With this generation, the last bastion of JRPGs is seemingly coming to an end.

Morrigan Stark said:
But I'd go further and say that instead of missing the PS2 era, I really miss the PS1 era. PS2 is when JRPGs started declining for me. The last one from that era I enjoyed is Suikoden V, and Trails in the Sky (though it's had a modern re-release but it's a 2004 game originally). And even those are still not as good as Suikoden II, Wild ARMs, BoF III, FF Tactics, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Xenogears, etc. I really really miss the 32-bit era. Sadly the closest thing to that is released only on handhelds which I can't stand. I tried the Bravely Default demo and enjoyed the gameplay, the combat was great... but my hands and neck really suffered for it, and I really loathed the art style so I probably won't ever bother with the full game.

Never could stand the pseudo-action combat. Either give me full action (like Ys or the Souls gameS) or turn-based or ATB, but the stuff like in Xenoblade, Ni No Kuni, urgh... worst of both worlds.
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Amen
 
duckroll said:
I'm glad you asked. They're both working on my favorite game these days. Terra Battle! It's totally not a "small throwaway mobile game" really. It's by far one of Mistwalkers best games, up there with Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey. Way better than ASH, more polished than Away, and much more balanced than the Blue Dragon RTS and the diablo clone on DS.

They're really slow with getting new content out, but the content is pretty solid, so I mostly complaint for a month, and then get very happy when something is eventually released.

Matsuno is working on a Terra Battle dungeon scenario event. Sakaguchi referred to it as "Matsuno World" in a recent interview. He's giving Matsuno a lot of freedom to come up with whatever he wants, using the world setting of Terra Battle as a framework.
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I don't know how much of Terra Battle one is meant to play before it gets interesting, but I've played through 10 chapters now and the story is non-existent/terrible and there's no characters by virtue of the fact that it's a mobile game where you collect them from the gacha.
 
What, we are getting tons of JRPGs on a variety of different platforms now and in the near future. In order of best to worst...

Square Enix (Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, Star Ocean, Dragon Quest, Bravely Default)
Nintendo (Pokemon, Zelda, Xenoblade, Fire Emblem, Mario RPGs)
Atlus (Shin Megami Tensei, Persona, Etrian Odyssey)
Falcom (Ys, Etc.)
Namco Bandai (Tales)
Nippon Ichi (Disgaea, Etc.)
Gust (Ateiler, Ar tonelico, Etc.)
Idea Factory/Compile Heart (Neptunia, Fairy Fencer F, Etc.)
Kemco (...Apparently, they've been doing well with their iOS & Android JRPGs and one of them even found itself on Steam, somehow.)

So yeah, there are a good number of developers in Japan still making JRPGs and games like them. And this isn't including the works of indie developers on Psuedo-JRPGs like Pier Solar and Cosmic Star Heroine.
 
Noirulus said:
I don't know how much of Terra Battle one is meant to play before it gets interesting, but I've played through 10 chapters now and the story is non-existent/terrible and there's no characters by virtue of the fact that it's a mobile game where you collect them from the gacha.
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You are missing out on the deep lore by not surrendering your imagination to Sakaguchi-san's bold vision. The story is not there to serve you, it is to provide a template of a beautiful universe filled with imagination and potential for you to explore. Every descriptive word, every character profile, every punctuation mark, every background image. They are all there to inspire the imagination of the brave adventure!
 
charsace said:
JRPG's aren't dying, but the big budget JRPG is dying.



There are a lot of turn-turn based rpg's that were made in the west and also had more combat depth than anything in japan.

Western game development tends to evolve faster than Japanese game development so in the mid 90's people were already trying to get realtime combat into wrpg's.
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I thought these kind of misremembered white-glove-treatment posts died out in 2012...or was it just the hope for that?

duckroll said:
I'm glad you asked. They're both working on my favorite game these days. Terra Battle! It's totally not a "small throwaway mobile game" really. It's by far one of Mistwalkers best games, up there with Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey. Way better than ASH, more polished than Away, and much more balanced than the Blue Dragon RTS and the diablo clone on DS.

They're really slow with getting new content out, but the content is pretty solid, so I mostly complaint for a month, and then get very happy when something is eventually released.

Matsuno is working on a Terra Battle dungeon scenario event. Sakaguchi referred to it as "Matsuno World" in a recent interview. He's giving Matsuno a lot of freedom to come up with whatever he wants, using the world setting of Terra Battle as a framework.
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Intriguing. Glad to know his work is still known as marketable for his support network.
 
