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

[Your Gaffer]

Oh please, not more of this "make is gritty, make it dark" bullshit.

I love dark games, I love gritty games. I also love Minecraft and Bastion and Rayman.

JRPG's don't need to go dark and gritty to be successful. They need to get rid of random encounters and they need to totally revamp their turn based combat systems. They can still be turn based but they need to have a deeper level of strategy so we can feel like we accomplishing something when we fight. Last of all they need to have a coherent plot that feeds you more bits and pieces of the story as you progress in the game, thus giving you a reason to keep playing. These are things a lot of JRPGs over the last 10 years have not done a good job with.

I hope there are some JRPG games that do the things I've talked about above, some of them can be dark and gritty, some of them don't have to be.

I completely agree with this. If Japanese developers want the west to appreciate and buy their games, they have to tell a good story well and make their game fun to play.

I will say this, however on the subject of maturity: I think all games, regardless of country of orientation, need to be more mature. Not in the gritty grimdark way, but in a way where they realize the audience for their games are adults. Right now it feels like most of the stuff being made is for teenagers and little kids and very little of it is being made for those actually make up the majority of the gaming population(or at least the so-called "hardcore" demographic).

So when the OP said that he wished that JRPGs would be more like ASOIF, I can sort of agree, but I wish ALL games were more like ASOIF. Not because it's dark, but because it's mature and adult. It knows it's audience and caters to it.

One of the games the OP mentioned was Xenogears, I remember playing that game when it launched in High School. That game was and still is amazing. It still had random encounters but the combat at least was fun, which kind of made up for it, but most importantly the story was great. It started small, introducing the characters and showing us their character traits and motivations. It dealt right away with feelings of guilt and remorse. It was definitely a mature story without being overtly violent or sexy.

 

[lapan]

What it really needs is to step away from anime character-stereotypes. Too many JRPGs use the same kinds of "moe" characters, making them bland and predictable.

 

[Radoh]

Well someone clearly has never played a Tales game.
JRPGs don't need to be reinvented for people to like them, games like Tales of Symphonia are well loved by pretty much everyone who ever played it.

 

[Gigano]

Well, I'd love pretty much any kind of well made game featuring political intrigue, no shying away from the brutality of reality, and an overall mature storyline. But quite a few JRPG's seem to pretty much be based around a more light-hearted tone and setting. I'm not sure Ni no Kuni would've gained a whole lot if there were political assassinations aplenty in it.

 

[gyrobot_v1legacy]

Well, I'd love pretty much any kind of well made game featuring political intrigue, no shying away from the brutality of reality, and an overall mature storyline. But quite a few JRPG's seem to pretty much be based around a more light-hearted tone and setting. I'm not sure Ni no Kuni would've gained a whole lot if there were political assassinations aplenty in it.

At least it was brutally honest in light heartedness, but if you are not having that intention. Then making it like a HBO show will be the logical answer. Don't hold nothing back I say!

 

[deathzero021]

probably true, make it semi-realistic and gritty, bloody, dark. but i really dont want that to happen... i really hope it doesnt too. The whole reason i love jRPG's is because they arent another M-rated Western Bloodfest. I like jRPG's for the fun adventure and stupid cliche characters that are just fun to laugh at. Even the cliched characters of jRPG's are more interesting than the buff boring/silent guys in Western shooters and RPGs.

To be honest, i dont WANT jRPG's to be popular. i want them to stay niche and stay unique from the rest of the western market. still to this day, the best games ive played have been japanese RPG's or Adventure games. I just dont think Western developers understand game development yet. They still seem to put all their focus into the graphics and special effects and no effort in the gameplay or unique character design. (dont get me wrong though, im not saying that japanese developers are perfect, they're far from it but i do think they have a better idea at where to put their money in the development process)

btw "childishness is a disease that needs to be cured"? really? yeah because being a kid is a disgusting sin that needs to be exterminated with "mature" bloody buff men punching and gunning each other to death. what a great cure...

 

[Lilani]

I mentioned that a lot before about Matsuno's works. That was the reason why people like his works. They are dark, blood hell he wrote the story for Mad World. He knows what the western audience wants. All it takes is a huge leap to CERO Z and he will hold absolutely nothing back. The variety of settings from JRPGs and the grit of WRPGs.

