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Namco Bandai : Savior of JRPGs?

Here's a question. Does Dark Souls at least have an insert or something about Tales of Graces' release in the manual or something? Even that would count as saying "here you like rpgs maybe you will like this one".

Or did it have an insert for Inversion or something else like it?
 
MechaX said:
Dark Souls and Graces F are great (let's throw in Xillia too), but I don't think that "largely" makes up for Enchanted Arms, Eternal Sonata, Cross Edge, Trinity Universe, Neptunia, or Star Ocean 4.
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What about all the other games I mentionned in the OP? (Vesperia, Magna Carta 2, and Ninokuni is looking very promising)

And if we're talking console JRPGs in general, this gen hasn't been nearly as bad as often claimed when you add the likes of Resonance of Fate, Xenoblade, The Last Remnant, NIER, etc.

And I'm avoiding adding FFXIII to that list because of all the hate it gets around here, but it was IMO a great game too, despite its flaws.
 
Qwn5M.jpg
 
I loved FF13, but partially because it was so different. Sometimes it's nice not to be lost in dungeons and have to think up unique strategies on the fly.
 
Rahxephon91 said:
Here's a question. Does Dark Souls at least have an insert or something about Tales of Graces' release in the manual or something? Even that would count as saying "here you like rpgs maybe you will like this one".

Or did it have an insert for Inversion or something else like it?
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Outside of core games who are already aware of both games' existance, does ToG really appeal to the kind of people who will play Dark Souls?

One is a gritty, dark action game with a few RPG elements.
The other is a light-hearted, quirky and colourful anime RPG.
 
Reveirg said:
Outside of core games who are already aware of both games' existance, does ToG really appeal to the kind of people who will play Dark Souls?

One is a gritty, dark action game with a few RPG elements.
The other is a light-hearted, quirky and colourful anime RPG.
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Few rpg elements? Have you even played Dark Souls?
 
johnsmith said:
Few rpg elements? Have you even played Dark Souls?
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I just finished it yesterday. Ok, I exaggerated that to prove my point, but it remains that the two games are fundamentally different and will not appeal to the same people.
 
Reveirg said:
Outside of core games who are already aware of both games' existance, does ToG really appeal to the kind of people who will play Dark Souls?

One is a gritty, dark action game with a few RPG elements.
The other is a light-hearted, quirky and colourful anime RPG.
Click to expand...
Regardless of appeal, if your own company doesn't advertise its own future products on an already released product then there is something wrong with that. Sure the Tales series is niche but if they advertise they will receive more sales.
 
I disagree with this for these reasons:

They would have never brought Dark Souls over, had Atlus not proven Demon's Souls a success.

As for Graces F and Abyss 3DS...

Still no release date known for Graces F (and I'm still betting on Jan. 31st... It's the Bamco thing to do), and Abyss 3DS, a game that was originally only in JP and NA... It's out in JP, it comes out in EU in three weeks, but NA? 2012. Why?


And I'm still annoyed at Ni no Kuni keeping the Japanese title.
I'm thrilled it is coming, but the game is in a European setting...
 
Reveirg said:
What about all the other games I mentionned in the OP? (Vesperia, Magna Carta 2, and Ninokuni is looking very promising)
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Well, I mean Vesperia 360 already came out, and Vesperia PS3... that's an entirely different subject...

Magna Car-

1175453128980hx1.gif


Reveirg said:
And if we're talking console JRPGs in general, this gen hasn't been nearly as bad as often claimed when you add the likes of Resonance of Fate, Xenoblade, The Last Remnant, NIER, etc.

And I'm avoiding adding FFXIII to that list because of all the hate it gets around here, but it was IMO a great game too, despite its flaws.
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Okay, now we're in list war territories. But the problem here is that Namco wasn't responsible for any of those RPGs, regardless of their quality (Xenoblade, I think is top tier, RoF has its flaws, NIER and Last Remnant are definitely for acquired tastes), so it would still be hard to justify them as being anything close to being saviors of the genre. And even with that nonwithstanding, there are still many more subpar console JRPGs this gen.
 
I knew this wouldn't be a popular opinion, but I'm still amazed that nobody can see the bright side here.

They're not perfect, but they're at least trying now, which is much more that can be said about other companies.
 
Reveirg said:
Outside of core games who are already aware of both games' existance, does ToG really appeal to the kind of people who will play Dark Souls?

