Yahtzee vs. the JRPG

[Bosola]

Only partially relevant, and shameless self-promotion, but I thought I'd spend a moment talking about something that might be of interest to many people in this thread: my own 'rebalance' of Final Fantasy 7, a free mod for both PSX and PC versions called 'Rebirth'. I believe that VII *is* a fun game, but in practice far from the model of perfection "certain fangroups" insist. Rather than simply whinge and snipe at the game, I've decided to but my money where my mouth is, and use the wealth of available modding tools to put theory into practice!

REBIRTH is my own attempt to improve the balance, difficulty level and battle mechanics of the original game. Vanilla VII can be excellent fun, but the experience is spoilt somewhat by the sameyness of the characters (who vary only in terms of limit breaks), unintuitive status vulnerabilities and unreliable debuffs (that mean you either spam status magic randomly, or just give up entirely), vapid enemies and few interesting equipment choices. REBIRTH will fix this, and more, adding

* Greater character individuation - radically different stats and equipment, to make party selection something actually worth thinking about
* Making status magic worth using - creating enemies with intuitive and significant vulnerabilities, but without affording gamebreaking combos on individual creatures (like mini and berserk together)
* Amplified materia stat boosts / penalties: REBIRTH will not only make you think about your loadout carefully, but also make your efforts to optimize pay off
* Vincent no longer makes spacktastic limit break choices (i.e. I've recoded his AI in limit form)
* Added Air, Water and Holy element materia. Made these elements more important, and added an easy-to-remember elemental class system, to reward players who engage their noggins.
* Radically altered enemy skills, adding double-edged spells, nerfing OP blue magic and making oft-neglected spells relevant again
* Making stealing actually worth doing
* Introducing new equipment, a 'defence break' mechanic (like Vit0), and more elemental / status inflicting weapons
* Eventually to rewrite large portions of the AI code (being in assembler, this will take a while)
* Rebalancing summons, disambiguating equipment names, and altering limit breaks with a modding tool I've programmed specifically for the project


Find out more about the mod here: http://www.moddb.com/mods/final-fantasy-7-rebirth

 

[Abriael]

Am I reading this right? You're mad because he's doing his job? The man who's more or less demonstrated that there's maybe three or four games he's ever really liked?

mad? now now. Aren't you exaggerating? When someone expresses criticism, it doesn't mean that he's mad.
I'm much more amused than mad.

117 hours of game play? Didn't the game just come out a few weeks ago? I've played games in their entirety and not logged that much time after multiple beatings. The only game that's actually trumped this trend in my own gaming is one were that'd be expected after years of playing it.

Aside the fact that I received the game 3 days before the street date because having a best friend that's a gamestop store manager always helps. There's a TON of stuff to be done in Final Fantasy XIII is you want to complete all the side quests. 117 hours aren't that outlandish. It depends if you want to go straight to the end, or see it all.
But if you go straight to the end, then don't complain that it's linear?

Yet you want to accuse him of bias? Ok, shoot me. We're all biased. Trying to claim you're not means you're lying and for him to try to be unbiased would just lead to poor journalism.

There's a difference between a bias and an opinion, made up from prolonged experience.

And that's exactly it- tutorials. If you have to sit someone down and demonstrate something for them you've already done something wrong. The best games in the industry have very simple combat systems that you can effectively pick up and play without having to consult walls of text or simply be sat down and shown what to do. It's the difference between a game treating you like a child or treating you like you're there to experience something.

"best" is a very subjective thing. Many people don't like oversimple games, and prefer games with a lots of options and tactical variation. It's called taste.

FF13 is completely linear. They don't make any bones about it. There's no dungeon exploration, there's no pit stops in town, there's nothing really. It's more like it's a rail shooter except that it's in RPG format.

Not really. It's linear until chapter 10. Chapter 11 is completely open ended, and it can be easily as long or longer than the rest, depending how much of the area you explore and how many of the missions you want to do.

Final Fantasy XIII effectively includes two different games. A linear experience and a free roaming one.

Its more the fact that everyone has the style trends. Everyone has to have an extra belt. Everyone has to have hair style X, and wear shirt Y. There's a distinct Final Fantasy style out there. You typically see it creep up in games, but it effectively died in FF6. Now it's all pretty boys, brusque black men and "moee" women.

