Support NeoGAF

[JimboJones]

Can't say I am having this problem, the recent JRPG's (Golden Sun 3, Xenoblade, Bowsers Inside Story) I have played have all be fairly medium to fast paced.

Stuff I havn't played like FFXIII and Dark/DemonSouls are real time arn't they and isn't the upcoming FFXIII-2 using the same battle system?
Also theres Birth by sleep, the DS Kingdom Hearts games out there, The World End With You, NEIR.

I tend to prefer slower paced JRPG's than stuff like the Tales Of series or Kingdom Hearts.
The only recent game I would consider kind of slow would have been DQIX and Lost Odyssey but I certainly don't feel like I am being overwhlemed by slow JRPG's. There is a decent slection of games out there if you want a faster paced game.

Maybe your definition of fast JRPG is different from mine though, considering you listed Xenoblade and Golden Sun as slow paced.

 

[Takuan]

^ True, FFXIII has a pretty fast battle system and I imagine the same will apply to XIII-2. I don't think I've played any other JRPG from this gen.

Stealth troll?

Blatant troll from a salty J-phile.

 

[Dunan]

Xenogears is a fantastic game, but if there's one thing that bothers me is the ridiculously slow text speed. It will drive you nuts, but damn if it isn't a great game otherwise.

IIRC (could be wrong), they kept the same text speed from the Japanese original despite English needing more than twice as many characters as Japanese does in a given block of text.

(This is assuming five characters per word and 1.8 Japanese characters per English word. Add in spaces between English words and it gets even worse.)

They really needed to speed up the text, or let you speed it up.

Getting back to the main topic, I too can't stand the slow pace of JRPGs. It's funny, because when I played them in Japanese years ago, my brain needed more time to process the text and so the pacing felt just right. In English I can read much more quickly and so the commands are much easier to enter. Anyone else who cut their teeth playing games in multiple languages feel the same way?

My real pet peeve, though, is long, pointless animations. I loved the PS1 Final Fantasy games, but those Guardian Force/Eidolon animations were just so annoyingly and pointlessly long.

The FF4 port on the PSP was a breath of fresh air. Fast animations, a speed-up option -- and the game's plot moves along pretty quickly to begin with. I want to see that speed-up thing become the standard.

 

[Mupod]

Seems like I'm bringing up Infinite Space a lot lately, but I actually really liked how quick and decisive its battle system was. A lot of people complained about it, maybe they were expecting the game to be some kind of strategy/simulation rather than a JRPG with spaceships. But to me it did exactly what an RPG battle system should.

And yeah, Persona 3/4 do a great job with this kind of thing.

 

[Zuhzuhzombie!!]

100 HOURS OF GAMEPLAY!

 

[Aru]

I think some of you are mixing up things I said in the OP and some posts after. I never said Radiant Historia was slow, I said it didn't have a fast forward option and that battles got boring after a while (I was getting sick of setting traps and pushing enemies back and forth).
The battles are pretty fast, in fact, when you know what to do.

 

[P90]

Chrono Cross had an item that lets you super speed up gameplay, but you only got it in New Game+. That should've been available from the beginning.

Still, the speed doesn't bug me if it's visually engaging. Losy Odyssey was slow, but there was enough going on with camera angles changes, the roadie run, etc. that I was OK with it. Same deal with Chrono Cross. Dragon Quest may have quicker battles, but considering most of it is just text, sound effects and minimal animation, they always felt slower to me even though they really aren't. DQIX was a good middle ground between speed and battle animations, better than DQVIII anyway.



Stealth troll?

No, just stating the obvious from reading through the thread. Many of the posts here sound exactly like EA and Bioware's justification for making DA II what it is/was. Hence, my reference to said game.

Addressing another post:

And anybody liking FF XIII's battle system, well, WTF? Sped up battle does not equate to good battle. Some games do a good to great job of allowing you full or quality AI control of other party members. FF XIII was a travesty. In fact DA II' battle system is better than FF XIII's battle system.