One is a gritty, dark action game with a few RPG elements.
The other is a light-hearted, quirky and colourful anime RPG.
Click to expand...
Does it have to? I'm sure my Halo manuals had Blinx or Project Gotham Racing and the only link here being that they are xbox exclusives. Or how Metal Gear Solid 1 and 2 had Silent Hill 1 and 2 on the back. In the case of Silent Hill, I saw another game coming from people I had just played a game I really liked. It at least put the name in my head. Dark Souls is an rpg and people just may see that Tales of Graces ad and think well I really liked this Dark Souls and here's this other rpg coming out from these people maybe it will also be good. It's just a simple thing they could do. Besides aren't those picking up Dark Souls gamers already open to more then your typical player?

Though I actually don't know how Bandai and Namco work these days as I think Dark Souls just has Bandai on the cover.
 
Rahxephon91 said:
Though I actually don't know how Bandai and Namco work these days as I think Dark Souls just has Bandai on the cover.
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They're the same company, they just use whatever logo "feels right" for each game or franchise.
Splatterhouse just got a Namco logo to allude to the game's arcade origins, for example.
 
Rahxephon91 said:
Does it have to? I'm sure my Halo manuals had Blinx or Project Gotham Racing and the only link here being that they are xbox exclusives. Or how Metal Gear Solid 1 and 2 had Silent Hill 1 and 2 on the back. In the case of Silent Hill, I saw another game coming from people I had just played a game I really liked. It at least put the name in my head. Dark Souls is an rpg and people just may see that Tales of Graces add and think well I really liked this Dark Souls and here's this other rpg coming out from these people maybe it will also be good. It's just a simple thing they could do.

Though I actually don't know how Bandai and Namco work these days as I think Dark Souls just has Bandai on the cover.
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That makes sense, yeah, I guess they should've advertised it then =/
 
Reveirg said:
Outside of core games who are already aware of both games' existance, does ToG really appeal to the kind of people who will play Dark Souls?

One is a gritty, dark action game with a few RPG elements.
The other is a light-hearted, quirky and colourful anime RPG.
Click to expand...

Well I'm core I guess but I love both :D
 
Zwei said:
I still like Square Enix
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I do, too. And it does seem to me like they're slowly rebuilding upon a solid ground with the likes of Type-0, Versus XIII, XIII-2 and XIV 2.0. Then again, the real value of these games remain to be seen. And a new IP really wouldn't hurt...


demosthenes said:
Well I'm core I guess but I love both :D
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I do too =D


Zwei said:
I'm still not forgiving NB for cutting XS short.
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Ugh, you had to bring that back :( I'm actually finishing my 2nd playthrough of Xenosaga III, 5 years later...
 
Reveirg said:
I do, too. And it does seem to me like they're slowly rebuilding upon a solid ground with the likes of Type-0, Versus XIII, XIII-2 and XIV 2.0. Then again, the real value of these games remain to be seen. And a new IP really wouldn't hurt...
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BRAVELY DEF- oh, right. No handhelds.
Man, gaming must be pretty bleak in a no-handheld world.
 
Zwei said:
I'm still not forgiving NB for cutting XS short.
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Game wouldn't have even made it to part 2 if it hadn't taken off in the US.

Xenosaga 1 was probably Namco's best advertising job ever on an RPG.
 
Aeana said:
BRAVELY DEF- oh, right. No handhelds.
Man, gaming must be pretty bleak in a no-handheld world.
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It is =(. Well, I do play handheld games too, but I really don't enjoy them as much for many reasons. (main reason being that visual and aural experiences are really inferior, but I also have no occasion to play them outside of home...)
 
Reveirg said:
I know, this is a bold claim, but in light of recent announcements, it seems Namco Bandai is the only big Japanese company that's making real efforts to get quality, HD JRPGs out in English (may it be as developer or publisher):

-Dark Souls
-Tales of Graces f
-Tales of the Abyss 3DS
-Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch

And this is without mentionning one of this gen's best console RPGs and its localization: Tales of Vesperia for Xbox 360, as well as releasing a two niche games earlier this gen: Magna Carta 2 and Eternal Sonata.

I know I probably need to lower my enthusiasm a bit, but it seems S-E and Atlus still haven't fully catched up with HD gaming. And with all the pessimism around the current state of JRPGs, I'd say this is the only silver lining right now.

Now they need to confirm a Xillia localization...

