You, Me, and The Great JRPG Love-In
- Thread starter Hollywood Knights
- Start date
Recommended Videos
I've played a lot a lot a LOT of JRPGs, and surely I can't be the only one who has found them to be stagnating of late?
The character archetypes are just TOO common. Furthermore, it confuses me why the way someone dresses for some reason defines a "character" in Japan, wherein the west it is the persons actions, attitudes and responses (you know, the character of a person).
How man JRPGs follow this storyline?
You, a young sword wielding teenage male (wake up in bed/are woken up because you slept in too late). Early in the game you (Meet a princess/Meet a girl who has amnesia and turns out to be a princess) and begrudgingly take her along with you. Witty dialogue ensues.
The girl, was given (before departure from the castle/on her parents death bed/as an heirloom) a mysterious pendant. The girl, for whatever reason must always be clutching the pendant and standing like this (for example):
In the end, it turns out this girl and the mysterious pendant are the key to destroying the evil cursing the land! This may or may not require her sacrifice. If it requires her sacrifice, it is very likely she will still come back alive afterward via he power of friendship.
I mean, it's just so overdone. This is why I really admire things like Demon's Souls for trying to break the mold a bit (well, a lot!). Hell, even Shin Megami Tensei doesn't REALLY follow this archetype and it's so refreshing to play those games. Or Disgaea! I love me some Disgaea! The problem is that these games aren't the majority.
One of the things I've come to realize though, is that I really prefer the JRPGs that just have text as opposed to voice acting. They either cheap out and just have amazingly shitty voice acting, or they get good voice actors who try to apply Japanese mannerisms to English where they simply don't work. A plea then to all JRPGs to PLEASE let me play the game in Japanese with English subtitles if you're doing dubs - it's just better this way.
The character archetypes are just TOO common. Furthermore, it confuses me why the way someone dresses for some reason defines a "character" in Japan, wherein the west it is the persons actions, attitudes and responses (you know, the character of a person).
How man JRPGs follow this storyline?
You, a young sword wielding teenage male (wake up in bed/are woken up because you slept in too late). Early in the game you (Meet a princess/Meet a girl who has amnesia and turns out to be a princess) and begrudgingly take her along with you. Witty dialogue ensues.
The girl, was given (before departure from the castle/on her parents death bed/as an heirloom) a mysterious pendant. The girl, for whatever reason must always be clutching the pendant and standing like this (for example):
In the end, it turns out this girl and the mysterious pendant are the key to destroying the evil cursing the land! This may or may not require her sacrifice. If it requires her sacrifice, it is very likely she will still come back alive afterward via he power of friendship.
I mean, it's just so overdone. This is why I really admire things like Demon's Souls for trying to break the mold a bit (well, a lot!). Hell, even Shin Megami Tensei doesn't REALLY follow this archetype and it's so refreshing to play those games. Or Disgaea! I love me some Disgaea! The problem is that these games aren't the majority.
One of the things I've come to realize though, is that I really prefer the JRPGs that just have text as opposed to voice acting. They either cheap out and just have amazingly shitty voice acting, or they get good voice actors who try to apply Japanese mannerisms to English where they simply don't work. A plea then to all JRPGs to PLEASE let me play the game in Japanese with English subtitles if you're doing dubs - it's just better this way.
I've played almost every JRPG released for the 360, and I've gotta say, the genre is still going strong and I still love them.
FFXIII may have sucked terribly, but Lost Odyssey, Resonance of Fate, Tales of Vesperia, Blue Dragon, Eternal Sonata (cutscenes aside), Enchanted Arms, and even parts of Star Ocean: TLH were very good (pretty much ranked from good to mediocre).
Operation Darkness and Spectral Force 3 on the SRPG side were pretty good, but were frankly too hard to be a lot of fun.
Magna Carta 2 suffered from using the same engine as Infinite Undiscovery (which I found to be a broken pile of frustration and yelling), but was still ok.
I only really became a "hardcore" gamer this generation, so the majority of my experience with JRPGs has been recent, and I'm still very pleased with the offerings. I wish Mistwalker would keep developing on the 360, but it doesn't look like they're going to... I love Sakaguchi and his crazy surfing lego man.
FFXIII may have sucked terribly, but Lost Odyssey, Resonance of Fate, Tales of Vesperia, Blue Dragon, Eternal Sonata (cutscenes aside), Enchanted Arms, and even parts of Star Ocean: TLH were very good (pretty much ranked from good to mediocre).
Operation Darkness and Spectral Force 3 on the SRPG side were pretty good, but were frankly too hard to be a lot of fun.
Magna Carta 2 suffered from using the same engine as Infinite Undiscovery (which I found to be a broken pile of frustration and yelling), but was still ok.
I only really became a "hardcore" gamer this generation, so the majority of my experience with JRPGs has been recent, and I'm still very pleased with the offerings. I wish Mistwalker would keep developing on the 360, but it doesn't look like they're going to... I love Sakaguchi and his crazy surfing lego man.
I don't play particularly many JRPGs. I've played a some final fantasies (III, IV, I'm starting IX, X, XIII) and The World Ends With You (great game by the way). I have liked every JRPG I've played so far. I simply can't quite connect with the complaints about them. The biggest complaint I've seen is that the player has little influence on the story and the player's only job is pushing the characters around to the next scene. This is true, but what they seem to miss is the fact that a good JRPG makes you want to go to the scene. People seem to think that the gamer is for some reason unwilling to cart the characters around. But why are you even playing it if you don't want to do that? You're obviously not enjoying the game if you don't even really want to continue with it. People who complain about JRPGs simply aren't JRPG people. They don't need to make it publicly known that they don't like the style JRPG gameplay. Why should we care about the likes and dislikes of random people? It's just an annoying opinion.
Edit: What's with the FFXIII hate? I've been playing through it and I've like it so far. The story feels compelling enough albeit a bit confusing and the characters are good enough (save for ***** kid and Vanille). Personally I loved the combat system. It's fun and dynamic. I particularly love that they encourage experimentation by giving you the retry ability. The key points of the system remind me a bit of The World Ends With You. You don't have to worry about health between battles, battles are mostly optional, and you can retry as many times as you want. The only problem for me was the linearity of the first chunk of the game. The minute you get out into the open world area, however, the game gets much funner. All in all, I'm liking it.
Edit: What's with the FFXIII hate? I've been playing through it and I've like it so far. The story feels compelling enough albeit a bit confusing and the characters are good enough (save for ***** kid and Vanille). Personally I loved the combat system. It's fun and dynamic. I particularly love that they encourage experimentation by giving you the retry ability. The key points of the system remind me a bit of The World Ends With You. You don't have to worry about health between battles, battles are mostly optional, and you can retry as many times as you want. The only problem for me was the linearity of the first chunk of the game. The minute you get out into the open world area, however, the game gets much funner. All in all, I'm liking it.
