These forums have some serious issues with JRPGs. And it's time to address them.

[Onyx Oblivion]

[HEADING=1]Stop the blind hatred.[/HEADING]
[HEADING=3]Some poster in every JRPG thread: "lol, JRPGs. They suck."[/HEADING] ^They will likely show up in this topic before long.^

Look, I'm not going to try and convert you, as I don't really want to. I just want to stop the ignorant bashing of a genre. JRPGs have slipped into decline in the past years, and I've given up on most of them. BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN THEY ARE ALL THE SAME. Like any genre, it has it's good games and it's bad games. You can't dismiss a whole genre just because you played a few Final Fantasy games and hated them. Or because you played a few Dragon Quest/Dragon Warrior games and hated them.

Do you hate all FPS games because you don't like Halo/Call of Duty (which are supposed to represent the most popular of their genre, as Final Fantasy is supposed to represent the most popular of JRPGs)? Probably not. It's about the game, not the genre.

1. Female looking men:

That's only mostly in Square Enix games. I'm sick of people thinking that all JRPGs are Square Enix games.

2. Turn based combat:

In recent years, JRPGs have tried to get away from that, but as an example of how to make turn based combat feel fast-paced, see Grandia...Where you and the enemy can cancel each other's turns by disrupting one another, and different moves took longer to execute, plus you had to move to the enemy to attack (the game automatically moves you towards your target).

Examples of major releases that aren't turn based: Eternal Sonata (you control directly when turn comes up), Star Ocean: The Last Hope, Infinite Undiscovery, Tales of Vesperia, Tales of Symphonia 2, V Chronicles (you control directly when turn comes up), The World Ends With You, Kingdom Hearts 39539854321865916901/21851985 days, Final Fantasy 12, FF12: Revanent Wings, Blue Dragon Plus

Examples of turn based combat in recent years from big name releases: Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, Persona. That's it. They're really trying to get away from it, with real time battles that you can pause to give orders when you want to.

3. Story's lame:

You're kidding, right? JRPGs are known for their sweeping stories. You just don't have any choice over it. Well, there are a ton of cliches, but what isn't cliched at this point? Otherwise, TV Tropes [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FridgeBrilliance] wouldn't exist. They also tend to have FANTASTIC soundtracks [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/view-from-the-road/6935-A-View-From-The-Road-Play-It-Again-Sam].

4. Not really Role-Playing if you can't make choices

I thought that RPGs were about leveling up, not moral choices.

Example: When they say a game has "RPG elements", that doesn't mean moral choices have been added to the game. That means they've added a leveling system of some sort. Like the stat bars in GTA: San Andreas.

Edit: Some JRPGs do have moral choices, just few and far between, like Chrono Cross and the whole

Spoiler

Save Kid thing, which determines who can join you later on, cutting off about 10 characters depending on your choice.

 

[Axolotl]

I dislike them for their Turn Based combt, while that's not all RPGs, It's most of them.

Why don't you dislike turn-based combat in an RPG?

This is what I don't understand about the JRPG hate, people who think turn-based combat is bad for RPGs.

 

[JoGribbs]

I don't hate JRPG's, they're just not my thing. If people get enjoyment out of it then It's not my place to judge.

I have a curious infatuation with the 'Tales of...' series though.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

Calling a level up system an ''RPG element'' is ignorance. Common ignorance, but ignorance none the less.

I do believe that at one point, a Tony Hawk game had RPG elements...Which caused to to erupt in a fit of rage that didn't end until I killed Tony Hawk and replaced him with a clone.

 

[Shock and Awe]

I have an amazing game by Square that is the exception to all those rules, do you want to know what it is?

Are You Sure?

Okay, get ready!

Spoiler

 

[Cherry Cola]

Lol, JRPGs. They suck.

[sub]I totally proved your point, therefore making this thread even better. Now pay me![/sub]

 

[Axolotl]

On the contrary, RPGs are supposed to be about role playing. Calling a level up system an ''RPG element'' is ignorance. Common ignorance, but ignorance none the less.

Leveling up is a key part of RPGs because it is part of using character statistics and having character stats over player skill as the prime determinator of victory is integral to what an RPG is.

 

[Baby Tea]

Well I do agree that blind hatred of JRPGs, or anything for that matter, needs to stop.
I'm not a JRPG fan myself, but if people like 'em then who cares?

I will touch on two points you made, though, based on my own experience:

3. Story's lame:

You're kidding, right? JRPGs are known for their sweeping stories. You just don't have any choice over it.

I have never seen a good story in a JRPG.
Sorry, maybe I've played the wrong ones, but choice has nothing to do with it. It's just cliche after cliche and always with the bad dialog. The JRPG I liked the most in terms of gameplay, Eternal Sonata, had the worst story. It was so pretentious, and so flat out awful that I skipped every cutscene after watching the first few, hoping it would turn out better.
It didn't.

