Turn based is just as valid, there's just not the many designer who can use it effectively anymore.
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Can Final Fantasy / JRPGs ever reach the sales of the old days again? - A Discussion
- Thread starter Toth
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Turn based is just as valid, there's just not the many designer who can use it effectively anymore.
An action-RPG series, made by a single Japanese developer, with unique mechanics and influence from Western mythology/culture. That describes King's Field and its successors in the Souls series, no?
Then it's settled, Ys aren't really JRPGs either, since they math that description too.
I've heard similar arguments before. It's completely ridiculous.
WRPGs get to be the modern style everyone wants, but if a Japanese developer does it, it doesn't count as a Japanese RPG? It's a definition designed to marginalize Japanese games by excluding many of the best examples of their work this gen.
Is Zelda, Skyward Sword a WRPG? No. They were doing action RPGs before the west was. Demon's Souls really isn't that far from Zelda.
Anyone who tries to marginalize any RPGs made in Japan in these kinds of discussions is completely wrong in my opinion. Is Mass Effect 3 like Baldur's Gate? Why do people still call it a WRPG? People need to really drop these bad labels.
Is Dragon Age a JRPG since it plays similar to FFXII? Is FFXII a WRPG?
An action-RPG series, made by a single Japanese developer, with unique mechanics and influence from Western mythology/culture? Dragon Slayer, Legend of Heroes, Xanadu, Ys, et al. aren't really JRPGs, confirmed.
If Demon's Souls was influenced by anything, it was Berserk, an anime series.
Most western press and developers who looked at Demon's Souls called the design "insane," because it goes against so many of the casual-focused, data-driven game design techniques western developers have pushed for. "Insane" is code now for being particularly Japanese in the gaming press. Really nothing about it is western influenced beyond being set in a fantasy version of medieval Europe.
The quality of controls is a distinctly Japanese element of gameplay design in action RPGs, and you see the same quality in Dragon's Dogma. Look at Skyrim for instance and how horrible the combat is. Todd Howard doesn't even understand why anyone would ever want to play an RPG in third person, and admitted as much in interviews.
People once again trying to rob Japan of their success stories so they can continue to trash them.
Agreed. I really enjoyed BbS and DDD but how can you make a KH 3 and expect someone to jump into it fresh off of beating KH2? They would be like...who the hell is Xehanort and where did he come from????
Meccanical
Member
The stuff dreams are made of.
MagiusNecros
Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance
When you've read BERSERK, nothing really affects you.
Meccanical
Member
Pretty sure that ending was based on Berserk actually.
Reminds me a lot of you know when.
MagiusNecros
Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance
As with Dark Id's thought's on Hymir's Finger, Drakengard really became a poor man's BERSERK and it was worth it.
Manmademan
Member
An action-RPG series, made by a single Japanese developer, with unique mechanics and influence from Western mythology/culture. That describes King's Field and its successors in the Souls series, no?
Then it's settled, Ys aren't really JRPGs either, since they math that description too.
It also describes vagrant story to a T. I'm sure I can think of more, but it's getting late on the east coast.
Manmademan
Member
And again, I'm not arguing with you. I think DD, and the Souls games are legitimate JRPGs- or at the very least attempts by japanese developers to expand what "JRPG" is and appeal to a changing market. Which is what will have to happen, as the market for traditional JRPGs is shrinking, not growing.
For what it's worth, Zelda has been tagged as "not a JRPG" for a very long time- that's a different discussion, I think.
Unfortunately these efforts are in the minority, and Square in particular seems completely oblivious as to how to do it. As an excercise in "how to evolve and expand" JRPGs, Dragon's Dogma is a successful effort, while Final Fantasy XIII and XIII-2 continue to make the same mistakes.
This is as far as I'm concerned a problem exclusive to JRPGs. Japanese games as a whole do not have this problem. Devil May Cry is well respected as a series. Resident Evil is as well (or was, up to RE6 which I did not play). Fighters are absolutely dominated by japanese devs- I can't think of any AAA fighting franchises made by western developers. But when it comes to RPGs, suddenly japanese devs are clueless and have no idea how to design games that the west will play.
