Why do people hate JRPGs?

[Sabiancym]

How about this.

I don't like it because it is my personal taste. If you wish to get butt hurt about someone not liking the same things you do keep it to yourself instead of crying about it and telling everyone that their personal opinion is wrong....

 

[The_Puppy_Prince]

Just watch all of Yahtzee's JRPG reviews
Pretty much sums up why :l

 

[Shagdawg]

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.

There is something to be said for forgetting about attempting to appease the west. I think that JRPG developers did a better job of connecting with western audiences when they weren't actively trying to make games for them, a trend I believe started directly after FF7.

I'm not a JRPG hater. Like I stated before, Chrono Trigger and FF6 are two of my favorite games of all time. JRPGs used to be THE genre I most enjoyed and anticipated. But I think you're kidding yourself if you believe they haven't been sub-par in general the last 10 years or so. Yes there have been some good ones, but I remember a time when a new release from Square was an EVENT in my circle of friends. Its not the case anymore, and I actually find that to be pretty sad.

I would buy the translation argument a little more if there weren't JRPGs that seem to be VERY well-written without all of the awful dialogue and grunting/moaning, like FF12 and Lost Oddysey. Even Persona 4, which had a very anime style, worked for me because the characters were largely well-written and there wasn't a lot of cheesy melodrama.

And while I agree with you about Bethesda to a large extent (I don't think there's a competent writer on that whole staff), I think you're doing Bioware a disservice by lumping them together. For me, Bioware has filled the void left by Square when it comes to well-written RPGs, and seem to strike a good balance between telling a good story and allowing some freedom for the player in terms of choice.

 

[McMarbles]

I'm nuts about JRPGs myself, but some people do appear to have legitimate reasons to not like them. Others have superficial ones, and a few are just plain racist.

 

[SkellgrimOrDave]

For me it's a personal thing, I just can't see the appeal, but then again I do have an axe to grind. I have friends who love JRPGS, and indeed my own sister is a massive fan of final fantasy, but I just can't stand them.

Me, I like gritty sort of games. Not those ridiculous pretences to realism that you find in call of duty or something like that, more the classic operation flashpoint, where two bullets from a hidden sniper in a forest is game over, or putting something like Mount and blade onto ridiculous difficulty and watching yourself get slaughtered. I like unforgiving difficulty, and games that actually give more genuine realism, and JRPGs really lack this.

Having said that I enjoyed Paper Mario 2, a game with some kind of similar combat engine to final fantasy, but another thing I can't stand about the JRPG is the characters. Oh the characters. Final fantasty seven really started me on this. I think the main problem is the fact that they act in such ways that I can't possibly relate to. Video games being an inherently interactive and hopefully immersive medium the complete linearity as far as action goes really puts me off JRPGs, the overacted drama, the incongruous character actions, (such as zero punctuation points out about faith in ZP) and all in all the general feel.

But I think the main point is that for all the things I hate, a lot of people love these things. Personal choice mostly.

 

[Mr.Amakir]

Because JRPGs don´t let you ROLEPLAY (not counting Persona 3 and 4).

 

[DEAD34345]

Personally, i have never found a JRPG i have enjoyed playing, mainly because the ones i have played seemed like really bad movies with an (only slightly) interactive battle thrown in every half an hour or so...

If there are JRPGs that are vastly different to this then i would like to try them, but as far as i can tell from my (limited) experience, they are all way too ridiculously linear.

Well which ones have you played?

I have played about 5 different final fantasies, chrono trigger, kingdom hearts, that one on the DS in which badges gave you powers, and a few more i can't remember the names of. I got no more than an hour or 2 into them before giving up due to boredom, or in the case of one of the final fantasies annoyance at a giant robot spider thing (I think). With most the only thing that kept me playing that long was the sheer insanity of the storylines, which gave me some laughs.

In one i was in some sort of college, that for some reason had a room with a dinosaur in it, then i had to fight a fire demon, then i was in the army and had to fight a giant robot spider thing. In another, shortly into a story, someone who i assume was the main characters friend died, only it turns out he was a robot being controlled by a cat that climbed out of his body when he died.

I really wasn't kidding though, if there are less linear JRPGs anyone could suggest i would give them a try.

 

[Death God]

I don't hate JRPG's. In fact the only genre of games I DO dislike is RGS's. You can't move and all your doing is pointing and shooting what the game tells you.

 

[DEAD34345]

I am going to agree with you that cutscenes are far too long and often in MODERN JRPG's.

One of the downfalls of modern JRPG's is these cutscenes. It's one of the reasons why Final Fantasy XIII can't hold a candle to Final Fantasy VI and VII. Even X is linear with some bad cutscenes but this gen is just over the top with them. Luckily you can skip them in most games but that doesn't make it ok.

I am going to make a bold statement here but I believe this to be true. One thing that has harmed both WRPG's and JRPG's is voice acting. Even great voice acting takes something away from the player. Ya know when you read a book, you imagine the voices in your head? Well, you could do that up to the PS2 era for most JRPG franchises.

