Poll: Do you hate JRPG's?

[GoldenCondor]

When i was like 8 i really enjoyed FF7, because it just then came out. it was Epic and great.
Now, most JRPG's are about grinding your character so he can be the biggest buffest douche on the block.
But i started JRPGS again, and turns out i like Tales of Eternia.

 

[PrototypeC]

I'm going to stand on the unpopular side with the mutants and lepers here... also Yahtzee. I bloody CAN NOT STAND JRPGS. Pokemon is the major exception, because it has cute fuzzy critters that you use to kill each other and has benefits for those just picking it up and those who play the game to death in order to get just that particular one with whatever move and a Spicy attitude, or whatever. I stopped paying attention, to be honest.

Final Fantasy, though, is a whole other mint biscuit. I hate that series with a passion and was furious when I heard Square took back their promise not to make any more. I mean, seriously, you have enough alternate worlds or universes or whatever with lots of characters and settings and different races. If you can make more FF7-world games you can do so for all the rest. Anyway, to me FF was repetitive grinding and crude perverted Japanese crap. The French are crass too, but they make jokes about it, and I love French humour. But how many times can a male character shamelessly hit on and grope female characters before they get a staff or gun-blade shoved haphazardly into their nether regions? Apparently, the perverts can get away with this forever... although I suppose that's more of a complaint about Japanese culture in general, in that they're much less prudish, as a whole. No American developer, underground or not, is going to make a successful game about raping your family members with the help of aliens and robots.

Hm. I seem to have lost my train of thought. JRPGs are grindy, horribly voice-acted, always have a perverted slant to it, are often anti-feminist in the most primevil sense of the word, and often have crappy, turn-based combat.

Good things now! They usually have unique and almost breathtaking artistic direction and world-building, unique enemies (as long as they don't fall back on giant animals and dragons), interesting storylines and technologies, and probably something else, I don't know.
This post is already too wordy.

Edit: that's it! That's the one I hate to hell! Eternal Sonata. God help us all.

 

[FinalGamer]

Hell no, I love JRPGs, first RPG I ever played was one. Oh sure they're not perfect but I find them fun.

 

[cordeos]

the stories are almost always trying to drive home some philosophical point that i really dont care about, i dont want my games to have morals, i want them to be fun.

 

[Carlston]

As much as people complain about JRPG's, what is the alternatives shining point?

You don't like the spikey hair characters, well that is what is the image of cool action star in Japan, well Anime character more likely so what do Western RPG's have?

Let's see, the exact same characters (same complaint of jrpgs) The tough muscle bound he-man clone, the love intrest female who is a delicate peace lover or interchanged with female #2 the "strong" fake woman, with toothpick arms but some how we believe Buffy can accually lift more than 60 pounds I'm as strong as the men type. The loser friend, the wise cracker, the mentor and the betrayer, the minority who will in time be a sterotype, the worthless nerd. Movie cliche's and game cliche's.

Baulders gate sums up the DND world RPG's and the story was almost identical to KOTOR short of the Reven twist. But once again, people make games that SELL and now a days the idea of new edgy storys or games is dead to be replaced with safe, same stories...

Starwars 1-3 was just a amazingly pathetic retell of 4-6 just you knew the good guy went bad. Phansty star 1-3 was the same, until they explained it all in 4 which never really made it to America... Final Fantasy has been the same damn story since FF2 for the famcom, Metal Gear Solid...Zelda, Metroid... GTA...

Bout the only thing to complain about is the culture difference. Which honestly is sad since they give you what you want. A retelling of a story (Starwars, Lord of the rings, fight the doom and gloom, save the earth) Well that's every story, Xmen, DC, Mortal Kombat, Streetfighter, jesus the F'in Care Bear, fighting evil protecting the innocent and making the world happier.

You don't like um, don't play um.
Just like the whine about turn based combat. It breaks the heart your ROLE PLAYING a person, who is not your leet pwning noob fps self, and has their own abilities. It's like showing up to a all you can eat Steak and rib place and whining there is no salad. Don't like it, don't buy it, don't put it in your console, don't complain about the mechanics, You don't by NBA live to complain lack of sandbox play and you want your create a player to beat up some hookers before the play offs.

