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[Kataploom]

I was just about to say this game is the best art style we’ve seen in a hot minute. The models and the environments is pure art.

The issue with the majority of what OP put is it’s just generic anime weeb art that exists in PS3 sword art online games. The only focus is making the character models look 5% better and the environments belong in PS2/3 era. It’s a joke.

I guess that's how people that don't like anime see it lol

 

[Arsic]

I guess that's how people that don't like anime see it lol

I do like anime? I mean look at my god damn PFP, or threads for games I’ve frequented recently like shin megami tensei V.

But ok.

 

[Kataploom]

I do like anime? I mean look at my god damn PFP, or threads for games I’ve frequented recently like shin megami tensei V.

But ok.

I don't get the PS2/3 era comment then, for me everything looks good and modern referring newest JRPG like Xenoblade, Tales of Arise or Dragon Quest 11... Xenoblade I can understand since the textures are low res due to world scale, even then the PBR materials and world scale

 

[March Climber]

The issue with the majority of what OP put is it’s just generic anime weeb art that exists in PS3 sword art online games. The only focus is making the character models look 5% better and the environments belong in PS2/3 era. It’s a joke.

It is a complicated situation, especially with the Switch and Phones being seen as a better home for JRPGs. It's one of the reasons I'm looking forward to the Switch 2. It will be a collective bump in graphical quality for everyone involved.

However, I wanted to at least suggest that Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet (PS4/Steam) as a standout above the other games in that series.

It is much better and more fun than it has any right to be compared to the other SAO games, especially on the gameplay side as a third person shooter/JRPG hybrid.

 

[Arsic]

I don't get the PS2/3 era comment then, for me everything looks good and modern referring newest JRPG like Xenoblade, Tales of Arise or Dragon Quest 11... Xenoblade I can understand since the textures are low res due to world scale, even then the PBR materials and world scale

^^^^Thats from the ps3 title and a comparison of ps4.

Games like trails and fire emblem using OPs post… don’t look much better than this.

I recently love shin megami tensei V but it is a copy paste low asset dump of a world. Especially the “dungeons.”

Persona 3, same thing. Environments in the tower are ass but the models look fantastic.

A good looking anime game recent release would be like Granblue and zenless zone zero IMO.

 

[Arsic]

It is a complicated situation, especially with the Switch and Phones being seen as a better home for JRPGs. It's one of the reasons I'm looking forward to the Switch 2. It will be a collective bump in graphical quality for everyone involved.

However, I wanted to at least suggest that Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet (PS4/Steam) as a standout above the other games in that series.

It is much better and more fun than it has any right to be compared to the other SAO games, especially on the gameplay side as a third person shooter/JRPG hybrid.

I play these games. I’ve played everything in OPs post. I’m just not of the mind they’ve hit a “stride.” They still are super behind.

And yes this game was a lot of fun. Solid 7.5/10 blast.

 

[March Climber]

I don't get the PS2/3 era comment then, for me everything looks good and modern referring newest JRPG like Xenoblade, Tales of Arise or Dragon Quest 11... Xenoblade I can understand since the textures are low res due to world scale, even then the PBR materials and world scale

You're listing the best of the best, what he is talking about is everything else.

I try not to count games based on anime because I know that Namco tends to just throw cheap budgets and mid-tier studios at either arena fighters, a musou, or a C-grade RPG to appease fans of a series. Somehow, they still manage to get away with this and earn a good amount of money from it too.

That's why when something actually manages to stand out like Fatal Bullet, people will point it out to try to reward actual creativity over the copy/paste-looking stuff.

 

[Digity]

What game is this from?

 

[Nankatsu]

Nobody talking about Metaphor: Refantazio?

 

[NotMyProblemAnymoreCunt]

What game is this from?

Fire Emblem Three Houses

 

[Punished Miku]

I don't really get this feeling at all. They hit their stride visually decades ago and have been slowly limping along since then. The biggest thing driving Final Fantasy VII-X and most of the explosion in JRPG popularity back then was top of the industry visuals. XIII had jaw dropping visuals that captured the imagination of the world. Versus XIII reveal trailer, XV reveal trailer were CG fluff, but had jaw dropping visuals and almost nothing else going for it.

I feel like now we're seeing more of a stagnation into anime, and anime in general feels like it's homogenized around a similar style. I feel like we saw a lot more variety of art style back in the day between Ranma 1/2, Fist of the Northstar, Vampire Hunter D, and on. We're seeing more of a perfection of the anime look in character models, but not a lot else. JRPGs could be a lot more inventive with art style if they're not interested in pushing visuals in terms of raw tech anymore. We could see stuff looking like Okami, or like Amano artwork, or like a painting, but I feel like it all mostly looks the same honestly.

