hemtae
Member
That's because they're both suppose to be released this year.
2014: Year of the RPG?
- Thread starter RedSwirl
- Start date
That's because they're both suppose to be released this year.
NemesisPrime
Banned
Dark Souls 2 is not an RPG.
One has some of the best graphics and art design of this entire generation, a memorable cast of characters, a fantastic battle system, a deep mythology, one of the best video game OSTs ever composed.
The other is Tales of. It has a good battle system, sometimes.
The difference in quality between the two series is extremely vast. Nobody calls it out because it's popular to trash FF these days, but there's a reason that Tales of is not even close to as popular. It's not even close to as good. Real talk.
HolyBaikal
Banned
Tales of consistently has a great battle system. And the battle system of Tales of Vesperia and Tales of Graces is leagues better than that
I've considered Tales better than Final Fantasy as soon as Tales of Symphonia came out. In which I consider Tales of Symphonia and Tales of the Abyss comparatively superior games than Final Fantasy X. A Final Fantasy of the same generation.
And while Sakuraba doesn't quite match up to Nobuo Uematsu, he is certainly talented.
And the cast of Final Fantasy XIII, better than Tales of Vesperia? Please.
You are right about one thing, though. The difference between Tales and Final Fantasy right now is vast. Tales has been curb-stomping Final Fantasy in terms of quality for years now.
joseph1594
Member
Ugh.... Just because several people have a different opinion than you, doesn't mean there is a groupthink/hivemind. That bullshit is so annoying because it is just a cheap excuse to delegitimize other people's opinion than you. Though I have no horse in the debate on whether Final Fantasy XIII is a good game or not, a lot of people do not like the series. End of story. This "GAF HIVEMIND!" stuff gets annoying. Just because there are several vocal members that dislike a game does not mean everyone does. I have seen several people on here that enjoy Final Fantasy XIII.
Before this thread devolves into "What is an RPG?" crap I think it is pretty clear no one can actually concretely define what an RPG is. RPGs mean different things to people but a lot of people consider the Souls games RPGs so I think it is fair to call Dark Souls II an RPG in this case.
2014 should definitely be a good year for RPGs. A lot of high profile releases, indie/Kickstarter games, and I have a good feeling that titles like Fallout 4, Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem (at least in Japan), the next Deus Ex will have a good chance to make it to 2014. Should be like 2011.
Do you think peer pressure exists? You say anything positive about FFXIII and you get responses like "UM WHAT" every single time. You really think that doesn't change the conversation, or people's opinions? Ninja please. It's so obvious.
HolyBaikal
Banned
The reason that Final Fantasy is more popular is because Final Fantasy VII establish market dominance and fame for both Final Fantasy and Square.
In the West, Final Fantasy is the most famous jRPG. In Japan however, Dragon Quest is more popular. That is because the cultures grew up on different RPGs.
Or is Dragon Quest of higher quality than Final Fantasy because it is more popular?
The reason Tales doesn't have such a huge following here in the West is for the reason that the first majorly successful title here was Tales of Symphonia, a Gamecube title. A system with little exposure.
This is changing however, because people are realizing the quality is higher from Atlus and Bandai Namco with Shin Megami Tensei and Tales, than with Square and Final Fantasy.
The characters in Tales of Vesperia are better than that of Final Fantasy XIII. The combat in Tales of Vesperia is better than Final Fantasy XIII. The overall gameplay in Tales of Vesperia is better than that of Final Fantasy XIII. The only way you can have an argument that Final Fantasy XIII has better than Tales, is if you're making an argument about graphics and music. Which is pretty meaningless for the overall quality of the game.
Real fucking stupid, maybe.
Riposte
Member
Why not use it to one's advantage? EVERY YEAR IS YEAR OF THE RPG, WOO!