 

[Aeana]

I think some of you are mixing up things I said in the OP and some posts after. I never said Radiant Historia was slow, I said it didn't have a fast forward option and that battles got boring after a while (I was getting sick of setting traps and pushing enemies back and forth).
The battles are pretty fast, in fact, when you know what to do.

The battles in Radiant Historia don't actually end up being very fast. Even in easy fights, you have to go through the tedium of setting up an efficient path to victory. As you say, you got tired of setting up traps and pushing enemies back and forth. If you don't do that sort of thing, though, even the easiest battles can take a while. But doing it in every fight is super tedious. Makes battles longer than they need to be, and they feel dragged out.

 

[K.Jack]

You should get the PC version of The Last Remnant. It's awesome and it has a turbo button.

Yup. I was coming into the thread to praise TLR for having a turbo animations option.

All turn-based RPGs should have the option.

 

[P90]

Blatant troll from a salty J-phile.

Not trolling, drawing an appropriate parallell. I will admit, your description of me as a salty J-phile is accurate.

 

[Aru]

The battles in Radiant Historia don't actually end up being very fast. Even in easy fights, you have to go through the tedium of setting up an efficient path to victory. As you say, you got tired of setting up traps and pushing enemies back and forth. If you don't do that sort of thing, though, even the easiest battles can take a while. But doing it in every fight is super tedious. Makes battles longer than they need to be, and they feel dragged out.

Yes, it was more like battles being long instead of slow.

 

[Aeana]

Yes, it was more like battles being long instead of slow.

I guess for me they are the same. What I'm primarily concerned about is length of battles. Slow stuff adds to the length, which is what bothers me.

 

[Aru]

I guess for me they are the same. What I'm primarily concerned about is length of battles. Slow stuff adds to the length, which is what bothers me.

I guess both bother me, but slow battles are more painful than long ones. Well, there is long and LONG. If each fight lasts 10 minutes, it can be annoying. As well as 2 hours long boss fights.

 

[Hcoregamer00]

fuck this game. i tried as hard as possible to get into it b/c of the hype it got from GAF, but it was fucking unbearably slow:

Valkyria Chronicles 2 fixes it by fast forwarding enemy movements or even skipping then to make the battles go by faster.

 

[IpsoFacto]

I don't have much of a problem with slow action gameplay, though, this gen there really isn't that much to complain about, since a lot of JRPGs are not slow in the classic sense.

Many of them are actually more streamlined and action packed, like Tales of Vesperia, which has more in common with a fighting game than a JRPG.

Resonance of Fate is perfect, a lot of action, 2-minute long cutscenes at most, so it's all good.

But yeah, if there is one problem it would be those long CG cutscenes. They are just way too long and you can see where the money really went to.

They should either trim them down or just make a movie with that.

 

[Aru]

Valkyria Chronicles 2 fixes it by fast forwarding enemy movements or even skipping then to make the battles go by faster.

Oh, he was talking about the enemy turn ? In both games you only see the movement of enemies that are in your sight, more or less. Fast forward is one thing in SRPGs, but skipping the enemy phase ? Not sure it's a good idea, gameplay wise (because you have to catch up to what the enemy did while playing your turn). I agree the option should be there in most SRPG, though.

 

[ctrayne]

As a fan of the Suikoden series, I don't mind long cutscenes or lots of exposition. But I totally understand and agree with what the OP is talking about, which is not a slow plot pace, but just slow animations and a sluggish UI. I hate that kind of crap and it really turns me off to a game.

Someone earlier mentioned FFXII Intl. as a great example of how it should be done, and I wholeheartedly agree. Front Mission 5 is excellent with this as well - deep tactics and complex statistics without any UI bloat or loading times or long animations, yet still retaining that epic scale. Enemy turns move quickly and everything is tightly programmed.

