Sick of Japanese RPG's

[Ze_ro]

- the challenge of fighting ever-stronger monsters.

 

In a world where enemies get exponentially stronger, I always wonder how anyone at all is alive... I mean, you start off with like, 20 hp, and end up fighting monsters with about 200,000 hp who do 5000 points of damage with each hit. I also always found it interesting how "experience" was able to eventually let you withstand such attacks. But that's how pretty much all RPG's work, Japanese or not.

 

- being *in* the story instead of just watching it.

 

You're kidding, right? You really feel *in* the storyline when you sit there and watch a 10 minute cutscene? That's the exact opposite of immersion in my opinion. Aside from a cutscene for an intro, and when you win the game, I'd rather everything be gameplay.

 

- falling in love with the characters (not literally) just like I learned to love the characters in Babylon 5 and Star Wars.

 

I used to like this too... but the characters have become so cliche that it's mostly ruined it.

 

I'll tell ya what I'm sick of. I'm sick of action RPGs and other rapid fire button tricks you need to do during combat to be even moderately capable.

 

I actually kind of like that. Final Fantasy type combat always seemed lame to me, since there's no positioning, and there are usually only three choices: run, fight, and magic (and usually one of the final two isn't even an option, since each character is either unable to use magic, or a complete wuss). Games like Super Mario RPG with "timed hits", as well as Grandia II that has an odd interrupt system seemed better to me, since there was actually some level of challenge about it... it wasn't just all random luck if you hit or not.

 

I still think the AD&D games (Pools of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, etc) had excellent combat... although it was rather annoying taking on a group of 30 drow... damn, I hated the drow...

 

I am sick to death of seeing japanese caricatures of human beings with blue hair, big eyes and child-like faces. I think their culture must be full of pedophiles.

 

Yeah, I have some serious worries for Japanese culture... for every Hello Kitty and Pokemon out there, there seems to be games like Chain and Battle Raper.

 

After having some time to think about it, there are a few decent non-Japanese RPG's, but very few of them are for consoles. I forgot that I actually own a copy of Diablo, but I was never able to play it before, since my old computer would crash almost constantly. I should give it a try again, as it seemed like a decent game. I've never actually tried Baldur's Gate, since my computer has never been very powerful, but I should give that one a try as well.

 

And naturally, there's always Nethack

 

Oh well, at least I still have lots of older games that I still haven't finished, like The Summoning, and Darklands (I have this game on 11 3.5" disks somewhere, man that game was big)... heck, maybe I'll even give Spelljammer another run one of these days.

 

By the way, what ever happened to FTL (the guys who did Dungeon Master) and SSI (who did all the AD&D games if I remember correctly)? Are they still around, or completely out of business or what?

 

--Zero

[Ze_ro]

By the way, anyone who's played a decent amount of RPG's should find this article, "How to Survive in Any RPG" pretty funny... It highlights pretty much all my complaints about what the japanese have done to the genre.

 

--Zero

[Kid Fenris]

Meh. That article isn't one of Something Awful's better pieces. Try this one instead.

[theaveng]

Overall I find RPGs have more to offer than other genres like First-Person Shooters or Platformers or Fighters.  Not that I don't like those types of games, but they lack the same amount of depth in story/characters/growth, and can't hold my attention for 50 hours like an RPG can.

And I find myself playing games like Street Fighter III over and over again because it's a head-to-head competition...

I'd probably feel the same way, but at my age (30) none of my friends still play videogames. So, no head-to-head competition possible.

 

Also, even with head-to-head I can't imagine playing SF3 for 50 hours. 10 hours max, and then I'd be bored with the whole "beat'em up real good" genre.

[theaveng]

- being *in* the story instead of just watching it.

You're kidding, right? You really feel *in* the storyline when you sit there and watch a 10 minute cutscene?

No, from commanding characters where to go exploring and what to do in combat. For every 10 minutes of cutscene there's 100 minutes of direct gameplay. FMV critics always forget that.

I am sick to death of seeing japanese caricatures of human beings with blue hair, big eyes and child-like faces. I think their culture must be full of pedophiles.

Yes, Japanese pornography often features underage girls. But then these girls have breasts, so they can't really be considered "children". Just very young women.

