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Top modern jrpgs?

Sigourn

uooh afficionado
Joined
Feb 6, 2016
Messages
5,625
This isn't comparable to a Nuzlocke run.

It's a self-imposed challenge, just like Nuzlocke is. We shouldn't gauge a game's difficulty by using self-imposed challenges.

Pokémon games are most definitely beatable while doing Nuzlocke runs. Does that mean that the core design of the games doesn't necessarily involve capturing a lot of Pokémons and reloading if you lose? Sure. That still doesn't mean "Nuzlocke was how we expected players to play the game". Likewise with Final Fantasy.

Like I said earlier, who cares at this point? You either agree or not. If JRPGs fans themselves recognize there's something that separates their games from games made everywhere else in the world, I'm more than willing to listen to them, which is more than I can say about "JRPGs are the same as any other RPG!".

>Complains that Valkyrie Profile is slow so start.

>Praises Vagrant Story, a game that starts with a cutscene that takes half an hour.

:retarded:

Not only is Vagrant Story definitely a JRPG, but it has all the tropes you seem to dislike about the genre, so one wonders what exactly it is you loved so much about it.

Yeah, sorry, you are the only retard here. Vagrant Story takes around half an hour (as opposed to Valkyrie Profile's giant "cutscene" that lasts half an hour), and doesn't waste the player's time either: it always moves forward, advancing the plot and fleshing out the characters. It's also beautifully portrayed.

The problem with Valkyrie Profile is not so much "it takes an hour", but rather, "it's fucking boring". Vagrant Story is none of that.

And please explain how it has "all the tropes" I "seem" to dislike about JRPGs. I'll wait.
 

Dzupakazul

Arbiter
Joined
Jun 16, 2015
Messages
707
This isn't comparable to a Nuzlocke run.
It's a self-imposed challenge, just like Nuzlocke is. We shouldn't gauge a game's difficulty by using self-imposed challenges.
Do you not see that absolutely anyone can play Final Fantasy and not be at all roadblocked by any of the insurmountable grinding you insist is persistent in the genre since its inception, which simply entirely dismisses your point that these games are inherently grindy? If playing a game in one of the possible ways that is readily accessible to *any* player is a "self-imposed challenge", then I'm at a loss of words. Not to mention that a regular player would be able to actually save the game and simply reload over and over to brute force through any high-risk encounter if he insisted on doing so, something T-Hawk had no luxury of. Or, you know, simply be able to use saves to experiment with the game by themselves and figure out if they're comfortable with the challenge level in the overworld or the dungeons, or whether they'd prefer to stay in an earlier area and grind.

The grindy reputation of most jRPGs is vastly overblown.
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
Joined
Feb 24, 2007
Messages
14,983
:lol: Not grinding isn't a self imposed challenge, it's the fucking reward for not being shit at resource and time management. This is like arguing that duping gold is necessary to beat Diablo 1 and not duping is a self imposed challenge the devs couldn't have foreseen.
 

Sigourn

uooh afficionado
Joined
Feb 6, 2016
Messages
5,625
Do you not see that absolutely anyone can play Final Fantasy and not be at all roadblocked by any of the insurmountable grinding you insist is persistent in the genre since its inception, which simply entirely dismisses your point that these games are inherently grindy?

Reality proves you wrong.

If playing a game in one of the possible ways that is readily accessible to *any* player is a "self-imposed challenge", then I'm at a loss of words.

"I want to win the game, without losing. The goal is to complete the entire game without ever suffering a party death and reload."

Sounds like a self-imposed challenge, dude.

People want to have fun when playing games. Square didn't expect people to try and beat the game with a minimum grinding. They expected people to have fun, and for the majority that meant grinding so that the obstacles weren't too hard to surpass.

The grindy reputation of most jRPGs is vastly overblown.

I agree.
 

Sigourn

uooh afficionado
Joined
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Messages
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Cross I'm still waiting on how Vagrant Story has everything that I hate about JRPGs.
 

Dzupakazul

Arbiter
Joined
Jun 16, 2015
Messages
707
"I want to win the game, without losing. The goal is to complete the entire game without ever suffering a party death and reload."
Sounds like a self-imposed challenge, dude.
Which stands to reason that if you can beat the game without grinding and not dying is not a pure luckfest (though encounters with SORCERORS come very close), it's not particularly grindy in its design.
People want to have fun when playing games. Square didn't expect people to try and beat the game with a minimum grinding. They expected people to have fun, and for the majority that meant grinding so that the obstacles weren't too hard to surpass.
They aren't. A balanced party (say, Fighter - Black Belt - White Mage - Black Mage - no real powergaming and could stand to some optimziation, but no slouch either) could easily go straight to fight Garland, cross the bridge, go to Matoya's cave, beeline to Pravoka, kill the Pirates and end up with a hearty amount of gold to purchase new equipment, then go to Marsh Cave to assess the difficulty spike of the place by themselves and start making preparations for the long, arduous journey inside.
 

Cross

Arcane
Joined
Oct 14, 2017
Messages
2,983
Yeah, sorry, you are the only retard here. Vagrant Story takes around half an hour (as opposed to Valkyrie Profile's giant "cutscene" that lasts half an hour), and doesn't waste the player's time either: it always moves forward, advancing the plot and fleshing out the characters. It's also beautifully portrayed.

The problem with Valkyrie Profile is not so much "it takes an hour", but rather, "it's fucking boring". Vagrant Story is none of that.
So now your criteria for genre classification is 'if it has a story that aligns with my shitty tastes, it can't be a jRPG?'.

And please explain how it has "all the tropes" I "seem" to dislike about JRPGs. I'll wait.
For starters, a heavy emphasis on non-interactive narrative, and a rigid separation between story and gameplay. Besides being a jRPG, Vagrant Story is also a dungeon crawler, a genre traditionally light on explicit narrative, yet it stll has several hours of cutscenes. Vagrant Story is no different from other jRPG's in this regard.

The second thing would be its use of more abstract systems and subsystems. There is the usual real-time/turn-based hybrid approach (time pauses when a spell is in effect or when you're targeting an attack), the whole weapon affinity business, the time trials, etc. These things are distinctly Japanese.

The third thing would be that it's a more streamlined, more restrictive experience. Compare Vagrant Story to other action-RPG dungeon crawlers like Ultima Underworld and Arx Fatalis and the difference should be obvious.

The fourth thing would be interface design: list-based inventory and menus, menus and more menus: always with white letters on a dark blue background. Almost every jRPG has this exact type of interface design, bizarrely enough.
 

Deleted Member 16721

Guest
The term "grindy" when used describing JRPGs is mostly a psychological phenomena. While of course you can "grind" if you want, people who grew up with games like the Final Fantasy series recall the "random battles", where you would move along the map and be ambushed by enemies, triggering a combat encounter. Over the years their memories started to turn into things like, "You get a random battle every 2 steps!" rather than the way the game actually played. That could be due to the (albeit rare) case when a battle seemed like it happened "too soon" after the last one.

Also, random battles in JRPGs are really no different than battles you find when exploring a map in Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights or any other "western" RPG. You explore the area, you fight "lesser goons", you encounter the boss creature, you complete the quest. The difference in JRPGs is that a lot of the battles are "invisible" so you trigger them without knowing, leading to a feeling that there are more battles than there really are.

To see this, just look at how people describe Chrono Trigger. Has anyone ever said that JRPG was "grindy"? It has sections with a lot of battles in dungeons, sometimes taking quite awhile to complete, but no one ever calls it grindy because they can see the enemies on the map. And contrary to what many people state about that design, you actually CANNOT avoid most of the encounters in that game, even though you can see them on the map. Many trigger automatically when you cross a certain threshold, etc..

I'm tired of typing now so I'll just say that the grindy reputation of JRPGs is way overblown, agreed. And some good modern JRPGs are Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon, The Last Remnant, and a bunch of the handheld console ones (don't sleep on the Nintendo DS or PSP, they have quality RPGs there, for sure.)
 

Sigourn

uooh afficionado
Joined
Feb 6, 2016
Messages
5,625
So now your criteria for genre classification is 'if it has a story that aligns with my shitty tastes, it can't be a jRPG?'.

Are you mentally retarded or something?

On another note: I began playing Valkyrie Profile. Does this shit actually get good? So far it's been pretty much dialogue after dialogue with poor voice acting and nothing of interest.

I never, ever, mentioned "Valkyrie Profile" and "JRPG" in the same sentence. I simply said the intro wasn't good. It was you who brought "JRPG" into the discussion, not me. A game with a shitty intro is a game with a shitty intro, no matter where does it come from or what style it follows.

Since you decided to bring stories into the table: there's nothing wrong with placing emphasis on a story. I would never say "JRPGs suck because they focus on stories". My issue with JRPGs as a whole is that these stories tend to suck, not the emphasis placed on them. The emphasis only exacerbates the problem, but the emphasis itself doesn't constitute the problem.

The second thing would be its use of more abstract systems and subsystems. There is the usual real-time/turn-based hybrid approach (time pauses when a spell is in effect or when you're targeting an attack), the whole weapon affinity business, the time trials, etc. These things are distinctly Japanese.

What? I never complained about that at all in JRPGs. Nor are those things "distinctly" Japanese in any way or form.

The third thing would be that it's a more streamlined, more restrictive experience. Compare Vagrant Story to other action-RPG dungeon crawlers like Ultima Underworld and Arx Fatalis and the difference should be obvious.

It still isn't distinctly Japanese at all. It's a dungeon crawler for fuck's sake. All you do in Vagrant Story is go through dungeons and kill shit.

The fourth thing would be interface design: list-based inventory and menus, menus and more menus: always with white letters on a dark blue background. Almost every jRPG has this exact type of interface design, bizarrely enough.

I actually like this about console games. I find most PC interfaces to be fairly shitty. The only issue with Vagrant Story is the lack of a quick-swap button for weapons, and most games have similar issues when it comes to lack of convenience features.

Since you tried to look like a smartass and only made a fool out of yourself, let me explain what my actual issues with your average JRPG are:

- Kiddie characters even when it doesn't make sense. Vagrant Story avoids this.
- Upbeat, cheerful tone that borderlines on cringe. Vagrant Story avoids this.
- Ragtag band of misfits that is composed to creatures from all races and backgrounds, even the most stupid ones. Final Fantasy VII, for the most part, avoided this. Final Fantasy XII avoided this in its entirety: the only standout character is Fran, and even then she's one of the most interesting characters of the cast. Vagrant Story avoids this as well. What it lacks up in "party" it makes up in cast: excellent all around.
- Tons of dumb NPCs who don't say anything useful at all, not even to put things into context. They usually spew out the obvious. Vagrant Story avoids this.
- The combat is usually mindless. Vagrant Story avoids this for the most part, as even chaining attacks requires a degree of reflexes.
- Equipment upgrade that is linear as hell and doesn't encourage you to think it through. Vagrant Story avoids this.
- Convoluted stories that don't make any sense and where your character is completely dragged into it for no reason. Vagrant Story avoids this.
- Anime tropes. Vagrant Story avoids this. No weaboo trash at all to be found in this masterpiece.
- Animu artstyle. Vagrant Story avoids this. Akihiko Yoshida's designs are VERY tame.

Feel free to call Vagrant Story a JRPG if you want. I personally don't consider it as one. One way or another, it avoids everything that I hate about JRPGs. In bold red are elements which I consider to be very much "Japanese" elements, as they are usually the few who incorporate that crap into their videogames. Number 2 is due to Number 1, Number 3 reinforces Number 2, and the last two are self-explanatory.

As you can see, I don't have any problems with the overarching gameplay itself. It's the disgusting Japanese influence that ruins JRPGs and makes them a sub-genre of their own. Nowhere in any other subgenre will you find such a huge influence of the country of origin's mindset and culture than in JRPGs.
 

Raghar

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Jul 16, 2009
Messages
22,507
Japanese had very different view about a lot of things like sex. Thus game made by Japanese developers differed a lot thus it got term JRPG. Meaning it was made for Japanese audience. Nowadays Japanese developers are tailoring games as a MERCHANDISE for western audiences. Of course the weird charm disappeared.
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
Joined
Feb 24, 2007
Messages
14,983
Over the years their memories started to turn into things like, "You get a random battle every 2 steps!" rather than the way the game actually played.
A big part of this is the reaction people get when they get into a battle they aren't prepared for. When you watch people play games, the bitching about random encounters doesn't start until they've got a pressing need to not have one, either because they're speed running, or because they're about to die. A dozen encounters on the way to the cool loot at the back of the dungeon? Totally fine. That last encounter that killed you before you reached a rest site? Fucking RNG grindy bullshit combat. And that rage over losing the game is what gets seared into memory. Of course people don't feel this way about games where dying means you just reload 30 seconds prior.
 

Sigourn

uooh afficionado
Joined
Feb 6, 2016
Messages
5,625
A big part of this is the reaction people get when they get into a battle they aren't prepared for.

Or maybe getting tired of facing mooks you can't simply skip. Like in Baldur's Gate. Except in Baldur's Gate you can sort of avoid them. In random encounters, you cannot.
 

Deflowerer

Arcane
Joined
May 22, 2013
Messages
2,052
Sort of weird to differentiate between JRPGs and DRPGs. For fuck's sake, for Japanese the pure, unadulterated essence of RPGs is Wizardry and its ilk, not tabletop games.
 

Deleted Member 16721

Guest
Can you even name a game where you can't avoid or skip a majority of trivial encounters?

Of course you can skip random encounters in JRPGs, but the difference is you have to usually sit for a second or two through the "a battle is happening!" animation (especially in old-school JRPGs.)

But in reality, if you compare it to Baldur's Gate, in BG you're not going to easily avoid a lot of encounters there once someone/something sees you. If there's a mage and they start casting, you can usually forget about escaping. Archers, etc., will shoot at you on sight and trigger their encounters. So while BG does give you more leeway in avoiding encounters, it ain't really that different than casting an Exit spell in Final Fantasy, or using the Alchemist spell in Elminage Gothic to instantly escape combat. And even the most oldest school JRPGs have options to escape battle (again, after triggering the animation to get into the battle, thus "wasting" modern impatient gamers' time a bit more, searing it on their brains even further.)

Just my 2.
 
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Sigourn

uooh afficionado
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Feb 6, 2016
Messages
5,625
Can you even name a game where you can't avoid or skip a majority of trivial encounters?

The problem is not the encounters themselves, the problem is the amount, you Undertale-loving dumbfuck. In JRPGs that use random encounters you are usually getting into fights every step of the fucking way and, like fluent said, it gets extremely tiring to sit through those stupid animations time after time, not to mention the usual "you earned exp, gold!" screens, and so on.

Though in hindsight I did refer to "cannot skip" as opposed to "there's too many".

EDIT: No need to drop offensive ratings just because you are a JRPG fan Hyperion.

EDIT 2: For an idea of what I think about the JRPG genre, just look at the ratings this post has.
 
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Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
Joined
Feb 24, 2007
Messages
14,983
So basically there's no problem at all, and you're just too retarded to skip fights? Fuck, even all the way back in the original Dragon Quest you had a spell for skipping random encounters. Which, AFAIK, the Ultima series didn't have up to that point (I don't recall it in Ultima 3 at any rate, a game which certainly had a higher ratio of combat to exploration.) So really, it's western rpgs that were full of tedious random encounter grinding.
 

Sigourn

uooh afficionado
Joined
Feb 6, 2016
Messages
5,625
So basically there's no problem at all, and you're just too retarded to skip fights? Fuck, even all the way back in the original Dragon Quest you had a spell for skipping random encounters. Which, AFAIK, the Ultima series didn't have up to that point (I don't recall it in Ultima 3 at any rate, a game which certainly had a higher ratio of combat to exploration.) So really, it's western rpgs that were full of tedious random encounter grinding.

