FACT: JRPG's are objectively better than WRPGS

>Get 10 hours into JRPG
>Combat becomes a tedious slog and I just mash confirm while reading something else
>Story is paced like absolute shit because they needlessly stretch out 30 hours of content into 120
No

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>JRPG's are objectively better than WRPGS
Care to explain why?

Nothing since Fire emblem is SRPG and the same for Valkyria Chronicles. Ys is ARPG
If you call them normalfag series you should atleast know that much.
A better comparison would be:
Trails, Star ocean and FF.

Dunno, i allways get the feeling that the design is better suited for multiplayer.
Wrpg feel like playing pen and paper alone, while Jrpg's design is better suited for singleplayer

ITT: Weeb games no one gives a flying fuck about

>Weeb games
>million sellers
>Western trash
>Can barely sell on indie PC market

started to play xenoblade chronicles 1 recently.
do i like it Yea Forums?

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Japanese SRPGs are JRPGs. Japanese ARPGs are JRPGs. And Star Ocean is also an ARPG.

Sometimes i dont know

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>Damn why are there no good WRPGs anymore.
- Too much emphasis on """roleplay""" when most game writers are shit and their idea of "choice" in a videogame is having multiple choice dialog options.
- Even worse when all that awful writing is voice-acted or portrayed by uncanny character models (to be fair JRPG anime shit is not much better in this regard).
- Nobody seems to be able to implement a good turn-based combat system that isn't a translation of tabletop rules.

But that's not even "objectively" explained why jrpgs are supposed to be "better". I like both so I never get why people argue over this.

shadow hearts 2 was underrated? huh

You cant objectively call something better. People argue about everything, sometimes just for the sake of arguing.

The fact that none of them is particularly good?

Yeah. Get a load of him being based and correct.

Whats "JRPG"? Does it stand for "RPG made in Japan"? Do you call The Witcher 3 "PRPG" or something? Or do you think that "JRPG" is some kind of "character driven role-playing game with emphasis on storytelling and character development" shit, and that according to this logic The Witcher 3 is a Polish "JRPG" then?

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nocturne was underrated? huh

Nowadays WRPG just means FPS/TPS/action game/hack and slash game with leveling up systems and stats

JRPGs stuck much closer to what RPG gameplay is supposed to be like: tactical and turn based. They also have much brighter worlds, likable and memorable characters, etc. What characters did you remember from Pillar of Eternity except that guy with the weird eye? How about Divinity 2? Nothing.

>Whats "JRPG"?
Japanese games that focus heavily on stats, story and characters in a party saving the village/country/world.

Jrps means eastern CRPG (Consolerpg)
>"JRPG" is some kind of "character driven role-playing game with emphasis on storytelling and character development"
yes, basicly. What makes it a RP"G" are usual rpg elements such as Talent trees, Statcalculating etc.

I am not gay so the bottom one looks a lot more appealing

>Does it stand for "RPG made in Japan"?
Yes.

>Whats "JRPG"?
A term that's been used for like, 25 years now

>A term that's been used for 25 years by dumb western journos who invented it in the first place
Japanese don't call their games JRPGs.

>Whats "JRPG"?
It's an umbrella category for RPGs based on a philosophical split from the late 80s, and for a time was nearly synonymous with "Console RPG." If you go back to 1990, western RPGs were games like Ultima, Wizardry, Might and Magic, Eye of the Beholder, and the Gold Box D&D games.

If you aren't dumb and blind, which most Yea Forums posters probably are but if you aren't dumb and blind you should be able to see many obvious differences in the design philosophy between those western RPGs I listed and the first 5 or so Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy games (as well as Phantasy Star II, Lufia 1+2, Breath of Fire, and many more). Given that all those streamlined story-focused RPGs were made by Japanese for consoles, they became known as "console RPGs" and "JRPGs." The term stuck as a genre category, although there are zoomers here with shit for brains that can't get past the literal definition of the words.

Presumably they have better-resolution categories that differentiate between streamlined casual RPGs like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy and more sophisticated RPGs made in Japan. But for a long time few of those games got released in the west. Typically, JRPG doesn't mean a Japanese-made TRPG or ARPG, although it sometimes does.

>What makes it a RP"G" are usual rpg elements such as Talent trees, Statcalculating etc
Specifically with an emphasis on decision-focused, stat-driven combat. (ARPGs are only quasi-RPGs due to their greater emphasis on tests of dexterity and reflexes)

Yeah now it seems like "cRPG" is becoming the appropriate term for the more classic western-style RPG with tactical combat. (Pathfinder: Kingmaker, DivOS, PoE, etc.)

There are at least two relevant meanings of the term JRPG and people who aren't retarded and autistic can gather from context which one is relevant. One definition emphasizes the light/casual story-focused RPGs and excludes most TRPGs. Many ARPGs increasingly count as JRPGs as the distinctions between real-time and turn-based games are blurred.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is considered a JRPG but is also an ARPG. Dragon's Dogma on the other hand is an ARPG that isn't considered a JRPG except by the broader, more inclusive definition of the term.

That is true.

Arpg and Jrpg exclude eachother.
Arpg doesnt only mean reflexive combat, but also less dialogue, cutscenes etc.
Jrpg is more character development, dialogues and cutscenes.
Look at star ocean for excample.
>10 hours of only cutscenes
>20 more hours only dialogue
>Each enemy is skippable
>Strong focuse on decisions such as modifyin weapons, forging items, setting roles to characters, leveling them up and skilling them
It wont magically become a ARPG only because its combat is not turnbased.

Valkyrie Profile is a clearly a "JRPG" in peoples mind and it plays nothing like any other "JRPG".
SMT considered "JRPG" by many although its a plain old western-style blobber dungeoncrawler which isn't even that heavy on a story.
Stop pulling this "gamedesign philosophy" bullshit, every game is put up differently even if they're made within the same country.
"JRPG" is a western buzzword that means nothing.

Why are fucking retards like you incapable of using the "+" buttong at the top of your browser, open wikipedia and learn something about RPG history instead of being stupid on the internet?
You could use all the time you waste arguing for getting actual information.
That way you wouldnt have to make yourself look that fucking stupid

You're right except XC2 is not an action RPG.

Show us one instance when japanese devs actually printed "cRPG" on a box. Clarifying that the game belongs to console platform doesn't correspond to the genre.

not getting enough upvotes on reddit, beepzorz?

Because wikipedia is run and edited by the same retards who invented the dumb shit outta their asses in the first place? Citating retards and journos in wikipedia articles doesn't automatically make it right. Look, I found a wikipedia article for you:
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_horror_films

Now open the real wikipedia, and also reffer to the
>This article has issues. Please help improve it
Thats literally marked in red.

In my opinion, game genres must be defined strictly by gameplay mechanics and not by story/amount of cutscenes/dialogues/whatever. Thus CRPG, ARPG, SRPG etc. are genres. JRPG and WRPG are not. You could name them metagenres if you want. It doesn't matter which definition of JRPG you use, it will include a large amount of games that do not have anything in common with each other both in gameplay and story elements.

That being said, this JRPG/WRPG autism is exclusively a western thing, Japs themselves call all of them just RPGs and don't give a single fuck.

better at what?
what are you considering to be jrpgs? any rpg-elements game from nippon or a specific console menu-based-actions jrpgs as a genre?

I'm a crpgfag that is trying to get into some console jrpgs
and I got to tell you I even found some borderline enjoyable ones, but there is always something that is completely fucking it up. Usually that is being artificially stretched.

It can be constant gameplay interruptions with stupid irrelevant cutscenes or the repulsive minigames, or the "go down the corridor and back interrupted by loading time and cutscenes with 0 gemplay. Oh whats that, you are done? go down this empty corridor as well. You guessed it, there is going to be 0 gameplay as well. Just push down the d-pad button, will you?".

It's like the developers think that nobody wants to actually play the games.
the only "jrpg" that actually just throw you into the gameplay and let you have fun are those of the souls series. and they only qualify as jrpgs in geographical term, e.g. retarded ones

you can say whatever you will but you can never change my mind. JRPGs are average-consumer-tier trash.

What bothers me about JRPGs is that I don't get to define my own character. I usually hate JRPG main characters since they end up saying/doing stupid shit and in WRPGs I have more options to avoid that. This alone makes WRPGs infinitely better.

>Stop pulling this "gamedesign philosophy" bullshit, every game is put up differently even if they're made within the same country.
Not that guy but JRPGs are very distinct in terms of music/art direction, storytelling patters and ultimately also game design. You can immediately tell if the game you're playing was made in Japan or the west. And there are also game design elements that are much more prominent in the west than in Japan, e.g. when it comes to choice/consequences. Certainly you may not be able to draw a binary line of demarcation between the two, but you can draw a stochastic border which attributes a title a certain likelihood to be made in the west or in Japan as there can be noted clear tendencies.

He's not him, though many redditors love to spam his retarded image macros his style is very easily recognizable.
In fact I have the sneaking suspicion this thread is another reddit falseflag thread made to just shitpost about JRPGs.

cRPG means casual rpg and they just write RPG, however.. if its action they usually write it on it.
On square enix hp they literally write it under each game.
For example:
dragon quest mainline is just labeled Rpg which automaticly means crpg and dragonquest heroes is labeled as arpg

>OH NO THE BIG BAD ANCIENT EVIL HAS AWAKENED
>luckily ludo and his 9 year old anime-trope-filled friends are here to save the world
>900,000 random battles later
>THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP SAVED THE WORLD
>>>>turn based battles

jrpgs are fuckin garbage through and through

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I have never played a jrpg in my entire life (even though I've played all good western games. Give me 1 (one) reason to play a jrpg.

anime tiddies

They are better designed for singleplayer

I absolutely don't think so. There is a minority of western RPGs which work as multiplayer games, e.g. Diablo or DivOS, but most of them are exclusively single player games because they involve way too much text and are way too masturbatory in terms of content, with the player character being wanked as the one hero of the plot, romance options, etc. which simply does not work with other people.

JRPGs
>Designed to create a unique adventure with an interesting cast of characters
>designed with game play as the focus, each game feeling different from one another
>showcase for composers to explore a variety of genres and tones
>showcase for artists to push technical limitations

WRPGs
>mistakenly called "CRPG" to have an aura of pretentious superiority
>designed to recreate a social table top environment but in a single player package
>ignores that these table top games are only fun because they are social
>showcase for preachy writers to sell their highschool level political agenda

More like the genre existence should be justified and thought out. As much as broad the definition of a "genre" is, its still a tool that was invented for a reason. "Survival horror" is buzzword invented by Capcom, but it doesn't mean the genre (or rather "survival" part of it) can't be defined since REs gameplay was pretty distinct for its time. Therefore Silent Hill isn't a survival horror, pretty much just as any other horror game that is not RE, but "survival horror" can be a genre, while "JRPG" can not.

>Jrpg
>Designed with gameplay as focuse
Stopped reading there

Suikoden 3 and 5

>"JRPG" is a western buzzword that means nothing.
On the contrary it is a practical term used by normal people all the time to express ideas succinctly and clearly. Just yesterday in a discussion about consoles it was pointed out that the SNES was notable for its JRPGs but that other genres (especially 2D platformers) somewhat declined in quality compared to the NES.

The term "JRPG" in that respect is clearly referring to the large category of games that include Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI, and Super Mario RPG, and Dragon Quest IV; and isn't talking about Ultima VI and Eye of the Beholder despite both of those games having SNES ports.

It is a practical, commonly used term.

Battle royale and AFPS are no genre either. The genre is called Shooter. I dont understand this genre autism

Yeah, it's pretty good. The story and combat pick up quite a bit around the midway point, but the exploration aspect peaks in the first 15-20 hours.

No one cares phoneposter.

>phoneposter.
???

>FACT: [Something completely false]
Sure thing, kid.

>isn't talking about Ultima VI and Eye of the Beholder despite both of those games having SNES ports.
What do console ports have to do with anything with geographical distinctions you fucking chickpea brainlet?

>mistakenly called "CRPG" to have an aura of pretentious superiority
This is simply because the term originated as a literal description of the game. Wizardry and Ultima were simply RPGs that you played on a computer instead of on the tabletop. That's all it meant. RPGs for console were called console RPGs, because computer RPGs came first and probably also because console is a 2-syllable word that flows off the tongue while computer is a more awkward 3-syllable word.

>JRPGs
>Designed to create a unique adventure with an interesting cast of characters
Doesn't work because JRPGs usually rely on the same stock characters that shounen manga rely, making them extremely derivative in terms of content.

>designed with game play as the focus, each game feeling different from one another
You have certain sub-types, e.g. menu-based turn-based, tactical grid turn-based or real time action-based, but within those types they are remarkably similar and derivative; a lot more so than WRPGs are.

>showcase for composers to explore a variety of genres and tones
Art direction is rather same-ish too. You have the same K-Pop looking idols in quasi-realism or anime-samefaces of various kinds.

>showcase for artists to push technical limitations
JRPGs are technically for the most part unimpressive. They did push boundaries during the mid 90s, but have long lost that place.

>WRPGs
>ignores that these table top games are only fun because they are social
"No". Tabletop games are unfun because they are social, or do you think it's fun playing with fat nerds like yourself pretending to be elven princesses? There are lots of things wrong with WRPGs, but this is actually the one thing where they're superior: they get rid of the social element.

We get it JRPG-weeb, you can move on.

>AFPS
What?

Wrong about everything? Must be a WRPG fan.

Its a practical term, but its not a genre as many pretend it is. You can generalize games by countries all you want, but actually comparing games by countries is just plain fucking stupid.

Everything I wrote is factual. If you disagree then you don't know what you're talking about.

>SMT considered "JRPG" by many
The term JRPG had already been established by the time SMT was released in North America.

You compare them by their designstyle, its only called like that beccause it comes from teh respective countrys.
Like comics are called comics and mangas are called mangas despite both being books.
If the manga is created in the usa its still japanese, because manga is a japanese thing

Japanese use the term 洋ゲー ALL THE FUCKING TIME and they know exactly what they mean by that. The idea that different parts of the world don't favour different types of gameplay or aesthetics is just as wrong as the idea that different parts of the world aren't inhabited by people of different races that differ in terms of looks, personality, etc. - sure you might find the odd outlier, but there are still tendencies.

>Designed to create a unique adventure with an interesting cast of characters
Teenagers and steoreotypes everywhere.
>designed with game play as the focus, each game feeling different from one another
Ultimately pointless as any but the less popular JRPG have interesting gameplay, and because they are less popular they don't get to influence the production of JRPGs as a whole.
>showcase for composers to explore a variety of genres and tones
Same cheerful melodies in most games. Notable exception is Nocturne with its bombastic soundtrack.
>showcase for artists to push technical limitations
SNES JRPGs all look the same; PS1 JRPGs all look the same; PS2 JRPGs all look the same.
>mistakenly called "CRPG" to have an aura of pretentious superiority
Called "cRPGs" because they are computer adaptations of traditional tabletop RPGs, using very similar rulesets.
>ignores that these table top games are only fun because they are social
And because the games are fun.
>showcase for preachy writers to sell their highschool level political agenda
t. only played games from BioWare.

>Doesn't work because JRPGs usually rely on the same stock characters that shounen manga rely
they don't
>but within those types they are remarkably similar and derivative
they aren't
>WRPG
first person, rtwp, turn based clicking
>Art direction is rather same-ish too
imagine being this wrong
>JRPGs are technically for the most part unimpressive
>the last JRPG I played was pokemon and final fantasy: the post
>"No"
oh it's a redditer.

>I played an SMT game ONCE and it changed my life
we get it, play better and more games.

ARPGs and SRPGs apperared in Japan and thus are Japanese things. Yet somehow those are not JRPGs while LRPGs, games based on western gameplay philosophy, are.

>JRPGs look unique!
>24 games on the chart
>almost everyone is either a derivative of Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Secret of Mana or Fire Emblem
oh no no no no no

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Literally every jrpg is a derivative of Wizardry anyway

>I dont understand this genre autism
Probably because you're a chimp that can only communicate with grunts and gestures.

Get fucked JRPG-weeb, SMT is great because it takes more from Wizardry than stuff like Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy. It's one of the few legitimately good JRPG franchises. Persona isn't though, it's weeb trash like most JRPGs.

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Please, im allmost confident that you have a brain. Just use it for one fucking time instead of being this dumb. Just give it a try atleast.