1st Course
Member
-Persona: More popular than ever.
-SMT: More popular than ever(?)
-DQ: still going strong, probably even more popular than it ever was.
-MH: Extremely strong in JP, didn't take off in the west yet.
-Tales: Not bad by the franchise standards, Symphonia (GCN/PS2 (JP only)) is still the most popular game.
-Phantasy Star: MMO only/SP games are dead.
-KH: Handheld only/KH3 ???/Declining.
-Paper Mario: Apparently Declining.
-YS: Probably more popular than ever.
-Star Ocean: Declining.
-Dark Cloud: Maybe dead, Maybe not.
-SaGa/Final Fantasy Legend : Dead.
-Mana/Seiken Densetsu: Dead.
-Chrono: Dead.
-Breath of Fire: Dead.
-Suikoden: Dead.
-Grandia: Dead.
-Wild Arms: Dead.
There are more but these are what comes to my mind atm.
I know, I was just kind of speaking generally to anyone who makes that claim.
Wasn't successful in sales though. It just goes to show that it's not just the quality of the games that is the problem. If people are into big action RPGs, Japan has been making the best ones for the last 2 years in Dark Souls and Dragon's Dogma. No one will acknowledge that though, because at this point the opinions have solidified into full blown biases, fueled by the media.
If you're looking for a big action RPG from SQEX, pretty sure that's going to be Versus. I personally think we'll see XV be more of an action RPG as well, and even Agni's Philosophy looked like heavy action.
XIV: ARR looks a lot like DD as far as world building also. I think they got the message. These things just take time.
There's still room for diversity in RPGs though, and not every game has to be the same thing. I love DD and XIII, and I'm looking forward to LR, and the Dark Arisen expansion. They're both Japanese RPGs.
Gonna preface this by saying that my post about Ys was just using a well known series to make a funny about the way people arbitrarily rob games of their "W" or "J" status.
The Souls games are very much third person successors of King's Field and Shadow Tower, which also have dark fantasy aesthetics similar to Berserk. Apart from some specific Berserk shout-outs in the Souls games, there's a deeper connection to Western fantasy canon, particularly tabletop RPGs and gamebooks. You should definitely look into the Eurogamer interview where Miyazaki talks about growing up with the Fighting Fantasy series and falling in love with their creepy, foreboding setting.
I'd argue that sticking to a vision and ignoring the market and the focus groups is crazy in a certain sense, and it's the best type of crazy there is and leads to games that wouldn't be possible otherwise.
Again, the Souls games share the DNA of King's Field, which is really a rogue series that doesn't have that many close relatives from either side of the pacific. It's got a Western look and feel with the real time gameplay and first person perspective favored by "W" RPGs, while using streamlined mechanics and a certain sense of quirkiness similar to "J" RPGs.
The Souls games are very much third person successors of King's Field and Shadow Tower, which also have dark fantasy aesthetics similar to Berserk. Apart from some specific Berserk shout-outs in the Souls games, there's a deeper connection to Western fantasy canon, particularly tabletop RPGs and gamebooks. You should definitely look into the Eurogamer interview where Miyazaki talks about growing up with the Fighting Fantasy series and falling in love with their creepy, foreboding setting.
I'd argue that sticking to a vision and ignoring the market and the focus groups is crazy in a certain sense, and it's the best type of crazy there is and leads to games that wouldn't be possible otherwise.
Again, the Souls games share the DNA of King's Field, which is really a rogue series that doesn't have that many close relatives from either side of the pacific. It's got a Western look and feel with the real time gameplay and first person perspective favored by "W" RPGs, while using streamlined mechanics and a certain sense of quirkiness similar to "J" RPGs.
Meccanical
Member
Shadow Hearts: Dead.
Skies of Arcadia: Too good for this sinful earth so was never a franchise to begin with.