What do you all think?
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Huge fan of Dark Souls here (just beat it last night actually), and huge fan of all the JRPGs you mentioned. But Dark Souls is not a JRPG. (I do not dispute that it is an RPG though)
 
cpp_is_king said:
Huge fan of Dark Souls here, and huge fan of all the JRPGs you mentioned. But Dark Souls is not a JRPG.
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This has been debated countless times. At this point I like to think of it as a GRPG, a great role-playing game. And it is developped in Japan...
 
Reveirg said:
This has been debated countless times. At this point I like to think of it as a GRPG, a great role-playing game. And it is developped in Japan...
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Since it's been debated countless times, by stating it as a simple matter-of-fact in the original post, you are inviting to rekindle the flames.

The label JRPG is utterly useless and meaningless if it simply refers to the geographical location where said game was programmed. The entire reason it exists is to convey information about the game that might be useful to people. There's a reason people refer to it as a "genre".

Wouldn't you think it was stupid if people started talking about NRPGs (RPGs where the development team operates out of Norway) or CRPGs (RPGs developed by studios in Shanghai)?

If JRPG refers to the geographical location of the development studio, then common statements like "I don't like JRPGs" begin to sound racist.
 
Reveirg said:
This has been debated countless times. At this point I like to think of it as a GRPG, a great role-playing game. And it is developped in Japan...
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It's a pretty great 3D action game.
 
hosannainexcelsis said:
I feel so sorry for anyone who can't bring themselves to play handheld games for whatever reason.
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It's not about refusing to play them, I do enjoy them. I'm glad they exist and they definitely have their place in the games industry.

However, it does not offer the same experience as HD gaming. It's not better, it's not worse, it's just not the same thing. As such, it's a shame to see console RPG gaming shrink so much lately.
 
Savior? The fuck? Absolutely not. They have done nothing to save JRPG's.

OP you may think Scamco gives a damn, but the lack of Vesperia on PS3 is pretty damn convincing they don't give two shits.

Dark Souls would of survived without Scamco. Atlus treated Demons Souls like a god damn king.
 
vocab said:
Savior? The fuck? Absolutely not. They have done nothing to save JRPG's.

OP you may think Scamco gives a damn, but the lack of Vesperia on PS3 is pretty damn convincing they don't give two shits.
/QUOTE]

I really don't know how the lack of releasing a port shows they don't care. Not when they went all out with Vesperia's Xbox localization.

Besides some cuts(big and small), Namco does pretty good localizations.
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Their treatment of the Tales series(In NA at least) leads me to think otherwise. Didn't they decide not to publish Demon's Souls outside of Japan?

Also, I'm a bit confused over the "JRPG" argument. From what I understand of it, some propose that a JRPG should not be called a JRPG if it does not contain stereotypes that they associate with said country and should instead be called a WRPG?

If that's the case, couldn't one say that a Canadian RPG shouldn't be called canadian if it doesn't have people living in igloos or attaching "eh!" at the end of every sentence?

I might be wrong but it seems that way to me.

Regardless of all that, I'm not sure that Namco Bandai could be considered a savior of JRPGS. I think they would have to output a lot of high quality games for that to be the case(bringing over some more from Japan would be great :p) Graces getting localized is definitely a good sign though .
 
'Namco Bandai : Savior of Console JRPGs?'

They are anything but.

Have you completely forgotten how they handle the Tales series? I'm fully expecting Ni No Kuni to be released with only about 50% of the original content.
 
Rahxephon91 said:
Here's a question. Does Dark Souls at least have an insert or something about Tales of Graces' release in the manual or something? Even that would count as saying "here you like rpgs maybe you will like this one".

Or did it have an insert for Inversion or something else like it?
Click to expand...

It has an ad for the new Ace Combat in the manual.
 
Namco have had a HUGE turnaround from being a joke of a company alongside capcom/konami/SE to me, to being one I really like again

but the saviour? nah, NISA, Aksys and XSeed are the holy trinity

I dont see how Atlus are anything but one of the most disappointing groups lately, they threw Growlanser, Super Robot Wars and everything Sting under the bus to release a fucking atrocious hack and slash
 
Nope, Ignition. Just look at Arc Rise Fantasia, before Portal 2 it was the first successful attempt at humour in a non-Adventure game. Everything NB has done this gen pales in comparison.
 
Coxy said:
I dont see how Atlus are anything but one of the most disappointing groups lately, they threw Growlanser, Super Robot Wars and everything Sting under the bus to release a fucking atrocious hack and slash
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What game is this?
 
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