I haven't grown out of playing JRPGs and still love them as I did years ago. Though I've steered away from most of the generic sword/sorcery games that dominate the genre. I like a modern setting for my RPGs, so I've found the Megaten series a godsend. I'd recommend Devil Summoner 2. The game takes place in Japan during the '20s, and you're a detective solving cases involving demons. Battles are done in real time a la .Hack and there is plenty of sidequests.
I so can't stand FF10 most the time, not just for the Sphere System. The Dress thingamaboober system in X-2 made more sense.Originally Posted by kupomogli
Anyhow love Xenogears. The story has so much emotion to it: happiness, confusion, even parts that would bring a tear to your eye. I really should get to finishing it...
My Gaming Collection (Now at Google Drive!)
FF7 was the beginning of the end for me. I've gotten very selective since then. Either the game has to be a rougelike or dungeon crawler, heavy in exploration (Wizardry/M&M etc), very action/reflex orientated (Diablo, PSO etc), or straight up strategy (Ogre Battle and Dragonforce converted me to Stratism) where movement, formations, micromanagement and such is a major battle system factor over the usual one-side of the screen vs the other, tap A to win, menu battles.
There are some good JRPGs since FF7; Valkyrie Profile, SMT: Nocturne (I find that I don't care for the Persona's much), DQ8 and FF12 looked interesting enough for me to pick up, but I'm very FF shy these days. I'll get to ut eventually though. I could go either way on it still. Depends.
For a genre I used to really be into, the games take to much time to finish and the payoff for all that investment is usually lacking in luster. Makes you feel cheated. Few JRPGs escape this, at least it seems so to me.
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I think Final Fantasy VII and X were worthwhile for the storylines. 9 was good in some parts but horrible in others. 8 was torturous and pretty much made me weary of other FF games. Actually X was also a real mixed bag, but I loved the ending and that sort of made up for it. At least the last boss wasn't a jack-in-the-box villain. X-2 and XII I gave up on. XII I found myself really enjoying the battles in, but eventually the whole game was just monster hunter with a stupid storyline.
The Dragon Quest series really seems to work better for me, tho most of them don't have the greatest storylines. They're more about character development and the way they tell the story than the actual story itself.
I've been playing the SFC remake of Dragon Quest II for the first time the past two weeks, and I must say I love it. In that game, you are only given vague clues of where places are, and you have to do some real aimless exploration to find the places you need to go. Sure, some might find this to be frustrating, but I love the fact that you have to do some real exploration. It is a wonderful game, but the fan translation has some showstopping bugs, so beware.
The only recent JRPG I have played lately is Star Ocean. It featured crappy Final Fight inspired battles, a major letdown in the storyline (seriously, the apocalypse happened on Earth, and that aspect was thrown to the wayside in favour of some girly-boy elf?) and way too many enemy encounters. I played FFX for about two and a half hours, and there was about 10 minutes of actual gameplay.
I think the major downfall of the JRPG is that after FF7, there was far too much emphasis on flash at the expense of gameplay and exploration. I mean, I was watching my brother play Xenosaga, and there seriously were points where you had to sit through over an hour of cinema. If I wanted to watch a movie, I would buy a movie! Dragon Quest II is still more fun than any console based RPG that I have played that has come out in the past decade, because it brings out the adventurer in me.
<Evan_G> i keep my games in an inaccessable crate where i can't play them
Star Ocean and Final Fight? o_O Now that's a comparison I've never encountered before nor expected to.
Are you kidding? When I first started doing the battles, that was the first thing that came to mind. Maybe the first three games in the series are different, but the Xbox 360 game had a fighting system that worked almost exactly the same as an old style beat-em-up.
And I should mention that games like Final Fight bore the hell out of me with their repetitive nature and enemies that take a lot of hits to defeat.
<Evan_G> i keep my games in an inaccessable crate where i can't play them
Ah, I assumed you were talking about the original Star Ocean. I wouldn't say any of the others remind me of Final Fight at all and I've never heard anybody bring up Final Fight as a comparison to them, but I haven't played Star Ocean 4 yet and wouldn't know what people would compare it to.
