Shagdawg said:
clockpenalty said:
Kurenaino said:
clockpenalty said:
If you read the reasons people are giving (sweeping generalisations about spunky teengers and long cutscenes etc) you'll understand that they are uninformed and baseless. Like any meme, people are just imbibing and repeating what is currently 'cool' without using their brains.
Or maybe, after playing a ton of JRPGs, people are just noticing trends and are voicing their opinions on the matter. Saying these accusations, as it were, are uninformed and baseless is, in and of itself, an uninformed and baseless statement. Have you ever played a JRPG? Then you'll know that a lot of them feature similar elements, twat waffle teens and cutscenes galore included. Like any genre, you're going to have common elements that are related to other games in the genre, that's how the genre is formed in the first place. Sure, you get a few that rise above the rest, but as the normal curve so aptly dictated, the vast majority will be nothing short of mediocrity.
1. You cannot generalise based on the lower 80% of trashy content, or all WRPGs would be dreary DnD nonsense with busty barmaids and heroes called 'th'tharigan the mighty, slayer of the warg'lathran'
2. The upper 20% does NOT fall into this category. Even the much hated Final Fantasy 13 *deliberately* attempted to subvert this by including an emo-teen as the most useless party member of all, and incluing a stoic, absolutely non-bubbly female and an unshaven muscleman as the leads. Yet somehow, the fog of bias cannot look beyond two minor party members. Even the token bubbly girl turned out to have a completely original role as far as those tropes go.
The point is, since the tide has turned against anime and japanese stuff in general, they stand no chance against the screaming horde baying for J-developer blood. Even the gaming press is on this bandwagon right now. My advice to them is to re-align their priorities and work on the domestic market.... the west has nothing but hate for them now
Except the two leads were a ***** and a moron. You can do a fun drinking game with FF13 were you take a shot every time Lightning punches someone with little context or Snow calls himself a hero. And if you really want to get hammered, you can do a shot every time Hope or Vanille grunts or moans. These are terrible characters and are representative of the problem with JRPGs in the last 10 yrs. Awful dialogue + unlikeable characters = I don't care about the story because I'm being given no reason to care about what happens to these people.
well... ff13 was not held up as an example of the 'good' jrpgs, although the battle system was excellent. It had a crappy story and is pretty annoying because, being the most visible, JRPG haters can easily pick on it and generalise
I put it forward just to show how the so-called stereotype of "angsty spiky haired teens with giant weapons" really has no meaning or basis, and is simply a cop-out used to justify irrational hate.
Lightning and Snow are pretty piss-poor as far as characters go. However they just do NOT fit into the stereotype.
Many posters have given valid,genuine reasons for hating JRPGs (linearity, slow pacing, grind, etc) these reasons are just as valid as giving 'complexity' as a reason form hating chess... ie Very, very valid and rooted in personal preference. JRPGs are linear by design, and it is perfctly OK to hate them because they are linear. Some people prefer a linear game, and they will prefer JRPGs. I personally enjoy both.
What I cannot stand are the idiots that mindlessly spew forth sweeping generalisations in the name of propagating the latest japan-hatred meme. Giant weapons, maid costumes, etc. For Gods sake people.
I still stand by what I said. The backlash against Anime and Japanese developed games is the source of this tide of bias against the poor JRPG. I say there is no solution or escape, except to simply abandon the west as a design target and let westerners request the games they want translated. Scale back the dev budgets and aim for domestic success, just like in the old days. Forget the west, the west is happy with Bioware and Bethesda games!
OR just ghostwrite games for bioware and bethesda and laugh as the ignorant pick them up and vehemently claim they are not 'japanese', like that person claiming Demons souls was somehow less japanese just because it was good!
PS: awful dialogue is also a valid criticism, though that should extend to anything translated from a foreign language. Most dubbed foreign movies have pretty awful sounding dialogue, but get a 'pass' because we are aware of their origin. I'm not advocating that we forgive japanese games for the dialogue issues, but chalking them up to 'laziness' is unfair: the mannerisms and speech patterns are difficult because of the cultural divide. If you watch japanese TV or movies, you will see that the weird grunts and apparently cheesy speeches are more-or-less the way things are done there.
