Yeah... I don't feel WKC is that great of a game. Its story is kind of ho-hum and its battle system is actually pretty boring beyond the combo system. Even the White Knight is actually kind of boring to play as. It also borrows much more heavily into more annoying aspects of MMOs. I don't care for Valkyria Chronicles as a story, and I definetly don't believe its had much of an impact on RPGs as Bolivar seems to believe. The game play is good but it's story borrows too heavily from other anti-war anime like Gundam, to not feel irritating after awhile. Which is a shame because it has potential.

Demon's Souls is an awesome game, I just refuse to say its an RPG because it isn't. Its an action game with RPG elements, but progress is less about levels and even equipment to some degree, and more about pure skill. The fact leveling gets harder as you go through New Game+ pretty much just drives home the point that the RPG elements are not the major contributing factor to success and are simply a minor buffer to reward skill. If you suck at this game, its because you the player suck, and no amount of stat boosts or special equipment is going to change that. It really has more in common with an action game than an RPG. Hell, DMC and GoW have leveling systems but they're still considered action games. The game also has no real story, just a loose but incredibly engrossing narrative. It's fantastic and easily one of the best new games this console generation.

I'm with Del, there is a drought of good console JRPGs this generation. Even Squenix has admitted XIII wasn't everyone's cup of tea and even promised to let the team take a break so they can "re-learn" how to make them like they use to, and they've flat out apologized for FFXIV. They don't have a great track record in-house for the console market. Also, they're too recent "short development time" titles are both sequels to established products (FFXIII-2 and Dissidia Duodecim) and many of the game they mentioned as doing this model tend to have the benefit of having the core game elements and engine established. AC: Brotherhood is not exactly a great departure from AC2 both visually or gameplay-wise. As Del said, XIII-2 is practically an "apology" game that is trying to address all the grievances from the first game.

I'm curious to see what this development model would do for the final product because the games that utilize it now, basically work on the principle of fine tuning the game each year, but there is no drastic change between each installment. I'm curious to know what Squenix would use as the gameplay basis or if they would simply stick to come up with new systems but make them more simple and development friendly.