Yahtzee vs. the JRPG

[Helba1984]

Yahtzee,

If you want a list of good JRPGs, I can give it to you - but you're right, VII was a pile of stinky cheese, and VIII wasn't much better. About the only good ones since VI have been IX, X, X-2, and XI. (not counting strategy games and whatnot).

XIII gave me the same feeling XII did - it was so bad, I wanted to return it; the only reason I didn't, is that I'm a collector and I must have them all. The series has been taking some drastic turns since after X-2, and if you ask me they're on the road to fiduciary trouble if the dude responsible for XIII is allowed to make a game again.

No towns in the entire game, because it was "too hard"? Maybe it was "too hard" because you laid off half your staff, jackass.

But there are literally TONS of other companies who are making some really great games, and you unfortunately lump them all together because you dislike more modern character design and seem to hate anime or anything related to it.

And by doing so, I think you're cheating yourself out of some great experiences.

- Helba

P.S. - Vanille's english voice actress needs her vocal cords ripped out with a chainsaw and no anesthetic. I'm sure we can at least agree on that?

P.P.S. - There is absolutely NO EXCUSE for a PS3 version of the game not having dual audio. There's twice the amount of free space on that disc that would be required for it.

 

[cj_iwakura]

Apocalypse halfway through?

Try SMT Nocturne.

The world ends in the beginning of the game.

 

[Helba1984]

Of course Yahtzee does tend to bait fans by saying hyperbolic things like "if you like it then you are provably wrong", hence some of the rage is brought upon himself, but he makes some fairly valid criticisms. Above all, the fact that you have to play the game for twenty hours before it gets good.

First of all, that's not a point he has the basis to make, because he played just 5 hours. That's not a review, That's hearsay.

Also, "you have to play 20 hours before it gets good" is an opinion, not a "valid point", and that's an opinion based on the possibility of the generic "you" to dislike linear gameplay.
Personally, the game got "good" as soon as I saw the first scenes, I don't mind linear gameplay, and I don't think that freedom of exploration is an indispensible trait of a quality game. If it was, my options to find good games would be radically narrowed.
There are plenty critically acclaimed games that are a whole X hours long on-rail adventure. Final Fantasy XIII won't be the first, nor the last, but lots of people seem to feel personally slighted by the fact it's linear. It's funny to see how the same people aren't as offended by other games that are equally straightforward.

Personally, I find that a big part of that disparity in judgement, expecially from the press, comes from the fact that Final Fantasy XIII is a Japanese game, and it's become "hip" to bash Japanese games. No matter the quality.

The fun part is that when we receive a JRPG that truly innovates the genre in many ways (White Knight Chronicles), they will find other excuses to bash it (and I did see reviews criticizing it for being too "confusing" in the explorative part. Damn you, you want linear or free exploration?).

100 hours? FF13 is only 40 hours long and most of that is grueling

It's 40 hours if you whine about it being linear and then PURPOSEDLY play it linear

Chapter 11 can easily be over 60 hours long, depending on how you play it, if you do all the missions, hunt all the monsters, look for all the components to get your ultimate weapons and so forth.
FFXIII is 2 games in one, basically. You can chose to play one, and whine it's linear and shallow, or you can play both, and you'll have an extremely rich and deep game.

Ah filler...... it didnt make FFX any better... and guess what..... its still a heavily linear game it just has a longer corridors than most....

If you ask me, X was one of the best, if not THE best one in the series; and it has nothing to do with linearity, although I love the story - it has to do with the combat system, which IMHO, is tied for greatest battle system of all time right up there with Legend of Dragoon.

So, put those two together, and the "corridors" are tolerable.

XIII had to be their idea of a joke, though; you seen the interviews with the project lead? *headdesk*

 

[cj_iwakura]

X had a pretty bad story. The last FF I genuinely enjoyed was IX.

Hell, I like My Life As A Darklord more than FFX. It's fun to play, and the story doesn't drone on and on about characters I don't care about.

 

[orangeapples]

probably already mentioned, but Final Fantasy IX is definitely the best of FFVII-FFXIII. too bad it has been so overlooked. I'm just waiting for it to come up on PSN for PSP.

