Why do people hate JRPGs?

[Folio]

JRPG's are forced but don't get me wrong. I don't need an Oblivion sandbox game where leveling doesn't matter at all.

Grinding is somewhat inevitable in RPG's, I accept it. But don't let it be the main quest. Don't give me over 9000 of the SAME creatures and just give me something new once in a while.

The plot may be good, but JRPG is like an American Hollywood movie:
JRPG has love, hope and friendship!
Hollywoods have explosions like MICHAEL BAY!
JRPG's start off with a punk or schmuck who makes up for him/herself.
Hollywoods have a happy ending.

Or perhaps people hate RPG's in general and never played a Western RPG.

Or they're used to Dungeons & Dragons.

 

[Kurenaino]

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

1. Um, yes, yes you can. When admittedly 80% of your genre is crap, you're going to get these kind of generalizations, this is just something that happens. Maybe it's not true for some, but for the majority, it is, and that's the point. And do people generalize every other game genre as well? Yeah, of course they do, it's because that's how people easily find the sort of game they'd like in the first place. And every genre's going to have it's own conventions that take successful ideas from other games. Look at the action genre right now, it could easily be said that all action games are blatant God of War ripoffs. And they're be mostly right. Since it was so successful, that old tired convention and gameplay mechanics are going to be used time and time again. So can you generalize? Absolutely, because regardless of what you do, there's going to be similarities across games in a genre.

2. No, of course they don't. That's why they're the upper 20%, because they defy the conventions. But if we're going to talk FFXIII here, there are other reasons that game was absolute garbage. I'd still like to point to the extremely long cutscenes, which tend to be deal breakers for me personally, because I don't think anybody wants to feel like their only purpose is to take a character from cutscene to cutscene. If you're only playing the game for ten minutes out of every hour the game's on, you've got a problem, and a lot of JRPGs fall into this.

I think your point misses the point entirely. I get that you like JRPGs, but putting on blinders to problems in the genre and simply blaming it on a trend of current Japanese hate is a bit ignorant of the point here. A lot of Japanese developers already don't send their games over there because a lot of them are so specifically Japanese, people in the west simply won't get it. JRPGs aren't like that. We have the ability to get those, and for the most part, we do. Let's not forget that there are some amazing JRPGs out there that have won critical acclaim, and they didn't even need to stop being Japanese to do that. I don't particularly like how a lot of JRPGs are run, but even with that consideration, my favorite game of all time, Tales of Symphonia, is a JRPG, and that game did extremely well over here because it didn't suffer from a lot of problems that a lot of JRPGs suffer from. When a game defies the genre, it's going to be looking at a good write up. Japanese or no has nothing to do with it.

I think the main point here is that big budget JRPGs have this need to pack the game with stunning graphics and cinematics, and so raging is this cinematic boner that they just go overboard and have too much. Of course, like everything, it's the big budget games that get the spotlight, and because of that, they cast other games that might actually not have George Lucas disease under a very nasty shadow. This is about flaws in the genre, not hating the Japanese.

 

[Koroviev]

Well, usually because the gameplay is awful. Don't get me wrong, I love FFIX and FFX and many other JRPGs like Chrono Trigger or Persona 4. But I can't deny that the actual fights in these games are lame, boring and EXTREMELY repetitive. Casting Bufu once on a monster to knock it down is okay. Casting Bufu 500 times on the same monsters is more than a LITTLE ANNOYING. Granted, some fights in JRPGs require strategy, but those are rare and usually don't come up in the main story line of the game.

What saves JRPGs are the story and the artwork and the music. FFIX had a great story and even better music. I loved to play that game for the story. With JRPGs, you can measure how good they are if you can BEAR the random encounters and battles for the story. This is the reason why I couldn't stand FFXIII - the story, to me, was bad, and the characters downright annoying (except for Sazh). And if a JRPG has a bad story, there is literally NOTHING good about it, so when a JRPG fails in the story department, as they have been doing recently, they fail colossally.

I mean think about it - there's really no RPG element in a JRPG, since you don't play a role. You don't really have that much control over your character in battle, and the battles themselves get very repetitive, very quickly. So what is there to a JRPG, EXCEPT story, music and artwork?

