Why are JRPGs so much longer than WRPGs?

[KarmaTheAlligator]

Quality > Quantity.

im not a big WRPG fan but atleast they are much better than Anime style JRPGs.

I really can't agree with that kind of reasoning. I don't mind people not liking the style, but you can't claim that one is of better quality than the other. As GabeZhul said, they're two different beasts, catering to people with different tastes. It's the whole comparing apples to oranges thing, it's just silly.

 

[TheGamerElite33]

Quality > Quantity.

im not a big WRPG fan but atleast they are much better than Anime style JRPGs.

I really can't agree with that kind of reasoning. I don't mind people not liking the style, but you can't claim that one is of better quality than the other. As GabeZhul said, they're two different beasts, catering to people with different tastes. It's the whole comparing apples to oranges thing, it's just silly.

I agree. everyone have different taste and i respect it but i rather play this

Badass game over this

Cartoony, childish or girly game. no offence.

 

[RyQ_TMC]

Eh, I'd need to see some solid statistics before making a generalization like one genre being longer than the other... Just relying on anecdotal evidence and examples isn't going to do much.

Assuming it's true, I think the main reason is that in WRPGs, the player has more choice in whether to do non-main story stuff, while in JRPGs almost everything is forced into the main narrative, even if it doesn't do much to advance the narrative itself. A WRPG says "here's the door to the next chapter, but you can stay a while in this area and bring this kid some flowers, if you feel you want some more XP". A JRPG says "here's the door to the next chapter, but wait! A child is crying that it wants some flowers, you can't progress without that! You want to go through and deprive a child of joy?"

And this is why...

But a standard JRPG like FF or Valkaryia Chronicles will easily stretch past the 50 hour mark, but most WRPGs are around the 20-30 hour mark but you might get the odd outlier (50 for Dragon Age Origins, about 90 for Skyrim)

... you need to specify how you calculate this stuff. You say Skyrim is 90 hours long, but Spoiler Warning did a playthrough in about 20 hours. You say Dragon Age: Origins is 50 hours, but my complete playthrough took me 67. On the other hand, you make a broad statement about "standard JRPGs", but I remember Star Ocean: The Last Hope being around 30 hours at most.

My point is, without some kind of "standard measure" we don't even know if the main assumption is true. Wasn't there a website where people logged their completion times for various titles? Averages from that could be useful.

On a slight off topic, why does everyone keep calling Valkyria Chronicles a JRPG? It's a squad-based tactical game, like XCOM or Jagged Alliance. Is it because of the anime-ish style?

 

[KarmaTheAlligator]

snip

See, that's not the problem, different tastes and all that, the problem is you were saying one genre is better quality than the other and that JRPGs just go for quantity, when you get something like Skyrim being hailed as the best thing since sliced bread and it's a buggy mess saved only by mods.

A question, have you even played Tales of Zestiria, to call it childish or girly? Or are you judging a book by its cover?

 

[Hawki]

Valkyria Chronicles is tactical role playing. Similar to 'Fire Emblem' or 'Final Fantasy Tactics' as far as genre goes.

 

[WanderingFool]

Probably already been said, but WRPGs are more about the environment and exploration while JRPGs are more about the characters and the story. As such, JRPGs (which I dont play many of, mind you) do tend to have fluff in place to pad out the length. WRPGs... while most of a WRPG game is fluff, but most if not all can be considered optional.

 

[endtherapture]

snip

I calculated it based on how long I spent playing it...my complete DA:O runthrough was 55 hours long including the expansion pack.

And because I asked what JRPGs I should get on PS3 and everyoen said Valkaryia Chronicles.

 

[Sack of Cheese]

I supposes Western developers would rather use the resources to add more choices to the game, rathen than to lengthen the campaign. If you try to see all the possible alternatives, it'd take as long as a JRPG.

Most early JRPGs also have grinding and such.

 

[JayRPG]

I'm a huge JRPG fan (not saying I dislike other genres) and I will echo the sentiments of many in this thread and say that JRPGs have a main-quest story driven experience, while WRPGs seem to have incredibly short main quests and focus on side questing and exploration.