JRPGs aren't bad, the stories are great, characters are deep. The only problem is the whiney characters. If anything Watch the Unskippable for Last Remnant. That is a perfect example.

even worse than the whiney character: the horrible voice acting. There is always 2 annoying characters.

 

[Abriael]

Ah filler...... it didnt make FFX any better... and guess what..... its still a heavily linear game it just has a longer corridors than most....

It's obvious that you don't know what you're talking about. There are NO corridors in the open ended part of the game. They aren't longer. It is, indeed, open ended. You can explore freely.

Misinformed post is misinformed.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

I think it's about time we and Square all say good-bye to FF. Seriously, it's done, it has no purpose. Square only makes it to please the fans (which of course is unwise) and the fans only play it as a videogaming form of comfort food. VII changed things, VIII blew goats, IX and X were solid entries, XII was the stake in the heart, and XIII is the cheap, perverse voodoo resurrection. Square definitely has great talent in their company so it's about time they use it for games other than FF. Y'know, just like in their SNES/PS1 GOLDEN AGE.

 

[Yulai Liu]

I think I am just too lazy to read so.....can you make a video and say this whole thing over again. I'm just saying~ I will read......

NICE WORK AGAIN!

 

[Arcane Azmadi]

"smashing together past and future like pillowy breasts in a granite wonderbra"

That's the most hilarious description of FFVIII I've ever heard and made the whole article worthwhile! At least I assume it was FFVIII he was describing there.

I'm actually in the extreme minority group that has FFVIII as my favourite installment in the series. I dunno, it's hard to explain.

Not that surprised that Yahtzee at least appreciated Chrono Trigger, even if he didn't finish it. I just hope he got up to the particularly unexpected part of the game where

Spoiler

Chrono dies

before he quit . At the time that bit just made my jaw drop so hard it put a hole in my floor.

 

[lifestorm2]

Well, I can't really say you opinion's entirely worthy of even being thought of, since you didn't even finish the game. I'd admit, though, it's like the first eleven chapters of the game was the INTRODUCTION and the rest of it being the entire story cramped in 12 hours; it's true if you think about it, since we don't really get any story other than flash backs to the 13 days section and every other scene is about the characters frolicking and not being effing together (and making me work with an incomplete battle system, with two party members) until they meet up again and crash land. To put an hypothetical analogy to it, you would be complaining about Final Fantasy 7 being just cutscenes and crappy gameplay when all you've seen is the bombing mission. Not that it's your fault, the pacing was shit, so was screenplay and story; I liked the ending a lot, though. And main story aside, I did like the compendium's notes; they make the main story seem slightly coherent, and the mythos behind the world is pretty fun to read (er...I'm not sure if it is in the English version).

On the issue of the games being art porn...well, that's probably because you already have a bad impression of the game. If you actually took the time to notice, FF13 actually takes a lot of innovation in to the maps of older renditions. If you played a bit without moving the (shitty ass) camera, you'd notice that sometimes it feels like how you move in FF7 (or RE, if you take it that way). The movements and map systems are improvements of older map systems, a bit more streamlined, though too simple and rigid. I liked the scenery; if you tried turning the old 2D games into 3D games I'm sure a lot of them would look darn weird, too; one complain I did have was that most of the game (the "introduction") was filled with glowing lasers and blinding lamps for no reason, and the scenery repeats way too often. It gets better once you move to the wild, but it sucked looking at the dull scenery.

In terms of character design, you're complaining that two out of six characters are kids physically? Lightning looks a bit like a twig, but Snow, Sazh, and Fang look nothing like adults, and Snow and Sazh look nothing like super models (bum and an afro guy), I don't see how you can complain about that unless you have that prejudice in the first place; I do admit that she was really sexualized: her stigma's on the side of her leg, and her skirt and top basically doesn't cover anything.

The game does actually feel like a "game" later on, so just because I'm downstream right now doesn't mean I can't go up stream and turn up my water control abilities to 11. There's actually a direct level of strategy and planning involved, along with the so-familiar-it's-like-we-are-relatives grinding.

