I do not like Western games at all (please read)

[Ajar]

For that matter, imagine a Final Fantasy game that doesn't entail hours upon hours of grinding on mobs.

I'm kind of the inverse of the original poster, actually. My preferences skew strongly toward Western games by developers like BioWare and Blizzard

Lets get some minute details straightened out.

Any and every Final Fantasy (minus the MMO) can be beaten without "Hours and hours of grinding," much less grinding at all.

Really? Because I've gotten nearly to the end of FFVI and FFVII, two of the most lauded titles in the franchise, only to find that my party was too weak to win the final battle. I hadn't been grinding.

Actually, the only Japanese RPG I've ever played that didn't force me to grind in order to complete the game at some point was Chrono Trigger. [Strategy RPGs like the Fire Emblem series excepted.]

Then you go on to quote Blizzard as being one of your favorite developers?

Well, yes. Blizzard made WarCraft II, StarCraft, WarCraft III, and their expansions, which are some of my favourite games. I have no interest in MMOs -- I have to be very interested in a game's story to bother with grinding -- but when Blizzard announces a non-MMO game, I pay attention.

 

[hooliganyouth]

I agree - sometimes I just want to play something relaxing or just fun.

This is one of the reasons I'm very pleased with XBOX Live Arcade. The games are cheap and a way to play some really off beat games i.e. Space Giraffe.

 

[bue519]

Correct me if im wrong but didn't metroid prime involve shooting of some kind. I mean the one of Samus' arms is a weapon. C'mon. Also not all Japanese RPG Rock even the one brought over here. I mean cmon hasnt anyone played Blue Dragon. I'd rather make out with a shotgun then go through that game again, its just repetitive B.S.

 

[John Funk]

For that matter, imagine a Final Fantasy game that doesn't entail hours upon hours of grinding on mobs.

I'm kind of the inverse of the original poster, actually. My preferences skew strongly toward Western games by developers like BioWare and Blizzard

Lets get some minute details straightened out.

Any and every Final Fantasy (minus the MMO) can be beaten without "Hours and hours of grinding," much less grinding at all.

Then you go on to quote Blizzard as being one of your favorite developers?

Play World of Warcraft much?

Your reasoning here seems backwards to me.

Play FFXI much? The amount of grinding is much less in the Blizzard game.

Oh, and let's not forget EVERY OTHER GAME THEY MADE that isn't a MMORPG. >_>

Oh and I also forgot to mention Square-Enix with Disney to make Kingdom Hearts. Name a good American made Disney game.

Weren't the SNES/Genesis Lion King and Aladdin games made by Western developers? Those games were awesome.

 

[Mr. Bubbles]

Bongo Bill I like your view on this subject and I respect that, but the games you suggested to me arent helping. Most of them are war games which means more shooting and killing. I liked God of War 2, but that also had more killing, which I dont need to have fun. Lord of the Rings is Game based of a book licence. Overlord was cool too but I prefer to play Pikmin. At least in Metroid prime 3, they mixed things up in the First person genre(not to mention having the best control for a FPS to date)

And just like Not all Americans play FPS, not all Japanese play RPG. I am saying that the Japanese market has more variety than the American Market. One of my favorite series is Phoenix Wright, which would have never been made here. So yeah its not really unfair

Every game outside of the puzzle genre has you killing something. As for freedom, try TES. And nearly every game you see from them is a sequal. I don't want Generic Turn-Based RPG With Sudo-Anime Art And A Tentacle Porn Scene XXXVII. But whatever. Maybe that's just me.

 

[Keldroc]

I'm going to have to say Bongo Bill is more on-target than anyone else in this thread, except that I submit that a lot of the crap from Japan DOES make it over here these days.

To complain about rockets and war and such as Western cliches may not be wrong, but to say that Japan avoids them is utterly disingenuous. Zera, you just said you're playing RE4. Japanese-made, but utterly Western in design. It's practically an FPS, featuring rockets, guns, gore, monsters, and violence on a level potentially unmatched on the Gamecube except maybe Killer7 (another violent and gruesome Japanese game). Yes, RE4 is awesome, but it also conforms to many of the criteria you set out as negatives.