Of course there are outliers in both genres. People saying they spent 80-90 hours in Skyrim/Fallout 3 whatever just need to think back to how many of hours were spent walking across the terrain doing absolutely dick all. Bethesda love their exploration but I could hardly call that gameplay, I spent about 30 hours in fallout 3 and enjoyed my time, generally, but at least 5 hours of that was just walking.. and doing nothing really; I don't often get the feel I'm doing nothing in a JRPG.

I hate the whole "childish" or "anime" graphics vs. realistic debate that always seem to go on. People really need to open their minds and not instantly judge.

I can go back to my gamecube and play Baten Kaitos, or Tales of Symphonia, or Wind Waker, and still think they look beautiful, they still hold up graphically today; The same cannot be said for any "realistic" game of the time.

The graphics and art style lend themselves to better performing games, and help to further the universe they are trying to create. JRPGs are rarely (if ever) set on earth, or even an earth like planet. They have entire wacky universes with things that just wouldn't be possible in an earth like world; I mean.. where is fallout set? Earth, post apocolyptically, but that is by design. Where is Skyrim set? Might as well be earth sometime in the past. Where is the Witcher set? might as well be earth. Where is Fable set? might as well be earth with magic.

Disclaimer: I am not by any means saying WRPGs are bad, I tend to enjoy JRPGs more because I like story driven games, but that isn't to say I haven't had my fair share of fun in WRPGs, I like a majority of them (besides Skyrim which I hated).

 

[Caostotale]

I agree. everyone have different taste and i respect it but i rather play this
Badass game over this
Cartoony, childish or girly game. no offence.

Yeah, lest we all forget that using a video game controller to maneuver some dark-and-edgy shadow knight with chain mail and scars is totally more adult and manly than using it to maneuver a set of Japanese anime characters. Shouldn't we be talking about the gameplay?

 

[Krige]

I don't really thing this is a matter of the development style. An average Wizardry 8 go takes 80+ hours (and that's *not* a sandbox game - sure enough there are sidequests but nearly all of them factor in main plot), I have 50+ hrs in Div:OS (and counting, doesn't seem to end anytime soon), but on the other hand Mars: War Logs was over quickly, as was STALKER (if we want to go there and call it an RPG). On the far eastern front, we have the classic hundreds-of-hours Dragon Quest grind-everything expreiences and short and sweet things like Live-A-Live (one of my personal favourites). Some games are short and some games are long, making it about the design philosophy, at least at this particular division, is simply misunderstanding the situation.

As the discussion has shifted somewhat...

TES games are... unique. Their actual content is short, you could complete Skyrims main story in less than one hour if you plan out properly.

But main plot alone is hardly the actual content. If anything, it's the oposite, the main plot informs you what you should do to END the experience and the actual content is everything else - crafting, fighting, and the hundreds and hundreds of sidequests. You're right on money though in saying it's the design style and not place of origin: one of my favourite examples would be calling the classic western titles, Anachronox and Albion, jRPGs (yeah, there are easier targets like Sudeki and Septerra Core, but those two are actually good games).

 

[Caostotale]

I hate the whole "childish" or "anime" graphics vs. realistic debate that always seem to go on. People really need to open their minds and not instantly judge.

I can go back to my gamecube and play Baten Kaitos, or Tales of Symphonia, or Wind Waker, and still think they look beautiful, they still hold up graphically today; The same cannot be said for any "realistic" game of the time.

The graphics and art style lend themselves to better performing games, and help to further the universe they are trying to create. JRPGs are rarely (if ever) set on earth, or even an earth like planet. They have entire wacky universes with things that just wouldn't be possible in an earth like world; I mean.. where is fallout set? Earth, post apocolyptically, but that is by design. Where is Skyrim set? Might as well be earth sometime in the past. Where is the Witcher set? might as well be earth. Where is Fable set? might as well be earth with magic.

I'm with you on having never given a crap about the realism or 'immersion' factors of Western video games (or the Japanese games that have been aping them recently). To me, it just seems like a supply/demand swirling black hole in which (a.) the game developers are embarrassed that they're making toys instead of epic Hollywood films or the VR experiences we were promised in the 1990s and/or that (b.) gamers are embarrassed that they're helplessly addicted to these toys and barely spend any time hiking/mountain-climbing/hunting/fighting/etc... in the real world, and so have to do these things vicariously through their games. I wouldn't care so much, except that for me, all sense of 'realism' collapses under the weight of the first reality-shattering fireball or ice spell that shows itself in those games. It's the same feeling I got when, after watching a whole bunch of Game of Thrones stuff and being reasonably impressed by the show's aesthetic design, there suddenly appeared a goofy-looking CGI assassin insect or some adorable cartoon dragons (can't remember which appeared first, but both were jarring because they were fantasy creatures), yet I still have to listen to tons of dude-bros talking about how it's 'better than Lord of the Rings because it's more like real life..' and blablabla...

