Should America or Japan feel ashame of the lack of "Jrpg"

[Gnashvar]

I wonder what a new Final Fantasy game placed in one of the pre-FFVII worlds would be like? Maybe they need to go back to their roots with all the new graphics and advances available.

[noiseredux]

I wonder what a new Final Fantasy game placed in one of the pre-FFVII worlds would be like?

[Erik_Twice]

You know, I used to love JRPG but the truth is...

I don't think they are very good.

In the end, I can't help but notice that the gameplay is reduced to press x, magic on tough enemy, summons on boss. Heal every two turns, use items when needed. It's shallow and we have had the same system forever. There has been no progression since the SNES days for the genre as a whole.

And it would be fine if enemies were interesting but you know they are not. They just take more or less damage or hit a different number of members in your party but that's it. It's not interesting battling against most JRPG monsters because most of the time it's a matter of using the same attack.

Those shallow mechanics are in most games of the genre and that hurts. For every Persona 3 combat system, which isn't that much better, you have a dozen Dragon Quest clones that copy the worst part of the copied worst part of Wizardry which in turn was the worst part of D&D.


I also feel that lvelling up and getting better equipment...is useless. Really, having a sword that does twice the damage your previous one did doesn't have any meaningful gameplay effect because the next enemies just have twice the same HP. You still play the same way, it's redudant, it's padding.

I'm tired of my games being a glorified Skinner Box. Sense of progression is well and all but it must be meaningful.

And my god, do they have padding. I think you can fit any JRPG in a fourth of it's size and retain everything good about it. In the end, Persona 3 FES, which I consider the best JRPG I have ever played, would be dozens of times better if you ignored the boring dungeon and only had the bosses and their own dungeons. More thematic, more interesting, less grinding, overall more fun.

I won't complain about the story because we all know how bad they are. Sometimes they have good writting or good characters but they often get drown into the bad plot and pretentiousness.


In other words. Dragon Quest is bad, stop copying it.

[skyknight]

In terms of number of titles that are being released in Japan, there is no shame; its the lack of GOOD quality JRPG that is be made these days.

You could argue for several factors: fewer competition, i.e. SquareEnix is the combination of all FF and DQ franchise, no way they will let FF and DQ go against each other for sales - so far DQ is limited to Nintendo consoles, while FF is almost on every consoles.

The comfort zone, the cliche, aka "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," if many gamers have fallen for a particular style and will continue to pay money for it, why change at all? (You all should be asking EA about the Madden series ). Some JRPG series have just become the same old s**t, with nothing new to gameplay other than changing the characters around.

The last, but not least, there are better games around. Ain't that the truth! My bros even ask me why am I still playing JRPG's when there is BioShock, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, the Witcher... all games that I have NOT played. My bros did beat me in FF VIII, IX, and FF Tactics, but after FFX, they have lost interest in JRPGs as they felt they couldn't offer more in terms of storyline and gameplay (but they still love the soundtracks of newer JRPG!)

And with all this, I gotta say you have to give credit to Atlus for not falling into the cliche, they do bold projects such as Catherine, and they take time to prepare - almost all of their PS2 titles came after 2003-> about 3 years after the PS2 launch.

[Gnashvar]

I wonder what a new Final Fantasy game placed in one of the pre-FFVII worlds would be like?

Yeah... no... That's a remake with a sequel with the same graphics. I meant a new game, with the medieval style with graphic quality like the ones on 13. Somewhat like 14 but not like it... LOL.

[BoringSupreez]

Ack has pretty much hit the nail on the head. The Japanese are not exactly known for innovation. They tend to have one guy with a great idea and then run it into the ground. I used to love JRPG's until I realized three things:

- All the developers were doing with their subsequent iterations was updating graphics and moving the menus around. The core gameplay rarely evolved in a meaningful way.

- JRPG developers seem largely incapable of telling anything but the most infantile stories. It always comes down to the Bildungsroman archetype over and over again.

- Developers had it in their head that Long = Good and began to artificially lengthen their games with grinding and fetch quests instead of stepping up and creating engrossing content that would make the time needed to play a JRPG these days worthwhile.

In the final analysis, JRPG's ended up becoming derivative.

Exactly. I find the old 16-bit JRPGs fun enough, but anything that came out on PS2 or anything newer is just stale. Once you've played all the classic 90's JRPGs, you've pretty much played all the 2000's stuff as well. Like that one Japanese game developer said at some game show last year, Japanese game companies are stuck in the past and haven't been innovating. That's why the most popular RPGs today are the western ones like Fallout 3 and Elder Scrolls; they are continuing to evolve. Playing Fallout 3 is a very different experience than playing Fallout 1, you can't say the same when comparing Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy VII

[MrPopo]

I'd like to see someone explain how a western RPG's combat system is any less monotonous than a JRPG's when you strip it down to the basics, as everyone likes to do when criticising JRPGs. And as someone mentioned, if you're criticising JRPGs for being the same thing over and over it's pretty hypocritical to not also condemn the military FPS or sports games.

[BoringSupreez]

I'd like to see someone explain how a western RPG's combat system is any less monotonous than a JRPG's when you strip it down to the basics, as everyone likes to do when criticising JRPGs. And as someone mentioned, if you're criticising JRPGs for being the same thing over and over it's pretty hypocritical to not also condemn the military FPS or sports games.

We do that all the time here on Racketboy. But this thread is specifically about JRPGs, not FPS games or sports titles.

[AppleQueso]

I'd like to see someone explain how a western RPG's combat system is any less monotonous than a JRPG's when you strip it down to the basics, as everyone likes to do when criticising JRPGs. And as someone mentioned, if you're criticising JRPGs for being the same thing over and over it's pretty hypocritical to not also condemn the military FPS or sports games.

Probably because a lot of Western RPGs don't put as much emphasis on the combat.

But really, yeah, this is a thread about jrpgs. Not wrpgs or fps games.

[Flake]

I'd like to see someone explain how a western RPG's combat system is any less monotonous than a JRPG's when you strip it down to the basics, as everyone likes to do when criticising JRPGs. And as someone mentioned, if you're criticising JRPGs for being the same thing over and over it's pretty hypocritical to not also condemn the military FPS or sports games.

It's all about how gratification is earned. In a JRPG I feel I have to grind for hours to play the game. In a WRPG I just play the damn thing.