Game classes

If you know me you probably know that I like videogames.  If you don't know me, well, I like videogames.  I recently watched HCBaily's lp of FF IX and it got me thinking of the kind of job classes I like in games.

Job classes are things like thief, knight, dragoon, and white/black mage or summoner.  I like the games where the classes are restricted.  I know what you're thinking (because I'm psychic like that) and you are thinking "oh restricted = bad thing" because that is how our cluture works.  It's not.  Restricted job classes are where the character can only learn job-specific abilities.  For example:  a white mage can only learn cure, holy, and "pure" magic like that instead of being able to learn bio, fire, thunder, ice and other black magic.  I really like when those jobs are incoporated into the story of the game, FF IX did a very good job of that.  The main character is a thief job class and he is in a theif guild.  Games like FF VIII do not have job-specific abilities.  You could very easily teach your knight, thief, white mage, red mage, black mage, dragoon, monk, and blue mage all magic, abilites and just completly break the game's difficulty level to pieces.  I hate that.

Chrono Trigger is the one exception.  It has almost everybody learn some kind of black magic.  Your four main characters all learn black magic, but in a very unique way.  Each character has a specific element that they learn black magic for.  They also get job-specific abilities.  Like the white mage of the game also has an ice elemental attack and other characters get "white magic" which is actually just curative ablities, whatever.  They did a good job with giving your main party each some type of elemental magic without breaking the game and giving everybody everything.  I like Chrono Trigger.

Red mages are also exceptions.  They are a class that is built non-job-specific and that it their job class.  Red mages attack with a sword like a knight class, and learn both black and white magic.  Their entire class is like that, so they are excused from all my dislike of non-job-specific because that is the point of the job class.

Of course this only applies to RPGs, never to platformers.  Platformers don't have a party so they just get everything and are excused.

Peace love and all that jazz
Zarina