Zero Punctuation: The World Ends With You
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
- Start date
JRPGs have always been boring to me. I play the occasional RPG out of boredom and being too lazy to research good games, but they are generally boring and have too many middle-aged fangirls. You can almost judge how bad a game is by how many annoying rabid fangirls it has. Final Fantasy? Bad(I wish the first was the final). Kingdom Hearts? Horrible(What the fuck is mickey mouse doing fighting off evil demon things? It seems like something that came out of some 5 year old's mind). Etc...
And happy birthday, Yahtzee, the one game reviewer I actually trust!
And happy birthday, Yahtzee, the one game reviewer I actually trust!
I don't see where this sot gets off lumping all JRPGs together. There's quite a bit more variety out there than he's giving credit for. If he ever played Vagrant Story he would know the difference between a good RPG and a bad one. It doesn't fit any of the cliches he's refering to.
I don't see that working so great, because it all too often ends up being the flip side of the "stole my puzzle from me" storytelling featured in this week's review. You select a dialogue choice along the lines of "Okay, I'll handle this," and it turns out that makes you blow the brains out of a major character, leaving me going, "WTF? That's not how I thought he was going to handle it!" Or you get railroaded into some other line of dialogue with similarly tragic results.PedroSteckecilo said:
The problem is the fact that an RPG isn't an RPG unless you're role playing. When you're role playing, your options are always going to be limited, because you're playing a role. Sometimes the role is sufficiently free-form that you can act like a total dick and still get a suitable story and ending, but most often the role has to step in and say "no, don't go there," and you just have to go along. Was there ever an option in Mass Effect to hook up with Saren, hand the whole galaxy over to the Reavers, and spend the rest of your life as one of their mindless thralls, infiltrating and betraying the surviving bastions of human civilization? Let's face it, we are centuries away from having available to one and all computers sufficiently powerful that we can just make a virtual world and populate it with digital beings that react in a realistic way to any possible action you can take, let alone set up some sort of story for it to tell. The Sims can't even do that with a freaking HOUSE.
Happy 25th birthday Yahtzee!
Regarding JRPGs...
Back in the day me and my friends all played FF7 and FF8.
I had never played JRPGs before emulation. The Dragon Warrior games are unbelievably tedious grindfests. With FF7, at least you didn't actually need to stay and level up to survive. But exploring the overworld wasn't much fun. Hacking the savegame to give you the "no-random-encounter" item improves those games no end.
Amusingly, the random encounter mechanic was probably borrowed from WESTERN RPGs like Might & Magic / Bard's Tale. I didn't care for those, either. I only played Dungeon Master.
Paper and pencil RPGs don't have random encounters AFAIK, it's up to the DM to include antagonists in a multi-part story.
The FF7 art style was a real hodge-podge with the characters turning into super deformed versions of themselves for no apparent reason. FF8 looked more realistic and consistent.
A bit later I got FF9 and found the random encounters so annoying I couldn't play anymore.
I prefer turn-based combat myself, like in Fallout, Fire Emblem and Grandia, which are my favorites.
Regarding JRPGs...
Back in the day me and my friends all played FF7 and FF8.
I had never played JRPGs before emulation. The Dragon Warrior games are unbelievably tedious grindfests. With FF7, at least you didn't actually need to stay and level up to survive. But exploring the overworld wasn't much fun. Hacking the savegame to give you the "no-random-encounter" item improves those games no end.
Amusingly, the random encounter mechanic was probably borrowed from WESTERN RPGs like Might & Magic / Bard's Tale. I didn't care for those, either. I only played Dungeon Master.
Paper and pencil RPGs don't have random encounters AFAIK, it's up to the DM to include antagonists in a multi-part story.
The FF7 art style was a real hodge-podge with the characters turning into super deformed versions of themselves for no apparent reason. FF8 looked more realistic and consistent.
A bit later I got FF9 and found the random encounters so annoying I couldn't play anymore.
I prefer turn-based combat myself, like in Fallout, Fire Emblem and Grandia, which are my favorites.
"Uhh, I'm not good with crowds... Crowds bring out those symbols- the weebers! I can see them everywhere! There! Clinging to that guy's back- WEEBERS!!! Weebie weebie weebie..."Sasha Janre said:
I'll pull the names out for the sake of keeping this spoiler free, but it's nothing major anyway.
