Writing Tips and Reviews

Mystical Power: Decline and New Ones

Here's another one of my "take my own words from a chat I had". I take my battle inspiration from games. Actually I take all my inspiration from things I like and old stuff I wrote. Nothing comes from nothing. No idea original. I think I'm going to stop hammering that in. Here's my reasoning to why I always have a mage type character and when those go extinct why I will replace them with something else.

"Gameplay wise, it's better than just everyone using weapons. In the Tales series there's always at least one mage type, in the Fate series the Caster class always has to be there, there's an expectation for some form of mystical power to exist. In game, if there was no form of mage or mystical power, then the player would just be spamming the attack button like those people in Kingdom Hearts who refuse to use spells. I spam wind magic like you wouldn't believe. Aero is really good when you get it up to full power.

It's purely for gameplay reasons. Since I take my inspiration from games. Once artes and magic go away, the "player" is left with a bunch of characters using weapons. As cool as it is to try out new weapons, it's also a part of fantasy gameplay to try out the mage character too. Mages are good support and good for distance attacks. Tales of the Rays players know this, most players have at least one mage character; having a full party of them is not a good idea, take it from me. My Tales parties always consist of two mages, usually one healing, and two fighters. It also makes the gameplay fun since you have to characters attacking with skills and another two summoning literal tornados of fire at the enemy.

It's fantasy gaming. Totally unnecessary but fun. If my series were games, then the low use of artes would have to be compensated to keep the player happy."