JRPGs Are My Therapist: A Mixed-Race Artist’s 2019 Chronicle

(Pt. 2 bc word count limits)

By William Quant

I’ve written an entire article on the latest Fire Emblem game elsewhere, so I won’t delve too terribly much into the plot, but really all you need to know is that it is your character’s job to teach, enrich, and later save the lives of an entire flock of high-class, troubled, and often traumatized youths who will decide the direction of the fantasy nation of Fodlan. Because the story is full of multi-sided warfare and plenty of characters, many of which you can’t save, the game is riddled with heartbreak after heartbreak. The game hours are long, the decisions are dire, and there isn’t a doubt in my mind that it should’ve been nominated for Game of the Year. And maybe I’m entirely biased because so many of the characters battle things like class systems, racism, depression, anxiety, PTSD, abuse, bouts with identity, and even outright suicidal tendencies.

So the obvious parallels were there for me, but you’ll be glad to know video games weren’t the only avenue of remedy I checked out. I actually did try and sign up with a mental health clinic, but after a prolonged registration process, there were never any openings to see a licensed professional. There’s something to be said here about the difference between mental health awareness and mental health accessibility, but this isn’t the piece to delve into that. Just know that I reached out, but alas, reaching who I should have proved incredibly difficult.

I found solace and support in my own D&D group, and of course, the fine students and staff of Fire Emblem’s Garreg Mach Monastery. Getting close to and helping these characters who had so much devastation in their lives really was in a way therapeutic, even if all I thought I was really doing was helping them with their studies. Then again, I suppose the small things matter as much to mental and physical health as the big things; everything is interconnected. That being said, I don’t know if I’ve ever gotten so emotional playing a game. Never cried or anything, but it just drew so much from me. I put hours into it and I swear one day I’ll go back and finish a playthrough with another house, but I don’t think a game has ever left me so emotionally drained in my entire life. While maybe not a JRPG in the truest sense, Three Houses certainly hit me like the ton of bricks I’d always heard those types of games are. It at least helped me along with the idea that so many other people had gone through and were going through what I was.

To say I needed a refill for my soul was an understatement. Despite the comics anthology actually being put out and published, I still don’t know if I really allowed myself to feel happy about all of it. I wasn’t sure if my mind and body had really accepted it. As fall rolled around, I found myself pulled to a franchise I actually played way back on the GameBoy Color but not only did I not know at the time it was a JRPG, I was also blissfully unaware that it was the game that defined the very idea of the JRPG - Dragon Quest.

It really is hard to overstate the importance of the existence of the Dragon Quest games in relation to Eastern role-playing games, and perhaps video games as a whole. To really exemplify how big they are, the two biggest names in JRPGs are undisputedly Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. One is much bigger in the East, the other in the West. Considering the cult following and reach of influence of the Final Fantasy series - even your mom probably knows that Aerith dies - you can also sort of imagine what Dragon Quest has done on the other side of the world. Despite me now being much more knowledgeable of the whole franchise and slightly daunted at its status as the codifier of the JRPG genre, I decided to take the plunge into the extensively named Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age S Definitive Edition.

I played Dragon Quest III back in the day (back when it was localized as Dragon Warrior, at that) and was blown away by the depth of something that was being played on a handheld, considering that I was much more used to playing things like Pokémon. Speaking of Pokémon, seeing how long it had been since I played a Dragon Quest game when I started DQXI, I was surprised that the character designs were significantly softer than yesteryear to the point that many of the monsters I fought wouldn’t look out of place in a Pocket Monsters game. They’ve gotten downright adorable and I want a Slime Knight as my stress relief service animal immediately. Despite being prepared for what the game had in store, it still ambushed me. The early portions of the game are an utter delight - a JRPG where I was overleveled for everything and having a blast. I mentioned the catharsis of this genre’s grinding, but what might be even better is the feeling of absolutely dominating the place when you know you should be struggling, reaping the rewards of all that grinding. Not a much better escape from your reality troubles than that.

Then came the challenge with an enemy you had to stop, grind, and find a tactic the game never told you was an option to help defeat. After said wake-up call kraken of a boss, you’re immediately given a haymaker of a gut punch with the saga of a doomed failed relationship between a mortal and a mermaid. That shit hurted. The amount of pain your heroes have to go through and just how much struggle here is littered throughout the game is another emotional ride that has helped me come to terms with my own troubles. This one is a bit more inconclusive, seeing as how I’m still playing it - had to take some time away to play Pokémon Shield, of course - but I can only imagine how much more struggle is on the way. Those same heroes’ complete lack of hesitation with jumping at a grander sense of adventure helped push me to have another go at making comics, this time a bit more consistently.

(Edit: In the months between finishing this article and actually putting it up somewhere, I did get to the first ending of DQXI and it is now one of only two video games that have ever made me cry. Good shit, good shit.)

I don’t really have a neat wrap-up for this piece considering that mental health troubles are things you never really get rid of. I can attempt to analyze some of the things about these games and see why they brought me such deep-seeded joy. Was it perhaps that the JRPG’s I was playing were much more about the world and the stories within and much less on how I was playing? Compared to Western style RPGs, which have a much bigger emphasis on creating your own character, the Eastern variants I played were much more of the traditional ready-made protagonist model, which perhaps made it much easier to leave my troubles at the start menu, or at least to put some distance between them.

But then why was it so much easier for me to feel for all of these characters and stories than other games or genres? That may have roots in their more cartoon or animated approach as opposed to the more realistic Western games I’ve played this year like Spider-Man, Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, and Fallout 4. A lifetime of making comics probably gives the simpler, more subjective style an inarguable appeal to me. They absorbed me enough that I completely forgot everything - even maybe how the world viewed me.

Of course playing video games didn’t solve all my problems. That’s not their intent. I don’t think it has ever been. And don’t get it twisted - no man is an island and I’m no different. I cannot exclude the help, wonder, and support I’ve gotten from other people and works of art I enjoy. Coworkers, friends, family, collaborators, and a wonderful significant other have done wonders and there’s no telling what other events in other nerdy realms have done for me, like watching and rewatching (and rewatching again) Into the Spider-Verse, and seeing Kofi Kingston, a Black man, win the WWE Championship at last year’s Wreslemania.

Video games were the perfect lens for this, I think, because they brought me so much light in a pretty dark year and they continue to do so. But maybe that’s what their intent really is, especially games as expansive and immersive as the mythical JRPG. They are just, at their core, a way for us to handle the very things we’re all dealing with in some way, shape or form by transporting us to another world. At the moment, I’m at a place where I do find it difficult to enjoy most things I always have such as writing, wrestling, and art, but if there’s one thing I still get some light from, it is these damned video games. I hope to show them as much love as they’ve shown me on this road to recovery.

Here’s to 2020, where I’ll probably put off playing Witcher 3 for another year in favor of...Tokyo Mirage Sessions? Hell yeah.

(Edit: I did exactly that lol)