Originally Posted by
Siyamak
Honestly, for every wRPG, I seem to see or hear about 4-5 different jRPGs. That may be flooding of the market right there, or that might just be me having a skewed perception. I don't know.
One of the biggest differences though between wRPG and jRPG though, is the amount of action in wRPG games, and the fact they have become more integrated with other game styles. While many jRPGs continue to trudge in the same style for years now (turn based level grind, with a few spins on the combat system.) Take games like Bioshock, Fallout 3, Oblivion (soon Skyrim,) the Fable series, Mass Effect, Borderlands, etc. They were all fairly big hits (though Fable has admittedly been shooting downhill since 2 if you ask me due to lack of difficulty and extremely short playtime.) None of them are like the RPGs of old (and by old, I mean like super nintendo and sega genesis or further back.) Every one of them is a major title and part of a franchise now, and none of them are using turn based combat. You are playing the single role of a character, that engages in actions that are popular in the midwest (shooting or hack n slash, and definitely not turn based.) I think the majority of the west simply does not care for turn based combat, something that's as old as pen and paper gaming. It feels archaic and is no longer very engaging. There's also a much greater immersion when you're controlling your one guy, who can become an extension of yourself. You cannot do this in jRPGs, characters are locked into their personalities and you have to deal with several of them. The only way you are going to get immersion in jRPG is if you like playing 10,000 rounds of the same strategy game (the numerous "fights") and the story actually interests you. Neither of those are well received in the west.
However, some RPGs have come out of the woodwork of Japan that are also not strictly adhering to typical turn based combat with one or two spins thrown in. The Tales series for one. I've met people who didn't really care for jRPGs, but would play these (especially since the release of Symphonia for GC) simply because it was real time combat and it's a great multi-player co-op romp. PSO definitely felt ahead of it's time, because it completely threw the cooldown timer and turn based combat out the window and it was about single character control and actual action, and it was online. While Monster Hunter is still relatively niche, it still at least has a pretty nice following behind it, more so than most other jRPGs over here.
Story wise, jRPGs try and be too complex half the time, and it usually seems like it turns around and bites them in the ass. One of their biggest problems seems to be the constant rehash of character tropes. Now that every jRPG is trying to throw in 20 damn characters or something (perhaps to appear epic or something,) character writing is stretched thin (or maybe they really are just terrible writers now.) Even major franchises like FFXIII suffer from this, heavily. Within the first few hours of gameplay, every single character can be immediately pegged as an overused archetype. That's not to say wRPGs don't use them, but since we usually play the role of a silent character we don't deal with it from the main guy, and anyone we bump into quest wise might be there for a little bit, but not really long enough to even care they are a cliched character.
One could argue that jRPGs aren't even RPGs. What "role" are you even playing? All characters are locked into their personalities and you're moving through a dozen or more of them. That's not roleplaying, that's just strategy gaming. The Legend of Zelda is more true to the term RPG than most jRPGs actually are.
Then there's voice acting, it's very well respected in Japan, not so much over here. Most localized jRPGs have shit for voice acting, and whenever the whole game starts feeling like a movie, well, who wants to listen to 40-100 hours of shitty voices that grate on the ears? While this is the fault of the localization team, and not really of gameplay development, when you're throwing long cut-scenes in every hour or two and speaking nearly every bit of text, it gets old, fast. wRPGs don't suffer as heavily from this (though some do,) because they were made by the west, for the west. They feature prominent voice actors in western gameing, sometimes even actors from movies or TV shows. It's far more enjoyable, and talking is not as over used because we're playing a silent character half the time. On top of this, the current trend is to give a player several different choices so they can play the way they want. Not lock them into a long story they are probably going to hate peppered with repetitive combat that can take 5 minutes to an hour. Shoot/slash an enemy a few times, he's downed, you move on. Turn based combat, have fun running around in a dungeon, getting hit with random encounters every 10 seconds that initiate an opening sequence, a long period of gameplay time (in comparison, a few seconds to several minutes is a big jump when added up,) and then a winning sequence (unless you lost of course.) Then you go back to your character, take 20-50 steps, BOOM. DO IT AGAIN. Suddenly thirty minutes to an hour later you've maybe covered a small stretch of land. Once again, this gets old, fast. And for all the pretty graphics and over-the-top epicness they throw in, every move loses it's luster when you've casted it on enemies a million freaking times.
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with liking the gameplay of jRPGs, to be fair, some have pretty deep and intricate battle systems that can really do a lot with some micromanaging. However, that is not a popular trend over here. Especially with more casual gamers (which, btw, have pretty much exploded into the market,) that only play an hour or two at any given time. A lot of people don't want to invest time in getting through a learning curve. They just want to sit back and relax and play a game whose gameplay comes intuitively to them.
Then there's marketing. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see western games get better marketing in the west than games from the east do. Sometimes there are some trend breaking jRPGs that really should have been better marketed over here and could have succeeded with it. That, however, is not the only issue, and anyone that thinks so is seriously fooling themselves.
I've very interested to see how well the new PSP FF (Type-Zero) will do. It's a major J franchise title breaking away from the jRPG trend in gameplay mechanics (and it's not Crystal Chronicles, ouph.)
That's my take on it at least.
Wish I could have a counter for every person that isn't going to read this 'cause of length, lol.
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