At least watch the super awesome ending with fun fun friendship, deus-ex-machina, and pan-up into the sky. I make it sound really lame, but after beating the suddenly damn hard final chapter and final boss, you would think anything's awesome. You can always go back to it later rather than review another game, I mean, you get two reviews for the price of one game, that's like, double the opportunity, right.


or you could just ignore my wall of text, hey, it's a giant wall alright.

 

[CopperBoom]

I can abide the JRPG format when I find the story interesting and compelling. For all the shtick FF7 gets for kicking off the spectacle-fighter-ish trend of RPGs which really don't involve roleplaying or indeed really any game playing, the story really was compelling enough that the thinner gameplay didn't bother me. It comes to me as no surprise and a great disappointment that they have taken to the Nintendo method of game making by which I mean just basically releasing iterations of the same game.

That may be true, but at least Nintendo's iterations are consistently FUN.

Hu-HO!
We got a live one here...
...seriously though, that was funny.

...much like this article was funny.

 

[Byers]

FF6, Earthbound and Chrono Trigger are the superior JRPGs of the SNES generation, and sadly hasn't been topped since then.

However, Super Mario RPG for the SNES was better than any of the Paper Mario games.

 

[ZephrC]

Bleh, I had a great big long post I was writing, then I realized nobody would care.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that while the video review of FF XIII was funny and fairly accurate, the article here displays a lack of familiarity with the game that, while not surprising, does take away from the credibility of the point. I dunno, I guess I just expect more thought out of written articles. Silly me.

 

[Michael826]

*sigh*

Neither argument will ever be successful. what a person likes is subjective, hence the endless bickering. it makes for an interesting read, though.

I was personally annoyed with Yahtzee FF XIII ZP, and i don't even have the game. I know his job is more or less to piss people off, but usually he's a little more informed.

 

[guabobe]

what happened to the space game he was making tho'?

 

[adafuns]

i wonder if yahtzee played super mario rpg for the snes. i loved that game, it was awesome. ff7 is still my favorite rpg despite understanding why ppl blame it on the fall of the series. whether you liked it or not it was original and shouldn't be held accountable for the rest of the series. the blame lies with square's blatant milking.

 

[luas_dublin]

I used to like jRPGs.
Then I bought a nintendo DS.
With maybe three-four exceptions every RPG for the DS is an Jrpg.
I have come to hate JRPGs.
After a while they all sort of seem to blur together.Quirky name, spikey headed androgynous gobshite chosen one character,and the usual collection of 12 year old girls and annoying best mates as your "party", crappy wibbly background real time battles and incomprehensible plots.
I would KILL to get something like the old style hard as nails regular RPG on the DS like Eye of the Beholder ,Bloodwhych, ,Warriors of the eternal sun,Planescape torment ,or hell even B uck Rogers count down to doomsday.
But no , sadly on the few ds forums I frequent people get excited when the latest generic JRpg comes out (hey! "Final Tentacle Dragon Saucer eyed schoolgirl quest 4 is out" bin w8ting for dat lol!").There's been one or two regular RPG's (thank you ATLUS), which seem to have been pretty much ignored
Oh and the only remotely decent JRPG (other than chrono trigger which was great , but was basically a fancy SNES game)I've played on the system was Soma Bringer , which of course WAS NEVER RELEASED OUTSIDE JAPAN! doh!(so you need a flash cart a dodgy rom and a fan translation patch)
There is no God , or if there is he has a PSP.

 

[luas_dublin]

Actually in retrospect Soma Bringer is basically Diablo dressed up to look like a JRPG , so yeah , JRPGS , I hates em all!

 

[Your once and future Fanboy]

I stopped playing FF7 at the point where a black hole sucked me into a parallel dimension and forced me to fight some sort of missle-firing shed that blew me up while I helplessly mashed the "kill the fucking shed" option in the combat menu. I'm glad that someone out there shares my pain.

please tell me that you are joking with this post?!

Did you just say that you only played to where you first enter Sector 6 in Midgard, and where in your imagination did you pull the "dimension" from?