Sazh isn't brusque at all, he's actually a quite tender, easy-going, caring man. Lightning is the total opposite of Moe, and Snow is everything, but not pretty.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

Have you ever played FFIX? It's kind of a throwback to pre-FFVII, and it's actually my favourite in the series. I never really liked FFVII, FFVIII or FFX and later, I prefer fantasy over sci-fi in Final Fantasy games.

Well I have to say it is a better reason than most give for not liking FFVII or FFVIII and FFX. Although VI one could argue was a bit futuristic for it's setting with the steampunk aspect to it.

OT: I have to completely disagree with the point made about FFVI's story. Yes the story was easy to follow until you got into the world of ruin which ruined the game(bad pun but still). As after the highly emotional scene you are plonked on the main land with no idea where to go and monsters that can petrify you and give you a game over with only 1 person in your party.

Also discounting all of the spin offs if you just count FFVII's story as it is it isn't that hard to follow. Heroes or Fringe is more complicated than any FF and even they aren't that bad. Well maybe Heroes is.

 

[Bosola]

On an unrelated subject, here is the best peice of dialog to ever take place! Yey for depth and totally unannoying characters! all hail FF!


And they wonder why i hate jrpgs

To add insult to injury, there's of course no way to skip through the cutscenes. I usually make a point of leaving to have a sandwich / do the dishes / shave the dog whenever that thing appears.

At least XII reduces the cringe factor by making everyone and everything (just) relentlessly bland.

 

[Awexsome]

Well as long as Yahtzee keeps being funny then I'll keep watching. His personal taste doesn't contain JRPGs but I can respect that. When it comes to FFXIII the story and characters kept me coming back to play more than the combat did since although it's still pretty fun it got repetitive battle after battle than say something like Tales of Vesperia did.

It'd take one hell of an awesome game to overcome my nostalgia factor in favor of FF7 and even a last generation game like Tales of Symphonia but I did enjoy playing through FFXIII. (I was really worried that Hope and Vanille were going to turn into the Vaan and Penelo of this game but luckily I was mistaken.)

 

[Abriael]

On an unrelated subject, here is the best peice of dialog to ever take place! Yey for depth and totally unannoying characters! all hail FF!

Looks like you're very easily annoyed. What about some chamomile?

 

[JPH330]

To add insult to injury, there's of course no way to skip through the cutscenes. I usually make a point of leaving to have a sandwich / do the dishes / shave the dog whenever that thing appears.

Indeed... That's one thing that made Kingdom Hearts II much more bearable for me. I didn't have to listen to Sora talk like an 8-year-old, I could just go straight to the part of the game I cared about.

 

[ShankHA32]

Of course having an anime styled character in my avatar makes me biased uh? I wonder what having crackers in yours makes you.

What makes me reinforce my opinion is the fact that you've been defending your beloved japanese culture with probably more than 10 posts in this thread alone, which really is saying something. And having a picture of Cracker ass Crackers makes me someone who doesn't push their preferred art style to other people with their avatar (because everyone who has an anime character as their avatar is shouting I LOVE ANIME), but rather a picture that represents what I am in a way, a cracker ass cracker.

LOL!

See, that's one way I am a cracker - I crack people up. You're welcome.

For your information, my friendly neighborhood smartie, I play both Japanese and Western games, RPG or not, i move with uncanny agility between Bioware RPGs, Bethesda RPGs (I've been a very active Oblivion modder), The Witcher, Drakensang and various JRPGs both new and old, love Silent Hunter 5 and Dawn of War 2 just as much as Yakuza 3, appreciate Assassin's Creed as much as Ninja Gaiden and have fun on Il-2 Sturmovik as much as on Ace Combat.

So? Should you playing western games as well as their japanese counterparts somehow outweigh your obvious bias? And I'm not saying bias in a way that makes you prefer, let's call them asian games (sick of saying japanese), over western ones. I mean it makes you overlook their flaws, which is what we're arguing about here, aren't we?

So I'm afraid not, the fact that I lived in Japan and know their culture enough to appreciate it as much as my native Italian culture (as opposed to some people here that go into a cultural shock as soon as they see a pair of almond-shaped eyes), and that I happened to chose a drawing I liked more than others, doesn't make me biased.

