Why were last gen's Jrpgs such crap?

Why are most jrpg stories (and gameplay) crap after the psp/ds/ps2 era?

Even heavy hitters got crap stories... did all the good writers in japan retire after the ps2/psp ended and left us with narcissistic dating sim pedo non-writers? Even final fantasy stories took a nose dive ( a big one with the 13 series).

I can't seem to find a good jrpg outside of etrian odyssey or a small handful of srpgs ala disgaea and fire emblem (persona is a ps2 series and 5 isn't out yet, so don't go there).

First lets talk story. Back in the NES --> SNES --> PS1 --> Ps2/PSP era, most jrpgs had epic stories of world spanning events. Gathering up heroes to take on a worldly evil or super villain. Most of that is now gone. 90% of the jrpgs I see are all about dating, and one guy and his entourage of young looking anime girls, or alchemy. Nothing is compelling, and I see no reason to play hardly any of them.

I just picked up, on sale($15) sword art online.. and instead of a great story I am left with a boring overdrawn dialog of some guy and his legion of girls who worship him. The story dialog of the girls talking about swooning over him went on for like 10 minutes.... it was boring. Game designers must be hiring junior high students to write their sexual fantasies for these games instead of you know, hiring competent writers. I just don't know how this stuff is even a game.

Examples:

All Alteir games... all are dainty young girls doing mundane tasks... how is this compelling?
Tales of hearts r - aparently the story is about a girl loosing her spirit and emotions that the main hero needs to find...uggh..

Final Fantasy 13 - Did not make sense at all.

Star Ocean4 - horrible horrible horrible.

I won't even get into the gameplay department as numours threads have discussed the lack of quality in recent years.

Is there any good jrpgs left? Or are they all stuck with trying to just show off female cartoons of women who don't even look like they are legal driving age? And seriously what's up with Japan's obsession with underage girls. Around here that stuff will get you put in jail, and for good reason.

I miss Suikoden, Vagrant Story, Vandel Hearts, Grandia, Dark Cloud, Secret of Mana, Dragon Quest, Legend of Dragoon, Legend of legia, lunar , Parasite eve, Megan man legends, Wild arms. etc...

Look at this list of PS1 rpgs: http://www.listal.com/list/jrpgs-on-playstation

now compare to this:

http://www.listal.com/list/jrpgs-on-playstation-3

first 10 are all alteir or moe games.... uggh (take out demons souls as that isn't really a jrpg).

Will we ever get a return to classics like Suikoden, Grandia and Vagrant story? Or will we get even more Japanese-centric modern moe stories that have infected jrpgs this last gen?

Thoughts...

Oh and xbox one get's none of them.... (actually that may be a good thing lol).

As someone who loves All rpgs, this makes me rather sad (I love both western and eastern...styles).

Demon's Souls

The World Ends With You

Dark Souls

Valkyria Chronicles

Ni Nu Kuni

Xenoblade: Chronicles

Tales of Vesperia

Resonance of Fate

At the least they were rated well or whatever, part of the issue is that they got their lunch eaten by Western developers. Japan was fundamentally behind the curve on HD development, and not as quick with the output. It is what it is, also if we're being quite frank: jrpg stories, are, were, always have been, and if we're being honest always will be dog shit of the highest order that is only passable if you turn your brain off and ignore the part where you are enjoying some anime bullshit. They got free passes when everything was text and you couldn't tell how poor the dialogue was, but once they got voice actors you couldn't help but notice how shit the dialogue was.

Good voice acting (FF13 for instance the voice acting isn't the issue, the shit characters and dialogue are) or even when it's bad voice acting (the voice acting is an issue in FFX, but so are the shit characters and dialogue).

Plus in general Japan's big pubs/devs had major down swings. Square was a fucking joke outside of The World Ends With You, and currently still a joke. They've yet to make an actual good game since TWEWY. Atlus was making PS2 or remaking PS1/PS2 stuff on the ds, on a rare day a saturn game for the DS. Outside of them who else was ever really that legit at bringing jrpgs? Namco keeps turning out one boring tales game after another, and Monolith got bought by Nintendo.

That said Square might stop sucking if FF15's previews are any indication, you know minus the part where it's the backstreet boys on a road trip, and with Platinum and From Software flexing their muscle, one can be hopeful that some other Japanese dev will find themselves a niche audience entirely on the quality of their games. I mean that's what Atlus did.

JRPG became a genre and thus the mechanics in this genre became outdated last generatrion when wrpg's were introduced with new open world mechanics that picked up the slack of the RPG market in the west

My problem isn't with the mechanics. I love both turn based and real-time gameplay. I understand some don't but that is per player opinion. My beef is the lame reliance on anime and what they call "Moe". This stuff never used to be in jrpgs at all. I don't remember a single jrpg from the ps1 having dating sim elements, underage girls, or just bad non plot plots ala ff13.

I do agree with champ about voice acting. JRPGs were so much better before we actually got to hear voices. That's about when the change occured. But it has more to do than just that and champ's comment above brings some of that to light.

Western rpgs aren't all open world real time either. Look at the two best rpgs from last year (imo) divinity original sin, legend of grimrock 2, might and magic X and Wasteland 2... games that have great mechanics and are turn based and isometric or grid based 3d at that. Styles that went away from wrpgs over 15 years ago. Yet they are so refreshing, and amazing.

Jrpgs could make a resurgance, if they went back to what made them popular in the 90s. They need to make stories that transcend nationalities too., the jrpgs from the 90s were usually fantasy or sci-fi fair not about "modern otaku culture" or some stuff like that... Hell back in the 90s some jrpgs you would be hard pressed to even know where they were made. The term JRPG didn't even come until the ps3/360 gen.. before that it was only RPG, and then subbed into action or turnbased.

They weren't.

They all moved to handhelds.

I'm not joking. If you wanted mid/low tier JRPGs, the development shifted to the PSP and DS due to sales.

Has for why FF13 was so shit............i don't know. Only large budget JRPGs i can remember were FF and Xenoblade.

FF flopped. Aside from that there were many great RPGs, surprisingly, a lot of them on 360. Eternal Sonata and Lost Odyssey being the best of the bunch.

Xenoblade Chronicles is one of the best JRPG's not only of last gen, but of all time. The Last Story is great. The World Ends With You is spectacular, and depending on how you define gens or whatever, Bravely Default and Kingdom Hearts 3D are great. The JRPGS are out there, they just aren't as popular anymore. The world has unfortunately moved on to more of the WRPG type gameplay, and it sucks.

It seems a lot of the releases are aimed at JPN high schoolers or lower so there's relatively plenty of harem-ecchi touch or the E for E demographics. I like it.

I feel like Souls and MH are anomalies but decent out of JPN materials/products.

Some of the best games last gen were Japanese-developed RPGs.

Because Japanese publishers were scared to death of the western audience. So, they traveled outside of their comfort zone and tried to "westernize" their games to a certain degree. The result was games being made by people who didn't really want to make them for an audience that didn't really want what they were buying.

SO4 combat superior

bosses just suck and no content well I beat main story + extras in 50hrs

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Anyway blame xbox they bought jrpgs and made changes to cater to the western audience which backfired. Also, jrpgs are not little, but HEAVILY influenced by anime which is drastically different from early 2000s, 90s, anime.

I'll preface by saying I didn't play a ton of jrpgs this past gen, but I did play a few..

For me, what I've read and played, I got the sense that jrpgs weren't necessarily bad, but maybe with the exception of very few, the genre didn't seem to advance in any meaningful way... Story telling especially...

Some weren't but yeah, overall the JRPG genre has gotten very stale, mainly because of how long it has been around and almost a complete lack of innovation/variation on the developers part to make it fresh and exciting.

Take that and put is aside western rpgs which have had a very strong showing recently along with new concepts and actual variation and JPRGs become even more underwhelming then they already were....

Look at X for Wii-U. I have almost no interest in that game based on the art style alone. The whole anime style with overly dramatic/emotional characters is so tired and played out that I just can't sit through another game like that.

It has become this weird niche market where appealing to otaku audience generates enough revenue, but the leap toward appealing for mass audience would be too risky and cost-ineffecitve, thereby discouraging any form of innovation. When it happened, it became Valkyria Chronicles.

Stuck in a transition period.
Early JRPGs last gen were sort of stuck doing the same thing they'd been doing for the last couple of gens but with better graphics (Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey). This, in contrast to WRPGs that were embracing other genres and seemed like they were moving forward in comparison. As the last generation wore on I think the Japanese grew to realise that they didn't have to just stick with what was popular before, nor that they needed to aggressively court the Western audience (Nier), but that they could satisfy themselves by continuing to evolve the JRPG and trusting consumer support from this growth. This saw the release of games like Xenoblade and The Last Story that grew from Final Fantasy XIIs more active combat system, in contrast to the early games of the gen (such as Blue Dragon) that were more retroactive in their approach.

Lost Odyssey, The Last Story, Pandora's Tower, Xenoblade Chronicles, Tales of Vesperia, Ni no Kuni etc. etc.

There were some great rpgs last gen.

@Midnightshade29:

Did you miss Demon's Souls and Dark Souls, two of the best JRPGs ever?

You should really play lost odyssey. And tales of Vesperia, Eternal Sonata.

Nobody mentioned Blue Dragon I don't think, while it has its issues it's more than worth playing.

Well you're a fanboy idiot who's stuck up Sony's ass. Last gen there were good JRPGs on non-Sony platforms, but you'd have to take the Sony goggles off to see them.

Xenoblade Chronicles

The World Ends With You

Tales of Vesperia

The Last Story

Pandora's Tower

Lost Odyssey

Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn

SMT: Devil Survivor 1 & 2

Eternal Sonata

Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time

Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story

Sony had a few good ones too, like Valkyria Chronicles and Ni No Kuni.

@bunchanumbers: calling tales of vesperia "great" is a gross overstatement. In its best moments it was good... It had a nice color palate and pretty art, combat was not great and in some cases I'd argue it was simply frustrating, story was every jrpg ever created and yuri, who has become a cult hero was a little dry and uninteresting.

Not hating on the game, I bought it and played it... Its a game that is better in still shots than it is to play.

I enjoyed it. It was the best Tales game since Symphonia for me. I actually liked Yuri's character and personality. In these games its so easy to go mega idealistic and he was as close to what a regular guy would do.

I'd rate Tales of Vesperia a 7/10 after beating it in summer 2012. It was solid, but I felt like not a lot about the game stuck out from a bunch of other jrpgs I'd played before.

Yuri was a really good character in my opinion, bunchanumbers has a great point haha. In a jrpg world rife with 14-18 year old sterotypical naiive heroic save them all progonist, we finally get a lead who is 21 and seems a lot more chill, experienced, down to earth, and does things you would not expect. Other than Yuri though I thought the supporting cast was fairly weak, none of the characters really stuck out to me outside of yuri.

I don't know if you can call tales games boring in general (I think another user in this thread said that). I really enjoyed graces f , and I thought Vesperia and Abyss were solid and definitely not boring.

I find current WRPGs even worse than JRPGs...

They're both dungeon crawlers that really have nothing Japanese about them besides the developer.

Nope, they're JRPG's.

they are as mediocre as they always have been you just didn't notice when you were 12.

here it is 20 years down the road and they are making (for the most part) the exact same games they made since the snes days.

j-dev has not changed one bit... you have.

I like the part where you elaborate on what, in your opinion, makes them that.

i think the reason is because jrpgs always sucked.

what does jrpg stand for? its not a matter of opinion.

Tales of Vesperia was amazing. The Tales series took a massive dive after that and it was like they decided to make them progressively worse with every one.

Ni No Kuni was a great game with a terrible story unless you're like five years old.

I honestly think this obsession they have with cutesy childish characters completely works against actually telling a good story. I've often thought most JRPG's should be on Wii or Wii U where the audience is basically the atypical manchild who refuses to grow up anyway.

I thought Final Fantasy XIII and the sequel were great. I really hated Lightning Returns. I didn't understand the story in the first two I just thought they were terrifically weird and artfully nonsensical. I doubt even the writers had any clue what was going on.

And it was so glorious.... but we haven't had a game like that since.. VC2 was amazing as well, but I lump the psp/ds with ps2 as they really were a continuation of that era.

There were plenty of good ones. My favorite probably was Ni No Kuni.

I would hardly call the souls series jrpgs.... more like action games with rpg elements, as the stats really mean squat. Rpgs, to me at least, need some random elements based on dice rolls. Souls games are all twitch/skill based..not a rpg. It's akin to calling cod an rpg because you level up and the guns have stats.

Yeah i didn't miss the souls series. I purchased Demon Souls from a Hong Kong exporter when everyone (the lemmings at the time especially) were making threads on how ugly and horrible looking it was from the videos... damn did that backfire on them. lol

I would have if those games were on pc, Ps3 , or wii last gen... but alas, I didn't own a 360 and won't for 2 games as nothing else was appealing to me (can't stand halo and gears). Vesperia should of gotten an English PS3 release and Eternal Sonata I played on Ps3 but really wasn't digging the plot or the characters (and god those voices were cringe worthy).

I know where you're coming from with Sonata but despite that it has great visuals and an excellent soundtrack, and the battle system is unique.

Well 360 has a loooot more than gears and halo which I like but I understand because the only game on Ps3 I cared about was Valkyria chronicles, and now I can get that for PC with the dlc.

I played Sonata on PS3 too and thought it was absolutely abysmal. If you only bought a 360 for Lost Odyssey though, it would be a worthwhile investment. Fantastic game.

I wish it sold more and FFXIII bombed lol

I really thought Lost Odyssey 2 would be nailed on for Xbox One. No chance. Instead we get fucking Titanfall... Nintendo are equally stupid. No Last Story for Wii U not even a HD remake just 5 milliion Mario and Zelda games.

I swear the world has caught 'stupid' and there is no cure.

I always thought that JRPG's became shit because of a shift of interest in Japan because a similar sharp drop in quality happened in anime too. Japan always had interest in sexualized and cute cartoons but in recent years it just exploded in a way that made everything else so much less relevant. Thus making everyone want to jump in the moe/ero bandwagon to make money. Because the thing is, there are polls that demonstrate that as long as an anime or game has an art style that they find appealing the product will sell.

I liked The Last Remnant, it wasn't that great but it was good enough. Still need to play Valkyria Chronicles.

Agree with this. Vesperia is pretty good but later ones vastly improved on the combat system. Vesperia feels a little slow and clunky now. Story is one of the better for the Tales series but that's not saying much.

JRPGs are no longer represented by Final Fantasy.

I think there were some great JRPGs last gen and I think there were some outstanding JRPGs on consoles. Granted this isn't the golden age but I think the big 3 had some great JRPGs and the PC is now getting them.

@chessmaster1989: yeah, I thought Eternal Sonata outclassed it...

Last gen's JRPGs were lacklustre at best. I'd guess that you could count the number of truly great ones on one hand.

Sure, there were some 'good' games like Tales of Vesperia, Bravely Default and Lost Odyssey...but they all felt flawed in their own ways, and I don't think any of them hold up to the classics.

Bravely Defauly and Lost Odyssey in particular were archaic snoozefests - I got so bored with both of them that I gave up on them 75% of the way through, with no regrets.

Admittedly, I had a lot of fun with some of the more experimental RPGs of the gen - Resonance of Fate and The Last Remnant in particular - but they're not exactly up there with Chrono Trigger.

As for Nier...it sounds like I should replay that. The atrocious pacing and backtracking over the first few hours really killed the fun for me, but maybe I should give it another try.

Well they are JRPGs

Since the 2000s, both Western and Japanese audiences have gone through shifts of interest, with Western audiences becoming increasingly obsessed with hyper-masculinity and Japanese audiences becoming increasingly obsessed with hyper-femininity, with very little middle-ground between these two extremes. There was a lot of middle ground up until the '90s, when both Western and Japanese audiences had generally similar tastes, but both their tastes have diverged significantly since then.