Maybe it's more accurate to say this year is the return of the RPG in a big way, not that it really went away, and I'd at least list something like Atelier Ayesha in place of Toki Towa if we're going for lower tier RPGs as Toki towa just sounds like garbage while Ayesha's merely low budget. Anyways, so long as we don't see stuff like Torment being pushed out it looks like next year would be a continuation of the return, rather than
I do have a strong feeling they'll be pushed to 2014 or at least one of them, but for now they're slated for this year with no indication they'll be pushed back, unlike DSII which seems to be a VERY big "maybe". Speaking of which...
... how fucking snobbish can people get? It's got stats that actually matters as you develop them as you level, equipment, shops, a serious exploration focus... it just happens to have a real time combat system rather than a turn based one. It's already frustrating with games like ME, but at least that's recognizably moving to the edges of the RPG umbrella, DSII's quite comfortably under the Action RPG portion. Maybe you can argue about being a JRPG or not, but an RPG it absolutely is.
Also, Dark Souls IS marked as an RPG outright on the Japanese site, so that's clearly what they wanted the game to be.
Not really interested in any upcoming RPGs. Cyberpunk sounds cool, but that is a ways off. I'll defiantly check out Dragon Age 3. What I really want is some Fallout.
I think it's high time Bethesda release some Fallout news. I tire of waiting. It is close to 5 years, come on, Beth.
I think it's high time Bethesda release some Fallout news. I tire of waiting. It is close to 5 years, come on, Beth.
Let me know when Atlus manages to put out an RPG on HD systems and we can then compare RPGs. If you want to compare handheld games, or PS2 games, they aren't superior in anything compared to Square.
As far as Dragon Quest, it's definitely not superior, and it's popularity in Japan is the anomaly, not the rule. Look at every other country in the world that has a major market for games and it's vastly less popular. I think looking at the whole gives you a better picture of how the two series stack up.
I, too, am betting on the Lord Jesus Christ returning and also King Arthur.
Anyway, I only care about the following nonexistent titles:
1)Type-0 English
2)Bravely Default English
3)TWEWY 2
4)A SRW game that has FMP in it.
5)A good, new Mana game.
X, Pokemon Y, and Fire Emblem are the titles I really want
Ghost_Protocol
Member
The person who created the game says its an RPG. It's an RPG.
Snapshot King
Member
I'm not sure which mistake I made, but I'm pretty sure it was forgetting that it was 2013. Whoops.
Riposte
Member
Snobbish? What are you even talking about? You make it seem like an inherently bad thing to think that Dark Souls isn't an "Action RPG", but rather an "Action game". Beyond disagreeing with your grab bag of random game mechanics that are nearly ubiquitous in 2013, I don't see why you are taking offense for people thinking otherwise. (Also who cares how someone markets something?)
What if they called it a football manager sim?
HolyBaikal
Banned
Dragon Quest is not an anomaly. It has much of the same sales appeal as Pokemon and Final Fantasy. The two best selling jRPG franchises in the West currently.
Dragon Quest, got a poor start in the West and gave up prematurely. While Pokemon Red and Blue, and Final Fantasy VII, got a strong start to get name power in the future.
The West has now discovered Dragon Quest, however. And Dragon Quest IX has sold over 1 million copies in the West, and over 5 million copies worldwide. Anomaly my foot.
And yes, Square does at least still have a worthy handheld presence. But the mainline Tales franchise has easily been ahead of mainline Final Fantasy since they released Tales of Symphonia. Particularly if you are judging in terms of sheer gameplay value.
In fact I would rate both Persona 4 and Tales of Symphonia more highly than Final Fantasy X. And I would easily rate Tales of Vesperia more highly than Final Fantasy XIII.
Mauricio_Magus
Banned
sure
I can't wait for X too
I can't wait for X too
HolyBaikal
Banned
By the way, to insult Tales music is to insult Dark Souls music. Both have the same composer, Motoi Sakuraba. And he certainly put and equal effort into both.
It is true that I think that Nobuo Uematsu and Yasunori Mitsuda both make better music than Motoi Sakuraba. But Motoi Sakuraba is very talented and has made great musical contributions to a great many games.