1: Hey, wanna play me in---
2: Say, did you know?
2: We all perceive the world around us differently---
2: ---filtered through the lens of our desired reality.
1: Huh!?
1: (thinking) Is this kid high?
2: So if you're wondering why a certain young lady still looks like somebody else...
2: ...it's because you refuse to perceive her as she really is.
1: Young lady?
2: The only thing stopping you from seeing what she really looks like... is you.
2: So you see, it's your fault.
1: I need to look harder?
2: That's right. Let go of your preconceptions.
1: Um... you know...
1: I was just gonna ask if you wanted to play Tin Pin, but, um---
2: Hmm? Tin Pin?
2: We already played.
1: What? We did not!
2: Weren't you listening?
2: Like I said, you only see what you want to see.
2: You didn't want to see yourself lose.
1: (thinking) How come I always pick the crazies to talk to...
2: When you're drowning in a sea of work with not enough time,...
2: ...why pour your soul into assets that get used all of... what, once?
2: Really. Have some compassion.
2: Ta-ta. (leaves)
1: Whew...
1: What was that all about?
1: Kid plays too many video games.
Really, the writing is excellent.
ok, i feel the same way about JRPG's but i must say, TWEWY was one of the better games i've played recently on the DS. Great combat, original style, and some fun music. While i was disappointed in the maddening amount of JRPG visual influence, i'll tolerate a lot for a game that remembers how to be fun. (though it had a sewer/ underground area like all modern adventure games, which tells me it was revving up to jump the shark)
i'd still give it a great score, but i think you hit all the main points.
i'd still give it a great score, but i think you hit all the main points.
Keep your flames turned off, kiddo.XT said:
You do realize that it was called Final Fantasy because it was expected to be the last game made by Square. The games only got bad once 7 came into existence, and they suddenly made 8 and 9 while people still wanted more of 7, which is pathetic since it was most likely the worst of the entire franchise anyways (I never could finish X. sucked. Never bothered trying the newer games because they most likely were worse). I think 7 did good only because it was "revolutionary" for its time. That's all it had going for it. The story sucked, the characters sucked, and the Materia system was a little too drawback-ish.Hungryfreak said:
Also, Kingdom Hearts really wasn't that great, was it? Sure, it was fun to actually have realtime fights and have to use magic in various instances instead of bashing the hell out of something, but story and characters were pretty shallow, too. Not to mention the second installment was basically a button-mashing-fest with less difficulty than the first one.
It's called generalization, and as such, there are always exceptions. Calm down.phyllis_the_phallus said:
Actually, you explained that very well. I'm impressed. However, again, some people aren't into the genre and often ask the impossible questions like that because it's just not their strength. *shrugs* But I like your definition of it. I'm going to quote you on what you said because I like it.Tatter said:
I find it funny that Yahtzee bashes on the fact that JRPGs are generally novel themed when he's developed point and click games that consist also with a lot of dialogue.
In contrast though, JRPGs are basically interactive animes, repetitive but veiled with a new costume. Though I still enjoy a good JRPG once in a while. But I don't see how Yahtzee can really give a review for this game without knowing anything about JRPGs.
In contrast though, JRPGs are basically interactive animes, repetitive but veiled with a new costume. Though I still enjoy a good JRPG once in a while. But I don't see how Yahtzee can really give a review for this game without knowing anything about JRPGs.
By the way. Somebody said Fusion is weaker than pins. This is not fully true. A Lv1 fusion is indeed not worth the fuzz except in the first week ( Shiki can only have Lv1 not more ). Lv2 though is already a large hit ( Beat can only do lv2 ). Lv3 on the other hand blasts an entire boss away in one shot ( Joshua can get this: max level ). It's though scarce. Lv1 requires 4 starts, Lv2 8 and Lv3 whoopie 16 stars. Usually battles are over ( 4-chain ) before you get 16 stars but once you get them enjoy the finishing move.
Otherwise Ben is spot on. he didn't mentioned some points I did in my review especially about the useless game mechanics but otherwise it's similar. As I found out too, a difficult game to judge since it depends a lot on your taste.
