Honest Question. WRPGs and JRPGs.

aweigh is old.

 

Interesting essay aweigh
Though I wish more jap studios would take the effort to make jrpgs like Elminage and SMT. Ok Etrian Odyssey too, but without the animu artstyle. Any solid jrpgs like these?

 

Reminds me of that great C&C before the great cataclysm in SMT 1, you can align yourself with any of the three factions, but in all of the three, the Heroine is rescued and join your side, Thor launch a nuclear missiles on Tokyo, destroying nearly everything. But hey, you had the free choice of deciding what you wants. It worked to know your alignment before the ending, though.

 

i'm only 33.

 

Wow, it's almost like I said not all JRPGs share the same characteristics at once. Mind blowing, I know.

I'm surprised you still haven't told me "Planescape: Torment is a JRPG then".

I'm not. That's because traditional JRPGs give the player barely any freedom at all.

I'm still waiting to know what you classify as a JRPG, other than "RPG from Japan", because you certainly haven't told me yet.

Oh, wait, here it is:

Can't be argued with someone who thinks you have to classify RPGs by country of origin as supposed to classify them by the things that make them stand apart from the rest. But oh well.

 

Instead of doubling down and embarrassing yourself any further, it's better to just move on. Your problem is, and I'm being generous here, is that you maaaaybe have played one or two jRPGs, and now you consider yourself some expert on the subject, when it's quite evident that you have very superficial knowledge about the games. Yeah maybe you can cite some title names, but based on this discussion, you have no idea what these games are actually like. You played a Final Fantasy game once and decided that this is what all jRPGs are like.

 

there is a NES rpg called "Sweet Home" which is a DQ-clone, i.e. a Wizardry-lite except with the top-down dungeons/overworld of Ultima, which features:

- (If I remember right the amount of NPCs) 8 playable party members and you can choose, at any point in the game, at any time, to split up the 8 chars in up to 4 different parties with the ability for the player to switch control/view-point between the parties at will and without limit.

- the game's "economy", of which the vast majority are standard help-you-stay-alive-type of items, is limited, and once an item is depleted in the game, it will stay so.

- a Western-RPG-like affinity for making the gameplay revolve equally among increasing in power, mapping out the mansion and... puzzles.

- lots of puzzles. A lot of which revolve around manipulating 2 or sometimes more "character parties" in disparate locations of the game areas (mansion, which is huge, and/or its underground set of tunnels).

- turn-based DQ-style (i.e. Wiz-type) random encounters where the game's premise and design vision (the 8 chars are stuck one night iniside of a demonic mansion which features a vast underground maze which interconnects esoteric areas of the mansion) where the importance is placed equally on giving XP, or and item (never both), and making the encounter itself always make the player take every single little thing into account before weighing pros/cons and deciding whether or not he/she wants to tangle with an enemy at the moment; i.e. more or less make encounters FEW (rate is low) but each one meaningful.

here's a video made by some youtuber (even if he makes you wanna stab him immediately upon loading the video, it is sadly the only video worth watching which showcases/reviews NES' "Sweet Home" jRPG):

 

Says the "JRPGs are RPGs from Japan" user.

Yeah, stop embarrassing yourself.

King's Field is a JRPG, guys, I swear!

 

I had to drop Golden Sun 2 after about an hour because of the cutscenes. The japanese are extremely shitty movie makers and when the budget gets big enough on an RPG they try to make it a movie. It was so verbose and redundant it literally felt like someone had sourced the translation out to two different people and then pasted both translations into every scene.

 

All that needs to be said.

 

I presume these people have also played "one or two JRPGs", right?

Also

Come on, dude, you can do better.

 

Now we are just going back in circles and starting the whole discussion from square 1 until we arrive back into the climax where it dawns on us that you don't actually know what you're talking about and then resort to linking articles written in reddit that are equally misguided but enforce your wrong opinion.

Hey, man. Check this video on proof that the earth is flat.

 

Quite ironic, by that quote definition:

SMT is JRPG.

 

i dunno, i used to classify JRPGs as:

"story-based"

...but nowadays I don't even think about that facet; instead I have begun of late to classify a jRPG in one of two ways:

Way #1) the jRPG in question features a moderate-to-higher amount of time of the game devoted to "telling a story", of which 100% of which (of these "stories" in jRPGs past the rise of Anime are: ...Anime-stories. Earlier jRPGs, say for example of DQ 4, undoubtedly features a huge amount of the games appeal on the unfolding of its game story to the player (the game forces the player to play 4 "chapters" with each one detailing the origins/background of your FUTURE party members, all the way when you finally begin the game earnest in chapter 5)--

--you will notice that this early jRPG's "story" is not a simple "Anime-story", and for an example of what I mean take FFX's Tidus-IS-A-DREAM-omg story. Anime... "cinematic"... whatever the fuck you wanna call it; it's genre shit and not in a good way.

and the 2nd way I have lately begun classifying the jRPG is:

- the game instead features systems, mechanical systems which dovetail into each other and serve to present the game's bulk of the interaction: in the manipulation of them. Gameplay, etc.

Elminage: Gothic/Original? 2nd type. The fact that Original features a bona-fide "Anime-story" (in so much as a straight-up Wiz-clone, made by ex-Wiz devs, can have one), for example, has no bearing on anything about how I classify/view or would recommend this game.

Due to the fact it's a game that clearly has its focus on the gameplay systems instead of in "telling a story", it is to me a simple "RPG".