It is true that I think that Nobuo Uematsu and Yasunori Mitsuda both make better music than Motoi Sakuraba. But Motoi Sakuraba is very talented and has made great musical contributions to a great many games.
Actually, I think Dragon Quest got a better start than Final Fantasy did. Dragon Warrior was better received than the first Final Fantasy game on NES. I thought Dragon Warrior was better, and they released 3 of them. Final Fantasy didn't even get localized again until the 4th entry on SNES. At that point, they had pulled out pretty far ahead. Then farther ahead on PS1. Then farther ahead on PS2. And farther ahead now.
That's why FF is more popular. It's been consistently better, for a very long time, and continues to be.
You're talking about this Tales of Symphonia?
Superior to Final Fantasy X, XI, and XII?
That just seems entirely unbelievable to me. I get it, you have your own opinion on it and that's okay. I'm not trying to change it.
But when everyone assumes they can just shit on the entire FF brand with no push back at all, I feel it's really unjustified and deserves to be argued against.
The music in Dark Souls sucks for the most part. It's a lot of heavy choral work that is not at all interesting. Shinsuke Kida's work on Demon's Souls is infinitely better. Sakuraba even had Emi Evans from NieR for a song and it's still not a very interesting song.
Dark Souls has nothing on any of these.
The Beginning
Maiden in Black
One Who Craves Souls
Maiden Astraea
Flamelurker
Riposte
Member
This logic hurts my head. Because I liked Dark Souls music I can't dislike Tales of Graces music? And how can you be so certain that he put equal effort into both?
HolyBaikal
Banned
Easily.
Or at least X and XII. Particularly X. XI is a little more difficult to judge, given you're judging it by the standards of MMORPG. In which I would say XI is pretty darn good and was certainly an amazing MMORPG for its day. And in fact still stands the test of time in many ways.
Why? All you did was post a fanart of Tales of Symphonia and then cover arts and a screenshot from Final Fantasy games.
What point did you get across at all? That Final Fantasy uses a different art style? That Final Fantasy XII has a bit more realistic CG?
Neko Mimi Mode
Member
But have remained behind in terms of characterisation, dialogue, plotlines, graphics, music and a raft of other areas.
I don't mind Tales of games, but they are far from the poster child of quality JRPGs and they've gone down the crapper this gen every bit as much as Final Fantasy.
EDIT; On NO level is Symphonia superior to XII IZJS.
Hey Tales of Symphonia (Which arguably has the dumbest plot ever) was my favourite RPG when I was 14.
Edit: To the above, Symphonia doesn't hold a candle to vanilla FFXII either.
Psycho_Mantis
Banned
YES. Do not forget:
HolyBaikal
Banned
Post any shot of Symphonia that you want. I wasn't trying to find a bad one.
To me, that's like arguing that eyesight is meaningless. Of course they mean something. Virtually all art museums in the entire world are based on looking at visually pleasing or thought provoking things. Better graphics and art affect people in the same way as any other kind of art, and they obviously matter.
jaundicejuice
Member
Which Tales game had a race war at the drop of a dime as its midpoint plot twist? Your adopted sister becomes the elfin, fantasy version of Hitler, I think it was Legendia.
Well, part of it's just getting annoyed when people get hung up on the definition, especially when it's something damn near every person acknowledges as an RPG and is closer to those roots than, say, God of War which uses RPG like mechanics to spruce up the action and give a sense of growth. There's a lot of grey area, but Dark Souls is not as grey as the likes of Yakuza, DMC, or God of War.
And these are for when genre claims aren't just being arbitrarily made, but have some basis in actual intent and design. That's why when you have Motomu Toriyama (or some asshole at SE telling him to) claim Tomb Raider and Hitman are RPGs it's thrown out by about everyone: they're not even games people argue as RPGs except in the sense of playing a role (especially not Tomb Raider, though I guess Angel of Darkness was supposed to get somewhat close), the lack of actual development involvement from him further reinforces it. We do admittedly have some cases that are questionable (Ocarina of Time's Japanese cover flat out lists the genre as RPG), but it is a good general rule of thumb if the developers or publishers call something they actually made and released an RPG.
