Diablos said:
That attitude makes me scratch my head. Would you play a WRPG that's below absolutely stellar? Probably.
To be honest, I probably wouldn't. I put a lot of time into the WRPG's that I play, I'm probably close to 50 hours into Fallout 3, and I can easily see myself putting in another 50 before I'm finished with the game completely (Well actually, I might just finish the main quest and stop this time around, since Bethesda placed a 20 level limit on characters, and I have a pretty long back catelogue, but for Morrowind/Oblivion I put in over 100 for each easily).
I don't know of many big, open world WRPG's that are really "sub-par" however, I'm guessing that these games are so difficult to tackle that only a top developer would really attempt them anyways, leaving the genre with a high hit percentage (On consoles at least).
I see what you're getting at though. Would I buy a sub-par shooter, or sub-par adventure game? Hell yes. But I only play on putting in 15-20 hours at most for these types of games, and these are genre's that I really enjoy.
And the west was totally unkind to Mistwalker. I read a review that basically compared Lost Odyssey to Mass Effect, and docked points from Lost Odyssey because it wasn't as innovative (to their pea-sized brains). Why the hell they even thought it to be valid to make such a stupid comparison is beyond me. They're two completely different kinds of games. That's like docking points from PGR4 because it's not like GTA4.
But that's a pure example of how the JRPG is getting shat on this gen. I don't like it at all. WRPG's are fine, but the west for some reason is kicking Japanese RPG's while they're down this gen, and it's wrong.
I think that a lot of the things that people ate up last gen in regards to JRPG's are viewed a lot more critically these days. There is still problems with localization in these games, and to be honest, I feel like the art direction that a lot of JRPG's take is wearing thin as well.
I can't sit through loads of poorly directed cutscenes, childish looking characters, bad voice acting, and turn based fighting unless the game is polished as hell with charm out of its ears. Just can't do it. I'm a little worried about how SO4 is going to do, I'm predicting not so well. I think that FF13 is going to have this genre's future in the west on it's shoulders.