And some people don't like the story, or the art work. So for them, a JRPG offers nothing. I mean, absolutely nothing - if you don't like the stories in JRPGs, there's nothing for you - they are supported solely by their characters and some people just don't gel with the typical cast and characters found in JRPGs. I, myself, am becoming increasingly exasperated with the "brooding pretty boy" stereotype found in a lot of JRPGs - probably the reason why I liked FFIX and FFX so much, because in those games the main protagonists were cheerful and optimistic, instead of whiny and sour.

For JRPGs to make a comeback, the designers have to start taking risks. Don't follow the standard anime tropes and cliches. Please don't follow pedestrian story structures and overused themes of "friendship" and "love".

My main point is that what makes a JRPG great is not the graphics or the gameplay. Persona 4 was a great game, despite being on the PS2 and having atrocious gameplay, because it had a pretty good story and a cast of likeable characters and great, stellar art-direction. FFXIII was, in contrast, a bad game, because the story was extremely limited (Almost no NPCs, towns or characterization of the world), and I found the characters, especially Hope, to be incredibly dim-witted and whiny.

Call it Stockholm Syndrome, but I think having the repetitive battles drag on serves as an incentive to upgrade your personas. Casting bufu repeatedly is tiresome. Casting mabufa creates the satisfaction of a one-hit kill and fast experience (mostly). What I also like about the game is that you can avoid the random encounters. Where it deserves fault, however, is in how easy it is to surpass your enemies in terms of skill level, thus turning the game into a dull grind-fest which offers you little reward. Then again, this problem could probably be avoided by selecting a higher difficulty.

 

[LordMarcusX]

Personally, I don't like JRPGs for the reason I don't like most games: Really uninspired storytelling. Virtually all storytelling relies on our willingness to buy into certain tropes and react to them in prescribed ways. Not to say that tropes are inherently bad -- they're unavoidable, common elements of a collection of stories common to a specific culture. But our reaction to them needs to be reconsidered. I think, in terms of JRPGs specifically, the dramatic tropes are used with the expectation that we will react to them in a certain way (ourselves becoming emotionally invested in how a character feels as a result of the events around them) and perhaps it is simply that I am not Japanese, but when I look back over the story of these games, it occurs to me that I can understand why a character feels the particular way they do.

[Spoiler Alert for 18 year old game .-. ]

Case-in-point, Final Fantasy 4, and the love triangle between Cecil, Kain, and Rosa. Why are Cecil and "Kain" best friends when they should be rivals? Furthermore, why does the ENTIRE party welcome Kain back after he joined up with Golbez (and I don't buy the "mind control" trope here)? Why does Kain, after joining up with Golbez, not endeavour to kill Cecil at the first opportunity? Why does Cecil let Golbez go on living after he tried to destroy the world and in the process killed a countless number of people?

It's all very silly! But most stories are like this. I think, then, perhaps, it is merely that JRPGs are, to my tastes today, far too fantastic. Ridiculous, even.

 

[Swishdude]

JRPGSs have been around for a long time.

Like, really really really long.

There are very few game types that live on for years. It's very rare now (but not impossible, see Diablo 3) to see a top down action adventure in the same style as Fallout 1 & 2. Same thing applies for side scrolling platformers like Mario. You still see them but they are not as popular as something modern like Modern Warfare 2.

Now comes the point.

JRPG games are old. The Japanese game industry (regardless of what anyone might try to argue here today) creates these games in virtually the same way everytime. You have a very dedicated community of players who despise changes or radical evolution in game play. So games made in the JRPG style are almost carbon copies of there predecesors, creating negative reactions to outlanders from Japan.

Now unfortunatly people are throwing around the same ideas about First Person Shooters. If you don't like any FPS but you like JRPGs you can't flip the tables. FPS games radically change, implementing different game types and unique features that change drastically from game to game. Of course you still have a lot of games that are just duplicates or poor attempts to cash in on a popular franchise, but never the less this is a very different genre.

We have First Person Shooters that impliment driving, racing, leveling systems like RPGs, sports and sport like scoring systems, simulation, sandbox and world building, puzzle focus, and even the odd FPS that has no shooting at all. Yes, there do exist JRPG games that attempt more, and achieve it. But these 'better' JRPG games usually don't happen. This is a result of the games being developed for a asian audience, imidiate Japan in most cases. Though it happens on occasion, they are usually not worked around to be more appealing to other audiences. Audiences like North American or Europe.