I'd like to think a good turn would be more tabletop P&P adaptations---they were kinda onto something back in the day and all when they filed off some of the serial numbers on elder D&D for the original Final Fantasy. As with most things, the progress of the 80's and some of the 90's came to a halt despite the tech barriers largely coming down afterwards as the pendulum swung excessively deep into the business-centric selling on appearance side of things versus the creative world crafting selling on aesthetics side. History went awry due to shortsighted choices beget by tech by way of economics.

There hasn't been any Lodoss games in awhile, the last Sword World game was some kind of mysterious DS game, Unlimited SaGA had heart...but..well...yeah, and Crimson Shroud somehow never garnered anything further even though I thought it was well received? Possibly some others I'm forgetting, but there's definitely a number of nifty systems out there that have come up in the relative vacuum that could stand to bring something to the table to revitalize things in a different direction.

I mean, there's a not insignificant number of folks chomping at the bit for Torment: Numenera---has to be a comparable or greater audience abroad given the history and backdrop for other established outfits like the above mentioned Sword World. Hell, they've kinda almost gotten back the groove in large part on the classic anime OVA end of things---if that can happen, then there should be ample hope for the rest of the surging works of the times.

Ultimately, the key thing is probably empowering and enabling the hobbyist groups and individuals out there to reach out with either youthful ambition or aged tenacity beget from unconquered obstacles on the part of the rapidly aging dev population of the 80's and 90's.
 
duckroll said:
That's a pretty low bar. But even with the low bar, is it even true? Let's not forget that early on, the PS3 also looked promising. Then stuff simply failed to materialize, and announcements dried up. The PS3 still ended up with two tri-Ace games (soon to be three!), FIVE Tales Of games, three FFXIII games, Nier, Drakengard 3, Valkyria Chronicles, and like 500 Nippon Ichi and Idea Factory games. What does the PS4 have?
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Holy shit, I just realized that the PS3 got five tales of games in six years.
 
Ah yeah, one of those, "I don't play handheld game so therefore I just ignore their existence entirely" threads. Always interesting to see how a lot of people have such an obsession with console gaming that they forget there's an entire section of gaming on other means.
 
I don't care what kind of fighting system it has.

I don't care if it has lolis in it. Actually, put more lolis in them.

Just put more jrpgs on consoles or pc, damnit. Traditional rpg gameplay doesn't work for me on a handheld. Sure, I guess this is more of a personal complaint, but I don't enjoy sitting for hours staring at my small handheld, tethered to the charger while I play a game.Pokemon is built around short bursts of play. Monster hunter is as well. Dragon Quest, no. Fire emblem, maybe.Strategy JRPGs work better, especially if you have either shorter or longer battles. I don't even hate portables as a medium. But after i spent like, 5 hours straight playing monster hunter freedom unite, and just felt my eyes watering and my back hurting because I was sitting infront of my computer playing it, I just decided that that style was not going to work out for me.

Also, the shitty, vn-style talking cardboard cutouts are not 'cutscenes', do not use them ever again. I didn't come to play a VN, i came to play a rpg, After the first few Disgaeas i just stopped playing that series because these 'cutscenes' were getting long and boring as fuck to watch. Just have the sprites move around and do things.

I don't even want big budget AAA rpgs all the time. I want some kinda quality control at least, though. I picked up the first ps3 atelier game a long time ago. It's alright, but I just couldn't get a handle on the honestly horrible model animation. Oh man, if there's anything I'd like to not see anymore in any game, it's character models running like they're on ice all the time.

I have a lot of complaints about the current state of jRPGs. I'm looking forward to Star Ocean V, FF15 and Xenoblade X, and maybe the next tales. But thats it, really. I miss the time where I could wonder what the next Suikoden(rip), Wild Arms, Dragon Quest(dream was dead), etc games would be like.

I think i'm going to just go replay Romancing SaGa this year.
 
Parfait said:
I don't care what kind of fighting system it has.

I don't care if it has lolis in it. Actually, put more lolis in them.

Just put more jrpgs on consoles or pc, damnit. Traditional rpg gameplay doesn't work for me on a handheld. Sure, I guess this is more of a personal complaint, but I don't enjoy sitting for hours staring at my small handheld, tethered to the charger while I play a game.Pokemon is built around short bursts of play. Monster hunter is as well. Dragon Quest, no. Fire emblem, maybe.Strategy JRPGs work better, especially if you have either shorter or longer battles. I don't even hate portables as a medium. But after i spent like, 5 hours straight playing monster hunter freedom unite, and just felt my eyes watering and my back hurting because I was sitting infront of my computer playing it, I just decided that that style was not going to work out for me.