Actually, in regards to the post I was originally replying to: it really doesn't help when there isn't a case made for why it ISN'T an RPG, that's part of why it gets so damn annoying. Gives the impression to me there's no thought put into it, just that the person has this notion of what an RPG is and doesn't accept anything that doesn't fit in perfectly. We even had the extreme of someone who feels modern setting outright disqualify games as JRPGs, even if the gameplay's undeniably that.
Riposte
Member
I'm assuming that P5 picture is bullshit.
EDIT: Eusis, if you want to have some fun... here is a thought exercise: Instead of jumping over stronger similarities to fit as many games under the RPG umbrella as possible (with silly excuses like "let's just believe whatever the publisher wants us to believe"), what if we stopped calling games RPGs altogether?
EDIT: Eusis, if you want to have some fun... here is a thought exercise: Instead of jumping over stronger similarities to fit as many games under the RPG umbrella as possible (with silly excuses like "let's just believe whatever the publisher wants us to believe"), what if we stopped calling games RPGs altogether?
Ghost_Protocol
Member
If it was revealed that Persona 5 starred Dojima as the main character neogaf would crash permanently and never recover.
The Z rating should be an immediate tip off. Persona's their lighter, more accessible flavor of the MegaTen umbrella, at least now it is, they wouldn't want to ruin that. Certainly not when SMTIV isn't carrying around a Z.
And as we have no idea when we'll even see that (though with Atlus's development record it probably WOULD be within a year of unveiling, but maybe not in the US) I wouldn't be throwing there. I wouldn't be throwing X there either, I have a feeling that's quite a ways away.
Neko Mimi Mode
Member
I was talking about Tales of games in general, are you seriously retreating back to Symphonia to argue that the entire series is superior? In that case the earlier Final Fantasys crush you.
That said, Symphonia did have some good characters but the story was ridiculous, the dialogue was silly and the voice acting was like nails on a chalkboard.
Sorry but graphics can mean a lot when taken in context with the other things you selectively responded to.
If the plot is non-existent;
the characters are all annoying and have nothing interesting to say;
the music sounds the same as the previous installment which wasn't good either;
and the game is a directionless mess lumbering over a painful and ill-conceived 80 hours with little to recommend it other than a fairly average jRPG battle system, then yes, I'm going to nitpick that it doesn't even look nice.
Oh yeah, wanted to respond to this:
Have you heard Tales of Eternia's music? No way did he put as much effort into that as... well, just about anything else he composed actually. Though I liked Demon's Souls's music a bit more than Dark Souls's anyway.
HolyBaikal
Banned
But realistic art is not better than abstract art.
Abstract art is equally capable of being thought provoking as realistic art. Pixel art is equal to hyper realistic, high polygon models. If anything, I think that Okami is a far more beautiful game than Final Fantasy XIII.
And these are video games, not paintings. The primary and best way to portray provoking thoughts or the general message in the art, is through gameplay.
And Tales games are filled with great art, anyway. And I find Tales of Vesperia and Tales of Graces are more visually appealing than Final Fantasy XIII, anyway. Tales of Vesperia has this beautiful cell shaded type of look that I find infinitely more beautiful than what Final Fantasy currently has.
You were mentioning the music earlier, not the gameplay. If music matters, I think we can agree that visual art matters too. Just drop that point at the very least, because it's not a great one to defend.
And which FF is going for realism? Have you ever seen Amano's work? Parts of Versus maybe, but that's the only one. And it still has quite a bit of fantasy in it. They just don't do the same kind of anime visual style every single time is all. Xillia's art style is going for "realism" as much as any FF game is, so I don't get your point here.
You can prefer whichever one you want. Vesparia is a pretty game, I agree (much better looking than Xillia). But I don't think it's even in the same league as FFXIII's visuals. Few games are really.
HarryDemeanor
Member
They're unveiling it at SOE Live this year. Smedley also hinted that it may be released by the end of this year.
