Cindi Mayweather
Member
SMTIV is low budget as fuck compared to what we got in the ps2 era. The game uses sprites instead of full on 3d models and features a lot of bad, inconsistent art.
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Why are modern JRPGs such a mess?
- Thread starter Alcotholic
- Start date
SMTIV is low budget as fuck compared to what we got in the ps2 era. The game uses sprites instead of full on 3d models and features a lot of bad, inconsistent art.
Hyperactivity
Banned
.....
Bwahahahaha
I don't understand why I would play a long epic game on a tiny screen when I have a big TV in the same room. I see portable gaming as when you have no other choice, like when you're traveling somewhere. In that case, it should be a short burst game.
Why not ask the people who prefer playing some of their WiiU games on the gamepad instead of the TV?
I know what you mean but I don't think it's that simple. Obviously literally any fictional female character has potential to be someone's "waifu" but that doesn't mean they were all designed with that intent.
I mean surely you can look at the Chrono Trigger cast, specifically the female characters, and tell the difference from say, the FE Fates Conquest and tell the difference between their women.
Also I can't believe I'm actually discussing what constitutes intended waifu material.
KuwabaraTheMan
Banned
Well, for one thing, it has a lot more voice acting than any of those titles, even Person 3 and 4. They also brought in a lot of famous guest artists, which I doubt was cheap. It's pretty proficient for a 3DS game, and the cutscenes are on a different level than any of their non-Persona titles.
I certainly don't see how anyone could look at SMT4 and think that Nocturne or Digital Devil Saga had a higher budget. Those games were pretty low budget at the time.
Atlus games have always been low budget. Their PS2 games were very low budget, featured virtually no voice acting, and were full of reused assets. Shin Megami Tensei IV had a massive amount of voice acting and featured almost entirely new art assets.
I'm not saying it's the biggest budget game ever, but it definitely compares favorably to their PS2 games on that front.
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
Uh, I think they were making a joke, guys...
What exactly is so funny about what they said? Congrats, it doesn't apply to you. But why mock someone who has different preferences, exactly?
Thinking that handhelds are more suited to short burst games than long drawn out gaming sessions is not a controversial nor a ridiculous opinion to have. Get off your high horse.
Alcotholic
Banned
I know you were exaggerating and I'm not making a case for Fallout 4, since it was an ok game, but that is a bizarre argument to make. Any game you show from today to someone from 2001 will be fairly mind blown by it. In 2001 Fallout 3 hadn't released yet- hell, Morrowind hadn't even released yet, that would be such a mind blowing experience to see something like Fallout 4, both graphically and mechanically as an RPG. I don't even think they could comprehend it.
With that said, same goes for ToCS. It would be a pretty wild experience since there would be nothing like it at the time.
Based on my observations from gameplay videos, mixes things up within the genre as much as Fallout does. Which is not very much. You're still getting an action oriented wRPG with new systems and mechanics, but it's still the same shit. ToCS offers turn based combat where you get bonuses in pairs. Wow. I'm not saying it doesn't look fun and it isn't fun (I'm sure it is), but you can't claim it's an advancement within the genre.
Cindi Mayweather
Member
Look at videos of Dragon Quarter, The World Ends With You, Radiant Historia, and Valkyrie Profile 2.
Robert at Zeboyd Games
Banned
True, but as time goes on, things also become more efficient and you can get better results with less cost (for example - our team making a game with 4 people that in the past would have taken dozens). On the PS2, there were a lot of mid-budget JRPGs like the Atlus RPGs I mentioned and that category of JRPG has almost all disappeared since then. Atlus, for example, has been content doing cheap portable games (albeit generally high quality) & endless remakes. And the AAA JRPG has largely disappeared as well for many years, although it may be making a resurgence.
iRAWRasaurus
Banned
Ha I mention the same thing earlier in this thread. Think some people took me too seriously.
Alcotholic
Banned
I've played and enjoyed TWEWY as I mentioned in the OP. I think it's one of the most original RPGs in the past 10 years.
I'm familiar with the other RPGs you have listed, but I have not played them. What are you trying to tell me?
The fact that Japanese games are not pushing technology and budgets aren't the issue of their accessibility IMO.
Otherwise, it would be as simple as ordering higher production values of the same kind of games, and it seems like the complaints from people in this thread about having 'grown out of' them seems to imply a more complicated situation.
I think a lot of it has to do with people having gotten a taste of Western RPG's over the 7th gen, to the point where generally they look back and are blindsided by culture shock and other things western gamers are generally not used to dealing with just dealing with western types of titles.
That has to be remembered yes, its a very important note that people forget when they automatically cite tropes as something wrong with the genre.
It varies from person to person.
The most 'common' (and ignorant IMO) definition is anime styled characters in a semi fictitious world with turn based combat.
