First feature:What JRPGs need to improve upon

On January 13 2011 04:21 Southlight wrote:
You really needed to list the types of JRPGs you've played, or are looking at, in order to back this up. There're bunches of great RPGs that simply never get ported to other languages because they're not given enough confidence (and for good reason) by the producers etc. For example, Falcom games just recently started getting ported to the UK, but in the US only a handful of the PSP ports actually got ported. Yet Falcom's considered one of the giants in JRPGs. The handful that did get ported more-or-less got overlooked because the US only reacts to the two words "Final Fantasy." So you end up with the big megabucks corporations (Atlus, etc.) porting their more standard RPGs while not having the guts to port the "different" stuff.

On January 13 2011 04:28 Nyxs wrote:
For me the article felt bland because it's all commonly known information about JRPGs and their letdowns or characteristics.

Like some above poster already mentioned I advice you to dive deeper in the JRPG scene/business if you want to write an insightful article. Because currently it feels like an average fan of the series wrote instead of someone that actually knows what he's talking about. Not that your information is wrong it just lacks the depth you would expect from a good article.

The Japanese approach to CRPGs (or, Making Numbers Go Up)
In Japan, meanwhile, things were proceeding in a most amusing direction.

The key to understanding the debacle that are modern JRPGs is to realize that role-playing took ages to arrive in Japan, and was largely ignored even when it did. D&D took almost a decade to be brought over, at which point the Japanese had already been playing western-made dungeon crawlers for several years.

That fact alone explains everything. You see Western developers have always been aware of the nature of role-playing, so at least they've always known what they should be aiming for. Granted, they messed up big-time (there's no technical reason why CRPGs with extensive dialogue trees like Torment couldn't have appeared back in the mid-'80s -- no reason why it took over a decade for them to start getting made), but one has to acknowledge the enormous difficulty of the task; and besides it is true that even the most trashy late-'80s early-'90s CRPGs contained at least a few moments which could, perhaps, by making appropriate allowances for the challenges presented by the electronic medium, be considered as actual role-playing.

But the Japanese designers who set out to make their own CRPGs had no such understanding. They played Wizardry and other early dungeon-crawlers, and then sat down in smoke-filled izakayas and exclaimed, "So this is what a role-playing game is then!"

And off they went to do what the Japanese do best.

Hydlide (1984) and Courageous Perseus (1985), the first Japanese CRPGs (hereafter referred to as JRPGs), were quickly followed by Dragon Quest (1986) and Final Fantasy (1987), the huge success of the latter effectively dooming the genre in Japan for decades. Had player reaction to these first efforts been unfavorable, their designers would have sat back and re-examined their choices; perhaps they would eventually have sought out and studied the second- or third-generation Western CRPGs (which were already starting to move away from dungeon crawling by offering the player the occasional choice), and things would have likely turned out very differently. But since no one involved -- neither designers nor players -- knew the first thing about RPGs (even the term "role-playing" itself affording them no clue as to the nature of these games, since most Japanese don't speak English), and since Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy had much to recommend them despite their not being RPGs, that was the end of the story. They kept selling, and so they kept getting made. The extremely risk-averse corporate policies of Japanese publishers such as Square, Enix and the rest of them (many of which were practically built on the success of their early JRPGs), have been efficiently crushing any hopes of a change ever since.

And there was never a question of these games evolving to overcome their humble origins, as happened in the West. Western CRPGs have kept evolving because there has always existed consciousness of a direction towards which to evolve; JRPGs, meanwhile, have been going round in circles ever since their inception -- Fallout is worlds away from Akalabeth; not so Lost Odyssey from Final Fantasy.

The only kind of evolution JRPGs have undergone is of a cosmetic nature: Final Fantasy was no Ultima, and its endless sequels had to be justifed in some way -- and so they were. CG or anime-style cutscenes and countless hours' worth of voice-acting and orchestral soundtracks were the justification, piled up, stacked and shoved inside cartridges, CD-ROMs, GD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs, and soon enough Blu-ray discs and who knows what else.

And the results of this unchecked and wholly misdirected "evolution"? They can be clearly seen today simply by contrasting the kinds of questions asked by fans of Western and Japanese CRPGs on the launch of a new title. While the former are eager to know about the character creation process, non-linearity, multiple endings, and whether they can be evil, the latter seem to care little about anything besides the names of "character" designers and music composers. Market economies being what they are, everyone ends up getting what they asked for.

To be sure, there have been exceptions. Chrono Trigger (1995), Star Ocean: The Second Story (1998), Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne (2003) and others, contained some elements of role-playing (though, it has to be said, nowhere near as many as the best Western CRPGs). But the exceptions were always one-offs and were hardly ever followed up, and every JRPG that took timid steps to introduce a little taste of role-playing, by way of some form of open-endedness or non-linearity, was quickly driven from the shelves (and from the public's notice) by fifty others that were little more than pure strategy games with elaborate cutscenes.

And yet this is not the most damning criticism that can be levelled at these games and the people who make them. Because even if you are prepared to accept that Final Fantasy is a strategy game and that the "RPG" stamp on the box is some sort of a mistake -- a cute Japanese misnomer, perhaps (let's not forget that the Japanese have yet to get their heads round the concept of genre: according to Capcom, Devil May Cry 3 belongs to the "Stylish Crazy Action" genre, and Success's turn-based strategy game Operation Darkness is labelled as a "Horror Simulation RPG", for christsake) -- you still have to face the fact that -- even as a strategy game -- it fails miserably (except perhaps if one assumes that it's directed at mildly retarded nine-year-olds).

To illustrate the astonishing degree to which the above is true I'll now relate an anecdote which I've been saving for this very purpose.

Several years ago I happened to be discussing JRPGs with a bunch of people on an online message board. After posting a lengthy explanation to the effect that Final Fantasy et al. are little more than strategy games with elaborate cutscenes, I settled back expecting nothing less than raging flames. The first reply instead turned out to be comedy gold:

"There is strategy involved in continually pressing X? That's news to me."

At which point someone helpfully explained:

"Sometimes you have to use a potion."

Alas! even this pitiful element of strategy is being done away with in many modern JRPGs. Take for example the recent blockbusters Rogue Galaxy and Blue Dragon, in which fallen party members are automatically revived after battles, and where potions might as well be growing on trees (in fact in Blue Dragon they grow right behind them). Just a bit more effort in this direction and the Japanese will end up re-inventing the movies! (In fact I dare say they already have -- Sakaguchi has a strong claim on this achievement with Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, a groundbreaking JRPG comprised of a single 106-minute-long cutscene, whose only flaw was that it didn't give players the option to skip it.)

But joking aside (and I beg your pardon, dear reader, for sarcasm is the only tolerable way I can bear to approach this absolutely ridiculous subject), there are some very good reasons why JRPGs suck even as strategy games, and they are well worth looking into.

If you read reviews of such games you'll have noticed that reviewers usually spend half their wordcount namedropping "character" designers and music composers, and the other half discussing battle "systems" (one would think this would give them a hint as to the nature of the games they are reviewing, but alas!) These battle systems always remind me of a humoristic piece that was doing the rounds on the internet a while back, in which it was ascertained that "Japanese vocabulary is determined by throwing tiny pieces of sushi at a dart board with several random syllables attached to it". Now this may not be true in regard to Japanese vocabulary, but I am convinced it is exactly how Japan comes up with all these utterly pathetic battle systems.

You may think I am judging them too harshly, perhaps? And yet consider: how could these systems possibly be anything other than pathetic? In the three-decade history of real-life role-playing there have been less than two dozen major systems published, yet Japan regularly churns out more than that in a single year! Is it any wonder that they all (no exceptions here, sorry) fucking suck? Even the most die-hard wargaming expert -- a Steve Jackson or a David Cook -- would give up if forced to come up with a brand-new battle system every six fucking months -- he'd turn to sushi and dart boards before long -- what can one expect from the Japanese, whose ignorance of wargaming is only rivaled by their ignorance of role-playing?

And the result of all this inanity? Even players who are right in the middle of a hundred-hour JRPG often have little idea of what the hell is going on -- and who can blame them, as it turns out they don't need to! They mash a button; random numbers keep flashing all over the screen; and if they happen to die at some point they simply double back, kill a couple hundred more green slimes and try again.

Not that the suckage of the system matters much, mind you, if we are talking about role-playing games. The battle system of an RPG is about as important as the story in a shooting game, and in fact the less the player is aware of it the better (as I will soon be explaining). But since there's no role-playing to be found in JRPGs, and since all the player ever does is direct battles, it stands to reason that the quality of the battle system becomes paramount. And this is in fact why the so-called SRPGs (the "s" standing for "simulation" in Japan (yes, I know, they are idiots) and "strategy" in the West; otherwise known as Tactical RPGs (TRPGs) or Tactics games) are, on average, of such higher quality than JRPGs -- because their designers understand this. In fact -- and this is a point worth exploring in some detail -- excepting JRPGs with action elements and those with a heavy emphasis on side-games (Dark Chronicle (2002), Persona 3 (2006) and others), there's no material difference between JRPGs and SRPGs: they are one and the same genre, and should be judged by the same exact criteria. Both types of games involve characters taking part in a series of squad-level, tactical battles, with a predetermined narrative delivered at intervals in the form cutscenes; beyond that, JRPGs have a stronger exploration aspect and SRPGs shorter cutscenes (though there are plenty of exceptions on both counts), but that's the most that can be said about their differences.

And yet what a huge impact on the quality of the actual games these little differences have made!

The above statement bears explaining, but first another quick history lesson is in order.

SRPGs are a Japanese invention dating all the way back to Intelligent Systems' Fire Emblem: Ankoku Ryuu to Hikari no Ken (1990). There have been Western games which resemble SRPGs in many ways, most notably X-COM: UFO Defense (1993), Jagged Alliance (1994) and Silent Storm (2003), but since they evolved from a different tradition and since no one seems to confuse them for RPGs (due to the lack of a heavy cutscene focus, no doubt) they won't concern us here. Now Fire Emblem took its inspiration from Dragon Quest (which itself was based on Wizardry etc. etc.), only instead of relying on incessant random encounters that no one really cared for anyway, it tried to make each and every battle as interesting and challenging as possible. The two styles evolved concurrently: while JRPG developers stuck to their throwaway battle systems, concentrating on "character" designs, soundtracks and cutscenes, SRPG developers poured most of their time and money into designing solid battle systems, and, for each game, a series of balanced, challenging battle scenarios. Free from pretensions of role-playing and from the tyranny of the cutscene, they were able to concentrate on the essence of the games they were making, and they've been turning out higher-quality work ever since.

But I'll close this parenthesis here and get back on track by noting that the wild variety of battle systems employed by JRPGs (even among titles belonging to the same series!) is in itself yet another flagrant indication that the Japanese have missed the point of role-playing entirely. Because the important thing in an RPG is the flavor of the setting and the quality and depth of the players' adventures within it -- whether a longsword does 1d12 or 2d6 points of damage is irrelevant. That's why table-top role-playing systems often remain in use for decades -- what would be the point of coming up with a new system for every single adventure? And if every other week the players were obliged to trash the old system and learn a new one, when would they find time to actually play anything? And, finally, if a single system suffices for decades of high-quality adventuring in real-life RPGs (in a variety of settings, no less), why should a bunch of boring, hackneyed-to-hell-and-back preteen-level non-interactive stories require dozens of different systems?

But the answer is all too obvious! -- the different systems are necessary exactly because the stories are hackneyed, non-interactive schlock!

And yet the systems end up sucking just as much as the stories, because no one involved dares to acknowledge that they are in fact developing strategy games, and go out and bring in some people who know how to make them!

But enough of this sorry subject; those yet to be convinced of the irrelevance of JRPGs should just go back to the encyclopedia definition. If the game you are playing does not allow you to "improvise freely", and if your actions do not "shape the direction and outcome of the game", then I am sorry, but the game you are playing, wonderful and fun though it may be, is not an RPG (and, incidentally, certainly shouldn't be reviewed as such).

On January 13 2011 04:55 Boblion wrote:
This thread needs an Icycalm quote ( the smartest megalomaniac jerk on teh web )

http://insomnia.ac/commentary/on_role-playing_games/

On January 13 2011 05:19 TheYango wrote:

As an aside, the whole article is worth reading (and provides a pretty pessimistic, but nonetheless fairly accurate perspective on RPGs as a whole).

On January 13 2011 09:23 Myrmidon wrote:
I think a game with a DQ-style battle system can be fine, but I don't see it happen in practice. Pretty much all you do in that kind of battle system is use the same strategy over and over again:

• Is someone dead? If yes, revive them. If not...
  
• Is someone hurt? If yes, heal them. If not...
  
• Attack the enemy. For most boss battles, this is only one guy, so you don't even need to do any thinking like about whom you should target.

The more interesting battles in DQ- or ATB- style games IMHO tend to be those involving a boss that summons minions (or body parts--same thing). Then you occasionally have to think about which enemy to target or whether or not to attack to finish a minion off rather than heal.