All JRPG needs to be liked again is to be gritty.

[Silvianoshei]

I don't really think so. I played Ni No Kuni, which is about as far away from gritty as you can get, and shit gets real in that game. Gritty, dirty stuff should be left to WRPGs I'd like JRPGs to keep their high minded philosophizing and political intrigue.

But drop the stupid cheesy friendship is magic bullshit. Leave that to the ponies.

 

[sageoftruth]

I play JRPG's because they are not gritty and are far from it. The only problem I have with JRPG's is the characters. Keep in mind that all this is really my opinion. Take Chie from Persona 4. At the moment I cannot stand her, she is one of the most annoying characters I have ever come across. I hope she gets better, I'm only a few hours in, just started playing yesterday. Another set of annoying characters would be the two kids in Lost Odyssey. Yes they come from a tragic moment and all that jazz but they were still highly annoying. The same with Final Fantasy games; Vaan in Final Fantasy 12, many of the characters in FF13. And a lot of the time I do not enjoy the whole "strong and silent and broody type" hero's. JRPG's don't need to be grittier, the reason I play them is because they are not gritty. I didn't even know that they weren't liked, I thought they were loved just as much as any other type of game.

Edit: Hold the phone. Go and play Lost Odyssey, OP. Go and play that and come back to me and tell me it was childish. Oh and Bastion. Go and give that a whirl too. And a load of others I can list that don't have much political intrigue and yet are still part of my list of favourite games

O MAI GAWD!

Padding! When did you start playing my #1 favourite game of all time?! PS2 or Vita re-release? Have you gotten to the first proper dungeon yet? (because the first 1 and a half/2 hours is literally scrolling text and dialogue choices peppered with save points, it's fucking hype) and goddammit everyone is supposed to love Chie! She's adorable :3

Anyway people typically complain more about Yosuke. He's kind of a dick sometimes.

I didn't even have to nag you into it. I now just need Rookie to stop creating shitty puns and actually play the damn thing.

"Lol Shitsona 4!"

[sub]Best jokes EU[/sub]

What he said. Hang in there. The first part of the game is by far the worst, but once they take off the training wheels, let you tackle the first dungeon, and give you full control, it's a blast, in my humble opinion.

 

[Christopher Fisher]

Yeah, I don't really think that's it. For me, JRPGs need to:

-Divorce themselves from anime (which I find unbelievably annoying and idiotic, with very few exceptions)
-Allow dialogue options that actually matter
-Get rid of turn based combat or make it real time with the ability to pause. I am sorry, but turn based JRPG combat isn't tactical; it's just slow and monotonous.
-This ties in with the anime point: don't have me play as some emo teen with his annoying teenybopper friends and the weird older guy that doesn't think he's weird for running around with half-naked 12 year olds.

Pretty much, it all boils down to: stop pandering to your Japanese fanbase and all the cliches/mechanics they expect.

 

[sageoftruth]

Want to make JRPGs better? Take out the Angsty teenage heroes, or atleast if you have to have them, make them a joke character of some sort (like having the cast lampshade make fun of their angsty-ness.)

That's a great idea. I'd love to see that in action. Since the angsty teenage heroes are so commonly reviled nowadays, I'm sure it would get a standing ovation.

 

[The Wykydtron]

What he said. Hang in there. The first part of the game is by far the worst, but once they take off the training wheels, let you tackle the first dungeon, and give you full control, it's a blast, in my humble opinion.

Ah my bad, I wasn't actually being sarcastic with my description of the first 2 hours. I do find them endlessly enjoyable, although I can see how other people could get bored by it. Good storytelling just never gets old for me :3

As a general rule, if I call something hype i'm being serious XD

Hype is srs bsns

 

[ZexionSephiroth]

"Gritty"? As in "Throw sand on everything" gritty or "Everyone is a Jerk" Gritty.

Wait... Actually, It doesn't matter. I hate both! There, I said it!

All I want, is a game where I save the world with the power of Friendship, rainbows shoot out, everything is made of crystals, and people defy physics by their resolve to save the world.

That doesn't mean it can't be Dark, but NEVER confuse Dark with Gritty. Just because It's flipping Midnight doesn't mean I don't want to see the Moonlight shining off the buildings... in fact, I expect it!

Basically, I want Final Fantasy VS 13 already!

(If you have no idea whether I'm talking Figuratively, Metaphorically, or Literally with all these points... I mean all three.)

 

[DrOswald]

Yeah, I don't really think that's it. For me, JRPGs need to:

-Divorce themselves from anime (which I find unbelievably annoying and idiotic, with very few exceptions)
-Allow dialogue options that actually matter
-Get rid of turn based combat or make it real time with the ability to pause. I am sorry, but turn based JRPG combat isn't tactical; it's just slow and monotonous.
-This ties in with the anime point: don't have me play as some emo teen with his annoying teenybopper friends and the weird older guy that doesn't think he's weird for running around with half-naked 12 year olds.

Pretty much, it all boils down to: stop pandering to your Japanese fanbase and all the cliches/mechanics they expect.

You see, I actually disagree with you on a couple points.

I like the turn based combat of traditional JRPG's. What I do not like are all the attempts to make a halfway between an action game and the JRPG combat system. I could go into great detail about this, but I wont. I am lazy.

Also, by "allow dialog options that actually matter" I assume you want dialog options that allow you to shape the story instead of merely participating in the story. Again, this is an ok idea in theory, but having multiple story paths will inevitably lead to a shallow story (at least more shallow than it was before.) I prefer a deep story to participate in, even if I cannot shape that story.

