What can be done to improve the JRPG?
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This proves what, you can't come up with a good story off the top of your head?WeepingAngels said:
Neither are most of the people credited for stories in games. Most of them come up with the same boring chosen one/foretold hero plot. Sometimes you get something a little more original than that and it's a real treat.WeepingAngels said:
It's only original the first time it's done. What if everyone was doing the everyday Joe stuff, then it would become the same boring plot. It is my opinion that those would have a much shorter life (people would tire of them sooner) than the chosen one plots.Johnny Novgorod said:
I wish I had noticed this thread earlier, JRPGs are a passion of mine. Gonna be a huuuge reply here to like several people. XD
And can I just state how much I loved it? After the climax atop the Mechonis, I had to sit back, emotionally drained, and stop for the day. I was reeling with amazement and I said out loud "Holy shit. This might be the game that FINALLY dethrones the twin Kings of RPGs, Crono Trigger and The World Ends With You. All it has to do is stick the landing".
...And sadly, it kinda didn't. :s
See, I was doing a low level run, trying to keep the game challenging (I did too many sidequest in that AWESOME swamp area and wound up not exploring the jungle at all because I was so over-leveled that it was boring), and then Xenoblade did three things wrong in succession.
1) Rather than go for the finale, it made us go through one whole (kinda dull) extra dungeon, and then when we got to go to the final dungeon, it kept throwing "roadblocks" in the way. (Oh no, the gate is locked, go find a key. Oh no, no boss fight against that dude, the arena is a trap that lowered you you have to get back up! Oh no, go ring a bell! etc).
2) Major difficulty ramp-up. The game was already pretty challenging for me with my low levels, and then they ramped it up to super hardcore levels, so that even after over a dozen attempts on the final boss, I couldn't kill it. :s I had to quit and then go grind to beat him. Which leads to point three.
3) No level-appropriate sidequests at the end. Seriously, because of plot reasons, all the sidequests I could have done for quick levels to kill the final boss were locked out, and all the ones that remained were way too low level for me and wouldn't help at all, or they were way too hard to beat. So I had to grind big monsters for a week in order to be strong enough to kill the final boss, which killed all the plot momentum for me. :s
I realize that most of this is "my fault" as I was playing at a lower level than usual. But it still soured the ending of an otherwise basically perfect game.
So right now, it's sharing the #2 spot on my "favourite RPGs of all time" with Undertale, instead of sitting on the #1 throne with the twin kings Crono Trigger (Classic RPG perfection) and TWEWY (So upbeat, weird and innovative that I have to love it).
I do wanna play it again, but I don't really feel like hooking up my Wii to do it right now, when I have other stuff taking my attention.
Not all JRPGs need to be about "Saving the entire world from an unstoppable evil with the blessings of fate!".
Like, let's take a look at the Etrian Odyssey series. The final bosses are all powerful regional beings that would cause phenomenal harm to the country, but not likely the whole world. So it works that they're beaten by the player's guild who is not chosen by fate, but rather the best damn combat guild in the region that is often stated by NPCs to be faster explorers and more adaptable fighters that most other guilds (They may also in some cases have the blessing/assistance of a powerful faction).
Hell, the JRPGs that I make as a hobby also typically follow this idea, allowing multiple stories to happen across several games without having world-ending apocalypses every few years.
To whit:
Setting 1:
- A squad of four excellent soldiers go on a mission to assassinate the queen of a neighboring nation to shift the balance of power in the region and save their nation from being slowly destroyed by war and rebellion.
- A Vanguard (My setting's Holy Knight equivalent) raids a forbidden shrine to discover its importance, discovering a horrible truth about the world and facing a fanatical sorceress in the process.
I even have some prototyped stuff involving a stealth-based JRPG where the hero is tracking a conspiracy that could radically change his nation and another one that's a dungeon crawling Dragon Hunt.
There are technically, "chosen ones" in my main setting, as some humans can be blessed by the gods and receive powerful boons, but they're not guaranteed to win at whatever they do, nor are they all heroes either. It typically just gives them a slight edge over regular people.
Setting 2:
- Four young women are kidnapped into a massive tower by world-hopping fiends. They then have to learn to leverage their individual strengths (Genius gadgeteering, devastating and barely-contained magic, phenomenal martial arts talent, zealous dedication to protecting others) into a team effort to fight their way through the tower and escape.
The only game I've made that HAS a world ending threat basically ends in a desperate last stand where the heroes vainly decide "If the world is going down, we at least want to got down fighting, we can't give up hope".
All of them are interesting and fun stories and games (or so my small group of fans tells me), and aside from that one game, none of them needed a world-ending threat to be good.
The heart and soul of the RPG are:
1) Well-written characters that you care about, and an interesting conflict for them to struggle with
2) A good combat system to fuel their conflict going forward.
And honestly, most of the time "Chosen one" plots become straight up "Prophecy" plots which are often dull because stuff is preordained. Yay, congrats, you're the chosen hero so you'll succeed at everything. Fate demands it. You COULD give up and doom the world (IF the prophecy allows you to), but why would you do that when you know you've got a 90% chance of winning because you're the chosen one?
1) Stuff will naturally get complicated on its own, there's no need to make a plot all metal-gear-solid twisty to make it engaging. The player will naturally get more into the story if the goal is more or less clear, which gives them more time to piece together any mystery that's going on, and more time to bond with the characters.
2) YES. AGREED. I hate running into writing where characters are either stupid cardboard cutouts, or act stupid and out of character because the plot demands some contrived shit happen. :s
3) I need to work on this one myself. >_> So far, my main setting has guns being a relatively new invention, with people knowing that swordsmen and the like will become obsolete eventually as a result, but that point hasn't happened just yet.
As someone who LOVED that game, I must respectfully disagree.Cold Shiny said:
And can I just state how much I loved it? After the climax atop the Mechonis, I had to sit back, emotionally drained, and stop for the day. I was reeling with amazement and I said out loud "Holy shit. This might be the game that FINALLY dethrones the twin Kings of RPGs, Crono Trigger and The World Ends With You. All it has to do is stick the landing".
...And sadly, it kinda didn't. :s
See, I was doing a low level run, trying to keep the game challenging (I did too many sidequest in that AWESOME swamp area and wound up not exploring the jungle at all because I was so over-leveled that it was boring), and then Xenoblade did three things wrong in succession.
1) Rather than go for the finale, it made us go through one whole (kinda dull) extra dungeon, and then when we got to go to the final dungeon, it kept throwing "roadblocks" in the way. (Oh no, the gate is locked, go find a key. Oh no, no boss fight against that dude, the arena is a trap that lowered you you have to get back up! Oh no, go ring a bell! etc).
2) Major difficulty ramp-up. The game was already pretty challenging for me with my low levels, and then they ramped it up to super hardcore levels, so that even after over a dozen attempts on the final boss, I couldn't kill it. :s I had to quit and then go grind to beat him. Which leads to point three.
3) No level-appropriate sidequests at the end. Seriously, because of plot reasons, all the sidequests I could have done for quick levels to kill the final boss were locked out, and all the ones that remained were way too low level for me and wouldn't help at all, or they were way too hard to beat. So I had to grind big monsters for a week in order to be strong enough to kill the final boss, which killed all the plot momentum for me. :s
I realize that most of this is "my fault" as I was playing at a lower level than usual. But it still soured the ending of an otherwise basically perfect game.
So right now, it's sharing the #2 spot on my "favourite RPGs of all time" with Undertale, instead of sitting on the #1 throne with the twin kings Crono Trigger (Classic RPG perfection) and TWEWY (So upbeat, weird and innovative that I have to love it).
I do wanna play it again, but I don't really feel like hooking up my Wii to do it right now, when I have other stuff taking my attention.
You lack imagination, man.WeepingAngels said:
Not all JRPGs need to be about "Saving the entire world from an unstoppable evil with the blessings of fate!".