Manmademan
Member
These two franchises have been entirely absent from consoles this generation- and Persona 4 only sold somewhere around 500,000 copies worldwide. (not including the golden re-release, of course.) They have their following, but are EXTREMELY niche compared to something like FF, Skyrim, DQ, etc.
Dragon's Dogma was successful- with a few caveats.
*Dragon's Dogma was an original IP- the bar for truly original franchises to crack the public awareness and sell over a million copies is pretty high- there's only a handful of franchises that have done this recently, RPG or otherwise.
*Dragon's Dogma released in the springtime, outside of the holiday rush. Even so, it broke a million copies by June/July. not exactly lighting the world on fire- but Impressive, again considering it was a completely original property.
*Dragon's Dogma stayed at full price or damned close to it longer than any other game I can think of. Even by late fall it was still retailing for $40 or more. It's 35.00 right NOW on Amazon. This is very unusual, as the gamers who typically pick up games at 29.99 or 19.99 or less are still shut out of the market for it. That makes the million or so sales it racked up all the more impressive.
I think capcom would have LIKED for it to be 2 million+ and be a breakout hit, but so far it's been a slow burn, sort of like Demon's Souls when it first released.
"Real time gameplay" is a relatively recent development in WRPGs, and not at all a factor in tabletop RPGs. Why are WRPGs allowed to evolve but no one challenges their name?
As I said before, Zelda was doing real time gameplay before a lot of WRPGs were. They're Japanese made RPGs in my view, end of story. People parsing entire countries out of taking credit for their own work is just really indefensible in my view.
I'm not trying to rob From Software of any credit at all. They deserve more! King's Field was 100% 3D, real time, and in first person when Daggerfall and Doom were still using wonky raycasting "3D" with 2D sprites. Sure, the framerate chugged, they weren't the deepest games out there, and critics never really cared for them, but they were very innovative and utterly unique. My point was just that they're amazing RPGs from Japan whose gameplay is tricky to classify based on traditional paradigms of JRPG and WRPG.
ahh, I see. I guess I agree then, but I don't really think it's that tricky to classify. I wouldn't ever classify it as a WRPG. It just goes too far in claiming credit for uniquely Japanese gameplay design ideas. I can't see how calling it a WRPG helps anything, when WRPGs themselves are fairly diverse and not all real time, third person, and so on.
In my view the labels have outlived their usefulness and don't really further anything but stereotypes and negative rivalries anymore.
Right, my solution is not to classify them in that way at all. They're RPGs, they're from Japan, and they don't have that much in common with other RPGs from Japan in terms of gameplay mechanics. That's all.
1st Course
Member
It's really very hard to group WRPGs as a single genre imo, today WRPGs are just very different than yesterday CRPGs. I bet that even today WRPGs fans are very different than CRPGs fans, While today JRPGs fans are usually still the same fans of 90's/early 2000's JRPGs.
It's all generalization but I believe it's true to some degree.
Yeah but I believe they are getting more popular.
It's all generalization but I believe it's true to some degree.
Yeah but I believe they are getting more popular.
One of the unfortunate things about the Souls games is that people today look at them while ignoring their direct predecessors. I imagine a good chunk of journalists who cover Demon's Souls don't know that From Software has been making dark fantasy dungeon crawlers for almost 20 years now. How many of them have even heard of King's Field, Shadow Tower, Evergrace, Lost Kingdoms, and Eternal Ring?
If you look back and compare the games, I think you could make the argument that King's Field could have been influenced by Ultima Underworld, the Japanese DOS version of which predates KF by a year. Even then, you'd never really know until you asked From.
D
Deleted member 20920
Unconfirmed Member
Yeah it's best to just treat all RPGs that were made in Japan as JRPGs. Hate the term. Same goes for WRPG when you have so many European companies making their very own brand of RPGs.
I hated how some people kept calling Dragon's Dogma and the Souls series WRPGs especially when their argument goes like this:
A: JRPGs need to learn more from WRPGs!
B: Hey why don't you look at Dragon's Dogma and Dark Souls? Both have real time combat and are darker than the average JRPGs that you say you hate.