>Takes more from western dungeoncrawler
>Still calling it a jrpg

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>Doesn't work because JRPGs usually rely on the same stock characters that shounen manga rely
They don't though, just like WRPGs do not usually rely on nondescript self insert errand boys.
>but within those types they are remarkably similar and derivative; a lot more so than WRPGs are.
>WRPGs
>Not derivative
99% of WRPGs have the exact same point and click interface and game structure, they even have the same exact UI layout, and 99% of them all rely on Ultima's achievements, they're the most derivative genre in videogames outside of maybe racing games.
Not like there's a lot wrong with it either, all genres are derivative at the end of the day, innovation and going outside of bounds is extremely rare, and I can't say WRPGs do a good job at that.
Even the so famed Witcher games are completely derivative of Gothic, which in turn are derivative of, big fat surprise, Ultima 9.
>Art direction is rather same-ish too.
It really isn't, WRPGs are far, far more guilty of that, especially the high fantasy ones, which outside of some rare exception like the Planescape games are all the same bland, non descript D&D/Tolkien setting, with either a grimdark/"Realistic"/cartoony flavour.
>They did push boundaries during the mid 90s, but have long lost that place.
So you confirm you talk about games you don't play, that's nice.

This post is the usual proof that like /tg/ says, WRPGs are for neckbeards that are far too unlikable to play TT with and are relegated to the pale imitation, pretending to be hardcore just to hide their bitterness and shitting on the japs for not catering to them hard enough.

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>Doesn't work because JRPGs usually rely on the same stock characters that shounen manga rely
>they don't
Are you subhuman fucking kidding me? JRPGs rely HEAVILY on shounen manga stock characters. You have dumb shounen leads, chuuni pandering mopy emos, hot-headed rivals, you have tsundere, kuudere, yandere, whatever. Look at ANY JRPG and you will immediately find characters that fall into these categories.

>they aren't
Yes, they are.

>first person, rtwp, turn based clicking
But also within these genres there are greater differences. e.g. Gothic 2 is an entirely different game than Mass Effect, even though they are both third person action games. The reason for that is that WRPGs are generally less derivative and also because WRPGs don't rely as heavily on combat but also involve a whole lot of non-combat gameplay where you're talking to people, finding clues where to go next, try to apply items or skills to solve puzzles, etc.

>imagine being this wrong
No, I'm completely right. You either have a quasi-realistic look where people look like K-Pop idols, i.e. Asians who underwent heavy plastic surgery to look more white, or anime looks, which are for the most part same-ish because they don't hire a guy like Fukumoto to do their designs but people with mass-appeal.

>oh it's a redditer.
JRPGs are generally technically unimpressive. If you disagree then you don't know what you're talking about. Show me a technically impressive JRPG. You can't, because JRPGs focus on consoles, which these days are low-end PCs. They don't even have the capabilities to be technically impressive.

>SMTcuck
>Filters
>CRT filter

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It's possible to recognize a "JRPG" (genre) if you play one, but even then it is subjective.

If I were to agree "JRPG" is a genre, then it would need to be:

1. Storybased.
2. Have heavy characterization.
3. Last but not least, be heavily embedded in Japanese culture. You recognize a JRPG by the way it is written, the steoreotypes it handles, the tropes it handles, the humour it handles.

Stop pretending to be hardcore, riajuu
>Gothic 2 is an entirely different game than Mass Effect
LMAO

>no arguments

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So games like Planescape, NWN2, Gothic and whatever else are JRPGs?

Consoles, wrpgs should be for PC only

Have you even played both, JRPG-weeb?
Gothic II is an action RPG through and through, taking the best elements of both genres. Mass Effect is a glorified third person shooter with romance storylines.

>WRPGs are for neckbeards that are far too unlikable to play TT with and are relegated to the pale imitation, pretending to be hardcore just to hide their bitterness and shitting on the japs for not catering to them hard enough.
Fucking this.
I'm dm at pen and paper and tend to create my own ruleset and adventures. I also create fancy stuff like half-linear mystery adventures that skip out on fights but focuse on case solving and social interactions instead.
Whenever i search for people playing them i hear the same old shit that translates to "IF ITS NOT d&d I WONT EVEN TRY IT, IT DOESNT MATTER IF I MIGHT END UP LIKING IT".
Wrpg fans are immune to anything, they propably dont even enjoy their own games.
Something that doesnt happen when i ask the JRPG crowd

>Flagrant shitpost
>Needing arguments
We both know you're in for the (You)s, so why must you soil Minnie May for this shitflinging you subhuman?

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>No, I'm completely right. You either have a quasi-realistic look where people look like K-Pop idols, i.e. Asians who underwent heavy plastic surgery to look more white, or anime looks, which are for the most part same-ish because they don't hire a guy like Fukumoto to do their designs but people with mass-appeal.
This is objectively right. The major exceptions I can think of are the works of Akihiko Yoshida, whose character designs are distinctly Japanese but surprisingly grounded in reality.

Why would they? Of those, only Planescape fulfills at least two requirements, but it's missing the key ingredient of "heavily embedded in Japanese culture".

i wish i could get into jrpgs. i like the art direction in many and i prefer turn based to the RTWP system of crpgs.
but the fact i can't create a character is what kills the enjoyment for me, and the mc in jrpgs is almost always some high schooler looking fag which makes it worse.

No chance. PS2 emulation is still fucky even on high end hardware.

>Gothic II is an action RPG through and through, taking the best elements of both genres.
Gothic 2 is a kraut pile of garbage with even less roleplaying than the glorified TPS series that is Ass Effect, don't kid yourself.
The only thing Gothic games do well is their map design, for everything else they're absolutely awful and niche for a lot of good reasons, from the braindead combat system to the GTA style "roleplaying" where hardly any of your choices matter, in fact it took them until G3 to even implement multiple ending and functional non linearity that isn't the same exact progression but with a few key NPCs dressed a bit differently.

>They don't though, just like WRPGs do not usually rely on nondescript self insert errand boys.
Yes, they do. And WRPGS usually DO rely on nondescript self-insert errand boys.

>99% of WRPGs have the exact same point and click interface and game structure, they even have the same exact UI layout, and 99% of them all rely on Ultima's achievements, they're the most derivative genre in videogames outside of maybe racing games.
Bloodlines, Gothic, Torment, Alpha Protocol, Age of Decadence, Morrowind, Expedition: Conquistadors, Diablo 2. A bunch of random titles that have next to nothing in common with each other. The Ultima series was revolutionary in many regards. Many of the things you see nowadays in games started there but they were only present there in a rudimentary fashion. The idea that Ultima invented it all and called it a day while everyone else has been copying things is plain false and everyone who says so hasn't played the Ultima games but only regurgitates hearsay in order to sound smart on the internet.

>So you confirm you talk about games you don't play, that's nice.
Again: give me a title which pushes technical boundaries. It does not exist. JRPGs are not technologically impressive. They were technologically impressive in the days of Final Fantasy VII. They are not any more.

>Gothic 2 is a kraut pile of garbage with even less roleplaying than the glorified TPS series that is Ass Effect, don't kid yourself.
You must think "roleplaying" means "who I get to have sex with", but I'm not surprised since you are a weeb.

What it even implies? Big eyes and bizarre hairstyles?

>but it's missing the key ingredient of "heavily embedded in Japanese culture".
Planescape LITERALLY has those things you like to call japanese culture like a comedic relief mascot character, let alone waifus.
NWN2 might as well be Chrono Trigger made by Obsidian so many years ago TODAY, coupled with the most basic character archetypes ever, especially when it comes to people like Neeshka or Grobnar, MoTB was even worse.

What you people love to call japanese culture is really not that japanese at the end of the day and can be found in countless games from around the world, especially RPGs.

We can discuss what sets Gothic apart from other games in a different thread, but important is that you ended up admitting that Gothic and Mass Effect are vastly different types of games, proving my point.

おつ

Westerners don't understand moe. NWN2 and MotB are not Japanese in the slightest.

Literally getting proven right here, never listen to someone who endlessly fellates smt and then turns around and says "it's not like the other JRPGs!" they're looking to appeal to westicucks and do not serve your interests. They will then proceed to look up cuckold porn.

Undertale had moe characters

you don't know what moe means, westerners don't understand it.

I've already stated before. >Last but not least, be heavily embedded in Japanese culture. You recognize a JRPG by the way it is written, the steoreotypes it handles, the tropes it handles, the humour it handles.
JRPGs are usually very light hearted and their writing style is very noticeable. Exceptions are to be found:
1. Vagrant Story.
2. Dark Souls.
3. Shin Megami Tensei (non-Persona), which you would eventually realize was a JRPG because of how lulzy the conversations with demons are.
Among others. Even when JRPGs are "dark" they are usually full of comedic relief, such as Final Fantasy VI with Edgar hitting on a child, or "I'm a treasure hunter!" and so on.
>Planescape LITERALLY has those things you like to call japanese culture like a comedic relief mascot character, let alone waifus.
It doesn't, though.
1. The "waifus" you refer to are female characters. Being a female character doesn't make you a waifu. It's how you are written that makes you a waifu. PS:T's characters are fairly well written and resemble human beings, unlike JRPG caricature females, a.ka. waifus.
2. I mean, go on ahead and call Morte a "mascot" if you think that helps your case.
The writing of Planescape: Torment resembles Japanese writing in nothing. Only an idiot would think otherwise.

>In my opinion, game genres must be defined strictly by gameplay mechanics and not by story/amount of cutscenes/dialogues/whatever.
First, story and cutscenes are part of a game so you can't ignore them entirely. That said, presence of story content doesn't define a genre.
Practically speaking, this IS how genres are defined. The problem is that average people are not good at consciously identifying and articulating every relevant gameplay element. Most people can intuitively pattern-match games like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest (see: ), and recognize similarities between them without accurately spelling out every single gameplay element relevant for that classification. The difficulty and complexity in doing that is why people have discussions about it and they're interesting when smart people are involved (which is maybe 1 out of every 10 Yea Forums posters)

>Thus CRPG, ARPG, SRPG etc. are genres. JRPG and WRPG are not.
A meaningless distinction. They are all broad classifications of games based on primarily on gameplay elements that just happen to correlate strongly to a country of origin and that's how the label evolved in language. In some circles you could, for example, say the term "Hollywood Movie" and the term would imply a lot of technical details about the movie, whether it was actually made by a Hollywood studio or not.

>goat mom not moe
no you don't understand!

>And WRPGS usually DO rely on nondescript self-insert errand boys.
They don't though, there's plenty of games with definite characters, look at something like Betrayal at Krondor, Planescape, Gothic, The Witcher, Mass Effect or even something as old and simple as Castle of the Winds.
>Bloodlines, Gothic, Torment, Alpha Protocol, Age of Decadence, Morrowind, Expedition: Conquistadors, Diablo 2. A bunch of random titles that have next to nothing in common with each other.
Age of Decadence works and looks pretty much exactly like Expeditions outside of finer details so it's already a bad example to make and I can pull just as many if not more Japanese games that have nothing in common with each other, see Final Fantasy, Yggdra Wars, Berwick Saga, Knights in the Nightmare, Natural Doctrine, PSO2, Unlimited SaGa, Resonance of Fate or Wild Card.
>give me a title which pushes technical boundaries.
I already did many times, the fact that you don't know any of those games and pretend FFVII pushed anything outside of wasted disc space keeps proving you're a bitter neckbeard talking about something you have zero knowledge about.

Then again, it's always like this in these threads, don't even know why you people have such a massive amount of spite and bile for games you never even seen a video of, let alone played, is it like that on Reddit too?

Oh my god it's this retard again with his pants on head retarded definition of jrpg that goes "that doesn't count!" when proven wrong.

Yes, because it was made by someone who himself calls his game a JRPG, which shows where his influences and his aims laid in.
Oh please explain how SMT is like the other JRPGs.

True, but that derivation proceeded down a different path from games like Might and Magic and Bard's Tale.

>2. Dark Souls.
Not even a real RPG. You can get away with calling it an ARPG if you squint and look sideways but calling it a JRPG is stupid. It is almost entirely an action game or action-adventure that happens to have a stats and leveling system, which garbage-tier autistic brains think automatically classifies it as an RPG.

>1. The "waifus" you refer to are female characters. Being a female character doesn't make you a waifu.
Except it totally does when they're literal semen demons slobbering on your nameless cock.
>2. I mean, go on ahead and call Morte a "mascot"
It is, you should learn how to deal with it, not to mention that Planescape was deliberately inspired by JRPGs like FFVI, so I don't really get why you're so adamant in denying this.
>The writing of Planescape: Torment resembles Japanese writing in nothing.
Except it does, or do you really think Avellone's longwinded, awkward shlock somehow elevates the game above japanese ones?
There's plenty of longwinded, boring JRPGs with countless walls of text too, some are even more boring than Planescape.

The stats and levelling system have enough influence on Dark Souls for me to call it an Action RPG. The influence is so big that if you decide not to git gud, you will be able to beat Dark Souls by overleveling. Other Action RPGs make stats way too secondary.

>If I were to agree "JRPG" is a genre, then it would need to be:
The problem is that language isn't defined by you personally and evolves over time and your personal definition of the word doesn't align with common use most of the time. (In some contexts it is valid but very often it is not)

>Not even a real RPG.
So are most WRPGs like TES.
>B...BUT IN TES YOU CAN "ROLEPLAY"
No you don't, you can take a different flavour of nerevarine/dragonborn whatever and play your stealth archer a little bit differently, or play Daggerfall to enjoy Doom with stats and somehow worse melee.

>Except it totally does when they're literal semen demons slobbering on your nameless cock.
Except they don't. Their race says they are semen demons, except one of them has taken a vow of chastity and the other hates your guts a lot of the time. And even then, the player needs to make Annah develop her love for them (and afterwards, correspond).

A waifu is a stereotype. Not every female character is a waifu. Final Fantasy VII doesn't have waifus, for instance.
>It is, you should learn how to deal with it, not to mention that Planescape was deliberately inspired by JRPGs like FFVI, so I don't really get why you're so adamant in denying this.
It was inspired by certain elements, but to say Black Isle set out to create a 1:1 JRPG would be completely mistaken. Logic would dictate that should a blatant JRPG copy and extremely well received RPG would be loved by JRPGs, right? They don't. Planescape: Torment doesn't play, look, sound or read like a JRPG.
>Except it does, or do you really think Avellone's longwinded, awkward shlock somehow elevates the game above japanese ones?
The second half of your sentence has nothing to do with the first one. Unless you believe the defining trait of JRPG writing is "it's shit" and because you think PS:T has "shit writing" then it must somehow have "JRPG writing".

TES is infinitely more of an RPG than Dark Souls.
The gameplay in TES emphasizes the roleplaying, yes. It also has combat that is, I guess, based around decisions, abilities, and stats more than reflexes and dexterity. I say "I guess" because TES combat tends to be rather shit.

Everything about Dark Souls is oriented around tests of reflexes and dexterity, the stats and weapon choices just add depth and flavor to the action. Meanwhile Elder Scrolls games are all about immersion in a fantasy world and building your character, and the combat is just there as one way to express the individuality of your character.

>Drakan
>RPG

>They don't though, there's plenty of games with definite characters, look at something like Betrayal at Krondor, Planescape, Gothic, The Witcher, Mass Effect or even something as old and simple as Castle of the Winds.
The majority of them don't. And the majority of these characters too are self-insert errand boys, at least in terms of functionality within the narrative. Don't get me wrong: I actually like western RPGs but this sort of criticism applies and is fair. The problem with too much player "agency" is that it clashes with the narrative design of many RPGs, which still has to be hand-crafted and is thus limited in terms of scope. You can't have the player be the guy who pulls all the strings because designing a game with a sufficiently elaborate narrative where the player can do all that would take too much effort at this point, so the player is always reduced to being some sort of errand boy. And I don't see self-insert as a problem as self-inserting is the essence of role playing. The Nameless One might have a grand backstory, but it's not actually his - it's the story of his former incarnations. The current one is a different person who is defined by the player.

>Age of Decadence works and looks pretty much exactly like Expeditions outside of finer details
You haven't played either if you think so. Expeditions heavily involves on moving over a strategic map, gathering resources, surviving, exploring the countryside, fighting natives, etc. - Age of Decadence is HEAVILY dialogue driven, you spend the majority of the time within the few settlements and in some routes you don't even fight a single battle. There might be a superficial similarity in terms of combat, and even there, the depth of the melee system in AoD far surpasses Conquistadors, which may also be a consequence of the player controlling only a single character in AoD whereas Conquistadors is party-based. The games are wildly different.

>A waifu is a stereotype.
No it isn't you fucking election tourist, waifus have literally nothing to do with stereotypes.
>Final Fantasy VII doesn't have waifus, for instance.
Stopped reading there.

continuation of >I already did many times
No, you did not. JRPGs these days are technologically unimpressive. They usually buy their engines and don't do anything special with it, let alone use them to their fullest potential.

>FFVII pushed anything outside of wasted disc space
FFVII mixed FMV with gameplay and the quality of the pre-rendered backgrounds in combination with the scope of the game was technologically something we hadn't seen before. FFVII pushed the boundaries and if you disagree you simply were too young when it came out.

