What can be done to improve the JRPG?

[Foolery]

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.

Could someone explain this to SE? Seriously. 60 hours doesn't mean much if half of it is grind or stupid mini-games. It's a 20 hour game pretending to be a 60 hour game.

It's not just SE but they're a huge offender here.

...they're probably too busy complaining that Tomb Raider and Deus Ex didn't sell enough.

In all seriousness, I recently picked Final Fantasy XV on the cheap, and it's...filled full of filler. I like the weapon hunts, and monster hunts, but there's a lot of just faffing about, and traversing empty spaces. It ends up being tedious amounts of walking, with small bits of action where I hold circle to win.

 

[Eric the Orange]

SE flopping badly with FFXV

Where did you get this information from, All I ever heard was that it sold the best of the series.

 

[SlumlordThanatos]

Not censoring them anymore would be nice. At the very least don't censure them to the point where a character's biggest personality trait in the western version is fucking pickles.

I'm kinda on the fence on this.

I remember when people were bitching about removing "petting" from Fire Emblem: Fates, and I seemed to be one of the few people who believed that nothing of value was lost. Also consider Bravely Second, when the localization changes, I feel, actually made the game better.

Doing inane shit like altering character sprites for no good reason is stupid, don't get me wrong. But every so often, Japan does something especially weird with their game (like the "petting" thing from Fates), and it doesn't bother me if they decide not to localize it.

Kind of a judgment call.

 

[Smithnikov_v1legacy]

It's about motivation, why does the main character drive on through all the tough fights and general BS?

Because the villian destroyed things/people he/she cared about.

Because the main character gets off on the challenge

Because the main character is out to prove something to himself/herself.

There you go, three reasons, easy ones other than "I was picked by _____ to do this."

Imagine during an exposition scene where the hero just decides to stop, get married and raise a family because anyone can save the world.

I'd find it refreshing, actually.

 

[Smithnikov_v1legacy]

By stop being mostly about teenagers killing God or restoring balance to the world.

If i could buy you a beer, I would.

 

[Ishigami]

FFXIII is not only hated for its characters but game design and storytelling.
May I remind people of the atrociously simplified combat control you had and the absence of any imagination in regards to level design? There is way more to not like about FFXIII than badly written characters.
And Let me just say this: If you outsourced your actual story to other media (FFXV) or hide in an encyclopaedia (FFXIII) then you failed basic story telling.

As already mentioned better writing seems required for the most part.
If I need to an in game dictionary or out of game source to get what is going on than your plot is not interesting or engaging but badly written and unnecessarily convoluted.
Likewise, characters should at least resemble an actual person and not an alien devoid of reason.
I refuse to believe that anyone was able to sit thru Lightning explaining to Hope why she changed her name without a facepalm.
While we are at it: They should tone down the symbolism. If it jumps into your face feet first, then you probably did it wrong.
Someone already mentioned the age of many protagonists. I get it: In Japan you already dead to society once you turn 30 and your sole purpose thereafter is to increase the GNP until you actually die, hopefully due to overwork.
Still it doesn't change that we old fucks often have a lot of money and I doubt many of us care much for teenage high school drama.

Mechanically the only thing I miss are the old explorable world maps.
Most games that had these (Tales of, Final Fantasy) replaced them by quick travel lists (Tales of Beseria) or connecting 3D fields (FFXIII) or now open world (FFXV). For me it kinda reduces the world. The map basically gave me an idea how big the world is. A teleport list doesn?t transfer this very well.
Not to mention you can actually hide some special location or enemies in it to make exploration worthwhile.
Of course you can do that in an open world as well but usually getting around in that tends to get tedious. In these world maps I can travel to another continent usually rather fast thanks to a mount e.g. airship in FFVIII. However it is still a travel, I get a feeling of scale and everything is connected. In an open world due to the actual size either your world is rather small or the travel takes too long. Just drive from the desert station in FFXV to the beach. Yes it a travel but while your car doodles along you will think "oh my god...".
I personally prefer turn based combat. FFX despite being misdirected in a lot of stuff had thus far for me the best combat system of all FF. Because it was transparent: It didn't rush you and you were able to see the outcome of your move before you committed to it. It was very strategic.
Action games tend to turn rather shallow see FFXV.

