hosannainexcelsis
Member
Someone forgot to send Nintendo the memo.Zeal said:
And Vanillaware? Really?
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Namco Bandai : Savior of JRPGs?
- Thread starter Reveirg
- Start date
And Vanillaware? Really?
Big Papa Husker
Member
If Xillia comes out here, maybe I will forgive them for not bringing Vesperia PS3 over.
Uh... Level-5?Zeal said:
FateBreaker
Member
kaioshade said:
I don't even know where to begin with this.
cpp_is_king
Member
kaioshade said:
I think it's a vocal minority of the fans who dont get it. If localizing a game is not going to make money, guess what's NOT going to happen? (hint: it rhymes with vocalize)
SatelliteOfLove
Member
Savior? Let's see if they can avoid the siren's songs of FF Versus and FF XIII-2 release dates, and they'll be a solid "good".
goldlion054
Member
I feel like Namco is punishing me specifically by not bring Tales of Xillia =(
While I understand being pessimistic in this case, I really doubt they want to announce it before Graces F is out. Similar happened with Abyss, there was no word on whether or not it'd come out here until Legendia was out, and for awhile it was just a suspicious placement of Luke (I think) there that gave any hope at all.
Disgaeamad
Member
Hahaha, oh wow.cpp_is_king said:
Rahxephon91
Banned
I like how their most famous work is not listed here.pgtl_10 said:
I know it's hard to believe. Who would have thought the xbox 360 would do it after the orginal xbox. I was shocked to.Disgaeamad said:
distantmantra
Member
goldlion054 said:
Xillia just came out in Japan. Why would they start hyping Xillia for North America when Graces F isn't even out yet?
I'm not saying they have a good track record, but give them a fucking break before freaking out.
distantmantra
Member
Gvaz said:
No current plans? What? Go to Namco Bandai's site, Graces F is listed as 2012 for North America. We all know it's coming and they even shown off the localized build of the game.
distantmantra
Member
Gvaz said:
They're still working on Graces F and Xillia just came out in Japan. Take a deep breath, calm down and give them a little bit of time before wigging out on them. It's not like the PS3 Vesperia situation where it had been out for over a year and nothing was said.
cpp_is_king
Member
Disgaeamad said:
Yea, wow is right. Name all the JRPGs that were released outside of Japan and are exclusive to either PS3 or Xbox 360. I'll start:
(Xbox) Lost Odyssey
(Xbox) Blue Dragon
(Xbox) Infinite Undiscovery
(Xbox) Last Remnant
(Xbox) Tales of Vesperia
(Xbox) Magna Carta 2
(PS3) Valkyria Chronicles
(PS3) Resonance of Fate
(PS3) Ar tonelico Qoga
(PS3) Hyperdimension Neptunia
(PS3) White Knight Chronicles
(PS3) Nier
(PS3) Atelier Rorona
(PS3) Atelier Totori
(PS3) Cross Edge
(PS3) Disgaea 3
(PS3) Disgaea 4
(PS3) Last Rebellion
(PS3) Trinity Souls of Zill O'ill
(PS3) Trinity Universe
Feel free to fill in this list if I'm missing some.
Now, recall that Tales of Vesperia was released in August of 2008 and obviously they had to make a platform decision much earlier than that, let's say February of 2008. So let's eliminate all the games on this list that weren't out in February of 2008. Here's what you're left with.
(Xbox) Lost Odyssey
(Xbox) Blue Dragon
Xbox had 2 of arguably the best JRPGs of the past few years (that were brought to the west anyway), better than just about anything on that list in many peoples' opinion and PS3 had not a single fucking game, and in fact continued to have absolutely nothing for quite some time, and you think Xbox 360 wasn't the unequivocably clear dominator at that time?
Of course, looking at that list, maybe it still is. As far as universally / near universally loved JRPGs, Xbox has Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon, and Vesperia, and PS3 has Valkyria Chronicles and Disgaea. However, the sheer quantity now available on PS3 probably pushes it ahead, but this was nowhere close to being the case until 2010, a good 1.5 - 2 years after Vesperia came out.
cpp_is_king
Member
hteng said:
Demon's Souls deserves a ranking on a list somewhere, but I don't consider it a JRPG.
Even still, it wasn't released until October of 2009, which doesn't change the lineup around the time that Vesperia was released.
I think a lot of those can be blamed on a combination of a bad mindset (no 2D games!), coming out too rapidly to reasonably localize and release, being on platforms that may be less than ideal in the US for them, and some simply being crap. Tales of Hearts is a shame to lose, but sounds like Innocence and ESPECIALLY Tempest don't matter.Gvaz said:
And I've mentioned it elsewhere, but you can look at how badly bigger games like ME2 did when ported to the PS3 just a year later for why we'll never see Vesperia PS3 here, a port that will come even later now and is for a much less popular game. It made sense in Japan where no one wants to get a 360, but a good chunk of people that care enough in North America and Europe will just own both systems and maybe a Wii alongside them.
cpp_is_king said:
Last remnant is on PC, resonance of fate and nier are also on 360
you left out:
Atelier Rorona
Atelier Totori
Cross Edge
Demons Souls
Disgaea 3
Disgaea 4
Last Rebellion
Trinity Souls of Zill O'ill
Trinity Universe
Rune Factory Tides of Destiny if you want to make it about PS3 vs 360, otherwise it's also available on Wii
in b4 only games I like count
cpp_is_king
Member
Coxy said:
I left out Demon's Souls intentionally because I do not consider it a JRPG (yes I consider it an RPG), and no I do not dislike it. I used to actually, until I played Dark Souls and I fell in love with it, and now I think I was wrong about Demon's Souls.
Most of those games are pretty niche, but I'll give you Disgaea. I will add them to my list for the sake of completeness, but I think none of them were out at the time of Vesperia so it still doesn't change my rationale for why it made sense for Namco to go Xbox 360 only.
The sheer quantity of games that have come out since 2010 has probably pushed PS3 ahead despite it still having IMO the top 3, but in 2008, heck even in 2009 Xbox 360 was king.
From is a Japanese developer. Their staff is 100% Japanese or very nearly so. DS and DS are also way more RPG than Neir, which is an action game with a grab bag of other mechanics thrown in. Saying it's not a JRPG because it doesn't follow some odd arbitrary ideal is strange when Resonance of Fate goes way further off the rails of traditional RPG design and still falls under that moniker.cpp_is_king said:
cpp_is_king
Member
Aaron said:
I'm actually on the fence about Resonance of Fate. But even though it doesn't fit the traditional style of what a JRPG is normally thought of as, it certainly looks and feels Japanese in almost every possible respect. Demon's Souls does not. It does not have a notable Japanese style to it. If you showed it to some random person on the street who had no idea, they would not be able to look at it and go "haha that is so Japanese, wtf". Also, I already said I don't dispute that Demon's Souls is an RPG.
Please read my post on the previous pages about why using JRPG is an idiotic label if you're using it to refer to the country of origin. I don't feel like rehashing it here, other than to say it's possible for Japanese companies to develop WRPGs, and it's possible for western companies to develop JRPGs. Otherwise it's a stupid, meaningless, frivolous label that has no bearing on anything other than to unnecessarily segregate.
hosannainexcelsis
Member
cpp_is_king said:
If you're not going to use JRPG and WRPG to refer to the country of origin, then you shouldn't use those terms at all as they will be unnecessarily confusing.
cpp_is_king
Member
hosannainexcelsis said:
If you are going to use them to refer to the country of origin, then do you consider people racist when they say "I don't like JRPGs"?
There is no scenario in which knowing something is a JRPG or a WRPG is useful if you use it to refer to the country of origin.
jeremy1456
Junior Member
The only thing I can say after seeing the PS3 JRPG list is "Wow, there are a lot of crappy JRPGs on the system."
They've got quantity, but I think quality is on the 360 side.
They've got quantity, but I think quality is on the 360 side.
Rahxephon91
Banned
Riposte
Member
Aaron said:
Resonance of Fate is a SRPG. You could frame it as a JRPG where characters move around in complicated battle map(as opposed to simplifications like "ranks") and the process of gaining and losing positioning(movement) is more important than JRPGs.
Don't go around calling things arbitrary. It is just dumb coming from a person who thinks Resonance of Fate is less similar to JRPGs than a fucking action game. Nier and the Souls series are both action games, though Nier is a flat out bad one and Souls games are some of the best of their breed(above 3D Zelda(pretty much the genre's start and the series most similar to the Souls games), Assassin's Creed, Batman, etc)
EDIT: JRPG, as a genre, isn't restricted to Japan. Genres are not based on where they are made, but what they are. If you want to say a "RPG"(which doesn't make any sense 99% of the time lol) from Japan, then you are no longer talking about genre and can throw in just about any action game in. Granted so few people seem to know what a genre looks like and what it is suppose to do, so whatever. (Hence the difficulties with such a simple problem.)
hosannainexcelsis
Member
Of course someone isn't racist for saying that, anymore than they'd be racist for saying "I don't like British TV" or "I don't like Russian literature."cpp_is_king said:
It's fine to not like how the terms JRPG and WRPG are used. But if J doesn't mean Japanese and W doesn't mean Western, why use them at all? Just scrap them entirely and refer to Command RPGs or Action RPGs or whatever.
VanillaCakeIsBurning
Member
Aaron said:
Agreed. There's no reason to drop the J from it just because the game doesn't fulfill some silly stereotype of what Japanese developers can create. Just because the game doesn't have a generic anime art style or turn based rpg combat does not mean it is devoid of the influence of its creators.
Using this same logic I could say that Shogun Total War (not an RPG but applicable to the example) is a JRTS because the game takes place in Japan completely ignoring the fact that using J or W to represent "style" doesn't actually tell you anything about how the game plays, only the nationality of those who created it.
cpp_is_king
Member
hosannainexcelsis said:
J does mean Japanese, and W does mean Western, but IMO there is a word omitted, and that word is "style".
The reason you use them is because there is a blatantly obvious distinction between almost 100% of titles developed in Japan versus in the west. However, the distinction is not present 100% of the time, and the outliers are obviously grossly out of place when categorized in with the rest of the games.
I mean think about it, you show someone who has never played a video game in her life pictures of a combat screen of every single one of the video games on the list above, but also throw in combat screens of Dragon Age, Might and Magic, Elder Scrolls, The Witcher 2, etc and asked them to divide the pictures into two categories, I'm pretty certain which category Demon's Souls would get put into.
You said it yourself - if the distinction is useless, why use it? Well, you tell me. You're the one using it in a useless way.
Riposte
Member
PoorFate said:
Its really dumb because Dark Souls is full of the qualities Japanese developers put in their game, to the point of "sterotypical". (Some of these qualities have been forsaken in the west, both in game design and in criticism.)
You just need to look at From's history as action game developers.
Because
Dark Souls
is a
3D action game
cpp_is_king
Member
Riposte said:
Action RPG is an actual sub genre, and I think it almost certainly falls there because it is anything but a pure action game.
Riposte
Member
cpp_is_king said:
Relatively speaking it is as "pure" of an action game as Devil May Cry or Ocarina of Time. "Action RPG" is a total ass-pull as last line of defense for people who simply do not want clear genre distinctions. Not to say there can't be a sub-genre called Action RPG(I have a few unnamed/unspecified groups in mind, but I'd never use it because all the baggage the word has now because people suck). Dark Souls is not an action RPG or a JRPG or a WRPG.
Btw JRPG(read: actual JRPGs), WRPG(read: actual WRPGs), and SRPG are already sub-genres of Strategy. Putting a Ocarina of Time/Monster Hunter-style action game with Devil May Cry-style leveling mechanics under all that is stupid.
cpp_is_king
Member
Riposte said:
It is quite similar to devil may cry, but the orders of magnitude slower pacing, the all important level up mechanic, and the ability to play the game with a variety of different combat styles (magic, tank, etc) and character styles is where the rpg aspect comes from. Devil May Cry doesnt have any of that, and is a much purer action game because of it.
I mean it has literally every element of an rpg and every element of an action game, so its hard to go with only one or the other
hosannainexcelsis
Member
cpp_is_king said:
Certainly Demon's Souls is influenced aesthetically by Western fantasy, but you know what's it's also influenced by? The manga/anime Berserk! Despite the Western influences, it and its predecessor games in the King's Field series are still very much Japanese games.
Categorizing by the country of origin is generally clear-cut and is commonly used in all forms of art and entertainment. Trying to use that same terminology to refer to works strongly influenced by foreign aesthetics is problematic: Is Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt an "American cartoon"? Is Avatar: The Last Airbender "anime"? They may be influenced by works in those traditions, but that doesn't place them in those traditions.
In the case of Demon's Souls, it seems unhelpful to lump it together with, say, Dragon Age considering the substantial gameplay differences between the two.
For the record, I'm not satisfied with the term RPG in general, given how overly broad it is and not accurate to a number of games generally labeled under it. However, I generally accept its usage as well as the common usage of JRPG/WRPG to refer to RPGs developed in Japan or in Western countries, in order to avoid confusion and to avoid being drawn into stupid debates that lead nowhere like the one I can't believe I've let myself be dragged into here.
Riposte
Member
cpp_is_king said:
DMC has leveling mechanics, set up like a vendor system much like Souls series. Also "magic, tank, etc" has no meaning in a game without party mechanics. (DMC3+ knows a thing or two about "styles".)
You can put "RPG elements" (strategy elements) into any type of game(and they are being put into every type of game). Saying "every element of an rpg" means nothing. What is critical here is that Dark Souls lacks the strategy battle systems that defines and differentiates JRPGs, WRPGs, and SRPGs. You can say it has "every element of a RPG", but it is actually missing the most important elements of Final Fantasy, Baldur's Gate, or Fire Emblem. So no, it doesn't. You know what Dark Souls is like? 3D Zelda, Monster Hunter, and to a lesser extent games like DMC and Ninja Gaiden.
VanillaCakeIsBurning
Member
Aren't you technically playing a role in all games though? In DMC you take on the role of Dante.
I guess it's just word games at this point. I think we scared away everyone who wanted to talk about the thread subject...
I guess it's just word games at this point. I think we scared away everyone who wanted to talk about the thread subject...
Many RPGs also have loads of action in them! And you're adventuring, so I guess they're Adventure games too!PoorFate said:
Yeah, genre names are honestly kind of silly beyond obvious ones like "racing". What DOES matter here is that Demon's Souls is derived from derivatives of D&D. Amusingly enough, people even likened
Sen's Fortress
R_thanatos
Member
It never made sense at all ..that was a stupid move and they understood that deeply now. now that the tides have turned i'm less angry but still it wqs a move that didn't pay off at all ..cpp_is_king said:
cpp_is_king
Member
R_thanatos said:
Thanks for your well thought about argument backed up by logic and reason, it's much appreciated.