The last JRPG I had played was FFVII, then right around the time I finished it, I was out of video gaming for several years (almost ten!). When I returned, I played Morrowind on Xbox and was ruined forever for linear RPGs.
I feel bad for anyone who can't enjoy older RPGs anymore. In the past year, my girlfriend has discovered how much fun older rpgs are so we play them together. We are running though all my old NES, SNES, and PS favs and I still enjoy them all. (PS games are still not as great for me because I seem to not enjoy 3D gameplay).
I don't really outgrow games I like I suppose. I actually have trouble getting into newer games. I have had a ps3 for years and I still don't own a single game for it (but I have the 60 gig so awesome backwards compatibility), and the only thing my 360 gets touched for is Rock Band. There is something about older gameplay that is missing for me now, and I can't let it go.
I think it's because there's a level of bullshit a lot of older RPGs had that newer RPGs don't. Most of the bullshit was time consuming and tedious. "Go here for no reason at all and clear out all the monsters." "Spend an hour grinding so you can beat that one boss." "Random battle every five steps or six steps." At 12 and 13 years old we didn't mind. First of all, it was all we knew. That was the standard at the time so we put up with it even if we didn't really enjoy those aspects. I know I personally never liked random battles. Second of all, we had lots more time to kill so those time sinks weren't so frustrating. We can still go back and play older games and enjoy them just fine. But the flaws just seem to be a bit more noticeable.
But many of these "features" are just as prominent in your typical MMORPG.
"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." --Bertrand Russel (attributed)
I have definitely found myself less satisfied with standard RPG fare these days, however there will often be one game in 10 that I really truely enjoy due to dramatic departures from the norm in either storyline or gameplay. If I could pick one RPG I would recommend to a newcomer to the genre, it would be Grandia II (on the DC of course, playing it on PS2 or PC is disgraceful :P). I know some people love it and some hate it, but I have to say that I more then love it. For one thing the battle mechanics are brilliant, and the storyline... WOW.
*******SPOILER ALERT!!! IF YOU HAVE NOT PLAYED GRANDIA II THEN READ PAST THIS POINT AT YOUR OWN RISK*******
I found it to be satisfying in every way. Even though the characters are young they are not childish. The storyline is very mature if you look a bit beyond the obvious. For instance the main plot is pretty plainly an alegory about corruption in the catholic church. Also the whole concept of the Jungian duality of man portrayed by Elena/Millenia was very deep and thought provoking. The whole idea of the "love-triangle" between Ryudo, Elena, and Millenia was also a huge departure from the usual one-girl-love-of-my-life that is typical in RPG storylines.
Go up to your brother, kill him with your gun. Leave him lying in his uniform dying in the sun. War, it's never been so much fun.
Regarding the plot: I always felt that if one took a plot out of a soap opera, that it would make a good rpg plot...I mean, not necessarily a logical plot, yet it would be different and keep the player guessing until the last moment.
I've found it hard to get into newer RPGs. Mostly because in my mind, they're almost all the same - same settings and story elements, etc. And because I like more of the older 16-bit RPGs better (Chrono Trigger, FF IV and VI, etc).
*shudder* If anyone ever tried to make an RPG out of the Filipino soap operas I've seen, that would be a mistake in so many ways... there's enough screaming and depression and domestic violence in those to make you feel guilty to be alive...
Then again, maybe it WOULD work - instead of the main character being a whiny emo self-destructive person, ALL of them are!!
I have always preferred western RPGs, and consider them superior in many ways to JRPGs in terms of exploration and / or plot. I'm really amazed that everyone's mentioning Fallout 3 and Morrowind but not a hint of the Ultima series. Ultima VII may perhaps be a penultimate game in the western RPG genre - full-bodied and immersive exploration (harvest wheat, grind it to flour, bake it into bread, sell the loaves to characters who actually go home and sleep at night and wake up and come to the bakery in the morning, then to work), a good and epic storyline with an appropriately evil villain (Underworld 2 really expanded this; loved that game - it was a Morrowind precursor for sure), memorable characters...it's simply fantastic. There's a reason Richard Garriott was rich enough to take a trip into space. Too bad EA raped the series and U8 / 9 sucked hard.