>Then again, it's always like this in these threads, don't even know why you people have such a massive amount of spite and bile for games you never even seen a video of
I think you're projecting your own reddit feuds upon unrelated people. I don't hate JRPGs. I think they do certain things well, and certain things not so well. When I call them technologically unimpressive then I'm not hating JRPGs I'm stating facts. A game can be both good and technologically unimpressive. In fact, I would argue the best WRPGs are technologically unimpressive.

>Final Fantasy VII doesn't have waifus, for instance

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>Every series has a different battle system idiot.

true.
Dragon Quest uses a generic turn based system
Dark Souls you need to consider how many enemies, environments, etc...
Final Fantasy has... this. The saddest I have ever seen of any action RPG just because the director wanted to pander to casuals

Attached: Hold O to Win.webm (640x360, 2.66M)

>Other Action RPGs make stats way too secondary.
Like what?
The fact is most Action RPGs like that are also probably not very much like RPGs anyway. In those cases though you can probably also look to shit like world and level design, which, in Dark Souls, is very much like an action game. Burg, Parish, Depths, Blighttown, Catacombs, Sen's... those are all action levels that happen to be interconnected. There's no attempt at all to create anything like a normal roleplaying world.

In the context of this conversation? Yes, waifus are stereotypes.
Of course you won't think so, as it helps your comparison:
>PS:T has a mascot character!
>PS:T has female characters!
>PS:T has writing!
>PS:T gives you a protagonist!
>Therefore it must be a JRPG!
while completely ignoring the nuance of how all of these are handled.

>Gothic 2 is a kraut pile of garbage
looks like someone got casual fillered by the notr wolfs

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>The fact is most Action RPGs like that are also probably not very much like RPGs anyway.
Precisely. They are called "Action RPGs" because the name stuck, but the stats may as well not be there.
>those are all action levels that happen to be interconnected. There's no attempt at all to create anything like a normal roleplaying world.
This is a nonsensical argument, what IS a "normal roleplaying world"? Dark Souls takes place in a setting and the world looks real, as opposed to the massive abstraction that is Super Mario Bros. (compared to Super Mario RPG, for instance).

>Age of Decadence
tfw i really wanted to play this but poorfag and i can't find a torrent because it's so niche

>FFVII pushed the boundaries and if you disagree you simply were too young when it came out.
Not that guy and I agree FF7 did more than waste disc space but the fact is that as far as fundamental game design, there's almost no difference between FF6 and FF7 other than an extra 8-10 hours of dialog and cutscenes punctuated by cinematics. Also I guess replacing sprite actors with 3D models but even then FF7 used a chibi style that wasn't used again in the 3D games.

Actually the most notable thing that FF7 from a gameplay perspective was cramming in a lot of extra minigames like the the bike race, chocobo racing, and fort condor. And at least to me, at the time that really felt like Square and Sony trying to show off the technological advantages of the Playstation vs the N64 ("FF7 is 20 games in one!!"). But the fact is most games are better off focusing on their core vision for gameplay rather than a kitchen sink of minigames approach.

>shadow hearts and drakan on the same list
based

What are you talking about? Just type

Age Decadence

on Pirate Bay.

Attached: aod.png (918x124, 9K)

>tfw i really wanted to play this but poorfag and i can't find a torrent because it's so niche
bea247.in/s/?q=Age of Decadence&page=0&orderby=99

>The majority of them don't
Wouldn't be too sure about the effective majority really, and if you want to be picky, almost all WRPGs outside of roguelikes and dungeon crawlers have you play as predefined character with some customization too.
>And the majority of these characters too are self-insert errand boys
Not really, especially not in BoK's case, as for the errand boy thing, that is a thing western devs love to push in their game design for some reason unknown to me and the vast majority of /tg/, but luckily there are games that do not turn you into an errand boy, although I do agree they're exceedingly rare on the western side.
>You can't have the player be the guy who pulls all the strings
Except it's invariably like that.
>You haven't played either if you think so
Except I said finer details, if you do try to pretend Expeditions and AoD don't have almost the same exact visual presentation and interface, let alone most of the combat, you're lying.
>JRPGs these days are technologically unimpressive
>They usually buy their engines
What do engines have to do with game design other than mostly looks, are you fucking stupid?
Underrail has its own game engine and yet it still works and looks as your average IE game outside of being turn based, which has nothing to do with its engine either.
I also like how you don't comment on any of the games I mentioned.
>FFVII mixed FMV with gameplay
It didn't mix a damn thing and that is merely graphical fluff which doesn't do anything at all in terms of actual boundaries, who the fuck are you trying to fool and call anyone underage?
>In fact, I would argue the best WRPGs are technologically unimpressive.
Something like Ultima Underworld shits on anything Japan had to offer at its time in terms of interface AND graphics, it might not be as fun to play but it did push "boundaries" as you like to call them, Witcher games did that too, too bad graphics matter very little in a RPG, see Underrail.

FACT: JRPGs are distinctly different in theme and mechanics than WRPGs and therefore aren't comparable.
There are more good JRPGs than WRPGs, true, but there are also more JRPGs than WRPGs in general.

>fundamental game design
Maybe we have different definitions of "technology" then. When I'm talking about "technology" I mean things like graphics, level size, AI, etc. And at that time the amount of FMV and mixing FMV with gameplay (i.e. using FMV as background) was something new and not possible on just any platform.

>FF7 used a chibi style that wasn't used again in the 3D games.
I would argue that FFIX went in that direction again, albeit a bit different. And there are plenty of later RPGs, e.g. Bravely, which are more on the super deformed side of things.

>le wolves are hard meme
Because backsteps and ctrl forward takes so much effort, right? Let alone pelting them with fireballs or just swing left and right repeatedly.
I bet you're the same kind of slav shitter who dies to boars in G3 at level 40, thinks the game is super hardcore and idolizes Piranhabytes broken excuse for combat.

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Well, wrpgs got allmost completely replaced by the better and more suited genre, MMO.

>have you play as predefined character with some customization too.
I mean, it depends on what you call "predefined character".

>Dark Souls takes place in a setting and the world looks real, as opposed to the massive abstraction that is Super Mario Bros.
Dark Souls world design is really much closer to Super Mario Brothers 3 or Mega Man than it is to say, Skyrim. You have Toad and Princess Toadstool as "NPCs" that you encounter in your travels. SMB3 doesn't have a real economy but Toad has the item houses and minigame spots while the Princess gives you tips and the Kings thank you profusely when you rescue them. There's minimal real world logic or reason behind the placement of Toad houses or Castles, it's all determined exclusively by the design of the action levels.

Meanwhile Dark Souls has NPCs like Quelana who is just chilling out by a rock in a swamp for no apparent reason. Female undead merchant just in a sewer selling you moss. Or NPCs like Solaire and Seigmeyer who are basically there playing the same videogame you are. Solaire even hand-waves the bizarre inconsistencies with the world logic essentially telling you that time and space are all fucked up in Lordran so don't think about it too hard.

>a combat system where you can duel pretty much anything at level 1 as long as you know what you are doing is bad
and no i don't think its some kind of super hardcore game.just the impression i have of people who shit on the game is of those who gave up after 10 minutes.

>There are more good JRPGs than WRPGs, true, but there are also more JRPGs than WRPGs in general.
I'm probably nitpicking, but I've said this before on a forum:
>JRPG fans absolutely adore their JRPGs, most JRPGs are "the best games ever made" or "hidden gems"
>Western RPG fans love their cRPGs, some cRPGs are "the best games ever made" or "mediocre curiosity"
It really works that way. For cRPG fans there are no hidden gems, probably the advantage of having all your games being made in the US and readily available from day one.

>how SMT is like the other JRPGs.
There's an entire subgenre it is a part of.

You can't say that something like the hacker in SS or the dragon born in Skyrim aren't predefined characters, they might not have 100% of their character set in stone, but that role is imposed on you and you can't do anything but play as those.
Sure, characters like JC Denton, TNO or Geralt are much more defined, but the predefined nature still stands.
Again, unless we're talking about some REALLY open ended game like your average dungeon crawler that just tells you your characters is there and goes on an adventure, it's hard to say RPGs don't have predefined characters, what varies is the extent of how predefined they are, sure, but they're still largely predefined at the end of the day, unlike tabletop where you just write up and play whatever the fuck you like.

>Solaire even hand-waves the bizarre inconsistencies with the world logic essentially telling you that time and space are all fucked up in Lordran so don't think about it too hard.
That sounds like a perfectly plausible setting IMO.

>There's an entire subgenre it is a part of.
And that subgenre is...?

right on brother

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I shit on the games because I played them up to forgotten gods and the first hour of Arkania before dropping it no less, but I was never under the impression that they were even remotely competent in what they do.
Labours of passion and love for sure, but still a mediocre output through and through, PB only really began to understand their formula from Risen onwards, and even there, Elex is still plagued by the same problems as G1, PB should stop trying to polish what's already there and start working on the weaker aspects of their games already, because those beatiful worlds are wasted on games that play like shit and are also completely uninteresting outside of the exploration and looting, which I can get in spades from other games that are also better in terms of everything else.

I like both, for different reasons and in different moods.

it's only plausible in the context of Souls games AKA "we thought about the lore less than the fans do"
it's all an excuse to fight cool enemies and interesting areas, or for that line specifically, for online gameplay. when does "convoluted time" ever come into play aside from online play? the world has a linear, discernible history with clear events with no time travel.

>as for the errand boy thing, that is a thing western devs love to push in their game design for some reason unknown to me
That's just a consequence of wanting a narrative but also wanting to give the player some kind of agency. If you want both, the player will always end up some kind of errand boy - or a ruler who can't actually do very much, which may ultimately feel even worse than being the errand boy as it clashes with the narrative. Remember Tyranny for example, where the player was supposed to be some kind of Inquisitor but ultimately ended up being an errand boy again. Don't get me wrong - I actually prefer being the errand boy over having no agency at all.

>Except I said finer details, if you do try to pretend Expeditions and AoD don't have almost the same exact visual presentation and interface, let alone most of the combat, you're lying.
Visual presentation is only a tiny part of the game. Certainly, visual presentation of AoD and Conquistators is similar. But you could in the same sense argue that the visual presentation of Diablo 3 is also remarkably similar - which is undeniably an entirely different game than either. Did you actually play the games or did you just google images? If you've actually played the game you would know that your comparison does not hold true. In Conquistators you spend the MAJORITY of the game in survival game mode, where you're moving across a strategic map, exploring the environment. In Age of Decadence you're most of the time in a dialogue screen. In some routes almost the entire game takes place in dialogue. You never see a single fight. And the combat system also works quite differently. The fact alone that AoD is single-character based, whereas Conquistadors is party based should make you immediately come to that realisation. These are not "finer details", these are the essences of game design.

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continuation of >What do engines have to do with game design other than mostly looks, are you fucking stupid?
We were talking about "technology" (graphics, ai, map size, polycount, whatever - anything "technical"). We were not talking about game design.

>It didn't mix a damn thing and that is merely graphical fluff which doesn't do anything at all in terms of actual boundaries
"graphical fluff" is the essence of "technology". In any case, you seem to have not read attentively as you've been under the impression I was talking about game design rather than technology.

>Something like Ultima Underworld shits on anything Japan had to offer at its time in terms of interface AND graphics
Yes, Ultima Underworld WAS technologically impressive. But there are also games like Underrail, which you've mentioned, or Age of Decadence - which are technologically unimpressive but still very good RPGs in their own regard.

WRPGs and JRPGs have very different goals in what they want to achieve despite both being rpgs it's like comparing RE4 and Doom and complaining that they don't play the same.

Only weebtrash think this.

What's the verdict on Oninaki?
I haven't played it for too long yet, just finished the second real boss and am playing around with the gunner Daemon. But, so far, it's way too easy even in maniac and how the fuck do I put those gems into weapons with empty sockets?

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In FFVII that style was done explicitly to make sure the 3D models were at least as expressive as the 2D sprites from the previous final fantasy games. That's why you have shit like blocky hands and forearms. Even Cloud's spiky hair was made that way in order to make it easy to see which direction he was facing when you were moving him around the pre-rendered backgrounds. FFIX and Bravely Default on the other hand, are stylized primarily for aesthetic reasons.
> When I'm talking about "technology" I mean things like graphics, level size, AI, etc
The thing is, back in 1997, "technology" was changing game design paradigms in a way that that no technological innovation has done since. The closest you have is maybe always-on internet or mobile gaming but neither of those comes close to the seismic magnitude of the 2D to 3D shift.

FF7's technological innovations are almost entirely on presentation (and the aforementioned minigames). AI for JRPGs is as much a gameplay balance issue as a technical one, as well. It's not like the Zeromus fight in FF4 would really be improved with a more sophisticated AI. The rhythm of that fight that comes from Z's predictable script is part of the fun.

I miss shadow hearts and jrpgs with something like that. Guess xenoblade are the closest nowadays

JRPGs tend to have a lower baseline because they're more streamlined. If you fuck up making a JRPG it probably means you just have a tedious repetitive shallow combat and a stupid story, which is only a shade different from the good JRPGs that have repetitive shallow combat that is at least relaxing or addicting and a decent well-presented story.

With a WRPG there's no telling how low you can go and how incomprehensibly bad it can be.

I don't know what happened but I really feel like I don't have time for JRPGs

>FFIX and Bravely Default on the other hand, are stylized primarily for aesthetic reasons.
It may in FFVII had a more functional reason to make things that way, but I believe aesthetics also played a role. Personally, I didn't really like the more "naturalistic" look of the later Final Fantasy games as much.

>The thing is, back in 1997, "technology" was changing game design paradigms in a way that that no technological innovation has done since.
This is without doubt true and I would argue that certain issues of the shift to 3D haven't been solved sufficiently up to this day.

>If you want both, the player will always end up some kind of errand boy - or a ruler who can't actually do very much
What a fucking retarded statement, an adventurer can easily be neither of those, yet most WRPGs despise the idea despite being supposedly all about a great adventure.
The truth is, WRPGs are almost completely fossilized in the standards Ultima games set when giving you questlines with specific NPCs acting as a prompt for quest flags were a lot more practical, that's it, it's just laziness.
You can implement the same thing in many different ways too, like having to read a note in some pub or just witnessing a certain cutscene and yet WRPGs still largely and willingly persist in the errand boy design.

>That reddit spacing
>Technology is graphics
Do you think Wizardry and Ultima influenced RPGs throughout the world because of their graphics and map size?
Think again, pushing the boundaries and establishing models is done through mechanical means, not fancy graphics, which is why FFVII doesn't mean shit outside of masses of industry propaganda indoctrinated parrots who say otherwise.

Like I said, it depends on what you call "predefined character". Out of those you mentioned, only Geralt is a predefined character.
1. You don't name him.
2. You don't define how he looks like.
3. You don't define his class.
4. You don't even choose his stats.
(At least all of this is true for The Witcher 1)
It's the closest thing to the stereotypical JRPG protagonist you will find.
I understand what you mean with your comparison to tabletop games, but then again I don't feel like that's a fair comparison given the limitations of the medium. Western RPGs simply gave far more freedom to the player when it comes to defining their character.
I always thought of the Souls universe as something like Tartarus.
I agree. A bad WRPG can be virtually unplayable. A bad JRPG may be boring and more grindy, or too easy.

I switch between them when I get burned out on one of the genres. Feel bad for those that can’t enjoy both.

>PS2
What are the actually amazing games on this console? A ton of the recced games are janky as shit or I've already played, or I'm not interested in

>the world has a linear, discernible history with clear events with no time travel.
It's largely abstract, though. What does "fire" actually mean? What will actually happen to the world if "the fire" goes out?

In Dark Souls you're basically playing through some kind of myth from an oral tradition that is never fully explained. Lordran is like a fallen/perverted Olympus or Garden of Eden or something like that. It's depicted as a place of legend detached from the real world.

>It's the closest thing to the stereotypical JRPG protagonist you will find.
But in the vast majority of JRPGs you do name your characters, define their class and even choose their stats, so I don't really see what you're trying to imply, I'll give you looks
Not to mention that in many TT games you also have predefined characters too.
There's quite a few good games in there, both WRPG and JRPGs.
I'd say try the Baldurs' Gate Dark Alliance games, they're pretty decent and have quite a few content to them, Champions of Norrath is a close second, although I don't like it as much as the BG games personally.
As for JRPGs there's anything really, so recs are kinda wasted as it's a large sea of games that also vary depending on personal taste, one personal favorite of mine is Metal Saga, King's Field 4 is also bretty gud if you like old Fromsoft jank although Shadow Tower Abyss is largely superior, Valkyrie Profile 2 is nice and so is Radiata Stories, then there's the Growlanser games, Breath of Fire: DQ, Kaga's Berwick Saga if you want some quality FE, Makai Kingdom, the Wizardry games etc, some of these are JP only though.

