Why does SE believe that people don't like JPRGs?

[VeloZer0]

We all know the story, SE at some point decided that outside Japan decided that people didn't like Japanese style games, and that it had to 'Western Up' it's titles. And with the success of Bravely Default they are re-evaluating, whatever the heck that may turn out to mean.

My question is, what lead them to get to this point?

[Wolf Kanno]

I would point out the long list of complaints levied against FF and the genre with VII's success. Mainly stuff like how people hated the battle systems for being slow and static and not "actiony" enough. This wasn't helped by the fact that during the long development times of the PS2/PS3 era FFs we saw the unexpected rise of MMOs and the Western RPG Renaissance, as well as Japan falling head over heels in love with Monster Hunter which has more in common with Diablo than traditional JRPGs.

SE kept trying to make their games more about action and then they simply watched how the genre was trending and tried to make money off it with various levels of success. Still, I would argue that people had been wishing for radical change and evolution within the JRPG genre since the PS1 generation and while we have had lots of experimentation in the decade that followed, we all kind of learned that the old formula was fine and just needed to be made more user friendly.

[Shauna]

Probably for the same dumb reasons (whatever they may be) that the Games Industry says "X isn't popular".

X has been known to be single player games, horror games, classic RPGs, whatever else you find.

[Aulayna]

http://kotaku.com/the-final-fantasy-xv-problem-1631021969

Actually an interesting read where Sakaguchi and Tabata touch on a few of these points.

[Sephiroth]

I think they have had many changes to make that take so long.

Long ago I hear we are getting a worldmap (as in overworld map) again. I hope it is THAT world map for real and not just another form of a world map. When it was said, it was said like the overworld map. I hope that is true.

[Vyk]

All of this just reminds me of when they didn't break over some of their best SNES RPGs. They've never really thought the west liked good games. Its not a new phenomena

[Slothy]

All of this just reminds me of when they didn't break over some of their best SNES RPGs. They've never really thought the west liked good games. Its not a new phenomena

Not only did they skip localizing a bunch of games for the west, they gave us Mystic Quest. Because they thought their other games were too complicated for us.

I mean, I have a soft spot for it being my first RPG and all but if doing an LP of it reminded me of anything it's that it's an awful game. Square thought we'd prefer awful games. Thanks Square!

[DMKA]

To be fair, since midway through the PS2 era, JRPGs really don't sell that well outside of Japan. That includes Bravely Default, as the vast majority of it's mere one million sales were in Japan.

Although, I think that's mostly because every JRPG that comes out now that isn't Final Fantasy is done in that repulsive cel-shaded "AM I KAWAII MOE UGUU DESU NE!?!? ~=!**^o^**!=~" anime style.

http://i.neoseeker.com/n/8/20130116145249_thumb.jpg

[Dat Matt]

I'm a big fan of both anime and cell shading. This sort of game is catered to my tastes so I buy them when they are localised.

Maybe the reason there is is an influx of these games is because people like me buy them.

[Mirage]

I like both jrpgs and anime, but i hate moe kawaii desu nee trout like dmka posted.

I think the most recent jrpg i played that didn't have cel shaded anime stuff was resonance of fate, and that's starting to be a while ago.

Well, except the FF13 trilogy.

[Bolivar]

East or West, RPGs have always been a niche genre over here. Even when American journalists proclaimed WRPGs had "taken over" you could count on one hand the number of series that truly crossed over.

FFVII just happened to be one of those mega hits that transcend genre because of its level of interaction, use of mini games, and unprecedented art direction. That's a hard achievement to replicate and Square need only look at its competitors to tell which way the wind blows.

[Loony BoB]

FFVII just happened to be one of those mega hits that transcend genre because of its level of interaction, use of mini games, and unprecedented art direction.
Try also the fact that it had...
- Character deaths
- Character plot twists
- Constant villians from start to finish, and those villians actually disliking each other, meaning there were occasions that you would "team up with the enemy".
- Effective comic relief
- More than six playable characters
- Unlockable characters
- Non-humanoid characters

etc.

The plot and characters, while not perfect, were intriguing to people who wanted more than a Disney "all the good guys live" situation.

If, in FFXIII...
- Sahz actually killed himself
- Hope actually succumbed and turned into a Cie'th, thus having to be killed
- Jihl ended up joining the good guys at some point, after seeing the enemy for his true colours
- The final boss was Barthy
- Barthy was more prevelant and his reasoning for doing what he was doing was better explained, and his "co-conspirators" were better fleshed out
- There were better minigames with good comic relief
- You could unlock additional characters
- A non-humanoid character of Pulse joined the party

...it might have been received a lot better. Especially the first parts. I mean, seriously, they would have blown some people's minds (excuse the pun).

As for SE thinking people don't like JRPGs - I don't think that's the case. If you mean traditional JRPGs, 2D etc, then I think that's because the audience is actually quite low for them. While Bravely Default did well, it perhaps could have done a lot better. Maybe it will in time, but the general feeling from me is that it's still not numero uno for them. My feeling is that they feel JRPGs don't do well because no JRPG has done notably well this generation from any developer that isn't Square Enix. The closest is probably Ni no Kuni.

[Mirage]

You can't have character deaths anymore because it's too expensive to model a character that will only be used for half of the game.

[Loony BoB]

I know you're probably kidding around, but: It shouldn't matter if it improves the reception and reviews of the games to the point that more people buy it. I mean, they spent that much time with Jihl and then they killed her off.

[Skyblade]

I know you're probably kidding around, but: It shouldn't matter if it improves the reception and reviews of the games to the point that more people buy it. I mean, they spent that much time with Jihl and then they killed her off.

They didn't have to design a moveset for her, or animations for every attack, etcetera.

A playable character is a lot of resources. It's the same reason we don't get hidden characters any more. They don't want to put in all that effort for characters some people might not see.




I'm at the point where Square can pretty much do what they want. I think FFXV is going to be a massive disappointment, as with almost every other game stuck in development hell that long. On the plus side, at this rate I'll be able to play Bravely Second before FFXV releases and torpedoes the company.

In the meantime, I'll be laughing at all the people who say "Square is the mainstay of JRPGs" and playing all the fantastic games that ATLUS and Nintendo have been rolling out lately. Square hasn't been the genre leader for JRPGs in a while. That doesn't mean the genre is dead, it just means other people have picked up the slack.

[Dante WolfWood]

When has SE ever been in touch with their fanbase?

[Loony BoB]

I know you're probably kidding around, but: It shouldn't matter if it improves the reception and reviews of the games to the point that more people buy it. I mean, they spent that much time with Jihl and then they killed her off.

They didn't have to design a moveset for her, or animations for every attack, etcetera.

A playable character is a lot of resources. It's the same reason we don't get hidden characters any more. They don't want to put in all that effort for characters some people might not see.
My point stands regardless - if the reception of the game improves dramatically because of the inclusion of such moments, it will pay for itself.


In the meantime, I'll be laughing at all the people who say "Square is the mainstay of JRPGs" and playing all the fantastic games that ATLUS and Nintendo have been rolling out lately. Square hasn't been the genre leader for JRPGs in a while. That doesn't mean the genre is dead, it just means other people have picked up the slack.
I don't think any other developers have picked up the slack. Ni no Kuni aside, I can't think of any recently released AAA-quality JRPG that has done considerably well for itself.

[Skyblade]

I know you're probably kidding around, but: It shouldn't matter if it improves the reception and reviews of the games to the point that more people buy it. I mean, they spent that much time with Jihl and then they killed her off.

They didn't have to design a moveset for her, or animations for every attack, etcetera.

A playable character is a lot of resources. It's the same reason we don't get hidden characters any more. They don't want to put in all that effort for characters some people might not see.
My point stands regardless - if the reception of the game improves dramatically because of the inclusion of such moments, it will pay for itself.

Agreed, but good luck trying to get Square to actually understand that concept.



In the meantime, I'll be laughing at all the people who say "Square is the mainstay of JRPGs" and playing all the fantastic games that ATLUS and Nintendo have been rolling out lately. Square hasn't been the genre leader for JRPGs in a while. That doesn't mean the genre is dead, it just means other people have picked up the slack.
I don't think any other developers have picked up the slack. Ni no Kuni aside, I can't think of any recently released AAA-quality JRPG that has done considerably well for itself.

True, but I can't think of that many "AAA-quality" games of any genre that I actually want to play. Mostly because that term seems to be restricted to only console games with at least 20 million in the development budget.

There have been plenty of AAA QUALITY handheld games. Even more AA quality handheld games that are still enjoyable and well worth playing. We're getting more on the way, from a ton of developers.

If JRPGs want to go back to consoles, they'll have to actually do well there. But I'd say Persona 5 and Xenoblade Chronicles X are going to be the ones the actually decide the fate of the JRPG on the console market. Not Square.

[Loony BoB]

There have been plenty of AAA QUALITY handheld games. Even more AA quality handheld games that are still enjoyable and well worth playing. We're getting more on the way, from a ton of developers.
AAA + Handheld for me do not compute. AAA for me is, simply put, an incredibly high quality game. The likes of Crisis Core and Uncharted: Golden Abyss still don't scratch on the surface of a good console game with a fully realised world.

If JRPGs want to go back to consoles, they'll have to actually do well there. But I'd say Persona 5 and Xenoblade Chronicles X are going to be the ones the actually decide the fate of the JRPG on the console market. Not Square.
But they aren't going to be mass marketed, so they won't decide the fate. I can't see either of those games getting the marketing required to "decide the fate of the JRPG on the console market" - right now the fate is already decided - it's a niche thing (and niche will always be around, you don't truly kill off a genre, it just becomes niche). You need an FFVII level of impact to step back out of the niche area. I don't think Persona 5 and Xenoblade Chronicles are a the point that they will be talked about by everyone in the world, because these kind of games simply appear in the background and few new people pick them up when they are released.

I mean, I hope I'm wrong, but I'm a JRPG fan and I haven't touched either the Persona series or the Xeno series. There was one of them that I was quite interested in but they didn't even release it in the UK.

[Skyblade]

There have been plenty of AAA QUALITY handheld games. Even more AA quality handheld games that are still enjoyable and well worth playing. We're getting more on the way, from a ton of developers.
AAA + Handheld for me do not compute. AAA for me is, simply put, an incredibly high quality game. The likes of Crisis Core and Uncharted: Golden Abyss still don't scratch on the surface of a good console game with a fully realised world.

Taking that definition, then, what was the last AAA JRPG you played? Because Bravely Default, all by its little lonesome, had a more fully realized world than any console game I've played in a decade.



If JRPGs want to go back to consoles, they'll have to actually do well there. But I'd say Persona 5 and Xenoblade Chronicles X are going to be the ones the actually decide the fate of the JRPG on the console market. Not Square.
But they aren't going to be mass marketed, so they won't decide the fate. I can't see either of those games getting the marketing required to "decide the fate of the JRPG on the console market" - right now the fate is already decided - it's a niche thing (and niche will always be around, you don't truly kill off a genre, it just becomes niche). You need an FFVII level of impact to step back out of the niche area. I don't think Persona 5 and Xenoblade Chronicles are a the point that they will be talked about by everyone in the world, because these kind of games simply appear in the background and few new people pick them up when they are released.

I mean, I hope I'm wrong, but I'm a JRPG fan and I haven't touched either the Persona series or the Xeno series. There was one of them that I was quite interested in but they didn't even release it in the UK.

Nintendo has been getting a lot better with their marketing, and with their support of JRPGs, since Operation Rainfall succeeded. They're advertising the games more, offering cross promotions with other games (as they did with Fire Emblem Awakening and Shin Megami Tensei IV), and supporting the developers more for creating them.

Game marketing has shifted substantially since I was a kid. I'm not even sure how the majority of the games are advertised or marketed anymore, so I can't say for sure how Nintendo is doing in comparison to others. I find out about games mostly through reviewers/previewers, official developer websites, and some very active posters on here. But that's the same for every genre. If I stuck to just the games seen in TV or magazine ads... Well, let's just say I'm glad I live in a world where there are more games than just those.

[Mirage]

I know you're probably kidding around, but: It shouldn't matter if it improves the reception and reviews of the games to the point that more people buy it. I mean, they spent that much time with Jihl and then they killed her off.

I wish was, but sadly it is at least partially true. Skyblade already elaborated on it for me. Don't forget that they also probably use motion capture, and you'd need a lot more voicework for someone who joins your party. Although, if someone is killed off halfway, they won't need to do as many lines for that character as if he or she stayed alive through the entire game, but voice acting is still a big reason why you don't have a lot of optional characters anymore, or even big casts of playable characters.

Hopefully, that is a problem that can be solved when we get really good voice synthesizing software. It's starting to get good, but it's still got a sizable way to go. I imagine it'll be good enough to be used on random NPC or minor plot characters soon, which would free up resources to spend money on more VAs for the main cast, or even add an optional character or two. Voice synthesizing is technology that is also desirable outside of gaming, so lots of research and development is spent on such tech even if game developers don't currently plan on using it.

[Del Murder]

To be fair, since midway through the PS2 era, JRPGs really don't sell that well outside of Japan. That includes Bravely Default, as the vast majority of it's mere one million sales were in Japan.
Yeah, sometimes we lose sight of the fact that we exist in a small corner of the Western world where we are all JRPG fans. But put all the FF fansites together and you get what, a few thousand people buying games? It takes more than that to support games. The vast majority of gamers are not JRPG fanatics. There was a brief surge during the PS1 era with FFVII but that was more the exception than the rule.

So I do agree that SE has been ignoring its base over here to some extent but at the same time, their estimates are grounded in a cold reality that JRPGs just aren't as popular as other types of games. At the end of the day (for better or worse) they want to sell as many games as possible.

[Mirage]

Thankfully, most RPG fans don't actually post on forums :p Even if the online communities are pretty small, you still get like a million copies sold even for niche titles like Tales games. Well, some of them anyway.

As for bravely default, you're wrong. Japan was the best selling region, but the actual breakdown for japan, NA and EU is 440k, 310k and 160k.

[Wolf Kanno]

Those numbers are actually pretty good considering the game got little publicity outside of Japan. JRPGs nowadays tend to work more on word of mouth much like back in the day.

[Loony BoB]

Taking that definition, then, what was the last AAA JRPG you played? Because Bravely Default, all by its little lonesome, had a more fully realized world than any console game I've played in a decade.
Lightning Returns, probably. Not sure if it can be classed as an AAA, really, but if it can't be then FFXIII (I'm not including MMOs). I hope to play Ni no Kuni, which I class as either an AAA game or extremely close to it.


Nintendo has been getting a lot better with their marketing, and with their support of JRPGs, since Operation Rainfall succeeded. They're advertising the games more, offering cross promotions with other games (as they did with Fire Emblem Awakening and Shin Megami Tensei IV), and supporting the developers more for creating them.
As good as their marketing might be, I have not heard of Operation Rainfall, I don't ever see any marketing for Fire Emblem Awakening and I couldn't say I know of anything about it that separates it from other Fire Emblem games (literally, the only part of FE games I recognise is the FE bit, I never see much about them) and Shin Megami Tensei IV is something I haven't heard of (same goes for I, II and III). If this is good marketing, I'm clueless to it. It may be that they are advertised a bit better for Nintendo fans, but as a gamer in general, the only recent JRPG I know about for a Nintendo console is The Last Story.


