ZephyrFate
Banned
You don't have to grind for Matador if you have the right skills, which is what the game wants you to do. Same with Thor. Neither of these require grinding.M°°nblade said:
Generic, here, does not mean what you think it means.
-
Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!
Let's talk about JRPGs that have good writing quality
- Thread starter Chairman Yang
- Start date
Generic, here, does not mean what you think it means.
tetrisgrammaton
Member
HK-47 said:
Agreed. Dungeons are the best aspect of Nocturne to me. Almost Zelda-ish in puzzle design.
John Harker
Definitely doesn't make things up as he goes along.
Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions and Final Fantasy XII distinctly come to mind.
Great writing and voice work.
They compliment each other well. Truly made Ivalice feel like a unique, seamless, and believable world.
Great writing and voice work.
They compliment each other well. Truly made Ivalice feel like a unique, seamless, and believable world.
ZephyrFate
Banned
The Amala Temple and the Amala Labyrinth are some of the best designed dungeons in any RPG.tetrisgrammaton said:
flintstryker
Banned
names?CO_Andy said:Any JRPG with Victor Ireland. Duh.
Crash Station
Member
flintstryker said:
Magic Knight Rayearth and Alundra.
flintstryker
Banned
Which makes it funny since i have played both before.cosmicblizzard said:
That's a toughie only because its hard to remember every line of dialogue I read back in the day when RPGs were awesome.
I'd easily jump right to Persona 4. The writing and dialogue fit perfectly and genuinely to the plot and characters involved.
Beyond Persona 4 I will have to make note that FF7(while not my favorite FF) does have some great writing within it.
The one other game I believe had incredible writing for a JRPG was Suikoden 2. I always remember Luca Blight's line where he said something around the lines of," I killed men by the thousands, but it took a thousand men to kill me."
So the list I have is:
Persona 4
Final Fantasy 7
Suikoden 2
I'd easily jump right to Persona 4. The writing and dialogue fit perfectly and genuinely to the plot and characters involved.
Beyond Persona 4 I will have to make note that FF7(while not my favorite FF) does have some great writing within it.
The one other game I believe had incredible writing for a JRPG was Suikoden 2. I always remember Luca Blight's line where he said something around the lines of," I killed men by the thousands, but it took a thousand men to kill me."
So the list I have is:
Persona 4
Final Fantasy 7
Suikoden 2
Himuro said:
Yep. Nocturne sure shines on those dungeon designs. And having to draw a map means that your dungeon looks so generic you don't have any clue where you are and have been.
And Nocturne does require grinding. "You just need the right skillz", well do you guys think that most gamers knew exactly what skills are needed to defeat Matador on the first playthrough? What if they already forgot those skills and had their ass handed to them? For what I've read, most of the people have indeed felt that Nocturne is very difficult and requires a lot of grinding. At least more than any FF game.
Personally Matador wasn't a problem for me. I didn't read about the game before playing so it just wasn't hyped for me as this super hard encounter. Besides I loved the pokemon aspect of Nocturne so I had a really good team.
Night_Trekker
Member
As much as I love the genre, I can think of very few.
The Lunar games were well-written, but that could have been the localization. The quality of Suikoden 5 has impressed me so far.
That's all I can think of right now :|
EDIT: Oh, duh... DQ8 is fairly well-written, though the story itself is simple and traditional.
The Lunar games were well-written, but that could have been the localization. The quality of Suikoden 5 has impressed me so far.
That's all I can think of right now :|
EDIT: Oh, duh... DQ8 is fairly well-written, though the story itself is simple and traditional.
SuperAngelo64
Banned
:lol
This WRPG Elitism/JRPG hate movement is getting really silly.
This WRPG Elitism/JRPG hate movement is getting really silly.
flintstryker said:
To be fair, the Alundra screen was one of two exchanges SCEA made us cut (though SCEI was fine with it), which is why you don't remember it. Also, the *context* is important because Meia says that after Alundra walked on her head, using it as a bridge. Many of the review copies had that line in it, uncut, though. Got a fair amount of calls from reviewers wondering if we were really leaving it in, which we would have because it was a great play on words.
It has everything to do with being generic when the dungeon environment lacks any form of visual reference to orientate myself between random encounters. The dungeons look like they ran a tileset through a dungeon generator. If that's not generic, then I don't know what is.Himuro said:
I wouldn't love Demon's souls so much if I disagreed with your last sentence.TheExodu5 said:
But refined grinding is still grinding. Whether I need to gather experience points, draw magic spells, or recruit new monsters, in the end the game still requires me to run around in circles to trigger random encounters to farm whatever I need in order to progress my game.
