Poll: Which do you prefer JRPGs or WRPGs?

[the_green_dragon]

I'm not sure how JRPG can be called an RPG at all. I mean you never make any choices for the character other then what equipment to wear. How is it a role playing game at all? When I play a role playing game I expect to be able to take on that character's role and make decisions that affect the story. JRPGs are mostly linear stories, good stories but still linear. Maybe they should be called J-Action something.

 

[EradiusLore]

not a huge fan of jRPG tbh, it always felt really restrictive compared to the rpgs i like to play, such as daggerfall, morrowind, oblivion, mass effect, knights of the old republic, etx. never got into the whole interactive movie thing that jrpgs seem to be made up of. i want to play not watch damn it!!

 

[Craorach]

Generally speaking I prefer WRPGs since I dislike the stories, personalities and systems in most JRPGs I've played. I really really wanted to enjoy various Final Fantasy games for example, but find the turn based combat silly, and many of the characters just annoying.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Mass effect was a mess because the combat was atrocious. Instead of an actual real time must aim and hit your target like an FPS which I was attracted to due to my experience with other JRPGs like Secret of mana. I find out that instead I have to have the little enemy in my "circle" for it to count as a hit, didn't matter if I was precise I just needed my enemy in the target. That was really sloppy and not fun for me as half of the time it would register and the other half it would not. Nevermind the atrocious controls where using magic or "tech" was just as bad where I had to pause the game, select the spell and then cast it.

It sounds like you didn't really understand Mass Effect's combat system. You did have to aim like an FPS. The circle was there to show you where your shot might scatter to, depending on your character's skill level and movement. Didn't you notice the circle shrunk a lot when you stood still, allowing you to be more precise? Or that it shrunk as you increased your skill with that weapon, also allowing you to be more precise? This is also what's behind what you seem to have read as a bug, where sometimes it would hit and sometimes not - sometimes the bullet would land in a part of the circle that your target wasn't in.
I thought it worked really well as a way to mix real-world skill at shooters with the character's developing skill at weapons.
Also, you don't have to pause to use biotics or tech powers, you can bind them to real time controls at any time.

agreed, i don't think they understood that it was a rpg approach in a third person form of shooting, so most of the game you sucked donkey dick at shooting and regardles of how well you were aiming you weren't going to hit amazingly, and by the end i had head shots every time (i went pure sniping most of the time)and demolished foes in less than 10 seconds per battle with my ridiculously OP sniper and acid ammo.

i will say the mass effect combat is a bit "loose" where it's not super user friendly, it kind of reminds me of some older pc based games, but once you understand it i was flying through levels because of how easy it had become to use, same goes for the mako, once i got the mechanics and "late"ness of the controls for turning and whatnot, i was picking off every enemy from a mile away while still trudging along the road just fine

 

[fenrizz]

I like em both.

They are different, but I enjoy both styles.

 

[Connor Gambrill]

JRPG's either all try to be like Final Fantasy or some sort of Anime with scantily clad girls and questionable boy like creatures, whereas WRPG's are just taken from J. R. R. Tolkein's scrap book and waste paper basket.

Though I prefer WRPG's simply because there's less talking and it doesn't take 20 hours to understand the plot, it's usually just "bad guy over there, go swing swords and throw fire"

 

[Zefar]

I prefer jRPGs over wRPGs and it's mainly because you never ever do anything awesome in a wRPG.

No awesome moves. No awesome skills. No awesome end boss fight where you own the shit out the boss.

Not once. I've also played through plenty of wRPG but all of them are forgettable. Combat is downright pathetic in most of them. Even Dragon Age Origins which my twin brother bought and played it for several hours. I've spent quite ab it of time watching him play it but all I can see is. "This look hella lot like Never Winter Knights 2". Which I played for a while before I got really bored.

You see, fighting in wRPG just tend to be you giving the order of your unit attacking a monster and having him whack at it till it dies. This goes on for quite some time until you learn a few spells. But these spells are not impressive and usually have a high cool down. Don't want users to spam them you know.