Game marketing has shifted substantially since I was a kid. I'm not even sure how the majority of the games are advertised or marketed anymore, so I can't say for sure how Nintendo is doing in comparison to others. I find out about games mostly through reviewers/previewers, official developer websites, and some very active posters on here. But that's the same for every genre. If I stuck to just the games seen in TV or magazine ads... Well, let's just say I'm glad I live in a world where there are more games than just those.
TV, magazines, newspapers, posters in stores, that kind of thing. I'm glad I live in a world where there are more games than just those kind of games, too, don't get me wrong. I'm just saying that if a developer wants to smash JRPGs back into the market as anything but a niche thing, then it will need to have an AAA budget for marketing. I'm not talking about simply being a good game, I'm talking about being a good game that is marketed to enough people to allow it to be a big deal, just as they did with Final Fantasy VII when it came out. The FF series is the only JRPG series I have ever seen marketing for in the mediums I mentioned. Other than that, I only see the occasional review of a JRPG and that's it.

[Mirage]

Smt4 doesn't even have an European release date, so that might be a reason why you haven't heard of it.

[Loony BoB]

No further questions, your honour. :smash:

[Psychotic]

Loony BoB is right - the JRPG is not an AAA mainstream medium anymore, it's become much more of a niche genre. Tastes and preferences have changed and I think the tastes of the average gamer have "matured" as the average age has increased. If you look at the SNES and PS generations of gaming, JRPGs and Platformers were huge deals and AAA games. Now? JRPG is a niche genre and platformers are now consigned to indie releases, with the exception of Mario which certainly isn't the powerhouse it once was. Conversely, look at the FPS. Originally considered to be PC and PC only, it has now taken the console world by storm and is here to stay for the foreseeable future.

I'm not going to win any fans for saying this, but I think JRPGs are seen as babyish and kidlike. Anime in general is. I'm not saying that's right or wrong, but that's certainly the perception. Indeed a lot of the JRPGs last generation had teenage characters and that dorky awful Pokemon style "WAAAAAAAH!" humour. What I saw of Star Ocean 4 was skin crawling, and search YouTube for "Infinite Undiscovery Dinner Dance". I'm not interested in hearing that these were the worst JRPGs ever or whether or not there were serious JRPGs to counteract this so if you're planning on listing them at me, use your time more productively. I'm saying these are examples of JRPGs from this generation with some real teenage and immature elements to the writing and tarnish the reputation of JRPGs as being a serious game. To me, when I look at the cover of something like Tales of Xillia and see it covered with anime characters I am immediately put off because of the expectation that it's going to be dumb. Maybe I'm missing out, but likewise I doubt I'm the only one.

Square have said they are still aiming Final Fantasy at teens - that's a huge mistake. Kids and teens these days expect a different experience out of games. Have you seen them play? They skip all the cutscenes and just get right into the action. It's not like our generation where we didn't have anything better. I was 11 when I picked up my first FF. Probably the most popular game (if it's not CoD!) for that age bracket is Minecraft. No cutscenes, no story, just hop right in and play. A JRPG by comparison to Minecraft or CoD is creeping death and kids don't want to know.

Japan itself certainly isn't the King of Video Games in the west. Remember when it used to be this mystical foreign land when you were a kid? All the best and newest games and tech would be there! Zelda, Mario, Nintendo, Pokemon, Sega, oh god! Wooooooow! Japan was the only show in town. Now all the popular games for kids are Western. If there were western powerhouse developers when we were kids, would Japanese games and culture have been as popular as it became? Who can say?

Maybe if a JRPG for adults - and wasn't targeted at anime lovers, sorry guys - came out it'd get more respect and be an AAA title but I don't know if many exist. Certainly I would be more interested anyway. And because I know EoFF has a whimsical boner, adult doesn't mean serious. Scrubs is for adults and is whimsical as shit. I don't know, maybe it's just Japanese humour that culturally is immature here. I think it will be a niche genre from now on though, and for Square it's a case of either sticking to what you know and appease your ageing fanbase, or else gamble and try for something new to expand. They've chosen the latter option. I wonder if they're in a Catch-22 position though.

[Loony BoB]

Agree with pretty much everything you've said, and they have been in a warped kind of Catch 22 situation for a long time now. They are always damned if they do, damned if they don't... but not completely damned. They also almost always win. Every new release sees a lot of old fans disappointed but also gets them new fans at the same time. The next release will see new fans again, and will probably see a lot of old fans disappointed. Still, the series fanbase grows because of this.

People say they are "living off the brand" which is entirely true. They were living off the brand since Final Fantasy II came out. There was no reason to tie the first two games together in a series other than financial reasons. They could have called it "The Wild Rose Rebellion" if they wanted to. Having some kind of romantic notion that they were not living off the brand at FFVI or FFVII "because they were good games" is silly.

I remain convinced that they are doing the right thing in continually trying to innovate and find that new style that can break the market, and I remain convinced that SE are the most likely company out there to break JRPGs back into a mainstream thing.

[Shauna]

To me, when I look at the cover of something like Tales of Xillia and see it covered with anime characters I am immediately put off because of the expectation that it's going to be dumb. Maybe I'm missing out, but likewise I doubt I'm the only one.

What doesn't help this attitude is the price of JRPGs, because of limited releases.

Tales of Vesperia, for example, many many months following release was still over £40. Preowned prices are still huge compared to other similarly aged games. People are not going to take a chance on a game they're skeptical of, despite hearing good things, if they're pouring a lot of money into it. The same attitude comes with a lot of games, but most other games will significantly drop in price after a period so even if people are a little bit wary, they don't have to worry about throwing down over £30 on something they might not like.

I have picked up some terrible games and some fantastic games, games I wouldn't even look at normally, because they were like £5 preowned. With JRPGs you often do not have that luxury (if you even spot a JRPG in a high street store, they're like gold dust unless they're FF or DQ).

[metagloria]

http://i.neoseeker.com/n/8/20130116145249_thumb.jpg

:omgomg:What is this delightful looking spectacle and how can I play it as soon as physically possible?

[Mirage]

To me, when I look at the cover of something like Tales of Xillia and see it covered with anime characters I am immediately put off because of the expectation that it's going to be dumb. Maybe I'm missing out, but likewise I doubt I'm the only one.

What doesn't help this attitude is the price of JRPGs, because of limited releases.

Tales of Vesperia, for example, many many months following release was still over £40. Preowned prices are still huge compared to other similarly aged games. People are not going to take a chance on a game they're skeptical of, despite hearing good things, if they're pouring a lot of money into it. The same attitude comes with a lot of games, but most other games will significantly drop in price after a period so even if people are a little bit wary, they don't have to worry about throwing down over £30 on something they might not like.

I have picked up some terrible games and some fantastic games, games I wouldn't even look at normally, because they were like £5 preowned. With JRPGs you often do not have that luxury (if you even spot a JRPG in a high street store, they're like gold dust unless they're FF or DQ).

@Psy: You are, actually. The story is actually not nearly as "anime" as you'd think it would be. I thought it was very good.

@Shauna: I greatly enjoy cheap second hand games, but for a publisher, it doesn't make all that much sense to oversaturate the market with game copies, and then get no money from the second hand market when the prices plummet. I think digital releases are very helpful here though. They don't have to deal with the risk of printing way too many copies, and when the interest for the game dies down, they can sell it for nearly as cheap as a second hand market would put them at, and still get all the profit from the games. See also: PS Plus.

[Loony BoB]

To be fair, I'm with Psy in that I disregard a lot of anime-esque games. Grandia is probably the most anime-esque game I've purchased. Anime is a style that doesn't appeal to me in a video game. I've played a few, but the style does indeed tend to be rather peppy and cutesy more often than not based on my experiences and my watching of things on YouTube. I would also say that a lot of the gameplay featured in the YouTubes I've seen has left me going "Eh, not for me." I don't think they are in line with the kind of thing I want out of a JRPG.

Style is important in setting an atmosphere and in appealing to an audience. It's clear from the get-go that people looking for a cute game will be more likely to buy a Tales game, while people looking for a darker game will be more likely to buy Skyrim. Appearance of a game is possibly the most important thing in marketing in today's age. People judge how likely they are to purchase games based on screenshots and skipping through YouTube videos.

[Shauna]

@Shauna: I greatly enjoy cheap second hand games, but for a publisher, it doesn't make all that much sense to oversaturate the market with game copies, and then get no money from the second hand market when the prices plummet. I think digital releases are very helpful here though. They don't have to deal with the risk of printing way too many copies, and when the interest for the game dies down, they can sell it for nearly as cheap as a second hand market would put them at, and still get all the profit from the games. See also: PS Plus.

Yeah, I entirely get why it happens, it just doesn't help bring in people who are one the fence. :3

I admit I don't look into the digital market, so I can't comment too much further there. I imagine that most individuals don't have a browse through the catalogue online though, and only hit up the PS Store etc when there's something they actually want to buy.

EDIT: Haha, people looking for a cute game will pick up Xillia AND THEN ARE EXTREMELY DISAPPOINTED

[Loony BoB]

EDIT: Haha, people looking for a cute game will pick up Xillia AND THEN ARE EXTREMELY DISAPPOINTED
Honestly I don't think they'll care so long as they can have things like this on their screens. :p I speak from knowledge of these kind of gamers. They don't mind if the story features death and political debates or if it's about how to knit rainbows, so long as they have stuff like this gracing their screen every now and then.

http://nerdreactor.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/tales-of-xillia-sexy_001.jpg
http://gameplayersreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/tales-of-xillia-gameplay-graphics-screenshot.jpg

[Mirage]

That's actually all pretty expensive dlc costumes, none of them, or anything like it, is included in the game. And for some of those, I'm glad they're not.

[Shauna]

Ugh seriously, those are terrible.

[Mirage]

The milla one in the second picture is... tolerable. None of the others are.

[Spuuky]

RPGs are extremely successful still. "J" is a meaningless connotation to me. I guess it implies that certain elements are PROBABLY (but not necessarily) present.

What makes Dragon Age an "RPG" but not a "JRPG" except that it isn't made in Japan? If Square-Enix had produced that exact game in Japan, are you telling me that people would say it "wasn't" a JRPG?

And if your only qualification for being a JRPG is that it is literally Japanese, then I don't care about your qualifications or the JRPG genre.

[Pumpkin]

http://i.neoseeker.com/n/8/20130116145249_thumb.jpg

:omgomg:What is this delightful looking spectacle and how can I play it as soon as physically possible?

Hyperdimension Neptunia (maybe Victoy? It's the only one I've played :P And yes I do like it :jess:)

Anime style does nothing to dissuade me from buying a game. Like people have said, games like Tales of Xillia might have a more cutesy anime look, but the story is interesting, the gameplay is fun, the characters are well written and its just overall a good game. I won't not play it because it looks more cutesy. I would have missed out on some of my favourite games ever if I skipped some of the more childlike less adult looking games (FFIX, Majora's Mask for starters...)

[Wolf Kanno]

I'm not surprised Operation Rainfall or SMTIV don't register with BoB, Operation Rainfall was purely an American thing because Nintendo of Europe was smart enough to just release the three Wii RPGs over there whereas Nintendo pretty much felt the American demographic doesn't like those things but surprisingly both Xenoblade and The Last Story proved to be better sellers than Nintendo or XSeeD had anticipated. As for SMTIV, it still hasn't come out in Europe yet but this largely because Atlus doesn't have a European branch so it was difficult to get their games out their but now that Sega owns them it looks like that issue might be going away in the future. Sadly Europe always gets the short end of the stick on these things and I think that might be why some members are confused about these damn Nintendo RPGs and Persona game because they are actually marketed better on our side of the Atlantic but then again I think Americans have the bigger stigma of being anti-JRPG over the PAL regions so we have to try to build a community that gets these games noticed more even if its mostly word of mouth.

I have mixed feelings about the over-animefication of the JRPG genre but it's kind of always been there I mean VII's art style was chosen for its manga visual appeal, VIII is filled with anime high school cliches, and so forth, even the older games have elements strongly borrowed from anime so I wouldn't say its a new thing, just more likely that players exposure to the medium makes the cliches more noticeable whereas in the 90s only a handful of Westerners probably knew what anime was from watching crappy dubs of Sailor Moon, DBZ, and maybe the Akira movie.

I do feel the genre needs to grow, hell I've been saying that for years but I don't really know who is going to go first with it. I don't feel it will be SE, largely for the reason BoB mention which is that the new games always bring in new fans while disenfranchising the older fans. This model allows them to basically not ever have to bother appealing to the older fans. I mean XIII was a trashy terrible spectacle but it doesn't change it was the fastest growing entry in the franchise. It had two unnecessary sequels that didn't sell nearly as well as the first but they both sold better than the average JRPG meaning SE can choose to franchise out every numbered sequel if they choose and they'll have an audience willing to throw money at it. What XIII will mostly do is create the new business model for SE on FF, they have already spoken about making sequels to XV and its not even finished yet, Type-0 also got a mobile sequel but SE is still holding onto the names Type-1, Type-2 and so forth s if the HD version does well we may sequels of it as well in the future. Frankly, SE doesn't need to grow, they have created for themselves a model that will perpetuate the FF brand until people just stop playing JRPGs and the genre dies in obscurity. They don't need to grow.

Atlus feels like the best contender with the MegaTen franchise since it has always pushed more mature themes but its a franchise that is niche within the genre itself and I doubt the main franchise will ever be mainstream. Persona has gained great popularity in the JRPG scene but Atlus is a small company the series is still relatively obscure to all but its rabid fanbase and even it may have fallen victim to the formulaic trappings of other high profile genres. Tales is pretty much in the same boat as FF where each new installment brings new fans so they don't really need to appeal to older fans as much and even then the series is much more guilty about using heavy anime cliches than other genres.

Suikoden and Breath of Fire are basically dead and many of the most prolific designers in the genre are not interested in the continue growth of the established form and are more interested in evolving it in ways for a future generations through things like mobile. It's more exciting for them than trying to make a new console entry that will probably sell extremely well on brand/name recognition alone as opposed to its own merits as a game. The Last Story was the most infamous entry of Operation Rainfall but I doubt the game would have done as well if it had been made by an unknown developer instead of Hironobu "Father of Final Fantasy" Sakaguchi and some of his former FF team. On a similar note, I don't believe XIII would have done as well if it had been marketed as a new IP as opposed to an FF.

I don't know about the genre, in some ways I feel my thought on the Cinematic-RPG Square promoted back in the PS1 days, I kind of feel its an evolutionary dead end at this point especially since other genres can easily pull it off and the genre has kind of fapped around in the last 20 odd years without pushing the whole medium instead focusing on one aspect of it all. Worse is that pushing nothing but story has left nothing but a generation who doesn't really appreciate or care about the core game mechanics while simultaneously helping other genres that sport a heavier emphasis on plot and characters. Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us are better cinematic story based games than what SE churned out this past generation. Why drop $50 on an RPG with clunky dissonance between its gameplay and plot when I could use the same money to pick up Uncharted which offers great characters and story and gameplay tied into the narrative experience?

The question I would ask is what would/should a Console-JRPG bring to the medium that can't be better served by another genre? RPGs were popular in the PS1 generation because most games didn't have real stories, mostly excuse plots and shallow player avatars. FFVII, Metal Gear Solid, and Tomb Raider kind of changed what players need but more importantly MGS and TR proved you could get the same strong character driven narrative without dealing with old-fogy genre of RPGs. Part of why I feel WRPGs have grown in popularity is simply because they can offer more to the player as an experience that most AAA games can't. Games like GTA and InFamous are working towards bridging that gap but it may be another console generation before other genres catch up.

It will be interesting to see where the genre goes from here but I don't really believe we'll see a resurgence of the old days.