If you're feeling particularly hardcore play the two SaGa games(Unlimited/Minstrel Song), they're probably top tier autism material when it comes to the PS2.

>an adventurer can easily be neither of those, yet most WRPGs despise the idea despite being supposedly all about a great adventure.
An adventurer needs to get his tasks somehow - certainly you can have the player run around aimlessly, but might lack the motivation that is provided by an elaborate narrative. A narrative is at least piece-wise linear if it wants to be somewhat coherent and engaging. Certain storytelling patterns completely clash with the aspect of agency (e.g. a common mistake is to include NPCs the player character is supposed to care about when the player knows them for barely 15 minutes). Also, there's the thing that in most RPGs there are lots of things you can't do. There are a lot more things you can't do than there are things you can do. If you leave the player to his own agency within a heavily scripted environment then he'll have a very hard time figuring out what he needs to do in order to progress. You may think yourself a genius game designer who can come up with genius quests where the player always knows what to do next, but I've seen it being done wrong too often to consider it an easy task.

>The truth is, WRPGs are almost completely fossilized in the standards Ultima games set when giving you questlines with specific NPCs acting as a prompt for quest flags were a lot more practical, that's it, it's just laziness.
I don't think this is that characteristic of Ultima games. You keep mentioning them, but factually they're not that heavily scripted and quest driven and actually fall into that trap of often leaving the player in a position where he doesn't know what to do next. Did you find the Time Lord easily in Ultima VII? Or remember that crap with all those items you had to collect at random places. The Ultima series was VERY open-world in comparison with today's games.

continuation of >You can implement the same thing in many different ways too, like having to read a note in some pub or just witnessing a certain cutscene and yet WRPGs still largely and willingly persist in the errand boy design.
Whether you're told what to do by reading a note or seeing it in a cutscene makes little difference. Ultimately you're the errand boy again, playing your part within the scheme of someone else. Either that, or you're doing pointless, unconnected, seemingly random actions that have no greater purpose. My point is: you're not the mastermind, you're no puller of strings but always a string being pulled by the narrative.

>genres can only be defined by marketers
stop being a dumbass.
Also the term "cRPG" was never used for "Console RPG" it was used for "Computer RPG." In fact this is one of the reasons why people started writing "JRPG" instead of "Console-style RPG" for games like Dragon Quest. This is just how the terms evolved.

>But in the vast majority of JRPGs you do name your characters, define their class and even choose their stats, so I don't really see what you're trying to imply, I'll give you looks
We clearly haven't been playing the same JRPGs. I'm not saying you are a liar, only that we have played different games.

>An adventurer needs to get his tasks somehow
An adventurer can just explore and stumble on things, you're knee deep in the errand boy mentality if you think you NEED somebody to tell you what to do and how.
Even when it comes to the retarded EXP reward at the end of a quest model you can just tie it to loot, example, you open a chest and find some old treasure map that vaguely points you to some hidden place, you navigate to said point and then you get the rewards, easy peasy and no office boss telling you to go there and come back for your RPG wagie paycheck.
>If you leave the player to his own agency within a heavily scripted environment then he'll have a very hard time figuring out what he needs to do in order to progress
Oh noes, somebody has to use their brain to play a vidyagaem, how tragic, guess I'll put eight quest markers, seventeen bonfires and a dozen of NPCs handholding you through the checkpoint.
>but factually they're not that heavily scripted and quest driven
Except they are, at least, for their time.
Nowadays it's different but that's because through years and years of a game of telephone trying to mimic older games things degenerated into the sorry state they're in now.
And being open world has nothing to do with being an errand boy, in fact the typical FF game, being linear as fuck, as very, very few cases of errands compared to the average WRPG, games like FFVIII have almost none too, though that's because they also have massive problems in other areas on the other hand.

>We clearly haven't been playing the same JRPGs.
Maybe you just need to play more of them then.

>being this butthurt about people not wanting to play your custom ruleset focused on gay buttsex and crime drama instead of combat and dungeon crawling.

Name 10 extremely popular JRPGs that let you define class and stats from the outset of the game.

jrpg's are more fun than western rpg's, but thats why wrpg isnt a real term, western rpg's play more to traditional rpg's following d&d and gurps rules, there's more focus on roleplaying and world building than direct fun or streamlined gameplay ironically enough

>Level-5 games
>Underrated
Pfft

I don't think that's the case. JRPGs just don't really care about that, characters usually have their own assigned class or it's a free-for-all system (such as Final Fantasy XII).

Examples of JRPGs that let you define most of the gameplay aspects of your main character are rare.

"fire" is just the sun

>If I haven't heard of those games and the stat definition isn't exclusively in D&D's style they don't count :)
You're trying really hard to be a nigger, you know.

literally all this does is reenforce my opinion of JRPGs>WRPGs

Post the ten games, dude. Here are some extremely popular WRPGs (by the standards of the genre) that let you do just that:

- Baldur's Gate
- Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines
- Morrowind
- Fallout
- Age of Decadence
- ATOM RPG
- Divinity: Original Sin
- Pillars of Eternity
- Wizardry
- Ultima
- Deus Ex
- Mass Effect

The truth is you won't find the same thing in JRPGs because that's not what JRPGs are about or what interests JRPG fans. These WRPGs are the norm, those JRPGs you mention are the exception.

>all JRPGs are the same

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The thing is, as far as genre classifications go, character creation really is a fairly minor aspect. Providing pre-created characters for the player was primarily a way to lower barriers to entry for a new player who doesn't know anything about the rules and mechanics of the system or the content of the game and what's going to matter. It's also a way to allow content developers to tailor appropriate rewards to players at appropriate points in the game. I wonder, how many first-time players of Baldur's Gate 2, upon finding Celestial Fury, regret not selecting Katana proficiency? Finally, and perhaps most importantly, using pre-created characters is the quickest way to get to the core gameplay. Real tabletop starter sets aimed at first-time players will often include pre-created characters so you don't have to be overwhelmed by a hundred pages of descriptions of stats and races in a player's handbook.

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You gotta be dumb to ask that question. Planescape is like a JRPG only in the most superficial way.

>tfw the good JRPGs on that chart look like WRPGs

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That's just your headcanon, like most assertions about Souls lore. The "Dark" ending doesn't show everyone freezing to death, does it?

>Even when it comes to the retarded EXP reward at the end of a quest model you can just tie it to loot, example, you open a chest and find some old treasure map
As I said: this only works for a certain type of quest. Certainly you can be the kind of treasure hunter who runs over a map kills things and steals their stuff but if you want a more elaborate narrative then you'll have a hard time giving the player agency for the aforementioned reasons.

>Oh noes, somebody has to use their brain to play a vidyagaem, how tragic
This is not a matter of using your brain. I can give you an example from NWN Hordes of the Underdark. At a certain point you need to kill a vampire. The game tells you you need wooden stakes. But where do you get wooden stakes? Real world logic would tell you you could simply use a wooden item, e.g. the shaft of a spear and make yourself a stake. Of course you can't do that. You can't chop some wood in the forest or buy stakes either. The solution is that you have to destroy a wooden crate in the dungeon - crates you've destroyed a million times before and which never left behind any stakes - in order to get those stakes. The designer probably thought the quest to be perfectly reasonable but forgot that it clashed with the games internal logic induced by the fact that the player was conditioned to not consider certain steps a possible solution as they broke with established lore. In the real world you can do lots of things, in an RPG you can only do very few things and certain things only at certain points. In such an environment the player has a very hard time finding his own way because he constantly receives negative feedback from not being able to do what he envisions to be the solution to the problem. Remember 90s adventure games and their irrational puzzles. This is the exact same situation.

Boring as fuck

continuation of >Except they are, at least, for their time.
In some regards I would agree in others I wouldn't. The later Ultima titles involved some scripted events that the player had to trigger in order to beat the game as some things needed to be done in order. But in the case of Ultima VII for example I would argue you can beat it FASTER than a lot of its contemporaries simply because the game focussed more on adventure gaming elements and exploration. You can run away from most battles. If you know how you can speedrun the game pretty fast.

>the typical FF game, being linear as fuck, as very, very few cases of errands compared to the average WRPG, games like FFVIII have almost none too
In your typical FF game you have zero player agency. In order to beat the game you need to run linearly through the scripted events in a pre-determined fashion. Certainly it may be the "player character" who decides to do certain things and tells the player what to do, but ultimately it's not the player who makes the choice regarding what to do. The player is errand boy to the narrative. He can't deviate from the plan. This is very different from Ultima VII for example, where you have some (very few) scripted events and the player can for most of the game freely decide where to go and what to do.
Fallout is a good example of a game that tries to strike a middle ground, having some scripted events but also giving the player a lot of freedom. However, this also comes at a cost. The narrative in Fallout is not as dense. The recruitable NPCs are rudimentary at best. This does not engage the player as much as your typical "modern" RPG, where the player is tightly embraced by a plot but also reduced to being an errand boy. I maintain the position that the tightness of the narrative comes at the cost of player agency.

I've only played the demo and the gameplay is slow and clunky as fuck. Story got me interested, but I sure won't pay more than $20 for it.

Ever hear of pokemon

>let you define class and stats from the outset of the game.
A trivial and massively overrated feature of WRPGs, a holdover from a time when the target audience all knew the D&D player's handbook by heart anyway. It's kind of hilarious how you have to say "at the outset of the game" in order to disqualify obvious examples like Final Fantasy III and V.

>- Baldur's Gate
You get to pick one class for one character. Every other character in your (6-person) party is an NPC with a pre-determined class.

>In your typical FF game you have zero player agency.
Just want to point out that this is hyperbole and varies by game. In general, Final Fantasy games have limited agency, not zero.

Shin Megami Tensei is a dungeon crawler. What does that have to do with Pokémon?
>A trivial and massively overrated feature of WRPGs
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is "trivial" or "overrated".
>It's kind of hilarious how you have to say "at the outset of the game" in order to disqualify obvious examples like Final Fantasy III and V.
Because in those games it IS trivial and overrated. Both are fairly easy games where you can change jobs at will.
>You get to pick one class for one character. Every other character in your (6-person) party is an NPC with a pre-determined class.
Of course, because the main character is the only character you actually need.

Of course. You do have a modicum of player agency in the sense that you can choose to stay in a dungeon and fight monster for as long as you want. You can sometimes travel the world map and visit old areas, etc. - however, in order to beat the game you need to progress in order. And every quest is usually strictly linear in the sense that it requires you to do certain things in order. Any 'meaningful' action in the sense that it progresses you in the plot and therefore the game is pre-determined and the choice in which order these actions are performed is made by the narrative design rather than the player through his own agency.

>A trivial and massively overrated feature of WRPGs
This is complete nonsense. In lots of games optimising your build is a HUGE part of the game. In some games it completely determines what kind of experience you're going to have.

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>JRPGs stuck much closer to what RPG gameplay is supposed to be like: tactical

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sjws and the decay of western civilization my friend

Stop it, JRPGs are already dead.

>It really isn't, WRPGs are far, far more guilty of that, especially the high fantasy ones, which outside of some rare exception like the Planescape games are all the same bland, non descript D&D/Tolkien setting

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>JRPGs
>>Designed to create a unique adventure with an interesting cast of characters

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Ever hear of shining in the darkness and holy ark and phantasy star

Yes.
To this day, dungeon crawlers are but a niche in JRPGs.

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>You get to pick one class for one character. Every other character in your (6-person) party is an NPC with a pre-determined class.

youtube.com/watch?v=bdxTUG6s2ac

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Can't we all just, G E T A L O N G ?

i.warosu.org/data/vr/img/0055/85/1558385546618.png
Beamdog is a guilty of a number of different crimes. Here are the major ones.

1. The Enhanced Editions are essentially a collection of free mods that had existed for nearly twenty years. Beamdog gathered them all up, slapped "Enhanced Edition" on it and resold it as a new product. There's very very little in the Enhanced Editions that wasn't already out there, and most of it is stuff you don't want (like obnoxious character outlines).

2. The games didn't sell so well and the originals were still far outselling them, even twenty years after their release, so Beamdog had EVERY digital distributor stop selling the originals and ONLY sell the Enhanced Edition. If you want to buy a digital copy of the originals now, they're "bundled" into the Enhanced Edition. Now these scumbags can claim sales from people just wanting to buy the originals as their own.

3. The infamous 600+ bugs on launch. The game is still riddled with bugs (as even a perfunctory glance over their forums show) but the fact that it took nearly two years for them to get a game that had been working fine for 20 years to reach playability after launch is telling of their wild incompetence.

4. This is where we get to the ones that really piss people off. Beamdog couldn't just remaster the game, they had to fuck with the content too. New dialogue for existing NPCs like Jaheira, Viconia, Safana, Kivan, et cetera was written in to make the characters more progressive and leftist friendly. Beamdog shills will argue that "adding content isn't changing content XDDD" but it is when the new content changes the core personalities of the existing characters. This is in addition to adding a slew of their own LGBT (hitherto there were none in Baldur's Gate) NPCs, all flooded with OP attributes and magic items to encourage people to play them despite their cancer.
5. Siege of motherfucking Dragonspear
warosu.org/vr/thread/5402232#p5408278

A niche subgenre with a number of varying games yes

was the Co-op stuff something they added or was it in the original release as well?

>Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is "trivial" or "overrated".
I actually like it just fine. The reason I say it's trivial is because in most games it usually doesn't actually matter a whole lot what class you choose and where you allocate your stats.

The far more important distinction between WRPGs and JRPGs is commitment. JRPGs, which tend to be aimed at a more casual audience, tend to downplay commitment, on the logic that players will find it frustrating if they make a bad choice that they can't at least remedy somehow once they realize the mistake. Meanwhile WRPGs want you to commit to decisions and tries to make decisions seem important.

Sometimes WRPGs actually are just faking this and you'll see the concept of "game/player trust" come up occasionally in discussions among WRPG fans that you'll rarely see in JRPG discussions. For example, Baldur's Gate 2 never truly explains the logic behind its party system to the player. BG2 wants to trick players into thinking that NPCs have their own free will and could leave you at any time. But in reality there's a very concrete set of rules guiding NPC behavior and so long as you follow them, the party system in BG2 will basically work almost just like the systems in JRPGs of the era like any Playstation Final Fantasy. It's just slightly more of a hassle, and also rather bizarre from a narrative perspective since the game opens with what seems like pressing quest to rescue Imoen but the actual structure of the game intends for you to assemble a party by doing side-quests for the NPCs you recruit.

>Of course, because the main character is the only character you actually need.
Only because the game forces it. And let's be real the vast majority of people who play Baldur's Gate add at least 3-4 NPCs to their party and most fill it out entirely.

>>Drakan
>>RPG

The second Drakan is an action-RPG, though not a Japanese one.

Which was directly inspired by Wizardry and hasn't really changed since then, correct. Which makes these games not like other JRPGs.

Wizardry is also retroactively a jrpg, few games are like it but there is a large subgenre of japanese games that saitisfy that niche.

Is there any connection between Drakan and Drakkhen?

How can it not matter when it changes the way the game plays?
>Only because the game forces it
How is the game "forcing" it? It makes perfect sense since in Baldur's Gate (You) are the protagonist and decide what he/she specializes in. Everyone else has a backstory behind them so it makes sense they belong to a predetermined class. In Icewind Dale the backstory is "you are a party of adventurers", so it makes perfect sense that you get to create all your characters from the ground up, for instance.

Its one thing to call the old Wizardry games JRPGs but past the 80s they really arent that much in common with nipshit

>Wizardry is also retroactively a jrpg
>wrpg
>"retroactively a jrpg"
Opinion dismissed.

Well they either defines the entire genre or they didn't have numerous games like it in Japan. Your paradox to choose denialist.

Don't deny facts.

Of course any JRPG would be better than the dullest game of all time. I can only thank Gorion's ghost that the makers of the dullest rpg of all time didn't get BG3! Each attempt Obsidian makes to create their own universe rather than simply deconstruct a setting made by others, has been more disastrous than the last. Aside from the outdated gameplay and lifeless cities, Pillars of Eternity's only consistency has been its lack of excitement and ineffective use of combat mechanics, all to make magic unmagical, to make action seem inert.

Perhaps the die was cast when Sawyer vetoed the idea of making anything at all innovative or original; he made sure the game would never be mistaken for a work of art that meant anything to anybody, just ridiculously profitable nostalgia pandering to ageing Baldur's Gate fans. Pillars of Eternity might be anti-casual(or not), but it’s certainly the anti-Divinity series in its refusal of spontaneity, fun and excitement.

>a-at least the writing was good though

"No!"

The writing is dreadful; the narrative was terrible. As I played, I noticed that every time I engaged in dialogue with an NPC the game presented me with a Wiki-page style infodump instead of anything resembling actual human conversation.