Random encounters are a very recurrent issue in JRPGs, aggravated by the fact these fights don't require the player to think too much (that is, something beyond "attack").
 

Alkarl

Learned
Joined
Oct 9, 2016
Messages
472
So basically there's no problem at all, and you're just too retarded to skip fights? Fuck, even all the way back in the original Dragon Quest you had a spell for skipping random encounters. Which, AFAIK, the Ultima series didn't have up to that point (I don't recall it in Ultima 3 at any rate, a game which certainly had a higher ratio of combat to exploration.) So really, it's western rpgs that were full of tedious random encounter grinding.

Random encounters are a very recurrent issue in JRPGs, aggravated by the fact these fights don't require the player to think too much (that is, something beyond "attack").

Sure, if you're just grinding past the difficulty curve, this can definitely be true. This is a pretty standard affair in any game, but that doesn't make it the rule/mean.
 

Hyperion

Arcane
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Jul 2, 2016
Messages
2,120
EDIT: No need to drop offensive ratings just because you are a JRPG fan Hyperion.

you Undertale-loving dumbfuck.

That's the reason for the Shit rating. I dislike Undertale as much as the next guy for a multitude of reasons, but you're being a condescending cocksucker for no reason. In fact, you're being a condescending dickhead, when, 2 pages ago you were typing like Larry the Cable Guy trying to read out of an Encyclopedia. You were pontificating about games you admitted you've never played, extolling their virtuosity. How could you know, since you've never actually played them? Your posting reeks of 20% unfounded arrogance, and 80% desperate brofist harvesting. But, you aren't in General RPG Discussion, you're in JRPG discussion where you're not going to get your weasel greased for bitching about the shallowness of JRPGs, which we're all aware of. Unlike you, we filter through the bad ones, and still play them for the good ones (don't try to pretend as though WRPGs don't have tons of shit to sift through), since most of us appreciate the superior combat systems, and usually higher difficulty in the niche games that Western games don't really offer. However, we're actually intelligent enough here to disagree with one another without resorting to insults in every post.

Keep that shit in GRPG, not here.
 
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Sigourn

uooh afficionado
Joined
Feb 6, 2016
Messages
5,625
Unlike you, we filter through the bad ones, and still play them for the good ones

There's no such thing as a "good" JRPG. If it is good, it isn't a JRPG.

That said, since I want to play something easier for a change, I'm going to embark on a journey™ of 16-bit era and earlier JRPGs.
 
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Suicidal

Arcane
Joined
Apr 29, 2007
Messages
2,208
Unlike you, we filter through the bad ones, and still play them for the good ones

There's no such thing as a "good" JRPG. If it is good, it isn't a JRPG.

I wonder how much glue do you have to chug in order to have this kind of thought process?

That's like saying "all movies with Arnold Schwarzenegger in them are inherently shit, except for those two movies that I like, but I will declare that they do not, in fact, have Schwarzenegger in them, even though they clearly do".
 
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Sigourn

uooh afficionado
Joined
Feb 6, 2016
Messages
5,625
I wonder how much glue do you have to chug in order to have this kind of thought process?

That's like saying "all movies with Arnold Schwarzenegger in them are inherently shit, except for those two movies that I like, but I will declare that they do not, in fact, have Schwarzenegger in them, even though they clearly do".

Here's a better analogy: an action movie where the action is absurdly over the top and expects to be taken seriously at the same time is shit. Jason Statham plays a lot of roles in that type of movies. The Jason Statham movies I actually like, surprise surprise, are not action films, but comedy films.

I find it baffling it is so difficult to understand: I don't have anything against JRPGs from a purely gameplay point of view. A lot of issues I have with them I also have with games made in America or other western countries. My biggest issues are purely cultural and stylistical, as I explained above with Vagrant Story.

Is it really that difficult to understand that I will NEVER like a game that shoehornes kiddie characters, or has a lol-so-cute sense of humor or artstyle or themes? If Fallout had the exact same gameplay but everything turned animu, guess what: I would hate it, and wouldn't bother playing it. Sorry, but my weaboo meter can only resist so much before it breaks and possibly good games go to hell because of that.
 
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