Are Japanese rpgs failing due to fluffy smugness?

It seems Western RPG's dominate now. Is this party due to grungy aesthetics that appeal to the west? Darksouls (a JRPG) has a grungy apprentice and the west loves it. Final Fantasy, in which you play a thin little girl with pink hair and hipster cloths seems to totally unappealing to the mainstream outside of Japan.

Should JRPG's become grungy in order to appeal and sell more?

Not even the japanese like the 13 series all that much, lol.

Square is just clueless as shit where to take final fantasy at the moment.

i feel like they should make the game they want to make.

but if they really want mass appeal i'd start by making the main protagonist a thirty-something white guy, and add guns to the games.

I think everyone is over the white hair and 10' swords. Ugh and that music.

I reckon Japanese should just stop trying too hard to westernize their game,

Even The Elder Scrolls (which was already highly popular) went from whimsical colorful Oblivion to desaturated blood and guts everyone sounds like Arnold Swarchenegger.

Yes, there is a lame factor towards JRPG's compared to the "cool" looking factor of Western RPG's.

I was playing star ocean, gf said why are u playing a gay girl game. I have a new gf now

I think WRPGs as a whole are getting worse and worse, and there are still a lot of great JRPGs being made. It's just unfortunate that the only JRPG that is widely known is Final Fantasy, and it has been one of the worst series on the market for 2 gens now.

Smart man.

Good for you! :)

Darksouls isn't a rpg.

But JRPG's are getting way to weird I guess. I cant think of the right word for it. Take Tales of Graces f for instance. That game would have been cool, but the characters wear stupid clothes and the word "friendship" is overused terribly.

The characters overall wear weird clothes, say weird things, and they are just plain cheesy, cheesy to the point of being disgusting in most jrpgs in general. The jrpg genre needs to grow up. The people who played them back in the snes era on up, have grown up. Make a grown up jrpg! Kids these day like shooters and games that involve a short attention span. Make the jrpg genre grow up so to speak, then they will be a fan favorite once again. (and stop the ff 13 crud, go back to your roots SE)

there not failing seriosuly where the fuk were u when xenoblade, ni no kuni persona 4 and bravely default came out. sigh does the internet just love living in there bubble or there rocks. well watever then enjoy crying in ur corners like u have for the past few years while i enjoy bravely default, Dark souls 2, monoliths X, Persona 5, FFX HD, Tales of sympohnia chronicles and tales of xilla 2 this year hooray for me!!

The trick to playing Tales games is mostly ignore the plot/characters in favor of gameplay. Gameplay wise they're quite good, but plot wise they're usually somewhere between okay and terrible.

I will just throw this out there, it is not a written truth, just my take on the matter. Fee lfree to correct or disagree.

All RPGs stem from thier PnP namesakes, they are by design complicated, heavily based on making belivable Worlds and have consequences to the choices.

In the beginning neither WRPGs or JRPGS were all that popular (well to be honest we are talking at a point before the distintion was even made. They were overly complex and very hard to get into by the average gamer.

Then the RPG Developers followed the Wizardry series which did remove some of the clutter, and dragged in the influence of visual novels which were somewhat gaining. By dropping some of difficulty of the systems, making it more acceserable JRPGS began to see alot of sucess.

WPGS trailed behind in this reguard, still aiming at the PnP inspirations and what those aimed for, which gave us the wonderful, but likewise hard to get into games like Baldurs gate, and Fallout (they were not the beginning of these, I think we can agree that Might and Magic, Wasteland and Ultima all made sucess beforehand, but these games paved the way for the WRPG as we know them, very true to the Origin of the genre, yet despite critical acclaim not that sucessful financially.

Which in turn made WRPGs begin to drop alot of the intricate systems that was under the Visuals, removing options for players in order to make WRPGS have more mass appeal. I think we could point to NWN as the beginning here. The overall World mattered less the focus was on you the "hero" quickly followed by Morrowing and others WHO also departed from its harder predecessors.

JRPGs aimed at telling a linier story, and WRPGS aimed at focusing on the hero, namely "you".

The degeneration of the RPGs continued on both, but having begun sooner the JRPGs finally reached a point where players could hardly recognize the gameplay which they were seeking, it had been swapped for so low a difficulty curve that in alot of times tactical awareness was not needed, dungeons were pitiful, and everything had become stripped in order to tell a story, nearly killing off the RPG part of the JRPG (closer to a visual novel in alot of ways). I think FF13 was the culmination where the fans finally had enough, FF15 while looking interresting confusingly enough look like another genre entirely.

Now you may not have ben paying attention, but WRPGs are following suit fast, for each game in a series RPG elements are being torn out to make it moreemediate, easier to understand, and focus even more on "you the hero" It is not JUST JRPGS people are complaining about.

Oblivion while pretty was a joke of an RPG, and Skyrim even more so, they were closer to first person action games. Mass Effect 2 effectively killed of most of what made it an rpg between the first and the second. And even the witcher 2 (abeit still rather "hardcore and niché by the standards" were far more tame then the first one.

My guess is that is why we have had so many kickstarter RPGs selling us on the "old school way" bringing the RPGs back to the roots, or atleast the golden era with Black Isle.

On the JRPG front, it is not that they are gone, but people abandoned thier beloved series to seek out games in the genre that still offered what was needed. Persona being an example here (Even bringing some choice back to the JRPGs) And games like Demon's Souls (I do not consider them RPGs, rather I consider them Dungeon crawlers, I tend to think of them as the Modern Diablo games) Saw huge popularity due to the need to think, understand the World, and not pull out more and more game systems in order to make the pretty story Progress, or make you feel like an unstoppable hero.

Long read I know, but maybe my rather odd idea may hold atleast a few drops of Water.

What'd you expect her to say!? When I was younger, I would never let anyone see me playing JRPGs; even when I was a little kid, I knew how embarrassing that shit was.

I blame NIS for putting JRPG in a already bad name to the genre.

JRPG's are failing from lack of innovation.

Other than a few JRPG's embracing pseudo-real time combat, they've kept the same inept stories, teens saving the world, etc.

JRPG were very different back in the 90s than they are now from what i recall

They're failing because they all have shitty UIs, graphics and most of the time gameplay mechanics.

Sounds like Skyrim.

Nah, Skyrim is actually an amazing game, unlike trash like Dark Souls or even Eurotrash like Witcher 2.

Almost as funny as, “I used to X, then I took an arrow to the knee.”

Well Tales of the Abyss was actually pretty decent. Graces f was plain terrible. I plan on buying the Symphonia hd remake too.

JRPGs are fine. It's just Final Fantasy that has no idea what it is doing.

As for why they aren't as dominant as they used to be? Well, truth be told outside of FF, DQ and Pokemon, JRPGs have always been pretty niche. That simply hasn't changed.

The only thing that has, is that WRPGs have found a mass market on home consoles ever since the XBOX. Local products tend to sell better in local markets because they speak to the consumer in a way foreign products have trouble doing.

You know I am planning on doing an article showing all the pockets of innovative flair in the genre. But the short version of that article would read like this:

JRPGs have plenty of innovation. But the genre as a whole doesn't adopt smart ideas or flatter through imitation. As a result, even really old ideas for dealing with common design problems (grinding, difficulty curve) are not commonly implemented, and the entire genre is held back in progression limbo.

If the FPS genre was like the JRPG genre right now, you'd still be seeing games with 1-stick aiming, Goldeneye style. Even though there are numerous better methods of input.

Plenty of WRPGs are full of fail as well.

As an older rpg gamer I love the grind and grit of what rpg used to be and Imo the souls series finally gave me what I wanted,on the other hand really good games like nice no kuni never grow old.

you made the right choice

Most WRPGs suck. Only Fallout games don't.

JRPGs are from a totally different culture, and they make them according so. Just like what we do in the West.