You really don't get it, do you. I actually had to Google CERO Z to figure out what the hell you were talking about, and now your naiveté is even more obvious.

You actually and honestly believe achieving a certain level of explicitness makes something more mature. Wow. Just...wow. So that must mean, by your standards, Duke Nukem and Saints Row 3 are much more mature than Mass Effect or Half-Life, and pornographic games are the most mature games that can be made. You really have no idea what makes a story mature. The very concept is lost on you, and in its place you've adopted this weird parody of "matureness" based on a certain level of "grit" and explicitness. And here I thought you were at least older than nine.

Do yourself a favor and put this one to bed for a while. Learn more about maturity and narrative and come back in a few years, once you've figured out what you're talking about. The problem here isn't that you're wrong, it's that there are so many people telling you that you're wrong and all you're doing is sticking your fingers in your ears and acting like they don't exist. The very fact that you've been so met with ire in this thread proves that your concept of "what the western audience wants" is wrong. Just because you want it doesn't mean everybody wants it, and nor does that mean what you don't want shouldn't be allowed to exist.

I am done with this thread. Your concept of maturity is that of a child's, and it seems only time is going to give you an idea of what the real world is like. Maybe after you get out of gradeschool you'll grow out of this "dark equals maturity" mindset.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

Well lets think for a moment why people hates JRPGs? Because it doesn't fit the current standards expected by the current attitude towards the fantasy genre.

But what do people expect from the fantasy genre now? To emulate ASOIAF, the political intrigue, the brutal cynicism and ultimately be as mature as possible. The funny thing is that JRPGs at one point was like that with Ogre Battle, Valkyrie Profile and Xenogears which served as the greats of JRPG. When JRPGs made the shift to making stuff lighter in content, WRPGs picked the ball up, using ASOIAF rather than Tolkien as their inspiration and has sold well compared to JRPGs which is becoming mostly kiddier.

So for JRPGs to be liked again, I recommend tossing in a bit of ASOIAF, some mature content and call us in the morning. We will dismiss the Turn Based stuff as part the genetic makeup of the genre. But the childishness is a disease that needs to be cured

That seems to be what YOU want. People seem to be fine with Wrath of the White Witch. JRPGs just need to be less stagnant and cool it with the double digit features. Everything in gaming today is "gritty" at least in the mainstream triple A market. And that's the problem. JRPGs don't need to be added to that list.

 

[Frostbyte666]

Don't need jrpg's to be gritty I am currently enjoying Ni No Kuni, though I am bashing my head against a desk every time I'm told how to take/give heart.

Still want a dark jrpg how about Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne, the human race is wiped out in the 1st 20 minutes and it is up to you to decide how the world will be reborn, if you decide to follow that path.

However many people have probably given many other greater examples of dark and gritty jrpg's and though fun it can be good to have a nice light-hearted experience as well. Variety is the spice of life after all, so why limit a genre to a single theme?

 

[gyrobot_v1legacy]

That seems to be what YOU want. People seem to be fine with Wrath of the White Witch. JRPGs just need to be less stagnant and cool it with the double digit features. Everything in gaming today is "gritty" at least in the mainstream triple A market. And that's the problem. JRPGs don't need to be added to that list.

And people now dismiss JRPGs as something like a bad stomach flu. If you want JRPGs to be the constant subject of ridicule and eventually give up on the western market completely. Then don't recognize the situation. But it want some of it's respect had (which granted Ni No Kuni has done), it better be meeting the standard over here in terms of ratings. And right now the HBO audience is the right crowd to work with.

I am advertising the slap patch solution on Japan's growing irrelevance to RPGs at large which no one is taking even though it may well let the healing process begin.

 

[syaoran728]

That seems to be what YOU want. People seem to be fine with Wrath of the White Witch. JRPGs just need to be less stagnant and cool it with the double digit features. Everything in gaming today is "gritty" at least in the mainstream triple A market. And that's the problem. JRPGs don't need to be added to that list.

And people now dismiss JRPGs as something like a bad stomach flu. If you want JRPGs to be the constant subject of ridicule and eventually give up on the western market completely. Then don't recognize the situation. But it want some of it's respect had (which granted Ni No Kuni has done), it better be meeting the standard over here in terms of ratings. And right now the HBO audience is the right crowd to work with.