So what is a good jRPG for me? Tales of Vesperia.

 

[SlumlordThanatos]

Not censoring them anymore would be nice. At the very least don't censure them to the point where a character's biggest personality trait in the western version is fucking pickles.

I'm kinda on the fence on this.

I remember when people were bitching about removing "petting" from Fire Emblem: Fates, and I seemed to be one of the few people who believed that nothing of value was lost. Also consider Bravely Second, when the localization changes, I feel, actually made the game better.

Doing inane shit like altering character sprites for no good reason is stupid, don't get me wrong. But every so often, Japan does something especially weird with their game (like the "petting" thing from Fates), and it doesn't bother me if they decide not to localize it.

Kind of a judgment call.

All I ask for is a compromise, taking Fates as an example I think it's okay to remove the head petting game or whatever but I don't think it's okay to remove dialogue or even rewrite entire characters as seen below:

Oh, yeah. Definitely. On that subject, you won't get any argument for me, especially given how bad the writing was for that game anyway.

I mean, there is a difference between outright censorship and localization, and all I want is for developers to know where that line is.

 

[Estarc]

I don't think the genre needs improvement personally. Bravely Default and Bravely Second on the 3DS are some of the best JRPGs I've ever had the pleasure of playing for example, and Tales of Berseria, which I am about twenty hours into at the moment, has been really great so far.

The fact that SOME JRPGs aren't that good is not a failure of the genre, it is a failure of the developers. Square-Enix also has the wrong expectations for the genre. The Bravely series did unexpectedly well, so they make I Am Setsuna, expecting it to do well as well. I did not play I Am Setsuna. It did not catch my interest. Just because I like JRPGs does not mean I will buy ALL JRPGs. But I'd be all over another Bravely game on the 3DS, whether it was a sequel or spin off, as long as it retained the same mechanics.

Regarding Final Fantasy, this is a series that stood out for always reinventing the universe and characters, but ultimately keeping very similar mechanics. The series has only started to stumble once Square-Enix broke from that. People would have kept on buying every Final Fantasy happily if SE has not tried to reinvent the wheel. When you have a massively successful formula you can refine it a little, but don't fucking change it. Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed prove people appreciate familiarity. Since Final Fantasy will never have a yearly release schedule either, it wouldn't even risk buyer fatigue.

Anyway, FFVII Remake Ep 1 is coming in 2025 or something. If that succeeds it will be in spite on SE's changes to the original formula, not because of them.

 

[Marik2]

 

[Ravenbom]

JRPGs need to start by ditching the cutscenes. Build a solid core and edit down the cutscenes to a manageable length.

First off, they're clearly spending all their money on cutscenes which is why JRPGs kind of reach their peak on the SNES and PS1 then after that on handhelds.

Second off, this was a big problem with FF15 and the FF15 movie; if you're going to have a cutscene, they need to have better motion and facial capture technology to not look like trash compared to Naughty Dog games like The Last of Us and Uncharted 4.
It was so irritating that they cut away from people's mouths right as they're about to speak in FF15 and the FF15 movie so that if they had a lot of dialog in the scene, the camera zoomed out and/or went to a wide shot of the person's back when they're speaking.

Cutscenes were a BIG bullet point in the PS1 and PS2 era and even PS3 era in Japanese game making but it's not a selling point anymore.

If you're going to throw 10's of millions of dollars at cutscenes (this is mostly a Square Enix complaint) then you should at least make it right.
MGS4 is not a JRPG but it has the cutscene problem of not being motion captured. When you compared it to Uncharted in PS3 era it looked like it was a nice looking puppet show.

Bad cut scenes, 10's of millions of dollars spend on them and they're just weirdly stuck in the uncanny valley.



Its such a waste of money. I'd rather get exposition and dialog in the manner of a Tales game. Millions of dollars cheaper and more effective in the end.