 

Also, if you see FF10 you'll notice that the men/women look normal. Consoles have finally reached the point where they have enough power to portray realistic people instead of cartoonish sprites.

[theaveng]

COPIED FROM RPGAMER.COM; WRITTEN BY The Athenian

 

If ever there were a time to bring out my patented Fiery Sword of Justice, this is it! I will right wrongs and triumph over evil! ...And that means you, Ze_ro!

 

I'm sick of them all. Granted, I haven't played them too much, but I don't see a lot of point in that, since they're all pretty much the same.

Apparently, he doesn't play games of any other genre either, because fighting games, shooters, racing, etc. could also be very easily considered "all pretty much the same." Yes, RPGs tend to have similarities between them, but this is like saying that racing games tend to have cars in them.

 

The story never makes much sense, and the parts of it that do are the same from game to game (great evil that's threatening the world, your initially wimpy character the only one that can stop it, blah, blah, blah).

That just sounds like any game, not just RPGs. Or he could be talking about Spiderman, for all we know.

 

The characters are always pretty much the same, the women are deformed Japanese Eye-monsters that barely look human anymore

Apparently, Ze_ro is unable to distinguish between RPGs and anime. ...At least, I'm assuming that's the style he's talking about.

 

and there's always some dorky character that's amazing with machines somehow.

...Again, this complaint could easily be applied to 89% of all games, movies, television shows, and whatever other media you can find in the known universe.

 

Now, I've played a number of these kinds of games lately, and I often get decently well into them before realizing just how big a mistake I've made.

But I thought he said he hadn't "played them too much"...?

 

Valmar's moon was about to crash into the planet thanks to the help of the pope or bishop or pope-bishop, or whatever his name was (remember what I said about non-sensical plots?).

Translation: "I can't remember the name of someone who is apparently a pretty important character."

 

At this point, I made it to the map screen, which naturally limited me to only a few places that I could go, despite the fact that I'd seen about 3 dozen different places already. The place I chose ended up being a "safe zone", for whatever reason. I figured that was game-speak for "Make sure your characters are good, cuz they're about to get their asses kicked", so I walked around and levelled my characters a bit (which is something I really hate doing in RPG's, but I figured if I'd gotten this far, I'd go all the way). Eventually, I got so far into the zone that I couldn't find my way back, and I stumbled across some castle ruins with enemies and a bunch of tasty looking chests in it (y'know, because every item, even if it's just a simple potion, HAS to be in a chest), so I decided to brave the enemies. Now keep in mind that I actually hadn't lost a battle in this game yet. I'd been close, but I guess I was doing just enough exploring to keep my characters powerful enough to deal with everything, even the bosses, without any enormous trouble (in fact, the balance of the game was what kept me interested, since I didn't have to level up for two days before taking on the 2nd level boss). So, I walked into the first group of enemies I saw. They put up a surprisingly good fight (probably my toughest of the game), but I finally managed to beat them. I made my way to the nearest chest, and it had some pretty decent stuff in it! Hey, I might as well get the rest of them while I'm here... So, I make it to a few more chests, kill off a few parties of devils or whatever they were, and I was doing okay. I run into another group of devils, and the match is going well... my characters are hurting, but there's only one devil left.

Except for some minor whining about treasure chests, this whole passage doesn't serve any purpose but to bore us with the details of how he played through a dungeon in Grandia II. Why is he telling us this? Is it supposed to be self-explanatory?

He does complain that he hates levelling-up in RPGs. Fair enough; but he also says that he didn't have to level-up in this game because it was so well balanced. So... what's the point of this, again?

 

WHAM! over 5000 damage to each of my characters, killing them all instantly! I wouldn't have been so pissed off if it hadn't been for the fact that none of my characters had more than about 3500 hit points to begin with

I've never played Grandia II, but it sounds like this is something that wasn't supposed to happen. Did this guy do something horribly wrong, or what? Also, this is not a typical event in a day in the life of an RPG player.

 

By the way, what the hell is with the stupid amounts of hit points in Japanese RPG's anyways?

What, does he want everyone to have 15 HP, or something? Does he want Level 9 to be the maximum experience level?

I can only assume that this is what he wants, because otherwise, I don't see how HP in the thousand range denotes "stupid amounts." It's just a number. What is so "stupid" about a number?

 

the characters had an annoying habit of speaking in emoticons... a little speech bubble with a smily face or crying face would show up (apparently the Japanese cry a lot... at least, as far as I can tell)

And so, the grand total of RPGs with emoticons appearing regularly is... ONE!

 

However, I was able to put most of that behind me and have some fun with the game

Obviously, he wasn't able to at all, because he just cited it as a reason why he hates Japanese RPGs so much.

 

I didn't manage to beat the boss (although I'm sure I could if I put some more effort into it)

Translation: "Yeah, so I died at the boss, but it wasn't my fault. I just wasn't paying attention, that's all. It had nothing to do with me, I swear! I'm good at games, really!"

 

So what the hell? I don't understand why everyone likes these games.

Well, I don't know what to say to this silly thing. I've never played any of the Grandia games, so I don't know it they're any good. But it took me about 5 minutes to figure out Golden Sun wasn't exactly a shining example of video game excellence, and I stopped playing accordingly. If this guy kept on punishing himself by playing a game he clearly wasn't enjoying, under the impression that this was one of the better RPGs out there right now, then he has only himself to blame.

 

Did Squaresoft hypnotize everyone or something?

Did Squaresoft make Grandia and Golden Sun?

 

The only japanese RPG (If you can call it an RPG) I've been able to stand was the Legend of Zelda games, and even they get stupid at times... but at least there's no monotonous "levelling".

There you go, theaveng!

...And about levelling being "monotonous", I'd say it's right up there with racing and fighting games. At least when you level up there is some reason or reward for it. But then you have "Generic Car Racing Game #323, with two-dimensional trees", and after about three rounds of that I just don't care who wins the race anymore, and I have lost the will to live.

And don't get me started on First-Person Shooters. They are the fleas in Lucifer's beard, I swear! There is nothing worse than them! Nothing!

 

I haven't played a really good RPG since Ultima 7 or Dungeon Master. Do they still make games like these, or is everyone jumping on the Japanese bandwagon?

I stand corrected. My undying hatred of American PC RPGs is the most powerful force in the cosmos. If only modern science could tap into this power and use it to benefit society... then all the world's problems would be solved.

 

...So you see, I too can complain about games without giving any good reasons!

[Paralistalon]

Try something off of the beaten path.  Valkyrie Profile, Vagrant Story, Rhapsody, Tactics Ogre: Knight of Lodis, the Suikoden series, Tales of Destiny II, Saga Frontier 2, and Persona 2 have little in common with the cliches you've mentioned.

 

Persona 2 is the best RPG ever!

 

Although, it does have the most Japanese flavor of any RPG I've played. (well, considering it does take place in modern day Japan...)

[Foxy Cleopatra]

 

Also, if you see FF10 you'll notice that the men/women look normal.  Consoles have finally reached the point where they have enough power to portray realistic people instead of cartoonish sprites.

 

I did see the game when it first came out and visually it was incredible, however, once again the plot lost me after the big game...

[theaveng]

NICE AVATAR! .......oh, I'm sorry. Were you saying something?

 

 

To date, I've found FF10 to have the best plot in an RPG. It isn't the simple "kill the bad guy" plot. Through the first 30 hours of the game, you don't even realize there is a bad guy. You're just going on a pilgrimage with Yuna so you can slay a gigantic whale.

 

It's not until around hour 30 that you discover that your pilgrimage is a farse, and that your goal is not the whale... it's to overthrow the religious establishment. Revolution!

 

I find that plot to be unique in the RPG world and with plenty of twists and turns to hold your attention.

[chrisbid]

of course, they never do explain where tidus or jecht really came from. they came "from a dream" thats about the most detailed it got. FFX was an improvement over 8 and 9, but even 7 was a tad better, and no FF game is as good as Phantasy Star.

[AtariX]

Ze_ro, I agree that Golden Sun is one big snooze fest. GS is very linear and has very little interaction. No mater what you answer in conversations in GS, the outcome is always the same. It has a very cookie cutter coming of age type story and the cutesie love interest that never goes anywhere, that has been used to death in numerous Japanese RPG's.

 

Like other people have said, try some other Japanese RPG's that are really good. Sega has some great RPG's if you own a Genny, Saturn or Dreamcast. The Shinning Force series, Phantasy Star series, Phantasy Star Online, Shenmue series, etc.

 

Most of the western style RPG talent is on PC's, not on consoles. That seems to be changing if you own an Xbox though. The Xbox has some good western style RPG's already out and more in the future. Morrowind and Balder's Gate: Dark Alliance are both good. Then you have Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic(Bioware), Sea Dogs II(Bethesda), Dugeons and Dragons Heroes, Sudeki and Fable in the near future. Microsoft is also rumored to be buying the PC RPG masters, Bioware. Then there are the rumored RPG's in the works for the Xbox either based in the Battletech, Shadowrun, Crimson Skies or D&D universes. The info is kinda sketchy at this point, but either Fasa Studio, Bioware, or Rare is working on one or more of the above titles and they might either be a regular RPG or a MMORPG.

[Ze_ro]

Apparently, he doesn't play games of any other genre either, because fighting games, shooters, racing, etc. could also be very easily considered "all pretty much the same."  Yes, RPGs tend to have similarities between them, but this is like saying that racing games tend to have cars in them.

 

I defend my point by saying that other genres have more variety than RPG's. For fighting games, there's actually more variety than people think. Tekken and Soul Calibur are a lot different than Street Fighter... Super Smash Bros. is a lot different than Mortal Kombat. Although they all ultimately have you fight another character, their implementation is vastly different.

 

As for racing games, compare Mario Kart, Daytona USA, and something like Trick Style (Racing on hover-boards) or Magforce Racing (Magnetic hovercrafts). These games can show a surprising amount of variety. I simply don't see as much variety when it comes to RPG's.

 

Ze_ro, I agree that Golden Sun is one big snooze fest. GS is very linear and has very little interaction. No mater what you answer in conversations in GS, the outcome is always the same.

 

I always found it odd that it would ask you yes/no questions at very inappropriate times.... for example, you'd be looking for item X, and a character would tell you that it's in dungeon Y. At this point your 2nd in command would turn to you and say "Hey Ze_ro! Do you think we should go to Dungeon Y and get X?" why on earth would I say no? As you said though, it really doesn't matter even if you do, since it won't branch the plot anyways.

 

--Zero

[theaveng]

of course, they never do explain where tidus or jecht really came from.  they came "from a dream" thats about the most detailed it got.

In order to explain that, you need to follow this train of thought:

- The "ghosts" of previously-living people are trapped inside statues. These statues are stored inside the temples.

- The statues/ghosts use their "dreams" aka minds to project energy beings into the real world.

- These energy beings are what Yuna summons: Valefor, Ifrit, et cetera.

- Tidus is one of those summoned energy beings. Ditto Jecht.

 

Clear?

 

Okay yes, it's a bunch of nonsense. Ghosts don't exist. Nor can they be trapped inside statues. And they certainly can't summon powerful energy beings like Valefor. Hence the name "fantasy" RPG. It's all make-believe.

[theaveng]

How many Jap. RPG's aren't anime?

Virtually none of them. Anime is the Japanese word for "cartoon" and 99% of Japanese RPGs are NOT cartoons. They are computer-generated sprites and/or polygons.

 

...you'd be looking for item X' date=' and a character would tell you that it's in dungeon Y. At this point your 2nd in command would turn to you and say "Hey Ze_ro! Do you think we should go to Dungeon Y and get X?" why on earth would I say no? [/quote']

The purpose of such questions is for you to say, "No I have to visit the store and buy supplies," or whatever else you need to do before leaving. I often say no to those questions, go buy potions, save my game, and then return to the guy and say "Yes I'm ready to visit Dungeon Y."

 

Such questions act as a pausing point in the game for you to prepare yourself for battle. You say "Yes" if you're ready or "No" if you need to go buy stuff/save your game.

[Gabriel]

I actually kind of like that. Final Fantasy type combat always seemed lame to me, since there's no positioning, and there are usually only three choices: run, fight, and magic (and usually one of the final two isn't even an option, since each character is either unable to use magic, or a complete wuss). Games like Super Mario RPG with "timed hits", as well as Grandia II that has an odd interrupt system seemed better to me, since there was actually some level of challenge about it... it wasn't just all random luck if you hit or not.

