Fight, Magic, Items is a non-fiction history book detailing the history of a specific sub-genre of video game: the JRPG, or Japanese Role Playing Game. This involves Moher going back to the genre's roots in Western video/computer games and fantasy and science fiction media that influenced the genre's first Japanese creators to make their games for the NES and other consoles, before the genre began to take off on its own. The book spends a lot of time dealing with the Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest/Warrior series, as some of the more major JRPG titles, and the book especially is interested in Western reactions to JRPGs and the struggles it has been sometimes for JRPGs to be localized and brought over to North America and Europe.
As a huge fan of JRPGs, although one who came into the genre later than Moher (my first JRPG came on the PS1 in Legend of Legaia, with my first completed JRPG being Final Fantasy X), I was really interested in the subject, and as I'll detail below, Moher does a really good job going through a chronological and not chronological narrative of how they came about and how the genre has evolved and is still evolving. There's a bunch of things Moher doesn't get into that I wish he had, but Fight, Magic Items is still a really interesting history for those who are fans of the genre.
Note: I read this in audiobook form. This can be a little awkward as I believe the print book has frequent little inserts in which the book quickly describes various JRPG titles that come up in the narrative which the book doesn't have time to go in depth about. In the audiobook, these inserts are dealt with by the audiobook reader interrupting the narrative to narrate the inserts, and if you're not aware of what's going on and paying attention it can be a bit confusing when a long bit of narration about one part of JRPG history - and a specific game in general - is interrupted for 30 seconds for a brief description of another game...only for the narrative to just go back to the first game. The reader is good mind you, but I suspect between pictures and these inserts you lose something not reading this book in print.
Fight, Magic, Items is probably not going to interest anyone who isn't already a fan of video games and isn't already at least largely familiar with JRPGs or a fan of them. While the book will occasionally sketch out some of the very basics of how a specific JRPG might play, it will rarely go in depth (and for many games that the narrative focuses upon, the book will ignore major parts of its gameplay altogether). As such, if you're not already familiar with JRPG gameplay or about concepts in various games that are discussed, you'll probably wind up a bit lost and confused. But if you're a JRPG fan with some familiarity with these concepts already, Fight, Magic, Items will work a lot better and can wind up being pretty damn interesting.
As you might imagine from the book's subtitle, "The History of Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and the rise of Japanese RPGs in the West", the book does indeed focus quite heavily on two notable JRPG series, "Final Fantasy" and "Dragon Quest", both of which are now produced by the same company Square Enix, and Square Enix's predecessor companies of Squaresoft and Enix are given major page time. But the book does a pretty good job justifying this largely and it's hard to argue that Final Fantasy isn't far and away the most notable JRPG series in Western consciousness and one that drove a lot of other companies to try and duplicate or ride its success.
The book goes largely chronologically through the genre's erstwhile beginnings - drawn from the works of other genres, especially Western ones - up through the modern day, stopping just around the book's publication in 2022. As you can imagine, the author's own personal biases and likes and dislikes do color some of his perspective, but Moher is entirely up front about these things and manages to never make it feel like his own personal tastes are preventing him from telling a largely accurate and interesting history. One way he avoids that is by quoting many other game experts and reviewers about various important games, such that even when he isn't a huge fan of a game, like one of my personal favorites "Final Fantasy 10", he has relevant quotes from those who are to establish why that game is still notable and has historical significance. The result is a book that definitely should have interest for anyone who is at least a mild fan of the JRPG, as it's fascinating to see the genre's development put into a historical perspective.
As the book itself admits in its final chapters, the genre and its features are so large that the book can't possibly cover every possible topic and idea that comes up in them. That said, I was a little disappointed that the book didn't really discuss in large parts the evolution of JRPG gameplay and differences between various games. At times, different game systems would come up and be discussed, like Final Fantasy's action time battle, and at other times Moher would quote a Final Fantasy producer talking about how with more lifelike graphics, they feel that turn based combat doesn't make sense and thus prefer a more action based RPG system. But Moher never really interrogates these ideas or changes in gameplay, and at times seems content to refer to games "evolving" or changing without really going into why they are doing so and whether those things are good ideas. I myself find the change from turn based systems to action packed and reflex testing ones to be a major turn off, so I was kind of hoping there'd be more discussion of this, especially as some game companies - or even Square in its other series - don't seem to be agreeing with this same direction. Similarly, as Moher is a huge fan of the genre, like most readers, he seems to be a bit more accepting of the genre's eventual turns as being natural and good, and a bit more critical eye honestly might have been welcome. But of course, that might've been a whole different book entirely.
Overall though, I picked up Fight, Magic, Items because I was interested in reading a history of a genre I loved and I got exactly that, and it was definitely a fascinating read/listen. Recommended for sure for other fans of the genre.
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