Otherwise Ben is spot on. he didn't mentioned some points I did in my review especially about the useless game mechanics but otherwise it's similar. As I found out too, a difficult game to judge since it depends a lot on your taste.
Haha loved the review as always. All very good points about J-RPG's. I mean, they really are only going to appeal to certain people and can be just like an interactive anime(aka, Xenosaga) It truly is a cultural difference in terms of what a Japanese consider a good game compared to a western game. After all, the Japanese romanticize the samurai and the sword, while Americans do the same with the cowboy and gun. Of course that's not completely true and I don't speak for everyone, but it basically comes down to whether you like slashing your sword or going on a rampage with your BFG. In all honesty some Japanese developers could probably care less if their games do well outside of Japan but some have, which is why they still market them outside of Japan, and I can't think of many "rest of the world" developers that localize their games in Japan.
I haven't truly played many J-RPG's because of time and they really didn't catch my attention and/or are really long, but I want to mention some of the few J-RPG's that really caught my attention and perhaps give Yahtzee a good idea of what is good in a J-RPG.
Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross. Loved the story lines and the combat.
Super Mario RPG. Only true Mario RPG to me.
Have not play Final Fantasy 6, but I hear good things about it.
The last two are a maybe: Eternal Sonada and Final Fantasy 7
I just started playing Eternal Sonada and I'm finding I really enjoy it, because you actually have to think fast and have good reaction time in the battles, though it can get annoying here and there. I have played through FF7 but haven't beaten it, haha. FF7 is one of those "ground breaking" games for many people. I can't really say I liked it since I never played it when it came out and I find Chrono Trigger and Cross to be more of my favorite ones. I like the ones that I do because I like the story, the pacing, the characters and the simplicity or perhaps bizarre combat systems that make everything more interesting for me.
I haven't truly played many J-RPG's because of time and they really didn't catch my attention and/or are really long, but I want to mention some of the few J-RPG's that really caught my attention and perhaps give Yahtzee a good idea of what is good in a J-RPG.
Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross. Loved the story lines and the combat.
Super Mario RPG. Only true Mario RPG to me.
Have not play Final Fantasy 6, but I hear good things about it.
The last two are a maybe: Eternal Sonada and Final Fantasy 7
I just started playing Eternal Sonada and I'm finding I really enjoy it, because you actually have to think fast and have good reaction time in the battles, though it can get annoying here and there. I have played through FF7 but haven't beaten it, haha. FF7 is one of those "ground breaking" games for many people. I can't really say I liked it since I never played it when it came out and I find Chrono Trigger and Cross to be more of my favorite ones. I like the ones that I do because I like the story, the pacing, the characters and the simplicity or perhaps bizarre combat systems that make everything more interesting for me.
I think it's basically what you think is more fun and how much thinking you want to do
1) pure reading, with which you'll go for a book or visual novel (which is essentially a novel with voices for the characters and pictures for every page), and you'll be thinking throughout.
2) lots of reading but just enough flashy stuff and gameplay to keep you from thinking most of the time, with which you'll turn to JRPG or Anime.
3) not so much reading but a good (sort of) story none-the-less and lots of gameplay to keep your mind occupied, in which case RPG. And last but not least
4) as little reading as possible, which then becomes any other genre.
In short, how much of a novel do you want it to be.
I find it weird (though it is his opinion) that Yahtzee call gaming an art form while so heavily criticizing JRPG. I personally think the writers of GOOD JRPG stories are making more of an artistic expression than any other game except good writers of visual novels. For the amount of art present in a game I say it's ranked #1 visual novels, since they are put under games and not novels for some reason #2 JRPG #3 WRPG and then advanture games and then everything else.
The good ones of course. The bad ones are either Hollywood Flicks or, in the case of visual novels, porn.
Though of course it's been a while since I played JRPG.
1) pure reading, with which you'll go for a book or visual novel (which is essentially a novel with voices for the characters and pictures for every page), and you'll be thinking throughout.
2) lots of reading but just enough flashy stuff and gameplay to keep you from thinking most of the time, with which you'll turn to JRPG or Anime.
3) not so much reading but a good (sort of) story none-the-less and lots of gameplay to keep your mind occupied, in which case RPG. And last but not least
4) as little reading as possible, which then becomes any other genre.
In short, how much of a novel do you want it to be.