However, it is all a matter of opinion. When western audiences, ones used to Madden and Halo are subjected to something very different. They tend not to enjoy it because it's not the same kind of game play there used to or understand. Culture shock in a way, try dropping a guy who has only ever played Halo in a room filled with D&D players.

 

[Testsubject909]

Oh yeah... I forgot to include the Yakuza series. It's a sandbox brawler with JRPG elements, such as the random fights (though cleverly scripted in the game to make some semblance of sense), the quests, roaming the world map(area maps) and leveling up. Gonna edit that into my huge-ass post...

 

[Testsubject909]

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

1. Um, yes, yes you can. When admittedly 80% of your genre is crap, you're going to get these kind of generalizations, this is just something that happens. Maybe it's not true for some, but for the majority, it is, and that's the point. And do people generalize every other game genre as well? Yeah, of course they do, it's because that's how people easily find the sort of game they'd like in the first place. And every genre's going to have it's own conventions that take successful ideas from other games. Look at the action genre right now, it could easily be said that all action games are blatant God of War ripoffs. And they're be mostly right. Since it was so successful, that old tired convention and gameplay mechanics are going to be used time and time again. So can you generalize? Absolutely, because regardless of what you do, there's going to be similarities across games in a genre.

2. No, of course they don't. That's why they're the upper 20%, because they defy the conventions. But if we're going to talk FFXIII here, there are other reasons that game was absolute garbage. I'd still like to point to the extremely long cutscenes, which tend to be deal breakers for me personally, because I don't think anybody wants to feel like their only purpose is to take a character from cutscene to cutscene. If you're only playing the game for ten minutes out of every hour the game's on, you've got a problem, and a lot of JRPGs fall into this.

I think your point misses the point entirely. I get that you like JRPGs, but putting on blinders to problems in the genre and simply blaming it on a trend of current Japanese hate is a bit ignorant of the point here. A lot of Japanese developers already don't send their games over there because a lot of them are so specifically Japanese, people in the west simply won't get it. JRPGs aren't like that. We have the ability to get those, and for the most part, we do. Let's not forget that there are some amazing JRPGs out there that have won critical acclaim, and they didn't even need to stop being Japanese to do that. I don't particularly like how a lot of JRPGs are run, but even with that consideration, my favorite game of all time, Tales of Symphonia, is a JRPG, and that game did extremely well over here because it didn't suffer from a lot of problems that a lot of JRPGs suffer from. When a game defies the genre, it's going to be looking at a good write up. Japanese or no has nothing to do with it.

I think the main point here is that big budget JRPGs have this need to pack the game with stunning graphics and cinematics, and so raging is this cinematic boner that they just go overboard and have too much. Of course, like everything, it's the big budget games that get the spotlight, and because of that, they cast other games that might actually not have George Lucas disease under a very nasty shadow. This is about flaws in the genre, not hating the Japanese.

Would you care to join me in counting how many JRPGs fall in the same old boring trappings of teenage angsts?

I'd like to refer you back to my list on Page 1. Then, I'd like to remind you, I skipped a few series, and I also skipped quite a many single title RPGs such as Ephemeral Fantasia, a game I do absolutely adore.

And then, we have games which can be argued as to possibly being a JRPG... Zelda for exemple, it can technically be considered a JRPG, it's second iteration certainly was one of the first Action JRPG to exist, as well as Castlevania 2. To an extent, you could argue that Zelda 1, or hell, all zeldas are Action JRPGs... Though that'd need to be heavily pondered and discussed.

I'm ready to believe that the stereotype of the whiny emo kid or teenage drama/angst actually applies to only the minority of JRPGs that exists currently.

 

[WaderiAAA]

One important reason for me to if not hate, then at least not like JRPGs that much is the lack of immersion in the turn-based combat ones. In platformers, FPSes, many sport games and hack and slash you at least walk around, jump and press buttons to attack (or swing a remote if you prefer). That is to me what an entertaining game is about. I'm just not drawn into JRPGs in the same way. I have the same problem with point and click games.

 

[Vetinarii]

The stupidity... Swords and Magic... HEY GUYS LET'S FIGHT A MOTORBIKE!!!
Wow sure FF that makes sense. Most are fine but the art style doesn't appeal to me and I downright hate all Final Fantasy...