I am advertising the slap patch solution on Japan's growing irrelevance to RPGs at large which no one is taking even though it may well let the healing process begin.

What makes you such an authority on the gaming market? Are you a professional in the field? All of what you have been saying is mostly your opinion without any sources to back up your claims.

 

[gyrobot_v1legacy]

Look at the professional game reviews, look at how game companies mention they don't want to bring games over here anymore partially due to the opinion of professional reviews.

 

[nykirnsu]

Look at the professional game reviews, look at how game companies mention they don't want to bring games over here anymore partially due to the opinion of professional reviews.

All of which has little to do with story-context or style, but because the games themselves are (with maybe a couple of exceptions) bad. Even so, if the west is losing respect for JRPGs it has little to do with maturity, but because they just don't like the static and overly complex gameplay. Talk to any of the frat boys that might actually agree with your vision of mature content; very few would tell you they'd enjoy JRPGs more if you added Gears of War's aesthetic (they might enjoy the cutscenes more, but that'd be it). No, what the idiots want is for the genre to be replaced with more bland shooters, which is hardly a solution.

'Childishness' as you call it doesn't need to be cured, what needs to be cured is the disease we call 'grittiness.'

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

And people now dismiss JRPGs as something like a bad stomach flu.

Really, because the way that I and most people see it, the big publishers/developers of JRPGs are losing their touch while new IPs are being lookat at with critical acclaim. You literally have no concrete sources to back up what you are saying.

If you want JRPGs to be the constant subject of ridicule and eventually give up on the western market completely. Then don't recognize the situation. But it want some of it's respect had (which granted Ni No Kuni has done), it better be meeting the standard over here in terms of ratings. And right now the HBO audience is the right crowd to work with.

What in the 9 circles of Hell are you talking about. If JRPGs started catering to your want for "gritty realism" they'd be just like the swath of major western RPGs that are doing just that. Keep in mind that the Western RPGs are being looked upon in a negative light recently due to the fact that, for the most part, they are trying to cater to people like yourself and sacrificing gameplay. (Skyrim's gutting of a lot of RPG elements, etc, etc). The "HBO" audience is not even close to the right crowd to cater to. If it was, then L.A. Noire would have sold a hell of a lot more than it did.

I am advertising the slap patch solution on Japan's growing irrelevance to RPGs at large which no one is taking even though it may well let the healing process begin.

The very fact that you're advertising a slap patch solution at all is asinine. The problem with JRPG isn't that people hate them in the West. The problem is that people in the West hate when JRPGs are made with catering to the West in mind. People in the West want JRPGs made like they were in the SNES-PS2 era. We don't want Final Fantasy 13's linear drag you by the nose style game play(Friend of mine dubbed it Final Hallway XIII). Why the hell do you think people freaked out over not getting the Xenoblade Chronicles at first? Or Mother 3?

People want JRPGs, but the bigger publishers are putting out JRPGs made for mass appeal. This in turn is making developers who make more traditional but innovative JRPGs from localizing due to a fear of not selling.

Were you asleep a few years ago when Demon's Souls, a Japanese Action RPG, was localized due to word of mouth alone? Now we have a new franchise that sold well enough for a sequel. How about when SEGA was iffy on localizing Yakuza 3? The fans cried so hard that we now have Yakuza 3,4,and 5. I think its time to stop relying on Square Enix to give us the JRPGs that people want.

Seriously, you're idea of what JRPGs should become would sound great in a boardroom meeting of executives who want sales and don't give a fuck about quality, but it would help ruin an already hurting JRPG base. Making JRPGs "gritty" will only make them worse. All the shooters now are "gritty". A lot of third person action games are "gritty". And gaming sales across the board are falling for all of the big companies. THQ closed down, and they were making almost nothing but "gritty" games. People want to be able to go into a fantasy setting without having to worry about seeing the gruff marine with the gravelly voice.

Ni No Kuni is what modern JRPGs should be going for. Not Cloud Strife with a stubble and smoking a pack a day, all while sipping bourbon and crying over a picture of Aeris he pulls out of his wallet in every cutscene.