Like, let's take a look at the Etrian Odyssey series. The final bosses are all powerful regional beings that would cause phenomenal harm to the country, but not likely the whole world. So it works that they're beaten by the player's guild who is not chosen by fate, but rather the best damn combat guild in the region that is often stated by NPCs to be faster explorers and more adaptable fighters that most other guilds (They may also in some cases have the blessing/assistance of a powerful faction).
Hell, the JRPGs that I make as a hobby also typically follow this idea, allowing multiple stories to happen across several games without having world-ending apocalypses every few years.
To whit:
Setting 1:
- A squad of four excellent soldiers go on a mission to assassinate the queen of a neighboring nation to shift the balance of power in the region and save their nation from being slowly destroyed by war and rebellion.
- A Vanguard (My setting's Holy Knight equivalent) raids a forbidden shrine to discover its importance, discovering a horrible truth about the world and facing a fanatical sorceress in the process.
I even have some prototyped stuff involving a stealth-based JRPG where the hero is tracking a conspiracy that could radically change his nation and another one that's a dungeon crawling Dragon Hunt.
There are technically, "chosen ones" in my main setting, as some humans can be blessed by the gods and receive powerful boons, but they're not guaranteed to win at whatever they do, nor are they all heroes either. It typically just gives them a slight edge over regular people.
Setting 2:
- Four young women are kidnapped into a massive tower by world-hopping fiends. They then have to learn to leverage their individual strengths (Genius gadgeteering, devastating and barely-contained magic, phenomenal martial arts talent, zealous dedication to protecting others) into a team effort to fight their way through the tower and escape.
The only game I've made that HAS a world ending threat basically ends in a desperate last stand where the heroes vainly decide "If the world is going down, we at least want to got down fighting, we can't give up hope".
All of them are interesting and fun stories and games (or so my small group of fans tells me), and aside from that one game, none of them needed a world-ending threat to be good.
The heart and soul of the RPG are:
1) Well-written characters that you care about, and an interesting conflict for them to struggle with
2) A good combat system to fuel their conflict going forward.
And honestly, most of the time "Chosen one" plots become straight up "Prophecy" plots which are often dull because stuff is preordained. Yay, congrats, you're the chosen hero so you'll succeed at everything. Fate demands it. You COULD give up and doom the world (IF the prophecy allows you to), but why would you do that when you know you've got a 90% chance of winning because you're the chosen one?
I try very hard to stick to these in my own work.Dr. McD said:
1) Stuff will naturally get complicated on its own, there's no need to make a plot all metal-gear-solid twisty to make it engaging. The player will naturally get more into the story if the goal is more or less clear, which gives them more time to piece together any mystery that's going on, and more time to bond with the characters.
2) YES. AGREED. I hate running into writing where characters are either stupid cardboard cutouts, or act stupid and out of character because the plot demands some contrived shit happen. :s
3) I need to work on this one myself. >_> So far, my main setting has guns being a relatively new invention, with people knowing that swordsmen and the like will become obsolete eventually as a result, but that point hasn't happened just yet.
Grinding, that is my big gripe with a lot of JRPGS, some series that I like have way too much grinding in it for me. Probably the best example would be the Digaea games were you could level up into the millions as far as user level went. At least with Disgaea 4 there was a level where if you set the enemy level right you get substantial amounts of bonus XP.
As someone that played a bit of P3 on the PSP P4 Golden, how is it? Game play wise which is is closer to?Dreiko said:
Regarding the Chosen One trope in JRPGs, I have a question.
From what I've gleamed from the analysis of Japanese pop culture, isn't it fairly common for stories to be about simply empowering yourself? That it's not about being Chosen, but that through training, dedication, etc, you can achieve levels of power that are capable of taking on any threat? It seems to be pretty common in a lot of the anime, and while I know there are exceptions, but the whole "power up your inner ki" concept is pretty common in the culture it seems. And that it's not always some Chosen One, but just some determined son of a ***** you simply refuses to lay down and die, and keeps fighting, getting stronger and stronger.
That seems to be a pretty easy concept to embrace to avoid the whole Chosen One idea, though I don't mind the Chosen One concept if it's in regards to some sort of legacy, or mantle of power kind of thing. That it doesn't matter who picks up the mantle, as long as someone does.
