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StarStabbedMoon · Oct 30, 2015

YianGaruga said:
As someone else said, I'd almost consider Pokemon its own thing or at least an outlier.

If we want to include it then the conversation is very different.

...

I'm not so sure it's an outlier to the genre. Many games that are definitely considered JRPGs use extremely similar mechanics of collecting creatures and making them fight for you, some that even predate Pokemon (Shin Megami Tensei for example). Pokemon has a style and aesthetic that remains appealing to kids and its fanbase decade after decade, but that's simply not translating into interest for JRPGs with other styles and aesthetics.

Under ideal circumstances and a healthy genre, Pokemon would be one of many examples that expand the range of the JRPG umbrella.

qcf x2 · Oct 30, 2015

Valen said:
VR JRPGs would be great. One of the reasons I got really interested in PSO back in the day was because it seemed like the closest thing to .hack at the time.

Seeing the summons in FF to their actual scale, in front of you, would be really something.

Don't forget the dungeon crawling. The original PS games had first person battles. It's a no brainer for a VR game, but somehow I doubt it happens.

redcrayon · Oct 30, 2015

Nekofrog said:
are there really people saying JRPGs were always niche and were never that popular?

im assuming those people weren't alive when the PS1 was popular. JRPGs defined that generation

Parasite Eve 1/2, Final Fantasy 7/8/9/Tactics, Dragoon, Tales, Chrono, Breath of Fire 3/4/5, Dragon Warrior 7, Lunar 1/2, Star Ocean, SUIKODEN 1/2, WILD ARMS 1/2, Valkyrie Profile, Xenogears, and I can go on.

That would be a false assumption. Lots of those games were hard to find in Europe, and if you go back a generation previous, we didn't see hardly any of the big RPGs on the SNES.

JRPGs didn't define the PSOne, or at least not in the UK. Racing games, fighters, tomb raider, Resident Evil. Case in point- the TV series Spaced was written at the time by people who knew their pop culture. Videogames are a big running theme. The games Tim is playing are Tekken, Tomb Raider and Resident Evil, not Final Fantasy and Tales.

That doesn't mean that there weren't loads of great JRPGs on PSOne, it's the genre where the games have stood the test of time the best as far as I'm concerned, but they didn't necessarily define the console amongst it's mainstream audience. There was also a big drop-off between someone who had played or heard of FF and every other JRPG on the console.

RedSwirl · Oct 30, 2015

DJIzana said:
Disagree. Doesn't explain why games like The Witcher sell like they do or Dragon Age. There's other elements involved than simply no time.

I think it's partly because as some of the western console gaming audience grew older, games like The Witcher and Dragon Age began to appeal to them more. Their storylines are mostly about adults instead of teenagers. Also, with games in general, western developers are obviously going to have an easier time making games western audiences can relate to. Some of those Japanese games were probably popular in the west largely because Japanese games made up the majority of console gaming. It wasn't until more and more western games came into the console space that some people started to realize just how Japanese the old JRPGs were.

redcrayon said:
I think it's that JRPGs just aren't as expandable in terms of audience size as western ones. Their audience hasn't changed in size, and has the disadvantage of the cultural barrier that western titles just don't have. Skyrim or The Witcher or Dragon Age sell bucketloads as Vikings and dragons and knights and European settings are a much easier sell on prime-time TV to an audience familiar with LOTR and Game of Thrones. Market research in Western games has also led to an amalgamation of genres, where it's now a much smaller leap for western audiences to leap from Far Cry and Assassins Creed into the stats and equipment and gameplay of Elder Scrolls, Fallout and Dragon Age, than it is for them to go from the former into Persona or Final Fantasy.

As a proportion of the gaming mindshare, it's that the market, budget and sales required of big games is now so big that they are designed to appeal to as many western people as possible, including those buying two games a year. That's something that JRPGs, with their genre quirks and comparative cultural weirdness, are never going to do on the expanded western home console audience that isn't just children that have only been exposed to 90% Japanese titles any more.

Lots of genres today aren't as popular with 'the younger generation' as they were to us in the 90s, but back then the audience was just children. These days a JRPG, still designed for Japanese teenagers, releases over here to find that the people buying it's western competitors are 35 year-old guys instead of western teenagers who are still largely receptive to the same coming-of-age stuff.

Totally agree. I think another factor may be that for decades, the North American console audiences has been mostly obsessed with action games. If you look at the biggest console games in the west, particularly North America, pretty much all of them are either action games (including shooters) or sports games (including racing). This goes pretty much all the way back to the 8-bit era. I think to Americans one of the main draws of console gaming is controlling a character in real time.

