Okay, so one of my big beefs with the JRPG genre is that I find RPG to be a misnomer. Although I've never played the pen-and-paper RPGs, I've always wanted to. And what appealed to me about them were the fact that you created your own character exactly how you wanted to, you played the game how your character would, and you could really feel like you're growing with your character's experience. That's what I consider a role-playing game. You play the role of your character.
In JRPGs, I don't get to define my own character. JRPGs are role-playing games insofar as some designer created a role that you will spend the next 60+ hours of your life playing (30+ of those being cutscenes). And the worst part is, these characters that I have to play, I don't often actually like.
FFXII finally made the leap into doing away with random battles. That's great. It only took them about 13 years after Darksun, but, y'know. And speaking of the battle systems in JRPGs, I tend to find that early on in the games, y'know, the parts of the game that might or might not inspire me to continue playing them, the battle systems aren't based on any skill or stats, but moreso about how many healing potions you have on you at the time of battle. Then, once you get past that phase and are actually able to kill enemies at will, I find the whole process tedious and disruptive to the game's pace.
I've really tried to like JRPGs, especially since I've only really played Phantasy Star II on the Genesis and really enjoyed it because it was something new and different for me, as well as Secret of Mana and Chrono Trigger, which I admit are great despite their genres. So when I bought my PS2, one of the first games I bought for it was Suikoden III. It was highly rated, well respected, etc etc, but I actually almost fell asleep while playing it (impressive, since I'm an insomniac), and when I died and found out that I had to watch an unskippable 10-minute cutscene all over again, I turned it off, deleted the save file from my memory card, then traded it in as partial payment towards another game. The process was so unceremonious that I don't even remember which game it was that I traded it in for.
Okay, so on to the constructive side of the criticism. As I've already alluded to, I find that the point of RPGs is to play the game the way you want to, with a character of your own design. Elaborate is always nice, but it doesn't have to be; if you've played the Quest for Glory series and realize that it's my favourite game series of all time, you can see how simple and stripped down an RPG can be and still be a rewarding experience. In fact, the character design in games like QFG, Darksun and Fallout were excellent because of their simplicity, and there are very few and rare cases when I have the tolerance to spend an hour before I actually get to play the game. But this is becoming one of those things that appeals to hardcore gamers. The kind who like spending hours on designing their character's stubble patterns. The kind who criticizes games for not being hard enough. The kind who feels insulted for playing a game with less than 80 hours minus side quests.
Personally, I like a game where I can finish it in a couple days, but end up spending 80 hours at it BY CHOICE. Hey guys, remember that thing called replay value? A lot of the games I grew up with, I could finish them in a day. Once I become fluent with them, sometimes in a matter of hours, or in the case of Space Quest 3, about 45 minutes. But I spent years of my life playing these games because they were fun, addictive, and left me wanting more, even if it just meant playing the same game over and over.
Also, more RPGs need to have throwing daggers that are actually an effective weapon, rather than a means by which to slightly annoy level 1 rabid monkeys.