I never understood that logic, video games were never meant to be realistic. Agreed with the art style for the most part though.

true video games are not "supposed" to be realistic, but u have to draw the line somewhere, and that line is drawn a couple of paces behind the bloody gun blade

I actually enjoy the juxtaposition of fantasy and sci fi elements...

Edit- also is a gunblade really that unrealistic? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayonette

That is a gun with a blade... GUN being the main weapon... who the hell uses a blade as the main weapon then the gun as a back up... oh dear the person I was fighting has gotten away now I can use my gun... use it before he gets in range moron... I quite liked Lost Oddessy but when I fought a tank in an early part Immersion went out of the window... fighting a tank with a sword? Wow really? I used magic but the idea people are still carrying swords when there are tanks is stupid... /rant

EDIT: I notice some people are having a go at the "grind" I don't remember grinding in Lost Oddessy at all... I just rushed through it (until my save went some way into the second disc and I punched a wall because it took so long to get there (because the game is huge not grindy)).

It doesn't take a lot of effort and research to find some absurd western weapon design. Of which the Gunblade is one.

Think of a rapier, now, instead of a hilt, it's a pistol.

You wacky westerners designed that thing... You also designed Axe-guns.

Proud of yourselves for inspiring the easterners to incorporate these completely real existing weapons in real life into their wacky fictional videogames?

We did this? Really? Well forgive me for not liking that idea... this is not a I HATE THE EAST discussion this is I think FF is stupid, if this came from westen designs then whoever came up with that is stupid too.

 

[Twad]

Personally it more of a problem with rpgs in general. The problems being:

- endless grind
- boring, predictable plot and characters
- Cutscene incompetence/hero stupidity is the norm to make stuff happen (our hero always let the evil murderous psychos he just beated walk away, let them do their monologue, or never interupt their incredibly slow/dramatic spellcasting)
- Big bad evil guys are almost always one-man armies, so you are the only thing that can slow them down (slow, because they always suceed at whatever they are trying to do in the end, but you do win at the last second).
- Big bad guys can always teleport or walk in(and out) of the most secured of locations as if it was empty and didnt have to fight/avoid trap/puzzles. And they often get there before we do (but leave no traces that they did that) and wait in ambush to steal our thunder right under our nose.
- its always about saving the world/universe.
- the universe is static around you. YOu are the only one travelling on the overworld map. Towns dont seem to have any purpose (they dont trade, produce anything) expect to serve as a place where a lot of (braindead) npcs just stand around.
- swords. There are always swords. Sword with ranged attacks that are more powerfull than a battleship's main gun.
- One of the character is often going to be a living plot device. Like the cute girl character we meet at the start of the game IS the key to destroy the world (or save it)

 

[Vetinarii]

The stupidity... Swords and Magic... HEY GUYS LET'S FIGHT A MOTORBIKE!!!

All can be in Oblivion the latter with a mod and that is WRPG so pretty crap reason to hate JRPGs.

On the immersion breaking fighting say a tank with a sword was Was Oblivion immersion breaking when you doing something as ridiculous as just running backward firing off magic like a machinegun or arrows? Was Mass Effect immersion breaking when a skill Adrenaline Rush could recharge all of your Tech Magic(I mean Talents) even though they nothing to do with your actual body or when you fought that Armature which is a tank outside of where Liara was with only guns and three people? Was Fallout 3 immersion breaking when they give you a Nuke Launcher?

The answer to most of those is probably no but it is ok to do complete bullshit in WRPG but when it happens in a JRPG it isn't ok.

Yes a MOD which I didn't get because it is stupid... Swords and Magic good, Technology good, Swords and Magic and technology bad... My brain works like this.

Magic doesn't last forever and to do good magic you run out of Majicka pretty quickly in Oblivion so for me that kept me interested, (though the magic arrow that hits the person you want but only from certain places and then the guard all know it was you was a huge immersion breaker) Mass Effect used some dodgy ideas to help speed you allong without removing too much (omni gel was immersion breaking) And Fallout's cool weapons (immersion broken by stupid diologue). All the games have small parts that you can generally avoid in them... you can't avoid fighting a motorbike...

