I'M JUST GONNA LEAVE THIS HERE WITHOUT MUCH FURTHER COMMENT.

What is domesticated even supposed to mean?

Tame a wild horse and you will have a horse that's completely chance-less in a race against domesticated horses breed to become good racing horses. Using that logic on games, domestic games would be games that have become better at what they are supposed to do compared to non domestic games. Reading the article, that seems to be about right.

author=Article
Try to remember the last time you were lost in a game.

It has happened in RM games, but it was quite some time it happened in a professionally made game. However, regardless of what game it happened in, I do not remember getting lost being a good thing. So, good riddance of that.

^ Well, this being an RPG Maker community, largely comprised of people coming from a J-RPG gaming tradition, it's not surprising we don't like what we're hearing. The J-RPG genre is like the worst offender of the kind of stuff the author of these articles is against. So posting those articles here might be like posting Marxist literature in a Libertarian community. (or vice versa)

As for me, I thought the articles were great food for thought, but I actually am an "adventure" kind of guy who does from time to time enjoy getting lost in a game.

For a good long while (pre-2001-ish), I was an adventure and platformer guy, seeing as how I grew up with such solid-titled series' such as Megaman, Zelda, Super Mario and Kirby, the last of which was about as close to an old-schoolers "casual" platformer as possible (you could just fly over every stage). Even going into the N64, I still spent a good chunk of my time in games like Super Mario 64, LoZ:OOT/MM, Banjo Kazooie/Tooie, Donkey Kong 64, you-name-it. Granted, I did have Castlevania 3, Darkwing Duck, Tale Spin, Duck Tales, Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers and the sort back in the NES days, but most of those I never got anywhere in unless my bro helped me out. It was only during the early 2000s that I played my first few RPGs to completion (Final Fantasy 5 (SNES emulator, PC) and 9 (PlayStation 1)).

Even with all this non-RPG experience and time spent back in the older gen gaming, I still don't treasure the thought of getting "lost" lost beyond a few minutes of walking backwards into a familiar place. Then again, who can honestly say that they got "lost" in Zelda 1, while the overworld was just big enough to feel vast, but small enough to kinda get the gist of where you are (it had a mini-map in the corner for Christ's sake!). I enjoy a good adventure as much as the next guy, and exploration with rewards to reap makes it all the more enjoyable, but sometimes just wandering a new world in itself is exploration enough if you take the time to admire the scenery.

People bitching about this and that seems justified in some cases but teeters on nit-picky when just enjoying a game for what it is instead of looking at and tearing apart this game through a designer's eye should be the main focus of gaming. So to rap it up, I would recommend taking each game as its own game instead of comparing it to other games of the series and liking or hating it accordingly.

EDIT: Difficulty is a completely different topic for me that depends solely on the game. If I am thoroughly enjoying myself or feel like this game I'm playing is worth my while, then I'll most likely muscle through an army of fiends before calling it a day, but anything less than "I must play this!" and I'll likely resort to using a cheat unless it falls under these few things:

1. There are no cheats
2. I don't have a Gameshark
3. Pride gets the better of me

The third being a movement I've strived for these past few years to get the most out of gaming instead of constantly falling back on walkthroughs and cheats.

Now if I can get off my ass (and back onto my ass) and deal with the fact that all electronic games will freeze up on me every once in a blue moon, I'll get back to playing Donkey Kong 64 as I was doing last night. I don't care if it's what most would call a "casual game" because of the lack of difficulty, I just play games to have fun.

You can't talk about bullshit requirements in Ultima 5 without mentioning Lord British's Sandalwood Box. It is the endgame requirement that is never mentioned *. Let's recap the endgame requirements:

- The Avatar must be level 8 (max level). Otherwise the Ghost of Richard Garriot won't ordain you for the quest and you can't enter Doom, the final dungeon. Never really mentioned in the game as a requirement but it's a good idea anyways.

- Defeat the Three Shadowlords. This is the biggest quest in the game and you can't kill them in battle (well, you can but they'll just respawn). If you don't kill them they ambush you at the entrance to Doom and immediately steal an essential endgame item (and kill you too). As the major antagonist and gradually learning how to kill them it's a safe assumption you should deal with them before entering the endgame.

- Get Lord British's Scepter. It's a magic tool that can banish any kind of forcefield. There's magic that does 99% of it except a magic forcefield that appears when you enter Doom where the Shadowlords ambush you. The Shadowlords steal it immediately if you ever enter battle with them. LB's Three Treasures are mentioned in the manual I believe.

- Get Lord British's Crown. Probably technically not required. When the Avatar wears it he becomes immune to magic mind control. Normally not an issue except Doom has dozens of hidden enemies in inaccessible parts of the map that only spam mind control and if it lands you're fucked.

- Get Lrod British's Amulet. This reveals the one square in a patch of unseeable darkness in the Underworld where Doom is.

- Learn the word of power that opens Doom. I think this gets mentioned by somebody, but given how only one NPC in the entire game might have an essential clue it'll probably get overlooked. The gameplay kinda hints at it as you need words of power to open up any of the dungeons that lead into the Underword where Doom is located.

- Get the fucking Sandalwood Box. There is nothing stopping you from going into Doom and finding your way to the end without this item. You'll find the mirror LB is trapped in and get sucked in when he asks you if you brought it. If you don't have it you just game over because you're trapped with LB now. Nobody in the entire game will mention that you need this essential item *! You will have to go back and find it with the only clue being that you failed the game because you don't have it.

Fuck you Ultima 5 (it is also a cool game despite all that)

* well, somebody tells you. Specifically Smith the Horse. In Ultima 6.