Atelier, Disgaea, Ar Tornelico, Neptunia, Idea Factory, Compile Heart, Gust, NIS, etc. do nothing for me, to be perfectly honest. I know some of those companies/games are unrelated, but I kinda just group them together because I don't necessarily care for any of them. I've tried so many times to get into these games and I can never play them for more than 2 hours. Gust, NIS, Idea Factory, and Compile Heart games seem to resonate between fans so maybe that's why I consider them from the same family, I don't know. I wouldn't call them pedophile games, but they are certainly ultra Japanese games.
This may sound vague or immature, but My BIGGEST issue with these games is that there's literally nothing COOL about them. I guess it's just my personal taste, but I just feel like there's nothing to get excited about with these games. It's just TOO anime-ish, like the bad and uninteresting side of Japan. It may sound a bit ignorant, but that's how I feel about these games. I understand that people dig the alchemy/item creation side of the game, but from the games I've played it's nothing worth flipping out about. Tons of games do item synthesis well. I'll also echo the sentiment that while I do enjoy item synthesis to some degree, I'm not fascinated by it so games being centered such a mechanic doesn't do much for me either. So, what's left, B/C-tier turn based battle systems and some nice artwork to accompany a "maybe cool" OST?
Like, do the fans of these games prefer Gust/NIS titles over say Falcom's games or other RPG developers? To just name a few, my Japanese RPG standards are Falcom games (Ys/Legend of Heroes), From Software (King's Field/Shadow Tower/Demon's Souls), Matsuno games (Vagrant Story/Tactics Ogre), Valkyria Chronicles, Wild ARMs, Suikoden, Vandal Hearts, Shadow Hearts, Xenogears/Saga/Blade, and Chrono Trigger/Cross. I'm just trying to wrap my head around why this fan base is so attached to these games. Call me ignorant or biased, but I honestly can't understand or see why someone would prefer Gust/NIS/Idea Factory, etc. games over the above titles.
The only reason why I ever checked these games out was because I'm a huge RPG fan and I like to play and collect as many games from the genres that I enjoy. These games appealed to me on the lowest level though. They have cool box art and sometimes their soundtracks are good. That's about it. I used to pick each of these Atelier/Disgaea/Ar Tornelico games up as they released thinking I would find one that was somewhat interesting, but it never happened. I've stopped collecting them since Disgaea 3 came out. Now they release these games left and right and I've lost complete interest in the whole scene.