4. Not really Role-Playing if you can't make choices

I thought that RPGs were about leveling up, not moral choices.

Example: When they say a game has "RPG elements", that doesn't mean moral choices have been added to the game. That means they've added a leveling system of some sort. Like the stat bars in GTA: San Andreas.

RPGs are about choices, not always moral choices.
Take 'moral' out of the equation. That has nothing to do with it. It's about choices, or, at the least, the illusion of choice. Give me multiple ways to play my role! Because that's what you're doing: Playing a role. Playing a role with no way to choose how to play it is just like any game. Then Half-life is an RPG because I'm playing the role of Gordon Freeman.

But once you factor in the choices, from how you level up, to how you respond to people, to which quests you take, to what weapons you wield! An RPG is putting a player within a role and letting them play it as they wish. JRPGs, in my experience, don't really do that. Your attributes all go up automatically, you are limited in what class of weapon you can use (Usually), and you can never choose dialog.

It's a Rail-RPG, really.
At least, in my experience it is.

Now, remember, I don't like JRPGs, but don't 'hate' them. If people like 'em: fine.
But they just aren't for me.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

I think that a lot of people don't like them because of this man:

Not all Japanese people are like that.

It's like thinking that all shooters are by CliffyB.

 

[Axeli]

On the contrary, RPGs are supposed to be about role playing. Calling a level up system an ''RPG element'' is ignorance. Common ignorance, but ignorance none the less.

"Several varieties of RPG exist in electronic media, including text-based MUDs and their graphics-based successors, massively multiplayer online role-playing games. The term is also used to describe role-playing video games using character progression mechanics first developed in pen-and-paper RPGs, though these games do not involve role-playing in the term's original sense."

Taken from Wikipedia article "Role Playing game". Yes, that statement is sourced. Quadruple.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

I have an amazing game by Square that is the exception to all those rules, do you want to know what it is?

Are You Sure?

Okay, get ready!

Spoiler

ah...the good old days. Well, it has the spiky hair, but what the fuck does hair matter?

I have never seen a good story in a JRPG.The JRPG I liked the most in terms of gameplay, Eternal Sonata, had the worst story. It was so pretentious, and so flat out awful that I skipped every cutscene after watching the first few, hoping it would turn out better.
It didn't.

*has flashback to that game*
*curls into fetal position*

 

[Baron Pedro]

Sorry, maybe I've played the wrong ones, but choice has nothing to do with it. It's just cliche after cliche and always with the bad dialog. The JRPG I liked the most in terms of gameplay, Eternal Sonata, had the worst story. It was so pretentious, and so flat out awful that I skipped every cutscene after watching the first few, hoping it would turn out better.
It didn't.

Apologies for being a spoilsport, but how can you form an opinion on story after only watching a few cutscenes and skipping the rest? That's like reading the first fifteen pages of a book, skipping the next 300, reading the last page and judging it on that.]

EDIT: To clarify, I have played this game, and the story isn't stellar, but it's hardly pretentious and flat-out awful.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

On the contrary, RPGs are supposed to be about role playing. Calling a level up system an ''RPG element'' is ignorance. Common ignorance, but ignorance none the less.

"Several varieties of RPG exist in electronic media, including text-based MUDs and their graphics-based successors, massively multiplayer online role-playing games. The term is also used to describe role-playing video games using character progression mechanics first developed in pen-and-paper RPGs, though these games do not involve role-playing in the term's original sense."

Taken from Wikipedia article "Role Playing game". Yes, that statement is sourced. Quadruple.

*gives you cookie for helping*

 

[Caimekaze]

On the contrary, RPGs are supposed to be about role playing. Calling a level up system an ''RPG element'' is ignorance. Common ignorance, but ignorance none the less.

But the problem with that is that most people have decided that by "Role Playing" it means "Being whoever you want to be, in this world" rather than "playing a role assigned to you".

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

On the contrary, RPGs are supposed to be about role playing. Calling a level up system an ''RPG element'' is ignorance. Common ignorance, but ignorance none the less.

But the problem with that is that most people have decided that by "Role Playing" it means "Being whoever you want to be, in this world" rather than "playing a role assigned to you".

I blame Bioware for popularizing this idea. WRPGs didn't always have moral choices up the arse (sorry, been playing The Saboteur a lot). They used to be about leveling and stats. See Diablo.

 

[Baby Tea]

Apologies for being a spoilsport, but how can you form an opinion on story after only watching a few cutscenes and skipping the rest? That's like reading the first fifteen pages of a book, skipping the next 300, reading the last page and judging it on that.

To be fair, I did watch the last few when I got near the end.
It was a run-on monologue of the girl talking about life and death with elementary school philosophy that was very pretentious. Yeah little girl, you know all about life because of that walk with your mom when you were young and you talked about puddles. Great.

Terrible dialog. Terrible story. Fun gameplay.