 

[Kataploom]

You're listing the best of the best, what he is talking about is everything else.

I try not to count games based on anime because I know that Namco tends to just throw cheap budgets and mid-tier studios at either arena fighters, a musou, or a C-grade RPG to appease fans of a series. Somehow, they still manage to get away with this and earn a good amount of money from it too.

That's why when something actually manages to stand out like Fatal Bullet, people will point it out to try to reward actual creativity over the copy/paste-looking stuff.

Ok, this is fair, I don't think it's a problem for those other games to push for less, as long as games are good and look good, cutting edge tech, simulations and whatever can go missing for all I care, the people that mostly care about those games barely care about those things if ever anyway, including me. Like those are "just nice to have, but fully optional", and I think Japanese devs just try to focus their budgets where it matters the most for the audience they want to appeal.

^^^^Thats from the ps3 title and a comparison of ps4.

Games like trails and fire emblem using OPs post… don’t look much better than this.

I recently love shin megami tensei V but it is a copy paste low asset dump of a world. Especially the “dungeons.”

Persona 3, same thing. Environments in the tower are ass but the models look fantastic.

A good looking anime game recent release would be like Granblue and zenless zone zero IMO.

That comparison makes the PS3 title look better than the PS4 one, imo, those more detailed textures look awful even if not compared to the PS3 one.

I think the problem comes from less games being done with high budget during PS3 until middle of PS4 era, the budgets have been increasing and the tech have gotten cheaper, while the west is almost everything AAA, so we're comparing A or AA games from Japan to AAA games from the west.

And IDK you but I see a good difference between PS4 and PS3 anime games most of the time. Take a look at Tales Of Xilia VS Tales of Arise, or even Code Vein which looks better than any anime game on previous gen from a technical standpoint, even games like Scarlet Nexus looks much better even tho characters are anime, which I think look good enough already and don't require any big revolution or anything like that.

Sure not every game, but I think it's mostly because of budgets and studio sizes, not because "art stagnation" or something like that.

 

[Kataploom]

I don't really get this feeling at all. They hit their stride visually decades ago and have been slowly limping along since then. The biggest thing driving Final Fantasy VII-X and most of the explosion in JRPG popularity back then was top of the industry visuals. XIII had jaw dropping visuals that captured the imagination of the world. Versus XIII reveal trailer, XV reveal trailer were CG fluff, but had jaw dropping visuals and almost nothing else going for it.

I feel like now we're seeing more of a stagnation into anime, and anime in general feels like it's homogenized around a similar style. I feel like we saw a lot more variety of art style back in the day between Ranma 1/2, Fist of the Northstar, Vampire Hunter D, and on. We're seeing more of a perfection of the anime look in character models, but not a lot else. JRPGs could be a lot more inventive with art style if they're not interested in pushing visuals in terms of raw tech anymore. We could see stuff looking like Okami, or like Amano artwork, or like a painting, but I feel like it all mostly looks the same honestly.

Anime is too big of a style to put them all in the same basket... All of these games look very different from each other (except a couple which are targeted to same audience) and they're pretty recent, all from none big franchises or something:





Maybe what you don't like are current anime trends?

Like too colorful (I hate it in everything, many things can miss it honestly), moe and soft porn with baby faces (yeah, I hate it too), both of the later mostly relegated to very niche stuff like Neptunia or Senran Kagura, that's a popular trend for years now but far from being the only thing specially these days with way more grounded stuff, let's say anime went through some dark "everything is moe and ecchi" for years until mid 2010s but that wasn't the only stuff that was made even then, it was just the style with more released low quality and mass produced stuff in the market.

The other predominant trend is the "idols wannabe" character styles with victorian style clothes and that is very VERY colorful, modern Trails games follow this trend, and I'll tell you I don't like it much either, but as I said, there are other flavors of animes which aren't like those, at all.

 

[Hudo]

Man, I really do hope they iterate on Diofield. I feel they have a cool idea there that just needs a bit of iteration.

 

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

Here are few more visually striking DQ XI screenshots:

 

[DeathGuise]

That's Mio from Xenoblade 3.

How the Switch is able to produce this kind of quality is just incredible. Insane

 

[Trilobit]

"JRPGs are visually stunning"

*proceeds to play with subtitles, staring at the bottom 10% of the screen the entire game*

As I played most of Ghost of Tsushima with Japanese audio I feel attacked.

