I think I just noticed why I and maybe others don't like JRPGs...

[Polite Sage]

I have a dislike for most JRPGs because of the repetitiveness of turn-base combat and random battles. Take Agarest for example (maybe the worst offender ever); Between every story event/battle there are usually from 2-6 random battles you have to fight and Agarest's battle system being so slow (and auto battle gets your party killed so you really can't depend on that) you may be spending over an hour fighting the identical battles, hearing the same music, repeating the same commands for an hour before anything meaningful happens. Other example games, any Star Ocean or FFXIII you can theoretically skip the random battles if you want, but the compulsory boss fights are going to get you back to grinding if nothing else will.

And one thing about "choice" in JRPGs... I can't say how many JRPGs with branching story (missed the mentioned Chrono Trigger) I've played, but most of the time I've seen it's physicaly impossible to influence the ending/events you're going to get, without extensive use of a walkthrough (they propably want to rip players off by selling them startegy guides -.-'). If anyone here has played Valkyrie Profile, any Star Ocean, or Agarest you know what I'm talking about. Especially Valkyrie Profile, which has 3 endings. The first two are rather easy to get, but the true one requires that you visit certain dungeons at a certain time, remove a certain (main!) character from your party for the rest of the game before a certain chapter, trigger specific events, influence a certain meter the game never tells you about (No, not the approval meter. What Zeal meter? Where is it? And how do you alter it? Good luck figuring that out!) etc. etc. The game never tells you about any of these. Not even a hint.

And I think many Westerners are put off by whiny emo kid characters and melodramatic stories. While I strongly dislike walking testosterone hunk protagonists in Western games, the JRPGs take the "emotional development" a little too far...

 

[Kahunaburger]

Im not saying that JRPGs have terrible stories, I'm just saying that to me they dont seem any better than any other game genre at delivering any kind of narrative.

They aren't. But they aren't worse at delivering narrative, either. It really depends on the game.

 

[Booze Zombie]

Quotey stuff

It's not an insult to the player, Japan is a different culture, their games are expected to do different things, promote different values. America is individualist and Japan is collectivist, America is about personal choice, "I'll make my choice, for me", where as in Japan it's for the good of society, the needs of the one are muted and choices are made for you, because they'll help you and everyone else.

You can't fix games coming from a different culture, as much as I dislike playing JRPGs, they have all the right in the world to make games like that.

 

[Fugitive Panda]

As someone who enjoys both Western-style and Japanese-style RPGs pretty regularly, I'd like to say that there is room in this world for both of them, and the existence of one only offers up more ideas for the two to play with. It's a mutually beneficial arrangement, and yet people get so up in arms about it.

That said, there are a couple things I want to address.

In Kingdom Hearts 2 I can't play Sora the way I would like him to be, a guy who gets stuff done and keeps on rollin'. There's no freedom of development for my character.

That's because Kingdom hearts 2 is about Sora, not you. He has his own development. It silly to complain about a lack of choice in a game that was never meant to feature that particular gameplay element, like complaining that an FPS doesn't let me woo the gruff tomboy with something to prove.

I'd compare them with movies, but that has too many negative connotations. It's true that modern JRPG's tend to exhibit complete control over their stories, in order to guarantee quality and complexity, but what's wrong with that? That's not a negative quality by definition. Frankly, I can name far more JRPG's with compelling characters and stories than I could WRPG's. So what if I couldn't control them?

I'm just saying I appreciate that I can make the world see me how I want to be seen.

That's the goal, but rarely the reality. You're only ever given a finite list of possible actions to take, and while simply being able to choose for yourself is very satisfying, the flaws are clear. If you're actually trying to craft a unique character, eventually you will run into a situation where none of the options fit your character, or the game makes assumptions about your intent. Let me use that famous ME2 example; do you reprogram the Geth, or kill them? There are a myriad of reasons to do either, but if you choose to kill them, Shepard offers a simple "If we don't kill them they might come back." It's a little more complicated than that, Shepard.

Or even more recently, Fallout: New Vegas. Once you reach the strip, all of the factions make a move to recruit you. Mr. House summons you up to his big fancy loft, explains his plan, and then... Offers you money. Every faction attempts to buy your services with money, or other material rewards. At no point do they lay out what they believe in, and at no point does the game bother to ask whether you agree, just whether or not you'll take their money. Considering the whole game seems to be asking you to pick a side, it's quite jarring that you can't delve deeper into these complex factions.

If your Cloud in FFVII your always a whiny emo you can never be a badass, your stuck with the persona and actions of a whiny emo even after the game ends and continues on to the next movie.

You've probably never played FFVII. Cloud only got 'emo' in the expanded universe, during the game proper he was, oh, "a guy who gets stuff done and keeps on rollin'."

