Forum - View topicThe X Button - From the Future
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ikillchicken
 Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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Just to echo what hermit has said, it's easy to point to a few specific sources that preferred JRPGs or a couple well recieved JRPGs. Clearly not everyone shares the same opinion and there are exception to general trends. There are clearly general trends though which we can observe by comparing all the RPGs of the current generation via metacritic or a similar site. Let's do so:
I see Elder Scrolls, Fallout 3, Mass Effect, Fable 2, Dragon Age and Borderlands all in the 85-95 range but only Demon's Souls (That name hurts my soul) and Valkyria Chronicles and Paper Mario for JRPGs. I suppose you could try to include the Persona games but then they're all PS2. Not to say a PS2 game can't be good but there's also no faster road to becoming an outdated genre than to remain on a last gen console. When you look at all the other JRPGs on current gen systems they're all floating down there in the below 80 range or worse. I'm not trying to say you aren't entitled to your own preference or to think that recent JRPGs are better than the general consensus reflects. In turn though I don't think you can deny that as the majority seems to see it, console JRPGs have been somewhat lacking recently and for this reason, they may be a genre that is declining in popularity. As for FFXIII versus Mass Effect 2, claiming one will 'overshadow' the other is nonsense. They're being released months apart. There isn't really going to be any direct competition. There is no doubt that both are huge releases with massive amounts of hype and arguing which may have slightly more is meaningless. More worth noting is the fact that FFXIII's hype is less surprising. It's a game that people have been waiting nearly half a decade for. The first next gen game from the single biggest JRPG series ever. A series that is decades old and that is largely responsible for making JRPGs what they are today and giving them a foothold in the mainstream North American market. If a game like Mass effect, only the second game from a series that didn't even exist prior to this generation of consoles can match it's hype...well I think it's pretty evident what that means. |
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teh*darkness
 Posts: 901 |
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Wow, that's lame. How about a game where using any of your special attacks drains your health, and not a static number, but a larger number based on how strong the attack is? And to top it off, any boss battles where you can get an award for winning without taking damage is negated if you lose health from using your own attacks? Yeah, that game's combat sucked majorly...
Actually, it was announced a while ago that it's coming out March 9th. And I don't really care what online "anything" has to say about what games are good for the most part, I read reviews (if at all) to get an idea about the game. And I can tell you, as much as I used to buy only jrpgs, the current gen offerings have decreased from a wide range of themes and styles of play, to pretty much NIS and Gust, grid-based strategy games and pseudo-dating-sim games, with last generation graphics. I remember playing all kinds of jrpgs on the SNES, PS1 and PS2, even some really good ones on GCN, but after the varied releases on the 360 a few years ago, and some of those being ported to PS3, Star Ocean: TLH was the last jrpg I bought. As for the two coming out here soon, Mass Effect 2 is getting added to my collection. FFXIII is not. The more I hear people talk about it, the less interested I become (I know several people who imported it and have been playing in Japanese). I've said it before and I'll say it again. KH3 and FFVSXIII, or bust. |
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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I know exactly what will happen: The retailers will refuse to sell the medium in which you can play these games. GameStop already did this with the PSPGo. The PSPGo can't do physical copies; it runs only on digital distribution. But Sony still needs a retailer to sell PSPGo machines in the first place. If retailers refuse to sell a game system, or any other product for that matter, then the company will think twice about designing it that way in the future. I predict that either no company will ever attempt a fully digitized game console like the PSPGo or subsequent attempts will cause increased resistance from retailers. If someone wants to buy a PSP, it seems, they're still buying PSPs instead of PSPGos. The retailers will continue to exist, and the retailers will be the ones who will be keeping the physical media alive. The game companies and manufacturers are the people LEAST in control of what they produce. They have less control than the retailers. (The iPod, iPhone, and the Blackberry, which DO rely entirely on digital distribution, are sold directly from either the product company or the phone company. The companies are their own retailers and thus there was never a middleman to begin with. In order for the PSPGo to succeed, Sony must sell them primarily from Sony stores.)
Paper Mario? You're not referring to the N64 game being released on the Virtual Console, are you? Super Paper Mario is primarily a 2.5-D platformer. Granted, it's a very heavily story-driven, puzzle-riddled, and exploration-encouraged 2.5-D platformer, but I'd say it's a JRPG only in the loosest sense. Also, would the DS Pokémon games count as JRPGs? |
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ikillchicken
Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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Yeah, I mean Super Paper Mario. I wasn't sure how JRPG-like it was but Metacritic listed it as an RPG and I recalled Digimon Tamer mentioning it in his post so I just gave him the benefit of the doubt. Actually, now that I look at it again though I was mistaken. He mentioned Mario & Luigi for DS. So yeah, I guess you could strike SPM from the list. Games like that (or Pokemon as you've mentioned) could technically be described as JRPGs in that they are sort of RPGs and they're from Japan. Since they bear very little resemblance to what most people would understand the genre of JRPGs to be though they are probably best not described as such. EDIT: If anyone is still reading this thread, there's an article on IGN that's rather interesting about this issue. Here. Last edited by ikillchicken on Tue Jan 12, 2010 6:00 am; edited 1 time in total |
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sfried
Posts: 266 |
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WHY ARE PEOPLE DISCREDITING ETRIAN ODYSSEY? Dungeon crawlers are definitely RPGS and EO is indisputable proof that there's no fine line between so-called "J RPG" and "Western RPG" (it's a direct homage to games like Sir-Tech's Wizardry series)!
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leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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Well, if it managed to resemble a JRPG to you, then I guess Super Paper Mario succeeded in that.
For the record, Super Paper Mario is probably 80% platforming, 20% JRPG. It has a story structure similar to the previous Paper Mario games, but Mario is going around jumping from platform to platform leaping onto heads of Goombas and Hammer Bros. and all. I suppose...imagine a regular 2-D Mario game. Except instead of pure action, it's divided between puzzle-solving and action. There are a lot of characters you meet who will usually stand around or wander about whom you can talk to, and towns along the way in these 2-D stages with townsfolk. However, these are still pieces of 2-D stages--there just happens to be a two-dimensional JRPG town within it and several (physically) two-dimensional NPCs. It must sound very disjointed. And it is. Though that was part of the point in the first place... I read the IGN article, though I haven't played many JRPGs. I tend to get lighthearted comedic games. However, one thing that puzzled me was why the author wants to pt in multiplayer. Some things just aren't designed for multiplayer. They clash with the rest of the game. Pokémon was designed with multiplayer in mind, but Final Fantasy (barring #12) is not. It's designed to tell a story. Your party running around with identical-looking parties doesn't make much sense. Seems the comments on that article agree with me there. Pretty cool. |
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ikillchicken
Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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Just to be clear, I never said it resembles a JRPG. From your description it sounds like it bears little resemblance to games like Final Fantasy and others that people usually define JRPGs with. I just meant that since it does incorporate some general RPG elements (a much broader category) and it's from Japan it might technically be called a JRPG. In any case, there's no disagreement about the content of the game though. |
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