Decline The decline of JRPGS

[Whisky]

We've had about a million topics about the decline of CRPGS, subjects such as when it happened and what caused it. It's only fair that we talk a little about the general decline of JRPGS.

So, what are your thoughts on it? Cite specific games, generations, companies, or whatever you think caused the decline. Or maybe you think it hasn't declined?

Personally, I think the beginning of the decline was the previous generation. Do not get me wrong, there were a fuckload of amazing JRPGS for the PS2, but it was the period that began numerous features that I would consider to be decline incarnate.

1. Loss of world maps and exploration. Final Fantasy X doing away with the world map and making the entire world a series of corridors was the beginning of the end for the world map (Though FFX wasn't that bad for linearity, compared to FFXIII). A lot of people have different opinions on world maps in JRPGS, but personally I love them. I love having areas to explore and I love gradually obtaining new methods of transportation to reach different areas. Getting an airship was one of those milestones in old FF games that always felt awesome each time and if you didn't pay attention to online maps (or in-game world maps) you would spend a bit of time exploring just to find all the areas you visited before and where they are in relation to the world. With games like FFX, your airship just gives you a list of places to teleport to. It's not that I hate all JRPGS without world maps, there were lots of great ones that had none, but it's something that I personally like to have.

2. Over-reliance on anime artstyle. This one should be self-explanatory. It's not that it doesn't have its place, it's just overused far too often. I don't even know if this is entirely last generation's fault, as it was the first generation that could easily translate anime design to character models. If the PS1 had the PS2's power, I think we might have seen this earlier.

3. Character and plot tropes became far too homogenous. Some people seem to think that angsty teenagers and thinly-veiled evil religious organizations were the norm for the entire history of JRPGS. That is completely untrue. Even with FF7, the character of Cloud, who is pretty much the poster boy of whiny emo-kid, never actually acted the part until the numerous spin-offs. Starting from the PS2 era, more games started to actively follow these tropes, which started to retard creativity and made games feel like a bullet point list.

4. They just don't make much JRPGS anymore and we don't get most of them.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Much truth in that post. I think it started in the PSX era, but at that point it was so subtle it wasn't so much decline as just change. They could have done cool things with the stuff that started to be possible then. But when FF7 hit, it started to become mainstream, and shit got dumbed down. Tutorials replaced instruction manuals (most later PSX games had no real instruction manual to speak of) and game devs started doing stupid shit under the assumption that people would look it up on the internet or in a strategy guide. I mean, games had little easter eggs before then, but the utterly convoluted shit that showed up later was just silly. The chest thing in FFXII is a great example from even later, but stuff like the card rules in FF8 or the puzzle in the tower of druaga in tales of destiny were nearly as bad.

 

[Whisky]

game devs started doing stupid shit under the assumption that people would look it up on the internet or in a strategy guide.

And that was if you were lucky. I hope no one here had to experience the sheer unmitigated horror of the official FF9 strategy guide.

For those unaware, it would give you basic hints and then have advertisements at the side of the page that said stuff like, "Want to find a hidden chest in this area? Then log onto www.paysite.com"

I disagree that it started in the PSX era, although gaining mainstream attention was probably a bad thing. The PSX era was generally very innovative and games still managed to march to their own beat. Honestly I think the biggest problem now is mainstream attention + negative popular opinion (Which we can blame on both gaming media sites and sadly, JRPG developers that are making some shit true, like my third point above).

 

[laclongquan]

Blame the lacks of JRPGs in English to the lacks of dedicated teams working on translation. There's a bunch of good ones, like the Rance series, but the lack of dedicated teams are telling when they are all stalled. Mainstream aside, the number of untranslated gems in indie is big enough.

 

[Damned Registrations]

The thing was, some (most tbh, like anything) of that innovation was shit, and it was the shit parts that stuck for some reason. I had a post somewhere else detailing this stuff before, but I'll reiterate some here. Using FF series as an example:

FF7 was the first of the series to cut equipment slots down to 4. (2 if you're not counting accessories.) Materia somewhat made up for this, but materia was interchangeable between any characters and any slots, so it wasn't really the same. FF8 took this even further and nuked equipment entirely, leaving only a weapon slot that did basically nothing. Even the ancient FF1 had 5 slots + vancianish magic. Huge decline in party customization here, where before all sorts of cool shit was possible and the exploration aspect was more exciting because of the prospect of finding unique equipment with some effect that couldn't otherwise be acquired.

