Disclaimer* This is not a ****ty ass WesternRPG thread. get that **** out of here. If you want to talk about crap i.e oblivion, Fallout and what have you. Just go away.




I think I had a really great childhood growing up. Through grade school I was able to live in a neighborhood where if it were a sunny day out. We would all go outside and do something. Whether it was playing soccer,whiffleball, building forts, nerf gun battles, or whatever else a bunch of kids would do in a nice day out.

And then during the winters it would be pretty boring. and I remember one day for xmas getting a ps1 and the game that came with it.

Saga Frontier II

it was my first console JRPG(pokemon for handheld..) and I loved it as a kid. For those of you who played you can understand why one would embrace that game. My second JRPG ever was Lunar II Eternal Blue complete


Then my neighbor let me play FF8 and after needing to return it after a Day I knew someone older than I that had pretty much every ps1 RPG available to the US market. The first game I boroughd as Final Fantasy 7 and from then on I pretty much was able to play every ps1 title out there.
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let's cut to the thread.





Wat is a JRPG?


Well if you need the answer to that question then you probably shouldn't be in this topic. Just note if you played Pokemon or FF1 or any Final Fantasy for that matter then you have played a JRPG.






I want this topic dedicated to those users who have played or are currently playing any Jrpg. to post what they are playing and to discuss what's left of the genre out there. Final Fantasy XIII was prolly the last mainstream rpg to come out, although I am unsure about Dragon quest IX. I don;t get much time playing JRPGs anymore becuase I simply don't have the time to do so. Every summer I try to play 1 JRPG and last year it was FFXIII. Hopefully this year I can find time to play Eternal Sonata and maybe Suikoden III if I can get my hands on it.


Although the NBA playoffs are upon is. I will try to finish off where I left off in Xenogears. SO it should be fun picking up where I left off in that great game.





And now I would like to hear some of you who are actually true Jrpg fans ( there has got to be maybe a couple of you out there) Who are eithe rplaying for a game or maybe waiting for one ot come out. if you are waiting for Suikoden VI to come out, might as well put it on your tomb in writing that if once the game comes out you, to have it buried next to you. and if you are awaiting Xenoblade. well, tell me how it is because I sure as hell don;t have a wii and it looks like an abortion of an idea.

Xenogears storyline is absolutely fantastic. It's only second to the Suikoden series storyline. If it's been a while I'd almost say start from the beginning with Xenogears as having all the information to you fresh in your head will make the experience that much more enjoyable.

I am a huge fanboy of the Suikoden series and have probably played those games more than any other RPG I own. The storylines in them hook me everytime. Not completing that series is really going to be one of those video game things that will be a big disappointment to me. It's set up so nice right now for 2 more titles and the 2nd one being absolutely epic.

I always had trouble getting into the xeno games. It was like playing a movie where obsessionally I'd run to the next part to start the movie again.

Any good JRPG's for the PS3. Besides FF13?

I used to love JRPGs as a kid, but revisiting them as an adult has left me a bit disappointed. I can't handle all the needless timewasting. I like turn based battle, but not when it is _way_ slower than it needs to be. It seems like each turn involves printing two or three lines of information per battle participant, and each of those dialog boxes stays on the screen about five times as long as it needs to.

This turns tedious random encounters into a massive time sink. I know that level grinding is a big part of JRPGs, but it's a too tedious for me now that I have things to do with my time. And even if you like the grind, visiting any early area means lots of super slow battles against monsters that you majorly outclass, which must bother even dedicated hack and slashers.

I still love the classics, and play through some of these games for the storyline, but sadly I think there's a reason that western RPGs are in ascendance. A few games get the balance right. Chronotrigger comes to mind immediately as a game with good pacing relative to the number of random baddies you need to slay.

Eternal Sonata actually wasn't bad.

s for any good ones. after If I ever get around to Eternal Sonata I will let you know. Also if tales of Vesperia makes its way to ps3 I would suggest that. there are actually a couple coming out for the ps3 within the next year. 3 that I know of but 2 of them are 2d and the other one is the tales series which hopefully gets brought here to the states.


edit* needle how was sonata? pretty solid plot?




I bought Suikoden III in good condition for only 12$ which I think is a steal. unfortunately it is to arrive in 7 days which is a loong time.

I never really got into too many of the PlayStation RPGs, but when I was a bit younger, I loved FFIV, FFVI, Chrono Trigger, EarthBound, Secret of Mana (maybe not stricly a JRPG, but it had plenty more RPG elements than zomething like Zelda), etc.

Curious if anybody still makes any games like those. I've tried playing some more recent RPGs, and I'm such a perfectionist that I get annoyed with A) the possibility to miss tons of really important weapons/items/characters, even if you're going through slowly, B) an abundance of choices, whether in character advancement or plot, that are too open-ended or that you can't take back. Lots of people love those sorts of things. I never really did. Chrono Trigger is an example of a game that did this that I still loved, but maybe just because I had endless time and didn't mind playing the game multiple times.

Western RPGs are pretty much objectively better than JRPGs. The defining characteristic of a JRPG is telling a linear story with lots of non-interactive portions. They're striving to be like books or movies or shows, when they should just BE books or movies or shows. They generally attempt to say something deeply "meaningful" about life or friends or God or the universe, and when you're 10-18 years old and have never really seen anything deeper than Toy Story 3 (not that that's bad), you're susceptible to those clumsy attempts.

In Western RPGs you're actually playing and often are engaging with the world in a more truly interactive way.

I disliked it, but my biases are clear. It was my first JRPG in years. It was alright, but the dialogue dragged on soooo long that I couldn't stand it. I have a theory that games with lots of dialogue were more acceptable before "talkies". When you're reading the text on screen you're still engaged and interacting to an extent. When you have to sit there listening to poorly animated characters speak with poorly acted and poorly written dialogue, it's terrible.

Eternal Sonata was good and I enjoyed it. Combat was still recognizably jrpg but a little faster paced.

Tales of Vesperia and Lost Odyssey are both very good jrpgs released this generation. Lost Odyssey is an X360 exclusive.

Tales of Vesperia was released on PS3 18 months ago.

EDIT: Yes Eternal Sonata does have some slow bits, especially the very beginning.

JuntMonkey,

I think you missed my beef. I am playing a JRPG right now (Pokemon), and I do like them mainly for the stories and also some of the mechanical elements. I guess I basically just don't like that the reading speed is set for a young child and there's nothing you can do about it except sit and wait. At every prompt. Of which there are tens of thousands. In every game.

The increased dialog interaction you get in western style games doesn't really do it for me. I find myself not liking any of my choices and being even more frustrated than the one choice you usually get in J-type games.

Senor Cardgage,
There are plenty of JRPGs on the DS, which is 16-bit era throwback system in a lot of ways. One that I really enjoyed, though it's not fully traditional is The World Ends With You. Interesting battle mechanic, good story, gives you some fun quests to complete after the main story.

Yea I know what you were saying. I was writing that post regardless and I think I originally planned on responding to something in yours.

Secret of Mana is the absolute nuts.

I agree with eternal sonata. Might try to hunt down secret of mana..

I used to like these, but I don't have consoles any more. That pretty much means I can't play them. I haven't heard of any really great ones lately. I know Xenosaga was disappointing and Final Fantasy needs a pick-me-up, unless they plan on going strictly MMO (I don't think MMOs "count"). XII wasn't that great and XIII doesn't look much better (I'll still play it when the current consoles are last-gen and cheaper to buy).

Junt:

I don't think that there is all that much difference in how linear a jrpg and western rpg are. In a lot of today's games you can make choices, but really they're just different ways to do the same thing. A few will make minor differences, like someone showing up briefly at the ending, but these were all available in in jrpgs as well.

I have a few problems with western rpgs after finishing me2 and DA:O. The itemization is horrible. Absolutely horrible. I have several characters in DA:O that are going into the final battle with some of the equipment they wore when the game began. My tank is using the first magic sword I ever found. There's very few items worth looting, but I constantly have to manage my backback because I need gold. Essentially all that most of the items that drop are is actually gold, but I need to get back to town to convert it. They need to cut out some of the worthless crap in the games.

The dialogue goes on and on and on. I find myself skipping a ton of the quest dialogue in DA:O then reading the quest tab later to see wtf someone said. ME2 wasn't as bad because I could just read the text real quick then skip ahead.

There is no sense of epicness. It makes no sense that my level 6 characters can kill a revenant and my level 15 characters are killing the same revenants as well. I understand it's needed to have a free world, but the scaling level system is stupid. I basically fight the same mobs everywhere I go, but the mobs get slightly more health at times.

JRPGs are great at itemization. Also side quests usually give you something very useful that makes you feel that your time was well spent.

The storylines are much much better.

Your character progresses a ton from level 1 to the end of the game. I think the best example of this is Lunar. I mean starting off as a kid whose idol is a dragonmaster, then later finding all the armor required to become one yourself. Perfect. I became a spectre in my first hour of play and a warden even quicker than that. Nothing changed. Oblivion was not much better.