I began marking on the back of an envelope every time this was repeated. I stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times. I was incredulous. Sawyer's mind is so governed by obsession with pointless minutiae of the lore that he has no other style of writing.

Later I read a lavish, loving review of Pillars of Eternity by the same David Gaider. He wrote something to the effect of, "If these kiddies are playing Obsidian games at 17 or 18, then when they get older they will go on to enjoy Dragon Age II." And he was quite right. He was not being ironic. When you play "Pillars of Eternity" you are, in fact, trained to shill for Bioware.

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There's no "fact". Wizardry is a western RPG and Etrian Odyssey is a JRPG. Both are dungeon crawlers. That's what makes them good games, as opposed to most JRPGs which aren't dungeon crawlers and not proper RPGs either.

I'm playing Megami Tensei 1 now and I'm enjoying it because it is a very nice Japanese spin to the Wizardry formula.

Nice, you found another series. There's also third person dungeon crawlers like dark cloud. Action ones like kings field and dungeons and darkness. Oh and classic horror ones like baroque. I knew you could face reality. Wizardry is a JRPG and that is a fact.

>In lots of games optimising your build is a HUGE part of the game
Name three. And remember, it's been clarified we're talking only about customization done "at the outset" and not customization done after you start the game.

In most party-based games the differences are often rather modest. Maybe you'll have a cleric/mage instead of a full mage meaning you might miss out on a rank of spells. Maybe you'll take the NPC Paladin with low Dex and give him the gauntlets of Dexterity, unless you rolled your own Pally with high Dex already so you can give those gauntlets to a different character.

Yes it's cool that you can do challenge runs and crazy builds with this style of game that may require mods to achieve with a JRPG, but the fact is most players will build balanced parties that differ in subtle, not dramatic ways. Often you'll have effectively required roles to fill and the only difference is the flavor of tank or healer you use to fill that role.

>Name three.
Just to try and answer my own question
>Wizardry 8
I've only played that game a bit but the build system is very complex and seems pretty deep. Maybe this one is valid.
>TES: Skyrim
True this game is all about developing your build but you don't actually decide much "at the outset." It's mostly just your race, that maybe gives you a very slight nudge in one direction or another.
>Age of Decadence
This is a niche, outlier game and not really representative of WRPGs in general.

>Damn why are there no good WRPGs anymore.

consoles stagnated their depth and ambition

Are you really unironically posting those tard charts as responses in an argument?

user, thats a troll image

youre just trying to troll, right?

Yeah I've known how to create a full custom party in Baldur's Gate by using multiplayer mode since fucking 1998 the fact is that the game is not really designed to be played that way.

Not that I'm aware of.

Don't respond to wrpg-kun as he is retarded enough to actually believe the things he posts

>Nobody seems to be able to implement a good turn-based combat system
It's the curse of Baldur's Gate. Everyone (except Larian) who makes an isometric RPG makes it RTwP because they think they're catering to Infinity Engine nostalgiafags. But RTwP was never good - it only existed back then because people associated turn-based combat with the Gold Box games and nobody would fund more of those after they stopped selling.

True, it's clunky as fuck and they made it that way on purpose - all those delays - so that people invest skill points.
After you do so it gets more fluid but also only for the initial Daemon. The rest is still very stupid.
Going to play through this area and if it doesn't improve going to quit.

>this proper cRPG is not representative of WRPGs in general
What in the fuck
You do know that Bethesda, BioWare and CDPR aren't representative of western RPGs, right?

>Name three. And remember, it's been clarified we're talking only about customization done "at the outset" and not customization done after you start the game.
Age of Decadence, Fallout, Underrail - pretty much any game where your initial stats distribution heavily impacts the rest of the game.

That being said: I'm actually more of a fan of defining the character throughout the game than at the very beginning. I've always liked the Gothic approach where your choice of class ties into the narrative and thus makes it a much more meaningful decision than selecting an option on a spreadsheet. But when it comes to that, JRPGs rarely have something comparable to offer. Certainly, you have the occasional job-change option, but it just doesn't feel comparably impactful.

>It's the curse of Baldur's Gate. Everyone (except Larian) who makes an isometric RPG makes it RTwP

>what is Shadowrun Returns
>what is Shadowrun: Dragonfall
>what is Shadowrun: Hong Kong
>what is Blackguards 1
>what is Blackguards 2
>what is Expeditions: Conquistador
>what is Expeditions: Viking

Barely anyone is making RTwP games these days.

>Yeah I've known how to create a full custom party in Baldur's Gate by using multiplayer mode since fucking 1998 the fact is that the game is not really designed to be played that way.
You clearly don't know what you're talking about. Being able to create your own party was a feature in the dozen or so D&D games that SSI made before Baldur's Gate came out. Baldur's Gate has permadeath. Party members don't join you automatically, you have to find them and recruit them. At no point does the game require having a specific party member to proceed. How is it not designd to be played with a custom party?

>Wizardry is also retroactively a jrpg
only the Wizardry games developed in Japan are, baka.

Literally no one but Obsidian is making RTwP games these days, that user is dumb.

I kep trying to give some highly praised JRPGs a chance, like Skies of Arcadia on GC and Legend of Heroes - Trails in the Sky but they all end up being quite fucking boring.

It feels like a common issue of the genre isn't only the combat being shit, it's that the game's combat has no pacing to it. The whole random encounters shit feels like a lazy cop out for devs so they don't have to design the way you encounter enemies in a way that makes sense other than "lol diceroll there you go another fight". Games without random battles also have a bunch of enemies evenly scattered all over the map which is fucking boring. Even JRPGs I liked such as Dragon Quest XI suffer of this to an extent, it's just such a lazy way to fill the world, it's almost as if that part of the game is made by fucking robots.

Dungeon Crawlers are generally less "proper RPGs" than most JRPGs.
Dungeon Crawlers emphasize and elaborate on one specific feature of the RPG and very often downplay every other RPG element.
>How is the game "forcing" it?
I mean in response to your trite suggestion that Baldur's Gate is the only "necessary" character in the game, implying that soloing the game with that character is some kind of reasonable proposition for a normal playthrough.

Practically speaking anyone who plays Baldur's Gate (and its sequel) is going to assemble a party (probably a full party) of NPCs with pre-determined classes just like you can assemble a party of characters in JRPGs like Final Fantasy IX. The difference is only a matter of degree (FF9 forces you to take certain characters at certain points while Baldur's Gate only strongly encourages it).

>How can it not matter when it changes the way the game plays?
Because it often doesn't change it by as much as you might imagine it will. Suppose you roll a fighter with a 9 Str, 9 Con, and 17 dex. All this means is that you'll use an NPC (eg Minsc) as your main tank, will use charname as an archer. If charname is a mage maybe you'll pass on Edwin. Most of the time you'll wind up with a balanced party that has tanking, clericking, magic, thief skills/backstab, and ranged attacks. Most battles will present a similar range of tactical options unless you've gone out of your way to set a challenge for yourself. You'll usually wind up with a similar set of equipment the stats and classes of your party will simply change which item you give to which character.

There is nothing wronf with random battles.

>It feels like a common issue of the genre isn't only the combat being shit, it's that the game's combat has no pacing to it.
Completely agree.
My favorite JRPG is the Final Fantasy IV Free Enterprise randomizer which is focused on a sequence of boss fights and the only normal monsters you fight are in trapped chests (or if/when you specifically choose to grind, usually for about 10-15 minutes total)

not inherently, but JRPGs rarely balance them well.

Sure they do. Only a few exceptions to that, most of them use an algorithm that tweaks encounter rate dynamically. The majority are fine.

>JRPGs
>designed with game play as the focus, each game feeling different from one another
Bull fucking shit. JRPGs overall have very little interactivity with the game's world, offer less character building if it's even present at all, and they have popularized lengthy cinematic bullshit with FFVII and arguably VI that was filled to the brim with cutscenes as well. They they are also infamous for ridiculous amount of padding, with inane bullshit like oh go here to grab the thing, oh no it's not there anymore, now go somewhere else, just boring shit to turn what would be a 30 hour game into a 100hours+ one.

Also JRPGs can be very very derivative. Same menus, same lack of depth, same shounen cliches left and right. Yeah one can point out at Dark Souls as an action JRPG that is different from a lot of JRPGs but it's an exception and not the rule at all.

>Dungeon Crawlers are generally less "proper RPGs" than most JRPGs.
I disagree.
Dungeon crawlers like Wizardry or Etrian Odyssey let you create your own party of characters, which puts them well above a lot of JRPGs.

Faggot I played gold box games when they came out.
>Party members don't join you automatically, you have to find them and recruit them
A trivial difference. Oh shit, I have to walk to the friendly arm in and go to the Tavern to meet Khalid and Jaheira to get them in my party. What incredible roleplaying agency!
>Baldur's Gate has permadeath
It also has power word: load and you're an idiot if you don't think the vast majority of players do just that when one of their party members gets chunked or disintegrated. It's as meaningful as the permadeath in Final Fantasy Tactics.
>How is it not designd to be played with a custom party?
The point is that your custom party is composed of NPCs, not fully custom characters. A game like Final Fantasy VI also lets you compose a party characters (albeit not in the first half of the game). The only real difference is that Baldur's Gate encourages more of a commitment that requires you to play the game multiple times in order to see the different alternatives play out, while the JRPG makes it fairly easy to get a feel for every option in a single playthrough.

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>Dungeon crawlers like Wizardry or Etrian Odyssey let you create your own party of characters
This isn't what makes a game an RPG. There are tabletop modules that provide pre-created characters. Is D&D suddenly not RPGs if you didn't go through the process of creating a character before you start the game?

Character creation is downstream of the essential elements of an RPG. RPGs tend to enable character creation by virtue of their stats-based systems, however it's those systems and how they play out that makes the game an RPG, not solely the fact that they allow for custom characters.

I simply can't agree. The best-paced JRPGs I've played are probably Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy IV and even then in FFIV I think the encounter rate is too high at least that game is saved by having escape be trivial and nearly instantaneous.

What DOES the average JRPG have that puts it above Etrian Odyssey?

Oh there is plenty wrong with random encounters. One thing they do is to homogenize the game into a bland mess. There's no let me explore this place then suddenly shit gets rough, no, it's always the same way you encounter enemies no matter if you're in a forest, underground, underwater, inside a volcano or whatever. It's always the same shitty RNG that makes the game feel like a flatline in terms of pacing, with a little blimp sometimes - it's the boss fight that is slightly more difficult than the normal slog that are the JRPG's countless random battles.

The ability to travel through and explore a world outside the dungeon. Interactivity may be limited in a JRPG compared to a WRPG but it's still more than typical Dungeon Crawlers.

That said I still consider Dungeon Crawlers RPGs especially when they make some attempt to portray the dungeon as a place that actually exists and is connected with a realistic world in a plausible way, as EO does. But still, the city in EO is just kind of a hub area and the focus is on the dungeon crawl (as is appropriate for a game in the genre).

not him but Pathfinder Kingmaker isn't made by Obsidian, the rtwp cancer is still alive and well

>t's always the same way you encounter enemies no matter if you're in a forest, underground, underwater, inside a volcano or whatever
It hasn't always been this way.

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>can only name 1 rtwp crpg vs the dozens of turn-based crpgs released in the last few years
Thanks for proving my point.

rtwp is not cancer it's a specific style of gameplay that has been shown to work well with the D&D-style ruleset (which applies to Pathfinder).

If you're not translating a tabletop game you probably shouldn't use rtwp.

You can give these Wild Arms 2 treatment though.

The only people who complain about jrpg combat are total shitters

>There is nothing wronf with random battles.
What purpose do they serve? Jrpgs copied random encounters from dungeon crawlers. But random encounters in dungeon crawlers exist to drain your resources, creating constant tension about whether to press forward or retreat back to town to heal.

This isn't the case in jrpgs, which are very easy. They would be better off doing what turn-based crpgs did and making battles consist of hand-place encounters that take place in the actual game world.

>90% of all JRPGs share the same combat system
FF1, FF7, FF10, FF10-2, FF12, FF13, FF15, Grandia, Dragon Quest, Crono Trigger

>The only people who complain about jrpg combat are total shitters
Barring a few exceptions, like Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter, jrpg combat is uniformly awful. I've been trying to get into a bunch of snes/ps1 rpgs I never played, but I find myself unable to stomach the constant stream of encounters that pose no challenge yet still take too much time due to slow animations and sluggish interface design.

>what purpose
ideally:
- Simulate the sense of adventuring in a wilderness or dungeon and associated danger.
- Taxing your resources (the fact that jrpgs are easy is not really relevant. Yes they are easy. So what? Some games are easy some games are hard in this case it doesn't change the fact that random encounters drain mana and potions.)
- Experimentation and practice with your equipment and abilities. You should have a feel for the capabilities of your whole party before facing off against a boss.
- Giving places in the world a sense of character beyond mere aesthetics, in games that don't emphasize puzzles and non-combat challenges. The random encounters in a particular area helps define that area to the player.

Please tell me what jrpgs are so awful then

Is that davidvinc content? Easily the best Top 10 JRPG creator on Youtube and you can tell he really has played everything under the fucking sun. He also lifts so I'll forgive him for being gay.

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>Simulate the sense of adventuring in a wilderness or dungeon and associated danger.
>Experimentation and practice with your equipment and abilities. You should have a feel for the capabilities of your whole party before facing off against a boss.
>Giving places in the world a sense of character beyond mere aesthetics, in games that don't emphasize puzzles and non-combat challenges. The random encounters in a particular area helps define that area to the player.
You can achieve all these things with hand-placed encounters.

>it doesn't change the fact that random encounters drain mana and potions.
That's certainly not true in most jrpgs. This has to do with the typical assymetrical nature of jrpg combat, where enemies can deal maybe 10-20 damage while the player is able to deal hundreds of points of damage and eventually, thousands. With such massive numbers inflation, it becomes very difficult to balance the game to still have a modicum of challenge.

This is in sharp contrast to tabletop-inspired rpgs, where player and enemies typically play by the same rules and have similar amounts of health and deal similar amounts of damage.

>jrpg fans are literally faggots

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I like both too, but I feel like WRPG's try to be gritty and serious for the sake of being gritty and serious. It turns usually almost comical after a while. Another problem is that WRPG's are either 9-10/10 or 3-5/10. And they are quite rare anyway. But good one is good, especially with multiplayer.
JRPG's are usually just silly but easy to get in to. The quality ranges from utter shit to fucking good. There are so many though and even best ones have issues.
They are still enjoyable and have waifus/husbandos and aren't afraid of lewd stuff which is nice.
I just want a DnD game with anime girls, especially if I can be a combat maid

To be fair lack of DEFINITION really is one of those JRPG weaknesses. For every game making use of a single themed setting, like Valkyrie Profile with the whole Norse mythology, you have dozens of "have some magic, ancient technology and throw in airships for good measure" kind of kitchen sink fantasy approach to settings.

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FF1, FF7, FF10, FF10-2, FF12, FF13, FF15, Grandia, Dragon Quest, Crono Trigger

You forgot the mention the GOD SLAYING.

>look at my cherry picked sample list #156465465
No idea what retards like you from both sides think they'll achieve with shit like this.

Holy shit!
If they cant get every ps2 game running at 100% ps2 era speeds, on current pc hardware, what makes you fucking think the switch can do it!?!

and yes, i own a switch. Just fucking get a ps2 and a portable screen!

you're overselling random battles hard
First of all the combat in those games isn't very challenging and the end result of the system is that it becomes extremely tedious to play with all those battles where you'll just spam A to autoattack kill and get it over with. The fact some people speed up the emulators and shit to get past fights ASAP speaks volumes about how awfully boring random battles, along with simplistic combat and long animations are.

Experimenting different gear can be done withoiut random battles, and they hardly do much more than "higher number" and maybe a status immunity in most JRPGs anyway.

>random battles give the world a sense of character
How? The mechanic only makes the world feel all the same, you're engaging the enemies in the same exact way, same walking-RNG tedious ordeal.

That doesn't happen nearly as often as people meme about it

>That doesn't happen nearly as often as people meme about it

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Nah I think it's because after Wizardry, WRPGs never produced a solid "early" turn-based combat system not based on D&D that everyone could agree was great and serve as a basis for future games. Meanwhile JRPGs pretty much immediately started diverging with videogame sensibilities in mind, with no only the Wizardry-style combat. but also TRPGs like Shining Force as well.

The other problem is that the shift to 3D led to a greater emphasis on ARPGs (and MMORPGs) focused on controlling the actions of a single player rather than micromanaging a whole party.

>hoboken
now that's going full hipster. even rpg fans haven't played that game.

the best WRPGs>the best JRPGS>the average JRPG>the average WRPG

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>Nah I think it's because after Wizardry, WRPGs never produced a solid "early" turn-based combat system not based on D&D that everyone could agree was great and serve as a basis for future games.
X-COM came out in the early 90's and is still more sophisticated than basically every turn-based game made today.

WRPGs are basically dead anyway

Cyberpunk, Outer Wilds, and VTMB 2 are the big noteworthy games on the horizon but they will all be disappointments in one way or another I can guarantee it because everything we've seen so far points in that direction

>you're overselling random battles hard
No, I'm not. I don't even like random battles that much. But unlike you I'm not carelessly dismissive and have taken the time to try and understand their purpose and function.
>>random battles give the world a sense of character
>How?
How is this not fucking obvious? A forest where you randomly encounter Tyranosaurs and Brachiosaurs is memorably different from a desert area where you encounter Cactrots and Hoovers. The deep lunar core where you randomly fight Red Dragons and Behemoths is different from the first level where you fight Warlocks and Valkyries.
> you're engaging the enemies in the same exact way
What does this even fucking mean? Sure, JRPGs with random encounters don't have a "stealth" mechanic (unless it's something to reduce encounter rate or change the rates of pre-emptive strikes or ambushes). But come on user, be serious, you can't honestly think that every game NEEDS to have some kind of explicit stealth approach mechanic to be worthwhile.

>First of all the combat in those games isn't very challenging
Oh and, so?
Yes, these games are easy. They are supposed to be easy, they are designed for a broad, casual audience and aimed heavily at kids. If you've outgrown them, just recognize that and either move on or try to understand the games for what they are rather than what you mistakenly believe they should be.

I'm playing Ultima 4 right now and it's making me lose respect for JRPGs.

>try to understand the games for what they are
They're supposed to be tedious and unengaging?

>I'm playing Ultima 4 right now and it's making me lose respect for JRPGs.
What makes you say that?

Fun fact: jrpg and wrpg are completely different, but zoomers can't understand it, being limited ny binary thinking and all.

not him, but you see Ultima 4
>the game keeps track of eight different virtues (honesty, compassion, valor, justice, sacrifice, honor, spirituality, humility)
>player actions both in and out of combat affect virtues in different ways
>the game distinguishes between non-evil enemies such as wild animals and enemies with actual evil intent (e.g. letting non-evil creatures flee is treated as a compassionate act, but the same is obviously not true for letting an evil creature flee)
it makes JRPGs look like Fisher-Price toys

Yeah it's also not a fantasy setting. I realize not all RPGs need to be fantasy but that's really where the genre originated and games like Fallout, KOTOR, and Mass Effect are extremely popular but I think the core RPG audience has a substantial desire for Fantasy-themed games with medieval weapons and magic.

They aren't tedious and unengaging for the appropriate audience. You just can't seem to be able to think outside your tiny little box to consider what others might find engaging.

>SNES JRPGs all look the same
yeah, super mario rpg and mystic ark totally look the same!
>PS1 JRPGs all look the same
yeah, legend of legaia and saga frontier 2 totally look the same!
>PS2 JRPGs all look the same.
yeah, final fantasy xii and atelier iris totally look the same!

Reminder that we've had constant threads using the same poll since February and all of Yea Forums's favorite games were Japanese.

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>Yeah it's also not a fantasy setting
The mechanics of X-COM, like action points and line of sight, are perfectly applicable to fantasy RPGs as well. In fact, most turn-based fantasy crpgs require having clear line of sight to shoot an arrow or target a spell.

Besides, there were other turn-based fantasy crpgs that weren't based on D&D, like Betrayal at Krondor, which you seem to be ignoring.

>it makes JRPGs look like Fisher-Price toys
Except (hyperbole aside) that's exactly what they are supposed to be. JRPGs are designed to be streamlined, accessible RPGs enjoyable by a broader audience than complex stat-heavy niche games for neckbeards. Some JRPGs manage to be both accessible and complex but a JRPG that fails to be accessible is more likely to be considered a failure overall than WRPGs which often don't give two shits about accessibility and may even expect players to read thick manuals before even starting to play.

>games made for kids have to be braindead easy
Simply not true at all. There are games made for kids that are hard as hell, like Super Mario Bros 3. Also the average JRPG isn't made for kids, the way they have a load of story in them, often convoluted makes it at least aimed at teenagers.

>jrpg vs wrpg
>epic vs steam
>sony vs nintendo
>ffxiv vs wow
you people can only fucking communicate in us vs them arguments and it makes me actually nauseous

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Adding to that:
>No random encounters, you can see enemies on the overworld and in dungeons.
>The game is focused on exploration, everything is open to you from the beginning and you'll never have to worry about wandering into an area with monsters you can't beat.
>This game has dialog trees. They're simple but it was extremely innovative for the time.
>The plot was meant to challenge RPG standards at the time. There is no evil warlord or villian to defeat, you aren't saving the world, the kingdom is at peace. The goal is to master the in-game morality system and to become an "Avatar." It sounds boring but it's executed fantastically.
This game came out in 1985, a year before Dragon Quest.

>the game keeps track of eight different virtues (honesty, compassion, valor, justice, sacrifice, honor, spirituality, humility)
and at the end of the day, it's a shitty, gimmicky system that railroads you into playing a certain way so you don't lose any virtue points. wrpgs have always been the epitome of feature creep over substance.

you know what gets me? Early Dragon Quest, despite the bastardization and casualization, at least somewhat resembled the role model. Today's Dragon Quest is a brainless movie game.

>not posting the real one

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>WRPG fans: JRPGs have too much dialog and story!
>Also WRPG fans: I love spending hours reading WRPG lore and talking to npcs!

Different places having different enemies isn't a big deal ad you don't need random battles for it. However in the random battles garbage system no matter where you are, it's always a 10 steps-fight, 10 steps-fight formula that grows stale very quickly. With enemies placed in the world the game feels much more alive.

The fact some JRPG devs are adding encounter sliders (see Bravely Default) is a sign that the system is garbage and people might want to turn it off because it makes the game boring. Also random encounters lessen the impact the player has in thre world, because no matter how many things you kill they're always there forever.

Most WRPGs are bad because their gameplay is full of needlessly bloated systems that don't translate well into challenging, engaging gameplay.. Elder Scrolls is the best example. The gameplay is so bad, you need to build fake gameplay in form of level scaling around it.

The JRPG system with exp points and progressively stronger enemies at least resembles something like actual gameplay.

>option A: here sit through countless cutscenes
>option B: you can spend time talking to NPCs and learning about the game's world if you want to
it's pretty much the difference between a movie and a game

I'm not ignoring Betrayal at Krondor at all the point is that game the market and game developers did. Krondor wasn't a wildly successful game despite being critically well-received. Krondor wasn't a game that screamed to everyone: "THIS is how to do combat right in an RPG!" Meanwhile for JRPGs, Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy had perfected their Wizardry-inspired formulas by 1990. Final Fantasy IV established the ATB system, which would be the standard for that series for the next decade. Krondor didn't even come out until 1993.

>The mechanics of X-COM, like action points and line of sight, are perfectly applicable to fantasy RPGs as well.
I agree, but the reality is that western Fantasy RPGs didn't do that. Call it the Baldur's Gate curse if you want, but Infinity Engine with with a Warcraft-style gameplay model with a pause feature, and that one WAS wildly successful. Meanwhile in Japan by 1997 you had fantasy TRPGs like Final Fantasy Tactics that had much richer and more complex 3D maps than X-COM as well as LOS rules and relevant movement rules for navigating the 3D terrain-based environment.

Genres and classifications literally don't matter because each game is it's individual thing

And I thought sophist twats died along with Ancient Greece.

>No random encounters, you can see enemies on the overworld and in dungeons.
so, in other words, the same thing bokosuka wars did two years earlier. once again, japan innovates, the west copies and takes all the credit.
>The game is focused on exploration, everything is open to you from the beginning
so, just like courageous perseus and hydlide did a year earlier.
>This game has dialog trees.
the portopia serial murder case had dialogue trees two years before ultima iv came out. the creator of that game went on to create dragon quest.
>The goal is to master the in-game morality system and to become an "Avatar." It sounds boring
and it is boring, since the game is structured around being a goody-two-shoes to get all the virtue points. smt took this system and made it genuinely compelling.

reality:
>option A: here sit through occasional cutscenes
>option B: you can spend hours reading reddit-tier essays in text boxes while trying to avoid the actual gameplay as much as possible
it's pretty much the difference between a game and a visual novel.

>Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy had perfected their Wizardry-inspired formulas by 1990.
They did? I don't think the combat in those games compares very favorably to the Gold Box games, Betrayal at Krondor or heck, even other jrpgs. Meanwhile, Wizardry, the inspiration for DQ and FF, was adding more interesting mechanics like spells being able to fizzle out or backfire.

>Meanwhile in Japan by 1997 you had fantasy TRPGs like Final Fantasy Tactics that had much richer and more complex 3D maps than X-COM as well as LOS rules and relevant movement rules for navigating the 3D terrain-based environment.
I like FFT, but I'm not sure I'd call the maps more complex. For starters, there is no illumination system or true line of sight system: everyone is visible to each other at all times, even if a unit is standing behind a wall that nobody could see him from.

>occasional cutscenes
Yea right. Also yes it's nice having the option to learn more about the world rather than being force fed shitty cutscenes for hours to no end. But then JRPG fans aren't much into having any choice in games given how incredibly railroaded those games are.

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>it's just wrpg-kun again
lmao

>it's pretty much the difference between a game and a visual novel.
Do you not understand what effect cutscenes have on a game? They affect the whole design of the game. There's a reason why most jrpgs are completely on rails. It's because the developers made the game linear to make sure the player couldn't accidentally miss out on the cutscenes.

By contrast, most wrpgs can be speedrun in a few minutes because there are very few cutsceenes or other mandatory 'plot triggers'.

>By contrast, most wrpgs can be speedrun in a few minutes because there are very few cutsceenes or other mandatory 'plot triggers'.
Sounds like wrpgs have absolute shit for characterization or plot points then

You shiuld play the og fft or tactics ogre

>Sounds like wrpgs have absolute shit for characterization or plot points then

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>he still posts that drivel
Goddamn dude

>You shiuld play the og fft or tactics ogre
The main character of both those games are teenagers (a particularly effeminate one in the case of Ramza), which is precisely what he said he disliked about jrpgs

>Sounds like wrpgs have absolute shit for characterization or plot points then
Characterization? Plot points? If I want movieshit I'll go to Yea Forums.

At least they are not highscool

I never said they MUST be braindead easy. It's about what winds up being enjoyable, and for a 12 year old kid in 1991, Final Fantasy IV was fucking fun as hell. Yes the combat in Final Fantasy was easy, but I also enjoyed experimenting with it and trying out the various abilities and weapons. There is actually a good amount of depth in the game despite the fact that it's not punishing or difficult if your only braindead goal is to finish the game as easily as possible.

I was also playing Gold Box Dragonlance games at the same time. But, the fact is that I was barely old enough to fully appreciate the tactical depth of those D&D games, at least not without some older/experienced guidance (which I did not have). I was smart enough to win, but wasn't deploying any kind of optimized strategies other than the rock-paper-scissors stuff forced on you by the game like not executing a killing blow on Baz draconians if you wanted to keep your weapon.

>There are games made for kids that are hard as hell, like Super Mario Bros 3
The difference is that hard for a platform game is almost entirely a matter of reflexes, dexterity, and practice/muscle-memory. RPGs have complex abstractions and good ones are designed to reward analysis, strategy and tactics. RPGs aimed at adults, with lots of obscure rules and punishing permanent penalties for bad decisions can bore and frustrate younger players.

I beat Legend of Zelda for NES when I was 7 or 8. It's a pretty hard game at that age and I definitely brute-forced Gleeoks with potions. But compared to even a JRPG, Zelda's abstractions are simple and intuitive. The game requires you to be observant and use some critical reasoning as well as have finger skill to defeat the enemies, but there's no advanced strategy or tactical requirements. There's no need to understand probabilities or do any kind of calculated risk assessments.

Ramza is one of the more mature JRPG protags out there though

>mature
>constantly talks and cries about his feelings

>I didn't play the game

not an argument

>Ramza is one of the more mature JRPG protags out there though
He barely even qualifies as a character, much less a good one. He seems to have no character traits whatsoever outside of 'nobly and selflessly does the right thing, always and without doubt'. It's impossible to relate to him because he shows no believable human emotions whatsoever. He doesn't even seem to particularly care that he becomes an exile, he's way too preocupied with doing the right thing. He doesn't even get angry that people he trusted stab him in the back, he keeps pleading with them and literally asking 'can't we just get along and stop innocents from suffering'.

It doesn't help that his character design is terrible.

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His actual sprite loses most of those details that annoy you though

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>Do you not understand what effect cutscenes have on a game?
yeah, they advance the story while being honest about taking control away from the player - unlike the dishonest crutches that western "cinematic experiences" use, such as forced walk-and-talk segments.
japanese cutscenes are like intermissions between the gameplay. western "cinematic" garbage undermines the gameplay itself to tell the story.

Look at that fucking ass, it's like he's practically begging Altima to give him a rimjob.

if you don't care about characterization or plot, why are you playing rpgs? shouldn't you stick to shmups and fighting games - or better yet, chess?

>yeah, they advance the story while being honest about taking control away from the player
Stopped reading there. I have never heard a more disgusting defense of cutscenes in my life.

>yeah they shit on the game by forcing control away from you, but at least they're honest about it :DDD

Yeah this guy took a shit on the sidewalk,but he was honest about it, so you have to like and praise the shit.

>moving the goal posts

We're talking about RPGs. What western rpgs do the walky talky thing?

>Different places having different enemies isn't a big deal ad you don't need random battles for it.
The fact that there are other ways to do it doesn't invalidate using random encounters to accomplish it also.
>Also random encounters lessen the impact the player has in thre world, because no matter how many things you kill they're always there forever.
This is true but is also a tradeoff in that can wind up being too static.

Also, you should realize that there was a game from way back in 1992 that was a JRPG without random encounters. Instead you had visible encounters in the dungeons, and you had "battlefields" where you could go and trigger a stack of battles (and after 10 battles, the battlefield would be cleared and you'd win an item). It was called Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest and was a game intended for kids even younger than normal Final Fantasy games. (They were likely trying to accomplish what Pokemon would manage to do a few years later)

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I'm playing a VIDEO GAME, which means gameplay should be more important than everything else. JRPGs should not be an exception, and they've always been the worst genre because they thought they had special privileges.

What's your favourite JRPG and why isn't it Wild Arms 3, you fucking pleb?

Go away acfag

>run out of arguments
>resort to calling the other person a fag
Bravo Nolan.

>He barely even qualifies as a character, much less a good one. He seems to have no character traits whatsoever outside of 'nobly and selflessly does the right thing, always and without doubt'.
Perfect for a videogame protagonist. That is exactly what he should be.

>What's your favourite JRPG and why isn't it Wild Arms 3, you fucking pleb?

because I was using the characters wrong.

Like Gallows, the big guy with the shotgun and the largest HP pool of the game.

HE'S YOUR FUCKING MAGE

>I'm playing a VIDEO GAME, which means gameplay should be more important than everything else.
and wrpgs have atrocious gameplay. there's a reason why wrpg defenders are always talking about character design, dialogue, gimmicky features, and other superficial shit instead of the experience of actually playing the games, because even they know their genre has garbage gameplay.

Not sure if it's the thing you're looking for but play Vagrant Story

I mean, I'm not really defending WRPGs in particular, I'm just stating my stance on whether story should be given such importance.

Why do you still have xenogears up there despite me annihilating you over and over again?

What the fuck are you faggots arguing about? Both WRPG and JRPGs are usually story focused games

but these are rpgs. they need both story and gameplay. wrpgs copy all their lore from tabletop games instead of coming up with anything original, and their gameplay is terrible.

The Genius of Sappheiros. Now THAT's one helluva JRPG.

Those fucking drop rates though

Makes sense since he's a native and spiritualism runs in his blood. Clive's your big dick damager, Virginia is your healer, Jet is the everyman/debuffer and Gallows is your all-purpose mage.

>Makes sense since he's a native and spiritualism runs in his blood.

I know but his large HP pool and his physique make you think otherwise.

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Japanese things can't be wannabe Japanese.

>they NEED story

This is a falsehood. It was propagated by people like Square and Bethesda and many other RPG makers because they needed an excuse to not have good gameplay in their games. They needed something to hide the various horrific bugs and glitches and poor programming, so they came up with pretentious stories to hide it all. And look how well it worked.

>hey, you know that sketch glitch in FF6 that would literally destroy carts and damage SNES consoles? or the various gameplay issues, like flags not being properly set, or items having bugged values, or stats doing nothing?
>well, nobody will notice it if we make LE EBIN WACKY STORY with zany random clowns and operas!
>genius!

