A Guide to Japanese Role-Playing Games

[newtmonkey]

I read a bit more of this and my opinion has changed a bit.

There's a section toward the front of the book that lists the contributors and what they contributed. However, there are no bylines on individual articles themselves so it's a bit annoying to have to flip back and forth to figure out who wrote what. Having said that, it's clear from the contributors list that most of the book outside of the Japanese PC game articles was written by Kurt Kalata. There's 600+ games covered here, and there is no way he has played all of these games to completion (or in any depth), so a lot of the "reviews" just cover surface level stuff like setting/plot summaries or dry descriptions of the battle system.

Having said that, when he writes about a game he has actually played in-depth/completed, he often makes some insightful comments. For example, he praises the PSX remake of Final Fantasy I for retaining the game's original system/difficulty while offering an alternate easy mode, and criticizes later remakes (that do not even bother to offer the original difficulty/system as an option) as missing the entire point of the game. He also makes some good points on industry trends in general, such as criticizing the industry for wasting the potential of the CDROM format on voice acting and cinemas at the expense of, well, everything else. It's not amazing insightful commentary, but it's a step above your typical HG101 stuff.

I think overall he would have been better served by taking the approach used for The CRPG Book. He should have focused mainly on writing about games he's actually completed, and left the rest to other contributors.

 

[Lucumo]

Grauken Damn I thought you were posting your own guide

I actually got invited by one contributor early on to see whether I could contribute but I told him I didn't have time, though the real reason was how Kalata handled Tom and his translation of Goemon and I wasn't willing to work with such an asshole

Yeah this particular incident is gonna be a dealbreaker for the book for me.

Most definitely. Even deleted my HG101 account after that incident.

Directly from Bitmap Books
https://www.bitmapbooks.co.uk/products/the-crpg-book-a-guide-to-computer-role-playing-games

And if you just want the digital version free of charge
https://crpgbook.wordpress.com/ (https://crpgbook.files.wordpress.com/2019/04/crpg_book_2.0-1.pdf)

One word of warning about digital versions, since Bitmap Books is quite anal about them

In the beginning, Bitmap Books sold digital versions of their books, they've stopped doing that and only provide you with a digital copy if you buy the physical version from them. It's limited to 5 downloads and since 1 or 2 years ago they've started to copy the email and the name of the buyer on each goddamn-fucking page of each digital version of their books (basic Adobe PDF DRM I think), making the digital versions utterly useless (not useless because it's DRM, but useless because nothing looks better on some nice pixel pages with your own email address plastered all over the bottom). You also can't modify the digital versions anymore, delete a page or anything you expect in non-DRM-versions

Oh, don't remind me. I still very much remember getting the email last year, notifying me about an update to the .pdf where they fixed several of the issues. Opened the document and got greeted by that watermark everywhere, on every single page (artwork ones included). Needless to say, I sent an email, thanked for the update but also asked whether there is any way to get rid of the obnoxious watermark. Reply was: "No, we are now stamping our PDFs as standard. This does not interfere with the text. These PDFs are free bonus items that are not designed to replace the actual book. I suggest reading the physical book for the best experience." Makes you roll your eyes. Well, in the end I just got rid of them my way, so that I can enjoy a clean reading/viewing experience.

If we are throwing in other books as potential alternate reading, I really enjoyed the Untold History of Japanese Game Developers:

The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers: Gold Edition eBook : Szczepaniak, S.M.G: Amazon.com.au: Kindle Store

Really? REALLY??

That book was an utter mess to read with no clear driving vision and came across like a hundred random interviews by a guy who had no clue how to properly interview or pull all the interviews into a sensible order. What I expected going into this was to get a sense of history of Jap game dev instead halfway into this I was wondering why I still bothered to read, there was no rhyme and reason to any of it. Despite its flaws, the JRPG book is ten times more useful or coherent than this was

Fair enough - I will admit the first time I read it I thought it was incoherent and struggled to follow / find a line of thought, but after reading it a few times I got into it and felt I learnt some stuff. I don't know - it was kind of like the Anthony Bourdain of japanese games...struggled with it for a while but it had something..maybe?

Did you read part 2 and 3? I never bothered after the first one. If you did, did they improve?

I would like to know that as well. Had always intended to buy the books but for some reason it never came to be. So, the question remains whether they are worth it overall.

 

[felipepepe]

I just got the JRPG Book, haven't had time to read much yet, but I'm very happy that Kurt and Bitmap Books managed to make that deal work, and that we FINALLY have a resource on JRPGs in English.

However, I think some people were expecting to the "CRPG Book but with JRPGs", while now some new readers are coming into the CRPG Book expecting a western version of Kurt's books. They both come from a very different places and people... I also get bothered by the lack of a clear timeline, but I guess he preferred to show the evolution of individual series, rather than the genre as a whole. I suspect that might resonate with his audience better, it speaks a lot that there is a RPG Codex but not a JRPG Codex, as they usually are more faithful to specific series.

Did you read part 2 and 3? I never bothered after the first one. If you did, did they improve?

I would like to know that as well. Had always intended to buy the books but for some reason it never came to be. So, the question remains whether they are worth it overall.

Honestly, they get even worse... the content is always in the same style, but the editing (or lack of) starts to get deranged. Part 2 he begins saying that no one appreciated his efforts and just want to shit on Japanese devs, part 3 he says the book only got released because his brother sponsored it, he hates the book and hates everyone. Seriously, this is the intro:

I loathe these books and this world which allows imbeciles to rise above works of substance and genuine value. There are 800'000 words which fill the 1'400 pages of my books. If the word anger was etched on every micro-millimetre of ink of those hundreds of thousands of letters it would not equal one-millionth of the anger I feel at having been denied what I am owed for creating these books.

Fuck him, I had fun with the CRPG Book.

Anyway, if you really want those interviews, I think he sold the rights or something because they were re-translated and re-eddited into a new book called Japansoft: An Oral Story: https://readonlymemory.vg/shop/book/japansoft-an-oral-history/

That one I actually recommend for enthusiasts, just know that it focus mostly on more obscure & early Japanese games and it's basically pure text with a few Japanese images & photos with no translation or context.

BTW, I'm still working on an updated CRPG Book, adding stuff like Chinese & Korean RPGs, games I missed like SpellForce and a few recent entries like Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Kingdom Come. Asian RPGs turned out to be a massive rabbit hole that I'm having fun exploring, so don't expect anything this year...

 

[Grauken]

I just got the JRPG Book, haven't had time to read much yet, but I'm very happy that Kurt and Bitmap Books managed to make that deal work, and that we FINALLY have a resource on JRPGs in English.

However, I think some people were expecting to the "CRPG Book but with JRPGs", while now some new readers are coming into the CRPG Book expecting a western version of Kurt's books. They both come from a very different places and people.

It's a good reference but it does lack the personal touch that so many reviews in the CRPG book had and which made it much more compelling to read for me. Though I can understand if some people prefer a more clinical, detached approach

 

[felipepepe]

BTW, if anyone is interested in Japanese interviews and speaks Spanish, there's a series of three books called Sensei: diálogos con maestros del videojuego japonés, from a dude called Luis García Navarro, that worked in Japan as game translator:

It doesn't have as many devs as Untold History, but the interviews are much less awkward and flow much better, since the dude actually speaks Japanese.

He does interviews interesting people like Masato Kato, founder of Nihon Falcom, who reveals that Richard Garriot came to Japan with his brother to do a deal to publish Ultima in the country, but "the conditions he asked for were very hard to comply".

 

[newtmonkey]

I am now 200 pages into this, and my opinion has changed yet again.

It's clear that the author has not played/completed the vast, vast majority of games covered here. Every article starts with 1-2 paragraphs of plot/character summary (so you can skip it, especially if you plan to play the game), and then continues with several paragraphs describing the combat system. Most articles end there, and don't even begin to discuss whether the changes made in a game in a long running series work or not (beyond just "story is good" or "story is dumb"). It was quite a struggle to get through the "Tales" series articles, which were pages and pages of "in this one, you can chain a FATE COMBO into a CROSS COMBO after performing an ARTE ATTACK to open up even more combo possibilities!!!!!!!"

All commentary is completely dropped after the major 16-bit series are covered, and reading it cover to cover (not the best idea) feels like binging wikipedia articles. I guess it works fine as a coffee table book to just flip through as you look at the screens and maybe read an article here or there as it strikes your fancy.

I also find the writing style to be jarring. The author uses UK English spelling, punctuation, and (rarely) slang throughout, even though he is an American and otherwise writes like one. Perhaps this was the work of the publisher, but who knows.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

I am now 200 pages into this, and my opinion has changed yet again.

It's clear that the author has not played/completed the vast, vast majority of games covered here. Every article starts with 1-2 paragraphs of plot/character summary (so you can skip it, especially if you plan to play the games), and then continues with several paragraphs describing the combat system of game. Most articles end there, and don't even begin to discuss whether the changes made in a game in a long running series work or not (beyond just "story is good" or "story is dumb"). It was quite a struggle to get through the "Tales" series articles, which were pages and pages of "in this one, you can chain a FATE COMBO into a CROSS COMBO after performing an ARTE ATTACK to open up even more combo possibilities!!!!!!!"

All commentary is completely dropped after the major 16-bit series are covered, and reading it cover to cover (not the best idea) feels like binging wikipedia articles. I guess it works fine as a coffee table book to just flip through as you look at the screens and maybe read an article here or there as it strikes your fancy.

I also find the writing style to be jarring. The author uses UK English spelling, punctuation, and (rarely) slang throughout, even though he is an American and otherwise writes like one. Perhaps this was the work of the publisher, but who knows.

Is the Poibos article any good? The information about it is pretty scarce in English, wondering if there's at least one decent source of information about it.

 

[Grauken]

I am now 200 pages into this, and my opinion has changed yet again.

It's clear that the author has not played/completed the vast, vast majority of games covered here. Every article starts with 1-2 paragraphs of plot/character summary (so you can skip it, especially if you plan to play the games), and then continues with several paragraphs describing the combat system of game. Most articles end there, and don't even begin to discuss whether the changes made in a game in a long running series work or not (beyond just "story is good" or "story is dumb"). It was quite a struggle to get through the "Tales" series articles, which were pages and pages of "in this one, you can chain a FATE COMBO into a CROSS COMBO after performing an ARTE ATTACK to open up even more combo possibilities!!!!!!!"

All commentary is completely dropped after the major 16-bit series are covered, and reading it cover to cover (not the best idea) feels like binging wikipedia articles. I guess it works fine as a coffee table book to just flip through as you look at the screens and maybe read an article here or there as it strikes your fancy.

I also find the writing style to be jarring. The author uses UK English spelling, punctuation, and (rarely) slang throughout, even though he is an American and otherwise writes like one. Perhaps this was the work of the publisher, but who knows.

Is the Poibos article any good? The information about it is pretty scarce in English, wondering if there's at least one decent source of information about it.

I can send you the page if you want

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

I am now 200 pages into this, and my opinion has changed yet again.

It's clear that the author has not played/completed the vast, vast majority of games covered here. Every article starts with 1-2 paragraphs of plot/character summary (so you can skip it, especially if you plan to play the games), and then continues with several paragraphs describing the combat system of game. Most articles end there, and don't even begin to discuss whether the changes made in a game in a long running series work or not (beyond just "story is good" or "story is dumb"). It was quite a struggle to get through the "Tales" series articles, which were pages and pages of "in this one, you can chain a FATE COMBO into a CROSS COMBO after performing an ARTE ATTACK to open up even more combo possibilities!!!!!!!"

All commentary is completely dropped after the major 16-bit series are covered, and reading it cover to cover (not the best idea) feels like binging wikipedia articles. I guess it works fine as a coffee table book to just flip through as you look at the screens and maybe read an article here or there as it strikes your fancy.

I also find the writing style to be jarring. The author uses UK English spelling, punctuation, and (rarely) slang throughout, even though he is an American and otherwise writes like one. Perhaps this was the work of the publisher, but who knows.

Is the Poibos article any good? The information about it is pretty scarce in English, wondering if there's at least one decent source of information about it.

I can send you the page if you want

I'll be grateful if you do.

 

[Viata]

For JRPG, the best one can do is either finding sites that have translated interviews from old japanese magazine or just read those interview yourself:
https://archive.org/details/gamemagazines?and[]=languageSorter:"Japanese"&sort=-week&page=2
https://archive.org/details/@gamebookscaner
https://archive.org/search.php?quer...geSorter:"Japanese"&and[]=languageSorter:"Jp"
https://archive.org/search.php?query=Gamest&and[]=mediatype:"texts"
The only problem is finding the interviews related to JRPG instead of any japanese game.

 

[lightbane]

I skimmed several reviews of this book and the implications seem to agree with what's been said here. You guys also missed the most important thing compared to the CRPG book (unless you said it already and I didn't notice): IT IS NOT AVAILABLE FOR FREE.
You can't find an online free edition anywhere, even if it was limited. You must pay, or else, in contrast to feli's work (or I haven't been able to find this JRPG book online anywhere), which is a damn shame because I wanted to skim through this book just to compare it with the CRPG one, but no dice, and I'm not going to pay that history revisionist lunatic.
Not even the usual pirate sites I know seem to care about this one.

 

[Grauken]

I skimmed several reviews of this book and the implications seem to agree with what's been said here. You guys also missed the most important thing compared to the CRPG book (unless you said it already and I didn't notice): IT IS NOT AVAILABLE FOR FREE.
You can't find an online free edition anywhere, even if it was limited. You must pay, or else, in contrast to feli's work (or I haven't been able to find this JRPG book online anywhere), which is a damn shame because I wanted to skim through this book just to compare it with the CRPG one, but no dice, and I'm not going to pay that history revisionist lunatic.
Not even the usual pirate sites I know seem to care about this one.

The reason you won't find pirate copies is that the only way to get a digital version is to buy a print version, and then they put your name (or the buyer's name) on every page as DRM, which is both annoying from a visual viewpoint and also hard to make a pirate version, as you had to clean up the whole pdf of your name (and in many cases it overlays artwork, etc). Easier to scan this, which is also a lot of work if you already have the print version

 

[Viata]

(and in many cases it overlays artwork, etc).

Amazing work they did there.

 

[Grauken]

(and in many cases it overlays artwork, etc).

Amazing work they did there.

I checked again, so it's not that egregious here as in other bitmap books, but it would still be annoying to strip out 6xx pages from the DRM. You prolly could automate that, but why bother

 

[lightbane]

Thanks for the info! Explains a lot and shows how feli's project is better IMO. Still, a shame, I wanted to give it a look to this one at some point in the future. Does it cover RPG Maker games to some extent as well?
These have potential, if you can find the true gems in the never-ending flood of RPGM games.

 

[Grauken]

Does it cover RPG Maker games to some extent as well?

No

 

[newtmonkey]

I've been slowly going through this book, and I'm now toward the end (action RPG section). Although the book started out suprisingly decent, it quickly became an awful slog. I think most of these reviews/articles/whatever were written by people who didn't actually complete (even play?) the games they wrote about, because they are so superficial.

Every article is the same. One or two paragraphs summarizing the story, one paragraph mentioning random quirky stuff ("in this game, you ride a potato!!!!!!" etc.), one paragraph about how grinding is required (and how "all" games back in the day were like this) and how no games before the current year have aged well, and then a summary paragraph on whether the story is "good."

I've actually completed a good number of these Japanese roleplaying games, and I have yet to find a single game (outside of Dragon Quest 1) that requires you to sit there and grind to progress. I suspect that when these writers say "grind" they actually mean "do anything other than read dialog boxes."

What is even the point of this book? If you want story summaries and screenshots, you've got wikipedia and mobygames. You are not gonna stumble on some hidden gem by reading this book, because every game prior to 2020 or whatever is archaic and stupid (unless the story is "good") according to these people.

 

[lightbane]

The writers behind HardcoreGaming were infected by the Woke virus and it seems to show from what you guys here say.

 

[AdamReith]

Sounds more like they had an underlying condition known as retarded hack syndrome to which the woke virus is a prolific comorbitity.

 

[lightbane]

Not sure, they used to be good until suddenly something changed by the end of the 00s. It felt like a gradual process.