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.

On January 13 2011 11:21 Thrill wrote:
You missed out on the biggest thing - all JRPGs are targeted at boys in their early teens.

There needs to be a paradigm shift where the mature theme of japanese horror games meet the brilliant story telling and core mechanics of JRPGs.

Western RPGs on the other hand are made by and for "dungeon masters", at least that's the root of titles such as BG.

On January 13 2011 11:48 Krigwin wrote:Westerners tend to emphasize the "Role-Playing" portion and make the player input the principal motor of the game, while the Japanese take more of a view that the player is the spectator to a plot they largely have no influence in.

On January 13 2011 10:43 kainzero wrote:

For DQ...

+ Show Spoiler [post] +
Hmmmm...

On January 13 2011 11:09 myopia wrote:
All it takes is one run through of Baldur's Gate II / Fallout 2 / Planescape / maybe even Nethack to show what a joke the 'RP' part of "JRPG' is.

That said, if I were to make a 'best games ever' list, it'd have a huge chunk of JRPG's. Earthbound / Mother 3 / FFVI are perfect.

On January 13 2011 10:32 JohannesH wrote:
And that Insomnia article really annoys me, when he can't think outside his encyclopedia definition and accept that rpgs, at least/especially computer ones, are mostly strategy games with a possible strong emphasis on story and/or open world interaction. But the core element being the strategy part (no matter how badly it may be often done), a visual novel or shooter with dialogue aren't proper RPGs no matter how much choices or larping there is involved.

On January 13 2011 12:35 Myrmidon wrote:
But almost all of the strategy you outlined above was about conserving resources as opposed to not conserving resources, which to me is not very exciting. Obviously you disagree.

I'm not interested in random encounters either, so I don't fight any regular enemies in most modern RPGs. I strongly prefer nonrandom encounters, (1) so I don't need to spend time in battles the game initiated for me, hitting the "run" command and hoping it works and (2) because this makes running around in dungeons more skill-based and exciting.

I think it's kind of a bad design for levels and stats to matter so much, anyway. For a lot of bosses (read: overgeneralization follows), you pretty much have to be at level X to stand a chance at winning, unless you get ridiculously lucky. At level X and X+1, there's some challenge. At level X+2 or higher (or wherever the threshold is), the boss is a cakewalk, and you'll win even if you play like a retard. This is especially the case if you gain some kind of multiheal, like you said. But I tend to run up to the boss at X-2 or whatever and then need to go back to grind some more. Then, the next time, I'll be sick of having to go backwards to grind, so I'll grind beforehand and inadvertently show up at the next boss at level X+2 where it's too easy. wtf.

On January 13 2011 13:38 kainzero wrote:


I definitely agree with this, which is why I think most JRPGs won't ever amount to anything particularly significant in terms of battles. This is also why I think "Strategy" or "Tactical" RPGs fail harder than "regular" JRPGs, because in those games you can compensate for a lack of strategy even more, simply by leveling... especially true in a game like Tactics Ogre, where 1 or 2 levels difference means that your troops get owned hard.

The problem with leveling is that they either matter too much or too little...

On January 13 2011 15:09 Myrmidon wrote:
Well, to be fair, many TRPGs don't give you an infinite supply of enemies to level up against. There are some exceptions in these series, but the typical Fire Emblem, Langrisser, etc. limit your leveling to the enemies on the map.+ Show Spoiler +

On January 13 2011 17:24 kainzero wrote:
I thought that with TO, it worked the same way.
The only problem is that at lower levels (the beginning), there aren't enough class/class skills to make it really interesting at the time and you have to compensate your levels with hard tactics. But from a player perspective, they're also playing at a disadvantage which isn't particularly fun.

On January 13 2011 17:24 kainzero wrote:
Anyway, I lost sight of the main point a long time ago: establishing a complete game, knowing why battle systems exist and what they mean for the players and the game they play.