InFamous 2 is a good example of what I want in a karma filled world or RPGs in general. My actions shaped the world, my friends, my enemies, my powers, my end game. I remembered the choices I had to make to get where I was, to who I was. You start off as Cole and you end up as either the Patron Saint of New Marais or an evil overlord (i never played the evil ending). People saw what I was doing and saw that I was their hero, their protector, I chose to be that guy.

Didn't Yahtzee spend half his review complaining about how inFamous 2 had a terrible morality system? In which you basically got to choose whether you were "the Patron Saint of New Marais" or a completely illogical douche? With absolutely no in between? And because the game reserved the strongest abilities to the highest levels of each morality, you basically had to stick to one for the entire game?

If you play through Mass Effect exclusively choosing the good/Paragon choices, how is that any different from a linear, choice-less game?

In a JRPG your stuck in the role laid out for you, and your probably gonna hate it because your either: A) a boy with big dreams and a big destiny B)a cocky fighter C)an emo D)a rebel E)an emotionless slate or F)the boy who has something to prove. You aren't even allowed to choose what set character trope for the main character.

You're just naming off as many cliches as you can think of, aren't you? You're not actually putting any objective thought into this.

I want my choices to matter, which Guild Wars 2 is doing. I can choose to save a village near by, go to it or keep on walking, if I save it I get discounts and bonus items if I leave it for dead it gets siege towers that will blow me up.

So, if you be good you get all the rewards, and if you be bad you get killed? How is that a choice? Basically, you're just glad to have the choice, even if it has only one right answer. But that's not really a choice, it's just a calculation. You're only satisfied because you just want the illusion of choice, rather than any meaningful decision.

I'd like to remind everyone after all that that I enjoy both genres, but while they both have strengths to play on, they also have their weaknesses. The strongest games on each end tend to be the ones that blur the line, and incorporate elements of both.

 

[SpaceBat]

I don't really need to say much due to j-e-f-f-e-r-s's post on the first page, but there's nothing wrong with set stories. Not every RPG has to be heavily choice-based, sometimes it's good enough to just sit down, relax and listen to an epic story unfold in front of your eyes.

Neither styles (The very few choice-based RPG's that exist / RPG's with set stories events) is flawed and neither need fixing or justification, they're just different.

 

[Chibz]

The thing I admire, love, and appreciate about games like Dragon Age: Origins and Neverwinter Nights 2(just started playing it, I think my CPU needs an upgrade though, plz pm for hlp) is that I have the freedom to choose who I want to be as a hero. I can be an evil psychopath that just likes to chop stuff up or the gleaming example of heroism and justice.

So you enjoy the illusion of freedom & choice rather than the open admission of it being limited? Hate to break it to you, son, but TT RPGs are where all the real freedom of character is.

Although, the real reason why JRPGs limit your choices like they do is... Why set up an elaborate & intricute narrative when the player can simply utterly annihilate/ruin it? It makes it near impossible to have a thematically consistent narrative.

 

[McNinja]

Linearity =/= bad.

Watch the latest Jimquisition.

Not necessarily. I haven't watched the latest Jimquisition, so I can't comment on that, but some games work well with some linearity. For instance, Gears of War 2 was a pretty good game, if a tad brown at times, and it was also a very linear game. You only had one way to get from point A to point B, although you could choose to take different paths (one usually overlooked the other, and allowed the teammate to provide covering fire while the team mate moved up or hit a switch or something).

Some games, like FFXIII, are so linear, with zero choice, that some people want to kill themselves. I don't mind some linearity, but too much (or if the game is too long, as GoW2 came very close to being), is indeed a bad thing.

On topic, I don't like JRPGs because of many reasons that usually vary from game to game, like turn-based combat (which I despise), the story could be a turn-off, the protagonist might be a whining tool, or any number of other reasons that will make me either purposefully write the game off as not for me or make me not care either way.

 

[TheDooD]

I noticed quite a few people around my age(22) has just started gaming three or so years ago so they haven't been exposed to the majority of JRPG's or they're just denying it. Since they just got into gaming they think what's popular is what defines a genre and it doesn't. After looking back I found mass effect and dragon age kinda shallow because you can be a huge evil prick throughout the game yet you still get the good guy's job done which makes being evil in the first place pointless.