I just got back from Japan last week. Consider their top 5 selling games while I was there:

1 - Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII - Yet another milking of the tired FFVII cow, telling an "untold" part of the story that really didn't need to be told in the first place, otherwise it probably would have been part of FFVII, no? Heavily violent, and featuring the angsty cookie-cutter androgynes mentioned by Bongo Bill.

2 - Another Century's Episode 3 - Yet another "Gundam/Macross/Mazinger/every other giant robot franchise Bandai owns" crossover game, in which angsty cookie-cutter anime characters whine about how much they don't want to fight and then blow the absolute crap out of each other. This series has been going for well on 20 years now, because originality isn't exactly something in demand over there.

3 - Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles DS - Another Final Fantasy game. Shocking. Trend developing yet?

4 - Bladestorm - Yet another Dynasty Warriors clone, but this time based on Western history. Specifically, the Hundred Year War. No rockets, but certainly violence, the killing of thousands of people per level, and yet another war setting.

5 - Samurai Warriors 2: Xtreme Legends - Yet another expansion to yet another Dynasty Warriors clone, based on Japanese history. Violence, war, killing of thousands, etc.

So yeah, I'm not seeing this Shangri-La of originality and fun fantasy you claim Japan to be. It's steeped in the same level of crap the Western market is, it's just different crap. Hell, this list is an improvement over recent years, when the top sellers tended to be still-picture anime dating novels for the PS2. Both sides of the cultural fence produce winners and losers, and there really is no way of saying "these guys make better games than these guys," because the differences are stylistic at best and imaginary at worst.

Play what you like, but trying to justify your personal tastes with sweeping generalizations about cultural design preferences is pretty silly.

 

[Joe]

Oh and I also forgot to mention Square-Enix with Disney to make Kingdom Hearts. Name a good American made Disney game.

Toon Town? American McGee's Alice was as based on the movie as it was on the book, too.

 

[Sanguinans Sabulum]

The 3 F's of Japanese games

Fun
Fantasy
Freedom(able to develop any game without or minimal publisher interference)

The 3 R's of Western games

Rockets(explosions, senseless killings)
Realism
Rights(Licences, movie games, sport games)

Woah, what's wrong with senseless killing, realism, and rights? You attribute "fun" to Japanese games which sounds to me more like you couldn't think of any other description for it and neglected some awesome Western games that do get that formula right. Oblivion, Fallout, Battle For Middle Earth, FEAR, Bioshock, Dawn of War, Baldur's Gate, World in Conflict, Warcraft III, Empire At War, Two Worlds (which kinda sucked but was still okay), Rainbow Six (tactical shooters), MOH:Airborne Assault, Company of Heroes, and that's just games that are on my desktop. All of them are great, original in significant ways, and most of them have good multiplayer. Throw away that PS3 or 360 and come back to where the great games are: PC.

If you pressed me for a description of each "sides" games, I'd counter you by saying that from what I've found, Japanese games are plot-oriented, while Western games focus in on gameplay.

 

[Dragonmaw]

Seems to me like you have a bit of a Japanese fetish for games. Not that it's bad, but you are very much overgeneralizing the American and Japanese game developers.

Oh, and Japanese games contain PLENTY of senseless killing. See any Dynasty Warriors game or RPG. What sense is there in killing the same creature 5 million times to ding to the next level? About as much sense as killing 5 million nazis to reach the end boss.

Also, as an addendum, I'd like to point out that there is a HUGE indie developer market in both countries. Gish, Alien Hominid, Cave Story, Warning Forever, and many others provide fresh gameplay FOR FREE. And as for "Freedom" in game development, the Japanese are just as much bound as we are. See: The MASSIVE Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest franchises.

 

[Keldroc]

Oh and I also forgot to mention Square-Enix with Disney to make Kingdom Hearts. Name a good American made Disney game.

KH is a Square action RPG with occasional Disney cameos. It's hardly a fair comparison.

But Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse beats the hell out of any other Disney game in existence. It was made by Sega of America. Its sequel, Land of Illusion, was no slouch, either.