>play (J/W)RPG
>final boss is God
>the church/religion is objectively good (muh healing) or objectively evil
>all of the main characters are teenagers or kids
>it opens with someone waking up
>the villain is “morally grey” because him killing millions of people is actually good because *contrived reason*
>the villain is a nihilist
>the main character’s village gets burned down
>space fantasy setting so you can have both swords and lasers
>medieval fantasy setting with dwarves, elves, orcs, goblins, etc
>same as above only they’re SLIGHTLY different (elves have dark skin!)
>resurrection magic is hilariously common, making death meaningless
>magic system is fire/ice/lightning/earth
>fire burns ice slows lightning stuns
>there’s a tank/healer/DPS archetype
>there’s a fighter/wizard/thief/priest archetype
>silent protagonist with no personality who magically makes a bunch of friends
>the final boss is defeated with friendship
>the main character uses swords, pole arms and all other weapons are inferior
>main character has amnesia to give an excuse to dump exposition
>obligatory mascot character
>party member who is a traitor becomes good
>if you kill him you’ll be just like him!
>evil empire
>magic is indistinguishable from technology
>nature good, technology evil
>obviously evil ruler/adviser gets unnoticed
>killing is superior to anything else because it provides the most XP
>”urban” setting that takes place in high school
>childhood friend romance (who uses magic or heals)
>antagonist's right hand man is childhood friend
>belts, spikey armor, stripper armor
>summons aren't actually summons, just spells
>advanced ancient civilization objectively superior to current one
>Fire 1, Fire 2, Fire 3, AoE Fire
There, I summarized every RPG, JRPG or WRPG, in a nutshell.

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I thought they were OK in the matsuri version (God help me I survived the goddamn lingering summer heat version, when items could get lost)

shuumatsu/weekend version, I mean.

>I don't think the combat in those games compares very favorably to the Gold Box games, Betrayal at Krondor or heck, even other jrpgs.
The market said otherwise. The combat in FFIV and DQ is very polished and streamlined relatively speaking (less so in DQ I'd argue but that's neither here nor there). The combat in Gold Box games is laughably primitive. Yes, they have greater tactical depth (in some ways). But they are clunky as fuck. (see my post here for a breakdown: ). Final Fantasy IV is not clunky at all, it's a very tight and polished engine relatively speaking (it has a few odd quirks but those are hard to notice unless you know what you're looking for). There are sequences in the goldbox games that boil down to extremely repetitive command entry waiting for the RNG to finally let you reach an outcome that was never really in doubt anyway.

>I like FFT, but I'm not sure I'd call the maps more complex.
Maybe it's not more complex as an absolute measure, but FFT has a meaningful height system which is rare in tactical games of that era (even now honestly). It may not be a full Z-axis but it's pretty close. As someone who has tried writing a TRPG game engine, this is massively more difficult to make work then just adding bells and whistles and obstacles to a 2D (isometric) grid. Plus it influences the entire game in fundamental ways (every unit needs a balanced jump stat, every ability needs to account for height, you need rules for height advantage in melee and in archery, and then you actually need to design the maps and encounters to be interesting with terrain that is interesting and exploitable but not totally cheap.

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>They are USUALLY story focused games
Of course they don't need story. But most of them are story focused, and pure dungeon crawlers are mostly niche games. That's true for both JRPGs and WRPGs. I still don't understand your point. Are you saying games shouldn't have any story at all? Because if that's what you're saying you're retarded. That's like saying "movies shouldn't have any story, if I wanted scripts I'd read books"

obviously, wRPGs never made strides in gameplay and were always dumbed down table top experiences without any of the good aspects. The characters and stories also never made an impact, Geralt/witcher 3 as well as planescape are the closest and they're both based off existing non-video game franchises. The only thing wRPGs did better was offer multiple playthrough routes (despite all of them being shit to play) and even that has been significantly reduced. All you have left is a husk of genre that was never exciting to begin with.

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JRPGs are a dumbing down of a dumbing down, nearly all of them are just poor copycats of Wizardry

>being so autistic that you took the image that made fun of XB2 (I think someone posted it earlier in this thread) and misleadingly edited it to make XB2 look like a good game

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>Are you saying games shouldn't have any story at all?

Judging by his shitposting in Metroid threads, yes. He wants zero story, not even any basic "here's the setting" cutscene.

not only have japanese RPGs improved turn based systems (best one in the industry is SMT), but many RPG franchises are breaking off from turn based systems in the first place

this was the original, the retard who made the edit is full of downright incorrect statements about XC2 because he has never been able to argue against it

FACT: OP is right.

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I'm saying story shouldn't have any place in a game other than a blurb in the manual justifying why you're platforming/shooting/puzzle solving. When you start setting dangerous precedents like "games need to evolve and tell stories" then you end up with companies like sony and people like Neil Druckmann, who think diversity is more important than gameplay and that "fun" is detrimental to the industry.

I'm sorry if it sounds extreme, but you can't give these people an inch, or they'll lecture you about the evils of fun in video games for a mile. Also, like I said before, the story is pretty much always an excuse to hide glaring problems. Much like how mature games use violence and graphics to hide bland corridor shootan, or weeb games use titties to hide bland gacha and microtransaction-laden gameplay.

>Dark Souls/Bloodborne series universally hailed as some of the greatest RPGs of all time
>I'm supposed to believe JRPGs are somehow better

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This is a legitimate criticism tho

The overwhelming majority of JRPGs are linear and have no actual options to roleplay. So why not make a pre-defined character who's interesting instead of the generic silent protagonist. The latter really only makes sense in games where there are so many options for players to make their own character that it's a bad idea giving them a pre-defined personality.

that image is the original, the retard who made this edithasn't even played the game since the first paragraph already has something wrong

>>Dark Souls/Bloodborne series universally hailed as some of the greatest RPGs of all time
>>I'm supposed to believe JRPGs are somehow better

this may come as a shock but Dark Souls/Bloodborne series are JRPGs

Name ONE jrpg that has good writting and doesnt play like the script of a bad shonen anime

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>shitposting

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I always find it funny how wRPGtards try to claim souls as their own, despite the very japanese style of level and enemy design (the two most important aspect of souls). They're so starved for good games to fill their shitty repertoire they'll steal japanese ones

>layers of intricate mechanics
This is exactly the problem with modern JRPGs. Because there isn't enough fundamental complexity in the combat model to support deep and interesting gameplay, they have to bolt on nonsensical abstractions (eg Blades) stupid quasi-minigame shit which is why the GUIs are full of clutter like in that XC2 screenshot.

>game is 90% hack'n'slash action
>but it has numbers so that makes it an RPG

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But seriously, are JRPGs the "movie-game" of RPGs?

...

>The market said otherwise.
Popularity is not a metric of quality. Or do you think Skyrim has the best RPG combat ever?

I specifically mentioned Betrayal at Krondor because it not only has a basic tactical combat system where you can move around and line of sight is a factor, but it easily has the most polished combat interface of any turn-based RPG of that era. Everything is accomplished with a single left click of the mouse, with right-clicking bringing up a description what something does.

>The combat in FFIV and DQ is very polished and streamlined relatively speaking (less so in DQ I'd argue but that's neither here nor there).
I really don't see how. Both games suffer from very slow combat. To demonstrate what I mean, here is a random encounter in FF4
youtube.com/watch?v=oLgbqywWJcM

Here is a random encounter in Fallout
youtube.com/watch?v=RtN2fZhU2Ss

Despite your characters being massively overpowered, the random encounter in FF4 takes longer to complete than the random encounter in Fallout, which involves dozens of combatants with the ability to move around, so you'd think it take longer than FF4. And Fallout's combat system isn't even particularly fast, it's just that ATB is incredibly slow.

ATB is a fundamentally bad system It adds a clunky a real-time element that means you can get attacked during your turn, thus defeating the whole point of using a turn-based system. This artificial time pressure also means the optimal strategy in 99.9% of battles is to mindlessly mash the (auto-)attack button as fast as possible before enemies can get any hits in.

It's also incredibly slow. In a normal turn-based game, you input your commands and they are executed. But in an ATB game, you first have to wait for the characters' ATB bars to slowly fill before you can input commands, and after they are executed, you have to wait again for them to fill before you can input new commands, over and over.

>doesn't support deep and interesting gameplay
why? the image only outlines the basic system, there are multiple other ways to play the game with different builds, chain attacks and orbs arn't even the dominating strategy in certain scenerios

the UI is full of clutter because the game has more depth than any wRPG ever made, everything is crucial to combat except the blade/arts descriptions which can be turned off

most of the genre.
name ONE wrpg that doesn't have reddit-tier writing and abysmal gameplay.

Not really each game is distinct. I just checked out a Witcher 3 gameplay video and most of the first hour is full of cutscenes so I'm not sure WRPGs are much better.

no, that would be cRPGs because you spend 50%+ of the game in dialogue boxes. Even the most egregious jRPGs with cutscene to gameplay ratio (xenosaga) only go as far as 30% dedicated to non-gameplay

Radiata Stories. It is pretty comfy.

Has about a dozen A-Grade waifus as well

Dark Chronicle/ Dark Cloud 2 is kino

>Even the most egregious jRPGs with cutscene to gameplay ratio (xenosaga) only go as far as 30% dedicated to non-gameplay
You're only counting cutscenes in that ratio. You seem to forget the 200 hours of cinematic movie combat.

Games can be whatever the creators want. Visual novels, interactive movies and pure dungeon crawlers can be all classified as games. You are actually autistic if you limit yourself to one type of game.

You spend 50% of the game in JRPGs in dialogue boxes too. The difference is that in CRPGs you can actually interact with it by selecting different options or through skill checks while in JRPGs they are basically cutscenes

>this level of coping and denial

you're really going to call jRPG combat a movie compared to the abysmal state of cRPG combat? even the most basic turn based jRPG combat has more player input and agency than cRPGs. Just look at baulder's gate or planescape torment

>MUH ARTISTIC VISION
Okay user, they can make their game the way they want, but if they expect me to pay 60 bucks for a hallway simulator and third grade fanfiction about killing god for the 5000th time, they should expect criticism.

>The difference is that in CRPGs you can actually interact with it by selecting different options or through skill checks
you screech at persona 5 for doing exactly this.

Most of the genre

>You spend 50% of the game in JRPGs in dialogue boxes too
no you don't, text boxes make up maybe an additional 5% over cutscenes with the big exception being persona (still under 50% cutscene:gameplay ratio)

>click
>win
wowwwwww, wrpg combat is so amazing!

>I always find it funny how wRPGtards try to claim souls as their own, despite the very japanese style

>you create your own character and assign their stats (typical of wrpgs, but something almost non-existent in jrpgs, where you typically play as a pre-defined character)
>uses a stamina system (a common feature in wrpgs since the 80's, even elder scrolls had it decades before dark souls, but far less common in jrpgs)
>uses a vancian system for spellcasting derived from western tabletop rpgs such as d&d
>uses a classless system (common in wrpgs like fallout and elder scrolls, but almost non-existent in jrpgs)
>story is told primarily through gameplay, like many other wrpgs and in sharp contrast to jrpgs which typically feature hours of non-interactive cutscenes)
>an emphasis on non-linear exploration (again, common in wrpgs, almost non-existent in jrpgs)
>dungeons have a sort of interconnected design (again, common in wrpgs, less so in jrpgs)
>enemies are pulled straight from western rpgs (e.g. mindflayers, mimics, myconids, etc.)
>armor changes your appearance (again, common in wrpgs, almost non-existent in jrpgs)
>you can kill npcs (again, common in wrpgs, non-existent in jrpgs)
>combat has more in common with old wrpgs like severance: blade of darkness than it does with anything else in the jrpg genre
>many other gameplay mechanics and features it shares with wrpgs

>very japanese style

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you can't cope as a jRPG fan, there is nothing to cope against. wRPG fags are the ones who have eternally been coping living in the shadow of jRPGs

Still not western

Only in certain conversations (namely, the social links) do different options actually matter, though.

In the majority of all other conversations they're basically cutscenes. In CRPGs you can interact with every conversation and they can resolve quests, give you different rewards, improve your status with a faction, and so on.

I don't get why you think I'm defending CRPGs or WRPGs. Many of them have these same problems. That doesn't make it okay for JRPGs to suffer them.

>no, that would be cRPGs because you spend 50%+ of the game in dialogue boxes.

>Planescape: Torment, an extremely unusual game, is somehow representative of cRPGs

>all superficial shit, ignores the core aspects of souls (level design/enemy design)
you know evergrace, made by fromsoft, came out before severance right?

>Characters have unique lines for every possible combat situation
>GO FOR THE EYES BOO, GO FOR THE EYES

>Only in certain conversations (namely, the social links)
yeah, "only" one of the major defining aspects of the game. no big deal.
>In CRPGs you can interact with every conversation and they can resolve quests, give you different rewards, improve your status with a faction, and so on.
all that and they're still not fun to play.

because the post is in the context of RPGs. I know you're not very bright, but at least be able to discern that

>dialogue box crawling is limited to P:T

Final Fantasy 15 is literally holding one button. Even Diablo isn't that bad and it's barely an RPG.

No? Tales is like this. Final Fantasy is like this. Dragon Quest is like this. Trails is like this. Fire Emblem, to some extent, is like this. Huge chunks of time are dedicated to dialogue, especially in more modern JRPGs, dialogue that you can't interact with at all.

FF15 is universally considered trash, unlike some of these lionized wRPGs which have the same braindead gameplay as FFXV

>ignores the core aspects of souls
You mean the aspects it took from Severance?

>attacking drains stamina, if your stamina runs out you can't attack for a few seconds unntil your stamina regenerates
>if enemies hit you while you drink your potion, it's interrupted (and you can do the same to enemies that drink potions)
>if your character tries to wield a weapon they lack the skill for, they will perform a very sluggish and clumsy attack animation
>weapons and shields have durability
>whenever you block an enemy's attack with a shield, their weapon will bounce back and you will have time to hit them back.
>you can block with either a shield or two-handed weapons
>inventory doesn't pause the game
>you can quickly switch between a few different sets of equipment/items
>there are big-ass swords bigger than the characters themselves (muh berserk reference)
>and hundreds of other similarities

Souls combat is a hell of a lot more similar to Severance than it is to any Japanese game (prior to Souls obviously. After Souls plenty of Japanese games took inspiration from Souls).

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Well, then allow me to clarify that both kind of RPGs fall prey to this.

tales, final fantasy, DQ, and even trails have a majority of the game exploring land. Trails is also xenosaga levels of egregious though

you do realize that fromsoft was already making predecessors to the souls games - such as king's field and shadow tower - years before severance: blade of darkness came out, right?

>wRPG fags are the ones who have eternally been coping living in the shadow of jRPGs

true, hell they are trying to cope by falsely claiming that the Souls games are WRPGs

>Final Fantasy 15 is literally holding one button.
all because the director wanted to pander to casuals:
novacrystallis.com/2014/09/with-final-fantasy-xv-i-do-want-to-make-it-more-casual-says-tabata/
I know the interview is like 2 years before the game came out but the fact you can still Hold O to win makes it casual pandering

>you screech at persona 5 for doing exactly this.
But it doesn't do that.

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The only good JRPG is SMT2

>tales, final fantasy, DQ, and even trails have a majority of the game exploring land.
You mean walking down hallways more cramped than those found in a Call of Duty installment?

>you do realize that fromsoft was already making predecessors to the souls games - such as king's field and shadow tower - years before severance: blade of darkness came out, right?
Neither of those series play anything like Souls.

t. illiterate

ffxv has basically the same gameplay as planescape. the only difference is that ffxv is hated by jrpg fans while planescape is held up as one of the greatest games ever made by wrpg fans.

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hey retard, pic related has all that and was made by fromsoft before severance came out. Severance influenced absolutely nothing

hallways are limited to trails, DQ and the good tales/FF games have more open ended areas or dungeons with branching paths than linear hallways (X being the exception in FF games that are considered good). and lets not pretend a majority of wRPGs aren't following hallways as well

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In every single game you've listed you spend more than 2/3 of the game on combat, exploration, etc. Yes, even Trails with their huge scripts.

based retard.
vg247.com/2014/07/02/from-kings-field-to-bloodborne-the-lineage-of-dark-souls/

>they're focused on exploration, though
But the exploration is all designed linearly. You go to X place at Y time and don't go anywhere else because of an arbitrary limit

CRPGs will either allow complete freedom, but with more difficult enemies to discourage players from going to certain places (but not restricting them altogether) or if there is a "gate" they will typically allow you to visit multiple places (A, B, and C) in any order you choose instead of just demanding you to go to A

If you want a particularly horrible example take a look at Pokemon. We're at Sword and Shield and you STILL can't complete gyms in any order you like. You can't even complete sets or "tiers" of gyms in any order you like (i.e. you can complete these 3 beginner gyms in any order, then these 3 intermediate gyms in any order, and so on)

Oh yeah, this totally looks so similar to Souls:

youtube.com/watch?v=5Bv5myHI510

You are LYING.