JRPGs are much more focused on the character development and storyline, Western RPGs are single players MMORPGs where they give you a cool world to run around in.



As far as good recent JRPGs: Lost Odyssey is the best answer.

Some of the tales games are good, some are awful.

Ar Tonelico is really old school but good. Same with Disgaea, although not so much an rpg. Valkyria Chronicles falls in the same category.

Western RPGs are essentially grab-bag hybrid games. They appeal to people in a variety of ways, but they don't do a bang-up job of anything.

That's okay by me, I'm looking forward to Skyrim more than any other game, even though I know there are other games with better action, better story, better character advancement, better loot systems, better writing, etc - none of them can put it all together the way Bethesda will.

JRPGs are much slicker, because they are actually focused games. They know exactly what they want to do, and they do it.

While I like both types of games, I don't think it's fair to compare them. They're very different genres, made for very different audiences.

(Which is to say, the Western RPG tangent here is no more relevant than a survival horror tangent would be.)

don't really have the time to play jrpg these days, but here's a list i played and liked:

chrono trigger, ff1-10, dragon quest ix, golden sun 1 & 2, persona 3, twewy, tales of symphonia, pokemon, riviera... i think that's it

i also really like srpg like fire emblem but i guess that's off topic

hmm just put ffxiii back in the ps3.

Secret of Mana was the first RPG I played back in 5th grade. And to my surprise, I replayed it a little over a year ago (was 25) and I thought it was just as awesome as I did back in the day.

I don't know the semantics as far as RPGs go, but in the case of these type I think graphics have worked against them. Not only does it take them way longer to make these kinds of games, but graphics never were all that important in these games anyway. It led to them getting rid of world maps/ease of exploration, which were a lot of the fun. Secret of Mana is a great example of this.

That's probably why I replayed 7-9 on my PSP fairly recently, and have very little desire to play 10, 12 or 13.

BTW, there's an insanely addictive FF character fighting game called Dissidia for the PSP (the sequel actually includes basically all of the original in it, so if you're going to get it just buy the sequel). The story is lol worthy at times but the game is still awesome. They actually have a world map in it, so they should copy that idea over to future games if they're smart.

I don't like that. With some of the early JRPGs such as Dragon Warrior [Quest] 1, the whole world was technically open to you from the start (no airship necessary), but you were funneled towards and away from certain areas because of enemy strength. I like that a lot, taking a few steps into dangerous territory, barely escaping a tough fight, and then coming back when you're stronger in like 10 hours.

Yea I don't think that telling a rigid story is what video games should be trying to do. It's like when movies were just getting started and many of them were basically just filmed stage plays. They were stuck in what the medium of theater could do and hadn't yet explored what film could do (with the camera, editing, close-ups, special effects, etc.). I feel like JRPGs are stuck trying to be like an epic anime TV series or movie and are not doing anything special with the medium.

I absolutely loved DW1. Grinding xp in areas that you're just barely able to handle, then getting some new sword/spell allowing you to do that in a new area against new things. That and FF7 are the only RPG's I've ever really played past the first hour. What are some modern games with similar progression style's? I also played WoW, and my favorite part was getting to 80 and then grinding for gear.

lol why? It's a completely different way of doing a game. Movies are limited to three hours or so. It would take at least 3 movies to tell the story of some of these games. And obviously the story is just part of it, while in a movie or a TV series it would be the entire thing.

A completely non-linear game can't have the same emotional poll as a linear game can. I don't see how you can compare the two at all.

I can appreciate your desire for innovation in gaming. I get really frustrated at times because some of what's possible in the medium just isn't happening. And where it is happening, it's happening at a snail's pace. Partly because the market for what I like is small, and even though I think it will explode eventually, that doesn't put money on the table (especially for conservative players like EA, who control most big game budgets).

But there are millions of people who want to pay $60 for a rigid story told in video game format. They have alternatives, and instead they choose these games. That seems like pretty strong evidence the games provide something of value (actually I know they do because I like JRPGs, but let's stay objective).

When modern cinematic techniques were invented, the market for filmed stage plays dried up in favor of real films. If new games are produced that "better" than traditional JRPGs in a similar way, the same thing will presumably happen to the market for traditional JRPGs. But so long as there's a strong market, these games are clearly "justified" by the fact people want to play them.

FF XII tried to be "innovative" and the end result was the gameplay resembling a botched abortion.

FF XIII was solid