JRPGs which still often have turn-based or random battles, go completely counter to this. Back in the day they had appeal to a lot of people despite that because they seemed like the most ambitious games on consoles at the time in terms of content and narrative. Since then, the old CRPG developers who came into the console space figured out that Americans prefer action games, and transformed their own games to match that preference. Fallout went from being a moderately well-known PC franchise into being one of the biggest games in the world probably by attracting a lot of people who played FPSs. BioWare went from making isometric Dungeons & Dragons spin-offs to making third person shooters and hack n' slash games. Even a huge chunk of console JRPGs now have switched to real time combat. Thinking about it, Final Fantasy XII probably came out a generation or a few years before its time. In my opinion even Dark Souls (which I still see as a large niche and not mainstream) owes some of its popularity to how wholly and completely it embraces being a real-time game with a control system that doesn't feel the least bit esoteric or obtuse. At no point does it stop the player to tell some kind of ambitious epic tale, it just let's them play the game 100 percent of the time.

entrement said:
I still think the they peaked in popularity during the PS1 thanks to FFVII.

Today, they have very dedicated but smaller audiences if we're talking about worldwide.

I think the zenith was Final Fantasy X and the first two Kingdom Hearts games.

Robert at Zeboyd Games · Oct 31, 2015

RedSwirl said:
In my opinion even Dark Souls (which I still see as a large niche and not mainstream)

Dark Souls sold over 5.5 million copies and Dark Souls 2 was at just under 3 million last sales report we got. That's some niche.

Many games that are definitely considered JRPGs use extremely similar mechanics of collecting creatures and making them fight for you, some that even predate Pokemon (Shin Megami Tensei for example).

Exactly. The archetypical JRPG series - Dragon Quest - had a monster capturing game in the form of Dragon Quest V several years before the first Pokemon games.

jetsetnickradio · Oct 31, 2015

A lot of younger kids still play Pokemon, but I'm honestly worried that JRPGs are becoming irrelevant for most gamers, not just the younger crowd. Especially good old-fashioned turned-based JRPGs without the real-time gimmicks.

Cindi Mayweather · Oct 31, 2015

I was really itching to post in this thread earlier but couldn't do so because my account wasn't validated. Come back a few hours later with an email that says my account's validated. It's a sign.

This is my first post.

Nekofrog said:
are there really people saying JRPGs were always niche and were never that popular?

im assuming those people weren't alive when the PS1 was popular. JRPGs defined that generation

Parasite Eve 1/2, Final Fantasy 7/8/9/Tactics, Dragoon, Tales, Chrono, Breath of Fire 3/4/5, Dragon Warrior 7, Lunar 1/2, Star Ocean, SUIKODEN 1/2, WILD ARMS 1/2, Valkyrie Profile, Xenogears, and I can go on.

a lot of these titles that you would expect to be "niche" back then weren't niche, they were front and center of the library. then you even have your "psuedo" JRPGs that have strong elements of them but aren't entirely RPGs (Megaman Legends).

this was a height of creativity that failed to manifest going forward. there will never be a more diverse and broad lineup of JRPGs, and it wasn't a lack of sales that stymied it either. the sales were there. the transition just utterly failed to keep it going generation to generation, now nobody but the most ardent JRPG nuts care.

tldr: yeah, kids probably have 0 interest in JRPGs now, but it's not their fault. it's the fault of the publishers and developers for not cultivating the massive hit they had in the 90s.

You are making a false presumption, likely based on the fact your own personal inner circle of gaming friends were jrpg fans. Which is entirely understandable, though incorrect. Ultimately, most game players aren't really interested in Japanese RPGS, and never have been. At most, they've likely played Final Fantasy 7-10, maybe the two Chrono games, and Kingdom Hearts, at best. This doesn't state anything in regards to the popularity of the jrpg genre, however.

There's a wide gap between many of the games you listed, and their competition.

For a point of analysis, Final Fantasy VII sold 9.8 million worldwide. That's a wide girth between many of the games you list, such as Breath of Fire, Suikoden, Wild Arms, Valkyrie Profile, Tales, and especially Dragon Warrior VII.

For comparison, Dragon Warrior VII sold 210,000 units according to the Dragon Quest wiki page, which cites official Square Enix sales data. Dragon Quest VIII, for what it's worth, was forced to be packaged with a Final Fantasy XII demo by in the western territories because a complete lack in confidence for it to sell.

Looking at NPD data, 200k tends to be the upper echelon of the more celebrated jrpgs that aren't FF, Pokemon, KH;etc.

Suikoden III, the best selling Suikoden, debuted on the October 2002 sales chart with 53,907 units sold and by August 2004 - nearly two years later - had amassed 232,387 units lifetime sales. I remind that Suikoden III was the best selling Suikoden in America.

Chrono Trigger sold 290,000 units abroad. The ugly 200k rears its ugly head again.

Of course, you have a point with some of them. Chrono Cross sold 650,000 abroad. It's STILL not the number you think it is because in this case "abroad" means more than North America, considering it was released in Europe as well. Using past jrpg trends, you could cut that number in half, and still have it at about 325k units per territory, and that's still only slightly larger than dreaded 200k. This is also precisely why we will never get another Chrono game, likely.

