JRPG hate thread

[tvstrip]

I dunno, man. I'm just saying they have a society set up to cater to them. More gamers, more acceptance, they are in the cradle of gaming civilization over there and we get their runoff.
Is it really racist to say they spend more time, when they do? I'm jealous of them, sure.... Its just my opinion, anywho. Didnt mean to offend.

No worries mate. And it's not racist to say that Japanese society is more accepting of the gamer/otaku culture, or that you're jealous of that. Hell, I'm sure any gamer of any nationality would be envious of that, esp those who grew up when gaming itself was a "nerd-exclusive" thing. Society is much more accepting of gamer culture these days.

"Grinding? Only AZNs have that much time to spend grinding weeks for every shitty, anime-style game."
That's what I was saying is racist.

Like saying "Only n***s like gangsta rap" vs "The rap industry is conducive to black artists".

I can see where you're coming from with the JP-leftovers argument. Games & Anime in the 80s & 90s were exactly that, they were made for the Japanese market with no consideration of export, and only a select few got released outside of Japan, often with crappy localization because it was seen as more of a side-project than an actual market.

But things changed after the popularity of DBZ, Sailor Moon, and even Tokusatsu series like Power Rangers. And of course, as much as I'm a diehard FF VI fan, I'm not going to deny that VII really opened the door for JRPGs. But the fact is, as time went on, more games, anime & Japanese culture was made for export, or at least was a major consideration.

Hell, look at that My Hero Academia scandal going on now; some chinese trolls didn't like the name of one of the characters because it was "historically offensive", and they changed his name.

And look at games now; pokemon used to only be based on regions in Japan, and now they're based on France/UK/US. Big budget games feature non-Japanese actors playing non-Japanese characters like Death Stranding.
You could even argue that as far back as Mother 2 (Earthbound) they were looking to cater to the Japanese AND Western Markets.


tl;dr No offence taken man. It was more of a impulse statement, esp with some asian racist trolling about the virus that's been going around. I get your argument and you're not wrong. Hopefully one day every gamer will be able to play without being stigmatized, and every JRPG will be just as enjoyable for everyone

 

[FreeOnes_Adam]

When it came out after SoM, I half expected more of the same. A lot of people, naturally, felt like.. oh hell yeah, a squeakuel! I read in one of those gamer magazines that it was made by the crew in America, and I had a hard-on for those japper games at that time, so I went in biased against it.
:\ Looking back, now.. I like the whole cheesy nostalgia aspect, and having a few decades to compare it to other square games.. hell yeah its one of the better ones. Even kinda funny, isnt it?

Secret of Mana was kind of my tutorial into the whole RPG arena. Someone bought me final fantasy 1 when I was 7. It was above my paygrade and I returned it. (le sigh, kind of a wasted opp) Its just such a crazy combination of greatness. The game isnt too hard, too easy, the multiplayer aspect, the art style, the time period, jeezy creezy its just so unexpectedly awesome.
I played through it, last year. Then tried to play evermore but I couldnt take another grand rpg. Too burnt out kicking rabite and mushroom asses.

Uber sadness, tho = trying to find another game like it!
The groundwork was laid, decades have passed. Still. Nothing like those secret-of games. Well, not technically true.. you ever play through Seiken Densetsu 3? Its secret of mana 3, and its been translated for decades, too. Give it a go if you want more of the same, but .. it kinda doesnt have the magic.

I'm waiting to finish it again to dive into what made SoE what it was. It's not as good as SoM, thats for sure. I feel like it could have come out BEFORE SoM for all I know.

- I like that charging your attack doesn't make you slow down like it does is Mana
- I HATE that you have to level up each weapon separately. I try and get my Gladiator Sword to level 2, then I get the next weapon, the Lance. Even though I was level 2 with my horned spear, I start at level 0 with the new spear. In Mana, all swords/axes/spears/etc leveled as a whole.
- I miss being able to push enemies around while attacking like in Mana. I keep trying to do that.
- The dog sniffing around is cool in Evermore. I like searching for stuff.
- Bosses take a long time in Evermore. That swamp snake.. Jesus.

The story isn't as compelling for sure in Evermore. The dialogue is corny with the movie shit, but hey, its got a theme.

Can't wait to finish so I can look into the history.


Like you, I was given Secret of Mana and Final Fantasy 6 to try out from a friend in hopes I would buy them. They blew me away. FF6 more so of course, but they both have a special place in my heart. After them, I played FF1 on NES. It was OK, but then became my RPG addiction.

 

[Torre82]

Ooh yeah, the swamp snake. I remember I started the game as a American.
"By the time I get there, I should be strong enough"
and then I died.
"I used up all my petals and I guess magic could be stronger."
Reup, retry, re-die.
"Well fuck, I'll get a few more levels and max out on healing items."
*barely slide by even after all that!*
THe last boss that even tried my patience in this series was that wall monster in 'Mana. By the time I finished grinding in one of those evil cultist stages, browsed the world all over, fixed the problem on that turtle island and bought the better equips from gold isle.. or was tht the north and south empire sections? I COULD GO SOMEWHERE AND BUY BETTER ARMOR I KNOW IT! But I dont remember. It could've been those cliffs before I talk to the bird master guy and get nightshade dude from the dark cave.

But yeah, swamp skull and his.. absolute pain in the ass stage. ANother thing that American kids had yet to see at that point ~ growing up with a nintendo, we thought that it was a glitch to go back a screen and the enemy disappears, or that there can only be so many enemies onscreen at a time, or that the stages reset if you leave the area. (Kid logic isnt horribly off the mark, but still wrong)

So yeah, crossing the bridges to have them fall, the enemies that seem to be punishing you for playing, and then you get to the end to get absolutely thrashed by that skull? It was ragequit city for the time!

I dont get to see my kid, these days.. but I told him what my dad never told me: Games are like real life. Sometimes you have to work a long, long time to get past the next part. Hours, days, dont worry about it, Max. I dont believe he got it, at the time.. (he was 6) but telling him "The game doesnt know that its bad" seemed to calm him down. He grew up in this touchscreen era, subway surfers, cut the rope and angry turds. He would ragequit once every 5 minutes, easy.

If I could go back in time, I would explain to the adults bak in the 80s: "OMFG DO YOU NOT SEE HOW CHEAP AND HORRIBLE THESE GAMES ARE?! DONT WORRY ABOUT A CHILD GETTING MAD! Worry about the waste of spending a few dollars on garbage, and sympathize with the fact that he has it for another 2 days and cant play anything else cuz the days of having consistently good, games worth playing is still years away.
There is an angry video game nerd in every adult, because NES and often SNES games .. just didnt 'get it'. The developers finally got it, a few years ago.

Not to say that they were bad games, I really like evermore. But I can only say that with hindsight. I didnt know crono trigger was coming. I didnt know the future and how hard it'd be to find something to play. It was still luck to find out if I rented a stinker or a gem from the store.

"Only 30 percent of all game players reach the end of a game. We're doing something wrong if 70% dont find it entertaining or fun enough to even play through a lil game'

Evermore was like that, to a point. The gladiator arena, the skull boss, the leaps in difficulty as you switch eras.. but it had magic. It had heart. Enough magic to keep an 82min going to the end.
... after the third rental and dozens of deaths.
In my opinion, at least. Game on, sirs.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

FF6: *would love to write another wall of text in praise, fangirling like mad*

FF6 is good, sir. Yup.

 

[D-rock]

The Secret of Evermore had it's flaws, but I thought it was an alright game. I think the biggest thing people had against it was that it wasn't a sequel to Secret of Mana. I don't know why the actual sequel, Seiken Densetsu, didn't get released outside Japan other than for some reason no matter how good a game was it almost seemed like random chance if a game would be released in Western markets back then. I know localization was a pain the ass back then, (evidenced by all the horrible translations of a lot of old Nintendo games) but even so most of the time it wasn't like those games where made by small companies and most of them had the budget for translations and the like if they wanted to.

 

[Torre82]

The Secret of Evermore had it's flaws, but I thought it was an alright game. I think the biggest thing people had against it was that it wasn't a sequel to Secret of Mana. I don't know why the actual sequel, Seiken Densetsu, didn't get released outside Japan other than for some reason no matter how good a game was it almost seemed like random chance if a game would be released in Western markets back then. I know localization was a pain the ass back then, (evidenced by all the horrible translations of a lot of old Nintendo games) but even so most of the time it wasn't like those games where made by small companies and most of them had the budget for translations and the like if they wanted to.

