Is there really a point to Japanese RPGs?

[wolveraptor]

This kind of shit is even worse for sports games. All they do in some cases is update stats. That doesn't even deserve the title "game".

On a related note: is it within a programmer's power to create a randomly generated fight sequence while you're waiting to choose your move? One thing I've always despised about these shit-tacular games is that your character fucking sits there bouncing up and down like a fuckfaced idiot while you take 49 hours to choose your next move. On the other hand, when they give you only 1 minute to choose your move, the whole gameplay style is cramped. I want to see the two characters engage in an uncontrolled, random fight that damages each other based on their respective stats while I choose a special move for my character to use. I'd buy two copies of such a game: one to keep under my pillow.

[Thunderfire]

1.) Great evil is afoot in the world.
2.) Said Great evil must be defeated by a group of callow youths
3.) Said Callow Youths will have funky hairstyles and clothing
4.) Said Callow Youths will be dumb as bricks
5.) No matter what you do, there's only one way to do something.

The same storyline and play style can be applied to virtually every Japanese RPG that's out;

This might be true for most japanese RPGs but there are exeptions.
e.g. most Wizardries are only available in Japanese. Disgaea is also an exeption but this is a tactical RPG.

[Dooey Jo]

is it within a programmer's power to create a randomly generated fight sequence while you're waiting to choose your move? ...

Yes, definitely. Wasn't KotOR something like that? If you didn't click anything, the character chose a random action by itself. I don't think it would be very hard taking that concept to the next level. The hard thing would of course be to make the characters choose intelligent things to do...

[MKSheppard]

I thought it was blatently obvious that I was referring to the Player Characters, but that seems to have flown right over your head.

Is there any reason for "Whiny Bitch #1214 with Spiky Hair" aka, Tidus/whoever to have a backstory other than the minimum needed to set up the story?

I'm sorry, you seem to have not read what you were quoting.

I'm sorry that you're falling back on the tired old cliche of "there are only a few basic plots in the history of mankind"; that doesn't excuse Japanese RPG designers who only seem to know how to change the names of the heroes; their hairstyles; and various details of the villain's plan.

I seem to recall that you can get captured in Fallout 1 by the Mutants...

Anders answered that question.

You can't deny that's not the plot for the games. As I said, you simplify it enough, you find it's the same basic recipie.

Again, the same old "everything boils down to the same plot!" fallback.

I'm not in total disagreement with you, Shep, but the way you're presenting your argument leaves much to be desired.

Do I need more cursing?

[MKSheppard]

There's also no point to WW2 games of any kind, FPS, etc, etc. Except that, Saint's alive, people enjoy them. Who gives a fuck if it's done nine bajillion times before? If people enjoy it, good. If you don't, don't buy it and go fuck off.

You're talking to someone who has never played the recent crop of WWII themed RTS like Codenape:Panzers and whose last two FPS purchases were:

Call of Duty 1
Half-Life

[MKSheppard]

Yes there is a reason we keep storming Omaha over and over agian.

OMAHA BEACH IS THE NEW HOTH!

Look at Call of Duty and say Silent Hunter III. Diffrent games yes but soon we will get to do it agian but instead prehaps with Rommel's Afrika Core and as an American sub facing down Japanse shipping.

Actually, they're making Silent Hunter IV; set IIRC in the Pacific; sinking megatonnage. It's been ten years since we had a Pacific Subsim; Silent Hunter 1 was released in 1996; and the Pacific submarine war by the US was dramatically different than the atlantic submarine war by Germany.

Call of Duty series was elevated above standard FPS fare despite it's rather generic US action sequences - 'Yes, we'll do US airborne in normandy!" by it's simply aweseome Russian front scenes from Stalingrad to Kursk to Berlin.

The same reason that we like Spiky Hair young kids with giant swords can stick them even bigger and much ugiler things over and over agian.

Lets not forget the illogicality of said giant sword suddenly aquiring a ranged attack; and being able to kill scores of machine-gun weilding enemies.

[Nephtys]

Shep, learn the facts. Swords always do more damage than guns. Guns always are more accurate than swords. Sheeeeesh, be multicultural. Learn something about Japan.

As for proof, in FF8, look at the battle between the Galbadian Regular Army and SeeD High School. Swords > Machine Guns!

[DPDarkPrimus]

Shep, you're complaining about ranged weapons vs melee weapons in worlds where anthromormorphic characters run wild, magical creatures run amuck and can be defeated by casting unimaginably destructive spells, and the main character never EVER catches on that his childhood friend has the hots for him?