It's easy to make assumptions here that, due to the sheer frequency of jrpgs we got in America back in the day, that all of them did well and had a pretty sizable audience..But they didn't. Kingdom Hearts, Poke'mon, Final Fantasy...they're all exceptions, and that's it. Japanese rpgs have a historically niche appeal in the west. Dragon Warrior needed to be given out for free for Nintendo of America to sell people on the concept. Dragon Quest nearly 20 years later still needed FF12 as a free demo to remotely get customers off their butts and convince them to buy it.

The idea that the Japanese RPGs, were popular by quantity of titles released in the west is merely a myth. The reality is that we, as jrpg fans, are a loyal and focused lot that support the games we want to support, and it's almost always universally the same people buying these games, with a few boosters give or take, depending on the IP. If you pay attention to jrpg sales data, you'll notice the trend that at best, with few exceptions, they top out at 200-300k.

JRPGs are niche.

Sad, but true.

Poetic.Injustice · Oct 31, 2015

A lot of people saying that they were never popular to begin with: For their time, I think they sold well enough compared to other genres. The growth has not been proportional since the PS2 era though.

RedSwirl · Oct 31, 2015

Robert at Zeboyd Games said:
Dark Souls sold over 5.5 million copies and Dark Souls 2 was at just under 3 million last sales report we got. That's some niche.

Didn't realize they sold that much. Definitely not Pokemon numbers but it's in the same ballpark as the numbers KH pulled and probably around some of the numbered FF games.

Cindi Mayweather · Oct 31, 2015

Poetic.Injustice said:
A lot of people saying that they were never popular to begin with: For their time, I think they sold incredibly well compared to other genres. The growth has not been proportional since the PS2 era though.

Well, you can make this argument with any genre.

2d shooter fans are probably more committed to supporting their genre than we are, but their numbers also stayed static. As budgets rise, sale ceilings result in issues. Jrpgs selling 200k abroad wasn't a problem until the developers couldn't afford for the games to sell merely 200k abroad. Context matters.

I expect this generation wrpgs will reach their sales ceiling, but that genre keeps getting more and more popular to the point where I continuously underestimate its sales potential.

KyanMehwulfe · Oct 31, 2015

even for me.. grew up on JRPGs and a lot of my favorite games are...

but, last time I actually enjoyed a JRPG?

Final Fantasy XII.... maybe Suikoden V. basically nothing since PS2 other than remakes like Tactics Ogre.. FF XIV too I guess that's pretty great but traditional SP JRPG (no remakes, no tactics, no mmos, etc) not much since ps2. tales, persona, etc just don't really find those type of stories or characters interesting.

the art and characters seem rather niche towards a certain type of JRPG or 'cast of characters' that just don't really appeal to me anymore. so i mostly just replay stuff like tactics ogre, ff 12/6/tactics. nothing against those other jrpgs of course, just not my thing.

kswiston · Oct 31, 2015

Cindi Mayweather said:
I was really itching to post in this thread earlier but couldn't do so because my account wasn't validated. Come back a few hours later with an email that says my account's validated. It's a sign.

This is my first post.

Great first post.

I am 33 years old, and was therefore in high school for pretty much the entire PS1/N64 generation. Suikoden and Valkyrie Profile seem like big games of the era now, but barely anyone was actually playing these games at the time. Your average PS1 owner was much more likely to have Bloody Roar or Battle Arena Toshinden in their collection at the time than most of those classic JRPGs.

Front and center games in North America during the PS1 era were stuff like Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, Tony Hawk, and Tekken. I don't think Europe was much different (maybe less Tony Hawk).

Aeana · Oct 31, 2015

Nekofrog said:
are there really people saying JRPGs were always niche and were never that popular?

im assuming those people weren't alive when the PS1 was popular. JRPGs defined that generation

Parasite Eve 1/2, Final Fantasy 7/8/9/Tactics, Dragoon, Tales, Chrono, Breath of Fire 3/4/5, Dragon Warrior 7, Lunar 1/2, Star Ocean, SUIKODEN 1/2, WILD ARMS 1/2, Valkyrie Profile, Xenogears, and I can go on.

a lot of these titles that you would expect to be "niche" back then weren't niche, they were front and center of the library. then you even have your "psuedo" JRPGs that have strong elements of them but aren't entirely RPGs (Megaman Legends).

this was a height of creativity that failed to manifest going forward. there will never be a more diverse and broad lineup of JRPGs, and it wasn't a lack of sales that stymied it either. the sales were there. the transition just utterly failed to keep it going generation to generation, now nobody but the most ardent JRPG nuts care.

tldr: yeah, kids probably have 0 interest in JRPGs now, but it's not their fault. it's the fault of the publishers and developers for not cultivating the massive hit they had in the 90s.

Most Japanese RPGs, even in the PSX era, didn't sell more than 200-300k. The number of them that reached or surpassed 1 million is pretty low. FF7, FF8, FF9, FFT (shipped just under 1 million), Legend of Dragoon, Paper Mario. That's really about it. Go a little bit lower and you can include Parasite Eve, which sold under 800k and most likely just because of the FF8 video. You list stuff like Suikoden 2, but the reason why that game became so rare and thus so expensive is because it sold so poorly when it came out.

RPGs didn't fail during the PSX era, but outside of Final Fantasy and Mario, they didn't really gain major traction. That continued into the PS2 era where the major successes still all had either a Square Enix logo or a Nintendo logo.

Chronoman · Oct 31, 2015

I do not think so. I think JRPGs are still pretty popular.

Cindi Mayweather · Oct 31, 2015

kswiston said:
Great first post.

I am 33 years old, and was therefore in high school for pretty much the entire PS1/N64 generation. Suikoden and Valkyrie Profile seem like big games of the era now, but barely anyone was actually playing these games at the time. Your average PS1 owner was much more likely to have Bloody Roar or Battle Arena Toshinden in their collection at the time than most of those classic JRPGs.

Front and center games in North America during the PS1 era were stuff like Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, Tony Hawk, and Tekken. I don't think Europe was much different (maybe less Tony Hawk).

I was in Middle School/High School the same period so you're only slightly older than me.

No one knew what Valkyrie Profile or Suikoden were besides die hards. I knew only one person who played Suikoden, and he let me borrow his copy in High School. We couldn't even find Suikoden II in stores. Back then you had to hunt via Gamestop/EB/FuncoLand's internet sites and see store availability, even then it was a crap shoot. I literally knew no one who heard of, much less played Valkyrie Profile in real life. And when the sequel came out, no one gave a shit for the second time.

Being a jrpg gamer in North America puts you in a special, special club. We're diehard and we stick to the franchises we love. But we are niche.

To be fair, many of the companies don't ever do any marketing. I never saw an ad for Suikoden II or III, but that perfectly explains how niche they really were. Jrpg fans buy games by word of mouth, constant updates from creators, more so than reviews and advertising. Those things don't influence us much.

AcademicSaucer · Oct 31, 2015

Wait until Nintendo releases their JRPG for mobile

RedSwirl · Oct 31, 2015

Cindi Mayweather said:
Well, you can make this argument with any genre.

2d shooter fans are probably more committed to supporting their genre than we are, but their numbers also stayed static. As budgets rise, sale ceilings result in issues. Jrpgs selling 200k abroad wasn't a problem until the developers couldn't afford for the games to sell merely 200k abroad. Context matters.

I expect this generation wrpgs will reach their sales ceiling, but that genre keeps getting more and more popular to the point where I continuously underestimate its sales potential.

Well how expensive is it to make a 2D shooter nowadays. I haven't kept track or anything, but a lot of the new 2D shootesr I see these days look very similar to maybe PS2-era ones in terms of production value. But I'm talking about shmups. Maybe you're talking about something else.

Cindi Mayweather · Oct 31, 2015

DJIzana said:
There were good ones but it's... I dunno. It's hard to explain. It doesn't feel as if a lot of those stand out as much as the ones released on SNES or PS1. There are exceptions, mind you... but I don't feel like there's a lot that do.

I'm not exactly sure how Breath of Fire V: Dragon Quarter, an rpg where you have to beat the clock didn't stand out compared to the SNES/PSX rpgs.

Or Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, the game where the world ends, you're turned into a demon, and you fight for survival and ideology on literal hell on Earth.

Or Digital Devil Saga, the nightmare-ish game about people who fight for survival and land, and suddenly turned into demons who must eat each other to stop from going mad.

Or Valkyrie Profile 2, the game that successfully blends strategy rpg with traditional rpg with the best dungeon design in the genre this side of Lufia 2.

Or Final Fantasy XII, the first turn-based jrpg since Chrono Trigger to have zero transitions in battle, with vast, vast landscapes, cities, and dungeons.

Or Suikoden III, the rpg with the most forward-thinking story structure since Dragon Quest IV, that allows you to see the viewpoints of rival factions to give a more nuanced take on war.

Dark Cloud, Final Fantasy X, Suikoden V, Radiata Stories, Final Fantasy X-2, Kingdom Hearts, Persona 3, Raidou 2, Wild Arms 3, Shadow Hearts, Baten Kaitos, Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, Tales of Symphonia, Tales of the Aybss...

In no way was the ps2 generation lacking in Japanese rpgs. From a gameplay as well as story perspective, it pushed the genre further into heights it had never reached before nor since.

From your posts, it seems you tend to value more big budget jrpgs than the rest. That's a big problem for ps2, because the main company dealing with big budgets was Square, and their output mostly sucked that generation. But while they were lacking, many other companies fully stepped up. If you missed many of these games, you missed out.