Now this is where you begin to sound misguided to me. Do you really think you need to actually live in Japan to understand the culture of the japanese? No, I do not to see cosplayers walking around on the streets to know that they exist, and no, nothing that I experience for myself in Japan, or anywhere else for that matter, that I saw people do, will somehow make me appreciate it. It's like saying you have to experience a life in a concentration camp to know how hard it was for people to get by in there.

The only bias here is that against Japanese games, that some western gamers (and wannabe journalists that turn into stereotype-mongers) seem to have. It's always sad that diversity tends to cause that much fear and hatred.

Your fear of these stereotype mongers makes your opinion all the more credible, because last I looked, people who side with the Japan lovers far outnumber those who don't. Also, don't act like you haven't seen anything else Yahtzee reviewed. He tears ANYTHING apart, and in this case, it was a JRPG, which he tore apart like the rest while explaining you what reinforces his hate towards JRPGs in general.
P.S. And in my opinion, most JRPGs greatly live up to their stereotypes. Otherwise there would be no reason to use them while 'stereotype-mongering', as you put it.

Is there any reason you went line by line on his quote to just continually bash him?
In my eyes, there is no reason anyone should bash someone outside an actual debate...and your first point which seemed to start this so called, "Internet argument" was unfounded.
You said he had a bias towards Eastern, Japanese style games simply because he had an avatar that had Japanese art in it. Whoa, stop the presses, that makes me have a bias towards JRPGs as well.

Sorry, I guess my opinion is unfounded, and I also must be ignorant. If having a Japanese style Avatar makes my opinion unworthy of being posted on this thread, then I guess I should buck out now while I have the chance. Of course, we all have some sort of bias, so why should he not be allowed to post on this thread because he "cares too much"? From what I can tell he just has a strong opinon on the topic, and is making frequent replies to those he disagrees with.

However, because I disagree with your assumption, I will keep on posting. I have little to no opinion on Yahtzee's article that pretty much was "defending" his review. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say he was "reinforcing the points he made in his review along with offering multiple points of clarification" but I digress.

He wanted to make 2 main points, 1. he did not hate all JRPGs, and 2. Judging a game on the first five hours is not entirely unreasonable.
I don't entirely disagree with him either, a game that takes so long to open up might be classified by some as a waste of time, especially since there are a multitude of other RPGs that one can buy and enjoy. (I mean, this is a remarkably fruitful time to be a gamer that enjoys RPGs)

On the other hand, giving a game a chance and letting it open up to you is another option when you play FF XIII, and those that do are entitled to their opinion, and can voice it on this thread if they choose too.

It doesn't make anyone right or wrong, and it is needless to constantly put other people down based on arbitrary standards that you choose to place on other members of The Escapist.

 

[PedroSteckecilo]

At least XII reduces the cringe factor by making everyone and everything (just) relentlessly bland.

Relentlessly bland? Grarg! Such baseless hatred of 12!

My gauge of the writing and voice acting says different... it's Quote Time!

Spoiler

Vaan: ...Hey, you sure this rabbit hole's the way into Archades?
Balthier: Better a hare unseen then a rat in a trap. Then again, if you'd prefer to go knocking on the front gates of the city, be my guest.
Penelo: But what about once we're inside? Won't the city watch find us?
Ashe: We'll do what we can to blend into the crowd. Our names may be notorious, but our faces are not far-known.
Vaan: True, true. You're our princess, and we didn't even recognize you.
Ashe: I noticed.

Spoiler

Vayne Solidor: I bid you welcome to my sky fortress, the Bahamut. I must apologize for my delay in welcoming you aboard my ship. Permit me to ask: who are you? An angel of vengeance? Or perchance a saint of salvation?
Ashe: I am simply myself. No more and no less. And I want only to be free.
Vayne Solidor: Such a woman is not fit to bear the burden of rule. Weep for Dalmasca, for She is lost. Observe well, Larsa. Watch and mark you the suffering of one who must rule, yet lacks the power.

Spoiler

Vayne Solidor: This crisis would not end were I gone. The Senate hates the very fact that House Solidor exists. By necessity, we must find reason to silence them.
Emperor Gramis Gana Solidor: Necessity? Ah, yes, necessity. Does that word free you, I wonder? You show no hesitation to solve matters with blood.
Vayne Solidor: The sword of House Solidor cannot be left to rust in doubt. It was you, Excellency, who tempered that sword.
Emperor Gramis Gana Solidor: Is this your idea of vengeance?
Vayne Solidor: It is my idea of necessity.