[Bolivar]

I agree the anime-dominant art styles signals creative stagnation; while older games were certainly influenced by anime, they by no means imitated it to the extent that their successors have. JRPGs previously introduced and pioneered unique art styles which did not exist, even in other mediums at times, which fed into their popularity.

Valkyria Chronicles was perhaps the last JRPG to really do that, hence why it's such a revered cult favorite, in addition to revolutionizing the SRPG formula, predating the X-Com remake, and all that jazz.

[Wolf Kanno]

I completely disagree about VC, while it's game design was certainly ahead of its time its character designs, art direction and general cast, story and themes are all taken from anime. The plot is basically a hodge-podge of Gundam tropes and part of the reason I feel I could never get into it.

[Bolivar]

Never mentioned anything about its "general cast, story, and themes." Sega's CANVAS Engine was near universally-praised for its unique "watercolor painting in motion" aesthetic, and the Japanese take on the World War II pastiche was likewise cited as particularly fresh, especially after everyone thought the Western FPS market had run it into the ground.

[Wolf Kanno]

Its art direction is nice but I just find it amusing you say you don't like the heavy anime nonsense in a lot of JRPGs and then cite a game that is guilty of it as though it didn't. ;)

[Vyk]

Saw a similar opinion in another thread, and had a brain fart, and replied as if it was a discussion in this thread. So... I'll just paste that response here..


I realize certain styles of anime aesthetic are acquired tastes, but most of them are par for the course. Is this meant to illustrate the idea that people are growing out of the whole aspect of JRPGs? This would lead one to believe if games like FFVI and Xenogears were released today, people would roll their eyes and sigh at the art direction and not give it another thought? Even the earliest Dragon Warrior games looked like anime. And damn near every JRPG after that. I don't see how that alone is a deciding factor. At least it's not super-deformed (chibi) anime style anymore like it was in those days

[Loony BoB]

WK's post is a really interesting one and raises a lot of good points. I feel that the biggest problem with the console JRPG industry at the moment is the lack of competition. It reminds me of when WWF bought out WCW. The competition fell apart and suddenly things got stale fast. Square and Enix merging probably worked out the same way to some extent.

Another thing WK touched on is "what is the difference?" for, say, Dragon Age vs. JRPGs. It's really hard for me to say as I can barely remember Dragon Age... here are things that could be different, going by memory alone, so please bare with me.

- Art direction. It is not a world full of wonder and beauty so much as a world full of stone buildings and dark woods.
- Camera angle / battle system - If I recall, the battle system is more akin to Diablo, and the loot is in a similar vein.
- Characters vs. Story - In almost all FF games, characters make the story, and they are fixed characters with their own stories that are 99% of the time set in stone, too. We are being told a story rather than writing it. In Dragon Age, I feel that while the characters have a background, it is us that develops their story from that point and it is us that controls how they turn out. I don't recall much about how tied they are to the overall storyline.
- Time spent in 'safe' areas. I felt like DA was a game that furthered the story to allow you to visit a dungeon (basically a dungeon crawler), while I feel like FFs are games where you visited the occasional dungeon in order to further the story.

[Dr Unne]

If, in FFXIII...
- Sahz actually killed himself
- Hope actually succumbed and turned into a Cie'th, thus having to be killed
- Jihl ended up joining the good guys at some point, after seeing the enemy for his true colours
- The final boss was Barthy
- Barthy was more prevelant and his reasoning for doing what he was doing was better explained, and his "co-conspirators" were better fleshed out
- There were better minigames with good comic relief
- You could unlock additional characters
- A non-humanoid character of Pulse joined the party

...it might have been received a lot better. Especially the first parts. I mean, seriously, they would have blown some people's minds (excuse the pun).

AAA games on PS/XB take too much money to produce. To make that money back they have to sell as many copies as possible, so the game often ends up generic and bland by necessity so they can appeal to as many people as possible. I think that was possibly one of FF13's problems. It looked very nice and had lots of voice acting and hit all the AAA marks, but it was a forgettable game. The ideal would be creative game developers taking big chances and pumping out new ideas and new games, until lightning strikes (pun unintended) and some guy's like "Listen, everyone! Time-travelling frogs! Hold on, hear me out..." and we get the next Chrono Trigger. That's pretty hard to do when taking a chance costs 5-10 years and hundreds of millions of dollars.

The solution is find a way to make games quickly and more cheaply. For that reason I think maybe PS/XB are the wrong platform for JRPGs, and they're becoming wronger over time. Which is why I love my 3DS and Vita where I can play tons of niche games, and I love my PC where I can play tons of indie games. (http://www.anodynegame.com/ - A 2D vaguely FF-like RPG made by two people, where your weapon is a broom. A lot more fun than FF13.) The things AAA-ness brings to the table are not the things that make a game good. AAA RPGs could go away and I wouldn't care. I'd rather SE split up the small army of people probably working on FFXV into 10 smaller teams and told them each to go nuts, you have one year to make a a brand new RPG, no voice acting, no motion-capture, no fully orchestrated soundtrack, no 30-minute FMVs, hop to it.

The longer that FFXV takes, the more worried I become. Is it going to wipe out SE if it flops? Is some board of directors telling the dev team "The main character does WHAT? Take that out of the game, it'll hurt sales!" What are the chances that FFXV is going to be an amazing game? I'm sure it'll be an OK, playable game, but what are the chances we get a game that people still love in 20 years? Chrono Trigger is turning 20 next year, FYI.

[Loony BoB]

While I get what you mean, Unne, I do feel we already have those kind of 'small scale' RPGs in abundance and they don't capture me to the same level as the AAA games do. I think people are quick to make excuses for all this stuff (eg. "But the cost of making the character!") when other games seem to be able to do it perfectly fine and are considered a success with fewer sales than an FF 'failure' gets. Perhaps with FF in particular, they spend too much time on the pretty, but I don't think that means we should jump all the way back to FFVI/VII levels. I think, in four years, SE should be able to make a FFX-quality game, graphic-wise and gameplay-wise. The story shouldn't change the development time or cost, just the gameplay mechanics, the world and the art. So I wouldn't mind if SE stopped trying to make new engines each time and settled on one for a full generation, just like other major series do in other genres.


The longer that FFXV takes, the more worried I become. Is it going to wipe out SE if it flops? Is some board of directors telling the dev team "The main character does WHAT? Take that out of the game, it'll hurt sales!" What are the chances that FFXV is going to be an amazing game? I'm sure it'll be an OK, playable game, but what are the chances we get a game that people still love in 20 years? Chrono Trigger is turning 20 next year, FYI.
To answer your worry about FFXV bombing causing SE to be wiped out: This won't happen while FFXIV is around. FFXIV is a huge success, already even more so than FFXI was, and FFXI out-earned every other FF. SE could literally fund the production of future FFs on FFXIV's earnings alone, at least one or two of them. I expect FFXV will sell very well, though.

I think we'll only know if the game is still loved 20 years on in 20 years. People have slated FFVIII, FFIX, FFX, FFXI, FFXII and FFXIII when they came out. Almost all of these games are looked back on fondly by those who favoured them, while the haters move on to other things. In the long run, I feel that most (if not all) of these games will be looked on fondly after 20 years from their launch.

[Bolivar]

Saw a similar opinion in another thread, and had a brain fart, and replied as if it was a discussion in this thread. So... I'll just paste that response here..


I realize certain styles of anime aesthetic are acquired tastes, but most of them are par for the course. Is this meant to illustrate the idea that people are growing out of the whole aspect of JRPGs? This would lead one to believe if games like FFVI and Xenogears were released today, people would roll their eyes and sigh at the art direction and not give it another thought? Even the earliest Dragon Warrior games looked like anime. And damn near every JRPG after that. I don't see how that alone is a deciding factor. At least it's not super-deformed (chibi) anime style anymore like it was in those days

I still see a line between influence and imitation, then and now. Sprites and pixel art exists on its own apart from chibi art and I would even say Akira Toriyana's drawings take on a different life in Dragon Quest than they do in his anime.

[Sephiroth]

Saw a similar opinion in another thread, and had a brain fart, and replied as if it was a discussion in this thread. So... I'll just paste that response here..


I realize certain styles of anime aesthetic are acquired tastes, but most of them are par for the course. Is this meant to illustrate the idea that people are growing out of the whole aspect of JRPGs? This would lead one to believe if games like FFVI and Xenogears were released today, people would roll their eyes and sigh at the art direction and not give it another thought? Even the earliest Dragon Warrior games looked like anime. And damn near every JRPG after that. I don't see how that alone is a deciding factor. At least it's not super-deformed (chibi) anime style anymore like it was in those days

I still see a line between influence and imitation, then and now. Sprites and pixel art exists on its own apart from chibi art and I would even say Akira Toriyana's drawings take on a different life in Dragon Quest than they do in his anime.

The anime is also pretty much not drawn by him. There are various people working for Toei to adapt the Manga panels and give them anime life.

[Wolf Kanno]

WK's post is a really interesting one and raises a lot of good points. I feel that the biggest problem with the console JRPG industry at the moment is the lack of competition. It reminds me of when WWF bought out WCW. The competition fell apart and suddenly things got stale fast. Square and Enix merging probably worked out the same way to some extent.

Another thing WK touched on is "what is the difference?" for, say, Dragon Age vs. JRPGs. It's really hard for me to say as I can barely remember Dragon Age... here are things that could be different, going by memory alone, so please bare with me.

- Art direction. It is not a world full of wonder and beauty so much as a world full of stone buildings and dark woods.
- Camera angle / battle system - If I recall, the battle system is more akin to Diablo, and the loot is in a similar vein.
- Characters vs. Story - In almost all FF games, characters make the story, and they are fixed characters with their own stories that are 99% of the time set in stone, too. We are being told a story rather than writing it. In Dragon Age, I feel that while the characters have a background, it is us that develops their story from that point and it is us that controls how they turn out. I don't recall much about how tied they are to the overall storyline.
- Time spent in 'safe' areas. I felt like DA was a game that furthered the story to allow you to visit a dungeon (basically a dungeon crawler), while I feel like FFs are games where you visited the occasional dungeon in order to further the story.

You're missing a bit of my point, though your breakdown is valid between JRPG vs. High profile WRPG, my question is what does FFXIII offer as an experience in relation to Uncharted, The Walking Dead, MGS4, or Heavy Rain? It's easy to criticize the more player-centric design of WRPGs but if you want strong plot and characters with nice art direction and less repetitive gameplay, then why not drop JRPGs altogether and check out the other AAA cinematic games offered on consoles/PC? What does a future FF offer as a complete package that you can't find in any other genre?

Square made bank back in the day for being a cinematic experience but it was easy to do so because quite frankly they didn't have competition in both their own genre but also didn't have to worry about other genres. When your selling point is simply well written stories and characters, and now you find yourself seeing this in FPS, Action games, Adventure games, and so forth, what does a JRPG have left to make it standout? We could argue a different flavor but there are plenty of other Japanese games with strong characters and plot that are not JRPGs and if its only just flavor then we're basically resigning it to niche status anyway, which in turn means that the medium and platform wouldn't matter from a business perspective.

What makes Bravery Default an interesting case and why I feel SE is surprised by its success is not because they wrote a great plot and characters, its the fact the game returns to the fundamentals of the genre from a game design stance, updated it a bit with a new spin, and people actually liked it. For two whole console generations, SE has been moving as far away as they can from the idea of four people standing on one side vs. monsters on the others and each taking turns hitting the other since the series explosion into mainstream, because fans and the design team wanted to move away from that; and yet here we have a game that still keeps this fundamental principle and people actually bought it, not just Japanese fans who grew up and appreciated this style of game, but those damn filthy Westerners whose majority of games they design involving action, explosions, and aimless wandering to find new things to kill and make them explode. Their reaction is about the same as game designer's who are dumbstruck to find out girls like playing their games as well despite their belief it lacks any quality they erroneously assume they like.

So we should really try to imagine what the JRPG can actually bring to gaming that isn't already covered by other genres or assume what is wrong with the design that needs to be improved to garner larger appeal.

[Bolivar]

Those other games are short.

Your premise is also flawed in that games don't need to do something different to co-exist, they need only do something well. A FFX today would be just as well received as 2001.

[Wolf Kanno]

Those other games are short.

Your premise is also flawed in that games don't need to do something different to co-exist, they need only do something well. A FFX today would be just as well received as 2001.

Why would length matter? A good story doesn't require it to be a door stopper. I could enjoy the entire Uncharted Trilogy in the time it would take to play FFXIII.

As for co-existence, if they could do so as the genre is now, we wouldn't have so many topics about the fall of the genre. The issue I'm pointing out is that people only like JRPGs for their stories and characters and my question is then why does it matter if its a JRPG when other games can provide great story and characters? You mention length but a long story has just as much chance as being a lgood as a short one and vice versa. Are you saying Uncharted 2's story and characters would be better if they stretched the game out another 30 hours? Are you saying a 20 hour RPG can't make it in today's market even if the story is well written because its just not long enough? The flaw in your argument is that you're placing too much importance on a quality of writing that other forms of medium have proven is just not the case as many short films can often be more successful and compelling than some 3 hour Hollywood blockbuster or writers being better known for their short-stories than their novels, so I fail to see how a game transcends this fact. The Last Story is a game that shows an RPG can be 20 hours long in scope and still be enjoyable experience with a compelling plot. The major flaw in its story is the poor writing of the two leads of the game but I don't believe an extra 20 hours could have fixed that as much as just getting a better writer would.

My point is that if the writing is good, length wouldn't matter. I also disagree that an FFX design clone would do well in today's market considering how its design kind of killed interest in the genre during the PS2 era because the cinematic story telling interfered too much with gameplay, and RPGs began to be seen as more film than game. XIII did well because it was an overdue game from a famous franchise, not because its core design philosophy was embraced by the fanbase, XIII-2 and LR would not have had to go so far in in the opposite direction in terms of game focus if fans truly wanted the FFX experience of 80% plot 20% game. FFX sold 8 million units, 1.4 million of it was pre-ordered. The HD remake has barely reached half a million in the three months of its release so I feel you are speaking too much from personal preference in saying fans love that style of game since even the originator can't be greeted with the same fan fare when its re-released. Its design is flawed for the genre but other genres have utilized it better.

[VeloZer0]

I think WK is hitting the nail on the head with the decline of JPRG market share correlating with other games adopting powerful story telling. The question is what do traditional JPRGs offer uniquely?

1) Turn-ish based battles. I say turn-ish to include the broader spectrum of things such as ATB.

2) Pacing control. In something like an FPS you don't have much options in terms of pacing, as you can't introduce elements like towns and puzzles. In a more open world WRPG you also loose a lot of your pacing control, as players are screwing around on their own. This is obviously a trade-off. By linearizing the experience (and yes, even older JRPGs are linear by WRPG standards) you take away gameplay elements. So the narrative you use it to weave better damn well be worth it.

So if you make a game that fails to make battles fun instead of dungeon-time-filler and don't use good pacing control to tell the story then you have basically failed at what can make a JRPG good.

[Bolivar]

Those other games are short.

Your premise is also flawed in that games don't need to do something different to co-exist, they need only do something well. A FFX today would be just as well received as 2001.

Why would length matter? A good story doesn't require it to be a door stopper. I could enjoy the entire Uncharted Trilogy in the time it would take to play FFXIII.