John Kowalski · Oct 31, 2015

they will not know the loving joy of Star Ocean 2

diffusionx · Oct 31, 2015

kswiston said:
Great first post.

I am 33 years old, and was therefore in high school for pretty much the entire PS1/N64 generation. Suikoden and Valkyrie Profile seem like big games of the era now, but barely anyone was actually playing these games at the time. Your average PS1 owner was much more likely to have Bloody Roar or Battle Arena Toshinden in their collection at the time than most of those classic JRPGs.

Front and center games in North America during the PS1 era were stuff like Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, Tony Hawk, and Tekken. I don't think Europe was much different (maybe less Tony Hawk).

According to Wiki, FF8 sold 8 million copies and that wasn't all on PC. These were huge and very successful games. Final Fantasy 7 is one of the system's defining games - actually probably the defining game.

So yea these were big games. The younger generations don't care though, I think that is obvious.

Manmademan · Oct 31, 2015

Cindi Mayweather said:
I'm not exactly sure how Breath of Fire V: Dragon Quarter, an rpg where you have to beat the clock didn't stand out compared to the SNES/PSX rpgs.

Or Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, the game where the world ends, you're turned into a demon, and you fight for survival and ideology on literal hell on Earth.

Or Digital Devil Saga, the nightmare-ish game about people who fight for survival and land, and suddenly turned into demons who must eat each other to stop from going mad.

Or Valkyrie Profile 2, the game that successfully blends strategy rpg with traditional rpg with the best dungeon design in the genre this side of Lufia 2.

Or Final Fantasy XII, the first turn-based jrpg since Chrono Trigger to have zero transitions in battle, with vast, vast landscapes, cities, and dungeons.

Or Suikoden III, the rpg with the most forward-thinking story structure since Dragon Quest IV, that allows you to see the viewpoints of rival factions to give a more nuanced take on war.

Dark Cloud, Final Fantasy X, Suikoden V, Radiata Stories, Final Fantasy X-2, Kingdom Hearts, Persona 3, Raidou 2, Wild Arms 3, Shadow Hearts, Baten Kaitos, Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, Tales of Symphonia, Tales of the Aybss...

In no way was the ps2 generation lacking in Japanese rpgs. From a gameplay as well as story perspective, it pushed the genre further into heights it had never reached before nor since.

From your posts, it seems you tend to value more big budget jrpgs than the rest. That's a big problem for ps2, because the main company dealing with big budgets was Square, and their output mostly sucked that generation. But while they were lacking, many other companies fully stepped up. If you missed many of these games, you missed out.

quality post. The PS2 was *by no means* short on great JRPGs. The SNES had nothing on it in terms of quantity, and the quality was just as high if not higher.

Honestly unless Chrono Trigger is the best game ever created for you, its hard to see how the SNES is preferable.

diffusionx said:
According to Wiki, FF8 sold 8 million copies and that wasn't all on PC. These were huge and very successful games. Final Fantasy 7 is one of the system's defining games - actually probably the defining game.

So yea these were big games. The younger generations don't care though, I think that is obvious.

a big chunk of those sales were in japan. FF7/8 did well here, but if you're talking the US/EU, it was in no way anywhere near the popularity of Metal Gear/Resident Evil/Tomb Raider/Gran Turismo.

Cindi Mayweather · Oct 31, 2015

RedSwirl said:
Well how expensive is it to make a 2D shooter nowadays. I haven't kept track or anything, but a lot of the new 2D shootesr I see these days look very similar to maybe PS2-era ones in terms of production value. But I'm talking about shmups. Maybe you're talking about something else.

But that's exactly my point. The point is that every genre has a ceiling of interest. A ceiling in which they'll mostly maximize profit. Go past the ceiling that is required to break even, and you risk killing the genre because the developers can no longer afford to make a modern looking game without not meeting their sales quota.

To keep budgets around the same, jrpgs retreated to handhelds. You didn't see B-tier jrpgs on consoles last generation for the most part, and there's a reason for that. Games like Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, Infinite Undiscovery, Star Ocean 4, and Tales of Vesperia didn't make nearly all of their money back. After that, the jrpgs dried up besides Square Enix releases and very, very niche releases. It's only recently, and mostly due to the influence of Unreal 4 and PS4's success, that you're seeing a renewed interest in developing console jrpgs.