Fimbulvetr
Member
HK-47 said:
Pretty sure there are 1 or 2 legitimate reasons for why the Garamsythe Waterway isn't filled with crap(world building ftw).
zoukka said:
So the game is flawed because people suck at it?
Augemitbutter
Member
Night_Trekker said:
agree, escpecially in the case of suikoden V. very good detailed plot and translation.
Fimbulvetr
Member
zoukka said:
zoukka said:
The average gamer can't think outside the box and has to resort to grinding. That's your argument, but the game is clearly designed in ways to get around just grinding for stats.
ZephyrFate
Banned
Did you just totally forget how the map system worked? It gave you a detailed look at every floor detailing every trap and important place to go.zoukka said:
Most gamers would see Matador's Wind skills and think, oh, I should go buy a Magatama with Null Force, which is VERY easy to get with VERY little grinding early-game. It does not require grinding. Just because Average Joe can't come to that conclusion doesn't mean it's the game's fault.
Moonblade: You obviously haven't played 99% of all RPGs that don't change up their dungeon looks. If anything, Nocturne prescribes to an older style of gameplay, and even still there are some damn beautiful dungeons in that game that you obviously totally forgot about. And, still, generic here does NOT mean what you think it means.
Haven't played Nocturne so can't comment on that specifically. If it allows the player for ways to overcome encounters *without* resorting to grinding (the latter being only ONE options), then all the better. If not, though, I'm against the concept of having to grind up to gain the necessary abilities/stats to defeat an encounter (which doesn't apply if you're not supposed to be at that encounter yet - but that's balancing).
Yes, you shouldn't be able to mindlessly bash through a battle. However, you should be able to defeat it by playing your cards right, with whatever tactical options you have available with you at the time. Since that's not always the case (inevitable in a game where the RPG elements allow for quite diverse customization), you should be able to just assess the combat scenario, figure out how you should go about vanquishing it, and then switch around your abilities as needed. You should not be engaging in unrelated random encounters until you gained enough levels to obtain the abilities you wanted. The challenge should be in how you approach the tactical situation, bringing to bear (and realizing that you would benefit from using) the appropriate skills, NOT in grinding to obtain said skills. Grinding is not engaging tactical gameplay, it's just tedious.
Games that allow me to fundamentally alter my party setup with minimal penalties cater to this. Here are some specific examples. In Last Remnant, I can easily just switch around most of my party members on and off, and significantly change the setup of all my unions. This is possible because non-recruited soldiers are always available at the barracks, with abilities that are comparable (but different) to my current party (instead of needing to level up a new char from lvl 1 when you recruit as is the case in some other games). If my party is having difficulty in a battle where I think having extra item usage or traps (or spells or melee-based or whatever - it doesn't matter), I can rethink my build, then go to the barracks and switch party members in and out to create the new build. Zero grind, satisfying customization.
In Blue Dragon (which actually does a decent job at limiting grind - to an extent - via field abilities and avoiding actual encounters but still gaining AP), I was at some point stuck at a very difficult boss fight on hard mode. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to beat the boss with my present setup. One solution was too grind for extra levels (which is terrible when it is the only option). Fortunately, the (pretty neatly-implemented) job system was made in such a way that I had a lot of spare abilities in my arsenal - it was less a matter of which abilities the character had available, and more of which ones s/he should actually bring in-battle (but still being able to alter things quite significantly outside of combat). So it was just a matter of changing a few jobs around, placing the appropriate abilities, and suddenly I was engaged in a very challenging battle - but still managed to win out this time around. Didn't have to grind, because the game allowed me enough diverse tactical options that I could choose via customization.
GAF loves Etrian Odyssey, but I found the gameplay too restrictive. Yes, there was a lot of customization, but the game wasn't flexible to allow you full access to it. If you committed to something, you were stuck with it. This 1) made the encounters somewhat repetitive, since you were stuck with similar skillsets through the game; 2) if you wanted to opt for different tactical options, you either had to create a new char at lvl 1 (especially guilty of this when you unlocked some new classes later in the game) or take a pretty penalizing level hit (5-10, IIRC) to respec some abilities; this meant having to grind to catch up, or having to be stuck with an underleveled character. More important, it meant that respeccing was not a viable option in most situation (perhaps you'd do only once or twice in the game); you are thus stripped of the ability to reassess and recustomize your character if that's what you want. You had to make do with what you had (which can be a good thing if done well). What I really disliked is how penalized you were for trying to opt for more diverse tactical builds (keeping more characters around). It's really too bad. If you had the ability to create new chars/builds that would gain the same level as your current party (or more accessible respeccing), the game would have been a lot more enjoyable for me, and the game would have encouraged more build experimentation. Some people like the restriction; just didn't click for me. Apparently the sequel improves somewhat on this, but I think I'm done with the series.