As for co-existence, if they could do so as the genre is now, we wouldn't have so many topics about the fall of the genre. The issue I'm pointing out is that people only like JRPGs for their stories and characters and my question is then why does it matter if its a JRPG when other games can provide great story and characters? You mention length but a long story has just as much chance as being a lgood as a short one and vice versa. Are you saying Uncharted 2's story and characters would be better if they stretched the game out another 30 hours? Are you saying a 20 hour RPG can't make it in today's market even if the story is well written because its just not long enough? The flaw in your argument is that you're placing too much importance on a quality of writing that other forms of medium have proven is just not the case as many short films can often be more successful and compelling than some 3 hour Hollywood blockbuster or writers being better known for their short-stories than their novels, so I fail to see how a game transcends this fact. The Last Story is a game that shows an RPG can be 20 hours long in scope and still be enjoyable experience with a compelling plot. The major flaw in its story is the poor writing of the two leads of the game but I don't believe an extra 20 hours could have fixed that as much as just getting a better writer would.

My point is that if the writing is good, length wouldn't matter. I also disagree that an FFX design clone would do well in today's market considering how its design kind of killed interest in the genre during the PS2 era because the cinematic story telling interfered too much with gameplay, and RPGs began to be seen as more film than game. XIII did well because it was an overdue game from a famous franchise, not because its core design philosophy was embraced by the fanbase, XIII-2 and LR would not have had to go so far in in the opposite direction in terms of game focus if fans truly wanted the FFX experience of 80% plot 20% game. FFX sold 8 million units, 1.4 million of it was pre-ordered. The HD remake has barely reached half a million in the three months of its release so I feel you are speaking too much from personal preference in saying fans love that style of game since even the originator can't be greeted with the same fan fare when its re-released. Its design is flawed for the genre but other genres have utilized it better.

I like big games, whereas other genres struggle to make cinematic experiences that last more than a few hours. There's nothing wrong with that but it's something I like that JRPGs can give me.

Your "decline of the genre" is hyperbole; it's always been niche, yet there are more JRPGs (and Western imitations) coming out from more developers on more platforms than ever before.

[Mirage]

I think WK is hitting the nail on the head with the decline of JPRG market share correlating with other games adopting powerful story telling. The question is what do traditional JPRGs offer uniquely?

1) Turn-ish based battles. I say turn-ish to include the broader spectrum of things such as ATB.

2) Pacing control. In something like an FPS you don't have much options in terms of pacing, as you can't introduce elements like towns and puzzles. In a more open world WRPG you also loose a lot of your pacing control, as players are screwing around on their own. This is obviously a trade-off. By linearizing the experience (and yes, even older JRPGs are linear by WRPG standards) you take away gameplay elements. So the narrative you use it to weave better damn well be worth it.

So if you make a game that fails to make battles fun instead of dungeon-time-filler and don't use good pacing control to tell the story then you have basically failed at what can make a JRPG good.

It's no problem to incorporate puzzles and towns in FPS games. Well, there might be a problem in making the average FPS player accept such a design choice, but that doesn't count.

[Loony BoB]

Are we seriously comparing FFXIII to Uncharted 3 now? Are we seriously questioning the reasons one might want to play a JRPG over a TPS/FPS? Are we seriously questioning whether there is any difference between the two experiences that one person might enjoy more than another?

Because xD if that's the case.

You can't ask what makes a JRPG different to a WRPG and then take those differences and say "Then why not play an FPS game?" If I told you the differences between a JRPG and an FPS, you'd come back with "But why not play a WRPG?" and we could go in circles all day. Do you want me to tell you the reasons people might want to play a JRPG over watching a movie, too? And before you go "Well, actually..." - again, seriously...

Every genre has something that you could argue another genre has.

The key point of the genre is that it covers all or most of these varied differences from all the other collective genres.

JRPGs have a story, but that does not make them a Survival Horror.
JRPGs have a leveling process, but that does not make them a TBS.
JRPGs have dungeon areas, but that does not make them a Dungeon Crawler.
JRPGs have characters, but that does not make them a Platformer.
JRPGs can be 3D, but that does not make them a Space Trade & Combat Simulator.
JRPGs generally won't allow you to win every battle by pressing X repeatedly, but that doesn't make them a Fighter (Beat'em Up) game.
JRPGs characters have a personal tie to the overall plot, but that doesn't make them a Point & Click Game.
JRPGs characters generally have a fixed story to them, but that doesn't make them a FPS.
JRPGs generally have varying weapons with upgrade systems, but that doesn't make them a WRPG.
JRPGs can have multiple controllable characters, but that doesn't make them an RTS.
JRPGs generally have puzzles to be solved, but that doesn't make them a Puzzle game.
JRPGs generally have cinematics, but that doesn't make them a movie.
JRPGs can sometimes allow you to move characters around the field, but that doesn't make them a Sports game.
JRPGs generally do not require excellent hand-eye co-ordination with precise timing, but that doesn't make them a City Building Sim.

JRPGs generally have all of these things, or at least most of them.

So, to go back to WK's question of "what does FFXIII offer as an experience in relation to Uncharted, The Walking Dead, MGS4, or Heavy Rain?", I will simply say "it's a JRPG." If you want specific examples of why any one person might want to play FFXIII - a JRPG - instead of another game, you'll have to ask that specific person. I love Uncharted and I love Final Fantasy. I play them both. Honestly, I don't need a reason for this beyond the fact that I enjoy playing video games and they are both video games. But yeah, they're blatantly different kettles of fish.

[Bolivar]

I think it's also telling how FFXIII outsold nearly all the games Wolf mentioned.

[Loony BoB]

I just realised that this thread is actually about Japanese Public Relations Games. Guys, we've been doing this all wrong. :(

[Psychotic]

I think it's also telling how FFXIII outsold nearly all the games Wolf mentioned.If it had any other name than "Final Fantasy XIII" would it have? We can never know, but in such a hypothetical scenario somehow I doubt it. It's particularly telling that its sequels combined struggled to match even half of FFXIII's first week sales.

[Bolivar]

So did X-2, which some people felt was a better game than the original.

[Psychotic]

Final Fantasy X-2 matched 65% of Final Fantasy X's sales.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 matched 45% of Final Fantasy XIII's sales.

Lighting Returns only matched 14% of Final Fantasy XIII's sales.

Incidentally, I think all of the sequels above are better than the original but that's not relevant. What's relevant is the number of people who enjoyed the first game and wanted more because we are assessing the quality of that first game and not its sequels. It is evident that the majority of the people who played Final Fantasy XIII did not want more.

[Spuuky]

JRPGs generally do not require excellent hand-eye co-ordination with precise timing, but that doesn't make them a City Building Sim.???

[Loony BoB]

Both genres don't require expert hand-eye co-ordination and precise timing. Basically differing them from the likes of FPS games, Fighter games, etc. which do require such things. A different set of skills required.

[Mirage]

My JRPGs require good timing.

[Loony BoB]

I don't imagine they require FPS-level stick accuracy and timing, though. I imagine you all get the point regardless of semantics. :p

[VeloZer0]

stuff
References to other genres weren't brought up to imply that they are equivalent, it is to show that things that were distinct to JRPGs are increasingly co-opted into other genres.

Imagine if you will two products, #1 and #2. #1 has features A,B,C and #2 has features D,E,F. If #2 adds features B and C then people who were mainly interested in B & C no longer are solely constrained to product #1. This tends to decrease the market share of product #1, though there are still people who like A and the combination A,B,C.

In this case those features are story telling as a central game role, and (in a more general RPG sense), leveling/skill progression mechanics. The genere can't trade on it's old signature staples as well as it could before, because there is more competition in the market place. But instead of focusing on strengthening the parts/combinations that are unique to the JRPG SE is instead trying to compete in an area it is no longer dominant in (story telling) and ripping up things that it can still offer that other genres don't (turn-ish based combat, etc..).

[Spuuky]

I don't imagine they require FPS-level stick accuracy and timing, though. I imagine you all get the point regardless of semantics. :pOh man, people who try to play FPS games with a "stick" are just asking to lose. I can't believe that people actually play FPS games on consoles. Anyway, that's an unnecessary tangent.

This is just devolving into a discussion about what a JRPG is again. RPGs with stories still exist. If your concern is just to get a "choice-free" story (since the defining feature seems to be removing player agency in favor of a "better" story even though that's not really how it works) then those still exist, too.

[Psychotic]

FPS gaming is more fun on a console than PC to me and evidently millions of others. That attitude baffles me because it's not 1998 anymore and I can't figure out why people haven't noticed console FPS gaming has bloomed. I am never surprised at the ages of the PC elitists still sneering at the idea - you tell me what all the young gamers are playing their FPS games on and I'll tell you what the future of the FPS is surely going to be. If anyone disagrees I'm just going to refer you to Bob Dylan (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xg9_Lx2AWaE). The song is also apt for the actual topic of this thread

[Spuuky]

FPSing on a console is for people who have never tried it on a PC. There are obviously individual anomalous exceptions, mostly people with bad taste and worse hand-eye coordination.

You're right that it isn't 1998 anymore. Now we can directly compare the exact same game on the PC and on a console to clearly see that the PC version is objectively superior, rather than having to evaluate on different axes. I guarantee, with 100% certainty, that the best controller-using players in the world at FPS X would lose badly to the best mouse-and-keyboard players playing the same game. I don't understand why you would ever willingly make the sacrifice of using a controller for any game that requires aiming. Of course, game-designers know this; they add auto-aim features to consoles, and crosshair drift to PCs, because they are trying to even out the playing field.

I agree that console FPSes are the way of the future. Superiority isn't what most people are looking for. They aren't looking for a better game, they are looking for a game that their friends are most likely to be playing, and that's consoles. It's a bit of a prisoner's dilemma. Unfortunately, consoles will continue to succeed because people don't realize it isn't 2004 anymore and that PCs work with screens just as large and conveniently placed as XBoxes.

[Del Murder]

Wiimote with nunchuck is the best way to play fps.

[Wolf Kanno]

To bring this back to topic...



I like big games, whereas other genres struggle to make cinematic experiences that last more than a few hours. There's nothing wrong with that but it's something I like that JRPGs can give me. I simply ask why? What makes a 10 hour experience different from a 40 hour one. What did FFVII accomplish that Metal Gear Solid didn't? Both games are filled with filler elements its just that MGS' only takes maybe thirty minutes out of your life whereas VII took over twenty hours to do.


Your "decline of the genre" is hyperbole; it's always been niche, yet there are more JRPGs (and Western imitations) coming out from more developers on more platforms than ever before.
Talk about a turn around, a few years back you would be the first to mention how FFVII opened up the genre for the mainstream and now here you are saying it was always niche despite the PS1 and PS2 literally coming apart at the seams with JRPGs while the last console generation and current console generation are on par with the Western 16-bit era which had lots of RPGs of its own but only a handful worth talking about. Three of the top 20 best selling games on the PS1 era JRPGs and six of the best selling on the PS2 were JRPGs, while the PS3 has 1. That to me shows the genre had a high and now its declined, largely because Square-Enix dropped the ball last generation.

Yes, a lot of them moved to handhelds and mobile but they are not doing well on them (well except Pokemon, but its a phenomena in itself) in the West because Western gamers have been very slow to embrace them. Handhelds are getting better reception but I can't tell you how I often I hear Western players bitch and moan when a new RPG is announced as a mobile. This is where genre is kind of going. The big budget games are too costly and barely make back the money that was put in whereas handhelds and mobile are cheap and easy.


I think it's also telling how FFXIII outsold nearly all the games Wolf mentioned.

Yes, but the Uncharted Trilogy has sold twice as much as the XIII trilogy. That tells me that most of the those XIII sales was mainly based on brand name, anticipation after waiting years for a new installment, and being the first entry on an overpriced console that players would hope would justify proof of admission, not because XIII was some wonderful blissful game. The sequels did terrible with XIII-2 not even selling half as many units as its predecessor, and Lightning Returns hasn't even broke a million units sold and almost half of the games sales are from Japan.

In fact a sales breakdowns shows that NA and EU have bought less with each installment. Skyrim has sold as well as XIII but the difference is that Skyrim's sales are still going up whereas XIII's have slowed to a crawl. So don't try to hold XIII's numbers and give it off as proof the JRPG is still viable on consoles. Most Western RPGs have done way better in the last generation than the JRPG console entries. Of the ten best selling RPGs of the last console cycle, only three are JRPGs and only one broke 2 million, in the PS2 era, all but one was a JRPG and six of the JRPGs sold over 4 million units. Also XIII sold less than both FFXII and X-2, and XII's sales are probably in the same boat as XIII in terms of probably being high based on hype and waiting years for a new installment as opposed to positive reception.



stuff
References to other genres weren't brought up to imply that they are equivalent, it is to show that things that were distinct to JRPGs are increasingly co-opted into other genres.

Imagine if you will two products, #1 and #2. #1 has features A,B,C and #2 has features D,E,F. If #2 adds features B and C then people who were mainly interested in B & C no longer are solely constrained to product #1. This tends to decrease the market share of product #1, though there are still people who like A and the combination A,B,C.

In this case those features are story telling as a central game role, and (in a more general RPG sense), leveling/skill progression mechanics. The genere can't trade on it's old signature staples as well as it could before, because there is more competition in the market place. But instead of focusing on strengthening the parts/combinations that are unique to the JRPG SE is instead trying to compete in an area it is no longer dominant in (story telling) and ripping up things that it can still offer that other genres don't (turn-ish based combat, etc..).

Yeah, this is what I am getting at BoB. I want to know what an epic 40 hour RPG console with all the bells and whistles can provide that can't be either better served by other genres or smaller productions on handhelds. I mean Bravery Default is a nice, visually stunning JRPG for the 3DS so why can it not hold up as well as a console entry?

[Bolivar]

I simply ask why? What makes a 10 hour experience different from a 40 hour one.

Commitment, along with a hundred different other things, none of which are relevant, constructive, or likely to help your argument that popularity is a zero-sum game, where video games can only sell units to the detriment of other video games.

Final Fantasy XIII did not sell less than X-2, nor did its trilogy sell half of the Uncharted trilogy; we've reached the point where you're just making things up. There comes a point where our discussion threads are no longer exchanges of ideas, they're just meaningless words being thrown against eachother, and that's not something I'm entirely interested in doing anymore.

[Spuuky]

I simply ask why? What makes a 10 hour experience different from a 40 hour one. What did FFVII accomplish that Metal Gear Solid didn't? Both games are filled with filler elements its just that MGS' only takes maybe thirty minutes out of your life whereas VII took over twenty hours to do.Pacing is totally different if the same story is packed into 10 hours rather than 40. For some things, that pace might be better. For others, it might be worse. Both forms offer different things; like the difference between a "mini-series" and a movie on TV. You can delve into things in a lot more detail, if you wish, if you have a longer time frame to work with. You can flesh out a world, rather than carefully structuring the illusion of depth all the time.

And if you are going to immerse yourself in a world, and you love that world, the longer you can stay immersed, the better it is. If the goal is world-immersion rather than a specific story or on top of a specific story, a longer game is inherently better, even if someone incorrectly deems some of the material to be "filler." This, specifically, is what handheld RPGs can't offer nearly as well as a full-production games.

I could tell the story of Crime & Punishment in 200 less pages than Dostoevsky did, by removing "filler." I can assure you I would lose a lot more than that along with it. Have you ever watched a Kurosawa movie? They are very long. The pacing is exquisite. You could tell the same story in an hour-long movie, but it wouldn't be the same story.

[Sephiroth]

Yes, but the Uncharted Trilogy has sold twice as much as the XIII trilogy. That tells me that most of the those XIII sales was mainly based on brand name, anticipation after waiting years for a new installment, and being the first entry on an overpriced console that players would hope would justify proof of admission, not because XIII was some wonderful blissful game. The sequels did terrible with XIII-2 not even selling half as many units as its predecessor, and Lightning Returns hasn't even broke a million units sold and almost half of the games sales are from Japan.