I think its part of the viewing history through rose colored glasses thing. Hindsight is 20/20 doesnt apply, IMO.
I'm nearly 40 and during that 80s/90s era, I remember the difference between geeks'n'freaks in our culture. Foremost geeky were role playing games, still had the stigma of basement dweller dungeons n dragons type. Revenge of the nerds wasnt made without reason ~ it was easy to laugh at the smart kids who could comprehend the math behind gaming in all the forms.

Looking forward from 1990:
Saturday morning cartoons aged with us and became adult swim.
Video games transferred from time waster (where the older generation DID NOT foresee it outselling hollywood by 2015) to full-on movie productions tier ~ hundreds of people working for years vs some dork or three in a basement who can afford a nintendo developer license, or the Japper Gods handing us their culture secondhand.
Gay people are like the nerds, they became a protected class.
Secret of Evermore was AMerica trying to break the monopoly and show that they could make something on Japan's level.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_of_Evermore

Another thing to think about, was at that time that Seiken 3 was out, they were SUPREMELY concerned about the future. Did they make a mistake? In hindsight, yes. But maybe not. Here's why:
Seikden Densetsu 3 was a 1995 release, and if you'll recall.. (remember arcades? I miss those.) Killer Instinct's attract screens (1994 killer instinct 1 release) promised that the ULTRA 64 was coming SOON!

I do believe, that as that era had squaresoft eating from Nintendo's palm.. they were waiting for the soon-to-be nintendo 64, rather than focus their efforts on the last generation. Also, they knew that sony was in talks with Nintendo to create a CD-based system as expansion for the SNES, but nintendo.. much like squaresoft.. were a bunch of fucktards that threw two interceptions during the super bowl, and (ahem, not mad. But historical blunders are...ugh, anyway) nintendo CANCELLED the cd expansion deal because sega soured the market for expansion hardware and they didnt want to be seen as following their example. Sony was so far along in development that they said FUCK NINTENDO WE DO IT OURSELVES! and you know how the playstation turned out. Good stuff on sony for not sticking to shitty storage formats for the next decade like nintendo.

And nintendo said hey, the 64 is going to be uber expensive to develop for, and hobbled by an unbalanced system**. But we're nintendo so you really have no choice. Squaresoft took offense to this and transitioned to Sony, but that reprogramming of an SNES game to playstation (SNES used assembly code, PS1 was C, and any alternatives to those 2 at that time were somewhat terrible. The tools of the time were slow and resource intensive. Initially, developers used SGI workstations to create PS1 games, so they had to get used to working in different code, expensive workstations and IRIX. Never tried irix, myself. Working with any UNIX derivatives back in the 90s was.. frustrating. Still is, but at least we can plug'n'play these days.)

AHEM! So. It was a transition period in EVERY way. Mid 90s rise of 3d gaming, would FMV play a part? Would n64 be out? Would playstation sell well? Would the market want the REAL sequel to secret of mana after secret of evermore was touted, disappointingly.. as the sequel? Windows 95 just came out and made PC gaming super easy. 3d0, 64, saturn and jaguar were on the horizon (hindsight 20/20, por favor)

And perhaps, as a sidenote.. market saturation really didnt hit so hard until FF7 1997, after which time they went for the sure-thing and just rereleased crono trigger, ff4, 5, 6 yada yada yada.. you know the rest.

/historyasIrememberit

** Unbalanced:
Framerate vs screen resolution vs polygons vs z accuracy vs antialiasing.... and dozens of other variables meant the games looked awful but played well. 512 with only 70,000 surfaces, gouraud shaded, low res textures, it was a mess.

PSX never tried much above 320x2XX, could push 100,000+ with better textures and a pumpin' soundscape for all their games.

Everything is, as was the next generation of ps2... really good ideas hobbled by a massive lack of ram and video ram. You know what a million untxtured, badly lit polys looks like? N64 games.
You know what ff7 looks like? A MILLION DOLLARS for square.

But whatevs. Seiken is playable now with fan translations. All is well.

 

[Torre82]

Good lord all I meant to say was that it was a transition period. But I wrote a novel, so.. um.. there ya go. It wouldve been nice to have SD3, tho. But bad timing.

