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Some gamers, myself included, like to talk about the "Golden Age of RPGs" but I am curious to learn where other people feel it happened. Was it just a short period of time in a certain decade, a specific console cycle, are we currently in one and some of us are just too blind to see it cause of our nostalgia goggles. What o you feel is the Golden Age of RPGs and why?
Most people would probably say SNES or PSX eras, but personally I don't believe in any "golden age", some years are good, some years are bad, but every generation has had plenty of RPGs I loved.
For what it's worth, though, almost all of my all-time favorite RPGs have been from the last 10 years.
The Legend of Zelda and Dragon Warrior for NES probably kicked off the Golden Age of RPGs. They defined much of what was to come over the next several decades.
I’m with wooz in that I don’t think there’s a single golden era for RPGs. There are games that I really like in various time periods, and likewise with games that didn’t click. Individually, I’d say FF had its golden age in the SNES age, SMT hit its peak on the PS2, PC RPGs were the best at the turn of the century, etc. I’d say Zelda is in its golden age now, but Zelda isn’t an RPG no matter how you slice it so :)
Honestly I don't think we ever left the Golden Age of RPGs. I think there's been a solid RPG every year or so since the mid-nineties. OK, sure, there aren't as many releasing in the same year anymore, but the genre certainly hasn't fallen flat on its face and fallen by the wayside like other genres have done.
Now if we'd change it to the Golden Age of Gaming, I'd have a much stronger opinion. :p
It's better than ever!
I definitely hold that PSX was the golden era. If you like it could extend on both sides SNES-PS2, but I think that's overstretching it to make it less meaningful. The tails are more like silver age or something. PSX really had that boom in RPGs due to the popularity of FF7 (although some great PSX RPGs came even before that) and I think maybe paired with the issue that early 3D games were kind of wonky on controls contributed to favorability of RPGs over some more action oriented games. Either way, it definitely has my favorite RPGs of any era with at least my top 3 of all time, so it's pretty solidly the gold standard for me. That's not too say that the current era hasn't had some great RPGs (I'd even say there's a resurgence after the dark ages of PS3 era), but it's not the same as a golden age.