Final Fantasy XIII sold about 12 million and Uncharted about 17 million. You are probably thinking of the Final Fantasy Wikia which I would never recommend people to use (as long as it is not about getting a quick information like how to find item or ability xy). I also would not take the sales too much as what people really like but how high their expectations are. Many people were disappointed so they didn't buy it but it does not mean the sequels don't actually cover much they like and just don't know because they didn't buy it. It often means they didn't like the first one but actually they totally miss the opportunity to be surprised from the next one and all that just because they think it will be very similiar to what they didn't like.



Also XIII sold less than both FFXII and X-2, and XII's sales are probably in the same boat as XIII in terms of probably being high based on hype and waiting years for a new installment as opposed to positive reception.

FFXII had about 5 million sales (RW should probably be counted as is it a part of it but it still less than the trilogy), that is less than XIII and way lower than the overall trilogy. FFX-2 for PS2 had about 3 million and I don't know about HD but that is definitely thanks to FFX-1 in most cases.

Also the argument that the name sales might be true just like many people like a Coca Cola more or a Sprite even though the same company actually sells a "no-name" product and people don't know but that is something normal because that guarantess sales and normally the name really does stand for something you know you can depend on. In my case I still do.

[Wolf Kanno]

I simply ask why? What makes a 10 hour experience different from a 40 hour one.

Commitment, along with a hundred different other things, none of which are relevant, constructive, or likely to help your argument that popularity is a zero-sum game, where video games can only sell units to the detriment of other video games.

That is a lousy answer and you are not really being constructive to this debate by ignoring the truth. ;)


Final Fantasy XIII did not sell less than X-2, nor did its trilogy sell half of the Uncharted trilogy; we've reached the point where you're just making things up. There comes a point where our discussion threads are no longer exchanges of ideas, they're just meaningless words being thrown against each other, and that's not something I'm entirely interested in doing anymore.




Final Fantasy XIII sold about 12 million and Uncharted about 17 million. You are probably thinking of the Final Fantasy Wikia which I would never recommend people to use (as long as it is not about getting a quick information like how to find item or ability xy). I also would not take the sales too much as what people really like but how high their expectations are. Many people were disappointed so they didn't buy it but it does not mean the sequels don't actually cover much they like and just don't know because they didn't buy it. It often means they didn't like the first one but actually they totally miss the opportunity to be surprised from the next one and all that just because they think it will be very similar to what they didn't like.

FFXII had about 5 million sales (RW should probably be counted as is it a part of it but it still less than the trilogy), that is less than XIII and way lower than the overall trilogy. FFX-2 for PS2 had about 3 million and I don't know about HD but that is definitely thanks to FFX-1 in most cases.

Also the argument that the name sales might be true just like many people like a Coca Cola more or a Sprite even though the same company actually sells a "no-name" product and people don't know but that is something normal because that guarantess sales and normally the name really does stand for something you know you can depend on. In my case I still do.

FFXIII Sales as of August 30th 2014 - 5.18 million units sold. (http://www.vgchartz.com/game/7727/final-fantasy-xiii/)
FFXIII-2 Sales as of August 30th 2014 - 2.59 million units sold (http://www.vgchartz.com/game/49773/final-fantasy-xiii-2/)
Lightning Returns Sales as of August 30th 2014 - 0.89 million units sold (http://www.vgchartz.com/game/70939/lightning-returns-final-fantasy-xiii/)

Total - 8.66 Million Units sold as of August 30th 2014

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune Sales as of August 30th 2014 - 4.76 million units sold (http://www.vgchartz.com/game/12778/uncharted-drakes-fortune/)
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Sales as of August 30th 2014 - 6.42 million units sold (http://www.vgchartz.com/game/28733/uncharted-2-among-thieves/)
Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception Sales as of August 30th 2014 - 6.44 million units sold (http://www.vgchartz.com/game/49054/uncharted-3-drakes-deception/)

Total - 17.62 Million Units Sold as of August 30th 2014

17.62 - 8.66 = 8.96 million units difference

FFX-2 (plus Internation Version but not the HD remake) Sales as of August 30th 2014 - 5.29 million units sold (http://www.vgchartz.com/game/760/final-fantasy-x-2/)
FFXII (Pus International Version) Sales as of August as of August 30th 2014 - 5.95 million units sold. (http://www.vgchartz.com/game/765/final-fantasy-xii/)

5.18 - 5.29 = 110,000 units difference
5.18 - 5.95 = 770,000 units difference

Notice how I actually have links to my numbers, and notice how the dates are current to last month.

No, I don't use FF Wiki or even Wikipedia as a source, I go to a website dedicated to keeping track of these numbers and noticed how XIII did do worse than the last two console FFs and how there is a steady decline in XIII sales and a steady rise in Uncharted sales. :p

I will also say that I agree that sales figures do not mean XIII-2 and LR were bad games necessarily, but I would point out the reviews were not as good as XIII's if Metacritic is anything to go by. Hell the user scores are worse than the critical reviews and this applies to XII as well which I feel does suffer from bigger sales based on brand and hype as opposed to actual fan reaction.



I simply ask why? What makes a 10 hour experience different from a 40 hour one. What did FFVII accomplish that Metal Gear Solid didn't? Both games are filled with filler elements its just that MGS' only takes maybe thirty minutes out of your life whereas VII took over twenty hours to do.Pacing is totally different if the same story is packed into 10 hours rather than 40. For some things, that pace might be better. For others, it might be worse. Both forms offer different things; like the difference between a "mini-series" and a movie on TV. You can delve into things in a lot more detail, if you wish, if you have a longer time frame to work with. You can flesh out a world, rather than carefully structuring the illusion of depth all the time.

And if you are going to immerse yourself in a world, and you love that world, the longer you can stay immersed, the better it is. If the goal is world-immersion rather than a specific story or on top of a specific story, a longer game is inherently better, even if someone incorrectly deems some of the material to be "filler." This, specifically, is what handheld RPGs can't offer nearly as well as a full-production games.

I could tell the story of Crime & Punishment in 200 less pages than Dostoevsky did, by removing "filler." I can assure you I would lose a lot more than that along with it. Have you ever watched a Kurosawa movie? They are very long. The pacing is exquisite. You could tell the same story in an hour-long movie, but it wouldn't be the same story.

This is what I'm getting at, though I would argue that there is more to JRPGs than narrative and I would also argue that handhelds can be just as long story-wise as a console title. I would also point out that you need to define good pacing with bad pacing. I mean Xenoblade and DQVII can both take over a hundred hours to complete but only Xenoblade is praised for its writing whereas DQVII's is said to be somewhat forgettable. On the other hand, DQV is well praised for its story and narrative but can be completed in under 30 hours. So would you say that JRPGs are often more successful with pacing or could stand to be edited down when the "filler" content adds nothing to the overall narrative, like say FFX's Monster Arena, which can tack on another 30 hours of game time but doesn't necessarily do anything for the world immersion?

[Sephiroth]

FFXIII Sales as of August 30th 2014 - 5.18 million units sold. (http://www.vgchartz.com/game/7727/final-fantasy-xiii/)
FFXIII-2 Sales as of August 30th 2014 - 2.59 million units sold (http://www.vgchartz.com/game/49773/final-fantasy-xiii-2/)
Lightning Returns Sales as of August 30th 2014 - 0.89 million units sold (http://www.vgchartz.com/game/70939/lightning-returns-final-fantasy-xiii/)

Total - 8.66 Million Units sold as of August 30th 2014

Final Fantasy XIII sold 5,2 million + times for PlayStation 3 and 2 million + times for X Box. That makes almost 7,5 million times.

http://www.vgchartz.com/game/7727/final-fantasy-xiii/
http://www.vgchartz.com/game/24628/final-fantasy-xiii/

Final Fantasy XIII-2 sold 2,5 million + times on PlayStation 3 and about a bit over half a million times on X Box. That makes a bit over 3 million.

Together with Lightning Returns, lets say about one million, we have almost 12 million.



5.18 - 5.29 = 110,000 units difference
5.18 - 5.95 = 770,000 units difference


And 7 million is greater than 5 or 6 million so I am right (Final Fantasy X-2 has also been sold 6 million times if we count everything). I do not mean that in a provoking way, I just wanted to point it out so I have solved the XIII > X-2 or XII issue as well. Uncharted has sold 19 million, by the way.

(http://www.vgchartz.com/game/12778/uncharted-drakes-fortune/)


No, I don't use FF Wiki or even Wikipedia as a source, ...

As much of a surprise as it is, Wikipedia is actually right. The mistake you have made is that you took the PS3 numbers as overall sales numbers. You probably did that purposely but an X Box Final Fantasy XIII is still Final Fantasy XIII and it should be counted except you really want to go the way of "consoles for which both game series came out" but that is not really fair, as it would make a great number of sales of Final Fantasy XIII insignificant and on which console it has been bought should not matter.

Source: http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/?name=Final+Fantasy+xiii

Here the overview:

http://s14.directupload.net/images/140916/qji6ujz2.jpg

[Spuuky]

This is what I'm getting at, though I would argue that there is more to JRPGs than narrative and I would also argue that handhelds can be just as long story-wise as a console title. I would also point out that you need to define good pacing with bad pacing. I mean Xenoblade and DQVII can both take over a hundred hours to complete but only Xenoblade is praised for its writing whereas DQVII's is said to be somewhat forgettable. On the other hand, DQV is well praised for its story and narrative but can be completed in under 30 hours. So would you say that JRPGs are often more successful with pacing or could stand to be edited down when the "filler" content adds nothing to the overall narrative, like say FFX's Monster Arena, which can tack on another 30 hours of game time but doesn't necessarily do anything for the world immersion?Of course there is more to JRPGs than narrative. Who exactly said there wasn't?

And "good pacing" and "bad pacing" are irrelevant to length. A story has a specific amount of content, and you can blow through that quickly or extend it way too long, but it's completely wrong to say that every story can be well-paced in 10 hours. It depends entirely on how big your story is.

What I want from games (sometimes) is specifically the ability to dissolve myself into their world for as long as I possibly can. If a game like that ends in 10 hours, I am going to be disappointed, even if the "story" is over. You can't do that on a handheld, not really. You can't immerse yourself in the same way, and you can't make the world large enough to explore it for a long time. Handhelds are great for shorter games, including short little fun JRPGs (like Etrian Odyssey, for instance). They're even pretty OK for a game like Dragon Quest IX; but you can't make Dragon Quest VIII on one and expect it to be the same. You can't make Fallout: New Vegas on one, either.

[Fynn]

This is what I'm getting at, though I would argue that there is more to JRPGs than narrative and I would also argue that handhelds can be just as long story-wise as a console title. I would also point out that you need to define good pacing with bad pacing. I mean Xenoblade and DQVII can both take over a hundred hours to complete but only Xenoblade is praised for its writing whereas DQVII's is said to be somewhat forgettable. On the other hand, DQV is well praised for its story and narrative but can be completed in under 30 hours. So would you say that JRPGs are often more successful with pacing or could stand to be edited down when the "filler" content adds nothing to the overall narrative, like say FFX's Monster Arena, which can tack on another 30 hours of game time but doesn't necessarily do anything for the world immersion?Of course there is more to JRPGs than narrative. Who exactly said there wasn't?

And "good pacing" and "bad pacing" are irrelevant to length. A story has a specific amount of content, and you can blow through that quickly or extend it way too long, but it's completely wrong to say that every story can be well-paced in 10 hours. It depends entirely on how big your story is.

What I want from games (sometimes) is specifically the ability to dissolve myself into their world for as long as I possibly can. If a game like that ends in 10 hours, I am going to be disappointed, even if the "story" is over. You can't do that on a handheld, not really. You can't immerse yourself in the same way, and you can't make the world large enough to explore it for a long time. Handhelds are great for shorter games, including short little fun JRPGs (like Etrian Odyssey, for instance). They're even pretty OK for a game like Dragon Quest IX; but you can't make Dragon Quest VIII on one and expect it to be the same. You can't make Fallout: New Vegas on one, either.

I'm sorry, but I'm gonna have to call BS on that. There is nothing stopping creators from making huge, long games on handhelds. Bravely Default, Radiant Historia both have long stories (with the former clocking even at 100 hours) with big, immersive worlds, and that's just to name a few, not even counting ports and remakes of things like older FFs, Persona 3 and even frigging Xenoblade Chronicles coming soon to the New 3DS which is certainly one of the best written recent RPGs (only one I ever passed the 100 hour mark by a substantial amount) with what is the biggest world I have ever experienced in a game (people have compared it to Skyrim, but I haven't played that, so I can't comment on that).

Oh, and DQVIII recently came out on iOS. Yes, the full game with all the graphics. Only thing missing is the voice acting. Otherwise, it's exactly the same game.

So yeah, you can totally make huge games on handhelds. In fact, there's tons of them. And honestly, that's all I play nowadays :monster:

[Madame Adequate]

Both genres don't require expert hand-eye co-ordination and precise timing. Basically differing them from the likes of FPS games, Fighter games, etc. which do require such things. A different set of skills required.

If you think city-builders don't need hand-eye coordination, you've not been playing SimCity 4 with transit puzzle pieces modded in. (The game crashes if you touch any regular transit piece like a road with your cursor while placing them.)

Anyway the reason is because the JRPG genre is pretty well played out and only big enough to sustain the occasional nostalgia trip like Bravely Default right now. They're still putting out games like DQ, FF, SMT, and Tales of, but really hardly any JRPG series is doing much outside of handhelds anymore, and some big series are ded, like Breath of Fire and Suikoden.

There's only so far a genre can go with so little innovation, and SE are about the only people attempting anything innovative in JRPGs, with some seriously mixed results.

[Fynn]

People ignoring Xenoblade... :whimper:

[Bolivar]

Notice how I actually have links to my numbers, and notice how the dates are current to last month.



Unfortunately, we also noticed you omitted the Xbox 360 sales, for reasons which I'm sure you'll assure us are legitimate.

In my mind, Wolf and the "JRPG Decline" crowd have yet to overcome two obstacles:

1) JRPGs have always been niche outside of Final Fantasy and Pokemon.
2) Final Fantasy and Pokemon are still popular.

I just don't see the fall of a genre that was niche on consoles brcause it's now niche on handheld and mobiles, especially when a) those handheld games are so damn good and b) a new series like Dark Souls proved you can still break through on the scene. And please stop with the "lack of innovation" arguments people, that word seemingly means something different to each person and it only reveals how many modern classics you personally haven't played.

This thread started about the age-old problem of missed translation opportunities and it's just devolved into something neurotic and insane.

[Freya]

He omitted them because he was comparing it to the Uncharted series which is a PS3 Exclusive. It was to point out that even an exclusive did better. It probably also goes with the whole Sony is the JRPG powerhouse thing but I could just be putting words in his ... fingers?

[Sephiroth]

He omitted them because he was comparing it to the Uncharted series which is a PS3 Exclusive. It was to point out that even an exclusive did better. It probably also goes with the whole Sony is the JRPG powerhouse thing but I could just be putting words in his ... fingers?

That doesn't make the X Box sales insignificant though (as I have covered in my post where I said he probably mentioned it because it is exclusive) and the success of Uncharted itself could have various reasons, like being a game genre of more general interest. Just mentioning the PS3 version and not even pointing out why highlights Final Fantasy XIII totally wrong and can give other people a wrong impression if Kanno really meant that and people don't understand it because of a missing definitive explanation.