 

[Kurenaino]

Would you care to join me in counting how many JRPGs fall in the same old boring trappings of teenage angsts?

I'd like to refer you back to my list on Page 1. Then, I'd like to remind you, I skipped a few series, and I also skipped quite a many single title RPGs such as Ephemeral Fantasia, a game I do absolutely adore.

And then, we have games which can be argued as to possibly being a JRPG... Zelda for exemple, it can technically be considered a JRPG, it's second iteration certainly was one of the first Action JRPG to exist, as well as Castlevania 2. To an extent, you could argue that Zelda 1, or hell, all zeldas are Action JRPGs... Though that'd need to be heavily pondered and discussed.

I'm ready to believe that the stereotype of the whiny emo kid or teenage drama/angst actually applies to only the minority of JRPGs that exists currently.

I agree with you here, actually. Most don't have the whiny emo teen idiot, but that was hardly my point. My point here is that all genres, including JRPGs, rely on genre conventions.It's not a bad thing in a lot of cases, don't fix what ain't broken, but a lot of the conventions in JRPGs just tend to rub people the wrong way. For me, it's the cutscenes, not the characters. However, and this is the big thing, when you're dealing with any game grouping, you're going to get a few huge, popular titles that are going to sort of set people's mindset of the entire genre and, for better or for worse, that franchise for the JRPG is Final Fantasy, and I think we'd be a little delusional if we argued that they don't use the emo angsty teen in pretty much everything. And since that's the big JRPG franchise, that's where people draw their generalizations from, correct or not. I think you'll notice here that even on this forum here, most complaints seemed to be lobbed exclusively at the Final Fantasy series.

Now as for Zelda being an RPG...no, I don't think so. There really aren't any RPG elements present in Zelda. I'd actually argue that God of War is more of an RPG than the Zelda franchise. I'm sure that can be debated, but I'm pretty sure that most people don't group Zelda with RPGs.

 

[TraderJimmy]

it's a bunch of stupid faggots who like wrpgs who claim jrpgs are for kids with gay plots but they forget most major jrpgs take ideas from western table top rpgs so saying they hate jrpgs means they hate the ieas of table top gaming. And this retarded "it's spread sheet with graphics LOL IADNE:FOIDAOFJSDF" is dumb because a RPG IS STAT BASED. If you love never winter nights you are playing GASP a game with spread sheets for graphics. If your playing fallout 1 2 3 your playing a game with spead sheets for graphics (and fallout 1 and 2 was most so since that SPECIAL was a quick idea instead of GURPS). I don't know what else since that's the main reasons I see on forums. But hard care rpg fans should try Class of Heroes, Dark Spire, or the Etrian Odyssey games if they want to play a rpg close to D&D (dark spire more so).

Never EVER heard that accusation laid at JRPGs. Strongly suspect strawman in action. I've always associated WRPGs with careful stat management and precise gameplay, while JRPGs - well, you get stronger. Then you hit things with the strong spell or sword. I like many of the games, sure. But I do think the stats end up pretty vague, if anything.

There are of course exceptions to the rule - Golden Sun, I can think of off the top of my head. But then there's stuff like Disgaea, Phantom Brave, Jade Cocoon, Final Fantasy (of course), Dragon Quest. Just my experience, but I DON'T associate JRPGs with stats at all. Except in the sense that you need to get all stats to 99999/9999/255 in order to beat the bonus bosses, but that's more an arbitrary grind threshold than an actual character build where you need to bloody think.

Then again, some WRPGs do feel very vague as well (Torchlight if you count Hack'n'Slash, WoW if you count MMORPGs).

Thanks for the recommendations, I'll definitely try to play those.

EDIT: Just noticed - Faggots? Grow up.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well I don't like them much, but that is mostly down to the how the game was designed, what mostly irritates me is:
- over-dramatization (extremely long dialog with no content made merely to presents someones feelings)
- nonsense stories (final fantasy always does this, never explains anything that is going on, things just sort of are...)
- overdone animation (it's cool to present things, but watching a 30+ second animation for every spell every single damn time is very irritating)
- repetitive characters (most JRPG's seem to follow the same formula)
- turn-based combat (not an affliction only found in JRPG's but alot use it, and I just don't care for it)

 

[nuba km]

most of the time they drag out long beyond there welcome. most of their gameplay is repetitive and not challenging (before someone goes fps games are repetitive it's just shoot that guy that is a gross simplification). If I want my cup of rpg I play either pokemon or a game with proper (not just who can change your character looks or we include stats) rpg elements like fallout. I like rpg like I like salt you add it to stuff to make it better.