[SirNitram]

There's also no point to WW2 games of any kind, FPS, etc, etc. Except that, Saint's alive, people enjoy them. Who gives a fuck if it's done nine bajillion times before? If people enjoy it, good. If you don't, don't buy it and go fuck off.

You're talking to someone who has never played the recent crop of WWII themed RTS like Codenape:Panzers and whose last two FPS purchases were:

Call of Duty 1
Half-Life

What was the point of CoD1? You know how it all goes.

Could it be because it was fun? Could it be because your enjoyed it? Or are you a little dense around the noggin, as usual?

[frogcurry]

The point of Japanese RPGs is to piss you off - when you are trying to work out which way to go out of two badly drawn routes that are hard to see properly due to the poor (unchangeable) camera angle - by forcing you to fight three random battles each of which resolves in 5 seconds as the enemies are pathetic.
GRAGGGHH!!

[SAMAS]

If a formula sells well, wouldn't it actually make sense to stick with the formula?

Even when it's been done 2341 times already? Isn't this what we're always agitating against when we talk about movies and television shows; the producers banging together some generic crap-o-vision thing to make a quick buck?

*CoughWWIIfirstpersonshooterscough*

[SAMAS]

This kind of shit is even worse for sports games. All they do in some cases is update stats. That doesn't even deserve the title "game".

On a related note: is it within a programmer's power to create a randomly generated fight sequence while you're waiting to choose your move? One thing I've always despised about these shit-tacular games is that your character fucking sits there bouncing up and down like a fuckfaced idiot while you take 49 hours to choose your next move. On the other hand, when they give you only 1 minute to choose your move, the whole gameplay style is cramped. I want to see the two characters engage in an uncontrolled, random fight that damages each other based on their respective stats while I choose a special move for my character to use. I'd buy two copies of such a game: one to keep under my pillow.

I think the battle system of Tales of Symphonia(and the other "Tales" games) is like that if you completely automate the battles, but I don't know, as it's much more fun to do the fighting myself.

[Guardsman Bass]

This kind of shit is even worse for sports games. All they do in some cases is update stats. That doesn't even deserve the title "game".

On a related note: is it within a programmer's power to create a randomly generated fight sequence while you're waiting to choose your move? One thing I've always despised about these shit-tacular games is that your character fucking sits there bouncing up and down like a fuckfaced idiot while you take 49 hours to choose your next move. On the other hand, when they give you only 1 minute to choose your move, the whole gameplay style is cramped. I want to see the two characters engage in an uncontrolled, random fight that damages each other based on their respective stats while I choose a special move for my character to use. I'd buy two copies of such a game: one to keep under my pillow.

I think the battle system of Tales of Symphonia(and the other "Tales" games) is like that if you completely automate the battles, but I don't know, as it's much more fun to do the fighting myself.

Symphonia's system was pretty cool in that it allowed you to set up overall commands for your four person group, and it was a "live-action" fight; there were no 'turns.' The only disadvantage in the whole thing was that you couldn't make the AI running your allies smarter, so when you did super-hard difficulty they were fucked up the anus.

As for a RPGish game that allowed you to create your own characters, was relatively non-linear, and so forth (but still with the spiky hair dos) look at Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles..

[Trogdor]

Shep, learn the facts. Swords always do more damage than guns. Guns always are more accurate than swords. Sheeeeesh, be multicultural. Learn something about Japan.

Hell, the sword > guns mentality isn't even totally confined to Japanese RPGs, though. Look at the KOTOR games. Blasters = useless. Lightsabers and vibroblades on the other hand...

[lance]

Most RPGs have plots that end with you saving the world/multiverse/ continent/Island, because it is more epic than just saving one small town. Where they differ is usually in the begining of the game.
FF1 You start as the chosen ones
FF4 You start with accidental genocide
FF6 Resistance movement
FF7 You start out as a terrorist
FF8 A student at a school for mercenarys
FF9 You start with kidnapping
TO Rescuing Duke Wrongway and ending your peoples oprresion
FE7 Finding what out happened to your father
All of these games end the same, but the mechanics, begining and a lot of the middles are different.
And not all of them have spikey hair, just the a couple of the final fantasy characters and Canopus really.

TO is Tactics Ogre and FE is Fire emblem if you didn't know.

[Sephirius]

Shep, learn the facts. Swords always do more damage than guns. Guns always are more accurate than swords. Sheeeeesh, be multicultural. Learn something about Japan.

