Can someone summarize to me the appeal of JRPGs?

[Ayreos]

To reply to the original question, it's atmosphere.
As much as western classic RPGs have some amazingly well-written and designed games, none of them have the atmosphere of games like Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest. The worlds in JRPGs are SOMETIMES imaginative and often full of hope and youthful friendship where bear fuckery not only isn't possible, but so far beyond contemplation it appears to not be real at all. JRPGs are for people who can't give a shit whether Han Solo shot first or not, but instead like to immerse in worlds where you're in a group of teenagers fighting against God and going wherever you want, yet still being surprised at every turn. Perhaps because our lives have enough dense and gritty narrative as is, so we don't find ourselves captivated by more of that in videogames.

Furthermore, JRPGs SOMETIMES associate imaginative settings to mechanics that reward and encourage exploration and discovery. That's another component atmosphere that is often missing in WRPGS. I greatly enjoyed Kingmaker, and the exploration was great fun, just like say, in BG. But at no point it really surprised me, or captivated me like nothing else did. It was all somewhat predictable. More crypts and forests with bears, more caves with scattered bones, more dusty ruins and wizard towers with bookcases and spiders. Even Morrowind, with its fabulous setting and atmosphere, isn't that visually exotic or auditorily unprecedented. You still trudge through caves, bones, darkness. Now compare it to Junon, or the derelict Submarine in FF7, the research island or the lunatic pandora in FF8. The ruined world in FF6, or a whole other dimension in FF5. The player goes the moon in FF4 and in space in Grandia too. You can blast the battlefield with summons and geomancy in FFT, or turn into a magic dragon knight in Legend of Dragoon. Often you fight actual insane gods, each wilder than the previous one. Even unknown Games like Granstream Saga, Legend of Legaia and Dark Cloud 2 or Mystic Ark have settings that haven't really been replicated in WRPGs. I mean, the first place you visit in the latter is a desert world where two large ships inhabited by sentient cats have ran aground, yet their respective crews wage a bitter war against each other. And that's one of multiple worlds.

Airships are not rare in western fantasy, so why is riding on one so much rarer in WRPGs? You can't ignore that before cultural decline hit all developed countries, the Japanese were simply far less restrained with their fantasy and were willing to try more with it. As a kid i read the Neverending Story, and Micheal Ende's world really wanted to describe a classic JRPG's world, but couldn't really come too close or go too far with it. So when i played by my first JRPG i got immediately what that writer tried, but couldn't fully give me. Sadly decline hit those games too. Today's JRPGs are even lazier than WRPGs and even the likes of Square Enix cannot figure out just why every developer with soul abandoned their company and retired.

 

[Thalstarion]

It's a genre that used to be a lot more adventurous, bold and interesting before it started almost exclusively painting by the numbers in order to appeal to Californian sensibilities.

It's unfortunate but I do not expect another game like Breath of Fire IV, the original Final Fantasy VII or Shadow Hearts. Any attempts at recreating something inspired by them are just so terribly sanitised and preachy in a way that reduces everything to black and white morality.

I used to love the genre due to compelling/charismatic antagonists who quite often had some sympathetic qualities buried beneath the surface. The likes of Beatrix from Final Fantasy IX, Seifer from Final Fantasy VIII, Fou Lu from Breath of Fire IV and many others.

We rarely get characters like them who have the potential to survive the events of the game because the likes of Square Enix are obsessed with 'ethics' now, so if a character does something 'bad' then they're unceremoniously killed off.

 

[luj1]

Clearly a lot of the appeal is centered around simplicity and infantilism

 

[Damned Registrations]

Clearly a lot of the appeal is centered around simplicity and infantilism

Yes, I do enjoy a good, simple RPG system now and again.

So much easier than crpgs. I need to SUBTRACT an enemies AC from my THAC0 to find a number I'm trying to roll over? What is this, math class?

 

[JarlFrank]

But why do they all look like kids?

 

[Damned Registrations]

But why do they all look like kids?

Having been in Japan for a couple months now: Everyone looks like kids or raisins. There's almost no in between.



Try to guess this guy's age. I dare you.

 

[jungl]

Clearly a lot of the appeal is centered around simplicity and infantilism

ya pretty much Sometimes you just want to play a game where you collect robot animals min max the best pilots with the appropriate skill set and weapon loadout for them to see huge numbers.

 

[Elttharion]

But why do they all look like kids?

Because they are cute and funny characters

 

[Machocruz]

As a kid i read the Neverending Story, and Micheal Ende's world really wanted to describe a classic JRPG's world, but couldn't really come too close or go too far with it. So when i played by my first JRPG i got immediately what that writer tried, but couldn't fully give me.

Not sure I understand. The book predates all JRPGs, I don't know what you mean by wanting to describe something that came after.

But I've only seen the movie, which I didn't think was lacking compared to JPRG worlds of a similar level of civilization. If the film is faithful representation of the book's world, I don't think the writer tried something and missed the mark, he just arrived at a level of things he thought would be appropriate together. The world feels fairly consistent and well realized. Some JRPGs go "too far" and are kitchen sink messes, the elements make no sense together, try-hard epicness and grandeur, lolrandom shit, etc. TNS is fanciful compared to typical medieval-esque, western fantasy, with reality interacting with fantasy, hero with American indian aesthetic, giant rock dude riding giant rock bike, snail mount, sphinxes that shoot death rays out of their eyes, dog dragon, etc. Speaking of snail mounts, I'm big disappointed we still only get a horse to ride in most fantasy games. Boooriiing.

However, I agree strongly that JRPG worlds are overall more exotic and creative than WRPGs. I like to say they have more "personality", or are livelier than dry western games. The are more likely to create an exotic fantasy world like The Dark Crystal, a film made by westerners, than western game devs.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Not sure I understand. The book predates all JRPGs, I don't know what you mean by wanting to describe something that came after.

Perhaps the phrase he was looking for was 'ahead of his time'. While people (rightfully) deride most modern storytelling for only referencing recent works, when it comes to building an exotic world, jrpgs have had the advantage of a few decades of pop culture to be able to use as reference in addition to classic stuff, and as shorthand for the audience. TNS has to put in the work to explicitly state where all these wacky things are coming from with a big framing device, but a jrpg doesn't need to explain why awesome giant bird mounts exist or magic crystals control the weather. The bar for 'exotic' has been moved higher with time, at least among people that grew up reading fantasy.

 

[JarlFrank]

Pre-Tolkien western fantasy, and later fantasy building up on that older tradition, is usually much weirder and more exotic than generic medieval-esque high fantasy.
The pulp fantasy of the 1930s had a lot of weird stuff in it, and a lot of later western fantasy authors wrote in that tradition of weird fiction. Michael Ende's Neverending Story doesn't feel out of place in that tradition at all, it's just an imaginative work of fantasy, there's nothing JRPG-y about it at all.

JRPGs didn't invent weird and quirky settings, and western fantasy isn't just Tolkien clones. If you think that, you have to read more.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Any examples you can cite? Genuinely interested. Weird fantasy is my jam. I think the earliest stuff I read was ~80's, and it was very Tolkien/DnD/Mythology inspired- unicorns, dragons, centaurs. Even the weirder sci fi mix stuff used those tropes. Certainly no snail mounts or Skrexi.

Thinking back on it now, the books available at my school and local libraries were probably a huge influence on my interests as I grew up, more so even than the dreaded television. Feels weird to realize I hadn't even considered it as a major influence for decades afterwards.

 

[JarlFrank]

My favorite author of all time is Clark Ashton Smith, a contemporary of Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft. He wrote fantasy, horror, weird fiction, etc. His Zothique cycle is my favorite, it's a melancholic sword & sorcery world in decline, where characters often meet tragic ends.
He wrote fantasy before it had become an established genre with rules and tropes, so the vibe is very different from the standard Tolkien/D&D knockoff you get in 80s fantasy. His descriptions are vivid and lurid, paintings of a decadent world of sorcery and mystery.
Just check out this passage from Empire of the Necromancers, which follows two necromancers who enter a dead city and resurrect its citizens to make them their servants:

Moving in solemn pageant, with dark and haughty and hollow faces, the dead emperors and empresses of Cincor made obeisance to Mmatmuor and Sodosma, and attended them like a train of captives through all the streets of Yethlyreom. Afterward, in the immense throne-room of the palace, the necromancers mounted the high double throne, where the rightful rulers had sat with their consorts. Amid the assembled emperors, in gorgeous and funereal state, they were invested with sovereignty by the sere hands of the mummy of Hestaiyon, earliest of the Nimboth line, who had ruled in half-mythic years. Then all the descendants of Hestaiyon, crowding the room in a great throng, acclaimed with toneless, echo-like voices the dominion of Mmatmuor and Sodosma.


Thus did the outcast necromancers find for themselves an empire and a subject people in the desolate, barren land where the men of Tinarath had driven them forth to perish. Reigning supreme over all the dead of Cincor, by virtue of their malign magic, they exercised a baleful despotism. Tribute was borne to them by fleshless porters from outlying realms; and plague-eaten corpses, and tall mummies scented with mortuary balsams, went to and fro upon their errands in Yethlyreom, or heaped before their greedy eyes, from inexhaustible vaults, the cobweb-blackened gold and dusty gems of antique time.


Dead laborers made their palace-gardens to bloom with long-perished flowers; liches and skeletons toiled for them in the mines, or reared superb, fantastic towers to the dying sun. Chamberlains and princes of old time were their cupbearers, and stringed instruments were plucked for their delight by the slim hands of empresses with golden hair that had come forth untarnished from the night of the tomb. Those that were fairest, whom the plague and the worm had not ravaged overmuch, they took for their lemans and made to serve their necrophilic lust.

Now, this imagery has become very standard D&D I guess, but nothing comes close to Smith's vivid prose.
If you want something more exotic, the stories of space-wizard Maal Dweb will serve you well. In The Flower-Women, Maal Dweb, a wizard who rules over an entire solar system, is growing bored of his omnipotence and decides to relinquish his powers and go on a little adventure to get the adrenaline pumping. He visits a planet in his system which is populated by vampiric flower-women who are being threatened by lizardmen, and he decides to fight the lizards (just for fun).

As he went down the knoll into the valley, the enchanter heard an eery, plaintive singing, like that of sirens who bewail some irremediable misfortune. The singing came from a sisterhood of unusual creatures, half woman and half flower, that grew on the valley bottom beside a sleepy stream of purple water. There were several scores of these lovely and charming monsters, whose feminine bodies of pink and pearl reclined amid the vermilion velvet couches of billowing petals to which they were attached. These petals were borne on mattress-like leaves and heavy, short, well-rooted stems. The flowers were disposed in irregular circles, clustering thickly toward the center, and with open intervals in the outer rows.


Maal Dweb approached the flower-women with a certain caution; for he knew that they were vampires. Their arms ended in long tendrils, pale as ivory, swifter and more supple than the coils of darting serpents, with which they were wont to secure the unwary victims drawn by their singing. Of course, knowing in his wisdom the inexorable laws of nature, he felt no disapproval of such vampirism; but, on the other hand, he did not care to be its object.


He circled about the strange family at a little distance, his movements hidden from their observation by their boulders overgrown with tall, luxuriant lichens of red and yellow. Soon he neared the straggling outer plants that were upstream from the knoll on which he had landed; and in confirmation of the vision beheld in the mimic world in his planetarium, he found that the turf was upheaved and broken where five of the blossoms, growing apart from their companions, had been disrooted and removed bodily. He had seen in his vision the rape of the fifth flower, and he knew that the others were now lamenting her.


Suddenly, as if they had forgotten their sorrow, the wailing of the flower-women turned to a wild and sweet and voluptuous singing, like that of the Lorelei. By this token, the enchanter knew that his presence had been detected. Inured though he was to such bewitchments, he found himself far from insensible to the perilous luring of the voices. Contrary to his intention, forgetful of the danger, he emerged from the lee of the lichen-crested rocks. By insidious degrees, the melody fired his blood with a strange intoxication, it sang in his brain like some bewildering wine. Step by step, with a temporary loss of prudence for which, later, he was quite unable to account, he approached the blossoms.


Now, pausing at an interval that he deemed safe in his bemusement, he beheld plainly the half-human features of the vampires, leaning toward him with fantastic invitation. Their weirdly slanted eyes, like oblong opals of dew and venom, the snaky coiling of their bronze-green hair, the bright, baneful scarlet of their lips, that thirsted subtly even as they sang, awoke within him the knowledge of his peril. Too late, he sought to defy the captiously woven spell. Unwinding with a movement swift as light, the long pale tendrils of one of the creatures wrapped him round, and he was drawn, resisting vainly, toward her couch.

Check it out here: http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/73/the-flower-women

A popular genre at the time was planetary romance, stories with plot structures similar to sword & sorcery (think Conan the Barbarian) but set on planets in our solar system, written at a time when the possibility of life on Mars and Venus was still seriously considered. Edgar Rice Burroughs is the most well-known author in that genre, his John Carter of Mars stories are pretty cool. Regular American dude gets transported to Mars, which is ruled by a naked queen named Dejah Thoris, and he helps her fight four-armed Martian creatures and other cool shit like that. It's highly imaginative and weird.

 

[Maxie]

Clearly a lot of the appeal is centered around simplicity and infantilism

yeah god forbid your protagonist engages in heroics instead of having ten quests about him being drunk and depressed

 

[Heroic Liberator]

The appeal of JRPGs? In one word,

Spoiler

Homosexuality.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Any examples you can cite? Genuinely interested. Weird fantasy is my jam. I think the earliest stuff I read was ~80's, and it was very Tolkien/DnD/Mythology inspired- unicorns, dragons, centaurs. Even the weirder sci fi mix stuff used those tropes. Certainly no snail mounts or Skrexi.

Thinking back on it now, the books available at my school and local libraries were probably a huge influence on my interests as I grew up, more so even than the dreaded television. Feels weird to realize I hadn't even considered it as a major influence for decades afterwards.

Essential fantasy reading, with the weirder elements in bold:

• Ancient Mythology
• Medieval Legends
• Early-Modern Fairy Tales
• H. Rider Haggard: King Solomon’s Mines, She
• William Morris: The Well at the World’s End
• W.H. Hodgson: The House on the Borderland, The Night Land
• Lord Dunsany: Various stories
• Abraham Merritt: The Moon Pool, The Ship of Ishtar, Dwellers in the Mirage, Creep Shadow Creep
• Eric Rücker Eddison: The Worm Ouroboros
• H.P. Lovecraft: Various stories (though Lovecraft was primarily horror, secondarily SF)
• Robert E. Howard: Conan the Cimmerian stories, Solomon Kane stories
• Clark Ashton Smith: Various stories
• J.R.R. Tolkien: The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings trilogy
• Fritz Leiber: Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories
• Mervyn Peake: Titus Groan, Gormenghast
• Jack Vance: The Dying Earth stories and novels, Lyonesse trilogy
• Poul Anderson: Three Hearts and Three Lions, The Broken Sword
• Peter S. Beagle: A Fine and Private Place, The Last Unicorn
• Michael Moorcock: Elric stories (1961-1977, in publication order)
• Roger Zelazny: Lord of Light, original Amber novels, Dilvish the Damned stories
• Gene Wolfe: Book of the New Sun (originally published as a tetralogy)

Also, if you've never read Sword & Sorcery (which might be considered "weird", but is generally less so than the items I placed in bold), those are REH's Conan (and Solomon Kane) stories, Leiber's Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser stories, Moorcock's Elric stories (which are generally much weirder than the other S&S stories listed), and Zelazny's Dilvish stories.

 

[spookyheart]

Multiple reasons.

1)Amazing soundtracks case in point just look at the world ends with you,parasite eve,ff7 or xenogears to name only just a handful.

2)Iconic storylines like you can't really something like xenogears in todays type of video games i mean sure xenoblade xists but it just isn't the same as xenogears.

3)Unique art and graphics, just look at twewy nuff said.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

But why do they all look like kids?

It's the number one thing that puts me off modern Japanese entertainment. Japan didn't always do this:

Even if you look at old sprites, like these Moblins from Link's Awakening, I don't think they neccecarily represent some Chibi monster, rather they are trying to suggest something ugly, bulky and muscular. But when the time came to remake Link's Awakening, the sprites were of course made into Chibi versions of the same thing, modelled in 3D, rather than say a more expressive and detailed version of the same sprite showing a more adult monster:

I'm not simply advocating "grimdark" or "bald space marines". Rather looking at the intent of early Zelda, were the developers themselves not trying to create an uncanny world, that leaned more toward the dangerous? I wonder, which direction would have led to more immersion?

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

Any examples you can cite? Genuinely interested. Weird fantasy is my jam. I think the earliest stuff I read was ~80's, and it was very Tolkien/DnD/Mythology inspired- unicorns, dragons, centaurs. Even the weirder sci fi mix stuff used those tropes. Certainly no snail mounts or Skrexi.

Thinking back on it now, the books available at my school and local libraries were probably a huge influence on my interests as I grew up, more so even than the dreaded television. Feels weird to realize I hadn't even considered it as a major influence for decades afterwards.

Jack Vance

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

This is a very dumb thread, btw. Lazy and incurious people shouldn't be humored with serious posts.

 

[n0wh3r3]

My advice is to buy this book: https://www.bitmapbooks.com/products/a-guide-to-japanese-role-playing-games

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Or just read it off of scribd for free.

 

[n0wh3r3]

Or just read it off of scribd for free.

You are a criminal. I got a phone in my hands, and guess which number I am dialing...

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

1-800-FUK-HOLE?
The singles hotline for sex workers?

Oh and you're a pathetic little bitch-assed cunt. All your faggot friends must pull a train nonstop on you because you whine like a tea kettle. Careful, your mascara is running. Don't want your pimp smacking you around and damaging the merch. I'm sure he'd be furious you even think about going to the authorities.

Someone is getting caged & beaten all night for being bad. Tsk tsk tsk.

 

[Yuber]

Who painted these?