From what I've gleamed from the analysis of Japanese pop culture, isn't it fairly common for stories to be about simply empowering yourself? That it's not about being Chosen, but that through training, dedication, etc, you can achieve levels of power that are capable of taking on any threat? It seems to be pretty common in a lot of the anime, and while I know there are exceptions, but the whole "power up your inner ki" concept is pretty common in the culture it seems. And that it's not always some Chosen One, but just some determined son of a ***** you simply refuses to lay down and die, and keeps fighting, getting stronger and stronger.
That seems to be a pretty easy concept to embrace to avoid the whole Chosen One idea, though I don't mind the Chosen One concept if it's in regards to some sort of legacy, or mantle of power kind of thing. That it doesn't matter who picks up the mantle, as long as someone does.
This thing where you have to pay for almost any additional costumes. Just let me unlock them, please.
I think the main problem for JRPGs is that they were games great for kids with plenty of time on their hands and they took too long to evolve (and some still haven't). The fact that grinding was ever a thing says it all. Even as a kid I couldn't ever finish those games because it was so boring and repetitive; there's plenty of times that I just wanna go over there to see what's there, but I gotta fight every 3 steps on the way there and back (which makes no sense as I just cleared a path). To me, JRPGs with their random battles totally ruined any notion of me exploring. And the battle systems themselves (the standard heroes and enemies across from each other trading blows) are just plain bad turn-based battle systems. JRPGs tried to make them "fast" and "exciting" but the point of a good turn-based system is that it isn't supposed to be fast or exciting, it's supposed to be slow and strategic. Turn-based combat means there should be LESS fights but each fight being longer and more important whereas the JRPG did the exact opposite. Ni no Kuni's bad mismatch of turned-based and real-time combat was basically the same problem JRPGs have always had. As a kid, I saw no point in playing a JRPG when I could just replay SMB3 for like the 50th time and have FUN.
Good writing in general is something any good RPG needs and there's not many good writers in the industry whether Japanese or Western. I'm thinking the writing came off as better during the golden age of the JRPGs because we were kids/young adults at the time and didn't know better. Hell, people thought Syphon Filter was good back in the day, go and replay that now, everything is bad from writing to voice acting to gameplay.
Note: I'm not giving a blanket statement of EVERY JRPG being exactly that, but most were, and there are still many JRPGs today that follow the same missteps of decades past. I know there's good examples of JRPGs and them indeed evolving but that has been fewer and farther between than most other genres which is why JRPG popularity sorta plummeted and has become, for the most part, a niche genre.
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Good writing in general is something any good RPG needs and there's not many good writers in the industry whether Japanese or Western. I'm thinking the writing came off as better during the golden age of the JRPGs because we were kids/young adults at the time and didn't know better. Hell, people thought Syphon Filter was good back in the day, go and replay that now, everything is bad from writing to voice acting to gameplay.
Note: I'm not giving a blanket statement of EVERY JRPG being exactly that, but most were, and there are still many JRPGs today that follow the same missteps of decades past. I know there's good examples of JRPGs and them indeed evolving but that has been fewer and farther between than most other genres which is why JRPG popularity sorta plummeted and has become, for the most part, a niche genre.
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Many game scripts were majorly rewritten so that the English text could fit on the cartridge. There's quite a decent amount of truth that American localization at least arguably improved the scripts.Dr. McD said:
Regardless of JRPG or WRPG, the whole save the world plot has gotten very old. I'd love to see RPGs in general have much more intimate storylines than it always being about saving the world.WeepingAngels said:
You seem to think there are only two kinds of stories, and both involve saving the world.WeepingAngels said:
Just because you haven't been singled out by God/Fate/Whatever doesn't make you boring. If anything that makes a character more relatable. We can all relate to difficult decisions and the constant struggle between what we want and what we can get. Nobody, absolutely nobody, can relate to a character being handpicked by forces unknown to play out Fate.
Again: not every story is or indeed has to be about saving the world.
Not every character is either the Messiah or Boring.
There are more stories than that.
There are more characters than that.
Diversity is fun.
I can think of a few things.