 

[Supafly]

Remember seeing those dorks who sit in their basements afterschool, rolling dice and talking about dungeons? And dragons?
Somewhere along the way, sometime took the hard work out of it. No more rolling dice, thats done behind the scenes.
But we cant just save ourselves all the work and skip to the good parts.. I say! Leroy, let us program in some fluff! You know, some fluff ~ some filler! To make up for all the time we've saved, we have to pad this thing so that it lasts HOURS longer!
Every so often force a harder fight. And give them a cliche, somewhat generic story.
...

/wall of text

I was one of those dorks. With different groups, first in my home village, later with a group in the city I live in now. We went through various game systems, from D&D, via Lidgard, Warhammer, Fading Suns (The little known scifi space game system "Stargate" is based on). Earthdawn, too. That was insanely fun.

If I would run into a group of gaming people, I would start playing again, in a heartbeat. Especially, as in our last group, we started to really roleplay, we played "Warhammer", and me and the girlfriend of our gamemaster played siblings of a transsylvanian royal family, she was a Necromancer, and I was a crossover of Violinist and Torturer. I loved to tie down captives, and play one of my pieces, "Agony in C-sharp", before interrogating them. All in a deeply transsylvanian accent, which was so cliché I was lucky we didn't have any politically correct friends around

Edit:

This is how we sounded like (Malkovich does it in english)

 

[Torre82]

I've met a few guys over the years. It always starts off the same... a flakey guy I work with has a problem, talks about the problem on a smokebreak or something, I offered up my couch for a day or two until he sorts it out.
He comes over, problem is sorted by that day or the next but dude is rightfully worried and dramatic about it, but it really isnt an issue. But keyword: Dramatic. Also: Dude is now on my couch and has a job. I tell him to split the bills down the middle and he agrees.
Invites over all his friends one day, an absolute clusterfuck of diversity as if its a 2019 movie trying to win an oscar.
These guys end up being gaming gods for a few months until the group falls apart, as dramatic.. fuckup types do, often.
But still, nice to have a diverse set of guys who know their way around a character sheet and can play a part. Eccentric, dramatic parts.

In other news: Final Fantasy Tactics crashed. Apparently retroarch doesnt write your savegame/SRAM to disk UNTIL YOU EXIT THE PROGRAM.
So thats 4 hours lost. Its shit like that that makes me hate 'grinding'.
But dont get anyone started on a giant of western RPGs: Bethesda.

Official answer to fix their crashing issues: "Just restart the game".
/sadness

 

[FreeOnes_Adam]

Speaking of tabletop RPGs (and totally avoiding the entire topic of this thread as we've been doing so well doing so far), anyone else know their roots around here?

Discovered D&D a few years ago, quickly grew out of it. So over it. So very over it.

These days I run Savage Worlds, Shadowrun, and Mouse Guard. I've ran Edge of Empire a few times too, despite not really being a Star Wars fan, its just a great system. I'd like to play some damn Vampire: the Masquerade sometime. There's a great new ALIEN RPG too. I played in it recently. It was delightfully deadly.

 

[Torre82]

Speaking of tabletop RPGs (and totally avoiding the entire topic of this thread as we've been doing so well doing so far), anyone else know their roots around here?

Discovered D&D a few years ago, quickly grew out of it. So over it. So very over it.

These days I run Savage Worlds, Shadowrun, and Mouse Guard. I've ran Edge of Empire a few times too, despite not really being a Star Wars fan, its just a great system. I'd like to play some damn Vampire: the Masquerade sometime. There's a great new ALIEN RPG too. I played in it recently. It was delightfully deadly.

H.R. Giger, Sigourney Weaver aliens?! Hells yeah.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC_Heroes
Ran those modules a little bit.

Tried to get a fallout game running with GURPS, but a few of our older members had strongly words against GURPS, for some reason.
We settled for star trek adventures with a lotta beer.

When the rules became too difficult to follow, settlers of canaan. That wasnt altogether easier after all those fireball shots, tho.
Then cards against humanity, cuz laughs.

Game night is a weird thing, sir.

How many people do you have in your circles?

 

[Torre82]

HOLY SHAT. I mean it isnt amazing, but.. random trivia I never thought I'd read kinda holy shat.
Anyway.

So there I was, scrolling through one of those 'Games like xxxxxx' lists, looking for something new to play, something similiar, who knows, its whatever." SO!

https://mana.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Secret_of_Mana_Player_Characters

Adam, did you know they had NAMES?
Not that it changes anything, but.. thats really not what I thought they'd be called.
(Randi? Srsly?)