TL;DR: I add the 'j' part to "jRPG" when discussing one, especially to another person, when the game features Animu shit. If, otoh, it's something like Elminage I will instead contextualize the recommendation/discussion around the Wiz-series and other Western-"type" RPG shit. I would only even bother mentioning the art style only if asked to; because...


...anyone who would give a shit about an RPGs "art style" or, simply put: graphics, is a retard. Who gives a fuck; the important thing is how it plays.

I'd prefer a wireframe turn-based RPG to one with "graphics" but not as good.

 

No need to discuss when you have proven you are a retard for whom the label "JRPG" may as well not even exist.

Else we will start talking about GRPGs (Gothic, Risen), PRPGs (The Witcher), and others.

Also

This is the very definition of backpedalling: "you haven't played enough JRPGs", "THOSE PEOPLE WHO HAVE PLAYED MANY JRPGS DON'T KNOW ANYTHING".

wew

I disagree, to be honest. SMT is very focused on its gameplay, it's unlike any traditional JRPGs where you can just "press X/O" to advance through the combat. It has way too much combat for my taste, but I consider it to be much more closer to Wizardry than Final Fantasy.

Would love for aweigh to post his opinion on this game, if he has played it.

 

Wew lad. You sure got me with that ad hominem. It means insult, in case you were wondering.

Ding, ding, ding! Finally, hours later, he gets it. When we start making mechanical distinctions between j or w RPGs we end up in situations where games like Pokemon and Digimon are wRPGs because they focus on player created parties, combat and dungeon crawling. Yet no one in their right mind would look at either of those and say "yeah, this is a wRPG". w/jRPG is more consistent as a label when pinpointing the origin of the software.

 

So now you are just denying SMT satisfy that just so that you can say the game you like is not JRPG.
The guy said "WRPG has more focus on player interaction with the world and less on the actual story" and SMT is not that by any way. The game railroaded as fuck, your choices means fuck over all and the only time your choice trully means something is when the game checks your aligment. Even so, you also can't do shit after that since you are forced to follow that path until the end.
Interaction with the world? SMT1 towns where also dungeons in some place, your interaction was just some person here and there to say something that you could completly ignore and would change nothing.
Your only argument for "focused on gameplay" is that during battles one can do more than just defeat demons, you can invite them to your party, but that is something that Pokemon and Yo-kai Watch has, should I also call them WRPG or because they are clearly aimed to children are JRPG? Keep in mind that Yo-kai Watch has more freedom on its storyline than SMT does.
SMTIV has the same thing SMT1 had, minus the first person view, and you can just "press X/O" to advance through the combat, shit has even auto-battle to save you from press X all the time.
Also, I don't understand what your "traditional JRPG" is supposed to mean. One of the reason we just call "JRPG" any RPG from Japan is because almost all of them is unlike the other, if we ignore anime graphics[then the list would decrease, but we would still have a fuckton of different kinds of JRPG see NES, SNES and PS1 who were not infected by anime graphics as JRPG are now].

 

The reason SMT1 has less exploring towns and cities and more going to dungeon is because most of towns are also dungeons. Otherwise we would have the same thing, that's why SMT2 had more towns than dungeons and why Nocture has more dungeons than towns. Because in all these three games, they are usually the same thing, they just decide to call this town a dungeon and that's it.

 

This is an ad hominem too, I presume you will understand.

No, we don't. Know why? Because western RPGs are simply "RPGs". It's the Japanese that created a very specific style of RPG on their own. Hence the term "JRPG". Not because the RPGs they make are Japanese. But because plenty of them have very specific traits common to them because of their Japanese origin. Which explains why a western dev can create a JRPG, and why a Japanese dev can create an "RPG" that doesn't share these common "japanese" traits: Dark Souls, Vagrant Story, among others.

Distinguishing between "wRPGs" and "jRPGs" makes no sense at all if the distinction is only based on country. And because the distinctions exist between "wRPGs" and "jRPGs" (look at the Internet if you don't believe me), yet there is no distinction between "usaRPG" and "polishRPG", then there's your first indication the Japanese make some RPGs that are clearly different than western games. Hence, jRPG.

Nothing more needs to be said.

 

I like Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy IX. Both JRPGs.

So no, it's not a "the games I like cannot be JRPGs".

 

I'm glad my cutting wit was not wasted on you. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

I never said it does, I just said it's more consistent, which is why I generally avoid using wRPG or jRPG altogether. What's wrong with using terms like FPP RT dungeon crawler or 3rd person TB story focused RPG? It's more informative to the player as it has less ambiguity than jRPG does.

 

have you ever heard of porn categories?
if the anime style is enough for a number of people to not touch the crap than it suffices as a criterion for a whole other genre. to me it seems obvious that it does, especially since that art style is also indicative for a lot of crappy design decisions i'd rather not put up with in my rpgs. it may work like a superstition, i may lose out on some obscure great jrpg i might be willing to play if i wasn't biased, but it works often enough for me not to care. (i'm still waiting for anyone to show me a good jrpg that doesn't suffer from the usual crap)
and all you have to show against this is what? a stupid parallel to rock subgenres?
you're a moron. admit, repent and improve.

 

One thing I noticed is that japs take FOREVER to get to the point and dialogue is often about things that are obvious. "Whoa, there are 3 dead guys here!". Like the "show, don't tell" is completely lost on then.

 

YES!

 

That JRPGs are simply RPGs from Japan is probably the most obvious use of the word. However, it is also completely useless as a genre. Telling me that a game was made in Japan, or by japanese people tells me nothing about its gameplay. It is about as useful a category as the literary category of everything that was written by people called John. So, I don't think this definition is very useful for this discussion.