Excuse me, I have a game pitch i need to send to EA now...

 

[ChromeAlchemist]

The story is always weak in JRPG's.
I'd say, Japanese story-telling, in general, is very poor. Given that videos games always have the worst narratives of any medium, JRPG's fall in the center of that Venn Diagram.

That's a horribly sweeping generalisation. The story in FFXII, Persona 3, Chrono Trigger, Xenogears, Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Cross, Disgaea, and so on are superb. The cookie cutter titles in the genre obviously are bad, but to say an entire genre has a weak story is just ignorant, and leads me to believe you haven't played many RPGs at all.

-snip-

My god...

Someone actually flips the script and challenges the formula of western developed RPGs? It's about damn time. I had something similar in my head, but not as detailed, and I never put it into a post, nice.

I think perhaps the only thing I can think of that you didn't put in there that I was thinking is the lack of difference in settings. It's either Medieval or futuristic/Sci-Fi/Cyberpunk. There are one or two titles that break the trend, but the rest pretty much follow this.

 

[Obeliskos]

Only hate some. Persona 3/4 are awesome games, whereas recent FF games are overrated garbage.

 

[ElephantGuts]

I hate JRPGs with all my soul. I can't really speak for the gameplay since I've never been able to get through the embarassingly torturous stories and characters to play one, but I'm sure I wouldn't like them anyway.

 

[Hobofisherman]

I only just recently finished FF7, if that counts as one. Played it when I was like 8, and never got past the end of disc 1. Finally finished it now I'm 18 and decided to play it again, and I was pretty disapointed. Disc 1 was as awesome as I remember, 2 was ridiculously short, and 3rd was all just fighting Sephiroth?! I mean come on 3 bloody discs just for that?

I suppose thats something I could say I hate about JRPGs. The overcompensation of everything. Especially how strong the main characters are, when infact they have the build of something that just walked off an MTV set in a pair of skinny jeans.

 

[Harlemura]

I'm going with Gameplay as a bad point, but I'm being very picky about it.
It's only in turn based games I get irritated with gameplay for two reasons that don't always even show up in a JRPG.
Main point's the case where I can see where I want to be at the end of a short path, but somehow I always manage not to see the 20 packs of wolfy things hiding under some pebbles, meaning I have to fight each and every one to walk about 50 paces.
I also have a pretty poor attention span, so if a fight that's completely turned based goes on for AGES for a boss or somethin' and then sometimes even resulting in me dying, meaning I have to start it all over again.

But yeah, apart from that, don't usually mind 'em.

 

[Markgraf]

I'm actually a big fan of JRPGs, but I really don't like the nomenclature assigned to them. I do not consider them "Role-Playing Games" at all. In fact, I prefer to think of them more as interactive movies, seeing as the player is normally left out from the plot, with little to no input upon it.

 

[Azazcyh]

the only thing that annoys me about jrpgs or anime and manga in genral is that I can't tell the boys from the girls

 

[Blanks]

i don't hate them, i'm just bored of years of playing them

moving into fps these days

 

[GodsOneMistake]

I actually like a lot of JRPG's, i love long games that i can just really immerse myself into. Lost Odyssey, Tales series, Skies of Arcadia...

 

[Escapefromwhatever]

I don't really think he bashed it all that much...he criticized it no doubt, but I didn't get the vibe that he was verbally attacking the game. In fact, he even stated that it made him realize he might-Gasp!- actually like turn-based combat. In any case, he seemed more confused than mean, similar to his The World Ends With You review.

For the poll, I voted that I do not hate JRPGs, because I have played and enjoyed many.

 

[Carlston]

The story is always weak in JRPG's.
I'd say, Japanese story-telling, in general, is very poor. Given that videos games always have the worst narratives of any medium, JRPG's fall in the center of that Venn Diagram.

That's a horribly sweeping generalisation. The story in FFXII, Persona 3, Chrono Trigger, Xenogears, Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Cross, Disgaea, and so on are superb. The cookie cutter titles in the genre obviously are bad, but to say an entire genre has a weak story is just ignorant, and leads me to believe you haven't played many RPGs at all.

