Considered trying it again? I can understand going from a fast-paced Tales game to the more deliberate pacing of Skies being hard to take. I’ve had similar issues in the past, going from Assassin’s Creed 2 to Uncharted 2 – not because of the tone or anything, but because I just couldn’t handle the change in movement and environment interaction. I needed a breather game.
The RPG is my favorite type of game, as my ridiculous diatribe earlier probably made clear.
/applause
I just want Enchanted Arms 2 :(
There are good and bad in every genre. Almost every genre. Anyhow, some of my favorite games are JRPGs, but not many recently.
I like everything I’ve seen from Atlus R&D 1, for example (ie megaten, etc.), and plenty of other PS2-era games. I also liked Xenosaga, .hack, Shadow Hearts, and various others. Last Final Fantasy I liked was X-2, though; XII was a beautiful technical achievement, but the gameplay was mediocre and the setting, story, and characters were bad. FF XIII was even worse. Current generation console JRPGs just haven’t been so great. Nier is I guess the best one of this generation, and it’s so much an action RPG it hardly counts as being in the JRPG style at all.
On the other hand, most recent western RPGs have been pretty weak too. Bioware. Sigh. At least they’re better than Bethesda, I guess. But quite dull efforts for quite some time. Weak thumbs up for at least doing a sci-fi game, but DA is so dull and hackneyed… Obsidian? Meh at best. Maybe they will improve someday.
Well whatever else comes out of this thread, it definitely sold me a copy of that thing.
There are actually people that enjoyed X-2 but disliked XII? I think XII is probably my favorite since VI, with X being a close second of the PS2 generation, mainly because it embodied more of the classic Final Fantasy style and storytelling. It also made great use of summons and added the ability to swap your fighters out mid-battle, so everyone was essentially at the same level. That was good balance.
X-2 was a combination of Barbie Dress-up, weak characterization, almost no story to speak of, oh, and a lesbian.
All I’ll say is what they’re saying about JRPG they said about fighting games a few years back.
All it takes for them to come back is for them to make a good one.
I haven’t played X-2, but I don’t see how lesbians ruin games, and Barbie dress-up and weak characterization have been key features of almost every game in that massive series.
I thought it was kind of fun. I liked being able to spend the whole game zipping all over the world, instead of only being able to do that at the end. Also, no laughing scene. Admittedly the silly flower mode combat was silly, but you didn’t actually have to use it.
The problems for me with XII were:
the story stopped halfway through, presumably when they fired the first creative director; from that point on the entire story was a NPC saying “the next dungeon is thataway”.
the MMO style gameplay is only OK at best and gets old after a while, because I kept being able to do the same thing over and over and win easily.
the character development grid gives you all the cool powers halfway through the game. Seriously, I maxed out everything important and got all the important stuff in the grid quite early on, and I wasn’t doing much extra side stuff.
the hunting side activity is profoundly moronic. You really expect me to stand in that one particular light beam in that one cave for 5 minutes to summon a monster with no hint for it whatsoever? Bastards. And that was one of the easy ones. It’s one thing to hide a few things here and there for strategy guide readers, it’s another to make an entire game system completely unplayable without a strategy guide.
it’s almost impossible to get to the boss fight without being massively overpowered for it. I didn’t do any of the “ultimate” grindy extra things at all, and I took no damage during the boss fight. Come on, guys, be serious.
Still, I must say they got an amazing amount of juice out of the PS2 for that game, the best technical achievement on that platform by far, and it seemed like the setting and story might be interesting when the game started out; too bad they threw all that away in the middle.
I haven’t played that Tales game so can’t comment on it but of the other three, FF XIII is the only one I’d say was actually bad. Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey weren’t terrible games - at best LO was good and BD is pretty decent. They were highly polished and had great production values, just a tad lackluster in the gameplay department.
I’d still say LO was a much better game than FF VII which most seem to put on a pedestal. And BD was just a bit too cutesy graphically but the battle system was generally solid.