The example of Baten Kaitos actually lays bear the reason I like JRPGs and that's the fact that the best JRPGs have intricate and interesting stat systems that make the games seem like very decked-out (no pun intended) card games. My favorite titles (i.e SMT Nocturne) generally do a good job of keeping high levels of risk/reward throughout the gaming experience. It occasionally sucks when the risk/reward mechanics are too easily overcome or broken with some overpowered character attack, etc..., but I've only dealt with a small handful of games where that's easy to accomplish.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

I hate the whole "childish" or "anime" graphics vs. realistic debate that always seem to go on. People really need to open their minds and not instantly judge.

I can go back to my gamecube and play Baten Kaitos, or Tales of Symphonia, or Wind Waker, and still think they look beautiful, they still hold up graphically today; The same cannot be said for any "realistic" game of the time.

The graphics and art style lend themselves to better performing games, and help to further the universe they are trying to create. JRPGs are rarely (if ever) set on earth, or even an earth like planet. They have entire wacky universes with things that just wouldn't be possible in an earth like world; I mean.. where is fallout set? Earth, post apocolyptically, but that is by design. Where is Skyrim set? Might as well be earth sometime in the past. Where is the Witcher set? might as well be earth. Where is Fable set? might as well be earth with magic.

Disclaimer: I am not by any means saying WRPGs are bad, I tend to enjoy JRPGs more because I like story driven games, but that isn't to say I haven't had my fair share of fun in WRPGs, I like a majority of them (besides Skyrim which I hated).

It's not even a realism issue, it's blatant ignorance. It's the ignorance spurned from people seeing animation and instantly thinking of it as childish in the US.


Japanese games lack this problem, they don't have any connotation like that. A game with anime graphics is just a game with anime graphics, it's not "cartoony" or "childish" any more so than a game like the Witcher. It's just an art style which people like and can have any kind of themes you wanna put in your game.

You might have not played a Tales game but you're confusing colors, brightness and positivity with childlike traits. No, these are just that, happy adventures. There's a whole lot of darkness too but it's not all-consuming. There's actual variety. There's nuance. There's actual characters who like to have fun and enjoy themselves and live their life. Not just a kill/destroy quest with no meaning.

Finally, if you don't think there's anything "epic" in a Tales game, you really really have not played any of them for 3 minutes. Hell, just the intro animation is epic enough!




This stuff is goose-bump levels of hype!

 

[Jason Rayes]

I still don't know how you got so much time out of Mass Effect though, I got maybe 30 hours out of each game doing all the major side quests I could fine.

Admittedly the 70 hour play through was on the first one and I visited every single planet and marked every single resource and interactive thing on them because there is obviously something wrong with me

I got 50 hours on each of the other 2 though by being a completionist

 

[immortalfrieza]

This thread has shown me I really need to start playing JRPGS. Now, if only 90% of them weren't exclusive to consoles or portables...

It's a good thing emulators exist eh? I use emulators to play almost all my older console games these days that don't have a PC version.

Misconception as grinding is not needed (what is needed is to beat every encounter as you're going through an area, and that is grinding as much as facing Skeleton X, Y, and Z when going through a dungeon in WRPG B, C, and D). Hard bosses in JRPGs don't require grinding, merely some knowledge on how to fight.
The likes of Matador in SMT3 doesn't require grinding, he is just there to separate the jobbers from the main event talent.

Basically. I've found that I only spend any time grinding when I don't want to in the rare occasions I'm up against a boss that is particularly hard and/or tricky, otherwise the resources I get from fighting everything on the way to a boss is more than enough, and the grinding rarely takes more than 10-20 minutes when I have to do it anyway. For the record, because of what I've learned from the lifetime of playing RPGs these days I usually grind quite a bit whenever I can find a decent opportunity just to make victory a little more assured, including doing all the sidequests.

