One thing permeates every aspect of video gaming – it is DYING! The last decade was full of articles about how PC gaming is dying, the release of the PSP was accompanied by predictions of how Nintendo’s handheld line was going to die. Even recently articles have shown how during the recession console game sales have declined while PC game sales rose – prompting articles wondering if console gaming was dying. And so on …
So naturally along with the death of platforms we get articles looking at the death of genres or specific game types. There were articles about the death of World War II games (right before the excellent Call of Duty: World at War shooter and the Company of Heroes RTS games), and now … IGN discusses 10 Ways to Save the JRPG (from certain death, naturally)!
To start off, exactly WHAT is a jRPG? Well, RPG stands for role-playing game, and the ‘J’ is short for Japanese. So it represents a specific style of game that shares a core set of characteristics across different franchises and developers. Some of the biggest game franchises include Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, both developed by Square Enix, but also include Star Ocean, Disgaea, Chrono Trigger and many many more. These games tend to feature young protagonists drawn in an anime style, with very linear and constrained stories and turn-based combat systems.
The idea of the jRPG as stagnant is certainly not new, in fact, there is a massive site dedicated to The Grand List of Console Role Playing Game Cliches. Even if you have little interest in the genre, I suggest taking a quick read of that page – it is hilarious. It is also all true. I am not a huge jRPG fan myself since I’ve never been a console gamer – everything I have learned about jRPG’s has been by playing them on the GameBoy Advance, Nintendo DS and Sony PSP over the past seven or eight years. Yet in those years I’ve seen those cliches recounted hundreds of times.
So what are the items IGN thinks need fixing? Let me summarize (since their list isn’t directly meaningful):
Give Players Towns Worth Exploring – In games series like Gothic or The Elder Scrolls or the recent Divinity 2, the towns have a variety of people doing things according to their position. In Gothic 2 if you go somewhere after dark folks are asleep and aren’t pleased to be woken up. Yet in most jRPG games there are only critical folks with no seeming purpose other than the plot role that involves you.
Get Rid of All the Time-Consuming Filler – Many jRPG games are 80 hours long or more – yet they are stuffed full of things like random battles and repeated trips through the same dungeon to add time and a feeling of ‘epic-ness’. It has been shown that gamers are quite happy with a shorter and more focused game.
Dialogue Should Be Held Between Living Characters – In the early days of the genre, characters you talked to were presented as static portraits with text on the bottom of the screen. That worked due to the processing power of those systems, and the portraits looked better than what was drawn on-screen. But now we have high-def systems with multi-core processors … and still look at static portraits. Gamers expect emotions to come from visuals in-game as well as all of those pretty cutscenes.
Bring Back Full-World Exploration – Huge open world games like Gothic and The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind were released in 2001 and 2002, respectively, yet in most jRPG games you can only travel to preset areas. Even in the early Final Fantasy games you could go just about anywhere you wanted once you got your airship – even if it made no sense to the plot. It gave a feeling of scope – and freedom.
Using The Same Old Characters Isn’t ‘Familiar’, it is Boring! – By the time you play a couple of jRPG’s you can predict the cast of characters – angsty male swordsman, perky female companion, and so on. Doesn’t matter what the setting or timeframe or scenario – every game presents the same basic cast of characters without fail. It is one thing to have a recurring character type as Bioware tends to do, but surround that with some interesting variety of types.
Localization Includes More Than Just Translating Text – The standard jRPG feels like it is full of middle school kids voiced by adults pretending to be in elementary school … and it is terribly annoying. In Japan that is how it is done in anime as well as games, but in other regions it plays poorly – and as Microsoft has seen with the (terrible sales in Japan), localization matters.
Online Play is No Longer Just ‘Nice to Have’ – it is Essential! – As a PSP gamer, I dread games that feature multiplayer that are popular in Japan (e.g. Monster Hunter franchise) since I know I’ll never see a multiplayer game because it is all local play. That is another cultural difference, but most of the world has broadly adopted online play, with Sony and Nintendo lagging badly behind – and Sony in particular suffering as a result.
Please Let Me Save My Game NOW! – I remember playing Star Wars Dark Forces, and being frustrated that there were no in-level saves … but the game was clearly designed around that. Similarly, early console RPGs were designed around the limited hardware capacity for saves. Now, however, sitting through a ten minute cutscene leading up to a boss battle without a checkpoint save in between is just lazy and sloppy – yet standard – design.
The Same Old Story With a Few New Words is … Still the Same Old Story – the current running joke is how with a few word substitutions you can transform Disney’s Pocahontas into Jim Cameron’s Avatar. That is pretty much the story of every jRPG for the last 23 years.
Combat Systems Used To Evolve – So Why Have They Stopped? – it is one thing when I play the remake of the 1991 Final Fantasy IV on the Nintendo DS and get the standard battle system … it is another thing when I’m playing a brand new game in the genre and it is identical.Aside from those items from the articles, what else would I say needs to be changed? First of all, random encounters. These are battles you come across as you travel around the world – they are unavoidable and are more or less required since they are what helps you gain enough levels to master the battles that actually matter! They are drudgery and nearly killed last year’s Black Sigil on the DS for me.
The other thing is the over-arching teen angst that permeates most jRPG games. I understand that much of the audience is teen males, but each year the average age of gamers increases, to the point where it is approaching 30! This focus on issues that feel straight out of a show on Disney Channel or Nickelodeon might appeal to a part of the audience, but it pushes away an increasing large part. For me, it is something unpleasant I have to ‘work through’.
Are you a fan of the jRPG genre? What do you like? What do you wish would change? Chime in with a comment!
I have loved technology for as long as I can remember - and have been a computer gamer since the PDP-10! Mobile Technology has played a major role in my life - I have used an electronic companion since the HP95LX more than 20 years ago, and have been a 'Laptop First' person since my Compaq LTE Lite 3/20 and Powerbook 170 back in 1991! As an avid gamer and gadget-junkie I was constantly asked for my opinions on new technology, which led to writing small blurbs ... and eventually becoming a reviewer many years ago. My family is my biggest priority in life, and they alternate between loving and tolerating my gaming and gadget hobbies ... but ultimately benefits from the addition of technology to our lives!
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