I have a thing I call the "BS Factor" and the higher it is, the more likely I will sell/never buy the game. Long tutorials that aren't fun, tons of unskippable cutscenes, sluggish or bloated UI, etc. all add to the BS Factor. The longer it takes and the more painful it is to start having fun, the higher the Factor. Fable III would be a high BS Factor game, as you have to sit through a LOT of terribly bland stuff and a whole rundown of how the stupid menu system works before you can finally start adventuring.

It's not a short attention span - like I said, I enjoy Suikodens - it's just a low tolerance for crappy design. I understand where OP is coming from.

 

[Dunan]

FFXIII's frenetic battle pace actually worked against the game as a whole. I would have liked a chance to admire the backgrounds and the monster graphics, but you don't have that luxury if the battles are timed and your result depends on speed.

It was doubly annoying because the game itself offered few opportunities to explore and smell the roses, so to speak.

Did Valkyria Chronicles really only let you see enemy movements that were already in your field of vision? If so, I completely failed to pick up on that. In the sequels, I usually kept the Enemy Phase fully visible during important battles so I could get a better look at the enemies' movements.

 

[RedSwirl]

I don't hate turn-based battles in and of themselves. What I do hate is games where I constantly go back and forth between real time exploration and turn-based battles. It makes the turn-based element feel restrictive and I start avoiding combat entirely as a result. This happens in nearly every JRPG I play.

I even prefer JRPGs that are ALL menu-based like SRPGs, because at least those games feel like they have a consistent pace.

I understand that being able to stop and think makes the tactics of combat easier to comprehend in an RPG, but WRPGs already figured out a compromise by having battles in real time but letting the player pause at-will to make commands. Final Fantasy XII is the only major JRPG I've played that does this (Vagrant Story, and I'm sure others do too).

Though I've noticed that most current gen console JRPGs don't suffer from this problem. Right now it's really just due to the hardware limitations of handhelds, and I can tolerate that kind of pacing on handhelds, just not on consoles.

 

[Slayven]

I hate that shit, when you are reduced to just hitting x for 20 minutes. That and 40 minutes until you hit the first save spot.

 

[Paracelsus]

Valkyria Chronicles 2 fixes it by fast forwarding enemy movements or even skipping then to make the battles go by faster.

I don't think VC was slow, it was fast enough for what it had to do. Resonance of Fate on the other hand could have used 10-20fps more.

I hate that shit, when you are reduced to just hitting x for 20 minutes.

Would you believe me if I told you the only time it happened was against a FFXIII boss? About 20 minutes, got bored of switching tactics so I set up a safe optima strategy (mage+healer) and started mashing the X button while browsing the internet and it won the battle for me.

 

[zlatko]

I can put up with slower paced RPGs if there is enough reward at a frequent enough rate. This can be terrific boss fights, well crafted cut scenes, or even an interesting locale.

 

[ULTROS!]

Although Star Ocean 4 and Final Fantasy XIII aren't the best representative of JRPGs, they have a nice and fast battle system... Not to mention they're fun (SO4 is pretty meaty, speedy, and heavily action-oriented while FFXIII is quick like... 5-10 seconds quick).

 

[Durante]

I guess for me they are the same. What I'm primarily concerned about is length of battles. Slow stuff adds to the length, which is what bothers me.

I disagree with that. For me battles can be very long as long as it's meaningful length. It's about the time spent thinking about the battle and making strategic choices versus the time just spent watching the battle unfold or repeating a rote set of strategies. The latter gets boring after a few hours, the former doesn't.

Long, meaningless battles are the worst, but even quick battles are annoying if they are just exercises in mashing X.

As an example, VC has some pretty long battles, but I never found them annoying. Even during the enemy turn phase, while I'm not acitvely doing anything, I get important information about the battle - and at a rather brisk pace.

 

[Urban Scholar]

As a fan of the Suikoden series, I don't mind long cutscenes or lots of exposition. But I totally understand and agree with what the OP is talking about, which is not a slow plot pace, but just slow animations and a sluggish UI. I hate that kind of crap and it really turns me off to a game.