Thats why it is easy to just choose one u like and then mention that as the norm lol. I can also pointed to u that recent Jrpg like Xenoblade Chronicle X had little amount of waifu? There. Boom.
I can point to u classic Dragon Quest V. Where the main focus IS THE WAIFU. I can again point to u Thousand Arms again a game which highly focused on the waifu.
If we are going to cherry picked everything of course you are going to be able to find the thing which support your argument and i am also going to be able to show things which support mine over here.
I do believe From does sacrifice my beloved Armored Core to come out with Souls series which i hate with my deepest heart.T_T
YankeeDonB
Member
Ha ha, fair enough. But we do try! I sang V's praises high and low back in the day, and 3's too.
iRAWRasaurus
Banned
"Trust me, I am a expert"
Robert at Zeboyd Games
Banned
SMT4 has small dungeons with extensive asset reuse, combat with minimally animated 2D sprites, and visual novel-style cutscenes. Voice acting is almost always a very small part of overall game budget and it's not like SMT4 has that much voice acting anyway. Compared to the fully animated 3D characters in the PS2 games and the animated cutscene in DDS1&2 and the Persona games, there's no comparison.
SatelliteOfLove
Member
And the problem with this stems from when "anime" is percieved as unilaterally narrowly from either outside OR inside the fandom.
This is where the tropes talk keeps popping up again and again here. No nuance or flavor or distinctions of quality, just slathering it on as Wholly Good or Wholly Bad.
edit: well well well, evidence, it arrives in the nick of time like a good hero should.
Cindi Mayweather
Member
That there are numerous RPGs that have pushed the genre and not every game has to be genre pushing. Trails games are story oriented behemoths. Some of them would be better off as VNs. No one is expecting a Trails game to have genre defining gameplay. They're all about the story. Your expectation is the equivalent of expecting a Mario game to have a great story; it's just silly and not those games strengths.
Poster that likes memes/thinks memes are funny is defending having long epic games on portables. Makes sense.
And you put a fucking non-spoiler in spoiler tags.
All you're missing is quoting a poster who posted after you.
Robert at Zeboyd Games
Banned
Oh definitely. A HUGE problem with the JRPG genre now is that it's lost the accessibility that it had in the SNES era. Nobody's really making tightly paced, straightforward JRPGs like Chrono Trigger these days. You play a game like Cold Steel and it's way more complicated and user unfriendly than your average SNES or even PS1 RPG.
You can't stop until you have people in every thread calling your game overrated, how your fanbase is literally cancer and how "X is much better than Suikoden, I'll never understand why people like that franchise so much" kinds of comments frequently. That's the only way you'll get the internet's attention. Are you willing to pay the price?
Cindi Mayweather
Member
If it means I get a game directed by Murayama post-III, yes.
What i f i said, that there is just simply no market for AAA Jrpg anymore except for maybe Final Fantasy?
All of us wanted to see Jrpg goes big just like Wrpg but i truly don't see that happening at all. Not to mention the extremely volatile fans of Jrpg. For a Jrpg to be able to succeed on mainstream level in the world, they will need to follow some of the West taste but Jrpg fans as hell don't want any of those things close to the series they beloved that they will scream that the series dead for trying to attract new type of fans.
Jrpg makers is stuck on a very difficult position. If they make the game which its main fanbase want, it will be a very Japanese product which had high possibilities selling well in Japan but not anywhere else. If that is the case, why do they need to up the budget so much when they know that the market is a set amount of number?
Unless if they wanted to target the mainstream market of the West, then they will need to prepare to not fall back on their main fanbase in Japan which can be a very high risk move which can easily backfire.
Nintendo is really smart with Paper Mario series then.^_^
Bravely is quite a straightforward Jrpg and it does did well in Japan.
memes are all they deserved. Obviously longer "epic" games are better when they can be brought with you, at least since I started working a real job.
While that may be true(infact, i think it is true for a lot of people in this thread), we're mainly discussing the discontent in general certain people have felt in regards to the genre, and why or what they feel might be done to fix it.
YankeeDonB
Member
Same except I don't have the time/energy at this point in my life =P
Cindi Mayweather
Member
I'd argue they're too simple. You don't get the depth of a game like VP2 anymore. Persona doesn't allow negotiation or anything anymore. The last great dungeon crawler I played was SMTIV.
The PS2 games had 3D characters, but keep in mind that Atlus basically reused them in all of their games. They weren't remaking new models for each game they made. Also, the animated cutscenes Atlus used in the Persona games were not exactly high budget animation, and they were also used sparingly.
John Harker
Definitely doesn't make things up as he goes along.
You got older.