Also, the shitty, vn-style talking cardboard cutouts are not 'cutscenes', do not use them ever again. I didn't come to play a VN, i came to play a rpg, After the first few Disgaeas i just stopped playing that series because these 'cutscenes' were getting long and boring as fuck to watch. Just have the sprites move around and do things.

I don't even want big budget AAA rpgs all the time. I want some kinda quality control at least, though. I picked up the first ps3 atelier game a long time ago. It's alright, but I just couldn't get a handle on the honestly horrible model animation. Oh man, if there's anything I'd like to not see anymore in any game, it's character models running like they're on ice all the time.

I have a lot of complaints about the current state of jRPGs. I'm looking forward to Star Ocean V, FF15 and Xenoblade X, and maybe the next tales. But thats it, really. I miss the time where I could wonder what the next Suikoden(rip), Wild Arms, Dragon Quest(dream was dead), etc games would be like.

I think i'm going to just go replay Romancing SaGa this year.
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You realize that both the 3DS and Vita has a suspend feature, right? You can pretty much stop and take breaks at any point in time, so even if a game isn't designed around it specifically, any game can be played in bursts now.
 
Really weird post. You make it sound like Valkyria Chronicles is a typical JRPG and in the next breathe say Final Fantasy isn't what it used to be. What I'm getting from this is the OP is not pleased with JRPGs being released, not that they're extinct.
 
Shauni said:
You realize that both the 3DS and Vita has a suspend feature, right? You can pretty much stop and take breaks at any point in time, so even if a game isn't designed around it specifically, any game can be played in bursts now.
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I literally hate playing jrpgs in bursts. If I want to play one, I sit down and play it for a while. A long while. That's why the monhun formula works on portables, the missions are shortish, and there isn't as much of an immersion factor. Nothing dumps a bucket of cold water over my head like just getting up from a jrpg after like 15 minutes. What did I even do in that time? What important plot threads appeared? How much stronger did I get? Man I sure want to play the Witcher 3 for just half an hour.
 
It's weird that the OP feels the need to specifically points to a very particular types of JRPGs just so he can discount stuff like Bloodborne and Xenoblade Chronicles X, just so that he can claim that the entire JRPG genre is in terminal condition.
 
I think the genre struggled to evolve. There's a deep anxiety for developers that gamers will not play something slow and turn-based, so they try and make a pseudo-action system that ends up watering down what makes action games good and alienates the traditional fan-base.

With that said, if you throw out the 'traditional' restriction, there have been some great games, just nothing that has hit as hard as the PSX-PS2 era. Hopefully Persona 5 is the silver bullet that kills the fun vampire that seems to have farted up SquareEnix's offices.
 
Morrigan Stark said:
But I'd go further and say that instead of missing the PS2 era, I really miss the PS1 era. PS2 is when JRPGs started declining for me. The last one from that era I enjoyed is Suikoden V, and Trails in the Sky (though it's had a modern re-release but it's a 2004 game originally). And even those are still not as good as Suikoden II, Wild ARMs, BoF III, FF Tactics, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Xenogears, etc. I really really miss the 32-bit era. Sadly the closest thing to that is released only on handhelds which I can't stand. I tried the Bravely Default demo and enjoyed the gameplay, the combat was great... but my hands and neck really suffered for it, and I really loathed the art style so I probably won't ever bother with the full game.

Never could stand the pseudo-action combat. Either give me full action (like Ys or the Souls gameS) or turn-based or ATB, but the stuff like in Xenoblade, Ni No Kuni, urgh... worst of both worlds.
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Disagree. PS2 era JRPGs >>>> PS1 era JRPGs for me.

Off the top of my head, and I recall this only from memory, the JRPGs that I greatly enjoyed in PS2

Numerous Shin Megami Tensei games (this alone is enough reason) such as Nocturne and the various spin-offs which is great RPGs in their own right such as Digital Devil Saga and Devil Summoner, Persona 3 FES, Persona 4, Suikoden III (great), Suikoden IV (acceptable), Suikoden V (fantastic), Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X-2 (don't care what anyone else says, this is a good JRPG with great gameplay mechanics), FFXII, Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirit, Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter (a fantastic experience unlike any other), Dark Cloud 2 (a fantastic JRPG), six .hack games, Dragon Quest VIII, Front Mission IV, Kingdom Hearts 1 + 2, Shadow Hearts 1 2 3, Soul Nomad, Valkyrie Profile 2, Xenosaga Trilogy....