 

[D-rock]

I played my first D&D game at 5 or 6 I think, and played every edition before 4th, and then switched to Pathfinder, and now that that has gone to second edition I have pretty much stopped playing. It doesn't help that people I used to play with are hard to get together with now with work and all so I don't play much anymore. That's all despite having about two hundred various books on those things just in hardcovers alone let alone a top of maps, adventure paths, scenarios, guides, ect... I gave hundreds of minis of mine to family members that still play RPGs as I felt it just wasn't right to have them not be used anymore for their intended purpose. I have more dice sets than is ever logically reasonable for anybody to have to just play the game.

I got into a lot of the old FASA stuff like Shadowrun, Earthdawn, and Mechwarrior, but that's because I liked to the company for it's Battletech mini game, and looked at the other stuff from them. I also have stuff from Mutant and Masterminds and Numenara. Some stuff from the old D20 Modern and Future stuff, Wotc Star Wars stuff, and I think somewhere I got into the old Star Trek and Traveler RPGs.

I wanted to get into Vampire the Masquerade, but I'm not much of a larper, and even if played conventionally I'd always be afraid as somebody that might get attached to their characters that it seems like a game where at some point your character is probably going to come to a horrific end. I also don't expect or even necessarily want it to be easy, but also wanting to try and play a high humanity vampire and stay there seems like it's designed to be a de facto impossible task without an extremely lenient gm. The new Bloodlines 2 video game coming out for that looks like it might be kind of sweet though. I like a lot of it's setting and lore, and it tends to do vampires better than most of other fictional settings that focus on them.

 

[Torre82]

I wanted to get into Vampire the Masquerade, but I'm not much of a larper, and even if played conventionally I'd always be afraid as somebody that might get attached to their characters that it seems like a game where at some point your character is probably going to come to a horrific end. I also don't expect or even necessarily want it to be easy, but also wanting to try and play a high humanity vampire and stay there seems like it's designed to be a de facto impossible task without an extremely lenient gm. The new Bloodlines 2 video game coming out for that looks like it might be kind of sweet though. I like a lot of it's setting and lore, and it tends to do vampires better than most of other fictional settings that focus on them.

Heh, yeah.. in my experience, everyone wants to be Lestat and 'revel' in their inhumanity. You would be like Louis in 'Interview with the vampire', but like you said, LARPing and melodrama, man.
Not a bad game, though. But I'm biased ~ I feel like the vampire aspect is 'cool'.

 

[Luxman]

Never liked any RPG's that I've tried playing, too boring and the 3rd person pov is annoying.
I only like playing FPS games and racing games.
To each their own.

 

[Torre82]

wow

Its alright, Steph.

 

[FreeOnes_Adam]

wow

Fixed.

 

[Luxman]

So which do you hate, the Japanese or RPG games?

 

[Torre82]

In later years, both. AND western games. And western RPGS.
When I was 15: I love *** stuff. I'm taking the language in school. all my games from there ARE GOOD.
when I was 25: *didnt have time to play everything, but I understood that Eastern gaming companies werent doing so well and started catering to western audiences hunger and money and final fantasy 13 was a very dividing/uniting factor between our two cultures*
when I was 35: weeaboos. Americans on gamefaqs/reddit/company message boards telling me about companies I've grown up with like I dont know them and I've got decades more experience with their catalog. Features for eastern audiences in games for western markets. The mobile and MMO market isnt our thing..
My feelings on it echo this guy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmkHAlhCvWg
"APril fooLs joke? what happened?"
Why is fallout 76 a thing?
What happened to blizzard rpgs?
Why is every atlus game the same?
Kemco is awful.
Squeenix ruined their western catalog and westernized their eastern stuff.
Western devs trying to East.
Eastern devs trying to West.
Everbody loses while they figure out what they want.

I think a good summary is.. "It isnt a bad game, it just that it isnt XXXXXX"
Replace X with whichever franchise is suffering amnesia.

 

[Luxman]

I haven't played any new games in years.
I prefer to watch youtube gameplay videos only of games that I find interesting.

 

[FreeOnes_Adam]

yes

More like banned. GTFO you spammy robot bastard.