Top modern jrpgs?

[Sigourn]

Decent 3D can be decent, especially given equal budgets and modern tech. 3D was definitely adopted WAY too early though, early 3D games were terrible compared to 2D you could have had for the same price.

Play the original Ogre Battle if you haven't. Best artwork and characters in the entire franchise, by far. Shame the N64 version of that gameplay was done so poorly, basically killed any possibility of it getting a worthy sequel.

I think Final Fantasy IX looked well enough, same with Vagrant Story. Low poly models where HD textures weren't needed at all, and looked just fine with pixelated textures.

When games started getting too photorealistic, the awful textures shine through. It wouldn't be a problem if the textures in the games had the same level of detail, but sometimes you have very high quality textures sitting right to low-res ones. It's awful. Ideally, when looking at an image of a 3D game everything should have the same level of crispyness.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Vagrant Story was considered a significant technical accomplishment at the time of release, one of the crowning jewels of the late PSX library. CRTs did a lot to mask the game's imperfections, as is the case with a lot of PSX 3D - modern players judge it in a very unflattering light, the majority of them playing these games distorted in huge high definition TVs, or inaccurate emulators that upscale and uprez everything into an ungainly mush.

Art direction does wonders to mitigate potential hardware limitations, and Vagrant Story had superb art direction. It's a similar story with Soul Reaver, a game that is truly mind-blowing on a technical level. There's a myriad technical limitations of course, but the ways the developers found to deal with them are nothing short of remarkable and it's fascinating to go back and see exactly how much limitation drives creativity.

I think that's one of the main problems with games today - not enough limitations, lazy developers that don't have to think problems through and take everything for granted.

 

[CryptRat]

To me Vagrant Story or Soul Reaver look absolutely terrible compared with PSX-era 2D. Even most PS2 3D games look worse than PSX-era 2D ones.

Today it may be different, I have no idea, but for years using 3d was just a huge mistake in most cases, requiring more budget to make your game look worse and add nothing to gameplay.

It's a complicated debate because even regarding games which benefit from 3D, for example 3D plateformers may have the merit to exist or not, I don't know, I play some and they clearly offer something else but in the same time I consider even the best ones nowhere as good as the good 2D ones.

 

[Hobo Elf]

That's kind of beside the point. Vagrant Story was a technical marvel of 3D graphics on the PS1 when it came out.

 

[CryptRat]

But why should we care when Saga Frontier 2 looks much better? It's only pointless.

 

[Deflowerer]

What the fuck am I reading? Yeah, I'm quite fond of 2D graphics myself, but 3D revolutionized gaming and 90s was probably the most inclined and creative period for video games all across the world, in many ways due to the advent of 3D graphics.

Other than that, I also like early 3D graphics, particularly in the likes of Vagrant Story. I think what I particularly like about PSX era 3D JRPGs is that due to the lack of voice acting and low graphical detail of faces, the gestures and movements of the characters were much more theatrical which is really cool.

And yes, there is hidden benefit of being limited in technology. Fixed camera angles in RE, foggy nightmare of SH, it pretty much owes to the fact that devs really had to take significant technological limitations into consideration, and I bet there were plenty of absolutely fucking garbage design decisions that met their fate in the dustbin just because they were not feasible technologically.

 

[Ash]

Not to mention it was a time where graphics were technologically limited, so gameplay was king generally speaking, and game dev was also a lot cheaper.

 

[Hobo Elf]

But why should we care when Saga Frontier 2 looks much better? It's only pointless.

Yea there's no disagreement that Saga Frontier 2 looks good with it's water colored paintings, it's a pretty unique style, but that same style wouldn't work for Vagrant Story. If Vagrant Story had been released on a N64 which had far superior texture rendering than the PS1 for 3D objects then I think the game maybe wouldn't have necessarily worked there either. Why? Because Vagrant Story is supposed to take in the strange Leá Monde, and the imperfect texture rendering of the PS1 which skewers and stretches the textures at certain angles give it an unsettling look. As Deflowerer said, there's some value in limited, early 3D tech (but not too early, otherwise you have games that look like ass, like Betrayal at Krondor) that creates atmospheres that are hard to replicate now.

Plus Vagrant Story is a game that actually benefits from being 3D as they could make a more complex combat system thanks to it. The game uses elevation and body parts quite a lot, which is pretty cool.

But I digress, weather or not you prefer or don't prefer 2D over 3D is not the point. The point is that Square managed to make a technically complex 3D that pushed the PS1 hardware to its limits with Vagrant Story.

 

[CryptRat]

What the fuck am I reading? Yeah, I'm quite fond of 2D graphics myself, but 3D revolutionized gaming and 90s was probably the most inclined and creative period for video games all across the world, in many ways due to the advent of 3D graphics.