 

I still think the AD&D games (Pools of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, etc) had excellent combat... although it was rather annoying taking on a group of 30 drow... damn, I hated the drow...

 

I think you misinterpret me slightly. It's my fault for phrasing things the way I did. There are some real-time combat style implementations that I like. For example, I like the active time battle system featured in the Final Fantasy games. It is close enough to a regular turn based battle system that it doesn't bother me.

 

I like Grandia II as well. I think that it has a pretty damn good battle system that blends the good points of real-time with the good points of turn based. In fact, I highly enjoyed Grandia Xtreme, because it was an old school dungeon romp focusing on battles, battles, battles! Sadly, I had to give it away, because the Doomishness of the exploration mode gave me Xtreme motion sickness that I couldn't quite deal with.

 

As for the limited options, many times the real point isn't in the on screen combat options. Many times it is how you've arranged your inventory and prepared for the fight. Other times it is how exactly you go about hacking your enemies. Sometimes it is how you manage your associated resources, like action points or what have you, during the fight.

 

I also LOVE the classic AD&D games. The gold box games are shining examples that very few things have met or exceeded. But if you're complaining about mindless leveling, then you have to complain about these. They had that feature in abundance.

[Ze_ro]

Anime is the Japanese word for "cartoon" and 99% of Japanese RPGs are NOT cartoons.  They are computer-generated sprites and/or polygons.

 

I meant that they're in Anime style, not actual cartoons (although most of the older, non-3D ones are still basically cartoons)

 

In my experience, Full-Motion Videos only last about 1 minute, and cutscenes 3 minutes... shorter than the typical pop song.  I don't think that's excessive, do you?

 

To be honest, I do... I play video games for the interaction, otherwise there's a perfectly good TV that's around for stuff like that. Naturally, you need something to explain the plot, but I don't think FMV do a very good job of this... old games like Ultima 5 and Wasteland (one of the best RPG's ever in my opinion) sure didn't use cutscenes... the closest you'd get is when you pray at an alter, and you have to read through a definition of Spirituality or whatever.

 

Of course, I prefer mindless games like Quake and Doom over "stealth" games like Goldeneye... so I guess it's a matter of taste or attention span or whatever.

 

The purpose of such questions is for you to say, "No I have to visit the store and buy supplies," or whatever else you need to do before leaving.

 

Yeah, except that in Golden Sun, it provided no effect whatsoever, except that the character might give a different line after your response (note that I said 'might'... sometimes it wasn't different at all!). Answering "Yes" didn't force you to go, and in both cases, you'd still be standing in the same spot after the conversation was over.

 

To make matters worse, there was even less relevant yes/no questions than that... often they'd ask you stuff for no reason, that really had absolutely no bearing on your quest (or even any side-quests), stuff that really should have been automatic in the dialog. Maybe the story had to be changed for the North American market, and something was messed up in the conversion or translation, who knows?

 

--Zero

[mos6507]

 

And I find myself playing games like Street Fighter III over and over again because it's a head-to-head competition, whereas I haven't touched a Final Fantasy game in years. Sure, I put a lot of time into it initially, but after I've seen it all, I've seen it all and generally don't need to do so again.

 

To each his own!

 

That's my main beef with RPGs. It's all too linear and goal-oriented. That's why games like Everquest are so liberating, because you define your own objectives and you can actually ROLE PLAY unlike the usual hack n slash du jour.

 

RPGs are primarily social games and they really cry out for some sort of meaningful interaction, if not from other players then from some kind of meaningful AI.

 

But although we're all on insanely fast PCs with oodles of RAM most console RPGs have less AI in them than Atari 2600 Adventure, which is why I get more replay value out of the latter.

[Ze_ro]

That's my main beef with RPGs.  It's all too linear and goal-oriented.

 

What bugs me is when people try to pawn them off as non-linear by saying that there's all these side-quests and seven endings and whatever... Sorry, but Chrono Trigger is far from non-linear no matter how many endings it has.

 

--Zero

[shep]

....and you forgot to mention that the lead character in most Japanese RPG's is usually and indecisive, young thief or mercenary, usually the quiet type who doesn't talk much, cannot remember his past,  and never admits to loving that girlteammate.

 

"...."

 

"...."

 

too true, FF8 anyone? (I do like FF8 but it got old by the fourth disc)