This doesn't make any sense. Most of the Tales soundtracks do nothing for me, while Valkyrie Profile-music is some of my most favourite gamemusic of all time. Same goes for the soundtrack of Baten Kaitos. Motoi Sakuraba goes everywhere with his soundtracks, so you either like it or you don't. But to say he put an equal effort in different soundtracks and that insulting one is insulting the other isn't true at all.
AkimbO_Arcana
Banned
It was nice to have a stand out RPG that late on PS2 in 2008 with Persona 4. But seriously Atlus, where is Persona 5, why does it take so long?! The waiting without any confirmation other than it will come even made me appreciate Catherine less, because I thought I was playing something that took away resources from P5's development.
The difference is that last gen there was an onslaught of great jrpg's. Now we are starving... (not saying there was nothing worth playing over the past few years)
The difference is that last gen there was an onslaught of great jrpg's. Now we are starving... (not saying there was nothing worth playing over the past few years)
HolyBaikal
Banned
They've been very much doing the same sort of blend of the popular cartoon style of Japan or "anime" us in the West like to call it, and the popular Japanese style of realistic CG development for a while now.
Lately which has been leaning on the side of realistic. Which isn't unique or special to them or anything, is it the same discipline that companies like Tecmo Koei have for designing characters. Or Capcom. Or most Japanese companies really.
What they're doing isn't really unique or special, just what most companies who push away from the Japanese cartoon aesthetic and toward realism do.
Amano's artwork has never featured very prominently in Final Fantasy characters or sprites. Mostly Amano's work is used for profiles. Final Fantasy IX was a very "anime" or cartoony Final Fantasy game with a slight realism. While the new ones almost entirely go for a realistic look with occasional popular cartoon references. While Tales games go for a cell shaded or cell shaded-like look. Amano influences are nowhere to be seen in Final Fantasy XIII at all. In fact the last time Amano aesthetics played even remotely heavily into a Final Fantasy game, was Final Fantasy VI.
Tales franchise goes for both cartoony characters and landscapes. While lately Final Fantasy has been going for realistic characters and landscapes. That's really the only difference. I do agree that many of the areas and designs in Final Fantasy games require more money and time to create, but I think that's honestly one of the failings of Final Fantasy lately. Spending money on things that don't matter like how ridiculously detailed some towns and dungeons and so forth have, while the gameplay suffers for it.
Lots of high polygon designs don't mean much if you can't interact with them. With Tales I find the ratio of stuff that is there to be interacted with as to the stuff that is simply there to look at, to be far higher in Tales than Final Fantasy. Which is better game design. Tales games could easily look just like a Final Fantasy game does(well, not easily in terms of budget) if they went with and hired the Tekken team for their character designs and landscapes. It would be nearly impossible to tell a Final Fantasy game from a Tales game if they took aesthetics and designers from Tekken. But that wouldn't make the games any better. And Hideo Baba is understandably against such a poor move. Play the Story mode in Tekken 6 and tell me how that couldn't just as easily have been Square Enix's work and why.
If one is arguing that Final Fantasy games are better than Tales games because they the popular cartoon style of Japan, instead of what Final Fantasy does, then that's pretty shallow. Cartoony is not worse than realistic. And I'd much rather have cartoony landscapes one can better interact with, than realistic high-polygon landscapes for show.
I'd also rather trek the cartoony landscapes of Okami than the realistic landscapes of Final Fantasy XIII anyday.
FFXIII was the turd falling from the perch buddy, but hey some people are into scat
Likewise, 2012 was the year of my depression since Versus didn't surface.
So like, every year since 2006 has been the year of your depression?
Used to be myself, but I'm fine nowadays.
Shin Megami Tensei IV is coming. That's probably where Atlus' priorities are now. That, and of course the western release of Soul Hackers.
Not really. Versus effectively surfaced in one form or another ever since 2006, let alone 2012. That year was terrible for Square Enix by and large; nothing new besides Agni's Philosophy. Coincidentally, 2012 was also the year I felt depressed, while I feel myself reborn nowadays.