FF7 also marked the end of significant differences between characters aside from limit breaks. FF9 and 10 gave them back some stuff, but generally speaking having a party comprised of disctinct characters vanished into a blob of interchangable characters that could each do everything. This was a massive decline compared to the differences between characters in FF6, or the massive set in stone differences one would create in FF5 by building characters along certain paths. You could honestly strip any character in FF7, dump their materia on another character, and it would almost never matter at all.

Spoony touched on this in his FFX review, and though I never thought of it before, FF7 was the point where they stopped giving a fuck about making remotely plausible characters and equipment. Cait Sith's weapons are fucking megaphones. Red XIII wields fucking HAIR CLIPS. Even Setzer at least used darts and implied his dice were some sort of magic attack.

FF7 also began some traditions I'd have happily seen quickly disappear that instead stayed around forever, including chocobo raising minigames and limit breaks shamelessly stolen from Lufia 2. FF6 had a pseudo limit break system, but it was so rare and unreliable it was more like an easter egg. Limit breaks are actually some of the better parts of some later FF games, but it's being used as an obvious crutch and at the cost of other potential ways to differentiate characters.

FF8 actually nuked the idea of equipment stores. They've never really come back properly. Actually, FF8 didn't even have a proper money system, instead having some weird and unexplained 'salary' system, which amounted to a set amount of money over a period of time based on doing quizes and finishing battles without summoning GFs. Not that you needed money for anything ever.

FF7 marked the first use of cinematic time wasting at the beginning and end of each battle. Because moving the camera around is SO COOL and people's time is not valuable, and nothing could be done in a game that would be more interesting than panning the camera over the same terrain every minute. It also marked a sharp increase in animation lengths of various spells and battle effects, particularly summons. God only knows how much more interesting materia they could have added if they didn't have to animate THIS.

FF8 marked the end of secret/optional party members. Everyone in and after FF8 is a mandatory party member.

Haven't played through FF12 or 13, but to my knowledge, FF7 was the last in which a party member ever died. People make fun of the aeris thing, but at least they had the balls to kill people off back then. FF4-7 all killed off party members. Dunno about earlier ones.

There was tons of good stuff back then too, a lot of my favourite jrpgs are on the PSX. It was a time of both incline and decline, but sadly only the decline lingered on.

 

[Whisky]

You raise some excellent points. I can't believe I forgot to mention neutered/non-existent towns and stores. I think I didn't connect that with the PSX era because, again using FF as an example, they tried to bring back some of the stuff they nuked in FF7 and FF8 (Equipment slots and non-unique characters for FF and actual stores for things beyond items.).

The non-unique characters is also a real problem. It's actually shocking to find out that characters in FF7 actually do have unique stats, because they're so unnoticeable after you equip materia.

As for the cinematic time-wasting, FF had nothing on Legend of Dragoon (Fuck, I hated that game). But yes, spell animations were far too long among many games in the PSX era.

I pretty much agree with everything you said, though I still maintain that the PS2 era was when the decline really started happening. It's actually really telling when you consider that a game like FF8 got panned for removing shit like equipment (Among many other things) while nowadays a game would be praised for doing that, streamlining they would call it.

EDIT: I agree, cboyardee!

 

[eric__s]

baaarf bluh buh bbbbb buh blarf

 

[Metro]

The decline happened at the birth of the genre.

 

[agentorange]

It's declining because people bought more copies of Persona 4 than Nocturne and Strange Journey combined.

 

[DarKPenguiN]

-Agree, the "decline" happened during the PS2 era IMHO. PSX had some very cool and creative games (and a ton of generic but decent titles)- But the Super nintendo was the "peak" of JRPG goodness.

I enjoyed FF7, hated 8 and just recently played X on the PS3 and it was horrible- I mean really bad. Totally linear, 1 dungeon, no shops, really annoying Anime "stereotype" toons... Yeah.

Even Zelda (and other action/platformers) peaked on the SNES/Genesis. I need to get me an emulator.

 

[deuxhero]

I don't think the genre as a whole really declined (not anymore than the average game), just the major household names (Final Fantasy for the most part).

If you don't mind cute lesbians as your protagonists and have a PS3, Atelier Totori and Atelier Meruru are great.

 

[SerratedBiz]

If you don't mind cute lesbians as your protagonists and have a PS3, Atelier Totori and Atelier Meruru are great.

You've been pushing them so hard lately I'm starting to feel curious, but for the life of me I can't go up to the store and ask them to hand over that loli game without feeling the need to purge myself through cleansing fire.

 

[commie]

The heading must be a troll...how can you decline from the bottom?

 

[Jick Magger]

I think it's mainly the points stated beforehand combined with the fact that Japanese studios seem to be far less willing to take risks, which you also touched up upon. Probably due to the higher budgets of games these days combined with a comparatively smaller and more niche fanbase save those held by Square Enix and the Final Fantasy series, and even those are starting to show their cracks in the recent years. Their 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' mentality has lead to genre-wide stagnation.

 

[Raghar]

Just because western games declined, because of standard university students who were accustomed to MMO, cell phones, tablets replaced partially these selfeducated pshychos who spend much higher effort than PhDs, it doesn't mean Japanese games must behave the same.

Two main problems with Japanese games are, they have problems with use of mouse, and they are afraid to do something noncommercial and revolutionary.

 

[laclongquan]

I cant believe some of the shits you guys spout!

FF7: Correct me if I am wrong but isnt that flower chick, her name escape me at the moment, is the healer type and if you strip her magic buff and slap on some fighter stuffs she will get raped hard and often? Ditto with the mascot on that huge puppet. Caith Sith? I dont know what you smoked. I dont like FF7 for a lot of reasons but I dont think their characters are interchangeable, even in battle.

FF8: Fuck your ignorance. Each class of weapon has some stat in it, the later better than the earlier, but there is some. You think we metagame like mad with card battle to get upgrade components for the third best weapon at the end of Disc 1 is for shits and giggles? And the sameness? Are you saying there's sameness between Quistis and Selphie? Fuck your ignorance. FF8 squad is specialized pretty hard because there's only three: fighter who rely mostly on damage and status-damage, magician healer who heal and cast, and summoner who calls GF. It's not the game fault if you like to use fighter-only squad. And dont spread your stupidity. And the Elemental system is the most innovative feature of all time, all game, that allow a complete personalized offense and defense for each character. No other game that I know of can boast such feature.

No optional character? Fuck you. FF8 is story-fag gift from heaven.The story require no loose end like take-or-leave-it characters. If you want optional you can optional take or leave GF.

 

[Giauz Ragnacock]

What would incline in the JRPG genre look like? If it meant games would become more samey ("I wish every battle system was FFTactics'" doesn't seem to be too uncommon a sentiment), as in having some imaginary ideal applied to every game, I think it would be a decline in the long run. I would really appreciate a new era of the world map with vehicles, though.

 

[Damned Registrations]

You are wrong as fuck about Aeris. She's the closest to actually having stats that are different enough to notice (too bad she disappears halfway through the game) but even then, if you swap her materia with say, Barret, she'll likely end up with more HP and defense and so forth, and less MP and magic.

And yes, everything you did in FF8 was for shits and giggles, since you could beat the entire game by spamming GFs or limit breaks and shoving your highest cure magic into the HP mod slot. Nobody is specialized at all because if you swap their GFS and magic around, they've no permanent differences besides the limit breaks (of which you only need Zell, since his is better than everyone elses by about a mile. And you only need his inital ones at that, since they chain into eachother and are the quickest to input, making them the most powerful) The elemental system was a retarded encouraqement to collect 300 of every spell so you could always be immune to whatever element/status the current boss had. Though again, it was totally irrelevant due to complete lack of difficulty and overpowered abilities. It was a massive decline from the equipment of older FF games, where you might find a shield that granted elemental absorbtion, and had to decide who to use it on (or whether to use it as a consumable for a spell that was far beyond your current means.)

 

[Ion Prothon II]

I cant believe some of the shits you guys spout!

FF7: Correct me if I am wrong but isnt that flower chick, her name escape me at the moment, is the healer type and if you strip her magic buff and slap on some fighter stuffs she will get raped hard and often? Ditto with the mascot on that huge puppet. Caith Sith? I dont know what you smoked. I dont like FF7 for a lot of reasons but I dont think their characters are interchangeable, even in battle.

FF8: Fuck your ignorance. Each class of weapon has some stat in it, the later better than the earlier, but there is some. You think we metagame like mad with card battle to get upgrade components for the third best weapon at the end of Disc 1 is for shits and giggles? And the sameness? Are you saying there's sameness between Quistis and Selphie? Fuck your ignorance. FF8 squad is specialized pretty hard because there's only three: fighter who rely mostly on damage and status-damage, magician healer who heal and cast, and summoner who calls GF. It's not the game fault if you like to use fighter-only squad. And dont spread your stupidity. And the Elemental system is the most innovative feature of all time, all game, that allow a complete personalized offense and defense for each character. No other game that I know of can boast such feature.

No optional character? Fuck you. FF8 is story-fag gift from heaven.The story require no loose end like take-or-leave-it characters. If you want optional you can optional take or leave GF.

FF9: every character is a different class with unique abilities. 2 guys who get new combat skills when both are kept in team. 3 fighters with different attacks, 2 summoners with (mostly) different sets of summons. Stats and skills with variety big enough to be seen in battle. The only thing that is interchangeable between characters, are equipment parts, and this only partially.
HOWEVER, NOT LIKE IT DOES MATTER, SINCE BATTLES ARE FUCKING EASY, AND SINCE IT'S LINEAR LIKE FUCK, FOR 3/4 OF ENTIRE GAME THERE'S NO CHOICE WHO GOES TO THE TEAM.
In other words, vanish into blob yourself, Damned Registrations.

But FF8, there the character selection is completely meaningless and things like weapons or specialization don't fucking matter. Why? Because junction, fucking failed experiment with mechanics. Want a healer? Just find a homo with highest MP and give him GF with drained healing spells. Then drain more of them, you slave, you bedouin. At least there's a way to avoid this shit with draining, though. The only thing that matters, is this percentage 'synchronization' with GF.
Junction s a wonderful system allowing for character customization, it's only hard to understand? Standing in an anthill is a wonderful way to spend time, it's only hard to understand too.
In other words, fuck your ignorance too, laclongquan.

 

[tuluse]

In my mind, JRPGs started just getting weird for the sake of being weird. The stories seem to make less and less fucking sense, and the character designs scream "trying to hard to look unusual". He's wearing 4 belts, and his shoes have zippers, how quirky.

Japanese writers also seem to struggle writing fish out of water protagonists. So you either have a dumbfuck who asks questions with the most obvious answers in the world, or a weirdo that you can't identify with.

Also, Parasite Eve is the only game that did anything interesting with the Final Fantasy active battle system.

 

[Raghar]

In my mind, JRPGs started just getting weird for the sake of being weird. The stories seem to make less and less fucking sense, and the character designs scream "trying to hard to look unusual". He's wearing 4 belts, and his shoes have zippers, how quirky.

What's wrong with zippers? As long as you don't have hair on feet, they are fine.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Most of everything has always been shit. The decline is a trick of the mind created by the increased volume of everything.

 

[laclongquan]

Come at me, bro!

Who the hell drain healing spells from enemies? unless it's the first part of disc 1, ie tutorial territory, pre-Garden party. You dont even get to choose character in your squad because they are it! No no, tutorial time end when you can choose your squad out of that small group. Even 3 out of 4 is fine too.

No no, the proper way of playing without grind is that you play normally to unlock the ability to change Cards into item, then you just turn a few of them pesky enemies into cards, or get cards from game. Card-->item-->spell, that's the way. You only draw spells in case of quality ones, like they are rare or unable to process yet spells. Only camel lovers grind in the disc1-3. Play smart, that's the ticket.

And where the hell do you find MP? They cast spell stored in their system, ie if they have 50 Sleep then after one casting you get 49 left. You only need to choose others to cast in case of making use of that character higher Magic stat, ie this character is more magician than other meathead.... what do you complain about difference between characters? Quistis is more magical than muscle Squall, so?

Get your fucking facts straight, homo! MP is for 7 and 9. 1 magic potion = 50 MP and that;s the same capacity to cast either Firaga or Blizzaga. But in 8, 1 Blizzaga is different from 1 Firage, you either purify 100 Blizzard/Fire on two step into 1 Blizzaga/Firaga, or process some rare items. FF8 is deep, bro!

 

[spekkio]

ITT people fail their saving throws against DR's "write incorrect stuff about Final Fantasy series and wait for somebody to correct it" trolling technique.

 

[Damned Registrations]

The proper way of playing without grind is actually to just leave Quistis, Squall and Zell in your party at 10 hp and spam limit breaks. Quistis gets a one shot instant kill on normal enemies very early on, the other two hit hard enough to do the same and rape bosses, especially Zell. If it's actually a one in a million boss that has a party wide attack that deals flat damage and not a % of current hp, you'll have to keep 1 guy at full health to spam phoenix downs. Unless you have 5000+ max hp anyways, in which case it doesn't matter because even at 10% you can take anything the boss throws at you. Actually, since levels are meaningless, you may as well set Enc-None ASAP and kill every single (lvl 5) boss with a single limit break from zell.

I have utterly and thoroughly broken that game in search of some sort of decent gameplay back before I had internet access. It was not to be found.