I think it depends on what games you played. Pokemon is my favorite RPG and you can beat the Main campaign in about 24 hours. Although post game carries depending on which version and if you try to catch them all. My favorite Western RPG, X-men legends, was in the 40's. ASlso this is Not counting how many times I restarted because I hit a dead end.
Why are JRPGs so much longer than WRPGs?
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Do you actually know anything about the Tales game or are you just going to base an argument on an unbalanced comparison weighing all this stuff you already know about The Witcher series against a piece of promotional art? Based solely on this promotional art, both games look fairly 'generic' with respect to their own genres. Nothing's yet been said about either game's battle mechanics, leveling system, difficulty, etc...RealRT said:
If it wasn't clear above, I really don't give a crap how 'bleak' or 'Game-of-Thrones-like' a RPG is in tone. If anything, that vibe's going to drive me away, as I generally prefer games to present a neutral or uplifting alternative to the endless stream of cynical gloom-and-doom that's taken over books, comics, movies, and television (sometimes I feel like Westerners won't be happy until all of our media is as miserable, negative, and preoccupied with death and sadness as the horrible stories we constantly hear about in the news).
Based on everything I've read over the years, I'm sure the Witcher games are plenty awesome as games. The argument here is about leveling pat and superficial judgments towards this or that game based on weak cultural assumptions and attitudes.
Less so than you'd think. Long WRPGs stretch back decades; Planescape Torment and Baldur's Gate 1/2 were similarly massive RPG worlds with easily a hundred hours of content. A lot of it, just like in TES and Fallout, was optional, and some (based on choices you make) could only be experienced in different playthroughs, but the feel of those huge world RPGs is just the most recent in a long line of PC RPGs.TheKasp said:
Yeah, as pointed out earlier, I think this is one of the "main" differences. Early JRPGs had very little, if any, side content. Their story was the core of the game, and once that was done, the game was done. To lengthen gameplay, they introduced some truly horrendous grind or random battles to artificially delay you. FF8 was one of my favorite JRPGs in that regard; fairly early on you could turn battles off and avoid them the entire rest of the game, and since bosses scaled by level (and were generally easier if you were lower level) it was possible to just cruise through that game with very few artificial delays. I'd mention bravely default as a good example too, since that also has a switch to turn random battles down or off, but that ALSO has literally the most horrendous example of artificial gameplay lengthening I've *EVER SEEN* so fuck that game.
WRPGs have always favored the world-building, and letting you explore that world every step of the way is a big part of that. Huge maps with dozens (if not hundreds) of locations, each with many quests and NPCs to interact with, definitely build a sense of "epic" proportions in a game. In most JRPGs, there are only enough towns to support the story; rarely any far-off locations that are completely optional and actually "neat" to experience (Wutai in FF7 is a notable exception). If they exist, often they just have a merchant with rare goods or a spell trainer or some shit to reward you for finding it, but the location itself is bland.
Fixed that for you! From simple reskins to spawning items or ammo to teleporting NPCs around the world to adding brand new content, mods have been a mainstay in any hugely popular PC game, even as far back as the legendary Baldur's Gate 1 and 2. There's even a modpack that combines BG1 and 2 into a "single game" run on BG2's engine, and offers a ton of tweaks and new content as well. And yeah... mod content in TES/FO can completely change the game, from simple quality of life mods like Loadout to entire reskins of zones or custom weapons.
*sniff* i love mods :3
I think it's due to WRPGs being made with multiple playthroughs in mind with a shorter but more immediately satisfiying gameplay. Where as JRPGs tend to be more character driven stories that takes the playing on an epiclly adventure that ends with a great feeling bang at the end, thus only requiring one playthrough to get 100% exploration and collection in.
There are exceptions on both sides of course, the "Tales of" JRPG franchise always has New Game+ with unlockables that require at least one playthrough to access. And on the WRPG side we have The Witcher, a character driven game that's pretty damn long and only warrants another playthrough to see different story aspects due to the varying choices available.
Just seems like different philosophies on how to make games.
There are exceptions on both sides of course, the "Tales of" JRPG franchise always has New Game+ with unlockables that require at least one playthrough to access. And on the WRPG side we have The Witcher, a character driven game that's pretty damn long and only warrants another playthrough to see different story aspects due to the varying choices available.
Just seems like different philosophies on how to make games.
Because Tales of Graces is full of tedious, annoying puzzles...And petrification-enemies that broke my friend's spirit after two tries xD (He's the JRPG fan and the one who actually owns the game)
... Tales of Graces sucks! the only two good things (which is only one because the other one is connected to her)
Pascal! I love her =P and Ruby Inferno, her level 3 Ultimate/Arte/whatever-it's-called. She summons a giant lava-dragon spirit and punches the shit out of the enemies, Then kick-piledrives them into the ground. THAT is AWESOME.