I find it weird (though it is his opinion) that Yahtzee call gaming an art form while so heavily criticizing JRPG. I personally think the writers of GOOD JRPG stories are making more of an artistic expression than any other game except good writers of visual novels. For the amount of art present in a game I say it's ranked #1 visual novels, since they are put under games and not novels for some reason #2 JRPG #3 WRPG and then advanture games and then everything else.
The good ones of course. The bad ones are either Hollywood Flicks or, in the case of visual novels, porn.
Though of course it's been a while since I played JRPG.
welcome to the magical land of mid-twenties! Long have we awaited your arrival and greet you now with mad +stats, bonus weapons and puppies! actually... just a virtual pat on the back and a "hey... do you remember Teddy ruxpin?"
Ehhhhhhh......not so much, no. JRPGs can only be considered to make an artistic expression if that expression is one of three pretty well universal themes among the genre and the statement is made entirely in a lost Egyptian dialect and then translated to English by a Puritan prude. In short, not so much. JRPGs generally have a more interesting art style than some of their more action-oriented brethren (woo - brown!), but their stories are equally generally derivative tripe recycled from the eight thousand practically identical games that come before them. It's nice to find ones that are interesting for a while - I'm currently deeply immersed in Persona 3 - but as soon as you try to dig deeper into the genre you're sure to find a whole pile of clones, followers, and hangers-on whose stale stories are matched only by their equally stale play mechanics. If you accept the conjecture that games are art (I place some preconditions on that - namely, that you have to change the definition of art), then a "very artistic" game would be one that makes the most of its medium, and JRPGs seem to do the very best to irritate the living hell out of anybody that enjoys actually playing games. The prose is typically awful once it gets to English - though for all I know this is hot stuff in its original language - and the prose delivery system is, almost universally, repetitive and grating.Parallel Pain said:
Let's take Persona as an example. The game is really, really original - for me, at least. In Japan, where social and dating sims are a little more prevalent and the other two titles in the franchise history probably took some of the shine off, this might be an old hat, but from where I'm sitting, combining the fundamentally boring grind of a Diablo/Rogue style dungeon crawl with the constant procession and pressures of a year of high school is perfectly brilliant, and if they'd left it at that, that would have been great. Unfortunately, the developers seem to be doing everything in their power to squander that opportunity with a whole laundry list of very typical JRPG crimes:
1. Fundamentally Unbalanced Combat - I see this a lot in the "hardcore" JRPG scene, mostly because Square seems to have learned by now how to balance elemental and status effects in a fight. Persona doesn't. Shadow Hearts didn't either. Far too often, the combat boils down to ridiculously easy win vs. horrifying demise, based entirely on what and which elemental or status effects you are equipped to throw out. It might seem balanced at first, but it's only balanced in the way that the nuclear deterrent effect between the United States and North Korea is balanced - we can each blow the living crap out of each other, and basically the guy who acts first is going to get the most chuckles out of the situation.
2. Grinding. JRPGs freaking invented grinding, or, if not, they certainly perfected it. Most notable problem - your party members and your party size not being equal. I've encountered exactly one series that didn't have this problem (Grandia), though I'm sure there's more if I look. In all of these games, you end up with maybe eight available party members to fill three or four slots, with the ones you carry along with you receiving lots of experience and growing and becoming real and useful individuals and the ones you leave back at camp sticking berries up their noses turning into tiny atrophied useless decaying lumps of flesh that WILL destroy you if you are so foolish as to bring them with you anywhere for any reason. The result is that if you don't have the handy walkthrough sitting next to you to tell you if, when, and how you will need to use all of these lazy, unmotivated meat sacks, you have to take them ALL out with you, essentially requiring you to repeat your level grinding over and over and over again so that whole new batches of useless morons can reach a level of skill they may or may not need to have. What makes this sort of idiocy truly criminal is the fact that Western RPGs have figured this tiny, glaringly obvious problem out and fixed it. In Mass Effect, everybody's your level. Problem solved. Now I can do more of the story adventuring and less killing boars. I don't even like killing boars.
