Decline in worthwhile JRPG's.

[kunimurasami667]

First post, first topic, figured id make it something a bit worthwhile.

*Note* I actually enjoy some of these titles that I mention so im not necessarily solely nerd raging. *Note*

To those gamers out there that have played games from Nintendo > Recent we know the difference between JRPG's (Style that started the Genre) and today's standard RPG (Westernized RPG).

Now the question is as the topic title suggests ... What is up with the decline in production / interest in the JRPG's that we all grew up with?

Ive come to the conclusion that because of the "Westernized Influence" JRPG's are becoming less and less sought after. This can be because of the "Boom" in sales for FPS's as well as the boom of the Westernized RPGS/SRPG's like Mass Effect, Fable, Morrowind, and Fallout to name a few.

We look at JRPG's within the last 5 years and we come up with games like FF12,13, Lost Oddessy (sp.?), Infinite Undiscovory, just to name a few that have failed in their own unique ways ie. Crappy battle system, lack of playable content, horrid voice overs with no JP voices, %10 game play %90 movies, and my fav ... %90 focus on graphics %10 focus on gameplay / story.

As I stated earlier (and there's actually a running sad but true joke with this) its also because of the sales from games such as CoD, GTA, WoW, and other such mind-numbing games that if its not of that style and ... "Uniqueness" then it wont sell.

I honestly want to see more JRPG's with as much depth as we've seen from our past like, Chrono Trigger, FF1-7, Vay, OG Star Ocean / ToD, Lunar, and so on with comparable graphics to todays games.

What say you community?

Oh and konnichiha everyone!

 

[krazykaiju]

Good JRPGs are still being made, they're just not being localized for the NA market. Part of the reason is that publishers don't want to spend any effort on niche games anymore (and any JP game that's not Final Fantasy is considered niche these days). Another reason is that the 'kids' these days love their shooters, so the market puts their development dollars were they get the most return.

If it weren't for NIS and Atlus I'd pretty much have given up on getting any decent localized JRPGs on this generation of consoles. At least we'll still get a few gems like Disgaea 4 and Tales of Graces.

 

[linuuu]

Xenoblade Chronicles its good "old style" jrpg

 

[Nethecite]

I still enjoyed FF up to X-2, and even XII & XIII, though the stories in those were very sadly lacking compared to earlier iterations. I think one of the problems is the attempt to broaden the appeal of the JRPG genre, and by doing that they ruin what made it so good in the first place. The quirky characters, the focus on story and the great game play are what drew me to them. But, like the original poster said, too much shiny graphics and not enough of the rest has been the trend.

I would love to see more dual-language releases, like was done with Star Ocean 4, though unless you have a Square-Enix sized budget, that's probably not gonna happen. Hell, it hasn't even happened for FF, and if that cash cow hasn't added it, it probably won't for DQ, Disgaea, etc.

 

[DakrFusion]

Don't forget the handheld games. Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky, the Ys games, and Radiant Historia to name a few have alot of the charm that the older games I grew up with had.

 

[Maverick007]

"What is up with the decline in production / interest in JRPGs?"

I assume you are talking about the big budget JRPGs. If that's the case then it can be summed up in one simple word: Money.

It's really really expensive to develop a large content game like a JRPG for the current gaming consoles just due to the amount of personnel it takes to program them. And in Japan where consoles are not really the "big market" in terms of gaming, it doesn't make any fiscal sense to that type of money on a smaller market when you can spend less money and advertise to the much larger market. The real market for JRPGs is the handheld market as another poster has said.

Now for the big budgets console JRPGs that are are being developed for the consoles like FFXIII the same initial costs still apply, so in order to cut back the games themselves get "streamlined" to save money. I know some people can bring up the argument, "But Skyrim is a huge game with towns and stuff," and it is a very good argument, but answering that requires to go into the mindset between the Japanese and Western game development, and that's a topic I don't really want to flesh out at the moment.
Localization follows closely to this topic since you're dealing with the more "console" based Western market. As for the "No Japanese" voice acting that is more to do with the limitations of diskspace with the amount of dialogue within the game, and is for the most part an unavoidable issue especially when most of the big budget JRPGs are being released on both the X360 and PS3, especially for the X360. Having more voice files means more space, and possibly more disks to add. More disks = more money. And since these companies want to be "fair" to consumers they'll rather subtract from one than add to another.

But of course the handheld market, especially for the PSP (where the majority of the JRPG market is at) is practically dead (from a hardcore gamer perspective I mean). Most companies think it's too big of a risk to release a PSP JRPG in the market since well...they're a company and they need to make money to survive.

So yeah... Money makes the world go round.