[Spuuky]

Oh, and DQVIII recently came out on iOS. Yes, the full game with all the graphics. Only thing missing is the voice acting. Otherwise, it's exactly the same game.Obviously I should have clarified that more rather than using a specific example. Making DQVIII on a handheld is not the same as making a new DQVIII on a handheld. I don't accept this. Of course you can put a game from two generations ago on a handheld of today; that's not the point. I'm sure that in 5-10 years, you could put FFXIII as it exists now on a handheld with no problem. What you can't do is make a modern, current-gen equivalent on a handheld, just like you couldn't put a handheld version of DQVIII on a handheld in 2004.

I have never been immersed in a handheld game, and I've played a lot of them, and enjoyed a lot of them. It simply isn't the same. I haven't played the specific Xenoblade Chronicles example you have listed.

[Sephiroth]

I'm sure that in 5-10 years, you could put FFXIII as it exists now on a handheld with no problem.

You can do that soon actually because of one of their new projects which allows you to try out on pretty new mobile stuff. I have read only one article about it, though. It seems to give you the opportunity to try out a Final Fantasy for a while and probably even save files in a Cloud.

[Bolivar]

He omitted them because he was comparing it to the Uncharted series which is a PS3 Exclusive. It was to point out that even an exclusive did better. It probably also goes with the whole Sony is the JRPG powerhouse thing but I could just be putting words in his ... fingers?

I guess that's as good as we're going to get but it's still hiding the numbers to make it look like interest in the game was lower than it actually was. A lot of people bought Xbox 360s when they knew they could play FFXIII on it, just like a lot more people started buying PS3s in 2009 when Uncharted 2 came out.

It does nothing to overcome overcome the obstacles to claiming JRPGs have declined, much less address the OP.

[Wolf Kanno]

Ah my bad, I didn't mean to omit the 360 sales, I just assumed they were part of the total since the XIII page mentioned both systems, so I will admit I was wrong. It still doesn't change the fact Uncharted, even as a PS3 exclusive and not counting the Vita title, outsold the FFXIII trilogy. The number is just a 5 million difference instead of 8 million. My point stands that a story driven action game can deliver a grand story on par with an RPG that had little else to offer. It also has shwn the at the Sony FF fan market has in fact shrunk between console generations as the PS3 sales numbers I posted were not as good as the PS2 sales numbers.

As for Pokemon and FF still being popular, its true, but the consoles market has been very slow for FF and even SE is remarking it's not as profitable to keep making these big budget titles and we may see a future where FFXVI might be a handheld or mobile.

http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/378405/scitech/geeksandgaming/final-fantasy-xv-may-make-or-break-japan-s-console-market

I mean when the smurfing co-director is saying that if XV can't bring people back to the console market then I feel we have a problem. XIII was the fastest selling title, but considering it spent so much time in development, it may have broken even or turned a very modest profit at best and FFXV may be in the same boat where SE may need it to sell over 6 million units just to break even, whereas handhelds and mobiles have become more popular and profitable, especially in Japan which has a large commuter culture as Tabata mentioned in the interview. Type-0 may end up being a pre-test to see if XV may have issues, but considering it was a title that got little interest in the West to begin with, I doubt it will sell as well as it should.

Bolivar. you talk about how this is all hyperbole but don't back it up with proof as to why it isn't despite the issue that even the series creators are openly discussing the issue. I mean we're kind of looking at a point where the FF of yesteryear is no longer viable for today's market and may move with the rest of the genre into the domain of handhelds and mobile just to cut down on costs. The Triple A console FF may be gone soon and everyone is kind of noticing this, so explain how this is not the case? I'm calling your call of hyperbole out as hyperbole itself. I mean even SE itself, which has admitted several missteps this generation, is remarking how the current gaming client is just not good for console JRPGs, both the XIII sequels did not perform as well as X-2.

[Sephiroth]

Actually it has a 7 million difference, I just pointed it out because that it only sold half as much is not true because Uncharted did not sell 24 million times while XIII sold 12 million times or FFXIII did not just sell 8 million times while Uncharted sold about as much as you thought, now even more.

I am actually sure that FFXV will boom the problem is that it now requires a new console again and that might keep the sales lower for a while than PS3 and XBox 360 would have done.

[Vyk]

Just for reference sake, you're not actually trying to convince people they no longer need (J)RPGs, and to look to shorter more action-movie-oriented games for their video gaming fixes, right? You're just begging the questions, genuinely curious, and just wanting to have a healthy debate, correct? I get the impression some people feel you are trying to persuade. And I don't imagine that you are

Edit: @WK

[Wolf Kanno]

Actually it has a 7 million difference, I just pointed it out because that it only sold half as much is not true because Uncharted did not sell 24 million times while XIII sold 12 million times or FFXIII did not just sell 8 million times while Uncharted sold about as much as you thought, now even more.

Fair enough. Thanks for pointing out my mistake. :)


I am actually sure that FFXV will boom the problem is that it now requires a new console again and that might keep the sales lower for a while than PS3 and XBox 360 would have done.

See it's the last part that I think has everyone worried. On the brightside, the PS4 is doing better than its predecessor but on the downside, XV still sounds to be a few years away and the long development time is probably making this project far more expensive than SE would like it. I mean we are talking about the same company who sunk their MMO by making hi-res flowerpots (http://home.eyesonff.com/content.php/3046-How-Flowerpots-killed-XIV). SE has not done a lot this past generation to garner consumer confidence.

The other issue is that I came back from an RPG Panel I held at a pretty sizeable convention and found the utter lack of faith in FFXV by fans a bit of a sobering experience. :(


Just for reference sake, you're not actually trying to convince people they no longer need (J)RPGs, and to look to shorter more action-movie-oriented games for their video gaming fixes, right? You're just begging the questions, genuinely curious, and just wanting to have a healthy debate, correct? I get the impression some people feel you are trying to persuade. And I don't imagine that you are

Edit: @WK

I am not persuading people to move away from JRPGs, I am instead trying to narrow down what they bring as a complete package. VeloZer0 caught on to my point about how JRPGs back in the day were largely known for their stories and characters but nowadays if you want good plot and characters you can go anywhere, it is no longer exclusive to the genre like it was in the 16-bit/32-bit days. So my question comes down to what else does the genre bring to the table for players? I mean if gamers only like it for the story and characters then why do you still come back to it when other genres have shown they can write just as competently? I am trying to get to some core to the JRPG experience I feel that people gloss over because we focus too much on one aspect and never really step back to look at the big picture. If you're here for plot and story only and everything else doesn't really matter, then why not just read the transcript or watch the cutscenes on YouTube? Why shell out $50 bucks if you're only going to lick the cream and throw away the cookie part of the JRPG Oreo? This is what I am getting at. I feel if we can find what the genre brings to players then we can figure out a solution to its problems, but some members argue there is no problem and others focus solely on one aspect without looking at the bigger picture, I am trying to guide the thread to this point of what makes a JRPG fun as a whole that makes it a unique experience from other games?

[Ayen]

I have a love/hate relationship with RPGs. While I some times complain about all the random battles while trying to navigate a dungeon or whatever, I actually do enjoy the turn based battles that come with them. I like deciding what all my squad mates attacks are going to be and not having to be rushed when choosing. I like switching between physical attacks and magic attacks. Some time a summon animation is nice to watch. And I do enjoy the leveling up and experience points. If I'm really into a game I don't fret too much over the grinding. I'm not the best when it comes to strategy, but I still manage to get enjoyment out of the genre.

I also like the exploration. I'll take the time to look at each house and find new items. I like talking to NPCs and seeing what they say. A world doesn't have to be a sandbox for me to get the most out of it, provided there's enough there to see and explore. I don't always go on side-quests, but it's always nice to have the option. I also enjoy being able to name my characters and have different dialog options to choose from that prompt different responses from different people. The characters and story usually help to improve these elements, since why would I go from battle to battle if I don't care where the story is taking me? Why bother talking to NPCs if my characters have no personalities of their own to make interactions enjoyable?

The problem is I can also think of a couple of genres that offer me most of this, sans the turn based battling. But I could be mistaken on that last part. Naming your character isn't what it used to be either unless you're playing a game that has no voice acting.

[Spuuky]

I am trying to guide the thread to this point of what makes a JRPG fun as a whole that makes it a unique experience from other games?I don't find "JRPG" to be a meaningful distinction, but "RPG" can mean a lot more. I want RPGs that provide immersive well-developed and fully-realized worlds, extensive opportunity for exploration, ideally thoughtful turn-based combat, and opportunities for my characters to grow and collect things.

[Bolivar]

Bolivar. you talk about how this is all hyperbole but don't back it up with proof as to why it isn't despite the issue that even the series creators are openly discussing the issue. I mean we're kind of looking at a point where the FF of yesteryear is no longer viable for today's market and may move with the rest of the genre into the domain of handhelds and mobile just to cut down on costs. The Triple A console FF may be gone soon and everyone is kind of noticing this, so explain how this is not the case? I'm calling your call of hyperbole out as hyperbole itself. I mean even SE itself, which has admitted several missteps this generation, is remarking how the current gaming client is just not good for console JRPGs, both the XIII sequels did not perform as well as X-2.

I've stated the proof many times and it's yet to be overcome: how can JRPGs be on the decline when they've always been a niche genre outside of Final Fantasy and Pokemon?

There is an ongoing crisis for console development but that ecilpses JRPGs - it is almost impossible to create a lengthy experience that conforms with High Definition expectations without heavily recycling assets like Bethesda does, and even that is now taking them a concerningly long time to do. The spread of the cinematic game is not other genres "catching up;" it's literally all they have left in an era with astronomical costs and unprecedented publisher closures. It's created a culture where almost every game is a 10-20 hour experience with optional multiplayer, leading gamers to consume it in a single playthrough before selling it back to GameStop to buy the next one. This leads to lower game prices, which fuels larger backlogs, encouraging more single playthroughs and now the culture of consuming games like cigarettes is spiraling out of control, devaluing games on a whole and possibly suggesting a second crash. It makes me skeptical that people talk of the Japanese gaming industry declining whereas it's simply evolved to survive: you never hear of a Konami or Namco Bandai going out of business, whereas we lost Midway at the beginning of last generation and THQ at the end of it. I don't think people appreciate how alarming that is, especially with Microsoft and Nintendo both struggling to gain traction with their newest systems.

[Wolf Kanno]

I've stated the proof many times and it's yet to be overcome: how can JRPGs be on the decline when they've always been a niche genre outside of Final Fantasy and Pokemon?

Because of pie! ;)

According to the ESA that keeps track of all of these funny stats and what-nots in the game industry back in 2004 RPGs accounted for 9% of console sales (http://www.tntg.org/documents/gamefacts.pdf). Hell, RPGs have even ranked higher than Fighting and Drving games, which most people wouldn't consider a niche genre, several times the past decade.. In fact in 2006 RPG accounted for 9.5% of the console market which would have been the same year we saw KHII, FFXII, Suikoden V, MOTHER 3, Xenosaga Episode 3, and a few other JRPG goodies (http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/esa_ef_2007.pdf). Then it dipped to the 7-8% range until it plateaus to a measly 5.8% in 2009 (http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/esa_essential_facts_2010.pdf). FFXIII's release most likely helped it get knocked back up to 7.7% the following year (https://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/ESA_EF_2011.pdf) which is important for a few reasons here, because it does prove you are right that the release of an FF title does boost sales for the genre, it also shows that despite outselling XII and being the fastest selling unit, it couldn't jump the sales back into the 9% range meaning those sales are not FF alone which means other games within the genre do have more significance meaning. While Pokemon and FF are certainly the heavy hitters, the genre's popularity doesn't begin or end with them. The genre slips back to 7.2% in 2011 most likely staying strong thanks to Skyrim, and then drops down to 6.5% in 2012 which quite frankly saw some great JRPGs that were mainly limited by platform, and it has finally climbed back up to 7% last year (http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/esa_ef_2014.pdf). Here's my issue with your "JRPGs are niche" answer, they had strong sales back in 2003 (http://firestone.princeton.edu/econlib/Gaming/2004.pdf) (fourth most popular genre), 2004 (http://www.tntg.org/documents/gamefacts.pdf) , and 2005 (http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/esa_ef_2006.pdf). A genre that comes close to cornering almost 10% of the market isn't niche in my book. You want niche, go to rhythm games or visual novels, RPGs are a staple and back in the early 2000s JRPGs dominated the console market so you can't say it was WRPG picking up the slack cause they were having their own strong sales on the PC market.

An FF and Pokemon spike the sales but looking back to the early-mid 2000s and comparing them to more recent years we start seeing the genre slip, only peaking again when a release of Pokemon, FF, or with Skyrim and even then the peaks are not getting as high as they used to. We saw a steady rise in the genre between 2002-2006 and now its kind of been sporadic after that with the genre not hitting those 8-9% again since the incpetion of the previous console cycle (PS3, 360, Wii) in which the genre has since been struggling to not slip into niche status. While it is difficult to split up the difference of the charts from JRPG vs. WRPG I would still point out that compared to several more high profile genres like fighting games, racing, and pure adventure style games, RPGs are not a niche returning to the fringe shadows from which it came. Its obviously still a big market over here and its the JRPGs lack of quality or over-reliance on gimmicky mechanics which has allowed WRPGs to take them over in sales and popularity. Last gen really wasnt a strong generation for JRPGs, we could probably pull out a strong top ten but we would have to include all systems as none of them had any real dominance, whereas a top ten WRPG wouldn't be so difficult.


There is an ongoing crisis for console development but that ecilpses JRPGs - it is almost impossible to create a lengthy experience that conforms with High Definition expectations without heavily recycling assets like Bethesda does, and even that is now taking them a concerningly long time to do. The spread of the cinematic game is not other genres "catching up;" it's literally all they have left in an era with astronomical costs and unprecedented publisher closures. It's created a culture where almost every game is a 10-20 hour experience with optional multiplayer, leading gamers to consume it in a single playthrough before selling it back to GameStop to buy the next one. This leads to lower game prices, which fuels larger backlogs, encouraging more single playthroughs and now the culture of consuming games like cigarettes is spiraling out of control, devaluing games on a whole and possibly suggesting a second crash. It makes me skeptical that people talk of the Japanese gaming industry declining whereas it's simply evolved to survive: you never hear of a Konami or Namco Bandai going out of business, whereas we lost Midway at the beginning of last generation and THQ at the end of it. I don't think people appreciate how alarming that is, especially with Microsoft and Nintendo both struggling to gain traction with their newest systems.

I don't disagree with your breakdown of the market model of gaming in general, but I don't feel it is to blame for the genre floundering since A) we were seeing this model hit full stride over ten years ago when, as I showed above, JRPGs were still strong contenders; and B) Most JRPGs from the PS2 era onward are not as long as people think they are and thus they can still work within the framework of the model. I mean beating FFX would take about 30 hours, even FFXII would probably be in the 40 hour range at best if all you are doing is the main campaign/slash story. That "over 100 hours of gameplay" nonsense comes from all the post-game/sidequest crap. Most of the JRPGs I can think of that would take over 50 hours just to complete the story portion are PS1 games like FFVII, VIII, Xenogears, and DQVII. So I feel JRPGs long ago adapted to the model. I still blame its fall in the West to both a shift towards disinterest in console RPGs in Japan brought upon by mobile gaming, as well as other genres shifting towards a heavier foruc on story telling, cinematics, and character development which stole one of the strengths of JRPGs while the genre struggled to figure out what to do with adapting their format to the market trends and new console specs while still being cost effective.

