The other day, I downloaded (From xbox live marketplace) these two demos and really had high hopes of the new version of silpheed. They did well on the background 3-d graphics, just like on the sega cd, but the ship display and control is quite a bit different than the sega cd counterpart, which I'm not really sure about. It was a game that, when I saw that it was coming to the 360, thought it would be a definate buy, but now I'm not so sure.
Next, overlord. I hadn't even heard of this game until microsoft released the downloadable demo, but they called it an RPG. Overload is sort of an action rpg, where you play an evil master that controls minions to do many of your tasks, whether it be to fetch stuff for you or to attack enemies. It is sort of reminiscent of a multi-console game a few years ago entitled goblin commander, which was considered a real time strategy.
I'm not going to say overload is a bad game but do believe it would get boring in a short time and that it would have no replay value whatsoever.
Ever since the ps2/xbox/gv era, we've seen way too many action rpgs. Many of these games shouldn't even be considered rpgs. If we go back to the NES and turbo grafx days and before and compare some of the games that were similar, we didn't call those old games action rpgs but rather action adventures.
A couple examples may be: legendary axe 1 and 2, the valis series, wizards and warriors, blaster master, the golden axe series, maybe even the castlevania series.
I tried out a game from the genre action rpg that was actually more reminiscent of arcade/action or arcade/adventure called demon stone awhile back. It was available on the xbox I believe, as well as the PC. It reminded me a lot of several arcade games: ad&d arcade, king of dragons, knights of the round table, etc.
It's ashame that the video game industry is taking advantage of a genre that I feel doesn't even exist. Maybe it's because of the fall of the RPG titles since graphics became the next big thing. Graphics = good for FPS, bad for RPGs.
Role Playing Games are almost a lost genre now.
I agree. RPGs have been diluted over the years, especially through action rpgs. But, trust me, they are still very much alive in Japan...they gets translated and brought here through Sony though. I am not a big fan of the company that killed my Sega, but the japanese rpgs do live on through Arc the Lad series, Growlanser, DragonQuest, Shadow Hearts series , Disgaea1 +2, Grandia series and many more. It is the only use I have for the PS2, tons of rpgs. XBOX made a couple of favorites too in Knights of the Old Republic series, Fable, Jade Empire, Sedeki. Gamecube had the closest thing you will find to Shining Force in Fire Emblem, the GBA had some Tactics Ogre games too.