Then there's Mickey Mania, which was good, if punishingly difficult. American made once again.

 

[jetsetlemming]

Mickey Mania was a fantastic game.
Also: Sounds like what you need is a serious dose of ADVENTURE GAMES! Yes, the adventure game genre is chock full genius western products that are lacking all three (or at least two) of those R's you're so troubled by. Sanitarium, Gabriel Knight, most anything by LucasArts, Psychonauts... Escapist's own Ben Croshaw made four freeware adventure games he calls "The Defou series", which are all great, especially the third in the series, Tribly's Notes.
When it comes to Western RPGs, the three B's, Blizzard, Bioshock, and Bethesda. Add onto that the Shock series, and dozens of freeware indie gems (Check out Dwarf Fortress. If you can get past the "bad" graphics (I like the design, personally , it's one of the best games ever, free or not.), you have plenty of games to cover that front.

 

[bue519]

Wow i remember Mickey Mania, that was my first game I ever bought and probably one of the only games where I gave Mickey the finger

 

[Dragonmaw]

Mickey Mania was a fantastic game.
Also: Sounds like what you need is a serious dose of ADVENTURE GAMES! Yes, the adventure game genre is chock full genius western products that are lacking all three (or at least two) of those R's you're so troubled by. Sanitarium, Gabriel Knight, most anything by LucasArts, Psychonauts... Escapist's own Ben Croshaw made four freeware adventure games he calls "The Defou series", which are all great, especially the third in the series, Tribly's Notes.
When it comes to Western RPGs, the three B's, Blizzard, Bioshock, and Bethesda. Add onto that the Shock series, and dozens of freeware indie gems (Check out Dwarf Fortress. If you can get past the "bad" graphics (I like the design, personally , it's one of the best games ever, free or not.), you have plenty of games to cover that front.

More like Black Isle, BioWare, and Bethesda, actually.

 

[Zera]

Oh and I also forgot to mention Square-Enix with Disney to make Kingdom Hearts. Name a good American made Disney game.

KH is a Square action RPG with occasional Disney cameos. It's hardly a fair comparison.

But Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse beats the hell out of any other Disney game in existence. It was made by Sega of America. Its sequel, Land of Illusion, was no slouch, either.

Then there's Mickey Mania, which was good, if punishingly difficult. American made once again.

Kingdom Hearts is the exact opposite of what you said. If you played it you would know.
Anyways it seems that you are all trying real hard to convince me by bringing up all these pc game developers. Im talking about consoles here. Sure Japanese usually play Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, just like us Americans play GTA, Sport games and FPS so dont try to generalize them either. You guys are really trying to convince yourselves as I see it. If Western developers would try to learn from Eastern Developers, Video Games would reach a new level. Sure Jade Empire and KOTOR are good, But its no Odin Spere or Twilight Princess.

Ps. dont even think about insulting Odin Sphere unless you actually played it. That is videogame art at its finest form. Oh and that Aladdin game for the SNES was from Capcom

 

[DarkKaz]

I saw this discussion and I decided to create an account just to replay to it.

I'm on the side of people who prefer Western or at least non-Japanese games, personally. I don't see why the discussion has been so limited to Western shooters and Japanese RPGs, however, I see a number of excellent games from both sides on my shelf alone that are neither. From Japan, Jet Set Radio Future, Panzer Dragoon Orta, Katamari Damacy, Ninja Gaiden. From not-Japan, SSX, Burnout, XIII, Kameo, and Hulk: Ultimate Destruction (a fantastic and underrated game). They're fantastic examples of even large developers sidestepping the dark, gritty, shooter cliches and the generic angsty anime characters and dull gameplay of, well, most Japanese games and I wouldn't trade them for much of anything.

(I recently did a great used-game cleansing so my examples are limited, but there are plenty more.)

 

[Joe]

Really, I'd put the first KOTOR over pretty much any other console RPG, story-wise. The gameplay was also a lot better than the typical JRPG combat, too. Granted, I haven't played Odin Sphere.