To win back the Western market, Japan would need to dedicate themselves too it, and I think that recent Squenix announcment of opening up a new studio dedicated to console gaming might be for that very reason. I wouldn't be surprised if SE started making JRPGs for consoles that only get Western releases, it's telling how the U.S. is getting Type-0 HD first, even before Japan that SE wants to win back the console market for the genre and I honestly hope they succeed cause while I love my handhelds, I do wish I could get more use out of these console laying around my place. ;)

[Spuuky]

Fighting and Driving games are both basically the definition of "niche genre," especially Fighting games.

[Wolf Kanno]

So are sports game but it doesn't change the fact they own a larger part of the market than most genres. :p

I probably feel differently about fighting games because I have frankly never met someone who hasn't played one before, while they certainly survive due to their niche status, they tend to surge back in popularity every few years thanks to a new series finally catering to the casual crowd. I think it would be difficult to imagine a gaming generation without a fighting game of some kind on it, so I consider it a staple however niche it really is. Either way, it still shows that RPGs are more popular than they are.

[Bolivar]

I think you need hard dollars and units as opposed to percentages here, since the gaming pie has grown astronomically since 2008, with genres and players that did not before exist. Namely music and rhythm games, the rise of the Wii, and dancing/fitness. The PS3 and 360 were also credited for growing the dedicated console audience larger than it was previously. We also have more PC games for casual players that were previously unavailable on console and made strides to cater to them once they arrived, like The Elder Scrolls and Call of Duty. So an inability to grow with the more mainstream influx of players does not necessarily reflect a retraction.

You're also mistaken when you say JRPGs conform with the modern game length since they only take 40 hours to beat, I assume you probably don't play those games so you wouldn't know. Most AAA action games can be beaten in 5-10 hours, the longest I recently remember is Deus Ex, at about 20. That is, unless they heavily recycle assets as I've mentioned before. Even then, Bethesda was only able to make about a 10 hour story in Skyrim.

[Wolf Kanno]

I understand most AAA titles are super short but as I said, I don't feel the 30-40 hour mark is too long for the causal, especially since many of these games are short and with a week rental you can easily take out a game in quick succession since most JRPGs are ridiculously easy and leave the harder challenges to post-game nonsense. I mean FFX practically built the perfect model for this as the main campaign is short and easy with all the challenging elements catering to the hardcore fans opens near the end of the game. Titles like Xenosaga followed suit. .hack broken its game into 20 hour segments of four to tell its story and games like BoFV can be beaten in under 7 hours as well.

My feeling is that even a casual will know an RPG is a time sink compared to action titles and shooters but I don't agree they see this as a detriment and would thus not buy it because of it. I may agree it can be a factor, but like most problems concerning somethings fall from grace, I would point out I feel the issues stymying the genre is a combination of factors, which is why the genre has been having issues finding its footing because its difficult to tackle them all. Games like Xenoblade and Bravery Default are trying to modernize an aging gameplay structure and mechanic but are still battling issues of getting both wide-acceptance and figuring out how to deal with game length. The Last Story, Persona 3/4, and Valkyria Chronicles are trying to take the genre in a new direction but failed to reach wide acceptance and mostly created new niches for the genre instead. Tails simply caters to its fans and uses word of mouth and their monopoly of the consoles to stay afloat, and the Souls series was pretty much designed from the get-go as a niche genre which is why its surge in popularity last gen has probably baffled so many people. Even FF took a design they did for FFX and ran with it, not paying attention to the fact this design style ended up killing a few franchises in the PS2 era, which is why they were caught flat footed when the game received mixed reviews from fans and critics and they spent the sequels trying to figure out what the masses want. Even though the last gen expanded the gaming audience, I feel most would agree that last gen was pretty bad for the JRPG genre in general as it lacked any real strong contenders as opposed to the PS2 which was a JRPG powerhouse and the PS1 having what some consider to be the finest collection of the genre in its entire history. The question is why did it stumble so badly?

Bringing this back to the gaming model issue, while I feel we can attribute some of the genres problems to not conforming as well to changing dynamics in the industry, I feel that shouldn't change the sentiment to the more die-hard fans of the genre who are usually a bit hard pressed to name five JRPGs from last gen that are good enough to stand proudly with the roster of previous generations. I feel most would agree here that there was certainly a genuine lack of quality this generation and though there are some great games released, none of them were able to really capture the community like in previous generations. Part of me wants to ay the issue is that SE didn't really bother leading the industry like it did the previous generations, instead phoning in their services for the first half of the generation and then playing defensive for the second half as they deal with an audience that questions their ability to produce quality work as they stumbled with their in-house developed titles.

On the brightside, I would say SE learned their lessons and instead of trying to save this lacking last gen, decided to move all their products to next-gen so they could build a strong foothold for the new generation. I'm already annoyed I have to save my money up for a PS4 and eventually a Wii U because this gen looks far more promising.

[Bolivar]

I think we're talking past eachother again. You asked how I can't see a JRPG crisis when Square had expressed the difficulties in modern AAA development and I merely explained that this crisis is not particular to one genre. I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to say about game length, all I'm highlighting is that it's becoming impossible to reconcile fan expectations of an epic adventure lasting more than a few hours with the realities of console development.

Failure to capture an audience does not equate an identity crisis. I remember a Neogaf thread where a user posted the large list of RPGs that actually did come out on PS3 last generation and I honestly can't bring myself to say they look anymore niche than their PS2 predecessors. Admittedly, we did not receive a definitive console Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest but we did receive landmark titles in Demon's Souls, Valkyria Chronicles and Xenoblade. That's not a bad trade at all, doubly so if you remotely appreciate new IP standing out instead of established franchises.

[VeloZer0]

When referring to JRPGs I am referring to a style of game, not a geographic point of origin (and if someone has a better term I would gladly use it). Just because Dark Souls was made in Japan does not make it a JRPG in the sense we are discussing here.

[Wolf Kanno]

I think we are talking past each other as well, my point was that RPGs have adhered to modern development style so I don't feel its as much of a factor as you are putting it as. I still feel the issue is a combination of poor development practices, weak writing, adhering too much to niche audiences, and the continuation of placing story over the detriment of everything else.

I think the issue with the RPG landscape of last gen compared to previous is that we lost a lot of strong flagship franchises and the few we thought we could count on didn't really deliver so it just felt meh. There are certainly strong entries this past generation but I doubt their longevity as future franchises and frankly I felt they were few and far between. I still feel that PS2 simply had a more solid lineup than the PS3 could muster and the few exclusives that might have changed that opinion have moved on to greener pastures. I just don't see myself in five years talking about White Knight Chronicles or Arc Rise Fantasia the same way I'm willing to talk about Suikoden V, Digital Devil Saga, or DQVIII. Hell Okage crosses my mind more often than Enchanted Arms. ;)

I still feel the genre is simply reaping the problems it sowed in previous generations and now has to comply with an audience of very different generations who all feel entitled to have their "vision" of the genre be the only one.

[Loony BoB]

Please, for the sake of common sense, stop comparing FFXIII with Uncharted. Goodness me. It's like comparing Grand Theft Auto IV with The Last of Us. They're bloody different games.

Uncharted, as much as I adore the series, is not a story focused game at all. It's a gameplay focused game, that happens to have great characters and a passable story (I mean, really, the Uncharted stories are generally about as basic and improbable as you'll get in gaming).

So if you're going to say...

My point stands that a story driven action game can deliver a grand story on par with an RPG that had little else to offer.
...then at the very least bother to find a story driven action game. Mass Effect is probably a better example.

Fact is, though, these games are shooters and shooters are generally the most popular games out there. They are dramatically different from JRPGs in so many ways that this very statement baffles me. You might as well question why point and click games are still a thing when every other game involves far more pointing and clicking and other stuff. Basically, some people don't want other stuff in their game.

And that's my pet peeve of this specific thread out of the way. :shifty:

Essentially I disagree that other games are doing story and character "just as good, if not better" than the best RPGs are, with extremely few exceptions (The Last of Us, Dreamfall, perhaps Mass Effect although it fell apart in the long run). I agree with anyone/everyone who says that the story writing is a major problem with RPGs today. I think the characters are often pretty good (I think people get stuck up on cliché personalities, but eccentrics are part of what makes a character interesting and there are only so many eccentricities you can make) but the plots themselves are often very thin, and the villians don't trigger emotional responses from us, nor do the 'big moments' in the games. I think the character dialogue tends to be okay, so the writing of the characters is fine, just... they have such great ideas they throw at us and then they never really grow on them to the correct degree. Also, they lack the balls to kill off characters, or put in any moments that will pluck at our heartstrings.

Finally, and I'm not sure if this has been brought up at all, but we experience emotive responses differently and to different things than we did when we were in our teens. Our age and life experience has probably not helped our case for getting emotional responses to moments in the games. Still, I know movies and TV shows can engage me fully, so it should be possible for games to do the same. The Last of Us and Journey did. Why not FFXIII? Just a poorly executed plot that started out so well and ended so meh.

[Bolivar]

I just don't see myself in five years talking about White Knight Chronicles or Arc Rise Fantasia the same way I'm willing to talk about Suikoden V, Digital Devil Saga, or DQVIII.


Yet you do talk about Xenoblade that way, while others, like it or not, also see Valkyria Chronicles and the Souls games in the same light. A lot of people also seem to feel the same way about Bravely Default and Fire Emblem as well. I'm sure that feeling will keep going when Bloodbourne, Persona 5 and the new Ys all come out next year.

Do you have anything else to fall back on at this point?

[Wolf Kanno]

Please, for the sake of common sense, stop comparing FFXIII with Uncharted. Goodness me. It's like comparing Grand Theft Auto IV with The Last of Us. They're bloody different games.

Uncharted, as much as I adore the series, is not a story focused game at all. It's a gameplay focused game, that happens to have great characters and a passable story (I mean, really, the Uncharted stories are generally about as basic and improbable as you'll get in gaming).

So if you're going to say...

My point stands that a story driven action game can deliver a grand story on par with an RPG that had little else to offer.
...then at the very least bother to find a story driven action game. Mass Effect is probably a better example.

Fact is, though, these games are shooters and shooters are generally the most popular games out there. They are dramatically different from JRPGs in so many ways that this very statement baffles me. You might as well question why point and click games are still a thing when every other game involves far more pointing and clicking and other stuff. Basically, some people don't want other stuff in their game.

And that's my pet peeve of this specific thread out of the way. :shifty:

Essentially I disagree that other games are doing story and character "just as good, if not better" than the best RPGs are, with extremely few exceptions (The Last of Us, Dreamfall, perhaps Mass Effect although it fell apart in the long run). I agree with anyone/everyone who says that the story writing is a major problem with RPGs today. I think the characters are often pretty good (I think people get stuck up on cliché personalities, but eccentrics are part of what makes a character interesting and there are only so many eccentricities you can make) but the plots themselves are often very thin, and the villians don't trigger emotional responses from us, nor do the 'big moments' in the games. I think the character dialogue tends to be okay, so the writing of the characters is fine, just... they have such great ideas they throw at us and then they never really grow on them to the correct degree. Also, they lack the balls to kill off characters, or put in any moments that will pluck at our heartstrings.

Finally, and I'm not sure if this has been brought up at all, but we experience emotive responses differently and to different things than we did when we were in our teens. Our age and life experience has probably not helped our case for getting emotional responses to moments in the games. Still, I know movies and TV shows can engage me fully, so it should be possible for games to do the same. The Last of Us and Journey did. Why not FFXIII? Just a poorly executed plot that started out so well and ended so meh.

BoB, you're missing the point of my argument. My point is that if you only play games for plot, then what does a JRPG offer from a storytelling standpoint, that another genre can't supply if they both have strong stories? For instance, I can say with confidence that MGS3 is a better written game than anything SE released on the PS2, and it's not even a close race. I would also argue MGS3 offers a better gameplay experience over everything SE released on the PS2, again, for me this is not even a close race. Yet I still like FFXII and FFX... well we won't dwell on that.

For the longest time, all the way back to the NES/Master System days, the JRPGs strength lied in its ability to tell a story which most other games didn't or couldn't do. Double Dragon, Mario, and Sonic all have excuse plots to give context but nothing more. It was games like Phantasy Star, DQIV, and FFIV that game the characters more purpose and meaning. If you wanted a thinking game back in the early 90s, you played RPGs or Adventure games because they were not simply about collecting coins, or beating up people. They offered narratives that gave real purpose and created characters with their own story arcs that offered emotional highs and lows, but with the advent of 3D and the gaming industry focusing on more of a cinematic experience, games that once only offered excuses to romp through their worlds were now focusing more on characters and world building. Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Tomb Raider, and hell even Tekken and old school plat-formers began to start emphasizing story and world building into their games. What really separates FFVII from Metal Gear Solid and Silent Hill? Largely gameplay and length but character writing and world building are something they all share.

Most JRPG fans I meet only play the games for the plot, I will argue the gameplay needs to be updated and made more challenging and then they whine on about how they are only here for the story and don't want the gameplay to be improved to hinder their ability to progress, at which point I always question why they bother to play when they could YouTube the custscenes or read a transcript of the game's plot. What does the game portion bring that is worth keeping? If your favorite RPGs didn't have a plot and were just blank slate characters, would you still play them and love them? I'm simply pointing out that JRPGs made a mistake twenty years ago and decided to put all their eggs into one basket in terms of focusing on plot and character to the detriment of everything else. Now they are in an age where good character and storytelling are a dime a dozen, the plots people are talking about this last gen are not XIII's, Xenoblades, or Dark Souls, people are talking about The Last of Us, Bioshock, Uncharted, Spec OPS: The Line, and Mass Effect. The genre's one major attribute is no longer unique or even as good as other genres that have adopted it. So then I ask what does an RPG have left to offer to a gamer? The point I'm getting at is that the genre needs to work on that gameplay part of the game and maybe take a chapter out of some of these other games play book.

When I was young, I forced myself to get further into FFVI, I reached the Opera scene and was surprised to find myself thrust into a story event mini-game with no heads up, I wasn't watching an opera unfold, I was experiencing it through gameplay and it changed my way of thinking both about FFVI and gaming's potential as a storytelling medium. Twenty years later, I'm playing Uncharted that made me playthrough set pieces inspired by Hollywood's finest, Modern Warfare had me experience a soldier's dying breath from radiation poisoning, MGS4 has me seamlessly jumping from story cutscene and frantic motorbike chases, Bioshock is twisting my mind with its clever writing, and FFXIII? Well it made me walk down a long pretty corridor until a custscene happened at which point I placed the controller down and watched it like a good boy, then when it was done, I moved forward, occasionally getting into fights where I let the A.I. do most of the heavy lifting before winning and moving onto the next plot point where again, I sat my controller and watched it like a movie. The genre that kind of pushed the envelope in making the player experience the story twenty years ago has now all but divorced the game and story from each other. The player is no longer involved in what happens, at this point I'm watching a movie or TV series, the player has no agency any longer, and if some of these other games can offer a more stimulating experience then why are we bothering with JRPGs?

I'm simply trying to get to the core of why we play these games, especially since all we ever seem to do is whine about how they are not as good as the old days but still we stand in line for the next installment because we've apparently been trained too. So why do we keep doing this to ourselves? Is there some inherent value to the genre that is understood but not said that keeps us coming back or are we simply Pavlov's Dogs salivating to a bell that signals the JRPG of yore we grew up on, even though its been years since the genre offered an experience on par with it?



Yet you do talk about Xenoblade that way, while others, like it or not, also see Valkyria Chronicles and the Souls games in the same light. A lot of people also seem to feel the same way about Bravely Default and Fire Emblem as well. I'm sure that feeling will keep going when Bloodbourne, Persona 5 and the new Ys all come out next year.