The genre didnt
The genre didnt
Alcotholic
Banned
The quote I was replying to said that a person from 2001 would find the mechanics of ToCS to be mind blowing and Fallout 4, while graphically would be impressive, the mechanics wouldn't be. They mentioned nothing about ToCS's story.
Cindi Mayweather
Member
Demons were reused. Characters and locations were not. Even then, DDS was noticeably higher budget. Compare the intro to DDS2 to SMTIV's. There's no comparison.
Dark_castle
Junior Member
See, that's where YOU come in! Release Cosmic Star Heroine and #makejrpggreatagain
I don't think that's even the case sadly.
If Chrono trigger were to have released today, it would have been derided by a lot of the same people in this thread, for being anime, having fanservicy characters and having a 'weird out there' plot that isn't something familiar to western games like Witcher 3.
I think a lot of what people are searching for, are memories that only existed because of the era itself, because they could put their minds into whatever they saw in the dot pixels, and not what they were actually created as being.
And that's a far harder issue to address for developers in this era to address, because that is also apart of the main appeal and what makes these types of works distinct.
5 does apparently.
Apocalypse is supposed to be better than IV, so that's something to look forward to.
And then the game would bomb as the gamer nowadays don't have any speck of time to ease themselves with the battle system.
Xenoblade Chronicle X faces the problem where people just don't get the battle system.
Infinite Space had people playing the game and end up returning as they can't even won the first to second chapter.
Knights in the Nightmare causes people to pull their head and bang the wall as they can't understand what they just played.
Resonance of Fate make the player jump of the tower to save them from the new unique battle system lol.
Accept the fact that the gamer nowadays simply had hard time on adapting to something new. They will always said they want something new but in their heart, they will only buy things which gives them safe gameplay mechanic as it is easy for them to understand.
There is some title which is focused on more mature market here. Sad that they simply does not sell well.T_T
Cindi Mayweather
Member
What?!
Why would it be? She's right, the character writing in basically most if not all western rpg writers fucking stomps all over JRPGs at this point.
5 brings back guns and demon negotiation just like in P1 and 2, yeah. By far the most exciting features for me.
Robert at Zeboyd Games
Banned
Arguably the most recent AAA JRPG was Ni no Kuni and that was a big worldwide success despite being very Japanese.
And I'm not saying that we need every JRPG to be AAA. I'm saying that as a fan of traditional JRPGs, it's very disappointing that mid & high budget JRPGs are mostly gone these days. And I don't think it needs to be that way - the Tales series is a good example of a mid-budget JRPG series that has found more than enough success to keep going and release games on a regular basis.
Yes, Atlus saved a lot of money during the generation from game to game through reuse. SMT: Nocturne was their first PS2 RPG though so that doesn't apply to it. As an indie developer, something of the scope & technology of SMT4 looks very doable to me. SMT: Nocturne, on the other hand, would be a much bigger undertaking.
Cindi Mayweather
Member
And then they can't stop slurping Soul dick. What you said is too true.
Which WRPG's are you referring to generally speaking? You said "all", which means i'm assuming you just mean everything without any nuance whatsoever, which is plainly wrong. And i would say you should not make such overt generalizations like that without merit.
I'm not sure about that. I replayed CT recently and the writing itself is fairly solid. The characters are somewhat basic archetypes, but they're not the "fanservice bait" kind of characters most people in these threads complain about. Ayla's design might have been bashed though.
Also, are we talking 3D Chrono or a straight up port of the game as it is? Because if it was 3D, then yes, a lot could be screwed up in the presentation, but if you look at other games with Horii's involvement, like Dragon Quest VIII, they seem mostly immune to the sorts of criticisms you see towards modern JRPGs. In fact, I've seen a lot of praise to DQ VIII's voice acting, so if CT was handled like that, I think it would be regarded as a return to form even by a modern audience. There are a lot of modern design sensibilities on that game, moreso than many current games of the genre.
It's true. All of it.
I mean most of them if that makes you feel better? People rightly take Bioware to task for their fuckups but they along with CDPR, and Obsidian been consistently outclassing their contemporaries with like... From as the only team that compares.
Is there a common point between the recent successful (say 500K+) JRPGs in the west?
*Pokemon: It's Pokemon.
*Dark Souls: Western aesthetic, deep action combat.
*Final Fantasy: It's Final Fantasy.
*Fire Emblem: Strategy game, relationship building for the army.
*Kingdom Hearts: It's Disney.
*Bravely Default: Excellent QOL features such as the random encounter slider, innovative combat.
*Valkyria Chronicles: Strategy shooter hybrid.
*Yokai Watch: Monster collecting like Pokemon, big marketing campaign.
*Mario & Luigi: It's Mario.
I'm sure I'm missing something, but looking at the list it's hard to pinpoint what JRPGs in general need to become big in the west.
*Pokemon: It's Pokemon.