Then when you look at Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne it had like 6 different endings all of the them very different from each other. Secret of Mana 2 had you choose from 3 out of 6 people you'll play as from the start and through the game you can change classes. Overall the japanese games I mentions have more depth when it comes to choice. in the WRPG's I mentioned you're pretty much can get everybody on your party and they can grow the same way even if you're evil or good. Yet in Nocturne the demons that work with you is all dependent on are you chaotic or lawful so that opens up some change with each playthrough since the demons all have different strengths and weaknesses. Next with Secret of Mana 2 you can choose 3 melee fighters from the start yet you won't really have any powerful magic until later on and you sure won't have the buffs the magic users have either. It goes the same way for just picking magic heavy characters you'll have a very hard time near the end because the enemies hit really hard and they really don't have that great defense. Finding you're perfect team would take at lease 5 playthroughs or so back in the day.

 

[Arcane Azmadi]

Pretty simple issue, really- despite the "RPG" label, JRPGs and WRPGs are almost completely different genres of game. Comparing a Final Fantasy game to an Elder Scrolls game is like comparing Doom 3 to Silent Hill- both are action horror games where you fight an array of monsters, but they both play completely differently and offer completely different types of experience. A western developer's idea of "role playing" is letting a player create their own avatar to represent them in the gameworld to tell their own story. A Japanese developer's idea of "role playing" is to put the player in control of the protagonist of a story and letting them guide the protagonist and his allies through to the ending. You generally don't play a JRPG as "yourself", you just control a precreated character. But isn't that like the vast majority of video games? In Uncharted you control Nathan Drake. In Devil May Cry you control Dante. And in Final Fantasy VII you control Cloud Strife (and friends).

 

[Guitarmasterx7]

Linearity =/= bad.

Watch the latest Jimquisition.

Yes, because an opinions column as a source of evidence.

Though I happen to agree, linearity isn't always a bad thing, but there's no denying that there's a huge difference between the storytelling in final fantasy as compared to oblivion, and being as RPGs are mainly narrative driven, this changes the game entirely. Another thing I would like to point out is that in a game like Oblivion or Mass Effect where your character's actions are pretty much all decided by you, it's kind of hard to dislike the character you're playing as. They're not going to develop in any way that surprises you, granted, but they're always going to be relatable because they're you. If you don't like the main character of a JRPG, you're going to have to squirm as you watch "your" character make all these stupid decisions and act like a fuckup for 40 hours.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Linearity =/= bad.

Watch the latest Jimquisition.

Yes, because an opinions column as a source of evidence.

Though I happen to agree, linearity isn't always a bad thing, but there's no denying that there's a huge difference between the storytelling in final fantasy as compared to oblivion, and being as RPGs are mainly narrative driven, this changes the game entirely. Another thing I would like to point out is that in a game like Oblivion or Mass Effect where your character's actions are pretty much all decided by you, it's kind of hard to dislike the character you're playing as. They're not going to develop in any way that surprises you, granted, but they're always going to be relatable because they're you. If you don't like the main character of a JRPG, you're going to have to squirm as you watch "your" character make all these stupid decisions and act like a fuckup for 40 hours.

I'm not entirely sure something like a Bethesada game can be considered narrative-driven - the narrative is usually pretty vestigial in those.

And interestingly enough, there are a large chunk of JRPGs where your protagonist is basically a blank slate - MegaTen games in particular often go this route. They don't get as much press as the final fantasies of the world, but they definitely exist.

 

[bunji]

Im not saying that JRPGs have terrible stories, I'm just saying that to me they dont seem any better than any other game genre at delivering any kind of narrative.

They aren't. But they aren't worse at delivering narrative, either. It really depends on the game.

The adult way would of course be to say that you should judge each game on it's own merit, and not the genre it belongs tho. That said i've yet to play a JRPG that had a story that i didn't find terrible on some basic levels, like introducing characters too late, not having a clear dramatic curve and so on. Possibly except Chrono Trigger for the SNES.

My biggest problem with JRPGs i guess is the same thing that Yahtzee bangs on about, the absolute disconnect between story and gameplay. I see that as a complete failure for something thats supposedly part of an interactive medium.

Also; commercials for captcha is complete bullshit, not cool escapist

Edit; saw you responding to another guy, and you mentioned that MegaTen have "blank slate" main characters in JRPGS. How does that even work in such a rigid story structure that JRPGs have? I'm not flaming here, im honestly curious about how that would work out.

 

[Frankie Villanueva]

No you pretty much were right. That's what I loved about Persona 4

 

[Kahunaburger]

Im not saying that JRPGs have terrible stories, I'm just saying that to me they dont seem any better than any other game genre at delivering any kind of narrative.

They aren't. But they aren't worse at delivering narrative, either. It really depends on the game.

The adult way would of course be to say that you should judge each game on it's own merit, and not the genre it belongs tho. That said i've yet to play a JRPG that had a story that i didn't find terrible on some basic levels, like introducing characters too late, not having a clear dramatic curve and so on. Possibly except Chrono Trigger for the SNES.