Characters themselves. I can't seriously remember any character that I've made or have controlled other than Mass Effect main character. Even then Tali and Legion in 2:nd game was much more memorable than any main hero of any wRPG game I've ever played.
Most look like a generic handsome guy too. Except for The Witcher. Which I've played for 10 hours before I got bored of the boring combat. At some point I only kept playing to sleep with all the witches as it was the only fun thing left to do.

Story can be ok for some games but it usually ends up saving the world or Galaxy, yes, wRPG have "Saving the world" type of scenarios as well.


It's also fun seeing a lot of people whine about turn based combat when most wRPG in the style of Dragon Age Origins and Never Winter knights use a pause feature and later on you have to use that. Which turn your game into a Turn based system.
All though in Fallout 3 I used it as little as possible as soon as I got a good gun. I don't like unreal random recoil for no reason other than missing monsters.

Kotor used this type of system as well and I played that to the end.

For me though some series of jRPG have been far more enjoyable and one of them is Tales of Abyss. Though if you don't have Japanese voice + English text you'll hate the voice actors. How they manage to get the worst actors for the English one is beyond me.

The whole Star Ocean series seems to have done fine as well.


I also find it laughable that people claim jRPG have too many cut scenes which turns it to a movie. Sorry but you will spend roughly 60 or so hours to get through a game and this is not doing everything. Cut scenes will only take a minute or two at most and there ain't going to be a lot of them. It's also one good way to progress character development which they usually do in those.


I can play through quite a bit of wRPG but the combat is the most boring aspect of most of them. Few skills, few attacks and no awesome moments. Oh and level 99 > level 20-50
You just feel so weak in a wRPG game. Doing mere 10 to 20 damage and at highest you might do 60. I pull off 1.2 million damage with my Oblivion summon in Final Fantasy 10, sure the game has a crap story and voice actors but as far as combat goes it's just fine.

Oh and Clouds Omni Slash. Yea, that monster isn't living after that. The most impressive multi hit some character in a wRPG have is like Flurry. A Mere 3-5 hits I think. pfft.

 

[Defense]

If you're talking about the style, then I prefer JRPGs with a bit of WRPG mixed in it. I hardly think it's as Black-and-White as people assume though. Bioware recently produced more "JRPG" styled games under a WRPG name.

 

[Jackstick]

JRPG. I can get into a JRPG pretty easily, and I feel like a lot more care is put into a JRPG.

 

[Anachronism]

There is a lack of cohesion in Final Fantasy X, and in the cinematic RPG itself. The story and gameplay have become two entirely separate mechanisms, operating independently of each other. In Final Fantasy X, half the time you're playing a game, and half the time you're watching a CGI movie. They never overlap. When you reach a certain point in one, Final Fantasy X switches over to the other. What the player does when he's at the wheel has no impact whatsoever on what happens when the game goes back on autopilot. This isn't a role-playing game.

This [http://socksmakepeoplesexy.net/index.php?a=ff10] sums up my problems with JRPGs. The Final Fantasy series, for instance, aren't bad games. The gameplay is solid, the characters are (mostly) likeable and the stories are good. The problem is that the player has absolutely no impact on the story. All you do is move the characters from one cutscene to another. They aren't role-playing games, they're role-watching games; yes, the characters grow and develop, but the player has absolutely nothing to do with it. Pretty much the first thing Tidus says in FFX is "This is my story", and he's right: it's his story, not the player's. The player has nothing to do with it.

To me, this pretty much defeats the entire point of a role-playing game. Frankly, the games industry, by and large*, seems to have forgotten what role-playing is. A role-playing game shouldn't be about stats and spreadsheets, XP and levelling up, but about embodying a character, and experiencing and affecting the world through them. Don't get me wrong, I like stats and XP in my games, but, as Shamus Young has said, it's got to the point now where RPG and role-playing game are pretty much two distinct genres.

*This is, of course, not to say that all developers do this; it's just the majority, particularly when you hear about "RPG elements" being incorporated into other genres.

 

[EHKOS]

WRPGs are my favorite, but once in a while there is a worthwile JRPG. Like Wild Arms. I suppose you could call Pokemon a JRPG....right?