 

[gyrobot_v1legacy]

Yahtzee did put up a nice point about some of us, we are clinging on to a fading youth whereas the youth of today has embraced the world is a cold uncaring place and decided it was better to enjoy games and shows aimed at "realism" than to escape in a fantasy world that will shatter ineveitably.

 

[Catrixa]

Oh, peaches, there was an episode of Star Trek: Voyager ("Muse") from eons ago that put all of my thoughts on this into one nice, neat statement: "Find the truth of your story and you won't need all those tricks. I don't know how things are done across the Eastern Sea, but here poets have become lazy; they rely on manipulation to move their audience. It wasn't always that way." Why does crap need to be "gritty" to be interesting? Shouldn't we be more worried about the actual dang story? Do people need to be hating life in order to be interesting? Does the trope need to be the story, or should the story use the trope to be a better story?

As people here have also pointed out, there are a myriad of options if you're looking for something more serious (this site has reviews for a lot of interesting-sounding titles in the JRPG realm alone, and this isn't the only place to look). I honestly don't know if there are any Game-of-Thrones-clones-vidjagame-edition, but there could be. Just because you haven't seen it doesn't mean it isn't there. And just because it's rendered in more than 3 colors doesn't mean it isn't deep.

...And just because it isn't depressing doesn't mean it isn't really, really good. You just have to find what's believable to you. Then plot devices won't matter.

 

[nykirnsu]

Yahtzee did put up a nice point about some of us, we are clinging on to a fading youth whereas the youth of today has embraced the world is a cold uncaring place and decided it was better to enjoy games and shows aimed at "realism" than to escape in a fantasy world that will shatter ineveitably.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/6565-Call-of-Duty-Black-Ops-2
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/4763-Gears-of-War-3
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/1717-Dead-to-Rights-Retribution

And I'm sure Yahtzee would LOVE this fix.
/s
Anyway, you're still avoiding the arguments that completely prove you wrong. There are two just above your post that have a page-long analysis. If you want to start winning people over I suggest you take the time to talk to them individually, instead of just writing a solitary smug sentence in dismissal.
Also, add a poll, then we'll see how much of the public like this grim-dark style.

 

[JagermanXcell]

The only thing I "dislike" (not hate, two totally different things) about JRPGs are the anime stereotypes. They get older then anime itself.
Until I played Persona 4 of course (Special mention to the "Tales" games). Truly a spectacle of a game to have such fun and realistic characters, only rarely do they dig into the stereotypes only to smash them through the ground. That and the game has the most compelling story I've ever had the honor to experience. Dat Kanji Tatsumi...

OT: Yeah, I'm pretty tired of the arbitrary "lets make everything dark and gritty" idea always buzzing its way into media from other cultures. Then again I only have ever see that come out of the west.
It happened to DmC, it happened to Resident Evil, and I pray it doesn't happen to something like... I don't know... Katamari Damacy, cause those first two obviously didn't turn out well.

Also doesn't making everything dark and brown lower creativity and imagination just to boost up sales? Talk about selling out 'Merica gaming industry....

 

[Catie Caraco]

But if that is the case, why do people love to watch HBO? Why are games emulating ASOIAF?

Because people are multidimensional and can like more than one thing? Seriously, I am currently 3/4ths of the way through A Feast for Crows, so I'm pretty well versed in ASOIAF, though I did get into it because of the show. Dragon Age Origins is also one of my favorite games, which is "dark" and "gritty", I suppose, and much more ASOIAF than Tolkien. But that doesn't mean that I don't also greatly love Tolkien and Tolkien-esque video games. I also love bright, cheery video games like Kingdom Hearts (at least the first one. They're kinda losing me with incoherent story and jumping consoles like a cracked out kangaroo). If I'm in the mood for darkness and grit, I'll pick up ASOIAF and read it. If I want happy colorful stuff I'll play KH or watch MLP. If I wants splatter-gore I'll watch Supernatural. See how I can like all these different things? It's amazing, really.

And if you're looking for a dark JRPG, look no further than Final Fantasy Tactics. It is the hybrid child of MacBeth and Hamlet, only it's possessed by the devil. Boom. Done. Actually, I'mma boot up my emulator and play it RIGHT NOW.