Compare Tales of Zestiria with say, Tales of Vesperia. Do you really see an increase in budget and resources? Which one looks better? Mind figuring out why? Do you think Tales of Besteria will look better than Vesperia? I bet it won't.

vs

KyanMehwulfe · Oct 31, 2015

yeah I never really knew anyone else playing most PSX RPGs... Suikoden was unheard of, don't think I think I knew anyone that touched Chrono Cross, even FF Tactics was just sort of maybe the most obvious RPG fans

FF VII though... basically every single kid on my hockey team, even kids I never knew played games, played that. Thing was like an event.

even FF VIII wasn't quite the same, maybe it became normalized or people were talking about the movie, too. wasn't the same sort of 'awe' or 'curiosity' that VII sparked though. at least at my high school, no other PSX game (rpg or not) even came close to being as talked about as FF VII... only thing that was really quite as big was Goldeneye because basically every party had a 4 player game going

these days, my different cousins' kids (not quite or barely teens) all just play minecraft lol barely even know what zelda or final fantasy is and probably wouldn't even know what jrpg stands for. minecraft for them is basically their mario or ff.

TC McQueen · Oct 31, 2015

Cindi Mayweather said:

Is that a Blue Exorcist mod for a JRPG?

Also, the top image in your comparison looks better, thanks to the anti-aliasing and 2D shaders.

TheyTookOurJobs · Oct 31, 2015

One of the Janitors at work is about 15 years younger than me, and he plays Infinite Space.

Cindi Mayweather · Oct 31, 2015

TC McQueen said:
Is that a Blue Exorcist mod for a JRPG?

Also, the top image in your comparison looks better, thanks to the anti-aliasing and 2D shaders.

The top image is from a game made in 2008. The bottom image is from a game releases literally last week.

If jrpgs were oh so not niche, and could afford to have oh so much bigger budgets, how come the quality disparity in a 7 year gap?

OmegaDL50 · Oct 31, 2015

LegendofLex said:
They really only got their start by riding on the popularity of The Legend of Zelda (Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest couldn't have gotten off the ground without much of the groundwork laid by that game), so as that franchise and games like it have gone out the window (to be replaced by open world WRPGs), JRPGs haven't had a successful template to model their genre after in quite some time.

Dragon Quest was heavily inspired by games like Ultima and Wizardry, in fact the original Dragon Quest came out in 1986 only two months after the original Legend of Zelda, meaning it had no influence or inspirations in regards to it's development at all. In fact Horii has admitted this in interviews as well.

Same applies to Final Fantasy which Sakaguchi's admission he states Ultima and the tabletop version of Dungeons & Dragons proved to be two of the largest influences to want to create a fantasy title. And while most of the '70s and early '80s role-playing games borrow from previously-established mythologies from the likes of Conan the Cimmerian and The Lord of the Rings, Ultima and D&D left the most noticeable impressions on Sakaguchi.

Sorry but Zelda had very little bearing if any on these two franchises.

Fuu · Oct 31, 2015

TC McQueen said:
Is that a Blue Exorcist mod for a JRPG?

Official Blue Exorcist DLC costumes for Tales of Zestiria. There are Evangelion costumes too.

Manmademan · Oct 31, 2015

OmegaDL50 said:
Dragon Quest was heavily inspired by games like Ultima and Wizardry, in fact the original Dragon Quest came out in 1986 only two months after the original Legend of Zelda, meaning it had no influence or inspirations in regards to it's development at all. In fact Horii has admitted this in interviews as well.

that's a very strange claim to make in the first place- there is virtually no similarity between the legend of zelda and DQ1...at all.

Same applies to Final Fantasy which Sakaguchi's admission he states Ultima and the tabletop version of Dungeons & Dragons proved to be two of the largest influences to want to create a fantasy title. And while most of the '70s and early '80s role-playing games borrow from previously-established mythologies from the likes of Conan the Cimmerian and The Lord of the Rings, Ultima and D&D left the most noticeable impressions on Sakaguchi.

Sorry but Zelda had very little bearing if any on these two franchises.

agree. FF1 ripped off D&D's bestiary pretty shamelessly as I recall- it's clear where the influence came from there.

kswiston · Oct 31, 2015

Manmademan said:
a big chunk of those sales were in japan. FF7/8 did well here, but if you're talking the US/EU, it was in no way anywhere near the popularity of Metal Gear/Resident Evil/Tomb Raider/Gran Turismo.

It's also Final Fantasy. You might as well use Nintendo games as evidence for how popular 2D platformers or cart racing games are currently.

The list of JRPGs that broke 1M copies sold outside of Japan from the SNES and PS1 eras is damn small when you remove anything involving Final Fantasy, Pokemon, or Mario.

Cindi Mayweather · Oct 31, 2015

kswiston said:
The list of JRPGs that broke 1M copies sold outside of Japan from the SNES and PS1 eras is damn small when you remove anything involving Final Fantasy, Pokemon, or Mario.

This would be interesting data to peruse. You could probably count them on two hands. Maybe even one.

NipplesAndToes23 · Oct 31, 2015

I didn't know Mario RPGs broke a million.

Manmademan · Oct 31, 2015

Cindi Mayweather said:
This would be interesting data to peruse. You could probably count them on two hands. Maybe even one.

its been done before here I think. Pretty sure the only one on PSX that pulled it off was Legend of Dragoon. Nothing on SNES was anywhere over 300K copies.

Cindi Mayweather · Oct 31, 2015

Manmademan said:
its been done before here I think. Pretty sure the only one on PSX that pulled it off was Legend of Dragoon. Nothing on SNES was anywhere over 300K copies.

Sure sounds like a widely played genre to me! /s

kswiston · Oct 31, 2015

Manmademan said:
its been done before here I think. Pretty sure the only one on PSX that pulled it off was Legend of Dragoon. Nothing on SNES was anywhere over 300K copies.

Including Europe? I would be interested in seeing numbers for Parasite Eve.

Blasian Persuasion said:
I didn't know Mario RPGs broke a million.

I don't know about the original game. The Mario & Luigi games were big sellers. Bowsers Inside Story shipped over 4 million copies. The rest were in the 1-3M range.

EDIT: With the possible exception of the first game again, the Paper Mario games were all million sellers outside Japan as well.

Jigorath · Oct 31, 2015

gundamkyoukai said:
JRPGs were not that big to begin with .
I mean you have your big sellers like KH , FF , pokemon .
But most of them were middle ground or niche .

Aye.

It just looks worse for JRPGs because WRPGs have become so much more popular over the last decade or so. Even the Souls series, one of the biggest JRPG series of the last console generation, takes heavy cues from Western RPGs.

SalvaPot · Oct 31, 2015

I think JRPGs have a harder time keeping up with AAA releases, they have to be this epic, powerful, awesome stories that require time and effort to get invested in. Most recent JRPG games are more action games than adventure games, for example.

A-V-B · Oct 31, 2015

It's only becoming irrelevant because all the groups that made great JRPGs have been dissolved. The old FF group, the old DQ group, the old Chrono/Xenogears group... gone. What do we have left? Persona, right? That's all we have! No one else is getting any funding, and the ones who are getting funding... well, they're not really the sorts who will keep the genre alive.

Shit, Undertale is the best JRPG we've had in years and it's part shmup.

statham · Oct 31, 2015

I still really like them , but it does seem to be fading, hopefully FFXV and KQ do really well.

StereoVsn · Oct 31, 2015

kswiston said:
It's also Final Fantasy. You might as well use Nintendo games as evidence for how popular 2D platformers or cart racing games are currently.

The list of JRPGs that broke 1M copies sold outside of Japan from the SNES and PS1 eras is damn small when you remove anything involving Final Fantasy, Pokemon, or Mario.

Yeah, JRPGs were always fairly niche in the West. As everyone else said, if it's not Final Fantasy, it really didn't sell all that well. Although last gen P4G did fairly well in the West on a dying platform, all things considered, so I think P5 has a chance to crack 1 million. Ni no Kuni did fairly well in the West as well, doing over 1 million. I think if Namco were ever to do a proper sequel, it could do better then that again.

For comparison, I am fairly certain that Witcher 3 and Fallout 4 LTD (combined looking at 20 mil plus LTD) will sell better then all JRPGs combined this generation in the West, including FFXV, DQXI, P5 and anything else in between. Heck, there is a chance that they will sell better then all JRPGs combined this gen in the world unless miracle happens and FFXV and FFVII remake just blow people away (not likely).

kiryogi · Oct 31, 2015

Cindi Mayweather said:
The top image is from a game made in 2008. The bottom image is from a game releases literally last week.

If jrpgs were oh so not niche, and could afford to have oh so much bigger budgets, how come the quality disparity in a 7 year gap?

Uh are you playing the PS3 version? PS4/PC version of Zestiria looks absolutely outstanding.

Also unlike Vesperia, Zestiria is pushing full on open world with seamless transitions for battles and cutscenes, a series first.
Proper shot:

Busaiku · Oct 31, 2015

StereoVsn said:
Yeah, JRPGs were always fairly niche in the West. As everyone else said, if it's not Final Fantasy, it really didn't sell all that well. Although last gen P4G did fairly well in the West on a dying platform, all things considered, so I think P5 has a chance to crack 1 million. Ni no Kuni did fairly well in the West as well, doing over 1 million. I think if Namco were ever to do a proper sequel, it could do better then that again.

For comparison, I am fairly certain that Witcher 3 and Fallout 4 LTD (combined looking at 20 mil plus LTD) will sell better then all JRPGs combined this generation in the West, including FFXV, DQXI, P5 and anything else in between. Heck, there is a chance that they will sell better then all JRPGs combined this gen in the world unless miracle happens and FFXV and FFVII remake just blow people away (not likely).

Pokémon will have sold more than either.

StereoVsn · Oct 31, 2015

Busaiku said:
Pokémon will have sold more than either.

Good point, did not count Pokemon or Yokai Watch series. Yes, those sell and quite well, but I feel they almost have no bearing on the overall JRPG market health and are more of its own thing.

