JRPG or RPG didn’t matter when creativity was at the forefront of the industry.
I somewhat agree with the sentiment behind the article, but…
And when you actually pick up the controller and play one of them, you begin to feel like you’ve been through the same gameplay loop as many other games this generation: Tales Of Arise, Scarlet Nexus, Nier Automata, Valkyrie Elysium, YS 8 and 9; they’re all essentially the same action game with different spices and aesthetic fluff.
Games like Tales and NieR (both long-running franchises) have never tried to be anything but action RPGs—not to mention NieR, which I’d honestly just call a straight up Platinum action game. I’d actually call NieR closer to Elden Ring than it is to Tales, and yet the author isn’t out here calling Elden Ring a JRPG. What more does NieR have in common with Tales or Ys than it does with Elden Ring besides country of origin? Does JRPG mean “game with anime-ish art style”? Maybe it’s the art style, but even that’s a bit of a stretch to me.
Which I think strikes at the heart of the matter: what defines a JRPG? Is it the country it came from? Obviously not. There’s a very specific style of game that “JRPG” refers to, and it’s a style that was very popular in the 90s and 00s. Obviously games are still made in that style: I could just as easily show a JRPG renaissance by namedropping Dragon Quest XI, Xenoblade, Yakuza: Like A Dragon, Persona 5, all the Trails games, etc. But the author is basing his notions of what a JRPG is solely on trends from 20+ years ago. Trends change. People change. Maybe in 20 years, people will be whining about whatever Japan is putting out then and saying “WHY CAN’T JAPAN GO BACK TO WHAT THEY DID RIGHT AND MAKE ANOTHER TALES GAME LIKE TALES OF ARISE?”.
Yes, I think developers, studios, and even industries should take pride in where they’ve been creatively, and that’s where I agree with the author. That said, why can’t we let new games be new games? People are still making plenty of traditional JRPGs whether they’re made in Japan or not (hi chained echoes and edge of eternity), so why bother the developers who don’t wanna make those games and essentially tell them “you need to get over your internalized xenophobia”? It’s possible they don’t have internalized xenophobia like this article is suggesting, maybe they’re just tired of people putting them in a box.
The fuss seems to be mostly just the Japanese developers getting butthurt that people in the west got bored of their simplistic combat systems and random encounters, and came up with a term to differentiate the games that, at the time were entirely developed in Japan, that fit this style.
It’s not the Japanese part that made them disliked more. It was the style of gameplay they offered. If you played one, you played them all, basically. They are barely RPGs, taking a more linear, choiceless approach to not only character creation, but dialogue options if even offered, are generally “yes/no” responses to questions that don’t have any real impact.
It took the big developers of these games way too long to actually listen to fans’ very valid criticisms and make changes to these systems, and they still very much keep so many more traditions that the term endures.
Seeing Nier Automata on this list makes me think the author hasn’t finished it. I’m not sure how you finish a full playthrough and come away with “2B’s combat was kind of basic” while ignoring everything else it was doing.
“2B’s combat was kind of basic”
I haven’t played Nier, but I’d say that defines perfectly Platinum games’ games (or at least the ones I played)
I haven’t played Nier, but I’d say that defines perfectly Platinum games’ games (or at least the ones I played)
Bayonetta has basic combat? Isn’t Platinum known for their combat and gameplay?
Bayonetta has basic combat?
When I bough Bayonetta 1+2 for the Wii U I was expecting something close to Devil May Cry (They share the same director and almost the same developing team, after all) but it was a huge disappointment everything is so dumbed down and simple that is not even fun. People only likes it because they are satisfied with the over-the-top action and Bayonetta one-liners and that’s all.
My main complains with Bayonetta are the following:
All the weapons feel the same, where the only change is the attack speed, their cosmetic appearance and in some cases some minor and useless changes, like if you hold the attack buttons and the weapons you have equiped are fireweapons, they shoot (with this I mean combos, like PPPK, KKKPK, etc… do the same with every weapon, except maybe the Kulshedra, the extremely basic whip, the weapons do not feel unique in any meaningful way, they all have the same moveset and combos. In Devil May Cry each weapon is unique, with their own moveset and combos, and their moveset changes depending on the style you have active, for extra depth)
Finding the secret stuff is too easy (except for some verses and Alfheim, that require some backtrack at specific points, but finding the vinyls to get new weapons is too easy)
Speaking of the Alfheims, they are not even chanllenging (compared to the Secret Missions in Devil May Cry)
Bayonetta 2 is even worse, everything is way more simplistic and easy than the first one, I haven’t bothered with Bayonetta 3