Given Aru's concerns, I'd say that the earlier suikoden games (1&2) are the best in terms of battle speed. A battle would literally last a few minutes or less. Of course they would drag a bit upon boss encounters. Most of the RPGs I've played in say the last 2 years have been on the slower end of things.

Although I'm a firm believer that it's the design and execution proper that determines the intent. Last Ranker from example was very straightforward and felt fast. Although some battle & boss fights took time(ranked fights especially). The design never gave that impression to me. The very last game I played being Devil Survivor, where each skirmish was literally 1 minute also did a good job. Though it felt dragging when you didn't set the walk speed and text to its maximum. Thankfully as soon as I saw those options I set them accordingly.

 

[Ravidrath]

Most JRPGs take WAY too long to get going story- and gameplay-wise.

Considering that Final Fantasy X was the most successful JRPG on the PS2 and what spawned the insane explosion in that genre, you'd think that people would have thought to copy one of its best features: the exciting opening.

Most JRPGs have a really slow build-up, and FFX is the only game I can think of that starts in media res.

I love Persona 3 and 4, but both had just excruciatingly slow beginnings. It takes, what... like four hours of just talking to people and clicking through text before you can enter the TV in P4? That's just ridiculous, and it doesn't matter how much time that is compared to the game's total play time. P3's more like 90 minutes, which is still too long, yet probably on the short end of things for most JRPGs.

 

[Ifrit]

I used to love JPRGs a lot, I still like them, but I can't stand slow pace and random battles. Still enjoyed Lost Odyssey ( pacing is fine but has random battles )

 

[chaosblade]

Most JRPGs take WAY too long to get going story- and gameplay-wise.

Considering that Final Fantasy X was the most successful JRPG on the PS2 and what spawned the insane explosion in that genre, you'd think that people would have thought to copy one of its best features: the exciting opening.

Most JRPGs have a really slow build-up, and FFX is the only game I can think of that starts in media res.

I love Persona 3 and 4, but both had just excruciatingly slow beginnings. It takes, what... like four hours of just talking to people and clicking through text before you can enter the TV in P4? That's just ridiculous, and it doesn't matter how much time that is compared to the game's total play time. P3's more like 90 minutes, which is still too long, yet probably on the short end of things for most JRPGs.

FF7 was the big game that blew up the genre. And it opened up pretty fast with the whole bombing mission, and the Shinra attack soon after. Took a pretty big pacing hit after Midgar though.

 

[Crazetex]

I love Persona 3 and 4, but both had just excruciatingly slow beginnings. It takes, what... like four hours of just talking to people and clicking through text before you can enter the TV in P4? That's just ridiculous, and it doesn't matter how much time that is compared to the game's total play time. P3's more like 90 minutes, which is still too long, yet probably on the short end of things for most JRPGs.

See, I greatly despise Persona 4 (haven't played P3) for what it stands for: it is supposedly this JRPG MONOLITH OF EXCELLENT DESIGN:

-Terribly long and drawn-out intro
-Terribly long and drawn-out worthless school event scenes that have no development
-Terribly long and drawn-out dungeons that are boring and tedious
-Same old turn-based battle system with the same old skills, except it has elements (worthless, boring "strategy"; seriously guys, "hit fire enemy with ice every turn" is not the Best Battle System Ever)
-Flat characters who show no signs of development outside of their compartmentalized "I develop now" scenes

Those school events: screw them. They sucked.

EDIT: I mean, I played the entire game. I didn't hate it, but I do dislike how it's viewed.

 

[Myriadis]

I don't have problems with that stuff if the battle system is quite strategic. Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter and Wild Arms 3, for example, are rather slow, but especially on Bosses you have to think about a certain strategy to damage them efficently, and I like that.
On the other hand, I don't like RPGs with lots of cutscenes and not much to do at the beginning. Final Fantasy X gets a lot better after Luca, because after that they tone down the amount of cutscenes immensely.