Pity the rest of the game is shit and stupid and incredulous and rancid and other mildly-insulting words that I can come up with. (Malik's ok too. The rest of the characters are just shite, and their reasoning is shite, and the plot is shite and very much is shite (I'm gonna stop now))
Disclaimer: If you like Tales of Graces or the other Tales games, you are free to do that. I'm just ranting because I don't like Graces and I have a habit of creating walls of text whenever I discuss/talk/write about something I really like/love or something I hate/can pick out flaws with...Repeatedly. =P
(I can be a very bitter individual if I get going. But I can also be a very positive one (don't ask me about things in Baldur's Gate if you don't have an hour to spare)
... Tales of Graces sucks! the only two good things (which is only one because the other one is connected to her)
Pascal! I love her =P and Ruby Inferno, her level 3 Ultimate/Arte/whatever-it's-called. She summons a giant lava-dragon spirit and punches the shit out of the enemies, Then kick-piledrives them into the ground. THAT is AWESOME.
Pity the rest of the game is shit and stupid and incredulous and rancid and other mildly-insulting words that I can come up with. (Malik's ok too. The rest of the characters are just shite, and their reasoning is shite, and the plot is shite and very much is shite (I'm gonna stop now))
Disclaimer: If you like Tales of Graces or the other Tales games, you are free to do that. I'm just ranting because I don't like Graces and I have a habit of creating walls of text whenever I discuss/talk/write about something I really like/love or something I hate/can pick out flaws with...Repeatedly. =P
(I can be a very bitter individual if I get going. But I can also be a very positive one (don't ask me about things in Baldur's Gate if you don't have an hour to spare)
Is Game-of-Thrones-like a thing? That people use often?Caostotale said:
I will never understand people's obsession with that series =/
Don't get me wrong. I like it, I think it's good, but I don't think it's "the best show in the world ever!!!(!!!)" But I only watch the show, and I've heard that it leaves out parts from the books and/or doesn't follow the books completely etc.
I don't know if that's necessarily 100% true, though yeah, JRPGs tend to be on the longer side.
I've never been into WRPGs much, but I know a lot of the length in those comes from exploration and side quests, which means if you want to just power through the game, you lose out on a bunch of the content.
I've never been into WRPGs much, but I know a lot of the length in those comes from exploration and side quests, which means if you want to just power through the game, you lose out on a bunch of the content.
It depends on what your talking about specifically.endtherapture said:
As a very general rule JRPGs use fairly crappy technology which a lot of people make fun of, not to mention that the highly stylized "anime" artwork tends to result in a lot less space being used. This generally means they can create a lot more game for a lot less than WRPGs which tend to spend more time on elaborate character models, and cutting edge graphics and technology. Basically with western games it's always "AAA" where your typical JRPG might be a "C" game
if it's lucky. With a WRPG for example you might say walk up to a full character model and have a conversation where a big deal is made about facial expressions, voice acting, etc... all uncanny valley aspects aside. In a JRPG though the conversations might take place in 2D using text, with each character involved having a portrait appear on the side of the screen as they talk, with perhaps a few different "mood" portraits showing exaggerated moods in a cartoony style being swapped in and out to empathize specific things.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying JRPGs are bad (played more than a few of them) it's just that you have to seriously look at the quality compared to a lot of the big western RPGs like "Origins". You might get a lot more gameplay out of a NIS or Atlus title than say a Bioware title but the quality that's there is going to be much lower and has to be taken on it's own merits.
Of course exceptions exist, such as some of the "Final Fantasy" games which have in their hey day included cutting edge technology and graphics for their time, and could still clock in at 100 hours or more. Of course with the way the industry has changed I believe Squeenix mentioned it probably couldn't afford to create a game the size and depth of say "Final Fantasy VII" with current tech which is why there hasn't been a remake despite massive demand for one. The more recent "Final Fantasy" titles got away with size and decent tech by being pretty linear, to the point of almost being a game where you just kept walking forward, even the battle system was something that didn't really have much to it, you largely set the game to play itself. That's what they got when they tried to do both without compromise and it's one of the bigger train wrecks in gaming. As a general rule WRPGs lean towards one pole JRPGs lean towards the other, they both have their respective charm. With time we will hopefully eventually see high quality RPGs that are extremely long again... but that will involved a lot of changes which will be slow to come. Among other things I don't think western game companies want to make many huge games because they want people to finish and be wanting more games by the time their next ones are done... a content audience that is still exploring old games isn't a profitable one. Bethesda is one of the few hold outs on this (I mean the time you can put into some of their games is crazy) but they also release very infrequently. Right now we don't have either a new "Fallout" or "Elder Scrolls" anywhere near release, maybe towards the tail end of next year if we're lucky.