Although I am not certain they will sell more then Fallout 4 considering Skyrim is over 20 million sales now.

Mory Dunz · Oct 31, 2015

Blasian Persuasion said:
I didn't know Mario RPGs broke a million.

I think BiS did over 2 million in the US alone. One of the members who has those types of numbers said that I believe.

edit:
Bowser's inside story

dity · Oct 31, 2015

I don't blame the younger generation. Unless you're used to them, JRPGs can be pretty fiddly and tedious.

Cindi Mayweather · Oct 31, 2015

kiryogi said:
Uh are you playing the PS3 version? PS4/PC version of Zestiria looks absolutely outstanding.

Also unlike Vesperia, Zestiria is pushing full on open world with seamless transitions for battles and cutscenes, a series first.
Proper shot:

You call it a proper shot, but isn't the ps3 version the main version? Steam and PS4 versions were announced way after the ps3 version. Which is the main system for Zestiria?

I still think Vesperia looks better.

RedSwirl · Oct 31, 2015

Cindi Mayweather said:
vs

I still don't know why Namco and a lot of other JRPG developers abandoned heavy cel shading after Vesperia. It can't be that expensive a feature if other mid-budget games are doing it, and in my opinion it looks better for games with anime graphics. Star Ocean 4 for instance should probably have been cel-shaded.

Persona 5 and Ni No Kuni are pretty much what I think modern JRPGs should look like.

TC McQueen · Oct 31, 2015

RedSwirl said:
I still don't know why Namco and a lot of other JRPG developers abandoned heavy cel shading after Vesperia. It can't be that expensive a feature if other mid-budget games are doing it, and in my opinion it looks better for games with anime graphics. Star Ocean 4 for instance should probably have been cel-shaded.

It's entirely possible that the PSP (the platform for most of those games in the post-PS2/pre-Vita era) couldn't handle the cel-shading and whatever pipelines/tool chains they used for cel-shading were more difficult on PS3 for whatever reason.

VanillaCakeIsBurning · Oct 31, 2015

Cindi Mayweather said:
But that's exactly my point. The point is that every genre has a ceiling of interest. A ceiling in which they'll mostly maximize profit. Go past the ceiling that is required to break even, and you risk killing the genre because the developers can no longer afford to make a modern looking game without not meeting their sales quota.

To keep budgets around the same, jrpgs retreated to handhelds. You didn't see B-tier jrpgs on consoles last generation for the most part, and there's a reason for that. Games like Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, Infinite Undiscovery, Star Ocean 4, and Tales of Vesperia didn't make nearly all of their money back. After that, the jrpgs dried up besides Square Enix releases and very, very niche releases. It's only recently, and mostly due to the influence of Unreal 4 and PS4's success, that you're seeing a renewed interest in developing console jrpgs.

Compare Tales of Zestiria with say, Tales of Vesperia. Do you really see an increase in budget and resources? Which one looks better? Mind figuring out why? Do you think Tales of Besteria will look better than Vesperia? I bet it won't.

vs

These probably aren't the best two games to compare. And not just because the screenshots used for comparison are really bad. The reason they started going with a different style from Xillia onwards is due to from what I remember Daigo Okumura's suggestions on how to improve character model detail in order to make them closer to the illustrations. Xillia and Zestiria's character models are more detailed than Vesperia's which rely on shading and modified proportions for their look. Whether one or the other looks better is up to the individual, since the indication is that this change wasn't because of budgetary reasons but for art related ones.

We even had a thread on it a few years ago.

Quoting the related paragraphs;

Okumura started his presentation by talking about how Tales of Xillias graphic style was something of a departure from the previous Tales games. While Tales of Vesperias cel-shading looked good, it made interesting, complex character design hard to do. Okumura wanted to switch to the new style to capture more detail and make characters look more like their original illustrations.

Cel-shading also tended to made characters look smaller, again increasing the gap between concept art and in-game appearance so Okumura recommended the new approach. While the Tales of Studio believed that the shorter characters were better from a game design perspective, Okumura convinced them from that from an illustrator standpoint, the new style was better. He eventually put together character models of characters from previous Tales games in both styles, and that won them over.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your post but you seem to be saying that Vesperia looks the best, and that Zestiria and future Tales of games will not look as good because they are not working with the same kind of budget they had when they were working on Vesperia?

RK128 · Oct 31, 2015

Considering Pokemon and Kingdom Hearts (franchises with large kid audiences), I would say the genre isn't lost to the younger generation

.

If anything, the PS4 will be the console that main-streams it like the genre had during the SNES and PS1 eras; once FFXV, KH3, Persona 5 and FFVII Remake land, the genre will explode in popularity with newer generations. This will lead to other games in the genre coming out soon like Neir 2 and Digimon Cyber Sleuth to be greater successes

.

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