JRPGs

[The Geek Lord]

There's plenty of stuff to hate in every game. I do love how hating FF7 got to be so cool though. I especially like how people say they hate FF7 but then FF6 is their favorite RPG ever.. even though the games are nearly identical in theme and tropes. What's even better though is the people who flat out hate the genre, they never liked it, they despise everything about it, but they forced themselves to play FF7 for 5 minutes so they could justify saying its the worst game ever or something. But hey, you can't be one of those cool nonconformist kids unless hate the popular thing like everyone else, right?

I played FF7 for three hours before I got sick of it. Perhaps I've just been spoiled by more recent JRPGs--Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, for example--but I saw nothing glorious about FF7. It was mediocre at best. I still hate it with a passion, though. It took away the budget for Xenogears, a much better game which was meant to be 4 discs long and ended up being 2, one full of text and nothing but. And then Namco bought the franchise, thought that the long-ass cutscenes were intentional, turned it into Xenosaga, forgot to give Xenosaga any kind of budget just like Square did, and it's aaaaaaaaaall downhill from there! (Seriously, the animations in Xenosaga did not flow--it somehow managed to look WORSE than Xenogears, for fuck's sake.)
(tl;dr FF7 took the budget of a much better game so fuck it.)
(Then again I'm sure a lot of people who hate FF7 haven't even heard of Xenogears.)
(FOUR PARENTHESIS STATEMENTS IN A ROW)

Ahem. Anyway.

Being a major fan of JRPGs I feel I'm much more qualified to criticize them. The plots are predictable, sometimes taking a turn for the completely stupid, most of the characters lack any depth or they're just incredibly annoying. Fuck, even some of my favorite games are guilty of at least one of these (CoughTeddieCoughRiseCoughYukiko).

Let's also not forget the poor game layout that expects you to know exactly how long you should grind before entering a dungeon for the first time or fighting a boss. Really, I don't think it's that hard to aim games at broader audiences, by, say, play testing the fucking thing until you figure out what level the players are going to be at when they get to the fucking dungeon.

Combat really varies from person to person. The aforementioned game Nocturne has some of my favorite turn-based combat--heck, some of my favorite combat in general.

In a nutshell, JRPGs have the same problem every other genre has: Sturgeon's Law applies. 90% of them are shit.

 

[CharrHearted]

Everyone likes different rpgs... yeah I have nothing more to say on the topic lets just call it off shall we?

People like jrpgs for jrpg reasons, people like western rpgs for western rpg reasons. Done.

 

[Grand_Arcana]

Honestly, I think it's because JRPGs Square Enix never became accustomed to the modern consoles. While FFs I-VI worked great on their consoles, VII and VIII were attempts to play with the new shinny rendering tools, and X had full voice acting. But the gameplay itself became archaic and the turn based/ ATB system murders your immersion, doubly so when Square's other titles prove time and again that depth of gameplay and Action aren't mutually exclusive.

Everyone mentions characterization, but IMO what really killed Final Fantasy was the voice acting. With the silent scrolling of texts, not only were cutscenes shorter, but the character takes precedence over the voice (I'm really bad at explaining these artsy things). If you're a fast reader, and most of us are, all the information is absorbed and processed in seconds while cutscenes may take several minutes. And text in no way dulled the impact of emotional scenes. If anything, the addition of voices made characters more unbearable than ever. (Besides I'd love to be rid of the Japanese custom of unnecessary vocalizations "eh" "uh" "tsh" "kah" "mmh" "gah"). If FFT was full voiced, I think I'd rip my testicles off and use them as earplugs.

I can't say much for WRPGs. I only just started playing them, and the mechanics are foreign to me so I don't know if I'm making and adequate build.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

And 8 was also ported to the PC but I hated it with a fiery passion. Seriously, you can't just seque out of the main character being stabbed through the heart and go on like it never happened.

I have a cream for this although one is a spoiler to the plot for those who haven't played it and one is a commonish interpretation of the game's story. Spoiler related one will be first for those that have not played the game and want to keep it a secret.

Spoiler

Well basically since Edea is actually supposed to be Squall's surrogate mother from the orphanage she could have revived him since it is her magic. After all we do not know the true mechanics of magic in these games since we can apparently bring people back from the dead and take meteors and live.