A: Pff. Those two games are not JRPGs. They are WRPGs!
B: But they're made in Japan...
A: Yeah but they borrowed WRPG features and aethestics. So they're WRPGs and not JRPGs.
B:-_-"...
In other words, such arguments mean that JRPGs, as a term, can never win.
The worse thing is that both Dragon's Dogma and Dark Souls have very Japanese design and mechanics... Even DD's art is sort of a throwback to older Japanese depiction of what a fantasy world is.
Hey now, most WRPGs aren't very good either. The only great ones in recent mind are Witcher 2, Fallout 3/NV and... uhh... someone help me out here.
In conclusion, most RPGs suck regardless geography and design philosophies.
Err, I thought the last couple DQ releases here were bombas outside of Japan? DQ6 DS didn't exactly do so hot if I remember correctly.
D
Deleted member 20920
Unconfirmed Member
Yeah, my point was that many gamers have decided to group RPGs into either WRPGs orr JPRGs and giving them generalised attributes and sentiments, all while villifying or glorifying the camp that they subscribe to more.
On Topic: I think one important thing that Japanese RPGs need in the western markets is better marketing. And for bigger companies like SE, they also have to understand that they have to try to grow the market slowly rather than be fully apprehensive and reduce their localisation efforts to almost nothing.
Fallout - New Vegas
Alpha Protocol
Witcher
Witcher 2
Dragons Age: Origins
[Your Mass Effect of Choice]
I think I may have missed one or three...
The issue is that the 'genre' took a very specific bent over the past decade, so when people discuss 'JRPGs', they are really referring to your FFs, DQs, Tales, and their ilk.
SMT aside, games of that sort have not 'evolved' as much as some would like. Of course, the HD gen has given us very few stellar entries to consider.
Ah yes, Witcher was previous gen and the only ME RPG was 1. And Alpha Protocol seems good for what it does.
We may see a resurgence in WRPGs if the Kickstarter ones are good. As much as I want them to be good, that's not a guarantee.
Vulcano's assistant
Banned
The Witcher was 2007
I'll add Neverwinter Nights 2 (plus Mask of the Betrayer) and Guild Wars 2 to that list.
It might as well have been a previous gen game
Game was alright, not as good as W2 though.
Good calls on all fronts.
No. The east is less relevant than ever to the west and better graphics made it harder to relate to the designs.
Hopefully they see that and get back to more stuff like the Souls games instead of trying to recapture those 6-10M/title stuff. Trying to hit the mega-blockbuster status seems to be leaving corpses everywhere.
Hopefully they see that and get back to more stuff like the Souls games instead of trying to recapture those 6-10M/title stuff. Trying to hit the mega-blockbuster status seems to be leaving corpses everywhere.
You gotta admit, W1 was based on the NWN engine.
To be fair, Xehanort IS mentioned AND seen in KH2. Even Master Xehanort. That said, the fact remains that where you could skip Chain of Memories and not be TOO confused in KH2, there have been what, 5 games between 2 and 3 SO FAR.
Exactly. Perfectly stated.
Sgt.Pepper
Banned
Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story sold like >4 million. They are different from Paper Mario.
While I agree with the many distinctions in Japanese Vs. West developing methods, the JRPG-WRPG term is non-defined. Some approach it as the mechanics in the games themselves or the origin, developing methods and polishing that separate the philosophy between western and eastern development.
WRPG and JRPG seems like an aggregated sliding scale using character progression, player agency in the world, themes featured, morality system, accountability of the world, combat system, and whether the main character is a blank slate or already established.
Getting back to the topic, JRPGs might be able to reach the sales of the old days by absolute volume, provided the gaming population continues to increase making even a smaller proportion that likes RPGs bigger than a large proportion of a smaller population. But the proportional mindset of people who like JRPGs will never eclipse the old days, simply because back then there weren't many good games besides fighters, platformers and sims (shooters weren't really on the consoles yet). Now you've got a massive amount of genres each having a huge suite of great games, so the people are split among more slices of the pie as they find something they like better than RPGs.