---

I think it's time for the Japanese to make an amazing looking Cowboy Bebop game. With a great English dub again too.

 

[fart town usa]

So, you’ve played Sand Land?

This game is the closest I’ve ever seen to playing a manga/anime. Everyone here should play it, actually.

Came to post this too.

Sand Land looks so damn good. I'm playing through it right now, got like 30 hours in it.

Amped to play Scarlet Nexus too, haven't looked into it much but the art style is great and it's on PS+

Japan VR is solid as well. A few studios are making some really interesting games and they all look great. Dyschronia is a Japanese-Adventure style game. Soul Covenant is an arena fighter. The Tale of Onogoro is a puzzle/adventure/shooter hybrid.

Dyschronia -

Soul Covenant -

The Tale of Onogoro

 

[Lethal01]

You're listing the best of the best, what he is talking about is everything else.

That's a total lie though.

The issue with the majority of what OP put is it’s just generic anime weeb art that exists in PS3 sword art online games. The only focus is making the character models look 5% better and the environments belong in PS2/3 era. It’s a joke.

 

[butane bob]

I guess that's how people that don't like anime see it lol

I like anime (older stuff mainly). But anime is a separate medium and should remain that way.
99% of JRPG's just look like generic shounen now, and they have the same insipid writing (lack of characterisation being the worst part).
I think it's really sad that entertainment mediums are becoming so homogenised.

 

[Skelterz]

We’re most certainly spoilt at the moment for high quality JRPG’s but we are missing those slightly edgier stories and less generic anime-esqe design from the 90’s period.

 

[Skelterz]

I like anime (older stuff mainly). But anime is a separate medium and should remain that way.
99% of JRPG's just look like generic shounen now, and they have the same insipid writing (lack of characterisation being the worst part).
I think it's really sad that entertainment mediums are becoming so homogenised.

I agree that’s why I resonated so much with lost odyssey it was the last to my knowledge traditional JRPG that wasn’t remotely homogenised the art style was unique and each character just looked normal almost I miss that style.

 

[cinnamonandgravy]

Technique, tools, and hardware seem to have finally matched the ambition of many Japanese (and Korean and Chinese) dev art teams working on JRPGs over the last ten years.

Game after game, they just look gorgeous.

The bright colors, next-level hair, improved shaders, the awesome “layered” anime eye aesthetic, devs have REALLY got it locked in.

Persona, SMT, Mana, Granblue, even the new Trails. Pure eye candy. And there are a ton of lower budget projects that still yield very attractive games.

It’s now to a point that even while
most of these games don’t reach the fidelity of some AAA Western titles, I simply don’t care (and that’s clearly not the point anyway). They’re leveraging art style and clever techniques to deliver visuals greater than the sum of their parts.

What I think is especially interesting is the way developers prioritize things visually. They’re being smart with their budgets. Both monetary and performance. With things like barely modeled filler crowds with no faces in Persona. They’re there to be a mass of bodies and they aren’t hiding that and instead leaning into it. It feels like an artistic choice even if it was to save performance or time.

In short, they sure know what they’re doing, huh?

Thanks, Asia.

looks super cheesy

 

[EruditeHobo]

Part of the issue for me is JRPGs trending away from more interesting visual environments, and more into (seemingly) creating anime dress-up dolls for characters or matching a particularly hard-leaning anime style. When you do that and have any semblance of cel-shading as your overall visual aesthetic, that is just about the quickest way to get me turned off to the look of the game.

As a result, I personally feel like the JRPGs in the 90s and early aughts were much more interesting visually.

As for modern day successes... I look at Vanillaware, and whether you consider their games JRPGs or not I see a dev working within an "eastern" (or perhaps it's more accurate to say a non-western) visual style, and despite them doing something incredibly stylistic and somewhat "eastern" they continually turn out games that are both artistically dynamic and unique. Many of the examples in this thread do not really appeal to me and do not really meet that threshold of "unique". They're often very same-y, anime-y, and un-engaging for me.

That said they are very visually polished games... lots of the screens posted here are pretty. just think what appeals to one will not appeal to others; it's not a matter of "good" or "bad" but rather preferences.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

This is what peak animation looks like

the few cutscenes I have saw. the animation is way overdone in conversations.

 

[K' Dash]

My 15 year old weeb self would be all over this.

 

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

Not a JRPG, but I really like the visual style (blend of 3D & Pixel Art) of this WIP Japanese adventure game.