My biggest problem with JRPGs i guess is the same thing that Yahtzee bangs on about, the absolute disconnect between story and gameplay. I see that as a complete failure for something thats supposedly part of an interactive medium.

Also; commercials for captcha is complete bullshit, not cool escapist

Edit; saw you responding to another guy, and you mentioned that MegaTen have "blank slate" main characters in JRPGS. How does that even work in such a rigid story structure that JRPGs have? I'm not flaming here, im honestly curious about how that would work out.

Well, the more linear MegaTen games I've seen work with a "blank slate" protagonist the same way that a similarly linear game like Dragon Age: Origins works. They offer you choices and consequences within a linear storytelling framework.

Devil Survivor (sort of a MegaTen spin-off) is unusual for an RPG (either W or J) because of how uniquely non-linear it is. It also displays excellent storytelling that takes advantage of the games nonlinearity and, most relevant to this discussion, an unusually low degree of gameplay and story segregation. Basically, the game is a isometric tactical rpg, and stuff that games would normally handle in cutscenes are often handled in the tactical rpg bit. For instance, there's a boss fight where you have to defend a major NPC from waves of enemies. If they kill her in that fight, she's dead, and the story changes to fit that.

So in other words, while each subgenre has its cliches, those cliches don't define the subgenre and you can absolutely find games that subvert what you'd expect based on where they were made. The other example people have been throwing around of a JRPG that doesn't play like a JRPG is Demon's Souls.

 

[Ickorus]

I have two problems with JPRGs:

The voice acting is often terrible and over-the-top and the storylines tend to swing wildly from happy-go-lucky fun times to angsty teenager emo times.

I do often enjoy most other aspects though, the worlds tend to be imaginative, the gameplay solid andthe visuals stunning.

 

[Ickorus]

Quotey stuff

It's not an insult to the player, Japan is a different culture, their games are expected to do different things, promote different values. America is individualist and Japan is collectivist, America is about personal choice, "I'll make my choice, for me", where as in Japan it's for the good of society, the needs of the one are muted and choices are made for you, because they'll help you and everyone else.

You can't fix games coming from a different culture, as much as I dislike playing JRPGs, they have all the right in the world to make games like that.

Being an English guy looking in on American culture I often see your society promoting family values and patriotism in your games and movies.

 

[Chibz]

Being an English guy looking in on American culture I often see your society promoting family values and patriotism in your games and movies.

So THAT explains it! Screw the brotherhood of steel, forget the enclave, move over Charon (even though I love you), take an early retirement Fawks. I want to mobilize Little Lamplight.

Now it sounds stupid at first glance, but hear me out. I want to recruit them due to their seeming super power. The power of not dying. Bless "family values". *Salutes*

 

[bunji]

The other example people have been throwing around of a JRPG that doesn't play like a JRPG is Demon's Souls.

I tried clearing away the massive quote debris, let's see how it works out.

Of course you have an excellent point, there are always interesting deviations within a genre that one can quote to point out that "not all fpsess? fpii? are like Doom, look at Deus Ex", but I think that it's kinda of a dodge. To make an accurate depiction of a genres general status one would have to look to the "biggest" games out there, and i'd like to state that enough JRPGs follow certain tropes that are getting old and tired by now to make that something one needs to keep in mind while discussing the genre at large.

I'd like to point out here that i'm by no means a JRPG afficionado, and as such my opinions about the genre are mainly influence by the large titles that every gamer worth his salt notices anyway, so take my rantings with a pinch of salt.

 

[Bobby_D]

Well there's an inherent flaw in your logic: that games must have branching stories to have choice or nonlinearity. An example is Super Mario Brothers...fairly linear story (Princess kidnapped [Yoshis too], go save her), but the game itself has many extra levels, secrets to unlock, etc. In a JRPG, there is similar kinds of choice. In every FF game, you're bound to come across an Airship at some point, and at that point you can fly around the world, checking out villages, doing whatever sidequests are available, etc. The story won't advance, but it still isn't linear, per se.

Dragon Age: Origins is, on the other hand, a VERY linear game, with the semblance of nonlinearity (and don't take this the wrong way, I love that game). It starts out in one of six levels, all of which have pre-set stories from which you cannot vary at all, and eventually all six tie together into one neat bow and the rest of the game goes from there. As with Mario after a certain point and the FF games after a certain point, the game can be played in whatever order you wish, extras can be unlocked, etc, but in the end, whether you choose to save Bann Teagan's son by sacrificing the wife or going to the circle of magi, or kill his son (three choices), it doesn't matter, because Bann Teagan will still join you and call for the Landsmeet.