Don't know about you but this strikes me as anything but "bland". It has a unique flare to it, actual WRITING rather than simple translation.

 

[geizr]

Okay, this whole affair started off humorous, watching fanbies on both sides of this religious crusade sling mud at each other. However, now it's just gotten stupid, in my opinion. To both sides, I can only say grow-up and get over it. It's just a game; everyone's tastes are different. Not everyone has to like the things you like, and not everyone has to not like the things you don't like. This much energy and effort to validate one's personal preferences is just ludicrous. Happiness comes from within, not from without.

Also, I'm going to say this: contrary to Yahtzee's "divine dictum", I did PLAY the game, and I did ENJOY the game(this is because Yahtzee's opinions have no bearing on my own choices and preferences). There are some who feel the same, and there are some who feel quite differently. This is allowed to occur because it is a game, and people are different with different tastes.

This entire fight just needs to end, and people need to just get on with playing games they enjoy(be that FF13 or otherwise). Don't let one incendiary curmudgeon ruin life for you.

(I still like his ZP, though.)

EDIT: Just want to clarify something on my last statement. I look upon the persona Yahtzee as being different from the person Ben Croshaw. I don't know Mr. Croshaw; I'm only familiar with a character he portrays in ZP.

 

[LeonardoDaFinchy]

Well well well... If you want an emotional rollercoaster, read a heated thread in it's entirety while NOT adding. At this point, I'll drop some assertions and piss off.

I went to the wikipedia page for Vanille, to remind myself which character is under discussion, and to be honest, she looks (as frankly tends to be the case) like she could be anywhere between 14 and 24. And such people do exist in real life. Fair dos there.

Linearity vs. openness. One person's exploration is another person's aimless wandering. Maybe stealing the golden breadcrumbs from Fable II would be a good move? When it worked, it worked well, and I imagine it'd be even better in a game world large enough for there to be a point to it.

Clothing styles. To be honest, fashion these days is far too wide in scope to chalk it up to anything but personal style. Calm down.

Role Playing and Story. Let us not forget, people, that technically Diablo is an RPG. Personally I roleplay during strategy games, particularly the Civilization 4 mod, Fall From Heaven 2. There is a heck of a lot of backstory for those that want it, a variety of characters to choose from (your leaders) and the number of 'builds' for customisation is fantastic, considering research 'lines' that look like classes (religion-cleric, hunting-rogue, warfare-warrior). You have an established story and characters, and can then make them your own. Sounds like the best of both worlds to me. Dragon Age: Origins was attacking the problem from the same angle, but slipped a bit. I'd have preferred a straight-up choice of who I wanted to play as, rather than having to pick a race and class firstly and separately.

Golden Sun = Awesome.

Points to consider or ignore. I'm out.

 

[xanith02100]

Yahtzee does indeed have good taste for the classics I say. I feel like we've bonded that we share many of the same favorite JRPGs after all.

 

[FinalHeart95]

If I'm wrong, then I damn well ENJOY being wrong. FFXIII is a blast. It's not the best in the series, but it's far from the worst. In my opinion, it's an improvement on XII in that I actually had the motivation to beat it...

Basically, I enjoy the games I do because of my opinion. And if you say my opinion is wrong, so be it. I really don't give a damn about your opinion.

 

[A random person]

But I don't think you can say that it is impossible to play FF13... You only got 5 hours in, only unlocked the barest bones of the combat system.

He mentioned why waiting to get to the best parts is not a good selling point, using Plan 9 and putting your hand on a stove as metaphors (both in different reviews).


That said, I want to know if he's ever played Persona 3 and/or 4, and what his thoughts on them were. I guess he really just can't be bothered to play them, given his apparently busy schedule.

Having played a little into Persona 3 FES (in my neverending quest to catch up to the general public), I'd have to second those recommendations. Which is strange, as in JRPG's I tend to want overworlds, growing parties, and multiple dungeons, but Persona 3 still managed to addict me.

Also, Yahtzee's claim of someone enjoying FFXIII being objectively wrong is arrogant even for him, and doesn't have the saving grace of being funny. On a similar note, don't cite FFVIII's plot (the thing about past and future being smashed together) as a problem with JRPG's in general, FFVIII is widely despised (see Spoony's review for details).