As for proof, in FF8, look at the battle between the Galbadian Regular Army and SeeD High School. Swords > Machine Guns!

uhm, don't forget that the SeeD students have a virtual monopoly on GF's and higher level spells.

[Sephirius]

There's also no point to WW2 games of any kind, FPS, etc, etc. Except that, Saint's alive, people enjoy them. Who gives a fuck if it's done nine bajillion times before? If people enjoy it, good. If you don't, don't buy it and go fuck off.

You're talking to someone who has never played the recent crop of WWII themed RTS like Codenape:Panzers and whose last two FPS purchases were:

Call of Duty 1
Half-Life

What was the point of CoD1? You know how it all goes.

Could it be because it was fun? Could it be because your enjoyed it? Or are you a little dense around the noggin, as usual?

he could possibly have purchased for the multiplay

[Xisiqomelir]

As for a RPGish game that allowed you to create your own characters, was relatively non-linear, and so forth (but still with the spiky hair dos) look at Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles..

Which sold so amazingly well that Square will no doubt rush to repeat the experiment.

[Shogoki]

Shep, you forgot to mention that the main villain has a mysterious connecition with the main character's mysterious past, wich will be revealed in an unexpected plot twist

[weemadando]

This kind of shit is even worse for sports games. All they do in some cases is update stats. That doesn't even deserve the title "game".

I'd actually dispute that point. Most sports games still have a fucking GAME in them. Some of them are fucking crap, but they are still identifiably a sports game.

[sketerpot]

As for a RPGish game that allowed you to create your own characters, was relatively non-linear, and so forth (but still with the spiky hair dos) look at Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles..

Which sold so amazingly well that Square will no doubt rush to repeat the experiment.

FF:CC did poorly because it had crappy single-player gameplay and seemed designed for a crowd of people with spare GBAs to plug in. It felt like Diablo II with spiky hair and better music and graphics. I don't think you can pin it on the character system and non-linear "story".

[18-Till-I-Die]

I'm inclined to agree with those who say Japanese RPGs blow.

I used to like them when i was younger, in fact those old FF games were my favorites on the NES/SNES and other games like that. However as time passed i noticed that yes, they were all the same game with new character names and animations.

They stopped seeming like role-playing and i got into stuff like Fallout, KOTOR and Marrow Wind, which i find is more like real role playing. In that i'm playing a role myself, not always following a story. Of course there are still some linear elements, but not half as linear as those Japanese RPGs. I cant really even play them now, its so boring to me now that i got into more 'advanced' gameplay.

I also was opened up to RTS games like StarCraft which completely fascinated me and now i play SC endlessly, and WarCraft 3.

I'm looking to get into MMORPGs too soon, probably City of Heroes/Villains. I never played online before really but it looks to be fun so i'll jump in.

FPS games are different games. Half-Life is, in terms of gameplay, nothing at alllike Deus Ex, and neither are at all like Doom, or Return to Wolfenstein, or Halo.

They're different not just in story, but design and gameplay. The only real true similarity is that they're all in first-person, which is of course a requirement to be FPS.

You cant really compare the elements of Halo to the elements of Killzone, or either to the original Doom. They're all different games short of the fundimental aspect of you shooting aliens, the stories are different, the characters, the look and design, the technology and more.

I do grow incredibly tired of WWII FPS games. God in heaven havent we stormed Normandy enough? I think its been taken and retaken more than any real battlefield in human history!

[Steve]

*gets stake to burn Shep alive for heresy against the greatness that is Final Fantasy 6*

[weemadando]

:evil:


*gets stake to burn Shep alive for heresy against the greatness that is Final Fantasy 6*

Look, I cut my teeth on games like Shining Force 2, Phantasy Star and others, but - the glory days are long over for the locked character, one route, random number generator, where the devs have clearly spent 95% of the time making mediocre looking cutscenes rather than bothering to think up anything even marginally innovative or new to put in their game, let alone update the ingame graphics, because, god knows - we can't alienate the people who want everything to look like its still 1997 brand of game which you think is still the best thing going. Well, its over I tell you over - its fucking terrible that kind of game. FFVII made me retch in disgust. And the fact that for some reason no one has seen fit to even update the idea for the past decade is depressing.

[18-Till-I-Die]

FFVII wasnt so bad...

it just was really fucking tired and confusing. It took like forever to finish, not because it was so difficult but because it became a chore almost for me.

It wasnt BAD...it just wasnt GOOD.


But other than that i completely agree with the above post by Weemando.