For the last year, I’ve been enjoying a particular type of binge-watch: the “movie” version of JRPG video games, which collect all cutscenes and full-motion videos to turn the clunky, getting rid of grinding-heavy and repetitive gameplay of those games into approximately 10 hours of mindless, but not STUPID entertainment. The gateway title was Kingdom Hearts, which--I became convinced after watching the ‘movie’ of all chapters--was some Myth-of-Er-like philosophical fable (it’s more than light! keyblade! friends!). I’ve been plowing through Square Enix and other titles ever since, without ever touching a controller.
You see, as much as I love video games as a visual-arts genre, I am terrible at them. My last attempt was with the Switch version of Dragon Quest XI last fall: after 4 hours of gameplay getting stuck at a level-8 boss, I threw the towel and texted the man I had started seeing “I keep grinding just to get one-shot.” He thought I was being sexual. I was just frustrated with my inept party a mute swordsman I named BABY and a blue-haired thief named Eric. To me, the strongest JRPG movie, so far, is Final Fantasy X.