The biggest problem with these titles though is that they’re structurally too rooted in the SNES days. But what happens when RPG developers try to distance themselves from classic design? FF XIII. Funny thing is that it had possibly one of the most fun battles systems ever for a JRPG but it was tied to a ridiculously long, linear and repetetive trek alongside some of the most annoying characters ever and some really bad choices (no towns/npcs/shops???).
What was really needed this generation was an SMT/Atlus game. Persona 4, Digital Devil Saga 2 and Devil Summoner 2 were excellent games with mature storylines and characters (yes, P4 was centered around H.S. students but these were fleshed out characters with relatable issues, not the usual whiny emo cunts or squealing brain-dead tarts) and good gameplay elements.
I imagine sequels to these games on a PS3/360 would have probably elevated Atlus and the current state of JRPGs. Well at least they gave us Devil Survivor and Strange Journey for the DS which were great titles and along with The World Ends With You, Dragon Quest IX and all the DQ and FF remakes proves JRPGs are still far from dead.
Then again, where are the WESTERN-style RPGs on handhelds? I mean, you sure as hell could do a Gold Box-like (or Fallout like) game on a DS or PSP, but where are they? Maybe it’s not just JRPGs, but RPGS period that are dead on handhelds? I love the genre, and while JRPGs aren’t my favorite, they beat no RPGs at all, and without JRPGs, there’s precious little I like to play on my DS or PSP.
Check out Etrian Odyssey or The Dark Spire for some old school WESTERN-style RPG’s on the DS. Bring you back to your days of Wizardry or The Bards Tale.
I loved Skies but I can understand how it didn’t appeal to some. It’s the one game I can say I truly loved but will never attempt to play again. The story and characters kept me playing, those random encounters…ugh.
That is one reason I adored FF XII (yes, it’s one of my fave FF games up there with FF IV, VI and IX) - no random battles. I don’t see why random battles are still even used. Chrono Trigger was sucessful without them way back. Still, I don’t mind them if the battles are over quickly and the battles have some challenge to them - FF IV, FF V and the Phantasy Star games come to mind, or if the occured something like once every 2 minutes instead of seconds.
That’s a question I ask myself all the time. With as popular as Bethesda has become, I’m surprised they haven’t attempted a new Elder Scrolls game for the DS or PSP. Hell, a port of Daggerfall would do. They did make something for phones I vaguely recall.
But an Ultima, Wizardry or Baldur’s Gate type game for portables would rock. But let’s not give Bioware any ideas - they’ve dumbed down their games enough for consoles!
You’ll have to realize two things:
Japanese RPGs aren’t as universally focused in modelling morality
and they aren’t as focused on world-building as Western RPGs are.
Having said that, here goes the list:
Oni series - instead of a system of good and evil, ran on a sense of karma, you got bad karma for doing certain things, good for others and it followed you around.
Tokyo Majin series - Hideously complex dialogue choices. It was a combination of choosing from a number of dialogue responses and giving one of nine basic response types to a stimulus and it controlled what fights you got into, who came on your side, how well you worked with others in battle and the branches of the plot.
Weltorv Estleia - In this game, you could do anything from buying a house and getting married, to becoming a pirate, to becoming the new dark lord and terrorizing the land.
Soldnerschild - This game cast you as an up and coming in a country’s army, then throws you into a huge political conflict, how you react determines how the war turns out, how loyalties play and so on and so forth. In fact, I think this is the best representation of such an idea ever seen in a game, and goes way beyond similar ideas seen in things like Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
Z’ill Oll (Infinite too) - In this game, you had a soul with ratings that would rise or fall based on your actions (things like your bravery or purity), your soul woudl change and so would the game. Depending an ultima like beginning sequence, you could also start in one of six starting storylines and the way the soul system interacted with a guild quest system and a heavily, heavily branching storyline made for one open-ended RPG.
Ore no Shikabane wo Koete Yuke - You raise a family of many generations in order to get rid of a curse, the way in which you acheive this goal is veeeeeeeeeeeery open-ended and has a huge effect on the history and the gameworld.
Lolita Fantasy: Warty Penis Dreams - Just seeing if you’re still with me.