 

[clockpenalty]

Mega Snip

I grew up when the Pokemon thing started getting huge in the US, and I've never liked any Japanese media. The games, the TV shows, the card games, or the books. Ever. Also, I don't like any RPGs. W or J. Why do I want to odd jobs in a game? I do that in real life.

This whole post stinks of fanboy for the reason of you missed my points. Ya know, the other 2 paragraphs that weren't rants, but actually sensible arguments with examples and comparisons.

I can't "reference your point" because your point is opinion, not fact, or even loosely based on one. Using my opinions to back your own isn't a very credible defense, however counter-attacking my points is, but you didn't do that, did you?

Basically, you used my post to restate and reinforce YOUR generalizations of why people hate JRPGs, then, in the end, said I was right. So I think I win. Good night.

Also its ok to tell us the source of your personal hatred towards japanese media.AND rpgs. You just destroyed all your credibility right there.

What? With what? The Pokemon thing? Please, that's not the source of my hatred for it. Wow.

Once again, you pulled off amazing forum acrobatics in avoiding my point, along with several other people's points, one of them being from Japan himself. Can you just accept the fact that people don't like them for whatever various reasons? I accept the fact that people think racers are all the same left and right turns, and all shooters are brown and gray with guns, but I DON'T CARE!

Whoa, sorry dude. I concede, you win. JRPGs suck!!! Chill out, man!!!

 

[clockpenalty]

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

Balderdash!

Demon's souls was praised by the west. That was a Japanese title. It just completely side stepped any kind of Japanese style gameplay.

The west isn't unfairly biased against JRPG games. It just recognises that most Japanese companies seem to be allergic to change.

They just keep churning out the same stuff, with little to no innovations barring graphics. Excuse me if I'm not bowled over by that. Scrape away the aesthetics and how was FF XIII any different to FF VII? Same character archetypes with gender swaps here and there.

Demons souls was a JRPG. If you are just going to say any good jrpg sidestepped any kind of 'japanese' gameplay (as if there is such a thing) then you just prove my point. It's bad because its japanese. And if its good, then it's not.

ALL videogame companies keep churning out the same stuff. Halo 5 (reach) call of duty 6 (mw2) Fable 3, baldurs gate 5 (mass effect 2).... all just churning out basically the same thing, but with improvements and refinements. Japanese studios do the same thing, also with improvements and refinements. The problems are that:

1) Many times they can be OVERLY conservative, which is a valid failing of a japanese design studio but also a great strength, as players of fighting games will attest

2) When they DO take risks, many times the improvements are not blatantly obvious because they usually do not target areas such as 'usability' or 'convenience'. They tend to focus on the game itself and preventing bugs, rather than creating a good UI layout, improving load times, allowing cutscenes to be skippable, etc. This makes them vulnerable to criticism, especially from western gamers used to better industrial design

However whenever you hear 'JRPG SUX'the next thing afterwards is a torrent of untruth and inaccuracies, plus unfair accusations that the so called WRPG counterparts are just as guilty of. The problems with JRPGs have nothing to do with the current torrent of hate and typecasting. Its just an unfortunate meme that has caught on at the moment. Japanese development = bad. Japanese art aesthetic = bad.

 

[Aurora Firestorm]

Kurenaino: what's that saying -- 80% of every art form is crap? It's not just JRPGs. The world is full of sucky artists (using the term loosely) in every media form. Lots of movies suck. Lots of shooters suck. Lots of pictures suck. Just because there are tons of lame artists in the JRPG category doesn't make it inherently bad, because this is commonplace.

...People hate on JRPGs because they don't like some of the tropes. This has been said to death. End of story. You can't tell someone to like JRPGs because they're awesome; that's like telling a kid to like broccoli even when he just can't stand the flavor. (I still hate broccoli...)