Do you have anything else to fall back on at this point?

Two of those games mentioned are handhelds and part of a different gaming generation as it is. Two of the other games are infamous for cleaning up the muck the genre has become by offering challenge and a streamlined interface that doesn't sacrifice the strengths of the genre's game design principles. Neither game is helped by one alienating its audience with its brutal difficulty and the other saw a limited release on a console most self-professed "hardcore" gamers would prefer to forget about. Doesn't change they were both wonderful though.

Yes, there were some great gems this generation, but you can't tell me that in another five years, supposing we get a good stock this current generation (and it's already looking more promising) that we won't be looking back to this period and saying it was definitely the weakest generation in terms of good games in the genre.

[Bolivar]

I'm simply pointing out that JRPGs made a mistake twenty years ago and decided to put all their eggs into one basket in terms of focusing on plot and character to the detriment of everything else.

You sound like someone who's never played a game designed by Hiroyuki Ito.



Two of those games mentioned are handhelds and part of a different gaming generation as it is. Two of the other games are infamous for cleaning up the muck the genre has become by offering challenge and a streamlined interface that doesn't sacrifice the strengths of the genre's game design principles.

A) What does handheld and generation have to do with it?

B) From Software and Sega have been making games like those for 20 years.

C) This sentence:


Neither game is helped by one alienating its audience with its brutal difficulty and the other saw a limited release on a console most self-professed "hardcore" gamers would prefer to forget about.

makes absolutely no sense.

It really seems like you'd be better served playing some of the awesome games that have come out recently instead of complaining about them on the internet.

[Wolf Kanno]

I'm simply pointing out that JRPGs made a mistake twenty years ago and decided to put all their eggs into one basket in terms of focusing on plot and character to the detriment of everything else.

You sound like someone who's never played a game designed by Hiroyuki Ito.

None of which are terribly challenging. He helped design two of my favorite games of all time but I don't consider either a challenge and I still feel the games make it easier for newcomers with only optional stuff for veterans.




Two of those games mentioned are handhelds and part of a different gaming generation as it is. Two of the other games are infamous for cleaning up the muck the genre has become by offering challenge and a streamlined interface that doesn't sacrifice the strengths of the genre's game design principles.

A) What does handheld and generation have to do with it?

B) From Software and Sega have been making games like those for 20 years.


I don't feel the Phantasy Star Online/Universe were terribly challenging and while King's Field is hard as balls, there is a reason no one has ever heard of them until Demon's Souls came out. I think you and I have very different criteria for challenging and not feeling like the game is holding your hand... Also I just don't like Valkyria Chronicles, I can appreciate what it tries to do but I find the games lacking and the story and characters atrocious anime fluff. You might eat it up because you sound like someone who avoids those type of games but as a long time anime fan and person who doesn't mind anime nonsense in my games I can tell you I have had my fill.

As for the handheld comment, I say that simply because several RPG fans, in this thread no less, have mentioned how they consider them "watered down experiences" which while I disagree, doesn't really change the fact that despite several wonderful handheld exclusive JRPGs coming out that were stellar, they are only talked about by people who like playing handhelds and are largely ignored by the rest of the fanbase. I mean SE doesn't really have a JRPG problem when it comes to handhelds, its their console entries most people have issues with. I also just don't really count titles on the 3DS as last gen, which is what I'm referring to when I speak about a poor selection, though the DS certainly had some strong entries.


C) This sentence:


Neither game is helped by one alienating its audience with its brutal difficulty and the other saw a limited release on a console most self-professed "hardcore" gamers would prefer to forget about.

makes absolutely no sense.

Again I'm pointing out that despite being great games, they will be niche. Kind of like Earthbound (released after everyone moved onto new console generation) or Tales of Symphonia ( largely loved for being a great JRPG on a console that had four JRPGs worth talking about) as opposed to titles that had universal appeal.


It really seems like you'd be better served playing some of the awesome games that have come out recently instead of complaining about them on the internet.

You are more than welcome to point them out to me cause I look across the field of this past generation and don't see much worth getting worked up over. Again, I do feel there are exceptions but as I was trying to point out it won't be as much of a collective narrative, instead it will be:

RPG Fan #1 - I loved Demon's Souls and Dark Souls
Fan #2 and #3 - I hear they were good but way too hard for our taste.
Fan #2 - What about Xenoblade Chronicles, that was a fantastic game that changed what a JRPG could be!
Fan #1 and #3 - We wanted to play that but we don't like the Wii, the 3DS version was a watered down handheld, and frankly it was hard to find.
Fan #3 - What about Bravery Default?
Fan #1 - I owned a Vita.
Fan #2 - I prefer console titles, handhelds are just too small and I prefer sitting back on my couch and watching it on my $1000 entertainment center. smurf handhelds...
Fan #1, #2, and #3 - So why are we all talking together again?
Fan #1 - Well Persona 3 and FFX were good...
Fan #2 and #3 - Oh yeah, those were great games! Why can't developers make them like they used to....

I lifted most of these comments from people on this forum, so don't try to say this isn't true. I'm just saying that this past gen was pretty weak for a JRPG fan and lacked a smorgasbord of great options like previous generations.

With that said, I feel we're probably going to go in circles on this issue as well and I'm bored of the topic at present since everyone seems to be unable to "see the forest for the trees" so I say we just quit while we're ahead and still willing to talk to each other. :wcanoe:

[Pumpkin]

I've overall been pretty pleased with the current gen RPG's. I usually wait a few years to buy games but I've been buying quite a few newer ones lately and overall I would say I'm happy with it.

Looking at some numbers from my in progress game list, I have about the same number of current gen RPG's as the other generations. Current (for me) meaning PS3/Wii/XBox 360/3DS/PSP.

[Skyblade]

I'm not sure JRPGs have ever really been about plot. Most of them have dead simple plots, if you break them down. They're just "go fight bad guy and save the world". Which is FINE. Because the character moments, the sub-stories within that plot, and the immersive nature of the world of JRPGs is far more important than the actual plot.

But JRPG designers keep hearing "oh, it's all about the plot", so they build up these huge, overarching plots that turn out to be complete nonsense that no one can follow and understand.

[Loony BoB]

I don't think anyone "only" plays games for plot, they merely play games that focus on the plot and have more to them than that. Otherwise they'd watch a movie or a TV series.

For everything that most of the games you mentioned offer, they don't focus on the story while still offering good gameplay, they focus on the gameplay while still offering good story. However, for the most part, these plots aren't the kind of plots that would work for a Final Fantasy game. JRPGs tend to be a lot more global in their premise, and involve a lot more fantasy. Zombie plots and nuclear war plots are great and all, but they do not belong in a Final Fantasy game.

The only problem with JRPGs from my perspective is that the plots aren't as good as they used to be. The gameplay, for me, is still decent. It could definitely improve, don't get me wrong - but if these JRPGs had incredible plots then it wouldn't matter so much.

I can also see a lot of reason in Skyblade's thought regarding plot vs. characters.


I'm simply trying to get to the core of why we play these games, especially since all we ever seem to do is whine about how they are not as good as the old days but still we stand in line for the next installment because we've apparently been trained to. So why do we keep doing this to ourselves?
Every individual is different. I personally always want to play the next FF game because I know it will be something different. The previous game can be bad and there's still every chance I'll like the next one. That's the beauty of a Final Fantasy game for me in particular - each game is different in ways that shooters can't manage. I like multiple genres, and that's because I enjoy variety in my video games. RPGs happen to offer the largest amount of variety within their own genre, in my experience. JRPGs tend to focus more on the story, and I like a good character and a good "global plot", so these things work for me. I also like the surrealism and fantasy involved in them - they take you to a new world each time. That's awesome.


Is there some inherent value to the genre that is understood but not said that keeps us coming back or are we simply Pavlov's Dogs salivating to a bell that signals the JRPG of yore we grew up on, even though its been years since the genre offered an experience on par with it?
It seems to me you're talking more about yourself than about other people. :smash: I, for one, enjoy the games I play. You should try that sometime... focus on just having fun instead of analysing everything. ;)

I don't want a complete lack of challenge in my JRPG. I don't want it to be TOO challenging, either. Personally I am happy with just having to have fun. What you define as a complete lack of challenge is different to what others will define, though. You probably are much better at overcoming challenges that other people might have more trouble with. This is A Thing That Happens. I'm better at gaming than some people, I'm worse than others. Same goes for you. If you happen to prefer your games ultrahard, then good for you, but that probably won't fly for most people.

Gameplay should never be confused with difficulty. The two are linked in some ways, but you can have games with incredible gameplay and next to no difficulty and vice versa.

[Bolivar]

I, for one, enjoy the games I play. You should try that sometime... focus on just having fun instead of analysing everything.
Gameplay should never be confused with difficulty.

[escobert]

When has SE ever been in touch with their fanbase?

This right here.

[Fynn]

To Bolivar and BoB - Awesomeness By Analysis (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AwesomenessByAnalysis). Perhaps some people (myself included) are entertained by analyzing things? I know that I can enjoy a shallow but well-executed game, but if I find that, upon analysis, it still holds ground or, even better, is that much more awesome, I will derive so much more pleasure from it. So please stop telling people how they should enjoy games because for all the bitching we analytical players do, it's the way we play and it deserves respect.

[Scotty_ffgamer]

I stopped following this thread a long time ago, but just in line with Fynn's post I can say that analysis is a big part of the enjoyment for me in story-driven games. It even has the potential of turning a very mediocre game into something a lot more interesting (which happened after I played through the XIII trilogy.)

[Ayen]

If I have to shut off my brain to enjoy something then there is obviously something wrong with said thing.

[Bolivar]

I'm sure the three of you know perfectly well how much BoB and I love analyzing video games.

That is not the same thing as arguing away all the awesome experiences out there right now so you can convince everyone (and seemingly oneself) that the sky is falling.

[Sephiroth]

If I have to shut off my brain to enjoy something then there is obviously something wrong with said thing.

Which makes 75% of all stories impossible to enjoy then.

[Ayen]

If I have to shut off my brain to enjoy something then there is obviously something wrong with said thing.

Which makes 75% of all stories impossible to enjoy then.

Which makes me appreciate the good stories.

[Vyk]

Agreed. This is why I enjoy so few things. AAA games rarely do it for me. But certain things hit AAA calibur for personal experience, and that's basically all I look for anymore. I don't have time to waste on sub-par experiences much anymore

[Loony BoB]

I stopped following this thread a long time ago, but just in line with Fynn's post I can say that analysis is a big part of the enjoyment for me in story-driven games. It even has the potential of turning a very mediocre game into something a lot more interesting (which happened after I played through the XIII trilogy.)
I think the analysis you do and the analysis WK does are different things, personally. If you find the analysis you can do in FFXIII's trilogy to be amazing yet WK considers it to be one of the worst games in existence, well... yeah.

I will however note that there was a notable wink (left out in Bolivar's quoting of me) at the end of my suggestion that people stop analysing the games and just play them to have fun. It was a very tongue in cheek comment to WK, and as a friend I like to think he can take that as good as he gives (and he certainly gives! xD).

I stand by my stance that difficulty and gameplay are two different things, though, even if they can affect each other.

Still, this debate only brings up another point: If it's a case of me not being able to tell you guys to stop analysing a game, who are the people in this thread to say that JRPGs are no longer good? Nothing more than fans disgruntled that the latest RPG isn't something they liked.

I suppose I look at Final Fantasy like I look at Doctor Who, while perhaps Wolf Kanno looks at Final Fantasy like I look at, say, Game of Thrones. The former is a whimsical thing where most of the stuff flat out doesn't make sense and is often corny, but that's why we love it. Game of Thrones is a notably more serious series that is there to be taken seriously. All the things that happen have to make sense on some level. So you have one successful series where you take everything with a gigantic pinch of salt, and another series where you expect things to make sense upon deep analysis.

I really enjoy both Doctor Who and Game of Thrones. I can get enjoyment out of silly stories and serious stories and everything inbetween. Forrest Gump is another great example of sometimes silly, sometimes serious, but always a wonderful story. Even Lord of the Rings has some silly and some serious moments, and a lot of things that don't quite make sense but are wonderful all the same (hi, Tom Bombadil). If I were to analyse these stories with toothpicks then I would be missing out on incredible stories for the sake of details.

I think another film - Big Fish - would be an interesting watch for anyone who hasn't seen it. It touches on analysis and storytelling in a superb way. Sometimes you have to accept a story for what it is - a story. Sometimes there are parts that are absurd, sometimes there are parts that are "analytically acceptable" (?). But in the end, a story can be whatever the story wants to be. I feel that FFXIII was by no means the best in the series but it was very, very far from the worst. I can think of many stories - particularly in the way of the global plot - over the years that have been horrible in the FF series. FFVIII, a game I love, had an awful global plot. But I can put aside my grievances and still enjoy the character story, the insane orphanage link, etc. until I can see the good things in the game. But then, I always do my best to see the good in things. It's just the way I am.

And Fynn, there is a difference in going out of your way to find even more awesome things (I do this too!) and going out of your way to find flaws and them focusing on said flaws instead of putting them aside for the sake of enjoyment. Again - Big Fish. :D

[Scotty_ffgamer]

For what it's worth, I hadn't read any of the newer posts outside of Fynn's post before I posted. People will have different things stand out to them as they analyze a work though, but yeah. For me, XIII is easily the worst game in the series. XIII-2 and LR improved on that, but the story still wasn't great if you took it for what it was. There was a lot of interesting things going on in the background of the story. The mythology was actually fascinating to me by the time I beat LR, but most of that wasn't the focus of the story. Honestly, a lot of the things I found really interesting through analyzing that story were things that were probably unintentional on the part of the game developers.

Coincidentally, VIII is my favorite game in the series. I generally just take the story at face value, but there so much room for interpretation in that game that the story can practically be anything I want it to be. It's a lot of fun to interpret that story in vastly different ways.

[Loony BoB]

Further cementing the point that different people will like different things, and neither of us should be considered "wrong" for it!

I found the mythology to be central to every plot in the XIII series although the world plot wasn't made as important as the character development (which is par for the Final Fantasy course - it's always about the characters dealing with the world plot rather than the world plot itself).

[Scotty_ffgamer]

Well, it was sort of central to the plot, but a lot of the things that I found really interesting were just things kind of in the background. You have to do some digging around to get into a lot of the details. As I looked around for and thought about some of those details, I realized that a lot of the mythology in the background is pretty well thought out and fascinating. I just don't think that mythology was told very well in game. But that's just me. We're all different like you said.

[Loony BoB]

Yep. If you think about it, Elder Scrolls gets highly praised for things you can find in the background of the game that help flesh things out. I see this similarly, if not nearly as extensive. =]

But yeah, games like I, V, VIII, X... the plots leave me going "eh" a lot of the time. XII may have been more well planned but for me, it was just boring. Essentially I have never really seen world plots as a strong point for FF, bar maybe 1-2 of the games. But then few world plots entertain me to the degree a single FF character plot will. :D

[Bolivar]

Honestly I enjoyed reading the fleshed out lore upon loading a save or to break up the action. Just felt like a streamlined Elder Scrolls to me (of which I am a huge lore junkie).

[black orb]

Why does SE believe that people don't like JPRGs?
>>> It sound like the perfect excuse of a company who make bad games..:luca:

[VeloZer0]

Why does SE believe that people don't like JPRGs?
>>> It sound like the perfect excuse of a company who make bad games..:luca:
After 9 pages I think we have winner. :lol: