What are your opinions on Jrpgs?

Black Angel said:
How is the combat 'AWFUL' when it's turn-based and your party aren't even shown on screen?
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Not necessarily awful but tedious imo. In other words, I suck at the game and can't stop getting Ness murdered by a bunch of cave rats.
 
Atomkilla said:
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I've played all those games (well, to specify, for FF, FF7, for FE, FET and FE Path of Radiance, DS1,2,3 and BB, MR 2...) for, on average, four to ten hours each. I've not really completed them, but I've gone beyond the tutorials, loaded new games at friends houses, shot the shit for a few hours, went back and forth for days. I think I'm qualified thereof to make up my own opinion on them on what I got from playing them, and it's just a bland distaste.

And I'm a 'idiot' for not fawning over them? I don't like them. I don't find their characters, plots, gameplay, or artstyle enticing enough to categorize them as being 'good'. In FF7 we're some special agent with a beserk like hunk of metal fighting a corp to save the planet's """lifeforce"""; Soulsborne barely has a plot to begin with, Stardew Valley and MR are grindy farming games that I felt were a waste of time with no real reward beyond 'cute graphics'. In FE we're helping two kingdoms overcome some racial amnesty of all things.

I can easily call that trite, infantile, and basic. How many times do we walk around with a 'party' and get into a MP/LP fight on a new screen with a bunch of enemies on one side and smash them back and forth for a decade, if not more? Or for the Souls series, do we really think Bloodborne is different from Ds1 in any real, meaningful way? We roll around. We might shoot things rather than plink them with arrows now, but it's a series based on vague plots with rolling around, enemies I can't tell head or tails from, and a Nintendo hard difficulty. If there is, I missed it, and if I missed it, ahh well, I'm not going out of my way to go back to it and try to uncover whatever the minute change was/is.

SquiglyContiello said:
This is the first time I've seen anyone use this to refer to Dark Souls and Stardew Valley.
I'm curious tho, what is a "deep" story to you? What is "complex" gameplay? If your answer will be anything along the lines of "it needs to be like tabletop!" or "It needs to be told using dialogue with dialogue options!" then don't even bother replying.
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Why not? That's what molded me. That's what I'm used to and what I like. If JRPGs don't have those things, then it's no real fault of their own, that's their style, we just part ways. I was raised on Kingdoms of Kalamar, Fallout, Icewind Dale, Baldurs Gate, etc, and that's what I'm more attracted to. Deep stories are deeper than a shallow pond where we have to stop some bland megacorp from sapping a planets 'life force' with a beserk knockoff; where we have a myriad of factions, plots, races, kingdoms, etal all competing with and for each other.

This is 'what are your opinions on jrpg'' thread. Sorry that my opinion isn't worship of them or really any games from Japan, but that's where I stand, I decided to participate, and no one is taking me at face value for it. I MUST be some kind of ignorant, or racist, or edgy troll, or whatever, not someone who played a myriad batch of games and simply didn't like any of them. Womp womp.
 
Eshanas said:
This is 'what are your opinions on jrpg'' thread. Sorry that my opinion isn't worship of them or really any games from Japan, but that's where I stand, I decided to participate, and no one is taking me at face value for it. I MUST be some kind of ignorant, or racist, or edgy troll, or whatever, not someone who played a myriad batch of games and simply didn't like any of them. Womp womp.
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There are good, constructive, and reasonable opinions, and then there are unfounded, ignorant opinions, or just opinions that are plainly incomplete (as in, all the foundations for such opinions aren't there).

Yours immediately fall under the category of the latter when you just lump every single different type of games under one category for the sole reason of it being made in Japan... or Japanese-looking.

Just to be clear, it's fine if you leave your posts at the gist of "JRPGs in general aren't my cup of tea" or something along those lines like the others did, and if only you actually did that everyone would've actually took you at face value. But you just have to go on and insist on how Soulsborne, of all the games, are the exact same as your typical JRPGs, with just plain obnoxious arguments such as "I found their stories trite, idiotic, and infantile, their gameplay bare and basic, and their style grating on the eyes." when all the games you lumped together has noticeable difference if you look past their overall similar presentation, and especially Soulsborne games which are radically, *RADICALLY*, different than the rest of the games you lumped them with.

Soulsborne 'barely' have any plot? Bloodborne 'not that much different' than Dark Souls just because you can roll around in both games? These are all unfounded arguments because in regards to plot, the games didn't serve them to you on a silver platter like most games that came out at the time did, you have to look for clues and narrative exposition by yourself and pay close attention to where to find them and what exactly they reveal. Meanwhile, in regards to overall design aspect, in general you'll have to approach Soulsborne games with extreme caution due to encounters and level design (like enemies hidden right around the corner and concealed traps), but the major gameplay itself (which is combat) are contrastly different from one another. Bloodborne is far, FAR more fast-paced where players are encouraged to play more aggressively with features such as rally system where player characters can heal themselves by attacking an enemy within 5 seconds or so of taking damage, while Dark Souls is much more slow-paced especially for first time players, where shields and poise system are one of the prominent features it has.

Lastly, to also finally say what's my opinions really are on JRPGs, or rather this whole semantics where you categorize certain type of games based on its country of origin or its look, I'm just going to quote a Codexer who managed to say it more eloquently than me:
Calling anything a JRPG or WRPG in the first place is dumb and doesn't really give you an accurate idea of what you can expect from the game's mechanics. Let's just stick with the established genre names that actually make sense, like ARPG, Sim / Tactical RPG, dungeon crawler, etc..
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I find it funny that there's an ongoing discussion of JRPGs on both the Codex and NMA at around the same time.

It's fine to prefer and stick to certain type of games because they're what floats your boat the most, but when you open your mouth to talk about things of which you *really* don't have a slightest of an idea about, especially after you've only played some of them and then dismiss the rest based on that alone, that's where I have a personal problem with.
 
>Deep Stories
>Referring to DnD games that aren't PS:T
Eshanas said:
Or for the Souls series, do we really think Bloodborne is different from Ds1 in any real, meaningful way? We roll around. We might shoot things rather than plink them with arrows now, but it's a series based on vague plots with rolling around, enemies I can't tell head or tails from, and a Nintendo hard difficulty. If there is, I missed it, and if I missed it, ahh well, I'm not going out of my way to go back to it and try to uncover whatever the minute change was/is.
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You could pretty much say the same with Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, and every single Diablo like.

Speaking of Icewind Dale, a full mage party wasn't working as well as I expected it to be. Worked pretty well in ToEE and in some older DnD games but I guess being TB made it easier to play as such a party.
 
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Speaking of deep stories. The story in Fallout is trope filled shit. Especially from Fallout 2 onward. C&C was the series saving grace then they got rid of that. This is the doomed timeline.

iu


Dialog options so RPG.
 
I couldn't help but notice few people already mentioning FFXII. That game opened me up for JRPGs, thanks to the combat namely being not turn based. Mind you, that was when I was hyperactive kid and something as turn based would make me jump around the room.
But what I played, and what I own, I have fond and fun time, even to this day, playing Final Fantasy X, X-2 and XII. I do also have few KOEI games, which most are action based (Dynasty/Samurai Warriors, Musou Orochi), visual novel-like (Soul Nomad & The World Eaters, Disagea, Phantom Brave) and I have been looking to get other JRPGs for PS2 as well.
 
Black Angel said:
My personal recommendation would be Radiata Stories. If only I have good enough rig to run it smoothly on the emulator...
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I'm not fan of emulators. At least not with games after 8 and 16 bit era due to controller layout and such. I rather have physical copies, which I do have from many games, and if any plans is to make youtube videos, I have game capture device for it.
 
I'd say JRPGs are still RPGs. Just in a different way. People that think you need complete freedom of every choice probably don't agree with me on what makes RPGs stand out from other types of games.

Anyway, what good JRPGs could I play on a crappy computer? I have a good one at home but need something to do when it's slow at work. Or a Switch. I've played the older Pokemons, I've played some random games like Cthulu Saves the World, LOTR: The Third Age, and a few others I never got to finish. But I want to be impressed by a JRPG honestly.
I have FF VII but I don't know if I care enough to play it. I have 1 minute on Steam because I was really drunk one night and tried to play it and it wouldn't accept my email for it's third party DRM stuff so I gave up.
 
Valdetiosi said:
I'm not fan of emulators. At least not with games after 8 and 16 bit era due to controller layout and such. I rather have physical copies, which I do have from many games, and if any plans is to make youtube videos, I have game capture device for it.
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Ah, then I'm afraid you'll have to wait for others recommendation, unless you know a local store where they still sell PS2 (used or new), if you haven't had one already, and a physical copy somewhere you can get. I haven't tried more modern JRPGs except for FFXII Zodiac Age remaster for PS4, still planned to get FFXV and Persona 5 although they're kind of lower priority because I'm still going through my bloated backlog of games, and back then I wasn't in touch with PS3 gaming because that was the time of playing MOBA with my friends.

Squadcar said:
Anyway, what good JRPGs could I play on a crappy computer?
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If you're fine with emulators, then I'll recommend some Gameboy Advance games instead of PS2 since my laptop couldn't run it smoothly so I imagine yours wouldn't, too. Breath of Fire 2 and Sword of Mana are worth trying (even though I haven't actually finished them), with the former being turn-based while the latter is real-time. As a disclaimer, I'm recommending those two games because those are the games I've tried and not their predecessors (Breath of Fire 1 and presumably Secret of Mana).

To anyone who've played it, how's Breath of Fire 1 and Secret of Mana?
 
Black Angel said:
Ah, then I'm afraid you'll have to wait for others recommendation, unless you know a local store where they still sell PS2 (used or new), if you haven't had one already, and a physical copy somewhere you can get.
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I know a local auction store, where people post from time to time their games either to be shouted for price or get to buy from get go. I managed to get there Phantom Brave, some other KOEI games, Metal Gear Solids and also God Hand.
 
Hard to recommend a "JRPG" when you can't fully define what a "JRPG" is.
Alundra is considered a "JRPG" yet Zelda isn't despite being similar.
Then there is the "needs to have a story and party based" stuff I hear from some of the genre's fans.
 
Valdetiosi said:
I know a local auction store, where people post from time to time their games either to be shouted for price or get to buy from get go. I managed to get there Phantom Brave, some other KOEI games, Metal Gear Solids and also God Hand.
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Oh right, while you're at it try your luck in finding Rogue Galaxy too, and some Suikoden and Growlanser games, although the only ones I've played from that series is Suikoden 5 and I remember didn't liking it as much as others because I didn't explore the side content while the only Growlanser I've played was the 3rd one and I liked it quite much, it has rather different combat system, neither real-time nor turn-based, most likely phase-based after looking at a gameplay video again.

SquiglyContiello said:
Hard to recommend a "JRPG" when you can't fully define what a "JRPG" is.
Alundra is considered a "JRPG" yet Zelda isn't despite being similar.
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Wait, what? If it's true, this is why categorizing games based on its country of origin is just plain dumb.
 
SquiglyContiello said:
Hard to recommend a "JRPG" when you can't fully define what a "JRPG" is.
Alundra is considered a "JRPG" yet Zelda isn't despite being similar.
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People can't help each other with recommendation for RPGs either then by that merit. Also, I don't know what Alundra is but as far as I'm concerned Zelda isn't much of RPG/JRPG/whatever. Then again, haven't really played Zelda. Not that I won't, just haven't (I'd try them but I feel like I might not be able to appreciate them like others do) and from what I've seen it didn't seem very RPG like to me. Seemed more action-adventure like. I'm not really trying to spur more discussion and fights on what RPGs are and aren't though. I just wanted some recommendations that I can play and maybe finish in a year when I have downtime here.

Black Angel said:
unless you know a local store where they still sell PS2
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I got a PS2, just not gonna bring it here. I'll leave it at home.

So far you guys have recommended:
GBA: Sword of Mana, Breath of Fire 2
SNES: Chrono Trigger, Live a Live

I anticipate Toront to recommend FF VIII and some others and on that note, is it worth getting it on Steam or is that a bad port or something?
 
Breath of Fire 2 was released for the GBA as well? I remember enjoying it for the most part in the SNES but i found it too slow that i just ended up quitting. Seems the GBA version adds a much needed run button.

Guess i'll try the GBA version.
 
Black Angel said:
Oh right, while you're at it try your luck in finding Rogue Galaxy too
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I have it, but it doesn't work for some reason. It worked perfectly on another PS2 I got to try it out over a friend. I would love to play it, so I try to see if the CD is faulty, by buying it again.
 
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