JRPG's never had great stories but adding your own imagination helped alot. Now your imagination plays a very small role a we see all the flaws.

Out of the JRPG's i have played, if you skipped the cutscenes you would probably end up with a hollow shell of a game, made up of a few tedious combat sections and nothing else. Admittedly though, i may have just been unlucky and played only the bad ones.

As for voice acting I guess what you say is mostly true, but when done properly voice acting can add a lot to a game. For example Mass Effect was much better for it's voice acting, even if games like Oblivion and the JRPGs i have played were much worse for it.

 

[Dark Prophet]

I don't think most people who say they hate JRPG or seem to hate them actually hate them, they just think it's cool to hate something and talk shit about it. I personally don't like JRPG but that does not mean I hate them I just don't play them.

 

[Zakarath]

The style is obnoxious and/or unrealistic and/or usually doesn't make sense (Swordfighting with absurdly oversized weapons in futuristic landscapes? Wtf?)
The characters are annoying (androgynous spiky-hair emo teenagers)
The plots are reused over and over and over when they weren't particularly good to begin with and/or they're nonsensical.
They don't offer true roleplaying. (They're linear.)
They having pacing issues. (too grindy)

That's my major gripes with them.

 

[DEAD34345]

Well, I skip the cutscenes on the second (or more) playthrough. Take Lost Odyssey, great game, the story was ok but not the second time through. I enjoy the battle and abilities system and that's why I play it.

Take FF 13, I played through it last week and I beat it (I have started it more than once). I got so bored with the story that towards the end I skipped the cutscenes. The story may have been great but it was poorly told. When it was over, I couldn't tell you what the story was. Of the cutscenes that I did watch, I had no idea what I was watching. Sadly, FF 13 had a crappy combat and leveling system so there is nothing to redeem it.

Speaking of voice acting, have you played Mass Effect without voice acting?

Strictly speaking, no, however i switched the subtitles on a few times and always ended up reading faster than what was being said and skipping to the next part. I enjoy reading, but i do believe it is much easier to relate to a character that can actually speak than it is to relate to a block of text. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it certainly makes it easier.

In fact back on topic, that's another problem I have with JRPGs (The ones i have played). None of the characters seemed to have any real motives that allowed me to relate to them, they were mostly just good, evil or angsty.

Oh, and also despite all the cut-scenes they still see fit to condense most of the plot into one giant monologue, probably because most of those cut-scenes involved lots of moodily staring into the camera or over-exaggerated combat you wish you were playing to have time for such minor things as the storyline.

To be honest i was hoping to be proven wrong on this, but no-one seems to be arguing for the JRPGs...

 

[clockpenalty]

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.

There is something to be said for forgetting about attempting to appease the west. I think that JRPG developers did a better job of connecting with western audiences when they weren't actively trying to make games for them, a trend I believe started directly after FF7.

I'm not a JRPG hater. Like I stated before, Chrono Trigger and FF6 are two of my favorite games of all time. JRPGs used to be THE genre I most enjoyed and anticipated. But I think you're kidding yourself if you believe they haven't been sub-par in general the last 10 years or so. Yes there have been some good ones, but I remember a time when a new release from Square was an EVENT in my circle of friends. Its not the case anymore, and I actually find that to be pretty sad.

I would buy the translation argument a little more if there weren't JRPGs that seem to be VERY well-written without all of the awful dialogue and grunting/moaning, like FF12 and Lost Oddysey. Even Persona 4, which had a very anime style, worked for me because the characters were largely well-written and there wasn't a lot of cheesy melodrama.

And while I agree with you about Bethesda to a large extent (I don't think there's a competent writer on that whole staff), I think you're doing Bioware a disservice by lumping them together. For me, Bioware has filled the void left by Square when it comes to well-written RPGs, and seem to strike a good balance between telling a good story and allowing some freedom for the player in terms of choice.

I'm ok with most of what you said. Just a bit of clarification:

1) Never mentioned bioware and bethesda in a negative light, nor did i appraise their writing. I lump them together as the so-called 'western' RPG makers. Barring glorified mod-maker obsidian, it seems that whenever people want to praise western RPGs they pick games largely from those 2 publishers.

2) Some times, foreign films are translated in an exceptional fashion. For example, CTHD did not have the 'huh?' plague that assails many chinese movie dubs, and Miyazaki movies are generally localised without a lot of grunting, moaning and melodramatic speeches. But if you switch the soundtrack on a Miyazaki film, and have developed an ear for a few japanese tropes (as you will after years of watching subbed anime) you'll see that those things were present on the original material.... it just so happened that the magic of an expanded budget made those things go away. Like I said, we shouldnt just excuse the poor dialogue, but understand that in its original context it was not 'poor'

 

[Archetypal_Maniac]

Theres a difference between copied and inspired, JRPGS copy their style, can't tell one from the other. That makes it un-inspired.