JRPG's in the current generation - What happened?

[G-Boobie]

IMHO jrpgs are going for more flash, and style over substance (can be said about most genres these days). The older jrpgs didn't have Shakesperean plots all the time, but they were damn fun. No learning obtuse battle systems that actually can detract from the game as a whole.

I dunno, man, to me JRPG's are all about mastering a system; especially games like SMT and Grandia. That's all a JRPG is, in the end: a neat system to figure out and exploit.

Yeah, there's story and the world the game is set in, but they all tend to blend together after awhile.

[Icarus Moonsight]

Marvel Comics presents: What If? Emo kids had super powers!?

Androgynous, spiky haired, angst filled, dark and brooding anti-heroes out to save the world and bitch and whine about random stuff along the way, for the eleven-billionth time. Both saving and whining.

This is why I can sit at home and play Etrian for hours on end and the next day pass by The World Ends With You in the aisles, uniterested... They gummed it up IMO. Made shit either too stupid (silly is good, stupid? not so much) or too complex (or both! yikes) for the eventual payoff. I say, if that's how it's gonna be, more Wizardry-clones and Rougelikes for me please. If it's really about game system abuse and maximizing benefits while keeping penalties to a minumum those types of games will do just fine. But, may I ask, make me earn it? I've had my fun with Vanish/X-Zone, Knights of the Round/Mime and the like... I want a mountain to climb and explore. Not an elevator ride to the top with a chatty operator that has a cat-girl fetish.

[chicnstu]

Blue Dragon I have no opinion about. Everyone I know was disappointed with it, so I didn't touch it.

I loved Blue Dragon but didn't enjoy Lost Odyssey very much. Here is my opinion (if anyone cares):

Lost Odyssey:

Bad:

I got tired of the Ring system (I never got tired of the Judgment Ring in Shadow Hearts: FtNW), the overall "twitchyness" of the game (Unreal Engine seems like a pile of crap to me, every game I've played that uses it has that "twitchyness" problem), the sometimes almost 1 minute load times for one battle, and the inconsistency of the scenes.

Good:

Story - My favorite story in any game, I thought that scene with the kids and their mom was very well done, very emotional. Some of the scenes are awesome with their animations and lip-syncing being human made, but with most of the scenes the development team just made the characters loop an animation and the lip-syncing wasn't even worked on. I wish all of the scenes had been made well before being shipped.

Characters - I thought Jansen was hilarious, he was the funniest character I've ever seen, I even thought he was funnier than most movie or TV characters, but GameInformer talked like they despised him.

Blue Dragon:

Bad:

Story - A very generic story. That's the only thing I didn't like, but it's not like I hated it, it was just "there". Hearing Shu say "I....won't....give...up" so many times was annoying. It sounded like the developer's felt like he needed his on phrase like Naruto's "Believe it".

Good:

Gameplay - The battles in the game were so much fun for me. In the overall game there was so much to do, so many numbers to manage (an RPG fan knows that's a good thing), it was so much fun switching the Shadow's classes to give them the abilities you wanted them to have. There was also more variety to the environments (there was even a cute little Christmas mask-party town, my favorite place in the game).

Way less technical problems than Lost Odyssey, everything felt so much smoother in Blue Dragon.

I loved the character/enemy designs, the overall game felt like a great combination of Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy.

JRPG's in the current generation - What happened?

I've always blamed it on the 360 for two reasons:

1. It's a system made in the United States, and it doesn't sell well in Japan (Japanese RPGs come from....Japan, and have almost always been on Japanese systems)

2. It came out a whole year before Wii and PS3. So most of the companies continued putting their RPGs on PS2 or made them for DS. So because they did that, it makes sense that it would take a while for more Japanese RPGs to start being made, which probably means most will move to Wii, especially since Dragon Quest X is coming to the system.

[kupomogli]

Not just Famitsu, but I honestly don't know any legitimate news sources that don't get paid off some way or another for good reviews.

I think after the Gamespot fiasco everyone knows that review scores are usually payoffs. It's pretty stupid though if you ask me. Because of all this, everyone gets all these specific scores yet none of these games deserve the scores in comparison to other titles that actually do.

Let's not forget about most review places going by the 10 point score rating which ultimately fails as 99% of all games are atleast a 6/10. So there aren't any games that actually suck? They're all average? That's a load of BS. So you can't really give an honest opinion of a review as you don't know whether 7/10 for review A is full of shit or the 7/10 for review B is correct and it may actually be a playable game.

[Aussie2B]

You can't apply the law of averages to games, or really anything that's being critiqued on its merits. Under a perfectly balanced scale, there should be just as many games deserving a 5 or lower as games that deserve a 6 or higher, but it would be a pretty sad state of affairs if there was just as many poor games out there as good games. It's only logical to assume that results would be skewed toward the positive end because games largely sell based on their quality and most game developers want to create a quality product, so there is both a financial and personal need to not release a sub-par game.

So really, it's inappropriate to use the word "average" to describe the quality of a game because there is no true average. What people really mean is "mediocre".

[BHvrd]

I was super-excited for White Knight Chronicles, but Famitsu gave it a 29/40.

Well crud.

I wonder if the online portion is salvageable.

[G-Boobie]

Well crud.

I wonder if the online portion is salvageable.

Never trust Famitsu when a Square Enix game is involved. As has been stated earlier in the thread, they gave Last Remnant a 39, and that game was crap. Speaking broadly and reductively(as is my normal method), Famitsu sucks. Actually, damn near every professional reviewer sucks. I tend to trust DP posters and friends as far as reviews go...

[Melf]

Well crud.

I wonder if the online portion is salvageable.

It's been said that the online portion is actually the bad part, and that single-player is where it's at, and that came straight from Famitsu itself. Take that as you will.

I'm really enjoying Infinite Undiscovery, and I liked Enchanted Arms a lot. I've got Lost Odyssey on tap, and White Knight Chronicles is on its way. Plus, there are all the great DS releases, DQ 9 & 10 coming... who said it was a bad time for JPRGs?

[chicnstu]

Let's not forget about most review places going by the 10 point score rating which ultimately fails as 99% of all games are at least a 6/10. So there aren't any games that actually suck? They're all average? That's a load of BS.

It makes sense to me for most games to average 6/10 (average). That's the way most things in life are...average. It's rare to find something above average, and it's rare to find something below average.

Also, it takes a lot of money to make most games and it takes a while to make a complete game. So if a company is going to spend a large amount of money and time, most will try to make their game at least a little fun. I also believe that most people that work for the company care if their game is fun, they want to make the next big hit (most with the intention to make more money).