That's why I've never gotten into the original Final Fantasies or any other old-school RPGs, though I am waiting for EarthBound to hit the VC, just to try it. I never really liked the way that many RPGs, Japanese and Western alike, required lots of leveling up and micromanagement. It was a bit thrilling at first; wandering into a new town, seeing all there was to see, buying the new weapons; after I realized basically the entire game was like that, I simply quit. FF6 was better than FF1 and FF2, but not enough to hold my interest. And in others, the micromanagement was what killed me. Fire Emblem, for example. The fact that party members who fall in battle are gone for good is simply infuriating to me. It's like you're playing a chess tournament and someone says to you, "Hey, you can't do that. You lost that rook in the last game. It's not yours to use anymore."
That's why I feel that a more open-ended and free RPG would be a better choice. In the Elder Scrolls games, you get a large world to explore, free of restrictions and boundaries. You can choose how your character fights, how they talk, what they react to; you can basically write a story by living it. And it's all very open. As long as you keep the difficulty level moderately low, the few occasions where key story characters can die are not hard to do with all your friends alive. Jauffre's not going to die unless you're careless with him or you do the deed yourself. For example, Barnabas could use a bit more psychic power than we saw on the show and see, "Oh, this errand I'm going to do for someone puts Roger's life in danger. Am I going to just do it and let Roger die, or am I going to save him?" Or the player could simply ambush Roger, turn him into a vampire, and have him kill everyone in town. Player-driven experience is the best way to experience Dark Shadows as a video game, and I think that can best be done as a point-and-click adventure or a free-form RPG. Other genres are definitely viable, but wouldn't let us do what many of us have always wanted to do: walk into Collinsport and unravel all of its many secrets.
Oh, and if anyone wants a taste of The Elder Scrolls to see a bit of what I'm talking about, the games are, in order: Arena (1991, T, DOS, available for free download at elderscrolls.com), Daggerfall (1994, M, DOS), Morrowind (2002, T, Windows 98+/Xbox), and Oblivion (2006, M [formerly T], Windows XP+/360/PS3).
EDIT: My first topic and it turns into a popular topic within a week. I expected to only get a few posts on here. I've made topics on far more popular subjects on boards with many more active members that have crashed and burned. I'm quite pleased with this.