1. Enemies visible on the field, or a no-encounter toggle. It saves time, allows easy-backtracking for items, and lets the player grind when they want.
2. Less fetch quests. Give me proper side-stories or monster hunts, if you want extra content, not ridiculous collectathons.
3. Don't pad the game. A shorter JRPG is fine. I'd choose a well-crafted 20-hour JRPG over a 40 to 60 hour adventure with recycled dungeons or monotone filler.
1. Enemies visible on the field, or a no-encounter toggle. It saves time, allows easy-backtracking for items, and lets the player grind when they want.
2. Less fetch quests. Give me proper side-stories or monster hunts, if you want extra content, not ridiculous collectathons.
3. Don't pad the game. A shorter JRPG is fine. I'd choose a well-crafted 20-hour JRPG over a 40 to 60 hour adventure with recycled dungeons or monotone filler.
THIS. THIS THIS THIS.Foolery said:
All of this.
Random encounters only work these days in one type of game. Dungeons Crawlers and other games where the management of HP and and resources over a long period of time is the whole point, where learning when to return to town to restock is essential. Virtually every other kind of game suffers from Random Encounters interrupting the flow of the game.
I hear you on fetch quests too, unless they can be handled neatly and conveniently without needing to run in a field for 2 hours grinding them, and then going all the way back to town where you need to make sure you return then to the quest giver and not accidentally sell them. I HATE when that happens. x_x
And finally, I hear you on the shorter length. If you can tell the story you want to tell in less time, go for it. Good pacing and flow can get ruined by dragging things out, especially if the filler ends up being filler and nothing else.
kiri3tsubasa said:
By far the best one of the series, the attention to detail, amount of content and depth of story is out of this world. The gameplay is closer to p4 but with a lot of classic SMT influence such as demon negotiation and everyone having a gun. We also finally have light/dark nukes that do actual damage so it's easier to exploit the weaknesses of enemies than relying on IKs and finally social links imbue the gameplay with new tools, be it stealth or a mind's eye that sees through walls or gun-specific moves that cause various effects in battle.
Your analysis is correct. Honestly, I'm not sure why JRPGs in particular are tarred with the "chosen one" brush by popular opinion over here. Sure, there are a few chosen-one plots in JRPGs, but even despite having played hundreds of them, I'm straining to think of more than a handful that unironically ran with that plot, rather than deconstructing it (Such as "Tales of the Abyss", which to this day remains one of the most brutal and brilliant deconstructions of "the chosen one" I've ever seen) On the rare occasions where being "chosen" is played completely straight, it's not usually the case that the character is chosen for greatness or heroism, but more generally that they've been chosen by some jerkass deity to receive power, solely so that they can struggle and suffer for said deity's amusement or profit. (see: every main-branch SMT game ever made)Happyninja42 said:
I hate to speak in broad terms about an entire group of people, but if one were to use the widest possible brush, one would likely say that while western society embraces the concept of "the individual", Japanese society prioritizes "the community". Both ways of life have their positive and negative sides, but for the purpose of storytelling tropes, "The Chosen One" stories are almost universally a preference of individualism-centered societies. For community-centered ones, they tend to prefer "the power of friendship/teamwork/greatness comes from cooperation." Both are schmultzy and cliched, but they're pretty distinct!
Again, in a world where western storytelling has brought us Neo, Anakin Skywalker, half the superhero pantheon, Commander Shepherd, The Herald of Andraste, and any number of first-person RPGs where the main character is prophesied, it boggles my mind how somehow JRPGs got the stigma of leaning on "the chosen one" too much. XD
Yeah ok I don't care anymore, I lose. One thing I do want to say is that I don't play JRPG's when I want to relate to the main character. I play them to play as someone else and go through a story that always ends in me being the ultimate badass.Johnny Novgorod said:
Well, you're in luck, because power fantasy RPGs will always be a thing. Power Fantasy is so common because it's something almost everyone will enjoy.WeepingAngels said:
I do think that things only improve as more themes and fantasies can be addressed though. It makes the whole medium richer and deeper.
<3 I'm loving what I'm hearing.Dreiko said: