Can someone summarize to me the appeal of JRPGs?

[JarlFrank]

I think where JRPGs really shine though is when the cutscenes aren't something you want to skip to begin with.

Doesn't exist for me, I hate cutscenes, especially when they're frontloaded.

Western RPGs have longer cutscenes than JRPGs. The main difference is presentation. WRPGs dump wall of texts, JRPGs try to play a bit with character motion. But JRPGs usually don't have prose, so reading time is smaller.

Most dialog in JRPGs is made by characters. If you don't like the characters, you will bore.

Not once have I played a western RPG with longer cutscenes than JRPGs. Most western RPGs don't have any cutscenes at all (the original Fallouts, Arcanum, Baldur's Gates, Might & Magics, Wizardries, Morrowind, Gothic, etc etc). And the dialog in western RPGs is presented in single paragraphs that appear instantly so you can quickly read it all and go on.

JRPG dialog is presented line by line with characters constantly bantering, and the text types out letter by letter, and you have to keep hammering on your keyboard to make it go faster, and it's just such a chore compared to the simple and elegant presentation of WRPG dialogs. And usually those dialogs aren't even interesting.

I played through some SRPGs because I love their gameplay but whenever a dialog came up I was just going click click click click to make it go past quicker. Horrible way of delivering story, I abhor it.

 

[n0wh3r3]

I think where JRPGs really shine though is when the cutscenes aren't something you want to skip to begin with.

Doesn't exist for me, I hate cutscenes, especially when they're frontloaded.

Western RPGs have longer cutscenes than JRPGs. The main difference is presentation. WRPGs dump wall of texts, JRPGs try to play a bit with character motion. But JRPGs usually don't have prose, so reading time is smaller.

Most dialog in JRPGs is made by characters. If you don't like the characters, you will bore.

Not once have I played a western RPG with longer cutscenes than JRPGs. Most western RPGs don't have any cutscenes at all (the original Fallouts, Arcanum, Baldur's Gates, Might & Magics, Wizardries, Morrowind, Gothic, etc etc). And the dialog in western RPGs is presented in single paragraphs that appear instantly so you can quickly read it all and go on.

JRPG dialog is presented line by line with characters constantly bantering, and the text types out letter by letter, and you have to keep hammering on your keyboard to make it go faster, and it's just such a chore compared to the simple and elegant presentation of WRPG dialogs. And usually those dialogs aren't even interesting.

I played through some SRPGs because I love their gameplay but whenever a dialog came up I was just going click click click click to make it go past quicker. Horrible way of delivering story, I abhor it.

You can't affirm that is better and elegant when is obviously a matter of "taste".
I like when the dialogues are presented in sentences and I have to press the controller button cause it gives a sense of conversation that is different from the feeling of reading a book.

 

[JarlFrank]

It's an annoying waste of time.

 

[Momock]

I think where JRPGs really shine though is when the cutscenes aren't something you want to skip to begin with.

Doesn't exist for me, I hate cutscenes, especially when they're frontloaded.

Western RPGs have longer cutscenes than JRPGs. The main difference is presentation. WRPGs dump wall of texts, JRPGs try to play a bit with character motion. But JRPGs usually don't have prose, so reading time is smaller.

Most dialog in JRPGs is made by characters. If you don't like the characters, you will bore.

Not once have I played a western RPG with longer cutscenes than JRPGs. Most western RPGs don't have any cutscenes at all (the original Fallouts, Arcanum, Baldur's Gates, Might & Magics, Wizardries, Morrowind, Gothic, etc etc). And the dialog in western RPGs is presented in single paragraphs that appear instantly so you can quickly read it all and go on.

JRPG dialog is presented line by line with characters constantly bantering, and the text types out letter by letter, and you have to keep hammering on your keyboard to make it go faster, and it's just such a chore compared to the simple and elegant presentation of WRPG dialogs. And usually those dialogs aren't even interesting.

I played through some SRPGs because I love their gameplay but whenever a dialog came up I was just going click click click click to make it go past quicker. Horrible way of delivering story, I abhor it.

The last time you touched a WRPG was 20 years ago, apparently.

JRPGs just present the text in short bursts instead of walls of text (unreadable on TV screens anyway).

 

[Damned Registrations]

It's an annoying waste of time.

One could say the same thing about western rpgs where you need to keep going through parts of a dialogue tree repetitively to get all the branches. That shit is effectively banter as well, it's just more nonsensical.

 

[Momock]

It's an annoying waste of time.

One could say the same thing about western rpgs where you need to keep going through parts of a dialogue tree repetitively to get all the branches. That shit is effectively banter as well, it's just more nonsensical.

That's pretty much a dead thing too. It's COLORS since the 360. Now the game itself is the waste of time.

 

[JarlFrank]

It's an annoying waste of time.

One could say the same thing about western rpgs where you need to keep going through parts of a dialogue tree repetitively to get all the branches. That shit is effectively banter as well, it's just more nonsensical.

The cool thing about western RPGs is that you don't have to. Much of the dialog is optional!

EDIT:
I know JRPGs also have optional dialog, but there's no dialog trees or keywords or anything. You just click on an NPC and he will talk at you and what he said is what he said, that's it. Maybe he has more to say if you click at him again, but you can't ask him anything specific or choose what to say to him. Dialog in JRPGs is entirely non-interactive. Might as well replace all NPCs with System Shock style audiologs, or with books.

 

[Reinhardt]

what "specific things" you can ask in crpgs? praise npcs neo vagina?

sorry, but i'll take "go and kill demon lord, brave hero-sama!" over "why your name is "big feminine penis", oh brave and stunning person of color?" any day of the week.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Maybe all gaming is a waste of time and a SIN! And add on TV, movies, fiction, comics, all gaming & gambling, sports, and entertainment period. Get back to work!!! LIFE IS NOT MEANT TO BE FUN & ENTERTAINING!!!

WORK!!!!

 

[Momock]

Might as well replace all NPCs with System Shock style audiologs, or with books.

It's hating for hating at that point, like a toddler.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I know JRPGs also have optional dialog, but there's no dialog trees or keywords or anything. You just click on an NPC and he will talk at you and what he said is what he said, that's it. Maybe he has more to say if you click at him again, but you can't ask him anything specific or choose what to say to him. Dialog in JRPGs is entirely non-interactive. Might as well replace all NPCs with System Shock style audiologs, or with books.

Not strictly true, but I'll grant you it's far and away the majority of JRPG dialogue. But generally speaking this means less reading and mashing for the same information. Instead of needing to ask some rando where you are, what an arena is, and who the best fighter is, you just get some guy telling you about the big hairy guy that will kick your ass. Or you walk past him because you don't give a fuck about the arena, least of all what a spectator would have to say about it.

Like, does this really feel like a long and onerous series of cutscenes and dialogue to recruit a party member? Keep in mind, the guy isn't even mashing through the text, he's letting it so so you can read it. Hell, you didn't even need the bit from the skeleton, that's just a random tip being shown as a way to figure this out naturally.



I don't think you can reasonably say that's worse than Baldur's Gate or Fallout.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I honestly can't lump all JRPGS into the same boat. They vary like western RPGS and everything in-between. And at certain times one's mood is wanting something different. I really don't think I binged all the gold box games......

Oh wait, nvm, I did because the mapping was fucking addictive. Oh the joy of pencil to grid.

 

[JarlFrank]

Might as well replace all NPCs with System Shock style audiologs, or with books.

It's hating for hating at that point, like a toddler.

It's a strong dislike because I genuinely can't stand the delivery.
Audiologs in System Shock 2 can be played in the background while you keep exploring.
Books can be read at your own pace.
JRPG dialogs are delivered sentence by sentence and you have to click click click click click holy shit it's such a chore.

I also hate the way text is typed out instead of being displayed immediately. Some western games have adopted that style and I absolutely hate it there too. It's so annoying and messes with my own reading pace.

 

[Reinhardt]

Might as well replace all NPCs with System Shock style audiologs, or with books.

It's hating for hating at that point, like a toddler.

It's a strong dislike because I genuinely can't stand the delivery.
Audiologs in System Shock 2 can be played in the background while you keep exploring.
Books can be read at your own pace.
JRPG dialogs are delivered sentence by sentence and you have to click click click click click holy shit it's such a chore.

I also hate the way text is typed out instead of being displayed immediately. Some western games have adopted that style and I absolutely hate it there too. It's so annoying and messes with my own reading pace.

no, nigga, it's really hating for hating. jrpgs usually have option to display full text at once AND you literally can skip text by holding ctrl or something most of the time.

 

[JarlFrank]

Like, does this really feel like a long and onerous series of cutscenes and dialogue to recruit a party member? Keep in mind, the guy isn't even mashing through the text, he's letting it so so you can read it. Hell, you didn't even need the bit from the skeleton, that's just a random tip being shown as a way to figure this out naturally.

This looks fine regarding volume of text, but the typing out is annoying. Why not display everything at once?

jrpgs usually have option to display full text at once AND you literally can skip text by holding ctrl or something most of the time.

Maybe some modern ones do but the old classics I tried don't.

 

[Damned Registrations]

This looks fine regarding volume of text, but the typing out is annoying. Why not display everything at once?

Two reasons; the first is to convey the timing of something being spoken, more accurately than just a comma or something. Especially if it needs to sync up with character animations, like someone turning to face a different person mid conversation, dramatically turn around, stab someone, whatever. Dumping it all at once is like having bad subtitles where they spoil shit that hasn't happened yet or lag behind too far.

The second reason is to prevent accidental text skipping; quite often you press a button to instantly load the rest of the text, and then again to skip to the next phrase. If it loads instantly, you might have pressed the button to skip some text a hair too late and accidentally skip the entire next sentence. Mind you, the better games let you set text speed in the options, and instant is pretty much always available in that case. Actually, some games have the best text skipping ever, where you just hold down a pair of buttons and it'll blow through 20 paragraphs in a single second. Always a nice feature if you're repeating a section for whatever reason.



Of course, on the other hand, you've got colossal fuckups like the people that translated FFT and made each line take the same amount of time to display, regardless of whether it had 20 words or two.

L _____ I______ O _____ N _____ _____ W _____ A _____ R _____ .

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

The third is so you can take a piss or get a beer or something; maybe make a sandwich, start a load of wash, ..... paint the house, etc.

 

[Maxie]

jrpgs have cute anime girls meanwhile western rpgs have annoying thots

 

[Nifft Batuff]

In JRPGs you can input your name using a controller!

 

[Ba'al]

What I'm bothered by is not necessarily the way the text is presented but the quality of the dialogue. I'll admit right away that I haven't played many JRPGs at all, but this is something I've noticed in all japanese media. It's hard to explain; the dialogue just ends up feeling awkward and full of cliche phrases. I'm gonna cheat and use an example from a Kojima game, specifically the MGS5 trailer - the cowboy dude says to Snake: "You're a legend in the eyes of those who live on the battlefield." Wtf, it's like saying "glasses that block UV rays" instead of just "sunglasses", like when a student wants to pad out the word count for an assignment. It's cringe shit like that which almost makes me want to learn japanese so I can finally know whether it's just the english translation that sucks or it's just the way japs write.

 

[Damned Registrations]

What I'm bothered by is not necessarily the way the text is presented but the quality of the dialogue. I'll admit right away that I haven't played many JRPGs at all, but this is something I've noticed in all japanese media. It's hard to explain; the dialogue just ends up feeling awkward and full of cliche phrases. I'm gonna cheat and use an example from a Kojima game, specifically the MGS5 trailer - the cowboy dude says to Snake: "You're a legend in the eyes of those who live on the battlefield." Wtf, it's like saying "glasses that block UV rays" instead of just "sunglasses", like when a student wants to pad out the word count for an assignment. It's cringe shit like that which almost makes me want to learn japanese so I can finally know whether it's just the english translation that sucks or it's just the way japs write.

Combination of both I'd say. First up, japanese syntax is pretty much how yoda talks, which makes translating stuff awkward. They also tend to just leave out parts of the sentence you could infer from context; like the japanese version of that sentence probably didn't include the "you're" part, because it's pointless to say that when you're in a conversation. OTOH, they do interrupt eachother constantly with an 'uh huh' as a social cue you're not bored to tears and trying to leave.

Anyways, the point is that adding back in the stuff stripped out of japanese results in more text than either a literal translation or a proper localization. I'm just happy we're at least past the point where breath gets translated as 'bracelet' because breath and brace get romanized as 'brasu' and the guy doing the translating has zero context.

 

[Rincewind]

I suppose the PC-88/98/etc line had a rather large influence in eroge VN. I recall for early DOS a company translating eroge JRPGS called Megatech. They must've been sending out snail mail flyers or I subbed to some magazine that got me on the list (maybe I saw an add.. fuck if i know). The only games they had at the time was:

• 1992: Cobra Mission: Panic in Cobra City
• 1993: Metal & Lace: The Battle of the Robo Babes
• 1994: Knights of Xentar
• 1995: Power Dolls

Jap names, dunno. I started getting adverts in 93 and ended in 96 was the last one i saw (so maybe I had a total of 4-5). I looked at them and went meh except for Xentar which obviously isn't the first in that series. And unless a game was on a console I had no clue what japan was peddling. X-com art threw me for a loop as I thought "Is this a japanese port game?"

We played Knights of Xentar with a classmate of mine when I was around 16, and we really liked it. Dunno how much of a jRPG is it, and we never finished it, but it was a cool game.

 

[Koschey]

Most western RPGs don't have any cutscenes at all (the original Fallouts, Arcanum, Baldur's Gates, Might & Magics, Wizardries, Morrowind, Gothic, etc etc).

Factually wrong in the case of Fallout 2 (e.g. Horrigan killing the escaped scientist's family in the desert or the Hakunin visions). Arcanum and BG1 have stuff like the encounters with the fake Arronax or Elminster, in which, yes, you can choose some dialogue responses, but the responses themselves don't have any tangible effect on the game, because these scenes are only there to tease/infodump.

I know JRPGs also have optional dialog, but there's no dialog trees or keywords or anything. You just click on an NPC and he will talk at you and what he said is what he said, that's it. Maybe he has more to say if you click at him again, but you can't ask him anything specific or choose what to say to him. Dialog in JRPGs is entirely non-interactive. Might as well replace all NPCs with System Shock style audiologs, or with books.

The same NPC will always reply with the same stuff to the same keyword/dialogue prompt in the same situation. You could just replace all responses with audiologs or books. You can even choose which audiologs to collect or listen to!

 

[JarlFrank]

Factually wrong in the case of Fallout 2 (e.g. Horrigan killing the escaped scientist's family in the desert or the Hakunin visions). Arcanum and BG1 have stuff like the encounters with the fake Arronax or Elminster, in which, yes, you can choose some dialogue responses, but the responses themselves don't have any tangible effect on the game, because these scenes are only there to tease/infodump.

Yeah, because short skippable FMVs that appear maybe five times in the entire game are comparable to having an in-engine cutscene every hour, that usually can't be skipped and lasts longer than half a minute.

Fallout 1 all cutscenes, 8 minutes:


And ALL of them can be skipped!

Meanwhile JRPGs, 4 minutes just for some retarded childish bullshit:


You'd never see this in a western RPG because such lengthy cutscene sequences don't exist:

And the encounters with NPCs where they basically just dump some info on you and your responses don't matter can't be compared to lengthy cutscenes either, because you can read the dialog at your own pace, and when you replay the game a second time and enter that encounter you can just skip past it by clicking whatever dialog options and get it over with in a few seconds. No such option for lengthy JRPG cutscenes. Even their written dialog takes a LOT longer to skip through due to the way it types out instead of being instantly displayed, and because it always just shows one or two sentences at a time instead of everything the character says at once.

The same NPC will always reply with the same stuff to the same keyword/dialogue prompt in the same situation. You could just replace all responses with audiologs or books. You can even choose which audiologs to collect or listen to!

Cool story bro, but you still have to figure out the keywords yourself and any given NPC has more than one keyword he responds to. JRPG NPC interactions consist of clicking on the NPC, who will then say something to you, but you can't ask anything specific back, neither by typing a keyword nor by choosing a dialog option from a list. It's barely interactive.

 

[Reinhardt]

Even their written dialog takes a LOT longer to skip through due to the way it types out instead of being instantly displayed, and because it always just shows one or two sentences at a time instead of everything the character says at once.

didn't we already went through this? just hold designated button and text will be skipped. much better than
1. can you tell me about some shit?
2. can you tell me about some shit?
3. are you sure?
4. end.

and you must press 1, 2, 3 to progress story and only then 4.