 

[Yuterald]

Wild Arms and Breath of Fire games usually have some sort of auto battle option, from what I remember. Just auto battle encounters if you can and fight manually during more difficult/boss battles. That should alleviate those situations, I suppose.

I personally don't have issues with slow paced battles. However, if battles are slow and are accompanied by HIGH encounter rates (Black Sigil on DS for example, I know, poor example, but it's the first thing that comes to mind) then yes, I agree, it's miserable. I can't stand high encounter rates, especially if there is no auto battle option.

In the end though I don't try and let shit like this stop me from seeing most RPGs to the end. Games like Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky are slow paced both in battle and story pacing, but the plot has a HUGE payoff. You suddenly begin to appreciate all the little 'boring' things you sat through that got you to that 'aha' moment. Breath of Fire IV, personally, was the same way. Yeah, some moments are slow and the the encounter rate is a bit high, but the end moments are soooo fucking cool that it makes up for any 'inconveniences" you dealt with.

 

[Ferrio]

Play the valkyrie profile games you fool.

 

[Trojita]

But I think I'm pretty much done with most turn-based JRPGs because most of them are too slow paced for me.

Come back to me when you have to summon Eden/KotR back to back.

I thought Radiant Historia's battle system was great and paced decently.

 

[Augemitbutter]

have you tried devil summoner raidou 2? it's pretty fast paced and one of the best RPGs of the last decade.

 

[Yottamole]

Jade Empire? Since when an RPG made by Bioware a JRPG? Hahaha.

Bioware made Sonic Chronicles.

 

[.JayZii]

Not really sick of it, no. Do it well, that's all I ask.

 

[Aeana]

I disagree with that. For me battles can be very long as long as it's meaningful length. It's about the time spent thinking about the battle and making strategic choices versus the time just spent watching the battle unfold or repeating a rote set of strategies. The latter gets boring after a few hours, the former doesn't.

Long, meaningless battles are the worst, but even quick battles are annoying if they are just exercises in mashing X.

As an example, VC has some pretty long battles, but I never found them annoying. Even during the enemy turn phase, while I'm not acitvely doing anything, I get important information about the battle - and at a rather brisk pace.

Strategy RPGs are an entirely different beast. They are nothing but battles.
I would not accept a battle system like Valkyria's with battles that took equally as long if I were fighting enemies in a dungeon in that manner, with many many different encounters along the way. i.e., if a game were set up like a regular RPG but had Valkyria's battles.

I would say that the closest a game ever got to combining the two successfully was Dragon Quarter, but you'll notice that battles take a fraction of the time of an SRPG battle.

EDIT: Actually, Growlanser did a pretty good job at it too.

 

[vireland]

You should get the PC version of The Last Remnant. It's awesome and it has a turbo button.

Turbo button can't save it, that game SUCKED - it was SO boring. Probably my worst console jprg this gen. It's an outward manifestation of all that is wrong with SE these days.

 

[Aeana]

Turbo button can't save it, that game SUCKED - it was SO boring. Probably my worst console jprg this gen. It's an outward manifestation of all that is wrong with SE these days.

That's odd. Most people would say "everything that's wrong with SE these days" is super linearity, Nomura designs, etc. Last Remnant is pretty much the opposite of a game like FF13, I'd say. Does that mean that FF13 is an example of everything that is right with SE?

 

[GSR]

I wanted to go back and replay the first Baten Kaitos, but it was just so goddamned slow. I remember there would be boss fights that took the better part of an hour.

 

[AwShucks]

You're right about Jade Empire, I'm putting it off the list.
Radiant Historia was a great JRPG and surely my handheld GOTY 2011 but my main complain about the game was the battles that got boring after a while.

If you thought Radiant Historia battles got boring then JRPGs are not for you apparently. The thing about Radiant Historia is it takes the standard turn based JRPG formula and adds so much to it that it's not supposed to be a "mash A in battle" type of system. You can't do TOO much with turn based battled and RH probably made a turn based system as complex as possible while still being turn based.