-snip-

Generalsations?
You mean the other 200k RPG's out there not your Xenogears, Disgaea, Persona 3...

After Playing a few hundred rpg's I don't care about the few gems in the pool of turds I been a gamer for a long time and yes the few jewels in the turds appear but I will still stick to the bashing of the cliche focus group safe cash cows.

For every Chrono Cross there is three dozen, pointless snooze fests that just reused another game engine and treaded through.

Now your mistaking I dislike JRPG? Western RPG's? Nope... I love RPG's, matter fact FF7 is still to this date a favorite of mine.

I played things like Zork, Temple of Apshi, Ultima (yeah I started at 1 back on a Apple) I watched RPG's start on PC's and work their way up. My hatred for many RPG's now are as follows.

ROLE PLAY. Choices, consquences, and the world events and my image by others change from action I do. Diablo 2 is not a Rpg... if you kill all the other warrior trying to save the world from Diablo you'd never be let in a town again. Fallout is excellent example 1-2 on what you did affected the world, Daggerfall had over 500 reputations from nobles, beggars, individuals... piss off a beggar and turns he was the cousin of a duke and guess what! All hell broke loose. As well the old TSR DND games like Kyrnn as much as I loved the story, you never had any chance to be evil, good or neutral... you just followed the story.

CONNECT THE DOTS. I blame this on the Dragon warrior (Dragon Quest) Rpg Series. DW1 Nes as a RPG there is no real role to play. You have no ability to explore...the conversations are scripted and never change. You go from castle A to cave B, Back to castle A. Town B to quest 3... Final Fantasy series loved to do that and then break it up with the airship, saddly nes FF1 when you got the airship there was very little to discover. Give me the ability to go where I need to, but check out the cave I was told 20 dragon live in and will whip my level 3 behind to reload my last save.

GRIND or atleast the ability to do so... games like KOTOR and Neverwinter nights are a set back. Bad enough we connect the dots, but we can't even get that wild hair to level up that extra 5 levels.

CLICHE. Yep we get them all....but original ideas still stick out, this day I still am not sure if how Sephiroth in FF7 screwed with people 7 years after he died but damnit that's talent.

THEME. Nothing is original they say, but you know i like the mix up. Cyberpunk, Scifi, fantasy is nice...just have a world. Explain it, and stick to it. Ultima 1 was DND to the core until somehow it turned into starwars, with lightsabers, blasters and a space fight with tie fighters. Might and Magic 1-5 did that to. Sword and magic...then power armor and deathrays. Sometimes you go to far.

STORY. Ok, most of the problems above... can be forgiven with a good story. Connect the dots forgiven with Dragon Quest 8, enjoyed the story. Lack of freedom in FF, Story... Scripted drops and connect the dots in KOTOR forgiven to story. Even if its a cliche reharsh. It's HOW you tell it. Give me Villians to hate, party memeber to connect to (and avenge damnit Areis.)

People complain about JRPG characters with spikey hair is ignorant generalsaion....
You serve me up a plate of good story, immersion, characters that interact well, and it can have a few flaws.

Give me like my last post, the generic rpg crap and I will bash it. But because I didn't mention the 7 good games in the sea of blah...
I don't play any RPG's

None at all. (stares at my bookshelf lined with games from Zork to FF12) 1982-2009

I don't know much about art...but I know what I like.

 

[Dr.Kozak]

I really don't know how I feel on JRPGs. I can take them or leave them. It probably comes from playing them quite a lot back in the early FF days, but I think because of that I burned myself out on them. As for the Zero Punctuation review, I didn't find it terribly critical, or at least no more than usual.

 

[wewontdie11]

I love the Final Fantasy games I've played. Just because they are so different from everything else out there and it's nice to branch out from games that just throw some kind of firearm at you and point you in the direction of some bad men.

Can't speak for all JRPGs though because I haven't played a great deal of other ones... at least not enough of other ones to form a decent opinion of them.

 

[Glerken]

I don't hate JRPG's.
I hate their characters. Is that a guy or a girl? Wait that fourteen year old looking kid is twenty? Why not make him look 20 then?