How Blue Dragon Fixed JRPG Class Systems
/I never owned an XBox 360, and so it wasn't until the game was available on the XBox One that I got around to playing Blue Dragon. What I had played however, were games like Final Fantasy Tactics, Final Fantasy 5, and Bravely Default. What these games have in common with Blue Dragon, is that they share a very similar class system. What I found to be especially interesting about Blue Dragon's take on it though, was that it felt like a notable step up - not because it did anything especially crazy to the formula, but simply because of some small tweaks to alleviate the pain points in said formula.
For the uninitiated, the core of this type of system basically works as follows:
Each character in the player's party has the ability to change their current class at any time (outside of battle, anyways). As a character levels up a given class, they will unlock new abilities that match that class' fantasy. At any time they will have x number (dependent on the game) of abilities that they can equip, out of all abilities they have ever learned. This allows you to do things like giving a Knight the ability to cast White Magic, for example. The specific details of how this is all implemented varies a bit from game to game, but the player's ability to mix and match class abilities is the main thrust of the concept.
How then does Blue Dragon make improvements? Well, to address that, we have to begin by outlining some of the issues that always seems to arise in these games. I am of the opinion that they largely fall into 3 categories:
Issue #1 - Ultimate Combos
The first and most obvious issue that comes to my mind, is that these systems are always seem to be defined by the overpowered skill combinations they produce. You always hear people talking about what amazing setup they came up with, and that's exactly what you want out of the game! But the problem is that, it becomes really easy to overly focus on that combo. Finding ability synergies is fun, but these games tend to fall into the trap of certain combos being just too good.
These combos become your go-to thing to do, their only function that actually matters, and as a result every other aspect of your character all but falls by the wayside. Your character becomes a vessel of sorts for that one really overpowered thing that they can do. They more-or-less stop being a character with a storied progression path that lead them to their current state (and an array of abilities to match it); they become just "the dude who uses Rapid Fire / Dual Wield", and everything that happened before those abilities is irrelevant. The combo starts to define them. In the worst cases, maybe this combo is so good that you decide you should dedicate 2 or 3 or 4 characters to doing the same thing- at which point the whole system has really just failed.
Issue #2 - Wasted Potential
So let's say you've gotten to the point where you're pretty happy with your character's setup. They've mastered 2 or 3 classes, they do everything you want them to do, and now all that's left is to wait for the endgame spells and equipment to roll in, right?
Except... you're only 1/2 way through the game. So now what are you going to do with them?
Well, At this point, you've got 2 options. You can choose to stick to your guns and keep rocking your dream combo for the rest of the game, or you can ditch your perfect setup you've been building towards this entire time. One of these options is asking you to forsake class progression entirely just so you can actually keep using the stuff you actually want to be using. The other option is asking you to compromise on your ability to do what you actually want to be doing, in the hopes that you might learn some new abilities that might help you, one day, maybe. You're either giving up your build or your progression, and both options frankly just suck.
Issue #3 - Cherry Pick or Die
As a result of the previous 2 issues, I've always felt that these games kind of stifle your ability to experiment. If you find something that seems to work, there is not a lot of reason to ever move on from that thing. Having a vast array of spells and abilities available is not typically that useful, because most of them will never see the light of day. You only have so many ability slots, so it's hard to commit to putting anything but the best of the best abilities in there. You can amass abilities that might be useful situationally, but when is that going to help unless your shiny perfect build has already failed? Are you really ever going to use Level 2 Old?
It creates this weird scenario where, the best option is almost always to hyper-specialize in one specific thing. But that "thing" you're specializing in isn't a class, or a role, or some unique character fantasy; it's the aforementioned "Ultimate Combo". In fact, you actually have very little ability to go all-in on a specific class if you decide that's the class for you. As a result of your limited skill slots, you can probably only even equip a small portion of the abilities that you learn from mastering that very class. All of that being considered, the only path that therefore makes sense is to cherry pick the best of the best abilities, and move on. You're not there because the class is cool, you may not care for them at all; you're only there because Blade Grasp is super overpowered.