This is not to say you are wrong on these points. It is a matter of personal preference. What this does demonstrate is that JRPG's are a niche genre broken into even smaller groups.

I think the main thing is to stop treating every game like it needs to be a AAA release. Instead of making one massive game that must appeal to everyone (resulting in a game that lacks focus that many people may like but no one will truly love,) a company could instead make smaller budget games that appeals greatly to their target crowds.

Besides, the JRPG was a genre born out of the hardware limitations of the NES level gaming. We don't need a modern scale development cycle to make a top tier JRPG.

 

[Gearhead mk2]

...please OP, tell me that you're joking. JRPGs allready have their own brand of badly done, boring, annoying grimdarkness. Adding the WH40K style of badly done, boring, annoying grimdarkness to that would result in a wansgty black hole. What JRPGs need is to ditch the menu-combat systems or alter them into the Kingdom Hearts 2 style and get good writing and likeable characters again.

 

[sageoftruth]

What he said. Hang in there. The first part of the game is by far the worst, but once they take off the training wheels, let you tackle the first dungeon, and give you full control, it's a blast, in my humble opinion.

Ah my bad, I wasn't actually being sarcastic with my description of the first 2 hours. I do find them endlessly enjoyable, although I can see how other people could get bored by it. Good storytelling just never gets old for me :3

As a general rule, if I call something hype i'm being serious XD

Hype is srs bsns

My apologies as well. I was actually directing this at the guy you were talking to. I was afraid it would be taken this way, given the way we all receive notifications when we are quoted. I was just backing you up, but I also agree that Persona 4, like any JRPG isn't for everyone.

 

[Aircross]

I think JRPGs should allow the players to characterize the main protagonists and put all the drama around the world they are in.

This is one reason why I love the Dragon Quest series so much, especially Dragon Quest 3.

-You're the hero, yourself.
-You go to a tavern and create your own party of characters. You can use your imagination to personalize your party!
-The events in the fictional world is where all the drama is taking place. Tragic love stories, kingdoms falling apart, a demon warlord bent on taking over the world, legends of powerful artifacts, etc.

 

[Cecilthedarkknight_234]

You want a really dark/gritty jrpg go play tactics ogre for the PlayStation one "not the psp port/remake" or the vandal hearts series.

 

[IDS3Remix]

JRPGs need to be less like overblown melodramatic animes, and more like experiences that can appeal to all ages. Earthbound and Chrono Trigger were magical experiences, and I can't remember when the last time was that I played a JRPG that kept me involved like either of those did. Well maybe Lost Oddssey, that game was amazing.

 

[sageoftruth]

All this talk about the importance/unimportance of grittiness suddenly has me wondering what would happen if someone made sickeningly sweet versions of Dark Souls and Gears of War.

 

[FFP2]

This guy understands. Although I do enjoy stories that have a subtle darkness to them. But this is typically the reason I love JRPGs.

Persona 4 would totally be the greatest game EVER if the enemies were terrorists, every second word was a swear and if it was all dipped in lovely, gritty grey and brown!

Honestly, I think JRPGs are the only genre not to have a really brown and "gritty" game.

OP: Look at a pic of The Gapra Whitewood from FF13 and compare that to a "gritty" game... for example GTA4. I know which game I'd rather play.

 

[Neonsilver]

I can only speak for myself, but fuck this gritty shit. Just because it works for asiof doesn't mean it jrpg developers have to emulate it. I don't want everything to be the same gritty stuff, of course a jrpg that emulates asiof can be great, but it doesn't mean everything has to be like it.

I think what is more disliked about jrpg's is the way that gameplay and story is in general disconnected from each other. I can't think of many jrpg's where I couldn't emulate the experience by watching a movie/reading a book for a few minutes, then doing some monotonous task for a while before I continue the book/movie.
That's in my case the reason for not finishing almost every jrpg I have played, I got bored of the gameplay.

Another thing I would love about jrpg's would be if more were released on PC.

 

[Animyr]

I don't play JRPGs and have never really been interested in them; from what I've seen, for the most part they aren't my thing. But for all types of stories, "grittiness" does not equal "depth."

 

[Saviordd1]

Kingdoms of Amalur had about as much grittiness as a Saturday Evening cartoon and it was pretty good.

Oblivion's politics were chocked up to "Dem demons hate you"

It doesn't need grittiness, the genre needs to stop being so damned silly and stop taking itself so seriously despite sed silliness.

 

[OtherSideofSky]

No, what JRPGs need to do to be "liked again" (they still maintain a sizable fanbase, the gaming community has just expanded to include a lot of new people who don't care for them) is to do all the fun, crazy, interesting things that people liked JRPGs for in the first place. When I look at modern JRPGs, with their predictable assemblage of worn-out anime archetypes in increasingly samey scifi/fantasy worlds, I have a hard time recognizing any trace of Breath of Fire 3 (a game which opened by putting you in control of a baby dragon rampaging its way through a mine full of helpless laborers), Shadow Hearts 2 (a game in which your party included a luchadore wrestler vampire and you gained new powers by visiting a graveyard in your soul), Skies of Arcadia (in which you control a crew of sky pirates exploring an enormous fully 3D overworld in a customizable airship), or the PS2 Devil Summoner games (in which you played a detective who captured demons as if they were Pokemon and used them in excellent real-time battles to solve cases in Taishou-era Japan). It was that kind of crazy storytelling and world-building, combined with a willingness to experiment with gameplay, that made the good old JRPGs what they were, and after a glut of samey titles in the PS2 era killed off a lot of interest in the genre, especially internationally, most developers became increasingly afraid to fund that sort of bold and imaginative effort.