To expand on this the only reason she was acting like this was because of Ultimecia the sorceress who gave Edea her powers and has some control over her mind. So it could be said that soon after the incident she could have healed him under the guise of trying to question him. Although really doing it out of motherly love.

Spoiler: Interpretation

He is dead or dying and everything after this is a dream. Now if you want you can google the FFVIII dream theory as I don't have time to explain it all here but it may be worth a read if it annoyed you that much.

Everyone mentions characterization, but IMO what really killed Final Fantasy was the voice acting. With the silent scrolling of texts, not only were cutscenes shorter, but the character takes precedence over the voice (I'm really bad at explaining these artsy things). If you're a fast reader, and most of us are, all the information is absorbed and processed in seconds while cutscenes may take several minutes. And text in no way dulled the impact of emotional scenes. If anything, the addition of voices made characters more unbearable than ever. (Besides I'd love to be rid of the Japanese custom of unnecessary vocalizations "eh" "uh" "tsh" "kah" "mmh" "gah"). If FFT was full voiced, I think I'd rip my testicles off and use them as earplugs.

I have a way to fix this. Do it like Star Ocean: Til the End of Time. You can pick Subtitles only, Voice only, Voice and Subtitles and name all characters.

 

[uguito-93]

If I had to hazard a guess it is that they are freakishly linear compared to most western rpg's, as well as the fact that most contain a lot of overused archetypes with little depth. While there are exceptions to this (Persona 4 and Paper Mario immediately spring to mind) the vast majority just feel like their ideas have already been done ad nauseum (think about how many jrpg protagonists feel like Cloud clones)

 

[ABLb0y]

I love JRPGs. Apparently, I'm wierd because I'd rather play TWEWY or Final Fantasy XIII (Read: The best games of all time) Than CoD.

 

[The Madman]

And 8 was also ported to the PC but I hated it with a fiery passion. Seriously, you can't just seque out of the main character being stabbed through the heart and go on like it never happened.

I have a cream for this although one is a spoiler to the plot for those who haven't played it and one is a commonish interpretation of the game's story. Spoiler related one will be first for those that have not played the game and want to keep it a secret.

Spoiler

Well basically since Edea is actually supposed to be Squall's surrogate mother from the orphanage she could have revived him since it is her magic. After all we do not know the true mechanics of magic in these games since we can apparently bring people back from the dead and take meteors and live.

To expand on this the only reason she was acting like this was because of Ultimecia the sorceress who gave Edea her powers and has some control over her mind. So it could be said that soon after the incident she could have healed him under the guise of trying to question him. Although really doing it out of motherly love.

Spoiler: Interpretation

He is dead or dying and everything after this is a dream. Now if you want you can google the FFVIII dream theory as I don't have time to explain it all here but it may be worth a read if it annoyed you that much.

I never got farther than part way through the second disk where I was given a task about launching nukes or somesuch for reasons I no longer knew or gave a shit about. I vaguely know what happens after that only because I watched Spoony's Review which pretty much ended up matching my own thoughts on the game, aka I didn't like it. Haven't played any newer Final Fantasy games since though that's more because none have ever been released on the PC since save some MMO's than anything else.

Anyway if a game requires fan theories to try and make sense of its labyrinth tale then story-wise it's a failure, simple as that. Some people might argue otherwise but I've always gone by the thought that a plot doesn't necessarily need to be complex in order to be good. It's just as much about how the information is presented to the audience as how crazy and twisty it can be, and a simple story presented well can be both extremely memorable as well as touching. A complex story also well presented has the potential just as good if not better since it teases the brain a bit as an added bonus, but it's often hard to balance complexity and presentation which is why those that succeed at striking that ideal balance are pretty few. Goes for movies, books, or any other medium as well.

Gotta admit the idea of a dying Squall is a nice one though. Another key to having a good plot is making likeable characters, something which I thought Squall was not, but that's a whole other rant. Maybe something was lost in the translation, but seriously I hated that twit.