Wayyyy eclipsing the PS1 era.

Robert at Zeboyd Games said:
Valkyria Chronicles 1 isn't really an RPG at all; it's straight up digitized tabletop wargaming goodness.
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Disagree; all the "ingredients" of the usual, typical JRPGs are there, down to the fact that if you level up one character enough, he or she can wipeout an entire map all on his/her own, lol.
 
The big-budget JRPG is becoming less common because the big-budget game is becoming less common.

We really do need to constantly reference that thread where the dude posted that chart showing the difference between retail video game releases in 2009 versus today. It's WAY down. In Japan the decline probably started earlier. I don't think the number of significant-budget games is going to hit zero for the foreseeable future. It'll probably settle into some low number put out by the few big companies left. As far as consoles are concerned you're probably never gonna see the plethora of "full-size" games we got during the prime PlayStation years again.

As for mobile, if the market for pricing mobile games wasn't so fucked, I think the touch screen would actually make a nice interface for turn-based RPGs. Particularly the dungeon RPGs that are getting popular. There are already multiple examples.
 
Traditional turn based JRPG can easily make their way to mobile. Turn based combat lends itself well to a touch interface.

Would be interesting to see FF16 on phones as the lead platform. Go back to series roots, turn based, ect.
 
I used to think touch based games and turn based RPGs would be a match made in heaven.

Until I played them. Virtual D-pads are awful and button presses are so much faster than screen taps. Slows the whole thing down. Some games designed for the platforms are better but the ports have universally been disappointing. Even worse if the game is only pseudo turn based and you actually need more precise controls.
 
duckroll said:
You are missing out on the deep lore by not surrendering your imagination to Sakaguchi-san's bold vision. The story is not there to serve you, it is to provide a template of a beautiful universe filled with imagination and potential for you to explore. Every descriptive word, every character profile, every punctuation mark, every background image. They are all there to inspire the imagination of the brave adventure!
Click to expand...

I will never understand whether you like Terra Battle or you just like trolling Terra Battle =X
 
Prototype said:
Traditional turn based JRPG can easily make their way to mobile. Turn based combat lends itself well to a touch interface.

Would be interesting to see FF16 on phones as the lead platform. Go back to series roots, turn based, ect.
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They're on handhelds, and there are a few F2P examples and ports on mobile. Handheld pricing model is better for the traditional experience though.

Man God said:
I used to think touch based games and turn based RPGs would be a match made in heaven.

Until I played them. Virtual D-pads are awful and button presses are so much faster than screen taps. Slows the whole thing down. Some games designed for the platforms are better but the ports have universally been disappointing. Even worse if the game is only pseudo turn based and you actually need more precise controls.
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This too.
 
Laughing Banana said:
Disagree; all the "ingredients" of the usual, typical JRPGs are there, down to the fact that if you level up one character enough, he or she can wipeout an entire map all on his/her own, lol.
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One of the reasons why I feel it's more of a straight strategy game instead of an RPG is that you CAN'T LV-Up one character enough. You level up unit types & then all units of that type are improved. The gameplay emphasis is on the army, not the individual characters.
 
It must be so utterly depressing to have strong feelings about a subject and, at the same time, to seemingly understand nothing about such subject.

JRPGs aren't going anywhere. They're just changing into something you don't associate with your childhood memories. Hell, scratch that: they have already completed that transition ages ago.

Get with the times.
 
Robert at Zeboyd Games said:
One of the reasons why I feel it's more of a straight strategy game instead of an RPG is that you CAN'T LV-Up one character enough. You level up unit types & then all units of that type are improved. The gameplay emphasis is on the army, not the individual characters.
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You should watch a Valkyria Chronicles Speedrun sometime. Take a guess how many times they use Alicia in a turn. =P
 
Brazil said:
It must be so utterly depressing to have strong feelings about a subject and, at the same time, to seemingly understand nothing about such subject.

JRPGs aren't going anywhere. They're just changing into something you don't associate with your childhood memories. Hell, scratch that: they have already completed that transition ages ago.

Get with the times.
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Yep. I don't mind if turn-based gameplay disappears forever if something more fun takes its place.
 
I love that JRPG and WRPG is a dichotomy in spite of its complete inability to make sense. The wikipedia article on JRPGs is also a hoot, give it a read.

If the terminology were American RPG vs Japanese RPG I could see that but "Western" is a bit of strange comparison to "Japanese". Wouldn't that dichotomy normally be "Western" and "Eastern"?

Also, because I'm feeling curious, how would people here define a JRPG? Or a WRPG for that matter? Mechanics and design that are distinct would be most helpful.
 
Turn based is actually a bigger part of the landscape now than it was last two generations, largely because of indie and phone games. So while more of traditional bigger budgeted JRPGS have gone heavy on the action there are more turn based games than ever.
 
Cyrano said:
I love that JRPG and WRPG is a dichotomy in spite of its complete inability to make sense. The wikipedia article on JRPGs is also a hoot, give it a read.

If the terminology were American RPG vs Japanese RPG I could see that but "Western" is a bit of strange comparison to "Japanese". Wouldn't that dichotomy normally be "Western" and "Eastern"?

Also, because I'm feeling curious, how would people here define a JRPG? Or a WRPG for that matter? Mechanics and design that are distinct would be most helpful.
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I don't see why this is that baffling. It's kind of like how film is defined into two groups "Hollywood" and "Outside the Hollywood studio system".

There was a major Japanese industry revolving around RPGs, and they did it with their own style and it's a big category of the genre. And then there's all the diverse styles of RPG made outside of that system.

It's not all that different from "Anime" and "western Animation" for the same reason.
 
tokkun said:
So what about games like Bravely Default, SMT IV, Etrian Odyssey, Persona Q, Pokemon, Fire Emblem, or Mario & Luigi? Do they not count because they are on handhelds?
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Quality aside, there are comparable number of turn-base less known JRPGs on consoles who also seem not to be counted too.
 
Man God said:
Holy shit, I just realized that the PS3 got five tales of games in six years.
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And the amount of effort put into each of them shows just how they released so many that quickly.

But yeah, it is a shame to see handhelds get ignored on this forum. I'll never understand that. Though I feel mobile is even starting to erode that market.
 
If you go from the PSP / DS era to 3DS / Vita era, then yes, the quantity and quality shrank considerably.

Like wise, from PS/360/Wii generation to PS4/Xbox One/ Wii U generation, the decline is similar.

Not just jrpg though but Japanese games in general. The booming mobile scene is simply too lucrative to ignore.
 
A bit hyperbolic, no? I mean, maybe it's not to the levels of FF7 (and that was a different time, especially from a western perspective), but traditional turn-based JRPGs seem alive and well to me. But then again, I try to focus on actually playing stuff and not over-analyzing. That being said, I'll take this moment to say that I'm still bitter over DQ7 3DS not being localized. 3 on the DS... zilch on 3DS. :(
 
Why do people, who seemigly care enough about these subjects to write giant whinathons about them, not care enough to actually know anything about what they are whining about?

How the hell is a game, that is clearly a renamed successor to the decade plus old kings field, a 'new western based blah'?

And who the hell still cant figure out that xenoblade is NOT a real time combat system, and holy shit is nowhere near an action game?
 
It's weird that the "turn-based" thing is so closely attached to the word "JRPG" for some people that if a Japanese RPG doesn't use turn-based all of a sudden they're not a Japanese RPG anymore.
 
I feel like they're more alive than ever.

Every genre evolves through time ans JRPGs have done just that recently. Xenoblade is much more of a FFXI/XII evolution than a western-influenced RPG.

And as has been pointed out, turn-based RPGs are still very much alive too, with Atlus, Falcom and S-E each having at least one quality franchise alive in that genre. Level 5 had Ni No Kuni recently too.
 
I strongly prefer action RPGs so the decline in turn-based is a positive for me. Persona 5 being turn-based is my only negative for it(will still buy it though).
 
I don't think the genre is dead but I feel like last generation (esp. around the middle of the PS3/360 life cycle) the variety of different kinds of settings and themes we saw in jrpgs saw a pretty big decrease compared to the PS1/PS2 era of games. I do think they're actually on an uptilt currently though.
 
RPGs are also heavily biased to come out in the later years of a console cycle. PS3 had nothing forever and then a ton of games in the last years of its life.
 
duckroll said:
That's a pretty low bar. But even with the low bar, is it even true? Let's not forget that early on, the PS3 also looked promising. Then stuff simply failed to materialize, and announcements dried up. The PS3 still ended up with two tri-Ace games (soon to be three!), five Tales Of games, three FFXIII games, Nier, Drakengard 3, Valkyria Chronicles, and like 500 Nippon Ichi and Idea Factory games. What does the PS4 have?
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Are you really comparing the PS3's almost 9 year life with the PS4?
 
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