>the best part of WRPGs is that you can skip 96% of the content
really makes me think

>You go to X place at Y time and don't go anywhere else because of an arbitrary limit

no? there are several areas you can trail off to outside of the main story

What's the game on the bottom left?

>tales, final fantasy, DQ, and even trails have a majority of the game exploring land
What exploration? In almost every jrpg in general, the overworld is shaped like a corridor, conveniently barricaded by mountains and shorelines (and the sea itself is barricaded by reefs, so the game is still linear even when you get a ship) so that you can only proceed down one path, which is inevitably the next plot-critical location, which is typically nestled in some environmental chokepoint so that you HAVE to pass through it and progress the plot before you can access the next part of the world. This leads to very unnatural world design and means there is pretty much no exploration in these games, until you unlock the airship near the end of the game, at which point you've already been forced to traverse pretty much the entire game world in a linear fashion.

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yes, it has as much to do with souls combat as severance does. There's also the entire king's field series

>pokemon
gamefreak are the bottom dwelers of jRPGs, they are the bethesda of the east

But it isn't significant at all. Usually it will be just an extra optional dungeon en route to A that you can avoid if you want. You still have to go to A in the end

>what exploration
google final fantasy 1-9 or 12 optional areas

and? it's still off the beaten path. Story line narrative changes weren't part of your original post and are goalpost moving, nor is it relevant in the context of gameplay

>Popularity is not a metric of quality.
I'm not just talking about quality though. I'm talking about having a proven game design other developers are likely to imitate. By 1990, JRPGs had the "streamlined Wizardry" combat model. It was proven and successful, and their game developers focused incremental improvements to that model. There's even a tool, RPG-Maker, for churning out generic baseline JRPGs.

WRPGs didn't have a proven combat model that other games could just adapt to their own game. Gold Box games adapted D&D with all its tabletop cruft. Betrayal at Krondor tried its own thing, but didn't prove to be the next great thing that everyone should copy. Baldur's Gate meanwhile, did that, with it's blending of Warcraft-style real-time select-and-click interface with an automatic pause mechanic triggered of combat events in a system based on D&D rules.

And again, in case you haven't been following along this whole discussion is about why WRPGs never seemed to escape the "curse of Baldur's Gate," and my argument is that none of the early fantasy WRPGs managed to achieve a videogame-first combat system that other developers could imitate and incrementally improve. Baldur's Gate was the first game to do it well.

holy fuck you're the same dumbass I've argued with before about this stupid shit and you completely ignored my response and are just copy-pasting the same stupid arguments that were wrong then and are wrong in new and retarded ways now. Apart from you completely fucking missing the point and context of this whole discussion(as you did before), that FF4 encounter is a retarded cherry-picked example of a rare fight that most players of the original game never even saw. Most random encounters last 25-60 seconds unless you run away (in which case I think it's like 5).

In FF XII you can outright skip several story bosses by going the other direction. In Final fucking Fantasy. Do not pretend you know anything about the genre.

>holy fuck you're the same dumbass I've argued with before about this stupid shit and you completely ignored my response and are just copy-pasting the same stupid arguments that were wrong then and are wrong in new and retarded ways now.
he's also a redditor who comes here to shitpost whenever he's not getting enough upvotes on reddit.

Reminder that this is the kind of people who complain about JRPGs.

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as shitty as skyrim's combat is, it's still better than almost every other wRPG game. Shows how trash the genre is

Because in the end it's still linear design. I have to go to Village A before I can go to Village B. I can enter an optional dungeon en route to Village A but no matter what I can't go to Village B

In a CRPG you can either go to either Village A, B, C, D, E, F, G in any order you want, or you can go to Village A, B, and C in any order, then D, E, and F in any order.

pretty much

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you can go to later villages early in almost every FF game, and this is one of the most linear jRPG series

>And again, in case you haven't been following along this whole discussion is about why WRPGs never seemed to escape the "curse of Baldur's Gate," and my argument is that none of the early fantasy WRPGs managed to achieve a videogame-first combat system that other developers could imitate and incrementally improve. Baldur's Gate was the first game to do it well.
But outside of Pillars of etrnity, which was specifically made as a spiritual successor, nobody copied Baldur's Gate. Most crpgs in the last few years have been turn-based.

>In a CRPG you can either go to either Village A, B, C, D, E, F, G in any order you want, or you can go to Village A, B, and C in any order, then D, E, and F in any order.
and what wrpgfags will never understand is that none of this matters when the games aren't fun to play.

It's pretty awful considering the supposedly greatest wrpgs have capital cities consisting of a couple of houses.

>three dialogue options
>makes absolutely no difference

ehh

>ffxv has basically the same gameplay as planescape.

You can Hold O in Planescape?

There isn't a single capital city in a JRPG that is comparable in content to Amn in BG2

you do a single click, which is actually even more braindead. at least with holding O your thumb may get tired wailing down on an HP sponge iron giant in XV

instead of holding o to win, you click to win. wow, what a difference.

new los angeles, xenoblade X far exceeds it

The point is that the "depth" comes from arbitrary bolted on systems that might as well be Tetris for all they related to any actual roleplaying. The original idea behind JRPG combat is to have a model for fantasy combat, since fully realistic combat was impossible to portray. You follow these rules that generate a narrative of how the combat might play out and your imagination fills in the blanks. Now with games like XC2 you have the opposite problem where rendering a realistic battle is easy and the hard part is actually giving the player a meaningful variety of things to do that are easy enough to perform but also be engaging; especially when everything has to happen in real-time and you need to focus on the perspective of a single character.

Instead of your gameplay abstractions being representative of fantasy combat, you have to invent concepts in your fantasy world to simplify and gamify the combat enough to be manageable for a player. It's completely against the spirit of what roleplaying games were originally all about.

>yes, it has as much to do with souls combat as severance does.

>no lock-on
>no dodge
>no block
>mini-map
>accessing inventory/using items/special abilities pauses the game (i.e. you can spam potions from the menu while the game is paused)

Evergrace is NOTHING like Souls/

>you have to pretend it's fun, not actually have fun
huh

That's what makes RPGs fun, kiddo. You have the freedom to make a character you want and go where you want.

JRPGs are not even RPGs, you literally never actually roleplay in them, they are basically movie games.

I can pick out just as much shit in souls gameplay that's not in severance, point is severance is an irrelevant game that influenced nothing and is not like souls combat, at least not any more than evergrace/king's field (the latter which you ignored)

no, what makes RPG video games fun is the comprehensiveness of story, combat, and exploration, something jRPGs have historically done better than wRPGs. CoC shit is fun in tabletop games, not a virtual world with heavy restrictions.

Oh yes the freedom to talk to a different npc for a different fetch quest or just stab a guy.

>You have the freedom to make a character you want and go where you want.
without engaging gameplay, that's basically just a walking simulator.

>I can pick out just as much shit in souls gameplay that's not in severance
Are you retarded? You claimed Evergrace was the precursor to Souls. That is completely false, since Evergrace lacks the fundamental aspects of Souls. But Severance does have those aspects.

Now, it's entirely possible that it's merely a coincidence that Souls and Severance are so similar, but the point still stands: when Souls games first released, the closest thing to them were older western rpg.

Besides, Souls being inspired by Severance is hardly impossible, considering King's Field was clearly inspired by older western rpgs as well.

In JRPGs you have no dialogue options and your character is always a faggot.

>In JRPGs you have no dialogue options and your character is always a faggot.
That's not true. Sometimes your character is a girl, though you'd be forgiven for not noticing the difference between a male jrpg protagonist and a female one.

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>Besides, Souls being inspired by Severance is hardly impossible
severance sold like shit and was never released in japan. the chances are slim to none that it inspired souls.

>You claimed Evergrace was the precursor to Souls
I never said that, it's not. Nor is severance

>severance does have those aspects
no it doesn't, level and enemy design is nothing like souls

>the closest thing to them were older western rpg.
no dumbfuck, that would be king's field, it's spiritual predecessor

>considering King's Field was clearly inspired by older western rpgs as well.
western influence in souls extends to miyazaki's limited english when reading western works as well as the settings (sekiro aside), king's field could be inspired just as much by japanese dungeon crawlers

Right, western devs are only now trying to figure out a good way to do turn-based micromanagement combat in an RPG from a videogame-first perspective and are having mixed success at it.

I'd say it's the opposite problem of JRPGs, where the Wizardry model is rather played out or misunderstood and modern devs are struggling to figure out what to do instead, hence you have debacles like Final Fantasy XV.

>severance sold like shit and was never released in japan. the chances are slim to none that it inspired souls.
Wizardry and Ultima laid the foundation for jrpgs long before they were released in Japan. And that was back in the 80's, when getting access to foreign games was much harder.

XV's debacle was irrespective of moving away from wizardry, it has it's own set of problems. FF has successfully done it with 12 and the MMOs. The only other jRPG series that moved away from turn based from the top of my head is the Xeno franchise which benefited greatly from it

>Right, western devs are only now trying to figure out a good way to do turn-based micromanagement combat in an RPG from a videogame-first perspective and are having mixed success at it.
That has less to do with RtwP and more to do with the fact that there were barely any crpgs made after the early 90's, since most of the developers wenkt bankrupt.

but they were released in japan, and were at least moderately successful unlike severance. In fact no one here even knew what the fuck the game was until you started spamming it on this board

while it's a big plus when there's a cool overworld, towns etc. to explore in a Dungeon Crawler, or if it's a hybrid of sorts, like the Might and Magic games... I still find the Dungeon Crawler genre in itself more compelling than standard RPGs these days because level design, resource scarcity and difficulty really matters. I don't care in which country Wizardry Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord or Elminage Gothic were made, they are both vastly superior to mainstream shit.

>it has it's own set of problems.

like a shitty director (who is no longer with Square), see >novacrystallis.com/2014/09/with-final-fantasy-xv-i-do-want-to-make-it-more-casual-says-tabata/

you should probably try playing more jrpgs, because they've been deviating from "the wizardry model" for ages. turn-based jrpgs have produced systems like death end re;quest's pinball-style combat, grandia's positioning and combo-based combat, mario rpgs' timed button presses, etc. and then there are jrpgs that use action-based combat, such as tales, kingdom hearts, and ys. dragon quest doesn't represent all jrpgs, there has always been creativity and experimentation in the genre.

yeah, and that wasn't the only thing. Hack Nomura was on it constantly changing what XIII versus was going to be alongside retarded upper management from SE. It was the perfect storm of shit

MMOs are just adaptations of Western-made MMOs. MMOs are actually one area where Western RPG developers got it right. They had Everquest that popularized Mud-style gameplay and then World of Warcraft streamlined it. The early MMOs solved the fundamental problem of real-time 3D RPGs by having multiple players control each character in the party.

The problem is that the MMO gameplay model isn't really sustainable in the long run and doesn't work for single player games anyway. Hence you have games like FF12 which is kind of like an MMO with a programmable bot AI system.

wizardry and ultima got popular in japan when they got ported to japanese computers. severance never got popular anywhere and never released in japan at all. terrible comparison.

>Attributes and skills used for combat never play a part in a dialogue
Lmaoing at you, in many megaten games you can rob paralyzed enemies, criticals can make enemies pray for mercy plus you can always choose between money, recruiting and items when they do so, protag stats directly affecting negotiations and there are dialogues that aren't RNG-dependant. You're absolute fucking retard.

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>FF has successfully done it with 12 and the MMOs.
I would hardly call it succesful considering how unsatisfying the combat in FF12 feels.

>image is about talking with npcs
>but muh monster negotiation!
The retard here is you

>Xeno franchise which benefited greatly from it
Xeno games never had good gameplay, but all the Blade games are unplayable. Even Xenosaga 1 is a masterpiece compared to real time with cooldowns trash.

>western influence in souls extends to miyazaki's limited english when reading western works as well as the settings (sekiro aside), king's field could be inspired just as much by japanese dungeon crawlers
Oh yeah, because Japanese action-RPGs are totally known for being first-person, right?

King's Field was clearly inspired by western games, King's Field in particular, you imbecile.

>no it doesn't, level and enemy design is nothing like souls
They're quite different games, but there are a ton of similarities in enemy design and level design, right down to the placement of traps.

>no dumbfuck, that would be king's field, it's spiritual predecessor
Again, King's Field plays nothing like Souls, you mongoloid. By your logic, Souls was derivative of other 1st person ARPGS like Arx Fatalis and Morrowind.

cumbra;n incel

>mario rpgs' timed button presses
this is the perfect example of a stupid bolted-on minigame abstraction. We can't figure out how to make the actual system interesting so we'll put a minigame layer on top instead.
> action-based combat, such as tales, kingdom hearts, and ys
cop out. It means the new games really aren't the same genre as the old ones. Ys was always more of an ARPG from the very beginning.

garbage opinion, there is way more depth, customization, and player involvement in the blade games than gears/saga. This isn't even considering the worst mech combat (which is shit in X as well)

dude wrpg "choices" ultimately force you along a predetermined path, the facade of choice is just to make people like you feel special.

It amounts to MAYBE a different response from a NPC, and makes for a less polished experience because the devs have to fit all this extra bullshit in. that's why we have games that use automated facial animations like Horizon and Mass Effect, becaues they're trying to fit in all this "player choice" and make the game bigger in the wrong areas

>King's Field was clearly inspired by western games, King's Field in particular, you imbecile.
This is meant to say:

>King's Field was clearly inspired by western games, Ultima Underworld in particular, you imbecile.

It's still infinitely better than having to play as a faggot character that looks like a faggot and says and does faggot things.

>mario rpgs' timed button presses

>adding qte's to turn-based combat
>this is somehow worthy of praise
It's shocking to me just how shitty the tastes of jrpg fans are.

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yeah i guess you'd need a break from that every now and then wouldn't you

>action RPGs
I said dungeon crawlers/DRPGs, you baboon

>They're quite different games, but there are a ton of similarities in enemy design and level design, right down to the placement of traps.
if the core elements are different, the comparison is null. It's like saying mario odyssey and metroid are alike

>Souls was derivative of other 1st person ARPGS like Arx Fatalis and Morrowind.
no, I explicitly stated japanese dungeon crawlers

>I still find the Dungeon Crawler genre in itself more compelling
Sure I'm not trying to convince you otherwise, just pointing out that they are hyper-focused on only one aspect of the greater RPG.

>dude wrpg "choices" ultimately force you along a predetermined path, the facade of choice is just to make people like you feel special.
Except that's not true. Wrpg players discover alternate approaches that the developers didn't even intend all the time, like reverse-pickpocketing in Fallout or grenade climbing in Deus Ex, simply by virtue of how open-ended and freeform these egames are.

You're utterly deluded if you think jrpgs offer anywhere near as much interactivity as wrpgs.

>designed with game play as the focus
They seem designed first and foremost to stroke the ego of their fragile playerbase. The combat, puzzles, item management, etc. are all dumbed down to a point where they become non-consequential. JRPGs are peak casual newfaggotry made for losers who got mad they lost at arcades.

t. faggot

Based schizo retard cope

This.

JRPGs involve zero player agency.

>I said dungeon crawlers/DRPGs, you baboon
So? The only Japanese games that are first-person consist of stuff like Etrian Odyssey or Shining in the Darkness that is specifically inspired by Wizardry, a western game.

Similarly, King's Field was obviously inspired by Wizardry, but especially by Ultima Underworld.

>if the core elements are different
But they're not. You know this considering you not only ignored: but even LIED about Evergrace's game mechanics.

the core of souls is level and enemy design, neither of which are addressed in the post

They are just different, none is better than the other, but personally I haven't enjoyed a jrpg as much as pic related.

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>In fact I have the sneaking suspicion this thread is another reddit falseflag thread made to just shitpost about JRPGs.
That's most of the threads here now. It's fucking abyssmal.

>no dialogue choices or dialogue options that get the same response regardless
>no building your character and choosing their specialty
>no ending variation
>no choice in party members
>boring turn based combat with long winded animations you’re forced to watch
>mandatory grinding
No, jrpgs are mostly inferior to wrpgs especially the classic western CRPGs

They're all garbage? What are some non normalfag series?

Daily reminder that the first JRPGs were action RPGs such as Hydlide and Xanadu. Dark Souls is clearly inspired by purely Japanese media such as Berserk, King’s Field, Castlevania and ol-school JRPGs (ARPGs). It is the most japanese JRPG around.

Azure Dreams is pretty good, it’s more of a rougelike than a traditional jrpg though

those features don't have anything to do with the game being an rpg. we were discussing "player choice" as it pertains to dialogue and character interactions specifically.