I'd probably say... 99% of the time, an RPG is just a statistical-based battle system fitted on to a narrative. + Show Spoiler +

Personally, that's where I think JRPGs are stuck creatively; that they follow this formula blindly of "narrative + stat-based battles for no reason" instead of having a reason to really have battles. People complain about grinding because it's both boring and mindless, and because it gets in the way of what they want in the game: advancing the story.

However, what makes sense creatively doesn't necessarily mean it makes sense economically...

The 2nd is the most common type of storyline you can find. I call it the brick wall with rehashed paint. Basically its using the same bland, overused, expected storyline that has been used in thousands of JRPGs released. Main character, meets new people, sudden event happens, life changes, super secret conspiracy, someone betrays someone, fight evil mastermind , happy ending lets go dance.

On January 14 2011 13:59 a176 wrote:


That is not a story line. Those are narrative elements that are used to build the story, the plot. When you look at FF6, 7, and 13, they all contain the same elements but the plots are obviously very different from one another. For stories as big and 'unique' as jrpgs present, these elements are the easiest to use to draw the player, and advance the story, without stretching it out over 3 whole games.

But you are right on the part that some jrpgs simply outright fail in the writing department. I can't even begin to guess what in the hell went on during FF13's development to come up with the final product like they did. What we got felt like listening to anime nerds talk about some show and its universe/backstory so vividly and you have no idea wtf they are going on about.

On January 14 2011 13:46 Chef wrote:
The only thing that's really fun about JRPGs is that you get to name the characters.

On January 14 2011 13:30 Myrmidon wrote:
I'm not quite sure what this means, but I thought the simplicity was part of the appeal of TO. If you play at lowish or reasonable levels, the game is about compensating for disadvantages (lower levels, having to keep all/most your guys alive every fight) with superior tactics. Against a computer AI opponent, you should be playing at some kind of disadvantage, or it'd be boring and stupidly easy. I mean, you're usually not going to have a disadvantage in equipment or spells, so having a little lower base stats makes sense to me.

In the games I was referring to that don't give you infinite levels, there are only story battles one after another (no farming on random encounter battles because they don't exist). This was more common back in the day, I think.

IMHO a solid overall RPG with a cohesive, driven story that doesn't get sidetracked with BS, an interesting but not over-complicated battle system, clearly-motivated dungeon exploration and towns, and a good deal of resource usage/conservation decisions to make ( ) would be Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter (BoF5). Enemies are there because they fit into the world, and it's a narrative about that world and struggling towards something.

On January 14 2011 13:46 Chef wrote:
By far, the worst thing about JRPGs is the ridiculously repetitive gameplay. Nobody likes it. It's just one monster encounter after another, nothing switches up, you use the exact same strategy to kill it... Well, let me say that specific kind of JRPG, since I know there's different types... But the Final Fantasy games are just freaking awful. The boss fights are fun, and the first time you see bad guys it's kinda cool, but after the 20th time you've seen them (without even grinding lol) you just wanna bang your head against the wall.

It seems as the game industry has gotten older, I've become a lot more discerning about what constitutes a well designed video game. The weird thing is, that a lot of the oldies have the best design philosophies, and the new ones are the buggy/tidious/tiresome crap. Not to say there weren't old awful games, but just that I'm impressed there were even a few games that figured out good game design so early in the industries life, and so unimpressed that completely terrible games get published when they have so many good examples to look to. I feel like the 'let's fight the same monster over and over again' is one of those things that really should have been solved by now.

On January 15 2011 04:52 kainzero wrote:

I feel like "He does the same thing as me... but harder!" is a disadvantage that players generally don't like.
Disadvantages can be accomplished through giving strange objectives or unique attacks/moves. With FFT, if I remember correctly, the Marquis Elmdor battle could be difficult even if you overleveled, because they had instant death attacks and charm attacks that you had to overcome. From a player perspective, that seems more fair.

On January 15 2011 04:52 kainzero wrote:

Maybe I should check that out, I haven't played it yet.
I'm actually gonna pick up Unlimited SaGa today. It had a high review in Japan and sold very well, but was mostly laughed at here. Perhaps there's something we haven't picked up on? I think SaGa has some of the more interesting mechanics in RPGs that are really overlooked.