I started playing video games when I was still in grade school, but I learned the beauty of Role Playing Games when I was in high school. It was one retro game entitled Legend of Legaia that started it all. Ever since, I got hooked up with this kind of video game genre.

One thing I noticed though is that RPG are like movies, there are lots of cliche that are always present in each and every role playing game. Here are some that I noticed.

  1. Healing and Save Station
    (e.g. Inn, camp, hospital, healing center, rest point, fountain)

    Every RPG starts, with an adventure, and an adventure would be useless once you are defeated. That is the purpose of the healing and save stations. Oftentimes named as an Inn and mostly found on every town. Most healing stations have save stations too, but definitely not all save stations have healing spot. Those kind of save stations are mostly found inside the dungeon just before you trigger an important scene like a boss fight.

  2. Healing, restoration and boost up items
    (e.g Potion, Healing leaf, healing water, Power up, Phoenix, Revive, Restore, Panacea, Nectar, Union Plume, etc)

    Since you cannot heal at all time, you need something portable to aid you. that is where the items take place.
    • Healing Items - as the names suggest, these restore your Life points
    • Restoration Items - this either revives the unconscious heroes or cures them from odd status like poison
    • Boost up Items - these items give your heroes some boost up to their status, either temporarily or permanently

  3. Status Points

    Characterized by the following:

    • HP (Health Points) - oftentimes use and usually signify by a heart symbol. This serves as the life points of the character. Draining it to zero will trigger the game to end aka GAME OVER
    • MP (Magic Points/ Manna Points) - oftentimes used together with HP and is usually used by magicians. This serves as the measurement whether a certain character is still capable of casting a specific action like magic or a special attack
    • EP (Energy Points) - Something similar to MP but usually used for physical attacks or activities.(well, most of the time)
    • RP (Rune points) - Similar to MP and/or EP
    • DME (Dematerialize energy) - similar to HP, as far as I know, only one game uses this kind of points termmilogy which is the "Valkyrie Series". Well logically, they cannot use health points because their dead.
    • LP (Life points) - similar to HP
    • AP (Arts Point/ Ablity points) - Similar to EP

    Other common status points are the following:
    • Attack Points - determines how strong the character physically
    • Intelligence - determines how strong the character in performing skills or magic. Also known as special attack
    • Defense - determines how much a character withstand a physical attack
    • Special Defense - determines how much character can withstand a special attack
    • Speed - determines the evasion rate or whether who hits first on a turn based battle

  4. Magic

    Either one of the characters is a magician or at least one of them can perform magic, I'm pretty sure that there would always be something magical about the story. And when I say Magic, I don't mean like those that can cast fireballs but instead those that are not common on the real world.

  5. Sceneries

    On making a game, one thing is always being checked, the Graphics! Whether the game is one of those old type games that are pixelated or the new 3D type, there would always be a part where a very beautiful scenery would be shown. An example would be the big old tree at the back of Genkaku's house of Suikoden 2 or the prairie of Chocobos from Final Fantasy.

  6. An Elder and/or A child

    I don't know why, but this is very noticeable on every RPG, there would always be a child or an elder that would sometimes be a part of the story. You would mostly find an
    Elder on the Village or I crying child on the way. (If they're not crying, they would be running or playing... and I find it really disturbing hehe)

  7. Sword

    Similar to magic, either one of the character is a swordsman(mostly the main one) or someone from the Evil forces would definitely used a sword. Or at least you can see it from somewhere in the game as a decoration.

  8. Armor and accessories

    To boost up the characters status, they would be needing these stuffs. These are oftentimes found on dungeons hanging around on treasure chests or dropped by enemies. Mostly they can be bought on an item/weapon shop on every town. Usually starts from a material such as leather and ends to an out of this world metal or mineral that is really rare.

  9. Map

    It is something worth keeping on every RPG to avoid being lost.

  10. Guide

    This is a very important part at the beginning of the game but mostly neglected specifically by the experience one. This helps you to coping up with the game specially for their special features.

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