Also, to quote Extra Credits -- lots of people here are considering "Final Fantasy" to be the same as "JRPG." False. Patently false. Square-Enix is not the only JRPG-making company out there, nor is Final Fantasy an example of the entire series. Persona does not have gun-blade weapons and spiky-haired characters who all look female even when they're male -- they all look fairly realistic (Igor aside) and with reasonably average gender-based traits and use conventional weapons of some kind. Every weapon used in Persona 3 and 4 exists in real life and can be effective in one scenario or another. Star Ocean and Tales of Symphonia don't have turn-based combat. Some RPGs don't even have separate battle screens. Magna Carta: Tears of Blood doesn't have a "now select your spell..." system, and Chrono Trigger used ATB so the enemies got a chance to attack you in real time.

There is variety. Final Fantasy is not the end-all be-all for JRPGs. Some people will of course still not like the genre -- that's fine -- but they should consider games that are outside the most well-known tropes first.



On a totally different note, whoever is complaining about grind in JRPGs obviously never played Baldur's Gate, though. That game, and I daresay many games based on tabletop RPG systems, are so full of grind that it comes out your ears. Just my personal beef there. Maybe I just suck at Baldur's Gate. I get my ass kicked every 10 feet...

 

[Sabiancym]

Everything anime annoys me to no end. I cannot stand it and it's everywhere.

The stupid character designs
The terrible dialog
The epileptic inducing particle effects that happen every 3 seconds.
Weapons 5 times bigger than the characters
Final Fantasy style combat.....terrible
And the feeling that the game was made by a bunch of pedophiles...seriously, do you need to make a girl in extremely tight clothing look like shes 16?



I really don't understand how adults can like this stuff. It's kind of scary that so many do.

^Accurate JRPG art.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

The stupidity... Swords and Magic... HEY GUYS LET'S FIGHT A MOTORBIKE!!!

All can be in Oblivion the latter with a mod and that is WRPG so pretty crap reason to hate JRPGs.

On the immersion breaking fighting say a tank with a sword was Was Oblivion immersion breaking when you doing something as ridiculous as just running backward firing off magic like a machinegun or arrows? Was Mass Effect immersion breaking when a skill Adrenaline Rush could recharge all of your Tech Magic(I mean Talents) even though they nothing to do with your actual body or when you fought that Armature which is a tank outside of where Liara was with only guns and three people? Was Fallout 3 immersion breaking when they give you a Nuke Launcher?

The answer to most of those is probably no but it is ok to do complete bullshit in WRPG but when it happens in a JRPG it isn't ok.

Yes a MOD which I didn't get because it is stupid... Swords and Magic good, Technology good, Swords and Magic and technology bad... My brain works like this.

Magic doesn't last forever and to do good magic you run out of Majicka pretty quickly in Oblivion so for me that kept me interested, (though the magic arrow that hits the person you want but only from certain places and then the guard all know it was you was a huge immersion breaker) Mass Effect used some dodgy ideas to help speed you allong without removing too much (omni gel was immersion breaking) And Fallout's cool weapons (immersion broken by stupid diologue). All the games have small parts that you can generally avoid in them... you can't avoid fighting a motorbike...

It is one five min or less mini game to break the pace of the game and is incerdibly easy I would hardly say it is anything to rant or rave about. That is fair enough if that how you feel about your game universes some of us however, like magic, swords and technology. In fact that is basically the original Star Wars trilogy since the Force was literally magic. There are also plenty of unavoidable things in games that are immersion breaking in every game. A better thing in ME is the ridiculous time it takes the Mako to recoup its shields which is unavoidable unless you want to pop in and out of cover like a Jack in the Box. Although I am not saying it is bad to hate them but tobring up a 5 min sequence which does not have to be repeated and it is not difficult is a bit much.

Everything anime annoys me to no end. I cannot stand it and it's everywhere.

The stupid character designs
The terrible dialog
The epileptic inducing particle effects that happen every 3 seconds.
Weapons 5 times bigger than the characters
Final Fantasy style combat.....terrible
And the feeling that the game was made by a bunch of pedophiles...seriously, do you need to make a girl in extremely tight clothing look like shes 16?



I really don't understand how adults can like this stuff. It's kind of scary that so many do.

^Accurate JRPG art.

Just no on so many level seriously how many JRPGs have you actually played? I would change the Accurate JRPG art in your post but to do that in a quote is a bit prickish.