/-------------------------------\
| The party grinds for a while, |
| gaining 6 levels and earning  |
| 7,800 gold pieces. The mages  |
| learn valuable new spells.    |
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|          > Skip <             |
|           Cancel              |
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I hate the combat AND the story of JRPGS

I really hate the homogenization of media under capitalism.

Not every game needs to be all action

Not every game needs to be a visual novel

And that's good. We need different genres for different people.

But no, we'll get people who will buy a game and be like "I don't like this genre, change it to the genre I like at the moment" instead of giving something new a try, or god forbid, sticking to the games they like.

For example, I do not like Fortnite. I will never play Fortnite, it just doesn't interest me. Do I demand Fortnite change to be more like the games I do like? No. Do I mock people who like it? No. I shut the fuck up and play Disco Elysium or Pizza Tower or some other dumb shit I like.

I really, really, do not want games to all be the same. I love jumping from genre to genre. I want Mario to be a platformer and Baldurs Gate to be an CRPG because it is way more interesting and diverse that way.

WHO PUT THIS MOVIE IN MY GAME

WHO PUT THIS GAME IN MY MOVIE

watch overly long melodramatic cutscene with bad voice acting

play the game instead

There are good jrpgs, but not very many of them.

I had the opposite problem as a kid. I ran from battles so I could get to the next story beat quicker and ended up under leveled for a boss at some point and had to hang em up. Thats how every JRPG ended for me as a kid.

I don't think it can be emphasised just how negatively some people react to JRPG storytelling, or anything too "animey" in general. I think the reason why overtly Japanese franchises like Final Fantasy achieved the massive mainstream status they still hold today is because in the PS1 days they were the only game in town, with Western devs lagging far behind in terms of cinematic story-heavy console game development.

Now that the industry is dominated by titles developed both by and for Westerners, the average gamer has no reason to bother with games where cartoon teenagers with stupid names and even stupider hair yap about nonsense for hours when they can just play whatever CD Projekt Red or Bethesda game is out. This is not to say that Japanese games don't have a large fanbase in the West, they definitely do! They just don't have the same kind of broad appeal

Seems neat TBH as some games have dialog scenes that are just.. terrible and drag on.

Game people definitely play for the story: has to tell you the story explicitly in 30 minute unskippable cutscenes that offer a theatrical presentation and perfect narrator. Only played by people who both know what a wall scroll is and have several.

Games that people don’t play for the story: uses environmental cues and bits of information gained from item descriptions and in game dialogue to present a story with multiple unreliable narrators and ultimately no real clear truth. Needs multiple playthroughs to even access all the information and ostensibly normal people will have gone to these lengths.

The jrpg is a post modern invention that lulls the player into taking on the mantle of the hero of inaction and provides no reward or punishment. It simply exists, making more of a statement about a society that would produce it by its mere presence than any piece of art codes into its message.

If two-thirds of JRPGs didn't recycle the same peppy squad of teenagers, one token older guardian who's too old for this shit, one token fanservice character who'll spend half the game being yandere towards the literal cardboard cutout protagonist, one token hyper-cute walking stuffed animal companion whose voice was designed in a lab to make you want to rip your eardrums out via rusty spoon, and token evil-but-will-renounce-their-ways-through-the-power-of-friendship traitor then I might actually give a shit about the story. I'm all for narrative-driven games, just so long as the narrative isn't a recycled anime trope that should have been dead and buried 30 years ago.

Looking at you Fire Emblem. If you're going to try and sell me on a political drama about overthrowing the old system for a more egalitarian one, concentrate on that and not teenagers going "waaaahhh, I'm an introvert and I had to go out into the sun today! Why are there so many people around?! Why can't I just hide in my room?!?" for 30 hours straight.

We're in a saturated media landscape, we're overworked to the point we have little free time, and we don't know if something is worth the investment of time. Also, we want to bond with others. It does make sense this would be a feature.

It's sad though. It's reducing videogames to less than an art form. Don't know much about this game, however.

I'm surprised this post has so many comments with many comments that apparently don't understand the point of JRPGs. Like seriously, why bother playing a JRPG if you're just going to skip the story lol

Some more pet peeves I have seen:

1. Thinking RPG is a cohesive genre when the four main branches of RPG have already split from one another during the early-mid 90s with nothing in common. What do Nethack, Pool of Radiance, Final Fantasy VI, and Fallout 1 have in common? Very little once you look past the genre they belong to and actually take them on their own terms.

2. Thinking CRPG/WRPG is a cohesive genre when it's just the non-JRPG branches that split from one another during the early-mid 90s. What do Nethack, Pool of Radiance, and Fallout 1 have in common? Also very little. Even if you replace Fallout 1 with Baldur's Gate 1, you can say that Nethack, Pool of Radiance, and Baldur's Gate 1 all have game mechanics that are based on D&D and takes place in some Tolkien/Forgotten Realm-inspired setting, but that's complete surface level. Despite being labeled CRPGs/WRPGs, they are all three completely different games. Liking one of them tells me absolutely nothing about whether you would like the other two. Since the 90s, the branches have diverged even more from each other. Path of Exile vs Starfield vs Disco Elysium. They have absolutely nothing in common with each other. You might as well be comparing a Metroidvania with an arena shooter at this point.

3. Thinking CRPGs/WRPGs have good narrative when it's really only one particular branch, the isometric RPG or Wasteland 1-Fallout 1 branch, that has good narrative. The roguelike-ARPG branch's narrative boils down to "kill the big bad in order to grab their loot." The dungeon crawler-open world branch doesn't really do narratives either. Good RPGs that come from branch like Morrowind or Dark Souls have great environmental storytelling and expansive lore, but there isn't an actual narrative to write home about. It's the branch that gave us the first two Fallouts and the Baldur's Gates and Planescape: Torment and Arcanum and the Shadowruns that actually try to tell a story.

4. Thinking the definition of JRPG is contingent on game mechanics. JRPGs have surprisingly little in common in terms of mechanics. I feel like most people just played Chrono Trigger and Earthbound once and think that all JRPGs since then largely follow the same core mechanics when those two games are very much products of a particular phase. It's like how a lot of JRPG stereotypes like turn-based combat (which I suppose technically isn't true since ATB isn't turn-based proper) or using some flying blimp to navigate a top-down map are more stereotypes of NES/SNES era JRPGs. I honestly can't think of a modern mainstream JRPG outside of Persona and Pokemon that is still turn-based.

Oh well, at least people aren't saying "JRPG = RPG made in Japan." That shit drives me up the fucking wall lmao

I don't see a problem with this. It's more or less the other side of the coin where very easy difficulties are put into games for people who just want the story. I think it's kinda neat though I would never utilize such a feature.

Honestly I'd play a modern JRPG if they let me play with the original voice acting with decent subtitles. As it stands I think the last one I played was Tales of Symphonia. That was a fun one.

I have horrible flashbacks to some of the old days where the English voice acting, especially of kid characters, made me want to drop the controller and find the remote so I could hit the mute button.

if you just want jrpg gameplay with no story play dungeon encounters! pure dungeon crawling, incredibly fun but also kind of unfairly hard. there's an enemy that steals 10k gold, and if you don't have that much you go into debt to try and make your money back

Most JRPG games have shit writing. Western ones too, but JRPGs are more formulaic and generic.

I wouldn't skip the story of JRPGs if they could manage to tell it with cutscenes that were less than 30 minutes long.
I feel like a lot of JRPGs are made by people who would rather be making movies.