Yes, you shouldn't be able to mindlessly bash through a battle. However, you should be able to defeat it by playing your cards right, with whatever tactical options you have available with you at the time. Since that's not always the case (inevitable in a game where the RPG elements allow for quite diverse customization), you should be able to just assess the combat scenario, figure out how you should go about vanquishing it, and then switch around your abilities as needed. You should not be engaging in unrelated random encounters until you gained enough levels to obtain the abilities you wanted. The challenge should be in how you approach the tactical situation, bringing to bear (and realizing that you would benefit from using) the appropriate skills, NOT in grinding to obtain said skills. Grinding is not engaging tactical gameplay, it's just tedious.
Games that allow me to fundamentally alter my party setup with minimal penalties cater to this. Here are some specific examples. In Last Remnant, I can easily just switch around most of my party members on and off, and significantly change the setup of all my unions. This is possible because non-recruited soldiers are always available at the barracks, with abilities that are comparable (but different) to my current party (instead of needing to level up a new char from lvl 1 when you recruit as is the case in some other games). If my party is having difficulty in a battle where I think having extra item usage or traps (or spells or melee-based or whatever - it doesn't matter), I can rethink my build, then go to the barracks and switch party members in and out to create the new build. Zero grind, satisfying customization.
In Blue Dragon (which actually does a decent job at limiting grind - to an extent - via field abilities and avoiding actual encounters but still gaining AP), I was at some point stuck at a very difficult boss fight on hard mode. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to beat the boss with my present setup. One solution was too grind for extra levels (which is terrible when it is the only option). Fortunately, the (pretty neatly-implemented) job system was made in such a way that I had a lot of spare abilities in my arsenal - it was less a matter of which abilities the character had available, and more of which ones s/he should actually bring in-battle (but still being able to alter things quite significantly outside of combat). So it was just a matter of changing a few jobs around, placing the appropriate abilities, and suddenly I was engaged in a very challenging battle - but still managed to win out this time around. Didn't have to grind, because the game allowed me enough diverse tactical options that I could choose via customization.
GAF loves Etrian Odyssey, but I found the gameplay too restrictive. Yes, there was a lot of customization, but the game wasn't flexible to allow you full access to it. If you committed to something, you were stuck with it. This 1) made the encounters somewhat repetitive, since you were stuck with similar skillsets through the game; 2) if you wanted to opt for different tactical options, you either had to create a new char at lvl 1 (especially guilty of this when you unlocked some new classes later in the game) or take a pretty penalizing level hit (5-10, IIRC) to respec some abilities; this meant having to grind to catch up, or having to be stuck with an underleveled character. More important, it meant that respeccing was not a viable option in most situation (perhaps you'd do only once or twice in the game); you are thus stripped of the ability to reassess and recustomize your character if that's what you want. You had to make do with what you had (which can be a good thing if done well). What I really disliked is how penalized you were for trying to opt for more diverse tactical builds (keeping more characters around). It's really too bad. If you had the ability to create new chars/builds that would gain the same level as your current party (or more accessible respeccing), the game would have been a lot more enjoyable for me, and the game would have encouraged more build experimentation. Some people like the restriction; just didn't click for me. Apparently the sequel improves somewhat on this, but I think I'm done with the series.
ZephyrFate
Banned
You can beat Nocturne at a fairly low level if you acquire the right skillsets. And even that requires very little grinding.
ZephyrFate said:
Fuck yes it is. And you guys need to read all the posts concerning this thing before accusing me of something. I personally had no troubles with the maps or Matador or whatever. I got bored of the game in some section pretty far to the game :b
Yeah you can beat God Hand with vanilla Gene, but does it mean something?
ZephyrFate
Banned
No... no it doesn't, dude. The game gives you all the tools you ever need. It takes some actual thought, which is on YOUR part, not the game's.zoukka said:
It does mean something. It means that grinding in Nocturne can and is easily made nonexistent.
Isn't this thread about writing, not gameplay? Shit.
Animation-Imp
Member
How about this:
You think wrpg's have better writing because they follow western story-telling conventions.
Japanese stories have a totally different structure and a completely different pacing.
Just compare Japanese movies with western movies.
So it's more than natural that this difference reflects in the games as well.
There are jrpg's with great writing/stories, just as there are wrpg's with abysmal writing.
I've been particulary impressed with:
Shadow hearts: Set during the first world war, this jrpg brings a surprising twist to the table.
SMT: lucider's call: Very deep almost philosofical story. (most SMT stories are good)
Xenosaga: a bit of a pain in the gameplay department, but a story with some very deep themes and some very innovative settings.