Romancing Saga 2 - Nearly all the Saga games are open-ended, but this I think, is, in the best way. It tasks you of taking control of many generations of a country and your actions in one generation determine the outcomes of future generations and it just keeps on snowballing.
Lunatic Dawn series - You can get married, have children, divorce, kill your wife, steal the kids and raise them to be the leaders of crime syndicates if you so wish. Your actions don’t just affect characters, but the ecosystem of the game too, having an effect on the land and towns development around you, as well as the populations and kinds of monsters. You can be virtuous, or get involved in the shady underworld. Lunatic Dawn games almost have too much freedom.
Venus & Braves - You play an immortal tasked with the burden of preparing against a great catastrophe in the future, time is at your manipulation. In this game you can CREATE the legend of the hero and the sword by manipulating the people involved and then manipulate the future youth who will find it. Party interaction is greatly emphasized over the course of many, many, many dozens of years.
Valkyrie Profile - Its well known by now, unfortunately I can’t really tell you what it is you can do in this game, as would consistute a massive spoiler and I wouldn’t dream of ruining the surprise. Beyond that though, I can tell you there’s a lot of leeway in how much you listen to Odin’s demands and what kinds of decisions you decide to make and when. It helps that this is also one of the greatest video games ever made. :P
Atelier series (note: excludes the Eternal Mana games)- You can have an effect on the development of your town, get involved or completely ignore relationships and developing storylines with any number of different characters, your reputation goes up or down, any number of possible goals are available, each with their own ending, etc.
Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War - This is, in my mind, one of the best examples of where open-ended design can get you. Sure you can’t do the campaign out of order, but that’s to the game’s benefit. What you can do is influence relationships and leadership to such a degree that the entire game’s second half is different.
Chester the Crab and His Adventures in China Vagina Land - Again, just wondering if you’re still paying attention. Sadly, this is an actual title over here, but not of a game.
Ogre Battle series - Whether you decide to be merciful and lawful or ruthless and reckless has a great deal to do with troops you can hire, what scenarios you get landed with, who will be your friend, how much people trust you and which one of the endings you get.
Since by this time everyone is well aware of the Megami Tensei games, I doubt I need to bring that up again. There are more, but I’m guessing you’ve got the point now. Japanese open-endedness isn’t always so much about morality, (though there are plenty where it is) its usually more about relationships and are some kind of dynamic unique to the game’s storyline.
In addition, here is a list of games released in the States where your dialogue choices do have an effect on the game:
Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne
Digital Devil Saga 1 & 2
Persona
Persona 2: Eternal Punishment
Romancing Saga
Tales of Symphonia
Star Ocean 2 & 3
Riviera: The Promised Land
Suikoden II
Suikoden III
(I heard a story that the Konami Suikoden designers got so swamped in reaction mail from the “No really, I insist you drink this poison” dialogue “option”, that they vowed never to do it again)
Radiata Stories
Tactics Ogre
Front Mission 3
There’s also Suikoden IV, but I was trying to limit myself to good games. I probably missed a few, I can never quite keep track.
The only game besides the two in this thread I know of that’s coming out in the US that’s open ended is Ryu Ga Gotoku, though I believe its going to be called Yakuza. Its an action RPG. I can’t tell you in what way it is open ended yet, because I have yet to play it, I just know there’s a lot of leeway in what you can do.
You all read this far? Ha ha, you stupid! I just copy paste old Kitsune post! BANZAIIIII!
Don’t worry, Kitsune, we know you have to drop the mask every once in a while.
I have them, and while they’re old school and good, they’re not exactly what I’d like, which is something, well, less old school. Something more contemporary. In effect, the retro-Wizardry style RPG has become a JRPG sub-genre.
Dragon Quest games are all grindy, from my experience (all of I, most of II, large swaths of III-V, VII, 8, 9). They range from “pretty grindy” to “good lord this is crazy grindy”. If you wanted to experience the job system in VII properly, you had to fight a billion* battles. Oh, and you didn’t get to the Job system until over halfway through the game, and you did a good bit of grinding to that point.
Now I’ve started replaying DQ VIII. Thanks a lot…
I would play this.