After playing a lot of JRPGs, most CRPGs became tedious

[Anonona]

Could someone sell me on Nocturne? I've only played Person 3 FES. Not sure how much it would have in common with Nocturne, but I enjoyed the demon collection and the battles enough to beat it. The story was decent, but the high school shit nearly made me quit about 1/2 to 2/3's into the game. I can almost put up with skimming the dialogue to get the gist of the story, but having to actively participate in a high school visual novel was horrible.

But combat was fun and demon collection was fun. Dungeons were bland as fuck but that didn't bother me too much. I've heard good things about Nocturne, but I'd like the trusted codexer's to sell me on it.

Nocturne keeps the demon collection, and you form your party of 4 with them. History is minimalistic, with many esoteric themes, a post-apocatic tale of the few chosen trying to rebuild the world and you play as the wild card that will turn the tables one way or the other. Very little dialogue, great atmosphere, the press-turn combat system is great, full party control.

 

[Hassar]

I think it is more tedious to play through a game with a predictable storyline and unoriginal characters, but is dressed up with colorful graphics designed - for the most part - to appeal to kids. Those games great mindless fun, but IMO, running different characters through Fallout was way more engaging than trying to replay Breath of Fire 2.

 

[NerevarineKing]

I have fond memories of many NES/SNES tracks, but they're not something I'd listen to on their own.

I can also listen to Shoji Meguro for hours.

Shoji Meguro didn't actually do the music for SMT4 for whatever reason. He's definitely one of my favorite video game composers and he such a variety of awesome tracks.

 

[Falksi]

I really enjoy both, just give me the best of both genres.

Half the key to enjoying games is cycling them as you feel to keep things fresh. And part of that for me is also playing the right popamole games alongside either CRPGs or JRPGs to break things up when I fancy it.

Btw, if you're into JRPGs you really should check out:

• Shining Force 2 (1 is worth a go too, just not as good, but maybe try that first)
• Lufia 2
• The Tales Series
• Lost Odyssey
• Shadow Hearts Series
• The Last Remnant

Every cunt bangs on about Chrono Trigger & FF6, but I prefer those listed above.

don't get me wrong I like my FF6 but Shadow Hearts 1 & 2 are fucking awesome and Lost Odyssey is amazing. Haven't touched Shadow Hearts 3 yet but I hear it's hit or miss. Do yourselves a favor, if you only have time for one or two of the RPGs on Falksi's list try those in particular

3 is a let down compared to the first 2 Shadow Hearts game, but still worth a blast.

Have you tried Tales of Berseria?

Unfortunately not yet, I haven't played many Tales games to be honest. I think I've only played a little of Tales of Phantasia, a little of some dungeon crawler spinoff on the PSP, and one run of Tales of Symphonia which was really good and I enjoyed it but out of your list Lost Odyssey and the Shadow Hearts games especially struck me more than ToS did. But that's because I like things a little darker and ToS is a more typical JRPG outing I would say.

Oh and I think I beat Tales of Eternia as well? It was so long ago it was kind of forgettable, but it was the one that came out in the US as Tales of Destiny 2 on the PS1 but it actually wasn't Tales of Destiny 2? it was the one where there were two worlds or something.

honestly I had more exposure to Star Ocean as a kid because Star Ocean 2 was fantastic

Tales of Berseria will definitely be worth a visit after Lost Odyssey & Shadow Hearts. They definitely have the darker tone, but Tales of Berseria is all about demonic revenge and playing as a wide-eyed innocent girl, who turns into a single minded demonic killer amongst a group of villains. Definitely check it out when you're done with those dude.

 

[Thac0]

Let me invade this forum to ask a question. Is Final Fantasy 12 any good? I've been on the fence with it for a while.

Its biggest draw is a much better and deeper AI scripting system than Dragon Age Origins.
It basically has rtwp combat which is quite tedious to control manually, so you need to make nice scripts for combat to be fun, but then it can be very good. A high point.

Story is slow and political, not everyone likes it. Also the cast is pretty bad, they had a nice core cast, but then the board of directors intervened and made a random ass boy and his girlfried the main characters instead with no connections to the story while the former core cast is delegated to side characters.

Worst thing is the area design, areas are fucking huge and sprawling with mobs. The game is often called a single player MMO for that reason.

To top it off the game has some nice flair, a cool world and a cool guild and hunting system. Overall I'd say it is worth it as a gameplay focussed FF, especially with Zodiac Age.

If you do check it out also give The Last Remnant a look, it is made by JRPG genius Kawazu, and was basically co developed with FFXII. A lot of similarities, and the entire game is a bit more high concept.

Paul Romero and Rob Kin

Mea Culpa, those are indeed better than Soule. I mostly count HoMM towards strategy, the music is good that it certainly makes the comparison less one sided for crpgs if they count.

 

[mogwaimon]

I really enjoy both, just give me the best of both genres.

Half the key to enjoying games is cycling them as you feel to keep things fresh. And part of that for me is also playing the right popamole games alongside either CRPGs or JRPGs to break things up when I fancy it.

Btw, if you're into JRPGs you really should check out:

• Shining Force 2 (1 is worth a go too, just not as good, but maybe try that first)
• Lufia 2
• The Tales Series
• Lost Odyssey
• Shadow Hearts Series
• The Last Remnant

Every cunt bangs on about Chrono Trigger & FF6, but I prefer those listed above.

don't get me wrong I like my FF6 but Shadow Hearts 1 & 2 are fucking awesome and Lost Odyssey is amazing. Haven't touched Shadow Hearts 3 yet but I hear it's hit or miss. Do yourselves a favor, if you only have time for one or two of the RPGs on Falksi's list try those in particular

3 is a let down compared to the first 2 Shadow Hearts game, but still worth a blast.

Have you tried Tales of Berseria?

Unfortunately not yet, I haven't played many Tales games to be honest. I think I've only played a little of Tales of Phantasia, a little of some dungeon crawler spinoff on the PSP, and one run of Tales of Symphonia which was really good and I enjoyed it but out of your list Lost Odyssey and the Shadow Hearts games especially struck me more than ToS did. But that's because I like things a little darker and ToS is a more typical JRPG outing I would say.

Oh and I think I beat Tales of Eternia as well? It was so long ago it was kind of forgettable, but it was the one that came out in the US as Tales of Destiny 2 on the PS1 but it actually wasn't Tales of Destiny 2? it was the one where there were two worlds or something.

honestly I had more exposure to Star Ocean as a kid because Star Ocean 2 was fantastic

Tales of Berseria will definitely be worth a visit after Lost Odyssey & Shadow Hearts. They definitely have the darker tone, but Tales of Berseria is all about demonic revenge and playing as a wide-eyed innocent girl, who turns into a single minded demonic killer amongst a group of villains. Definitely check it out when you're done with those dude.

My dance card is filled up a bit right now but maybe I'll bump Berseria up the ol' backlog a bit if it's 'that' good, thanks!

 

[Rean]

You ain't white if you don't like JRPGs.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

well the quality control and music bit are certainly true, many of the CRPG classics touted by the Codex end up requiring fan patches to fix gamebreaking bugs and you'd be hard pressed to find a CRPG composer with the cred of Uematsu or Shimomura, IMO.

Yeah, Uematsu is filthy, filthy plagarist. Pretty sure there are more than a few CRPGs with a similar pedigree, I think there's a thread around here dedicated to those somewhere. Mind you, they don't really reach the quality of the material Uemtasu stole, but then, few would, when you're stealing from the best.

 

[Pots Talos]

Yeah, Uematsu is filthy, filthy plagarist. Pretty sure there are more than a few CRPGs with a similar pedigree, I think there's a thread around here dedicated to those somewhere. Mind you, they don't really reach the quality of the material Uemtasu stole, but then, few would, when you're stealing from the best.

I've never heard about Uematsu plagiarism. What did he plagiarize?

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk

 

[mogwaimon]

yea I'm curious to know this as well

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Really? Have you been living under a rock? Seems like the only time I ever hear something about the dude its accusing him of ripping off some Led Zeppelin song or something. Most of its gone in one ear and out the other, so the only one I distinctly remember is this:

Suspiciously similar sounding song, from years earlier:

Triumvirat's on the obscure side, but having heard similar cases in the past, there's no doubt in my mind the guy's taken from more than one forgotten '70s prog band. They're just waiting to be found, because the audiences for JRPGs and prog rock don't interact much.

 

[Pots Talos]

That isn't plagiarism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastiche

 

[mogwaimon]

you don't even have the right themes linked, the Capua song supposedly related to one of the sections of Dancing Mad, not Decisive Battle. At least according to this tvtropes page that you probably pulled that from https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/SuspiciouslySimilarSong/FinalFantasy

of course this is the same page that thinks Locke's theme...



...is the same as the Back to the Future theme...



so....yea. Uematsu does take inspiration from other songs often from the looks of it, but he transforms them enough so they're more like homages/mishmashes than a direct copy, which is what MANY musicians do (see pastiche above). Especially rap artists, who directly rip samples from songs to compose their beats so...if Uematsu is full on plagiarism in your mind I'd like to hear your opinion on that particular practice. Hell it's not even confined to rap, there's a song by an old punk/emo band called On the Might of Princes that has a sound bite ripped directly from Marvel vs Capcom at the beginning as well.

 

[Palomides]

Uematsu has been quite open about his influences, for example citing specifically a part of Stravinsky's works that he took and used to write 'One-Winged Angel'.

 

[Dustin542]

Also well, Corridors of Time exists.

Every track in Chrono Trigger is pretty great. Uematsu's best work imo along with FF VI and VII.

I think that was done by Yasunori Mitsuda. They both worked on that game.

Also he made the Robo's Theme sound like Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up despite claiming to never have heard it before composing for the game.

 

[JDR13]

No. While I believe that taste in art is subjective, I also believe that art has an objective quality. Van Gogh is objectively better than some random street artist you never heard of.
There are like five CRPG composers of note who can wrestle with the Eastern giants. Jeremy Soule, Marcin Przybyłowicz, Kirill Pokrovsky, Michael Hoenig. Then you add the guys who have made only one series, but that one has pretty kickass music. Guillaume David for 40k Mechanicus, Jon Everist for Shadowrun, Kai Rosenkranz for Gothic.
That is pretty much it for good music in Western rpgs. In almost all crpgs coming out you might as well mute the music, because it is just some ambient orchestra bullcrap without any meaning.

Now for all of the great CRPG soundtrack I'd say that there is only one who can actually wrestle with the Japanese top of all time musicians, and that is Soule. If I keep posting JRPG soundtracks here, even if I keep limiting myself to 1/composer, I will again be severily limited by the 5 media embeds per post that the codex has.
If I boot up a random CRPG I expect the soundtrack to be nothing worth remembering. If I boot up a random JRPG I can expect a soundtrack that is at least as good as Shadowrun.

It's easy to tell that your view simply comes from having a strong preference for the style. Talking about how many JRPG soundtracks you can post doesn't mean they're great, it just means you like them. It's cool that you dig the style that much, but trying to act like every JRPG soundtrack is some masterwork only makes you look like a silly fanboy. I've been playing them since the NES and Sega Master System, so I know that's not the case.

Then again, I'm talking to someone sporting a Final Fantasy avatar with the tag 'JRPG ambassador', so it's no surprise you think that music is better.

 

[JDR13]

I used to play a ton of JRPGs when I was a teenager and now almost exclusively play cRPGs. I think JRPGs followed the exact same trajectory as cRPGs though, there is the 1990s and early 2ks golden age, PS2 has some nice ones but quality is going down and then it's one good game once in a while. I feel like a lot of people who never played JRPGs before get into games like Trails or Tales because they release on PC but for me those are the blandest shit. I used to like tales but literally every game in that series is the same.
The ones I remember the most fondly are :
-FFVI and FFVII: One being the typical epic saga and the other a more simple but elegant personal story. Both are a bit too long for my taste though. Length is always relative. Story can only carry length of a game so much, I find gameplay is what makes a game able to go in the 40+hours without becoming boring. (Small mention for FFX's turn base system which I liked a lot)
-FFtactics/TacticsOgre/FireEmblem games/SF2: Japanese Tactical turn based RPG tend to be really good imo. FF tactics has a problem of being a bit grindy early game and then break the entire purpose of the grind by giving you a super OP character that can solo entire maps in the midgame.
-Valkyrie Profile : Probably my single favorite JRPG. Really cool art (music and visuals), interesting gameplay, and great story (although you need a guide to get to the route that reveals the plot proper). The sequel is much, much worse.

Your path sounds similar to my own. I played JRPGs almost exclusively from the NES/SMS era through the SNES/Genesis and PS1/Saturn/N64 eras. It wasn't until the PS2/Xbox days that I started to gravitate more towards Western RPGs. Baldur's Gate got me hooked, and then Gothic and Morrowind put the nail in the coffin.

I just got tired of the grind that many JRPGs felt like.. as well as how linear most of them seemed. I also grew tired of the art style which became even more cartoonish and anime influenced in the PS2 era.

I still play them now and then, but I'm more likely to play re-releases of older titles than newer ones.

 

[Sreggin Etah I]

dressed up with colorful graphics designed - for the most part - to appeal to kids.

(Sigh!), i've been saying this from time to time, to people who complains about Anime, Cartoons, and JRPGs art-styles, and games with simple graphics, that their art-style/graphics is abstract. When you're playing a ASCII Roguelike for example: you're not seing T's, fighting D's, using S's and A's. You are:

Spoiler

seeing Trees!

Spoiler

Fighting Dragons!

Spoiler

Using Swords and Axes!

When you read this: "The kraken grabs Wolverine with his tentacles!"

You're not seeing just letters and words, you're seeing something like this:

Spoiler

When you're playing:

Spoiler

FFII Behemoth

You're seeing:

Spoiler

FFII official artwork, this is how the game is supposed to look like, if you want to.

Use your imagination and visualization skills to fill the gaps, like reading a book!

 

[JDR13]

I think it's undeniable that JRPG have more memorable music. It's also a different philosophy. cRPGs are more formulaic in their approach to world-building and 'immersion' and they write background music that supports a scene but also doesn't 'intrude' too much. JRPGs go all out all the time so yeah, they end up really memorable sountracks.

More memorable in both good and bad ways. I agree JRPG music is more prominent and in-your-face, but that's a double-edged sword. It's great if it's a track I like but all the more annoying if it's one I don't care for.

Also well, Corridors of Time exists.

Every track in Chrono Trigger is pretty great. Uematsu's best work imo along with FF VI and VII.

I think that was done by Yasunori Mitsuda. They both worked on that game.

Also he made the Robo's Theme sound like Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up despite claiming to never have heard it before composing for the game.

Yeah, I remember reading that Uematsu took over for the other composer when he got sick. That's pretty funny about Robo's Theme. I somehow never noticed it before, but you're absolutely right.

 

[Thac0]

No. While I believe that taste in art is subjective, I also believe that art has an objective quality. Van Gogh is objectively better than some random street artist you never heard of.
There are like five CRPG composers of note who can wrestle with the Eastern giants. Jeremy Soule, Marcin Przybyłowicz, Kirill Pokrovsky, Michael Hoenig. Then you add the guys who have made only one series, but that one has pretty kickass music. Guillaume David for 40k Mechanicus, Jon Everist for Shadowrun, Kai Rosenkranz for Gothic.
That is pretty much it for good music in Western rpgs. In almost all crpgs coming out you might as well mute the music, because it is just some ambient orchestra bullcrap without any meaning.

Now for all of the great CRPG soundtrack I'd say that there is only one who can actually wrestle with the Japanese top of all time musicians, and that is Soule. If I keep posting JRPG soundtracks here, even if I keep limiting myself to 1/composer, I will again be severily limited by the 5 media embeds per post that the codex has.
If I boot up a random CRPG I expect the soundtrack to be nothing worth remembering. If I boot up a random JRPG I can expect a soundtrack that is at least as good as Shadowrun.

Talking about how many JRPG soundtracks you can post doesn't mean they're great

Talking about how many European medieval paintings you can post doesn't mean they are great, it just means you like them more compared to African medieval paintings.

Dude there just is much more high quality work in Japanese soundtracks. I have at least a bit of a background in music, with a few years of formal guitar training, and saying that the two genres are equal and that it comes down to taste is cope.

Yes there are a few great Western rpg soundtracks, but the average and the median quality is incomparably higher for Japanese ones.

You either need to disbelieve in the objectivity of art or mention enough western soundtracks worth listening to to claim otherwise.

 

[JDR13]

Talking about how many European medieval paintings you can post doesn't mean they are great, it just means you like them more compared to African medieval paintings.

Hey... now you're starting to get it.

Dude there just is much more high quality work in Japanese soundtracks. I have at least a bit of a background in music, with a few years of formal guitar training, and saying that the two genres are equal and that it comes down to taste is cope.

Cool story there, Eddie Van Halen.

Yes there are a few great Western rpg soundtracks, but the average and the median quality is incomparably higher for Japanese ones.

You either need to disbelieve in the objectivity of art or mention enough western soundtracks worth listening to to claim otherwise.

You mean to you the quality is better, and that's fine. Insisting that your opinion is fact though only makes the fanboy goggles all the more apparent.

 

[Thac0]

Hey... now you're starting to get it.

Oh I am sorry, you actually disbelieve in the objectivity of art.
I won't waste any time with this any more.

Just let me link you a little exhibition, which juxtaposes traditional African art with that from the Renaissance.

It is called "Beyond Compare" ....

 

[JDR13]

Eh? I guess you didn't get it after all. Oh well...

 

[Thac0]

@ Nubuo Uematsu plagiarist:
I actually found the source for this claim:
http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=64077&PN=2
It was never a plagiarist claim on the first place, Nobuo Uematsu is fairly well known in prog circles. After all he openly cites his influences from Elton John to specifically prog rock.
http://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=11061
One of Uematsu's albums actually managed to make it onto one of ye typical nerd boards.

 

[volklore]

I think it's undeniable that JRPG have more memorable music. It's also a different philosophy. cRPGs are more formulaic in their approach to world-building and 'immersion' and they write background music that supports a scene but also doesn't 'intrude' too much. JRPGs go all out all the time so yeah, they end up really memorable sountracks.

More memorable in both good and bad ways. I agree JRPG music is more prominent and in-your-face, but that's a double-edged sword. It's great if it's a track I like but all the more annoying if it's one I don't care for.

Yeah I agree. JRPGs also rarely use silent tracks and the music theme of an area just keeps on looping (+ transition to combat / fight music/ victory music). There is an element of music fatigue that sometimes happens when playing JRPGs that never happens in cRPGs.