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

JRPGs. Have a look at the start of Moviebob's Halo Legends review and you'll get why. The common complaint is they rip off anime, but they still possess a great deal more variety in aesthetic styles and attacks than the dirt-brown sword-slinger worlds of most WRPGs. I particularly enjoyed the 'comic book' look in the last couple of Wild Arms games before 5, though I would consider Star Ocean to be the most generic-looking after 2.

They're also actually more straightforward, whereas every WRPG I've played emulates an open-world game or a single-player MMORPG- you're let loose in a massive world and just do things until you stumble on a plot-related item, which could take weeks.

 

[Sean Steele]

Leveling dose not make the RPG for me. Exploration dose not make the RPG for me, only influence on the outcome really makes something seem at all like an RPG for me. So WRPG.

 

[nbamaniac]

Both are enjoyable in their own right..

WRPGs: Baldur's gate 1 and 2, Planescape: Torment, Star Wars: KotoR, The Witcher 1 and 2, Mass Effect and Dragon Age series.

JRPGs: Final Fantasy 4, 5 and 6, Phantasy Star series, Suikoden 1 and 2, Golden Sun 1 and 2

 

[seditary]

I love people who apply their own personal definition of an RPG that precludes their conception of what's termed JRPGs to only JRPGs and doesn't realize it precludes the RPGs they like as well.

So adorable.

Be a lover, not a hater. You'll enjoy yourself more, trust me.

 

[Defense]

Asking if JRPG's are better on a site that loves Bioware..

See the logical fail? xD

I'm on another forum where JRPGs rule, and the opinions are much worse. The JRPG folks are "I don't like the lack of story focus on X/Y/Z", and the WRPG folks think Bioware is the best company ever, despite only having played Mass Effect and Dragon Age: Origins.

They also think it's much more nonlinear than it actually is, but what are you gonna do with Bioware fanboys.

There is a lack of cohesion in Final Fantasy X, and in the cinematic RPG itself. The story and gameplay have become two entirely separate mechanisms, operating independently of each other. In Final Fantasy X, half the time you're playing a game, and half the time you're watching a CGI movie. They never overlap. When you reach a certain point in one, Final Fantasy X switches over to the other. What the player does when he's at the wheel has no impact whatsoever on what happens when the game goes back on autopilot. This isn't a role-playing game.

This [http://socksmakepeoplesexy.net/index.php?a=ff10] sums up my problems with JRPGs. The Final Fantasy series, for instance, aren't bad games. The gameplay is solid, the characters are (mostly) likeable and the stories are good. The problem is that the player has absolutely no impact on the story. All you do is move the characters from one cutscene to another. They aren't role-playing games, they're role-watching games; yes, the characters grow and develop, but the player has absolutely nothing to do with it. Pretty much the first thing Tidus says in FFX is "This is my story", and he's right: it's his story, not the player's. The player has nothing to do with it.

To me, this pretty much defeats the entire point of a role-playing game. Frankly, the games industry, by and large*, seems to have forgotten what role-playing is. A role-playing game shouldn't be about stats and spreadsheets, XP and levelling up, but about embodying a character, and experiencing and affecting the world through them. Don't get me wrong, I like stats and XP in my games, but, as Shamus Young has said, it's got to the point now where RPG and role-playing game are pretty much two distinct genres.[/quote]
But that's how RPGs started out. JRPGs got their name from their gameplay mechanics, which were similar to pen and paper RPGs at the time. They weren't called that because of their "nonlinear" nature.

 

[Ailia]

They both have their ups and downs.
JRPGs like the Tales of series and the MegaTen series have been staples of my gaming library almost since I first became a gamer, and, though I dislike most Final Fantasies, I love them for their colourful characters and ridiculously angtsy stories. There is a lack of true role-playing in these games, but it doesn't usually bug me unless the game gets over-cinematic (like the FF series).
But WRPGs have their merits too; Baldur's Gate II was the first game that obsessed my to the point where my parents were worried, and I've replayed it with a couple dozen different characters. There's more variety, and as such generally more replay value, but wandering around looking for quests does get on my nerves after a while.

OT: I like both, I really can't choose one over the other, though recently I've been playing more WRPGs.