 

[aozgolo]

Hate being late to these parties but... JRPGs are improving, and evolving, and becoming more varied. The trick is in finding them, they often get completely buried even within their own genres. There's people who have played every single Final Fantasy but never touched a Dragon Quest, tons of people who rant and rave about Persona without noticing other similar series. In any conversation about JRPGs you'll see the same top ten games mentioned over and over and over again, and used as the baseline for comparing the entire genre, but it's simply not that stagnant or shallow. Not saying those games are bad by any means but if those are all you played, you're missing the other 90% of the iceberg.

As an example I recently got a PS Vita, considered a dead system by many, but it's a JRPG powerhouse, Turn based, Action, Tactical, Dungeon Crawler, Visual Novel Hybrid, Dating Sim Hybrid, Hack n Slash, Beat-em-Up Hybrid, 2D Platformer Hybrid, Retro-style Pixel Graphics, Full HQ 3D, really there's no end to the types of JRPGs you can find on a system apparently infamous for lack of titles (really does depend on what genre you want). You can further apply this to many other consoles, especially ones from Sony and some from Nintendo (though Wii U is horribly lacking here)

As for anime-style? Well you're going hand in hand with that, it's the J in JRPG, they love their anime, as do many in the foreign market they cater to. While you do occasionally get the more westernized titles like Dark Souls, they are the exception and never the rule, and you're better off looking to Western developers for games that don't go towards that style or those tropes, thankfully WRPGs are just as varied in their offerings, just for different platforms.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

????? What in the world are you talking about? This is why I have to laugh my ass off every time someone brings up "JRPG's" because they rely on stereotypes, lazy logic, debunked arguments, and a crippling ignorance of history. Fact of the matter there is nothing Japan need to "improve" with RPGs because the genre has always been highly varied and experimental. Then again considering how people rarely go outside of just using Final Fantasy, MAYBE Dragon Quest or Tales of if they're feeling bold. Other than that it's painfully clear they don't go outside of what is on the cover of a Game Informer and their ignorance to history cripples arguments. Here's just a few examples of how varied RPGs get.

Earthbound/Mother: Set in the backdrop of satirical Americana and having primarily to do with pop culture concepts of aliens.

SaGa Frontier: The first game is set in a fictional solar system and features seven protagonists with their own campaigns. The sequel is a multigenerational story concerning the bloodline of two families set against a unique fantasy setting where bone and wood weapons are used in preference to steel.

Atelier: Almost completely centered on item creation, the player having more freedom to do what they want at their own pace.

Shin Megami Tensei: Almost always set against the backdrop of a post-apocalyptic Tokyo featuring arguments on religion and philosophy

Etrian Odyssey: Dungeon-crawling at its finest with the ability to make and annotate your maps with great exploration and character customization

Rune Factory: Literally a fantasy Harvest Moon where you interact with townsfolk and manage your farm in addition to going into dungeons to deal with monsters.

Vagrant Story: A solo dungeon crawl with a unique, rhythm-based battle system, a labyrinthine map to explore, some of the deepest weapons customization you'll ever see, and set in a Renaissance/Late Middle ages time period.

Wild Arms: A sci-fi Western

Valkyrie Profile: A valkyrie drafts the souls of the dead on the eve of Ragnarok while learning about her true nature. Also has an interesting, combo-based combat system

Inazuma Eleven: A literal soccer RPG.

All in all, the genre is fine, it's only problem being how ignorant people are of the breadth of how eclectic it is.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

In continuation of the above post, I will go on to list lesser known Jrpgs which are amazing and worth playing, some are out only in Japan atm so I will list them as upcoming for the US ver. but you can always import if you understand JP. If you haven't played them yet and feel Jrpgs are bad now, play them and then speak about the genre!


Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky (psp,vita,steam)

Legend of Heroes: Sen no Kiseki/trails of cold steel (ps3, vita)

Romancing Saga: Scarlet Grace (upcoming, vita)

Utawarerumono: Itsuwari no Kamen (upcoming vita/ps4)

MeiQ (vita)

7th Dragon 3 (3DS)

Stella Glow (3DS)

Ar Nosurge (ps3/vita)

Azure Nights (ps4/vita)

Dungeon Travelers 2 (vita)

Demon Gaze (vita)

Caligula (upcoming, vita)

Mary Skelter (upcoming, vita)

SAO series - yes the games are actually good - (ps3,vita, ps4)

I am Setsuna (pc, ps4, switch)

Super Robot Wars series (ps3, ps4, vita, 3ds)

Project x Zone (3DS)

God Wars (upcoming, vita)

Exist Archive (vita)

 

[Ishigami]

snip

Bad writing is not only in Tales, Dragon Quest and FF. If you have some experience in games you just know if game is written in Japan or somewhere else.
It is a rather universal complain that affect tons of jRPGs. Older and newer. Even for quite a few that even you mentioned here, I know, I played some of them.
I think most people here are well aware that JRPG include a lot of different actual genres from action games (Monster Hunter) or strategic games (FF Tactics, The Last Remnant).
I doubt anyone here actually thinks diversity in genre is the problem.
Common be real: Wild Arms, Shin Megami Tensei, Atelier, Valkyrie Profile and Valkyrie Chronicles or Resonance of Fate, just to name two that you did not list, are full of tropes and cringe worthy writing.
That the protagonist are often unlikely young is also very common. The older ones are around 21 or 22? that?s still young.
To illustrate my point: Try to find a main protagonist, no support character, of a JRPG that is 30+ years old, looks and acts the part, the game may not be older than lets say 10 years.
http://www.gamersmanifesto.com/blog/2014/07/im-getting-too-old-for-jrpgs/
I grew up with JRPGs but as I grow older JRPGs just don?t. And while I still find games that I enjoy I often wish they would tackle their themes a bit more mature, grounded and quite frankly drop the annoying kids.

snip2

That?s another issue.
A lot of the better games are no longer on home consoles but on handhelds. I get it: Japan devs look out for Jap customers and trends. But it?s a rather narrow perspective isn?t it?
I just don?t give a fuck if there a good JRPGs if they are on systems that I don? want.
I don?t want TV entertainment I want cinema.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

Even if you cut all of the vita/3ds only games, you still have half of my list to play, good enough, it'll make you rethink your view of Jrpgs good enough.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Drop the "J", get rid of the anime crap, turn based combat, and party system. Basically just make it a western RPG instead, and it's already better than whatever it would have been.

Or you could, you know, just play the maaaany WRPGs out there and let those of us who enjoy turn based combat and adventuring parties and stuff have our tiny little niche that barely exists anymore?

Like, I do enjoy a good WRPG, but I also love JRPGs and good ones are often few and far between these days. I am still agonizing over how long it's taking for Atlus to even ANNOUNCE the localization for Etrian Odyssey 5.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

Drop the "J", get rid of the anime crap, turn based combat, and party system. Basically just make it a western RPG instead, and it's already better than whatever it would have been.

Then it should start from over here. The "J" was added by Westerners. Mostly as a way to try to separate them from western made titles, almost like they were saying "Oh, RPGs from Japan aren't REAL RPGs." Has a really uncomfortable, xenophobic tinge to it when you sit down and think about it. Then again all of last-gen and a lot of the current gen still does

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

Jrpgs are not traditional rpgs, definitely. The main difference is that rpgs tend to go for a self-insert fantasy while Jrpgs go for a very detailed story with a lot of moving parts that becomes better with a well defined protagonist to experience it through.


It's fine to like either thing of course, and there do exist some Jrpgs like Romancing SaGa which feel more like Wrpgs in that respect, but the anime is what makes Jrpgs shine for those who love them lol.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

The issue with JRPG's isn't that there isn't innovation, I've played many JRPG's with very unique mechanics and stories, the issue is that non of the gameplay innovations become standards. Most RPG's don't require a large amount of mechanical skill, instead opting for more tactical skill so you can't do what a shooter does with improved aiming controls and the like, which are much easier to point at and say "See? We're getting better".

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Japan sucks, and so does everything from there. Get over it.

Wow, someone sure is salty.

Is this just your personal taste, like do mechas, animated stuff with oversized eyes, etc just offend you on some basic level, or is there some other reason you have to justify you not only holding this opinion, but being so aggressive about it?