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metallifan wrote:Basically, JRPGs are like FPS games of today. I remember back when puzzles and tests were a huge part of FPS games. Those are mostly gone now too. It feels more and more like "Follow the GPS. Kill some guys. Win the game!" with every passing year.

Gyaargh no! Puzzles were a stupid, pointless inclusion in the genre, and a surefire way to break the immersion. I'd agree that the genre has been slow to develop, with genuine cover mechanics and the like only slowly coming in to the genre, but the answer isn't more rooms with random switches or crate building exercises.

But in general, games have and probably always will be pretty generic. It's possible that now, with on-line downloading potentially opening the market up for smaller developers we may get some genuinely original titles, but it's more likely we're going to get a whole lot of unoriginal, shoddily made knock-offs.

Probably why I'm drawn more to freeform RPGs like M&B Warband - there isn't much for originality in the market these days, so why not make my own story in the game?

Yeah, that game is pretty sweet. It has it's own problems, of course, but the originality goes a long way.

sebster wrote:
Gyaargh no! Puzzles were a stupid, pointless inclusion in the genre, and a surefire way to break the immersion.

THE LIE IS A CAKE!!!!

According to the game you had to be baked to get the cake......

Gwar! wrote:THE LIE IS A CAKE!!!!

Please put the Apeture Science Device on the ground, and assume the Party Escort Position now.

sebster wrote:
Gyaargh no! Puzzles were a stupid, pointless inclusion in the genre, and a surefire way to break the immersion.

Puzzles made players think. If anything, games nowadays are stupid because they appeal to stupid people by trying to avoid anything even slightly complex that might make your average 12 year old gamer cry or have a fit.

The puzzles got you focused on the game. If anything, they immersed you more because you were hell-bent on solving said puzzle, and damned if you were gonna set that controller down or get up from that comp before you did!


But then again I guess you'd have to be someone that grew up in that era with those old games to really appreciate them. Hell I remember when DOOM II came out back when I was in Elementary school. It was actually considered a scary-as-hell, play-it-with-the-lights-off game back then All the puzzles to find secret weapons and powerups made you really get into it though, and you could spend an hour running around a level a dozen times because you saw a 100 armour bonus or a chainsaw on a ledge not 10 feet above you.

FFVII was the only jrpg I ever played and I love it...

now.... EVERY character in EVERY JRPG is modeled off Cloud or Sephiroth...EVERY ONE.....flippin' spikey-haired girly square enix characters.......

and yes...all of the weapons are way to XBOX HEUG for real life.

Except for the inability to climb I would love to see that kind of puzzle return. Thats why the resident evil games appeal to me. The puzzles may have gotten simpler over the years but they are still there. I think this thread is slowly turning into what sucks about current games.

I would like to see more organic puzzles. Having to kill a dog to find a pass key to get a lighter to burn up a painting to get a gem to put in a statue to open a door is a bit obtuse.

IG_urban wrote:EVERY character in EVERY JRPG is modeled off Cloud or Sephiroth...EVERY ONE.....flippin' spikey-haired girly square enix characters.......

The irony of that statement has me in fits of hysteria.

Platuan4th wrote:

IG_urban wrote:EVERY character in EVERY JRPG is modeled off Cloud or Sephiroth...EVERY ONE.....flippin' spikey-haired girly square enix characters.......

The irony of that statement has me in fits of hysteria.

Especially since he pointed out that "every" one was modeled after the characters from a game he liked. Exept that not every character is modeled that way since in the most recent ff game Sazh and Snow don't have a spike on em. Hope was a whiner. Kept him out of my party cause I didn't like him.

Ahtman wrote:I would like to see more organic puzzles. Having to kill a dog to find a pass key to get a lighter to burn up a painting to get a gem to put in a statue to open a door is a bit obtuse.

This +42, which is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Nothing kills a puzzle like having to do things like this.

Puzzles were a good thing, as long as its something that is intuitive. Take Perfect Dark (Edit: for unintuitive), for example: There is this part where you have to blow up a wall to enter a base's hallway. You can't blow up any spot, you have to blow up a very specific spot, with no indication other than an easy to miss X. And there is this part where you have to use certain terminals to deactivate an engine(?), with no indication that that is where you have to be or what terminals you have to push unless you equip a certain item....

I suppose what I am trying to say is: Puzzles are good, better, best when you know your trying to solve a puzzle.

Western RPGs aren't in a much better state. While I'm not saying that I like or prefer JRPGs (For the most part, I hate them), I am saying that if you look introspectively, the western take on things isn't much better off.

The two highly praised developers of western RPGs (Bioware and Bethesda Softworks) are content to rest on their laurels, and while they offer something entirely unique to the rest of the trash that's found in the genre, they don't offer anything that's even remotely unique to anything they've ever made before. Bioware has followed the exact same structure for every single one of their games since their inception, with only slight variation. Bethesda has essentially used the exact same engine (conceptually) for every single one of their games.

While JRPGs might be completely ridiculous to some, at least the settings manage to set the games apart from one another. Western RPGs exist solely in extremely generic universes (either your typical high fantasy or science fiction fare), apart from a select few.

Both sides of the same coin are fairly horrible, you just have to be content to wade through the trash to find some unique gems.

IG_urban wrote:
now.... EVERY character in EVERY JRPG is modeled off Cloud or Sephiroth...EVERY ONE.....flippin' spikey-haired girly square enix characters.......

Except this isn't true. For all the subjective statements you can make about liking one thing, the claim you're making is just plainly false. If as you claim every single character in a JRPG Post-FF7 has been a Cloud or Sephiroth clone there shouldn't be even a single example of a character that doesn't look like Cloud or Sephiroth.

The problem is, it's pretty easy for me to think of multiple counter examples off the top of my head.

http://i46.tinypic.com/s4pa4w.jpg
http://i48.tinypic.com/2i7bsxg.jpg
http://i45.tinypic.com/i41jy8.jpg
http://i50.tinypic.com/20f7nnl.jpg
http://i47.tinypic.com/8ytbvd.jpg


All of the above are characters from post-FF7 JRPGs. They include main characters and supporting ones. There are some characters from good games and at least one from a horrible game. Say what you whatever you feel like about liking/disliking their respective character designs but none of them qualify as Cloud or Sephiroth clones.

I like JRPGs and I certainly don't have any problem with people who don't. The genre certainly has it's fair share of faults. However, making sweeping, obviously false statements is just plain silly.

I would have tended to agree with OP before FFXIII came out. At that time, I was playing Star Ocean: The Last Hope and having a pretty miserable time (whether I acknowledged it at the time or not is beside the point). I even posted here on Dakka commenting that Star Ocean had made me give up on buying FFXIII. Thankfully, someone purchased the game for me as a gift. I like the combat system. I like the plot and characters. It's the most serious-minded, least cliche-driven FF experience I've had in a long time. In a word, the game seems sincere to me. This is in stark contrast to FFXII, which earned a perfect score from Famitsu and yet seemed totally awful to me. JRPGs are a long way from dead. SquareEnix, among others, has pushed a lot of crap through (especially for 360) in this generation of consoles. FFXIII is not really a "diamond in the rough" at all. It's just a diamond. Disregard the ravings of anyone who tells you otherwise, especially someone claiming the FF series peaked at 9.

Manchu wrote: Thankfully, someone purchased the game for me as a gift. I like the combat system. I like the plot and characters. It's the most serious-minded, least cliche-driven FF experience I've had in a long time. In a word, the game seems sincere to me. This is in stark contrast to FFXII, which earned a perfect score from Famitsu and yet seemed totally awful to me.

Wow, I feel almost completely the opposite of that in every way.

Play Persona 3: FES and Persona 4. Great story, gameplay, music and art direction. It doesn't get much better in the recent crop.

It is very amusing to see 40K players criticising a game for having XBOX HUEG weapons.

Well I suppose the difference is that while a bolter is a large weapon it is used by 9 ft. tall super-humans whereas in anime it would be a heavy bolter fired by a school girl.

Methinks the large swords are compensating for something

RxGhost wrote:Play Persona 3: FES and Persona 4. Great story, gameplay, music and art direction. It doesn't get much better in the recent crop.

Those were both awesome games that I enjoyed immensely. When I played them I didn't even know I was still capable of enjoying a video game that much anymore. That said, I somehow doubt they'll win any converts from the crowd of people that dislike JRPGs for being about Angsty Teenagers. You know, given the how the protagonist's powers are fueled quite literally by his ability help his friends with their issues.

Chongara wrote:

RxGhost wrote:Play Persona 3: FES and Persona 4. Great story, gameplay, music and art direction. It doesn't get much better in the recent crop.

Those were both awesome games that I enjoyed immensely. When I played them I didn't even know I was still capable of enjoying a video game that much anymore. That said, I somehow doubt they'll win any converts from the crowd of people that dislike JRPGs for being about Angsty Teenagers. You know, given the how the protagonist's powers are fueled quite literally by his ability help his friends with their issues.

That's probably one of the worst powers I have read in like... a few days.

My friends are so angsty that I become superhuman!

Emopower Rangers?

It's not so much that as your powers are directly related to the strength of the personal connections you forge with your friends, family, even strangers that you interact with...kinda' like a weaponized empathy.

WAIT!

I found a picture! With a caption!

Soladrin wrote:

Chongara wrote:

RxGhost wrote:Play Persona 3: FES and Persona 4. Great story, gameplay, music and art direction. It doesn't get much better in the recent crop.

Those were both awesome games that I enjoyed immensely. When I played them I didn't even know I was still capable of enjoying a video game that much anymore. That said, I somehow doubt they'll win any converts from the crowd of people that dislike JRPGs for being about Angsty Teenagers. You know, given the how the protagonist's powers are fueled quite literally by his ability help his friends with their issues.

That's probably one of the worst powers I have read in like... a few days.

My friends are so angsty that I become superhuman!

Well it's not so much that it makes you superhuman, it's that it gives you the ability to summon demons by shooting yourself in the head. There is like this dude with a funny-lookin' nose who lives in extra-dimensional elevator who helps you charge them up and whatnot. There are killer puddles of black goo wearing masks, and if you take too long on one floor of a dungeon the cowboy grim reaper shows up. You also may or may not run into a giant penis riding a chariot.

Actually, that's just 3. 4 Has you solving trying to solve a series of murders by jumping into TVs and cooperating with an animated bear suit that can't stop making bad puns.

They're very nice if you enjoy that sort of stuff but they're certainly not going to change your mind if that sounds just plain stupid to you in the first place.

What about wrist-cutting or strumming one-note songs on your character's guitar while he cries over his failings as a human being?

Does he get super powers for that stuff?

Chongara wrote:

Soladrin wrote:

Chongara wrote:

RxGhost wrote:Play Persona 3: FES and Persona 4. Great story, gameplay, music and art direction. It doesn't get much better in the recent crop.

Those were both awesome games that I enjoyed immensely. When I played them I didn't even know I was still capable of enjoying a video game that much anymore. That said, I somehow doubt they'll win any converts from the crowd of people that dislike JRPGs for being about Angsty Teenagers. You know, given the how the protagonist's powers are fueled quite literally by his ability help his friends with their issues.

That's probably one of the worst powers I have read in like... a few days.

My friends are so angsty that I become superhuman!

Well it's not so much that it makes you superhuman, it's that it gives you the ability to summon demons by shooting yourself in the head. There is like this dude with a funny-lookin' nose who lives in extra-dimensional elevator who helps you charge them up and whatnot. There are killer puddles of black goo wearing masks, and if you take too long on one floor of a dungeon the cowboy grim reaper shows up. You also may or may not run into a giant penis riding a chariot.

Actually, that's just 3. 4 Has you solving trying to solve a series of murders by jumping into TVs and cooperating with an animated bear suit that can't stop making bad puns.

They're very nice if you enjoy that sort of stuff but they're certainly not going to change your mind if that sounds just plain stupid to you in the first place.

Your right, that last sentence is completely right, cause it sounds like someone looked for a random kid's bucket of toy's threw it at a monopoly board, and went with everything that landed on a station.

Penis monster wins the thread.

metallifan wrote:What about wrist-cutting or strumming one-note songs on your character's guitar while he cries over his failings as a human being?

Does he get super powers for that stuff?

Nope, just the head shooting. (Be warned, dangerously anime cutscene).

Actually, the protagonists of both games are pretty much angst-free themselves. Since they're entirely silent except for the dialogue choices you make for them. Still though, they're certainly not for everyone.I'd suggest that anyone who has ever enjoyed a JRPG should give them a chance. If you're more of a Gunmetal & Brown III: Big Muscles Behind Cover type, don't bother.

My god... That video made me think of nothing less than: