[QUOTE="LordTrexGuy"]
[QUOTE="Ovirew"]Well hey, maybe you don't like games with anime artwork or turn-based battle systems, but some of us do. And Maybe a lot of Japanese RPGs are similar or cheap to make, but they're hardly the worst offenders. How about all of those game companies that rip gamers off year after year, but still make out like bandits? Activision gets away with charging people $15/mo for an MMO that came out in 2004, and keeps making minor changes to COD but somehow each year's new iteration of the series sells like hotcakes. Capcom charges people for content that they lock on the game discs, and keep making fighting games that mix characters from different fighting games, which really aren't all that different to begin with. How about how just about every game company gouges gamers by making day-one DLC and making most DLC more expensive than it's really worth? I can't think of too many JRPGs that are over-priced to be quite honest. You buy a Disgaea game, you can keep working on that for years. You buy New Super Mario Bros. for $35 and get a few hours of entertainment, but the game stays the same price for an insane period of time. Today I saw the game and checked its price, and it rang up $30. I was shocked, a game that came out back in like 2006 is still at pretty much the same price as it was at launch. Compare this to Advance Wars Dual Strike, which came out in (I think) 2005. I got the game at the end of 2006, brand new, for $20. Advance Wars has a crapload of depth and is a fun turn-based strategy game series. But it only took a year for that game to drop in price - it seems to take an eternity for a Mario or Pokemon game to do the same.dsrules13
I agree with you about WoW and COD being cheap, both developed to rip off customers of their money but about Capcom, even on-disc DLC beats anime games any time. The reason JRPGs are so cheap is because they are stale now. Nobody likes to see big-eyed, spike haired dudes (which according to Japan devs are handsome) going around a generic fantasy world killing dogs from hell and fight in turns. Mario and Pokemon, on the other hand are still expensive because they contain characters which the whole world loves. Seriously, I would rather flick channels to Animax and watch something there rather than pay $20 and play some boring sh!t. If you still do love turn-based sprite games, then it's time my friend that you moved on to something into which more effort has been poured.
Just because you have a different taste doesn't mean mine or Ovirew's is wrong. And not all JRPGs are traditional, I have trouble getting through some of the more traditional offerings such as Dragon Quest IV. But games like Persona take a fresher take on the genre. I like the turn-based system. In a lot of games it takes strategic planning, unlike the hack-and-slash of action rpgs with the 3D graphics. And not just JRPGs have generic fantasy worlds. Look at Skyrim or Oblivion. Sure they have many unique things to them, but are very generic in the monsters, characters, architecture, items, etc.
Just because they have sprites doesn't mean they have less effort poured in then any other game, I don't understand why this is difficult to understand. They are a different style, not necessarily a worse style. JRPGs put stock in different aspects of the game. Think about everything that must be designed in an RPG. Then look at how long they are, often 30-40+ hours. I'll give you an example, Disgaea. It's a strategy rpg with sprites released on PS2 with mutiple sequels, two of them ported to the PSP. You can level up your characters to 9,999 if you want to, there are over 100 classes of characters to choose from, there are tons of unlockable stages and bosses piled on to the main storyline, and every single item in the game has something like a 100 stage world. I'll repeat that, every item in the game has a 100 stage world if you want to level it up. Plenty of people spend in excess of 250 hours with the game, but it offers almost infinite content. So if the game wants to use sprites, that shows no lack of effort to me.
Compare that to a platformer. Most will take you less than 10 hours. And you often have one or maybe two playable characters.
And speaking of sprite games and platformers, look at Rayman Origins. Some of the most beautiful animated sprites I've ever seen. And it is critically acclaimed, received extremely high scores and was praised for its graphics, praised.
I simply cannot understand why someone would like Persona. I never complained about sprites, isn't Super Mario Bros also a sprite-based game? I love it. But turn-based combat is something completely different. It's a lack of effort on the dev's part to create good combat. Most of these games have the same animation for almost every move, its just that the moves have different names. If it is so difficult for them to make good combat, they should rather stop making games or go pacifist. Talking about item levels in Disgaea, yes, you can see a number magically increasing next to an item and this number is the stage world, but in Skyrim, you can turn around an object to see it in full 3D and enchanting it gives it a unique shader too, which imo, is much more interesting than seeing an icon change. And lets compare it to a platformer. Disgaea may give you a million hours playtime, but I would rather love just an hour with something like LittleBigPlanet where more work has been put in. And if the JRPGs absolutely require to made in sprites, why don't the devs try to at least make them look good?
And Rayman Origins is by Ubisoft who are not Japanese. They put at least some effort in trying to polish their work, unlike JRPG devs, who just want quick cash from cheap games, using the same animations and recycling the same ideas over and over.
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