Yes. Pink carrots and fluff is all jrpg's have these days with atrocious voice acting

Don't forget PS2 quality graphics, cliche stories, pedophilic fan service, etc etc

Japanese games "fail" because many Japanese devs cater only to the Japanese audience which I guess works out because Japanese gamers tend to completely ignore Western games anyways.

Whereas the West has moved very far away from some terrible gameplay conventions of the 80s and 90s, lots of Japanese games still use them all the time. Standards must just not change very much when the gamers, and devs completely ignore anything not Japanese.

But if they like it then whatever. It's only Japan.

Dark Souls is not an RPG, it's a metroidvania game.

@ReadingRainbow4: You've never actually played Skyrim have you?

@uninspiredcup: Here's your typical JRPG:

I think they need better writers, I think fluffy happy games can be good if done right, the writing in JRPG's this gen has just been atrocious.

Final Fantasy is a game for basement dwellers now. Don't want any of that armpit fetish fan service crap.

Oh damn that reminds me. Years back I was playing one of the Metroid Prime games and my girl was just chillin and watching. I got hit and of course you hear Samus grunt and see her reflection in the visor... all of the sudden my girl flips out and starts joking on me for playing as a girl. I was like wtf? I don't play games so I can live vicariously through the player character, I play them because they are fun.

She just went on and on though, wouldn't stfu about it. Even a week later up at the bar she tried to call me out on it in front of my friends who also were just like "wtf is wrong with this chick?"

I just called her a brainless walking twat with a nice rack and we went our separate ways.

I don't date gamer girls, but sometimes it seems I should.

I remember when I was obsessed with MGS3 and ignoring this other girl. Finally she got fed up and said "why don't you just **** Metal Gear!"... XD

Gotta admit, that was a good one. If only she knew that she was telling me to get it on with a bipedal tank that has nuclear launch capabilities.

... sorry for the ramble lol. Shit just gets funny sometimes.

Most JRPGs are evolving gameplay-wise. Most big-budget WRPGs and Final Fantasy are devolving. I wish everything was turn-based. That makes the game more challenging and requires a whole lot more strategy than games that give you a few combat animations and turn into an exercise in blocking, strafing, and swinging.

We need more games like FFXIII. Pink and girly.

I can't argue with this, though I haven't played many JRPG's last gen so I can only ass-ume the evolution is happening slowly.

I think there's a place for real time and turn based as I like both. Real time sword and shield combat really needs a do over though. Do any games get it right?

I'll make sure to read your article. I would probably play more JRPG's but apparently some things are just lost in translation and I hate the soap opera shit they've turned into.

IMO, the problem with real time sword and shield combat, and even real time gunplay in RPGs is that it completely breaks the leveling system. Games like KOTOR and Dragon Age Origins probably handle it best, by allowing you to pause and queue up moves and then watch in real time (though it really is just turn-based under the hood). I like the feeling of starting with a weak character (weak group of characters ideally) and building him (them) up to a badass that can wipe the floor with the vast majority of the game and finally go tackle the really hard enemies. Most WRPGs have been moving away from that, though. They want to be non-linear, so they just scale the game with you, which takes away any danger in exploration and any sense of your character actually becoming stronger. In the case of The Elder Scrolls, anyway, the game just becomes a checklist of chores to go do.

Unfortunately I have, everything about it was terrible, especially the laughable combat system and quests.

infinite Undiscovery? really? lol. atleast it brings back memories to when Xbox was desperate to capture that JP market.

@ReadingRainbow4: I get it. You're regurgitating some forum posts or that's what your favorite youtube personality said. But really, you shouldn't pass judgment on Skyrim unless you've played it.

Trust me, you really should play it, you don't know what you're missing.

Fortunately unlike you, I form my own opinions on the games I play. I came to the decision, like many, many others that it was shit.

Complete and utter shit, If bethesda wants to remain relevant they need to desperately try better than they have been, people are sick of Minecraft's basic combat layout.