Disgaea: fun, wild and completely crazy story. A parody on all jrpg conventions.
There are many more great jrpg's with very well written stories.
If with writing you're indicating the dialog,
then that's a different discussion, but still one that's defined by the inherent difference between Western and Japanese story-telling.
You think wrpg's have better writing because they follow western story-telling conventions.
Japanese stories have a totally different structure and a completely different pacing.
Just compare Japanese movies with western movies.
So it's more than natural that this difference reflects in the games as well.
There are jrpg's with great writing/stories, just as there are wrpg's with abysmal writing.
I've been particulary impressed with:
Shadow hearts: Set during the first world war, this jrpg brings a surprising twist to the table.
SMT: lucider's call: Very deep almost philosofical story. (most SMT stories are good)
Xenosaga: a bit of a pain in the gameplay department, but a story with some very deep themes and some very innovative settings.
Disgaea: fun, wild and completely crazy story. A parody on all jrpg conventions.
There are many more great jrpg's with very well written stories.
If with writing you're indicating the dialog,
then that's a different discussion, but still one that's defined by the inherent difference between Western and Japanese story-telling.
ZephyrFate
Banned
Shadow Hearts I is set before the First World War, IIRC, in 1913.
Crash Station
Member
Animation-Imp said:
Also interesting to note that the JRPGs considered to have good writing in this thread take a more western approach to story telling and even have western settings. Final Fantasy Tactics and XII, Vagrant Story, etc.
ZephyrFate
Banned
Well, obviously, because all of us are used to Western writing, for the most part. That is the standard we hold other stories from other countries up to.
Crash Station
Member
ZephyrFate said:
Which is why a thread like this will never be productive.
ZephyrFate
Banned
It's not necessarily a bad thing to discuss, though, as jRPGs are one of the few genres where storytelling is a fundamental part of the game. It is, however, the fault of many jRPG developers to relegate their stories to tropes and cliches rather than break the mold. Of course, this critique can be used of wRPG developers, as well, but not to the same degree.cosmicblizzard said:
They're used to Western writing/film as well. Which is why most of the stories, situations, and on-liners are ripped right out of classic Western story conventions. Particularly 80s American pop culture.ZephyrFate said:
Sometimes you get the feeling that what is considered new and fresh there, are the same things we saw 20 or 30 years ago in film, and thus, are seen as cheesy by today's standards to a Western audience. I would perhaps attribute it to the fact that the West has had a bit more time to mature in the world of film and cinematic storytelling.
gamergirly
Member
ZephyrFate said:
Makes you wonder how wRPGS seem to Japanese individuals. There was a time when a RPG was just a RPG. Only us hardcore divide up the genre
Crash Station
Member
ZephyrFate said:
Some of those tropes are necessary though. For example: the coming of age story is so popular because it's not only relatable for the target demographic but also makes a lot of sense for a 40+ hour game where growth is important. The characters grow as characters while they grow in battle. As Miyamoto regarding Mother 2 said, "Its starting from zero and ending at one hundred". Of course maybe they could be a little older like early-mid 20s since there's a lot of room for growth there too, but I'm not complaining.
ZephyrFate
Banned
But the bildungsroman is easily one of the most tired tropes existing within stories today, which is why you have games such as Planescape: Torment and Dreamfall: The Longest Journey (and its predecessor) which eschew those that idea in favor of archetypes that are more fresh and original. You don't need to have a coming of age story to make a game last 40+ hours and have growth.cosmicblizzard said:
Sohter.Nura
Member
Valkyrie Profile
FF XII
FF VII
Disgaea
It's not "adult" writing, but it's well written for the audience that it aims at.
I enjoyed the plot and setting of all these games
FF XII
FF VII
Disgaea
It's not "adult" writing, but it's well written for the audience that it aims at.
I enjoyed the plot and setting of all these games
PepsimanVsJoe
Member
So much bullshit being thrown around re: Nocturne.
I dumped the game ten hours in and I still say it's better designed than a handful of you clowns make it out to be.
I dumped the game ten hours in and I still say it's better designed than a handful of you clowns make it out to be.
Crash Station
Member
ZephyrFate said:
I never said you did. I'm just saying there isn't as much room to branch off like a lot of people in this thread seem to think; at least not without sacrificing gameplay. It's still an interactive medium. Saying it's more convenient for stories like that is definitely a cop out but there really isn't much to work with because it needs to at least try to make sense in the context of the gameplay.
ZephyrFate
Banned
Seems more like he's praising it.Himuro said:Wait, are you trashing Nocturne?
Similar threads
- Poll