As an Armored Core fan, I wouldn't count on the series being dead yet, Miyazaki has said he wants to direct another one. At least wait until Dark Souls 3 is out and if he makes
another Souls game, maybe it is time to declare the series on an extended vacation.
Try Mercenaries Saga 2 on 3DS. It's like a £4 take on FFT. Well worth a punt. Visuals aren't fantastic but the mechanics are nicely balanced between classes and attacks/spells/skills, with facing, height and formation all factoring in.
I'm going to wait and see what Regalia, Project Phoenix and Liege look like on the Vita before ruling it dead. None of them have chibified art styles.
Thanks for the recommendation, pal. Game looks
sweet. So cheap too, geez. I hope to see more of these indie TRPG come to fruition, since so far, they've all been development for a long time. Same goes for Unsung Story too from Matsuno and Playdek.
JRPGs that have any amount of appeal outside of weird otaku subcultures. Today they just seem creepy and not the pinnacle of technology and role playing design they once were. American RPG budgets blew them out of the water and Japanese dev's slavish devotion to (now) antiquated game design just pushed them to the back of the pack. It's sad, but true.
It's sad to see ATLUS fall victim to this now too. I hope Persona 5 brings things back for them.
And I dunno, Square are going to be releasing a good variety of JRPGs now, aren't they? FFVII Remake, Kingdom Hearts 3, FFXV, Nier 2, Star Ocean 5, Bravely Second, Dragon Quest XI, New JRPG IP from a new studio internally. As far as the more niche JRPG devs go, I can definitely see where you are coming from, though. It is sad to see them having to pander to the lowest denominator like that. Still hurt about what happened to Sting, who made such amazing weird and well varied SRPGs last gen. Now they make creepy and bad looking games for Compile Heart, the bane of all existence.