Other than that, I also like early 3D graphics, particularly in the likes of Vagrant Story. I think what I particularly like about PSX era 3D JRPGs is that due to the lack of voice acting and low graphical detail of faces, the gestures and movements of the characters were much more theatrical which is really cool.

And yes, there is hidden benefit of being limited in technology. Fixed camera angles in RE, foggy nightmare of SH, it pretty much owes to the fact that devs really had to take significant technological limitations into consideration, and I bet there were plenty of absolutely fucking garbage design decisions that met their fate in the dustbin just because they were not feasible technologically.

Many franchises and entire genres I like (western rpgs, plateformers, adventure games) died (literally died or became worse) when 3D came while none were enhanhced then, which does not mean 3D is the main reason or even a reason at all although I tend to think it's one of the reasons (for adventure games and plateformers in particular it's sort of obvious, for RPGs it's more complex). Of course poeple like Ash who think Doom is the best RPG will disagree.

 

[Deflowerer]

Platformers and adventure games died because other games incorporated those elements to their formula, or at least the elements that were deemed important by the market that had made them such a success.

 

[Ash]

I give few shits for storyfaggot point and click adventure games as their own concept. Platforming, investigative and puzzle elements as Deflowerer said was incorporated into 3D gameplay commonplace, and I don't see how the addition of a whole new dimension of gameplay doesn't count as enhancement e.g what Tomb Raider did for the platformer was pretty great. A whole new dimension of gameplay probably being the single biggest gameplay enhancement ever to happen. There still was occasional 2D platformers in the early 3D days also, and arguably the 2D platformer had kinda run its course anyhow given there were thousands of them, many alike. Those games are still there, many standing tall. I occasionally go back and play them. There's not many worthwhile directions the genre could have headed though. Metriodvanias is about all notable that happened since and that's not so much the fault of 3D as it is 2D being notably limited by nature.
The western RPG did what now? The Codex top 70 RPGs indicates late 90s was the clear golden age of cRPG. You're free to disagree, but I don't see how you could lament the many diverse directions the cRPG branched into around that time.

And what the fuck are you talking about "Doom is the greatest RPG"? I've never seen anyone even try to argue Doom is an RPG, let alone the greatest. Greatest FPS perhaps, but even then I'm not so sure. Build engine games made many enhancements to the formula but core combat declined little, so it's hard to say.

So what you're saying is Ultima Underworld and Doom were decline incarnate being the two most notable of the earliest 3D games. They brought little new. Didn't enhance anything. Shit decline :/

 

[Deflowerer]

The main advantage of adventure games was the text parser. The genre fucked itself up, not because of obscure cat moustache puzzles, but because it dumbed itself down to the point that any redeeming quality was not in any shape or form unique to the genre itself. From loss of parser to less and less preset actions to complete context-sensitive interaction, the genre became dumber and dumber. But it had nothing other genres couldn't successfully incorporate.

However, I do think that if only because of it being the only prime story-telling genre of the day, its more slow and "meditative" nature of gameplay was conducive to more cerebral gameplay experiences across the industry.

 

[Ash]

Wouldn't "most cerebral" award go to RPGs?

P&C was storyfaggotry anyways. Gameplay was secondary to the interactive novel concept. More so the novel part than the interactive part. But I'm not the most informed when it comes to adventure games, only having played a few. I'd like to try out an adventure game where the gameplay was more involved than the standard. Oh wait, isn't that RPGs?

 

[Deflowerer]

Well, submarine and flight simulators were also very cerebral, but what I meant specifically is that imo the adventure games as a pretty big and mainstream genre enjoyed by probably larger audience than RPGs and god forbid, hardcore submarine simulations, sort of kept the overall industry in check from gravitating towards too twitchy genres, or at least gave cerebral games more welcoming audience, notwithstanding enthusiasts. Not to mention, in particular with Sierra, the adventure games went beyond the fantasy/scifi/postapocalyptic genre stories that were commonplace with RPGs. There was nothing comparable to say, Deadline from Infocom, or A Mind Forever Voyaging, or Police Quest and Leisure Suit Larry in other genres.

 

[Raghar]

I started playing Tactics Ogre before realizing I should really finish my Icewind Dale playthrough (expansions left to go). Anyhow, what a fantastic game. 3D truly killed videogames, between Icewind Dale's fantastic looking backgrounds and TO's beautiful artstyle I don't know what made developers jump ship. Only 3D worth doing is non-photorealistic 3D. Kind of like Gothic II.

These are rendered 3D, AND required high artistic talent. If they still used that, a game would need 150 GB in current resolutions and with properly large game worlds.

Of course as Torment tides of Numenera proven, company nowadays are not really capable to find proper artistic talent.

 

[Ash]

"3D killed videogames", a new wave of retard. There's only one core thing that killed video games. It wasn't 3D. It wasn't consoles. It wasn't the lowest common denominator. It was sellouts within the industry tossing away their artistic integrity for big bucks.

 

[CryptRat]

I give few shits for storyfaggot point and click adventure games as their own concept. Platforming, investigative and puzzle elements as Deflowerer said was incorporated into 3D gameplay commonplace, and I don't see how the addition of a whole new dimension of gameplay doesn't count as enhancement e.g what Tomb Raider did for the platformer was pretty great. A whole new dimension of gameplay probably being the single biggest gameplay enhancement ever to happen.

Problem is that I think Tomb Raider is worse than a good Mario or Megaman, to each its own.

Platformers and adventure games died because other games incorporated those elements to their formula, or at least the elements that were deemed important by the market that had made them such a success.

Sure these games are so visually appealing that it's inconceivable that their look is one potential reason why nobody would want play to them :

Coming after these :

 

[Ash]

Problem is that I think Tomb Raider is worse than a good Mario or Megaman, to each its own.

I like a good Mario or Megaman too.
hmm, Nintendo games. I can see how you may think 3D was decline if you devoutly followed the mainstream titles. Donkey Kong Country became DK64, Link to the Past became Ocarina of Time, Yoshi's Island became Yoshi's Story, Sonic games became that 3D adventure garbage.
New IPs was where it was at, the following only being some examples of good 3D platforming: How about Crash Bandicoot? Duke Nukem 3D or Turok (FPS' with plenty platforming)? Thief or Deus Ex (both have quite a bit of platforming on occasion)? Spyro the Dragon? Medievil? You play any of those? Did you also play Tomb Raider 2 or 3?

 

[Hobo Elf]

The funny thing about Sonic games becoming garbage with 3D is that they made that one game, Sonic 3D, for the Sega Genesis and it was actually good. But yeah lots of platformers didn't know what to do when they had to transition from 2D to 3D. Mario succeeded by making the games more about exploration than platforming itself. Castlevania completely shat itself in 3D. Megaman also somehow, miraculously, succeeded in going to 3D with Megaman Legends.

 

[Alkarl]

Games were always gonna go 3D, it was just a matter of time and cost of technology. Some made the initial transition better than others, obviously, and things only got better from there.

While the decline seems to set in around this time, as mentioned above there were tons of games that were great, Ocarina of Time, Crash, etc. Also the Gothics, Deus Ex. It could be that I just have a lot of nostalgia for it, but early 3D has always held this special charm to me. It represents both an amazing leap in gaming tech and also a period few would willingly return to.

However, by the time hi-res and hd games started rolling out, the writing was on the wall. Games had declined somewhere along the way. It's easy to blame new tech, especially 3D, since it is the most obvious and striking difference between the games we used to love and the shit sitting before us now.

 

[Ash]

Ocarina of Time was used as an example of a not-so-good 3D game

It represents both an amazing leap in gaming tech and also a period few would willingly return to.

Meh. Many early 3D games are better than most modern 3D games. Namely in gameplay.

And oh yeah, I forgot about 3D Castlevania. Quite a few nintendo titles shat the bed. The playstation had a far superior catalogue of games than the N64 in most respects.

 

[CryptRat]

New IPs was where it was at, the following only being some examples of good 3D platforming: How about Crash Bandicoot? Duke Nukem 3D or Turok (FPS' with plenty platforming)? Thief or Deus Ex (both have quite a bit of platforming on occasion)? Spyro the Dragon? Medievil? You play any of those? Did you also play Tomb Raider 2 or 3?

Yes, I played some of them and it's really not that I think they're very bad but rather that they replaced a type of games I liked more.

It's different than let's say, western RPGs after ToEE and until 2013 in which case I am almost sure that I hated every single game I tried (they're obviously some indies I would have liked, typically Vogel's stuff, but I didn't know they existed).

 

[Ash]

ToEE was 2003 though. We already had a decade of good 3D by then! Indeed after that point things were declining (RPGs especially) and by 2007 and beyond gaming was pretty much a wasteland.

 

[CryptRat]

Yes but many of the good RPGs were not 3D or very far from full 3D, weren't they? Maybe I'm wrong.

EDIT : oh and sorry, my last sentence had nothing to do with 3D by the way, I was just comparing how I rate 2D plateformers vs 3D plateformers compared with how I rate pre2003RPGs vs post2003RPGs, to explain how I feel differently.

 

[Ash]

Most of them yes. Arx Fatalis was good. VTM:B was good. Deus Ex was good. Morrowind was good. Vagrant Story was good. Ultima Underworld was good. Gothic was decent. But most of the greats are 2D or a hybrid of 2D and 3D. Or 2.5D. I don't blame 3D though, just sellouts. Even big budget 3D games used to be good back then.

What's your top 5 platformers CryptRat ?