The genre, it seemed, had been exhausted. In the face of Nippon Ichi's bold innovation most Japanese developers walked away from the genre, and those who didn't consigned their creations to orthodoxy and handheld formats. Every unit in the game has a 100 per cent counter rate, providing it's using the same weapon as its attacker. Even if it was evolution rather than revolution, a great many players were left disorientated and disenfranchised by the complexities it introduced. But as a result the strategy RPG arguably became something else. More recently Nippon Ichi smashed through these constraints with its dazzling Disgaea series, opening up dizzying potential for customisation and pushing the conservative framework in new and interesting directions. From its origins in the Shining Force series through Yasumi Matsuno's Ogre Battle games up to his masterpiece, Final Fantasy Tactics, the genre quickly pressed up against its self-imposed boundaries, leaving precious little room for any newcomer to manoeuvre. It's an argument given credibility by the story of the strategy RPG, that Japanese sub-genre that marries chess with Tolkien and anime eyes. And so it seems feasible that some genres can be exhausted, mined of potential permutations to the extent that there are simply no truly new games to be made in that particular form. Tetris is Tetris, no matter what colour the blocks or which imagery is used for the background. Not so game systems, which in their stark mathematical and tactile nature are near impossible to disguise. Is it possible to exhaust a genre's potential? There may be only seven stories to be told in the world, but in the multitudinous hues of character and scenario it's possible to dress them in infinite ways - and so keep our bookstores stocked with novelty.
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