What I'm not really sure about is why western games are "bad." I mean, your three "R"'s are:

The 3 R's of Western games

Rockets(explosions, senseless killings)
Realism
Rights(Licences, movie games, sport games)

I happen to like rockets, realism when it's not brown (I'm looking at you, Gears of War) and stuff based on licenses. Rockets are like fireworks I can control. Realism doesn't displace artistic style, it just precludes me from having to deal with anthromorphic characters about which a sizable portion of the internet fantasizes. And as far as licenses go, get used to it. The transmedia movement [http://henryjenkins.org/] is building steam, and the notion of stuff coming out in just one medium is going to be antiquated sooner rather than later. But that's not a bad thing. In fact, licensed games are getting better than they used to be. Take LOTRO, which was mentioned previously. I just don't see an intrinsic problem with any of your "R"'s; it's just a question of how they're used.

But then, I also love sports games. $40 for something that's truly different every time I play? Sign me up!

Without putting words in your mouth, I think what you're looking for and tend to find in Eastern games is a sense of artistic undertaking. In the good Eastern games, there's usually an intrinsic, epic feel, even down to the soundtracks. The stories are usually long, if sophomoric, and despite all the protagonists being loner chosen one vampire space elf orphans [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_29/181-Striding-the-Wasteland], they all follow a linear progression.

I can understand liking that sort of thing, but I just don't. The Western games with good stories I've played - KOTOR, Indigo Prophecy, Bloodlines, etc. - tell better stories on average than the Eastern games the typical fan heralds as the Second Coming. But I also don't get anime, which seems to enjoy similar storytelling conventions.

But hey, different strokes.

 

[Bahimiron [deprecated]]

The SNES Aladdin game was Capcom. The Genesis version, which is the version that has been considered a classic for years, was Virgin Interactive, a British company.

The most rational post so far has been Bongo Bill's, where he pretty much pointed out Sturgeon's Law. 90% of everything is crap. If you went to Japan, I think you'd be disappointed to see the shelves crammed with a thousand derivative versions of Final Fantasy made by countless developers you've never even heard of, all of which make Blue Dragon look like a classic. You'd see endless amounts of Mah-Jongg games and train simulators and top down bullet hell shoot 'em ups.

The Japanese audience is different, but they're not more innovative than Western developers. They get stuck in the same ruts as the people in the west. C'mon, Mario Party EIGHT?

It seems like the Japanese offer up all the innovation, but that's only because you're seeing a fairly small number of those games. On the other hand, over here (and by over here I do NOT mean just America) we've got Bioshock, Portal, Alan Wake, KOTOR, Ratchet & Clank, Left 4 Dead, Fable 2 and numerous others.

I know you're not counting PC games, but that's pretty foolish of you. That's like saying 'as long as you only count board games, the Germans are the most innovative game manufacturers in the world'. Why only count board games? Why only count console games? As a video gamer, you gotta be taking your games where they come from, and in this argument the PC is brimming with innovation. Any game from Introversion, Relic or Blizzard. Things springing from the mind of Sid Meier and Warren Specter. Oh, and for the love of God, any complaint about western innovation that isn't refuted with a mention of Spore is a tragedy.

 

[Keldroc]

Kingdom Hearts is the exact opposite of what you said. If you played it you would know.

I have played KH1, KH:CoM, and KH2 to 100% completion. Sephiroth, Colosseum, the whole nine yards. I know what they are just fine, thanks.

Ps. dont even think about insulting Odin Sphere unless you actually played it. That is videogame art at its finest form. Oh and that Aladdin game for the SNES was from Capcom

Odin Sphere is very good, but once again a unique example, not par for the course in Japanese game development. Vanillaware is a respected developer because they put out games that are different and well-made. You cannot say "Japan has better games" by citing the top 1% of Japan's game output.

 

[Mr. Bubbles]

It's a battle of the cliches is what it is.

 

[sumwar]

Yea I think this is just a difference of tastes really. I like RPGs but there are negatives to them just like shooters. If you're not into shooters and sports games(I'm not into sports games) there are alternatives but of course not as many in Japan. I don't keep up to date with gaming in Japan but I wouldn't be surprised if there are mainstream games there but of a different genre. Look at some of the games people mentioned, try them out you might like em.