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

[Lunar Templar]

um, no.

Hell no

We have to much 'dark gritty' bullshit out there as is, we don't need to fuck up another genera with that cancer.

 

[piinyouri]

I personally don't much care for JRPG's anymore because of

Story. The story's are always the same thing. Different sequence, names are changed, but it's always the same thing.
Story isn't even the most important part of a game for me anyway, but just once it'd be nice to not skip through all the overly long and boring cut scenes.

Voice acting and dialogue. Are both almost always awful. I can't take anything seriously or get truly invested in the world or characters because of it.

JRPG's (the kind I like/used to like anyway) have always excelled at gameplay, and as long as it's not turn based, they still usually do, despite all the afore mentioned problems.

 

[Gregory McMillan]

Gritty? is that the best you can come up with? I agree with Daystar Clarion, they have become like a great big soap opera and it needs to stop. Homogenizing the genre to be like western rpgs is not the answer.

I blame it on Final Fantasy X. It's still one of my favorite FFs but I think they're all trying to bank of its success. The game had the right mix of elements at the right time, just like FFVII. The same proverbial lightning does not strike twice.


FFT: War of the Lions has the political grit that you might be looking for. It's based on the War of the Roses just like ASOIAF, but it doesn't compromise the light-hearted aspects of the fantasy backdrop. As a result you have an incredible juxtaposition between Chocobos, job classes, and zodiac stones versus backstabbing, cross-class prejudice/injustice, and the orchestration of war. It keeps the aspects of fantasy that you would see in LoTR or Chronicles of Narnia but also has the seriousness found in ASOIAF.

JRPGs don't need to be like everything else, they just need to be good. FFIV through FFX, Legend of Dragoon, Xenogears, Star Ocean. They all had recipes for success, but then they tried to appeal to other people.

 

[Erttheking]

No. Why does every single game in the world need to be "dark and edgy"? What is wrong with giving a character a scene where he doesn't want to cut himself and is actively enjoying his life? What is wrong with creating a fictional world and trying to convince us that living there wouldn't be a miserable experience? Sure some mature tones would be fine, but dark and edgy aren't the same thing as mature.

 

[Something Amyss]

If anything, we need fewer gritty games period.

I'm not saying none, but we have such market saturation that a few gritty games won't be missed.

No, JRPGs were in the hate trend before things went to samey and brown because America hates different cultural aesthetics.

 

[Something Amyss]

No. Why does every single game in the world need to be "dark and edgy"?

Because different is bad and must be destroyed!

...no, I don't like this whole "we need a homogenous experience!" thing, anyway.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

Gah, no. I get enough dark, gritty, political crap in other games and real life. I like my JRPGs to be about saving the world from some cliche evil, with the sappy dialogue along the lines of, "I'll NEVER give up!" and "She's special to me!" and other stuff like that.
Besides, didn't they try to do that with Final Fantasy XII and Tactics? And I still cannot, for the life of me, understand those plots and I felt very sad watching so many people die in Tactics.

 

[Erttheking]

No. Why does every single game in the world need to be "dark and edgy"?

Because different is bad and must be destroyed!

...no, I don't like this whole "we need a homogenous experience!" thing, anyway.

I mean, there's nothing wrong with a dark story, but it's not a standard every piece of fiction in the world needs to meet.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

I dislike JRPGs the same reason I stopped liking anime. Roles are more important than characters in my opinion. you'll need the Moe Girl, put a tsundere here or there. Make him the chosen one (a problem in both east and west). Have the majority of the plot not understood by anyone so they say 'what' 'are you serious?' 'but how?' so more exposition can be had. But these are my gripes. as it's my personal taste.

I didn't know JRPGs were reviled.

 

[hooglese]

For me it's the random encounters and turn based combat. Never did like turn based 4vX combat. The grittiness is irrelevant to me. For instance, I loved the Tales games, except ToS2 naturally and dragon quest. Why? NO RANDOM ENCOUNTERS, you see the enemies and run from them or charge at them.

 

[DementedSheep]

As much as I do like gritty, grey on grey morality and political intrigue not everything needs to be this. I don't have a lot of experience with the genre because most JRPG's are console only and it not really my thing but I doubt changing it to be gritty is going to help them. I think it would just put the audience they already have off.

Can ask an silly question? What is ASOIAF?

ASOIAF = A song of Ice and Fire.
It's a very popular book and tv series (they renamed it Game of Thrones for the tv series) at the moment.

 

[shadow skill]

Yea no. Also please go play Xenogears or the SMT games such as Persona 3 or 4.

 

[blackrave]

Isn't that like saying that racing games need to have more dialogue and stealth sections?

Now question is- How you can hide tuned muscle car in shadows? I think neon, exhaust pipe and engine noise will give it away.

 

[Tanis]

We don't need more 'gritty' we need LESS 'hey, lets kill brown people in a game with grey/brown/black/red and MC that come across as douche bags'.

I'd rather play a colorful JRPG with a questionable soap opera story then ANOTHER freaking CoD/BF/ect.

I hope to see another JRPG like Ni No Kuni.

 

[Dragonpit]

Yeah...no.
So I started off with looking up the definition of gritty. So I'm guessing the demand is uncompromising realism. I let that sink in for a moment. Uncompromising realism in a JRPG...
No.
Just no.
I have no problem with realism in itself. It's a matter of personal taste, really. If you want a "realistic" game, okay. But no. Persona 4 was not in the strictest sense "real," but then if they did make it "real", they could've lost the true meaning behind what they were trying to do. It's supposed to be a psychological game, in terms of symbolism. Losing the fantasy aspect could very easily have cost it the symbolism that is a very strong part of it core structure.

Final Fantasy has the same thing, but it's not as strong there as it is for the Shin Megami Tensei series because it doesn't tie into the stories throughout the series as much. But it is there.

On the other hand, games such as Dragon Age and Mass Effect aren't gritty, either. Yeah, they're dark, but there are a number of JRPGs that are very dark as well. But these such games share a fantasy setting. Okay...Mass Effect is Sci-Fi, but it's still not "real." You have magic and biotics, respectively. You tell me how that's gritty.

The only thing that could strike a chord as very as gritty goes at this point is the art style, which is anime for JRPGs, but that in itself as largely cultural, as well as a matter of personal taste. In that case, asking JRPGs to be gritty is unreasonable, because you're asking the developers to surrender something cultural for the sake of popularity. If you or anyone else does not like, as others have put it, seeing "emo androgynous teenagers with bad fashion sense", then that's just your taste. It is not your job to slap others with your opinion.

As for why JRPGs are in some decline, I can only imagine that it's because JRPGs are more story-driven and that does not strike a chord with the more action-oriented Western audience. Mind you, that's just my guess, but between that and your vision of the need for "gritty," I'd say mine's more likely.

 

[Gregory McMillan]

As much as I do like gritty, grey on grey morality and political intrigue but not everything needs to be this. I don't have a lot of experience with the genre because most JRPG's are console only and it not really my thing but I doubt changing it to be gritty is going to help them. I think it would just put the audience they already have off.

Can ask an silly question? What is ASOIAF?

ASOIF = A song of Ice and Fire.
It's a very popular book and tv series (they renamed it Game of Thrones for the tv series) at the moment.

Ha ha, I am just reading part 2 of the seventh(?) book. Dances with Dragons. TV show has brainwashed me into thinking Game of Thrones. I love it. An JRPG with that scope would be great.

A Dance with Dragons is the fifth book, not the second. If you're reading that without having read books 2-4 (A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, and A Feast for Crows) it will get confusing.