I play quite a lot of JRPGs and I don't think that's true. If they're not story driven, why are you forced to sit through hours and hours worth of cutscenes and conversations (+memory/flashback scenes etc) you can't skip? Why are they linear if they're not story-driven?BoneSnapDeez wrote: If a game uses its story as a selling point - or there's some expectation that it will have a decent story and it fails to deliver, then by all means slam it to pieces. But RPGs typically don't bill themselves as story-driven, it's the gameplay that's crucial.
And the average game hasn't got a battle system deep enough or encounters interesting enough to warrant playing them for the combat either: if it's turn based, you'll find much better gameplay from a SRPG or a turn based tactics game and if it's aRPG, from many other genres. Sure the battles can be and often are fun for some time, but many people (even fans of the genre/people who play a lot of JRPGs) often have difficulty finishing the games because the constant battles become tedious eventually and there's not enough depth in character&party customization to keep things fresh&interesting.
Naturally there are exceptions to this rule (the Shin Megami Tensei-series in general, Wizardry-clones etc), but what I said is true for most of standard JRPGs (not counting SRPGs, dungeon crawlers etc)