After something like Ultima VII, I just never felt that any JRPGs topped it. I enjoyed FF7 and found it iconic and a lot of fun, but it just wasn't quite as immersive or fun - and I absolutely hated the fact that most of the best items were hidden in some random nook or cranny in one particular town that would be destroyed (and unavailable) once a certain point in the painfully linear plotline had passed.
I, too, don't bother with these FMV-crammed JRPG extravaganzas that come out these days...dungeon crawlers and / or a game with an expansive RPG-like mechanic (but little in the way of storyline) like Pokemon is enough to satisfy me on the great level / exp mechanics in JRPGs.
Of course, western RPGs haven't told really amazing stories lately, either. With Looking Glass Studios and Origin shuttered, we really only have Bioware (KOTOR was pretty excellent), and they were never really quite as good (Deus Ex owns any Bioware story that's ever come out, I'm sorry)...and now that EA owns Bioware I'm not exactly expecting an uptick in quality...
You are startled by a grim snarl. Before you, you see 1 Red dragon. Will your stalwart band choose to (F)ight or (R)un?
Deus Ex is really my favorite PC game, and it's become my yardstick for measuring other PC games (which is why I didn't love Bioshock).
Western RPGs have always been a bit more mature, but I think that's pretty much understood. Still, I had a lot of moments in Fallout 3 and Oblivion where I thought to myself, "this would be a lot more appealing if I were younger." Bethesda's dialog system borders on absurdity at times, and the voice acting doesn't help. I tried to get into KOTOR, but the D&D system has always felt kinda odd to me. I keep trying to play Baldur's Gate, but I just haven't been able to get into the right mindset to really enjoy it.
I honestly don't mind the overabundant cutscenes. If I wanted to play an action game, I'd pick up a shooter. If the gameplay is at least decent, I have no problem with half-hour cutscenes, as long as they adds to the story quality. I think that western RPGs get tripped up here, because they tend to avoid cutscenes. I feel bewildered when everything is in your own view, never cutting away.
I've only played a few of the recent Western RPGs and I hate them. Oblivion and the one before it (Morrowind, just remembered the name), Fallout 3... I just can't get into these games at all. I did enjoy the Wizardry ports on NES/SNES and Might & Magic ports (tho haven't spent as much time w/ them yet), but I really need a compelling storyline or actually ANY storyline to get me going. Vague shit like "take this letter to some dude in some far away town" just doesn't cut it for me. I don't like first-person action in my RPGs either, particularly when the game feels more like a shooter than an RPG (Fallout 3, Mass Effect). Besides that, all the shit you can do in these games tends to be overwhelming. After I'm done picking flowers, it just feels weird to wander upon a house in the woods that immediately gets attacked and set on fire. Like they were just waiting for me to show up.
Anyway, I can understand how some people really go for this, but I need more direction and a more compelling storyline to push me forward in a game. I'm all for non-linearity, but it has to be done a certain way for me to enjoy it. Dragon Warrior started out very non-linear yet was also very linear, but certain things if you were clever enough you could do them early, like defeating the dragon. I want to feel like the world is pretty much open if I can just figure out how to explore it, but also feel like I need to go do this and that quickly, not just wander around doing whatever. I'm not sure I've ever played a game that felt like that tho.
I get the distinct impression upon reading this that you should play Ultima VII. I won't give anything away so as to not ruin the story, but it does pretty much hit that balance: after the initial town (you are "trapped" inside until you beat the first quest, which isn't terribly cumbersome and serves to get you used to the interface), you are pretty much free to explore the entire world, but you're given a task to do / figure out - it seems somewhat urgent, and while the gameworld doesn't end if you don't and you can wander, there's an evil coming that you're meant to thwart (and you're introduced to this evil in the opening cutscene).
You are startled by a grim snarl. Before you, you see 1 Red dragon. Will your stalwart band choose to (F)ight or (R)un?
I don't really have a computer to play games on, that's pretty much why I don't.The only Ultima games I've tried were console ports and they were/are awful. I'll look into whether I can find this game and if I can find a way to run it or not, tho, since I definitely do want to see what the big deal about Ultima is (I know the ports are poor substitutes for the PC versions).
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