You can't blame him for thinking Tales is cute and childish. It WANTS you to think it's cute and childish, that way hit hits you harder when all the racism, genocide, and human sacrifices start cropping up. I wonder how many of the Party's parents you'll have to murder in this one. Tales is an evil franchise.Dreiko said:
I think it's a great show based on what's surely a solid book series, but would certainly agree that people swoon over it too much. On top of the show's considerable amounts of 'mature' content (which in today's culture just means tons of teenager pandering bullshit thrown in), it's one of those 'geek things' that a ton of other people in society enjoy, which for some geeks makes it the best thing in the world (I suppose because it makes for good water-cooler talk, conversation at the bar, Facebook BSing, etc...). I suppose the fact that I'm a dyed-in-the-wool 'true nerd' sort who's not particularly outgoing with non-nerds makes me aloof to most of the hype and silliness (e.g. dorky people filming audience reaction videos during surprising scenes).Pikey Mikey said:
I think it has to do with the language. With the way it works you can fit in a whole lot more words onto the screen than those of the English language. For instance, look at the Japanese "Name your Character" screens. They have like four slots, but those four slots are obviously more than enough to put in the kind of names we put into ours.
I know it's not exactly what both of you mean, but Falcom's Legend of Heroes seems to be approaching that threshold, if it hasn't already passed it years ago. The scripts for every game are absolutely HUGE and I recall a joking response from them saying that they hope to finish up the series before their president dies.Pikey Mikey said:
Nothing whatsoever. And no, i'ts not all endless stream of bleakness. The world is bleak, but characters have their lighthearted moments (one particular example that stands out for me is a quest in 2 that's basically a medieval fantasy version of Hangover). It's dark, but it's good kind of dark, that lets you take a rest from the darkness and just have some fun with the characters. Do not confuse it with stuff like Dragon Age - now THAT game you can tear a new one all you want, it really is horribly generic as hell. The "Tales" art tells me that this game is yet another JRPG with teens saving the world. Not terribly original and nothing that would sway me away from WRPGs.Caostotale said:
The Witcher 1 and 2:GamerMage said:
Good characters - check
Easily comprehensible battle system - check
Colorful areas - check
Comprehensible plot - check
Seems like a hit on all sixes to me.
You picked the wrong way and you have to go back through all those mobs that randomly spawn to take the other route and there you encounter a boss that pretty much oneshots your whole party so you need to grind those random mobs to raise your level, thats pretty much my experience with jrpgs.
In the west everyone is racing to be first. In Japan'O'Land it's all about teamwork and taking turns.
To me it would seem to boil down to the very real extra time requirement of turn-based combat/interaction.
To me it would seem to boil down to the very real extra time requirement of turn-based combat/interaction.
Mainly it's differences in design and theme. WRPGs tend to be power fantasies, focusing on you the player becoming the biggest baddest mofo on the planet, exploring big open worlds and generally ruling everything. As such, you tend to get strong fast, and most of the gameplay just comes from exploration and messing around. JRPGs are more focused on the party and the story, getting to know the characters and the world, becoming invested in it. It was what the genre was known for before FFVIII made it what it is today. There's a lot of downtime, talking, plot bombs, and you have to work on levelling and keeping track of a whole team instead of just yourself.
There's also filler. WRPGs tend to have most of the filler content divorced from the usually short main plot. Fallout 3 for example, that had a short main quest but was bursting with sidequests, exploration, little details and world changing choices. The Wasteland Survival Guide alone can add on like 2 hours to your playtime. JRPGs incorporate the filler into the main plot, with grinding and traveling and diversions from the main quest. This is usually just padding, but it does allow you to see more of the characters, which form the focus of most JRPGs. I haven't played Persona 4, but I heard that did it brilliantly.
Of course there are outliers and mixers between the two styles, such as Mass Effect, Kingdom Hearts and Fire Emblem Awakening to a degree.
There's also filler. WRPGs tend to have most of the filler content divorced from the usually short main plot. Fallout 3 for example, that had a short main quest but was bursting with sidequests, exploration, little details and world changing choices. The Wasteland Survival Guide alone can add on like 2 hours to your playtime. JRPGs incorporate the filler into the main plot, with grinding and traveling and diversions from the main quest. This is usually just padding, but it does allow you to see more of the characters, which form the focus of most JRPGs. I haven't played Persona 4, but I heard that did it brilliantly.
Of course there are outliers and mixers between the two styles, such as Mass Effect, Kingdom Hearts and Fire Emblem Awakening to a degree.
Don't forget class-ism (a protagonist had to be told what money is, he was so rich he just took what he wanted from a store without thinking twice about it), illegal cloning experiments, child soldiers, environmental calamities, PTSD surfacing as fear of women, mutilation and many many other things.JCAll said:
Suffice it to say, if you think tales is "childish" you're ignorant.