Is this game much better than the demo? I played the demo with my kid and overall the couch coop game with the dog seemed much weaker than Pikmin 3. Maybe it gets better?
I didn’t play the demo but I assume it’s gameplay very early in the game. My review is that the game starts too slow which is probably what you experienced. Overall it might be worse than Pikmin 3 Deluxe but Pikmin 4 is still a quality game that gets better when you’re around the mid-way point. It’s surprisingly long too (going for all treasure, not speedrunning) and overall I think it’s worth the price.
Thanks for the update! Right now it seems kid lost interest because of no co-op, but I’m sure that will change with time. It really seems like a solid game.
The game is great and easily the best japanese fighting game experience for casuals. (Mechanically I prefer anime fighters though.) For once a Japanese game has all the bells and whistles instead of almost purely focusing on the multiplayer.
The cosmetics are what they are. At least it’s not p2w but it’s up to consumers to not spend if they don’t agree with paying more in a game they already bought.
Edit: downvote me all you want but the truth is that street fighter 6 was a very big step forward for japanese fighting games in terms of what they offer consumers. The fgc hasn’t had games that can truly appeal to and bring in new players so I can’t help but be happy for it. The only exceptions would be NRS’s games and smash.
I think it’s generally agreed that pretty much all our genre naming conventions are bad and alternatives exist. youtu.be/uepAJ-rqJKA has a pretty good description of an alternative, where you describe games by their core reason for play as opposed to mechanics or camera perspective
Lots of hobbies or industries have terms that are a bit off but accepted by everyone in the know as institutional knowledge. It’s no surprise gaming is the same and it’s unlikely to change 50 odd years in.
I heard that in the late 2000s the western gaming press had a very strong dislike for JRPGs, which led to Japanese developers treating the term as derogatory. And while I still think that ideally we’d have better terminology that would try to capture the differences between the games rather than their place of origin (the most famous distinction being that “western RPGs” usually let you create your character and treat them as a blank slate in the story, whereas “JRPGs” usually put you in control of a predefined character with their own motivations and actions in the storyline), I think it’s nice that nowadays there are developers who are actually proud of the term “JRPG”.
There was a strong dislike of JRPGs and Japanese games in the 2000s.
Development struggles
From what I heard is, during the shift to HD development in early PS3 360 era, many western devs switched to use Unreal engine, while Japanese devs were sticking to their in house engines. But, in house engines were not cheap nor easy to build / maintain, so they struggled to recoup their expenses.
One of their strategies is to make their games more appealing to the west, but they were kinda doing it from the lens of what they think American games are appealing, so we get games that weren’t universally loved, like
It didn’t help when we got bangers like Mass Effect trilogy, Skyrim, Fallout 3. So Square definitely disliked the JRPG term. However if you were to ask smaller Japanese devs at the time, e.g. ATLUS or Nihon Falcom, they’d probably prefer the term, because their ‘niche’ games (at the time), sold quite well while Square struggled.
Not a really descriptive term anymore
But you’re right, JRPG is non-descriptive when it comes to reviews. I’d prefer that reviewers have a small box that lists out the mechanics of the game, e.g. turn-based, random loot drops, predesignated character, linear dungeons, etc. But even nowadays reviewers are recommending games like Jedi Survivor, while the game is still a broken mess, which made me wonder what’s the point of reviews anymore?
It’s great when the devs like the term, but it barely helps anyone when reviewers use it. Not to mention the political tension when they use the term JRPG for games developed by Chinese or Korean devs.
Of course I haven’t mentioned that some reviewers were just racists fucks. Also it’s the period when Famitsu will just give any games 40/40 if the publishers bought enough advertisements from them, FF13 got 39/40, and Square was probably wondering why the games were not well received outside Japan
I think it doesn’t truly mean “Japanese RPG’s”, even today. There are lots of Japanese games that don’t get called JRPG’s even though they are RPG’s or have those elements (there is ambiguitiy in what an RPG is too, admittedly), like Resident Evil games and Dark Souls games and Zelda games and Pokemon. Dark Souls especially, since they have the character building and stats as well as the roleplaying.
People don’t call Elden Ring a JRPG because JRPG is supposed to mean one thing but really it carries a lot connotations about mechanics, graphics, and the derogatory connotations about quality.
And Pokemon! Pokemon is very clearly a JRPG in the mechnical and graphics sense, but it doesn’t typically get called a JRPG. I think this is because of the negative connotations of JRPG, personally.
And on the other hand we have things like Chained Echoes, which is in all mechanical and graphical ways is a textbook JRPG, except it’s not made in Japan at all, but rather inspired by Japanese games.
I agree this is complicated, but I found Jimquisition’s video on the topic really persuasive. I recommend that one even for people normally don’t jive with Jimquisition’s style.
Within any group, there will always be some who don’t find a term offensive even while others do, but I think probably the best outcome in this case is for the general populace to move away from the term, while leaving space for Japanese video game devs to reclaim it and use it themselves if they wish to.
Maybe it will truly lose the negative connotations with time, but I don’t think we’re there yet, when people are only just starting to sometimes acknowledge it ever had those connotations in the first place.