 

[kayos90]

That's odd. Most people would say "everything that's wrong with SE these days" is super linearity, Nomura designs, etc. Last Remnant is pretty much the opposite of a game like FF13, I'd say. Does that mean that FF13 is an example of everything that is right with SE?

Wow, if Last Remnant is everything that SE did wrong and FF13 is everything they did right then I have no idea what world I'm in. Last Remnant, despite the crappy review it got, was a very unique game with a very fun combat system that was very different from other games at the time.

 

[DEO3]

I thought I was done with JRPGs a long, long, time ago.

Then I played Xenoblade.

Play Xenoblade.

 

[Aeana]

If you thought Radiant Historia battles got boring then JRPGs are not for you apparently. The thing about Radiant Historia is it takes the standard turn based JRPG formula and adds so much to it that it's not supposed to be a "mash A in battle" type of system. You can't do TOO much with turn based battled and RH probably made a turn based system as complex as possible while still being turn based.

Radiant Historia's battles did get boring, though, around the middle part of the game where you're stuck with Raynie and Marco for an exorbitant amount of time and every battle plays out exactly the same, over and over and over and over again. It was worse than mashing A, because battles were easy but in order to get them over with in a timely manner, you had to move enemies around the grid, group them up, and then attack them. Tedious and boring.

I like Radiant Historia, but it is by no means without flaws and its battle system and encounter design are not perfect.

 

[kayos90]

I thought I was done with JRPGs a long, long, time ago.

Then I played Xenoblade.

Play Xenoblade.

Oh, you're one of those people.

 

[R_thanatos]

@Aru

I didn't find radiant historia to be slow at all ..repetitive backtracking , yes but slow ? not at all .

Same for golden sun ( all 3 ) battle are fast , no waiting , animation takes 1 second MAx and in some cases you can skip the long ones ..

i read your post and i don't know if i have properly grasped your definition of "slow"

IMO xenoblade is not slow paced AT all ... there are times i wished i could slow things down even ..

Shaddup Shaddup Shaddup! I WAS TRYING TO REPRESS THOSE HORRIBLE MEMORIES!

But yes, Xenosaga 2 is the epitome of slow JRPGs. Ugh.

Yeah Xenosaga 2 is a painfull passage in a nice trilogy ( after getting to Xeno 3 all is perfect )

 

[lastendconductor]

After playing Atlus jrpgs, it's hard to go back. Even SMT 1 for the SNES is faster than 99% of the jrpgs out there.

 

[Lafiel]

I'm a j-rpg fan, and generally can't stand slow-ass battle systems, although i make one small exception for Final Fantasy IX - which has the slowest battle system in a FF game.

But I found persona 2, xenosaga episode 1 & 2 and the like a chore to play through at times because of the "slow" battling, and it's part of the reason why I prefer DQ over FF these days.

 

[kayos90]

I'm a j-rpg fan, and generally can't stand slow-ass battle systems, although i make one small exception for Final Fantasy IX - which has the slowest battle system in a FF game.

But I found persona 2, xenosaga episode 1 & 2 and the like a chore to play through at times because of the "slow" battling, and it's part of the reason why I prefer DQ over FF these days.

FFIX is pretty slow I'm not going to lie but I've played slower. Last Remnant was slow but it was a different type of slow. I was actually fine with it. Super slow is something like um.... hmm.... I can't think of one on the top of my head.

 

[Aeana]

FFIX is pretty slow I'm not going to lie but I've played slower. Last Remnant was slow but it was a different type of slow. I was actually fine with it. Super slow is something like um.... hmm.... I can't think of one on the top of my head.

The answer you're looking for is Glory of Heracles DS. Specifically the Japanese version, or the NA version if you don't enable any of the speed enhancements (which still do not make the game "speedy" in any sense of the word).