Of course, it's important to keep in mind that different games experience these issues to different degrees. Of the 3 main reference points I'm using here, Final Fantasy 5 definitely gets hit the hardest, which is to be expected given that it basically birthed this style of class system. Since then, we tend to see things like more ability slots, slots that are dedicated to certain kinds of abilities, and more complex job unlocking requirements, all of which ease a lot of the issues with the system In fact I think you could argue that most of these issues are actually pretty insignificant in Bravely Default (the most recent of the games we're discussing).
But we're here to talk about how Blue Dragon did it, because I still think it beats Bravely Default on this topic by a good margin. so let's get into that, how did they do it?!
Blue Dragon's Fix #1 - The Sky's the Limit
In Blue Dragon, every time a character's class level increases, their stats increase as well. A class will typically have learned all of it's abilities by around level 35, but if the player decides they are satisfied with the abilities they know, they can choose to stick with their current class and just level it up as far as they want to go. It they want to be a level 70 Assassin, it doesn't matter what their Sword Master level is, it has no bearing on their stats as an Assassin.
This seems like a very simple thing, but it does a lot for the feel of playing the game. Primarily, it means that you never find yourself in a situation where you are wasting class experience (unless you grind to level 99 I suppose). You'll continue gaining stats long after you finish learning all of a class' abilities, and so you are always making progress towards building the character that you want to make. This also means that, if you really want to be good at doing Assassin things, you're not pressured to change classes, you can just stick with it and get really excellent Assassin stats. You're fully empowered to specialize in a given class as much or as little as you like.
Blue Dragon's Fix #2 - Strength in Numbers
I mentioned above that an improvement more modern games make over Final Fantasy 5 is to have more ability slots, and this is a concept that Blue Dragon really takes to heart. FF5 has 1 slot, FFT has 4, Bravely Default has 5, and Blue Dragon has... well, 12. It's a pretty big jump, but equally important is the fact that, to compensate, each individual ability in Blue Dragon tends to be a bit weaker that what you might see in the other mentioned games. Some of them are definitely still very potent, but having a large number of lesser abilities comes with a lot of benefits.
The simplest is just that, you get a lot more granular control over who your character is and what they can do. You can still build really powerful ability combos, it just takes a lot more abilities to do it with. Something that might take 3 ability slots in another game might take 7 in Blue Dragon. Which is a lot, but it means that you actually need to learn and care about 7 different skills, which is more than you can even equip in the other games. It also means that, if you want to swap something out for a specific scenario (or just to experiment), you're only changing out 1/7 of your combo. Having the ability to swap out smaller components means you have so much more room to be flexible, since you're only compromising 10% of your combo, rather than giving up the whole thing.
Blue Dragon's Fix #3 - Choose your Destiny
Probably the most subtle thing Blue Dragon does though, is the way that it unlocks classes. Basically, every 10 levels, a character chooses which of the 9 classes they would like to unlock. Each character only access the classes they have unlocked themselves regardless of what classes their allies have access to. This means that there aren't any complicated unlock requirements to fulfill, and you're not choosing from a giant list of classes the story just dumped on you, the only real requirement for gaining access to a class, is that you choose it.
The reason this choice is important, is because it forces the player to carefully consider what they want out of a character. Whatever choice you make, you're stuck with the classes you've got access to for at least the next 10 levels. Because it's pretty clear what each class is designed to do, it allows the player to build an idea in their head of what they want their character's path to be. Critically, this means that the player is considering each class as a concept they want to add to their character moreso than as a vessel for a potentially overpowered ability to add to their arsenal. If I want to just hit people better, chances are good, I can achieve that by leveling up my Assassin skills.
So what happens when you put all of these things together? Well, as I've alluded to thus far, these changes allow the player to much more precisely create the character they want to build, without having to make compromises. I feel like you really relate more to the characters themselves, because they are more than just a couple of abilities they happen to have equipped this given moment. They are a product you actively worked towards building with every decision you made across the breadth of the game.
It's true that the system is a little bit less bombastic as a result of the abilities being more tame, but I think this is a small price to pay. This is realistically the only downside I've been able to see to the way Blue Dragon does things. As much as there are a lot of games out there that claim to be a "classic JRPG with a modern twist", I feel like Blue Dragon is the only game I've ever played that really stayed true to the formula while still making it's fixes. It doesn't feel like a straight port of the old games, and it doesn't feel like it's gone in an entirely new direction. It feels familiar, but better.