 

[black-magic]

Bah! The only good RPG's ever made have paper mario in the title.

 

[Sakurazaki1023]

Okay, this whole affair started off humorous, watching fanbies on both sides of this religious crusade sling mud at each other. However, now it's just gotten stupid, in my opinion. To both sides, I can only say grow-up and get over it. It's just a game; everyone's tastes are different. Not everyone has to like the things you like, and not everyone has to not like the things you don't like. This much energy and effort to validate one's personal preferences is just ludicrous. Happiness comes from within, not from without.

Also, I'm going to say this: contrary to Yahtzee's "divine dictum", I did PLAY the game, and I did ENJOY the game(this is because Yahtzee's opinions have no bearing on my own choices and preferences). There are some who feel the same, and there are some who feel quite differently. This is allowed to occur because it is a game, and people are different with different tastes.

This entire fight just needs to end, and people need to just get on with playing games they enjoy(be that FF13 or otherwise). Don't let one incendiary curmudgeon ruin life for you.

(I still like his ZP, though.)

I completely agree

Case in point, I am currently playing Fallout 3 and Operation Darkness (both on the 360). Despite the big "Game of the Year" label on Fallout, I'm have far more fun with the WWII tactics game that has an average review score of 5/10 (mainly for sub-par graphics and a annoying camera). It's just a matter of personal preference, this anti-JRPG shit has got to stop.

But I don't think you can say that it is impossible to play FF13... You only got 5 hours in, only unlocked the barest bones of the combat system.

He mentioned why waiting to get to the best parts is not a good selling point, using Plan 9 and putting your hand on a stove as metaphors (both in different reviews).


That said, I want to know if he's ever played Persona 3 and/or 4, and what his thoughts on them were. I guess he really just can't be bothered to play them, given his apparently busy schedule.

Having played a little into Persona 3 FES (in my neverending quest to catch up to the general public), I'd have to second those recommendations. Which is strange, as in JRPG's I tend to want overworlds, growing parties, and multiple dungeons, but Persona 3 still managed to addict me.

Also, Yahtzee's claim of someone enjoying FFXIII being objectively wrong is arrogant even for him, and doesn't have the saving grace of being funny. On a similar note, don't cite FFVIII's plot (the thing about past and future being smashed together) as a problem with JRPG's in general, FFVIII is widely despised (see Spoony's review for details).

Sadly, I doubt Yahtzee would ever play a Persona game. I'm sure it's way too Japanese for his tastes and takes way to long to get going. While the Persona games are among my favorite games of all time, he would get about 3-4 hours into it and start complaining about still being in the tutorial areas and how every male character looks like girl. Besides, if he couldn't get through FF13 what chance does he have against the 100+ hour Persona 3 FES?

 

[Serge A. Storms]

I basically have to drive 8-10 hours a weekend getting to and from either Atlanta or Beaufort, SC, when I'm on the returning end of one of those weekends, I want to sit down and play a game for fun, I don't want a game that punishes me for driving so much by making me wait 20 hours before it decides to be fun. Fuck FFXIII and the game developers that think I need to give their game some level of real commitment and dedication in my life before it puts out.

 

[ShankHA32]

massive snip

See, I'm really bad at putting my points across, and I can't be arsed to spend much more time in this thread so I'll keep it short . Avatar - by definition - is something that represents you. Whenever I think of furburt, I think of Bruce Campbell, whenever I think of someone with a funny gif avatar, I picture them as someone with a sense of humor. However, whenever I see someone's avatar to be a yet another clone character from a yet another anime/manga whatever, I see an avatar that basically doesn't represent anything except the person's love for anime. Simple as that. Also, something I keep noticing in all those japanophiles on this site. At least 95% have anime characters as their avatars. Coincidence? I think not. I also stated pretty clearly somewhere above I want my avatar to represent me, not my hobbies, which is what I think some other people should do too.

Sure, sometimes avatars do represent people as a whole. Or sometimes people just pick one and then never change it.
Just because I have an avatar that has a JRPG character on it doesn't make me a "japanophile"

Its the same thing as stereotyping a race. It's simply lazy to just push everyone to one side based on a picture below their name.