*Dark Souls: Western aesthetic, deep action combat.
*Final Fantasy: It's Final Fantasy.
*Fire Emblem: Strategy game, relationship building for the army.
*Kingdom Hearts: It's Disney.
*Bravely Default: Excellent QOL features such as the random encounter slider, innovative combat.
*Valkyria Chronicles: Strategy shooter hybrid.
*Yokai Watch: Monster collecting like Pokemon, big marketing campaign.
*Mario & Luigi: It's Mario.
I'm sure I'm missing something, but looking at the list it's hard to pinpoint what JRPGs in general need to become big in the west.
Cindi Mayweather
Member
What about Bethesda's doo doo? I'd rather play an SMT or DQ than have to suffer through his another Bethesda game.
The issue with JRPGs and Japanese games in general "not evolving enough" I think is two-fold. Firstly and most obviously are the low budgets, which is why many modern JRPGs look like PS2 games.
Another thing though I think is that there's a different culture to how Japanese developers approach games. Western developers always borrow and copy things from each other. When one adds a new mechanic or other idea that works it's seen as an objectively better thing to use in the west. A lot of those developers come from a PC tradition where everything's looked at in some kind of linear tech curve, as if everybody is working towards eventually making the ultimate, perfect video game, or in the view of the old PC guard, the ultimate virtual reality simulation. I think Japanese developers tend to look at each game as its own individual game with its own individual rules, without the need to borrow ideas that work from other games. Popular trends still happen sure, like Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, and Monster Hunter, but there isn't the same constant push forward by the whole development community.
This has the effect of many aspects of Japanese game design not changing significantly in decades. It makes some games look "old" if they don't do what some western games are doing, but it also makes older games look more viable and hold up better compared to newer ones. I tried Chrono Trigger for the first time in like 2008 and it felt just as good as any new DS RPG. Imagine if JRPG developers had started learning from that game in 1995. The effect it has for western games is that western games will fall into trends very rapidly, making each game ultimately wear its era on its sleeve. You can carve up the first person shooter genre into distinct periods: The Wolfenstein era (1992-1998), the Half-Life era (1998-2005), the Call of Duty era (2007-c.2013), the Hero Shooter era (c.2013-). You can maybe carve up JRPGs into pre, and post-Final Fantasy VII, but that's purely in regards to story presentation. Mechanically, Modern Shin Megami Tensei isn't worlds apart from NES or SNES Shin Megami Tensei, or at least what would have been possible on that hardware.
It is, but anime can be well-written.
I honestly don't like it when people on this forum say "anime" in a disparaging way because it's way too broad a word to use. Usually what people are tired of when they say "anime" on GAF is moe, otaku-pandering shounen anime. Persona 4 ironically fits that bill to a tee but approaches it with more sophisticated writing, a healthy bit of self-awareness, genuinely likable characters, and a pretty good English localization.
Another thing though I think is that there's a different culture to how Japanese developers approach games. Western developers always borrow and copy things from each other. When one adds a new mechanic or other idea that works it's seen as an objectively better thing to use in the west. A lot of those developers come from a PC tradition where everything's looked at in some kind of linear tech curve, as if everybody is working towards eventually making the ultimate, perfect video game, or in the view of the old PC guard, the ultimate virtual reality simulation. I think Japanese developers tend to look at each game as its own individual game with its own individual rules, without the need to borrow ideas that work from other games. Popular trends still happen sure, like Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, and Monster Hunter, but there isn't the same constant push forward by the whole development community.
This has the effect of many aspects of Japanese game design not changing significantly in decades. It makes some games look "old" if they don't do what some western games are doing, but it also makes older games look more viable and hold up better compared to newer ones. I tried Chrono Trigger for the first time in like 2008 and it felt just as good as any new DS RPG. Imagine if JRPG developers had started learning from that game in 1995. The effect it has for western games is that western games will fall into trends very rapidly, making each game ultimately wear its era on its sleeve. You can carve up the first person shooter genre into distinct periods: The Wolfenstein era (1992-1998), the Half-Life era (1998-2005), the Call of Duty era (2007-c.2013), the Hero Shooter era (c.2013-). You can maybe carve up JRPGs into pre, and post-Final Fantasy VII, but that's purely in regards to story presentation. Mechanically, Modern Shin Megami Tensei isn't worlds apart from NES or SNES Shin Megami Tensei, or at least what would have been possible on that hardware.
It is, but anime can be well-written.
I honestly don't like it when people on this forum say "anime" in a disparaging way because it's way too broad a word to use. Usually what people are tired of when they say "anime" on GAF is moe, otaku-pandering shounen anime. Persona 4 ironically fits that bill to a tee but approaches it with more sophisticated writing, a healthy bit of self-awareness, genuinely likable characters, and a pretty good English localization.