Doesn’t it suck when a game stops the actual gameplay in favor of a long cutscene? Or when others throw in a quick-time event in an arbitrary effort to throw in some interaction? Why couldn’t they do what role-playing games do and make the cutscene part of the gameplay? Many RPGs nowadays have tried to speed up their pace, whether it’s blending them with action like Fallout: New Vegas, or straight up telling the player to hurry up and pick something like in South Park: The Stick of Truth.
But back in the past, developers really wanted to wow the player with their characters’ special moves by making them look as dramatic as possible. Especially the ones behind Japanese RPGs. It’s just a shame that, once the thrill wears off, they become a lagging nuisance. Here are some otherwise fine JRPGs with battle animations that will make players wish they could skip to the end.
6 Star Ocean: The Second Story
The second game in the Star Ocean saga is regarded as one of the best, with favorable reviews from critics and fans alike. Originally developed by tri-ace, players control space cadet Claude Kenni as he befriends the locals on a medieval planet he crashed on and helps protect them from an evil space organization.
The gameplay isn’t that slow compared to its more notorious rivals. But the issue comes from the Ultimate Elemental Spells, which pause everything for their animations to play out. That’s typical for the genre, but when the AI uses them up to 5-6 times in a row, it can really make the game chug.
5 Chrono Cross
Chrono Trigger is regarded as one of the best RPGs on the SNES. Its PS1 follow-up, Chrono Cross, is more of a cult favorite. It got a rapturous response from fans and critics on release and won plenty of awards. But it was a different beast from Trigger, and fans expecting more of the same were left somewhat bemused by Cross’s changes.
Still, it had the classic Summon spells that stop everything for some fancy action to take place. It’s worth the player’s while to hunt them out, though the joy of using that Unicorn Summon can fade quickly by its 10th use. Luckily, there is an option to fast-forward the Summon animations to get them over with. Players just have to beat the game first, then start a New Game Plus campaign to use it! Just in case none of the Summons got old for players before the end.
4 Legend of Legaia
Legend of Legaia’s story about Vahn and his gang seeking to bring peace between the humans and creatures called ‘Seru’ is somewhat trite. But its gameplay helped it receive favorable reviews as it switched things up a touch. Players could select high, low, left, or right-side targets, then string a combo attack within a single turn.
It’s good for racking up the damage, especially in the early stages. As the player levels up, they can chain together more attacks…making the turns last longer the stronger they get…making the game slower as a result. At least it had some mercy. The Juggernaut Summon is infamously long-lasting, but it requires the player to get everyone in their party up to Level 99, so chances are it’ll only be used once before the end of the game anyway!
3 Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World
As the Tales games went on, their moves went from being fairly quick to overly elaborate, time-freezing segments with long combos, flashy lights, and dramatic portraits. The most infamous example comes from Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World. In it, the boss Richter declares “Pain will only last an instant!” and goes into a lengthy flashy attack that’s twice as long as it needed to be and is likely to miss the player’s party anyway.
Even worse, the character Emil can lengthen things by 15 seconds by triggering a spell called Ain Soph Aur. Unless Richter is able to counter it. If he does, that adds another 15 seconds as he bounces back from it. The spell is rarely used as there are stronger options, but that’s not much of a plus when all the spells and counters could’ve been shorter and more focused instead. That's just one of Tales' flaws too.
2 Xenosaga series
Time is relative and abstract, as any length of time can be too long or too short depending on the activity. One minute is too short a time to get to work, a quick time to heat up a sandwich, and an eternity for a character’s attack in an RPG.
In Episode 1 of Xenosaga, Erde Kaiser’s transforming mecha attack can last a full minute from start to finish. It stays the same from the moment it’s accessible until the end of the game. Series’ icon KOS-MOS isn’t any better, as most of her attack involves similarly long transformations that she does right in front of the enemy. If only they could hit her out of it like characters could in other genres.
1 Final Fantasy 7
As the premier JRPG series outside of Japan, Final Fantasy has multiple examples of overly long animations. Final Fantasy 8’s Guardian Forces can last between 20-60 seconds, the Magus Sisters’ Delta Attack in Final Fantasy 10, Kefka’s Supernova in Final Fantasy 6 being four times as long as every other top-end spell in that game. But Kefka’s Supernova has nothing on Sephiroth’s similarly named Super Nova in Final Fantasy 7.
It’s an amazing sequence as the Solar System gets annihilated bit by bit until the Sun explodes. It also lasts 2 minutes every time it’s used. Heaven forbid Cloud counters with Knights of the Round, which takes an additional, unskippable minute to complete. Its most infamous use comes from trapping the optional boss Ruby Weapon in a loop with the Mime Materia, where the player could put the controller down and do anything else for the next 5-10 minutes. Maybe Metal Gear’s cutscenes aren’t so bad after all.