 

[Knight Captain Kerr]

?Tend to follow linear plots, with less of a Wide Open Sandbox setting.
?The player usually controls a party of predesigned characters. The player is sometimes offered a choice of what characters to use, but not the option of designing his own protagonists.
?The party members are usually written into the plot, rather than blank slates.
?A linear plot and lack of character creation that, hopefully, allows a more cinematic and tightly-scripted story.
?Later games tend to have one or more elaborate, minigame-like "systems" (such as the License Grid in Final Fantasy XII) that allow skill and ability customization.
?Random Encounters are a common gameplay element.
?Turn-based combat is also prominent.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EasternRPG

My dislike stems from these fine examples....

Thanks, you listed the main issues with JRPGs I have for me. I also like the art style in WRPGs more than JRPGs.

 

[Volafortis]

In JRPGs you are just plopped into a character (generally speaking), in western RPGs you get to define that character (again, generally speaking).

The "role-playing" aspect of WRPGs appeals to me more.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

And 8 was also ported to the PC but I hated it with a fiery passion. Seriously, you can't just seque out of the main character being stabbed through the heart and go on like it never happened.

I have a cream for this although one is a spoiler to the plot for those who haven't played it and one is a commonish interpretation of the game's story. Spoiler related one will be first for those that have not played the game and want to keep it a secret.

Spoiler

Well basically since Edea is actually supposed to be Squall's surrogate mother from the orphanage she could have revived him since it is her magic. After all we do not know the true mechanics of magic in these games since we can apparently bring people back from the dead and take meteors and live.

To expand on this the only reason she was acting like this was because of Ultimecia the sorceress who gave Edea her powers and has some control over her mind. So it could be said that soon after the incident she could have healed him under the guise of trying to question him. Although really doing it out of motherly love.

Spoiler: Interpretation

He is dead or dying and everything after this is a dream. Now if you want you can google the FFVIII dream theory as I don't have time to explain it all here but it may be worth a read if it annoyed you that much.

I never got farther than part way through the second disk where I was given a task about launching nukes or somesuch for reasons I no longer knew or gave a shit about. I vaguely know what happens after that only because I watched Spoony's Review which pretty much ended up matching my own thoughts on the game, aka I didn't like it. Haven't played any newer Final Fantasy games since though that's more because none have ever been released on the PC since save some MMO's than anything else.

Anyway if a game requires fan theories to try and make sense of its labyrinth tale then story-wise it's a failure, simple as that. Some people might argue otherwise but I've always gone by the thought that a plot doesn't necessarily need to be complex in order to be good. It's just as much about how the information is presented to the audience as how crazy and twisty it can be, and a simple story presented well can be both extremely memorable as well as touching. A complex story also well presented has the potential just as good if not better since it teases the brain a bit as an added bonus, but it's often hard to balance complexity and presentation which is why those that succeed at striking that ideal balance are pretty few. Goes for movies, books, or any other medium as well.

Gotta admit the idea of a dying Squall is a nice one though. Another key to having a good plot is making likeable characters, something which I thought Squall was not, but that's a whole other rant. Maybe something was lost in the translation, but seriously I hated that twit.

Well I was more pointing out the dream theory one because it would make all the other make so much more sense and to be honest it does seem like something it was supposed to be but taken out at last minute. While I am not saying FFVIII had an amazing plot by any stretch of the imagination I was just sorta giving my interpretation of that part and the fan theory.

 

[Fanfic_warper]

It may seem stupid or pointless to say this since no one has posted in a while, but if anyone is keeping track and watching this particular thread, I want to thank everyone for 2 reasons.

1) this thread got me a badge. YAY!

2) The valueable insight into what people like about W and J RPGs. Some people are just bashing on one or the other, but I must admit, there is a fair amount of defense on both sides.


Thanks again, escapist community.

 

[Defense]

It's because people are stereotyping idiots. I could just as easily say that WRPGs are choose your own adventure books with heavy Tolkien themes, reused character archetypes/settings, and boring D&D combat, but that wouldn't make me right.

JRPGs are giant grinds with reused character archetypes across the board, usually including at least one 10 year old girl and/or at least one long haired, overly emotional boy.

This guy never played NieR or Trails in the Sky.

If you need to grind more than once in a recent JRPG, you just suck at the game.

 

[Nieroshai]

PERSONALLY I like JRPGs for the story and WRPGs for the customization and interactivity.

 

[Chemical Alia]

RPGs are boring games to me in the first place. The anime art style only pushes me further away. They're pretty much the opposite of what I like in every way.

Except Paper Mario, that was pretty cool.