Snip

Pal, if you think the Tales games are "cartoony, childish, or girly" you've never actually played one. The games are always VERY serious and mature overall, and can get VERY dark, frequently from the very beginning. Sure, there's humor spread throughout, but that just makes the maturity, seriousness, and darkness stand out more. Even the anime style of the games doesn't always look very cartoony. The plots are also significantly less cliched than most.


OT: A lot of people here are saying things like "WRPGs are sidequest and choice focused" and "JRPGs are focused on the story with few sidequests" as well as the grinding. This is wrong, there's plenty of JRPGs (Final Fantasy 12, Xenoblade Chronicles, most Metroidvania games just to name a few) that are focused on sidequests over story, or in addition to story, and plenty of WRPGs (Fable series, anything by Bioware, Dead Island off the top of my head) that focus on story over sidequests or in addition to sidequests, both can be equally grindy and exploration based, and both have plenty that are short 20 hour long romps or 100 hour long epics. The line between the two genres isn't anywhere near as wide as people think.

 

[duwenbasden]

JRPGs just seem like huge, long games taking up many hours of your time. WRPGs are also pretty long but I feel like due to the increased emphasis on choice, you get less content in a single linear playthrough, they seem a lot shorter.

But a standard JRPG like FF or Valkaryia Chronicles will easily stretch past the 50 hour mark, but most WRPGs are around the 20-30 hour mark but you might get the odd outlier (50 for Dragon Age Origins, about 90 for Skyrim)

Why is this, and why do JRPGs have tons of cinematics, whilst WRPGs find it more difficuly to incorporate as many cinematics without cutting down on game length?

Not really. I have 54 hours on Pokemon X and 250 hours on Skyrim, and enjoyed most of the time in them. I say about even. I did the Civil War quest after 200 hours, and the E4 after 50 hours and only after a long "ffffffinnneeeeeeeee" sigh. Having a story is fine, but if you think your story is more important than mine you can fuck right off. I am not your taxi driver along your plotted line.

Also, more chance of a JRPG character grinding my gears and stuck with him/her for the rest of the game. I will gladly listen to M'aiq for his absolutely asinine opinions; but I have the urge to turn off my game every time Shawna opens her fucking mouth for her absolutely asinine opinions.

 

[Krige]

My point is that TES games strive through dicking around and user generated content and the vast world to put that into.

I agree and that's why I say that this dicking around is the real meat of the game.

 

[infohippie]

This thread has shown me I really need to start playing JRPGS. Now, if only 90% of them weren't exclusive to consoles or portables...

It's a good thing emulators exist eh? I use emulators to play almost all my older console games these days that don't have a PC version.

I am inexperienced with emulators - would that mean I still would have to use a controller to play them? 'Cause that shit won't fly. The main reason I don't console is because I hate using controllers at all.

 

[RealRT]

Because brevity is the soul of wit and JRPGs clearly have neither.
*ba-dum-tish*

I agree. everyone have different taste and i respect it but i rather play this
Badass game over this
Cartoony, childish or girly game. no offence.

Yeah, lest we all forget that using a video game controller to maneuver some dark-and-edgy shadow knight with chain mail and scars is totally more adult and manly than using it to maneuver a set of Japanese anime characters. Shouldn't we be talking about the gameplay?

What? I'm under an impression that you spent last five years under a rock when it comes to RPGs and games in general if you call Geralt that.

 

[immortalfrieza]

This thread has shown me I really need to start playing JRPGS. Now, if only 90% of them weren't exclusive to consoles or portables...

It's a good thing emulators exist eh? I use emulators to play almost all my older console games these days that don't have a PC version.

I am inexperienced with emulators - would that mean I still would have to use a controller to play them? 'Cause that shit won't fly. The main reason I don't console is because I hate using controllers at all.

No, in fact you can set up all emulators to work with either keyboard and mouse or controllers pretty easily as long as the game doesn't require motion controls. If it does use motion controls it's a pain in the ass to get it to work, so I don't play any that require it. Also, I should mention emulators are usually at least a console generation behind, so don't expect to be playing PS3 or 360 games or anything like that for a while.

For the record, I greatly prefer using controllers, simply because it's easier and more comfortable.