3. Saving the World. This is a problem that stretches beyond the JRPG genre, but honestly it seems to be the worst here. No matter who you are and no matter what you start out doing, you can be effectively guaranteed that at some point in the course of the game you're going to find your own particular variation of the Invisible Time Wizard floating around in the space between dimensions and plotting to destroy the world because his neighbor's dog told him to or some other such foolishness. You will then stop this person. All RPGs manage to get bogged down in this sort of wrote pattern, it seems, but it doesn't really have to, and in JRPGs sometimes the reasoning is just truly, fundamentally stupid. Here's an idea - maybe instead of trying to save the world, my motivation is that I'm sick of having to run up two hundred flights of stairs every night and risk my life in combat with these weird things that look like hands and tables and curiously agile ink blots and live my life as a normal freaking human being. Maybe my motivation for adventuring around the world in my multi-part ship with my immortal friends is because I just want to freaking die already. Why does there always have to be a villain tenting his fingers and lining out his plan to crack the Earth in half so he can host a family reunion with his grandfather?
That, right there, is three areas of significant difficulty that JRPGs have yet to resolve, despite the fact that the resolution for the issues are completely obvious. Celebrating these games for their prose is like praising your three year old because he took a crap in the toilet for a change. As a person who actually, honestly loves this genre and grew up consuming these things, even I can stand back and say that most of these games aren't even making the most of what little portion of the medium they actually use. I mean, Phoenix Wright can tell a story just as easily as a forty five minute cutscene, and he's going to make me think about it a little bit more than some asinine nihilist philosophy about why The Monolith from 2001 got a spray tan and will somehow destroy the Earth (a fact which I have assumed from almost finishing the first game in that series), if only because it requires more cognitive exercise to communicate a coherent theory of a crime to a squad of caricatures and loonies than it does to register and immediately dismiss the pseudo-intellectual semi-Eastern Philosophical claptrap at the root of most of these games' "deeper meanings." For crying out loud - the short stories in Lost Odyssey were theoretically written by some of the greatest writers in Japan, but what I saw up on the screen wasn't even up to Stephen King standards, and that's just sad.
They may tell the biggest story (over and over and over again), but I definitely don't think that JRPGs have any ground to assert themselves as "most artistic genre."
As much as I disagree with the hate of JRPGs and so on, I find that this review was great. Of course Yahtzee has many valid points, though I wonder if he looked at Another Day. It practically makes fun of itself right there, since the whole chapter is a huge satire. In any case, I looked at the review merely for Entertainment purposes, since I've already beaten it and developed my own opinions. Still...I find it odd that every time I think of a good game for Yahtzee to review, I doubt it initially, then, next thing I know, it's the latest review (see No More Heroes). I doubted that TWEWY would be reviewed because it was a JRPG, but I was wrong again. Next thing you know, he'll review something like Phoenix Wright just for kicks...I wish...
In a more positive note, Happy Birthday fellow Fedora-wearing comrade! If I knew you better, I'd actually send you the latest Fedora I picked up while I was at New York City.
In a more positive note, Happy Birthday fellow Fedora-wearing comrade! If I knew you better, I'd actually send you the latest Fedora I picked up while I was at New York City.
Damn, this dude just pointed the faults out pretty well! Only thing I can argue is the difficulty. This game gives you Personas/Weapons against these monsters. Of course, if you are going into battle with a boss soon you ALWAYS know to bring a variety. It's common sense to make sure your equipped for things and situations. Now you don't know exactly what kind of situation it will be, but they give plenty of variety for you to be able to take on what's coming. Difficulty is based on how smart a person is really. The only fight I found difficult(nuclear death charge difficult as you put it) was the final boss... as should all final bosses be. They are meant to be challenging. And half the fun of beating a boss is getting the feeling you conquered something. And as long as you know how to use the AI commands for your partners, they do their job very well. Sometimes I'd find myself on the verge of death, and then my partner casts a spell that instantly heals all my health, despite the fact she only had 1 hit point. And yes, saving the world has been done OVER AND OVER again, but this is another place where they make things interesting. Never before have I had to save the world quite like this. It's original, and aren't ALL games usually based on saving the world? Halo, your saving the world/universe. Painkiller your saving the world from HELL pretty much, and in Resident Evil 4, your saving the world from parasitic monsters. But what I do agree with you about was the grinding.... why can't they all just stay the same level as you? I'm not wasting hours training each person.cool_moe_dee_345 said: