Ape and Creatures

RPGs are not my all-time favorite games to play, but it is one of the big four (generally), which includes RPGs, simulations, adventure, and hybridized puzzle (Tetris no, Braid and Portal yes).

But I have played a handful of them. Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI (which I've completed maybe 60-70% of, it's a long game), EarthBound, Super Mario RPG, and now currently Pokémon Yellow (nostalgia--plus I never beat the Elite Four).

There are two things to note in that list: all but one are Super Nintendo games, and all but two are made by Squaresoft. The first detail isn't that important, but the second one is. EarthBound and Pokémon were co-developed by a Japanese company. In the days of EarthBound, it was known as Ape. By Pokémon rolled around, it was now going under the Creatures moniker.

Both of these games are somewhat fun, with pockets of frustration: the games have extremely uneven difficulty. A few gyms and battles are able to breeze right through, and then you have to do a bunch of monster-battling (often whether you like it or not) to even get close to pounding the Big Boss. EarthBound (and not the NES version. that's even worse) caught a lot of flack for this. According to TVTropes, "It starts out fairly challenging, gets extremely easy after Happy Happy, gets hard when you reach the mines and stays hard all the way through Moonside, drops insanely low all the way through Scaraba, gets a bit more challenging in Deep Darkness, and finally gets pretty nasty once you reach Fire Spring through the end."

And that's true, looking back on the time when I did play EarthBound without cheating. It's also true in Pokémon. I can't tell you how many times I had a boss battle or two that was extremely easy: a good water type move can douse any of Blaine's, or Giovanni's Pokémon (and their followers), but suddenly, the Victory Road trainers have battles so hard, you think you're fighting the bosses right then.

So now, instead of going through the Elite Four easily, I'm getting pounded on the first Pokémon Lorelei pulls out. It also haunted me on the last Pokémon game I tried (Gold) as the second half of the game (Kanto) was extraordinarily easy (except for the final, final boss, which I shouldn't spoil even though it's pretty common knowledge by now).

The problem is far from unheard of but ONE SPECIFIC COMPANY who pulls the exact same stuff twice? Give me a break!