Granted, most genre words are vague and confusing as hell - JRPG isn’t special in that sense - but most don’t have the racist history/implications or negative connotations. And when I try to think of another genre label that is used as an insult, the first that comes to mind is Visual Novel, which is another one that is heavily associated with Japan.
The gaming press had a pretty strong dislike for Japanese games all together for a bit bar Nintendo titles. Thats why we ended up with that rough era where companies like Capcom were trying to make more western styled titles.
J action sounds right for metal gear rising and Bayonetta. It’s a lot better then trying to call it camera style common verb like fps, TPS. Our genres should really start focusing on player experience rather than basic mechanics.
It’s weird to claim that only Japanese creators can make JRPGs. That’s not true at all, it just implies a specific style of gameplay, not the country of origin.
I disagree with both article and your point. The J is unhelpful when we can just label them turned-based action. This is just an issue of grandfathering a genre which means very little, is incredibly decisive and even unhelpful. It’s easy to imagine someone who like Final Fantasy may like a game like LISA. But harder to suggest someone who like ~~Final Fantasy ~~ Dragon Quest will like Kingdom Hearts, Demon Gaze or Disgaea. Just split JRPGs into mechanical genres. Turn-Based Action, Action RPG, Turn/Tile-based Strategy.
This issue extends to more genres (Generally RPG and Action) but I think it’s probably the easiest one to start moving away from
I’d say there is a general vibe to JRPGs that you can’t really get at by just describing the combat system.
It’s easy to imagine someone who like Final Fantasy may like a game like LISA. But harder to suggest someone who like Final Fantasy will like Kingdom Hearts
If anything, I’d say the opposite. Even setting aside the developer and series overlap, I would expect a Final Fantasy fan to be much more receptive to Kingdom Hearts than to LISA. While classic Final Fantasy may be closer to LISA mechanically, FF and KH are working in a related tradition that LISA is a bit farther from. There’s connective tissue between JRPGs that go beyond their mechanics, and this is part of why FF as a series has gone between so many radically different systems while still feeling united in some way. JRPG may not be a perfect term, but it carries historical reality, not just bland mechanical descriptions. If you look at music for example, genre titles are just as often describing the scene something came up in (or is emulating) as they are describing the sound itself. If genres are to give us helpful groupings of games that are related to one another, just describing their bare mechanics isn’t enough on its own.
Ah that’s my bad, when I think about FF I still think of the earlier games but the newer games aren’t in that bandcamp. Should have suggested dragon quest
Yah, you’re right, if you sub categorize it’s much clearer. For me JRPG is the format of classic final fantasy games where you can run around in an over world and then trigger battles that go into a turn based back and forth sequence. I suppose you would need to also say it has to come from Japan otherwise you would say Southpark stick or truth and fractured but whole are JRPGs and I don’t know if one would classify it as such.
There are plenty of turn based western RPGs that aren't JRPGs, like the brand new Baldur's Gate 3. If a game is a JRPG, I'm expecting an ensemble cast who each have their own special abilities and weapon type, and they each level up in more or less exactly one way, which I can't control. Instead, I customize them through equipment, if at all. Dialogue may have choices, but it's usually between choice A and choice B.
In a western RPG, I may have a party of characters or only control one, and when I level up, I get points to spend in whichever attributes I think I'll get the most value out of for the build I'm going for. These skills may result in skill checks that open up different avenues for solving problems in the game than if I had invested in other skills, and these skill checks may come up in dialogue.
Of course, J or not, the reality of the world is not so binary, and many games have some but not all of these traits or make them more difficult to define, but the J does tell me something.
I know what you mean but what you’ve done is just define two sets of games with varying differences in mechanics. So only WRPGs can assign attributes and JRPGs must have ensemble casts? There are many components of games that can transcend genres. A racing game like Mario Party can have an ensemble cast with unique abilities, A game like Sims can have attribute spending to create a player build. Locking these to genres doesn’t help understand as you suggest but that doesn’t mean we should stop trying.
It’s much easier to used these parts as extra descriptors and even better when you also add perspectives
BG3: An turn based strategy [with complex choice]
Valkyria Chronicles: A turn based strategy [with player recruitment]
Disgaea: An turn based strategy [with unlockable job systems]
Wargroove: A turn based strategy [with resource management systems]
I’d even prefer “Earthbound-inspired RPG” as thats more clear on what I’m going to be playing
I shortened the definition for the sake of not writing a book, but the point is that no one game will satisfy all of the criteria of a genre, but they evoke a common set of responses and scratch a similar itch. The genre would be more anchored to early Final Fantasy titles than Earthbound.
I wasn’t suggesting all games should be labeled “earthbound-inspired”, the term JRPG is so broad that just suggesting it’s inspiration is more informative.
But then it's only informative to people who've played that game, as opposed to people who've played that genre. Far more people have played a JRPG than people have played Earthbound.
This just goes back to JRPG being vague and not giving any real info anyway.
If I told you I like Dark Souls which is arguably a JRPG or a more obvious Earthbound, why would it be better to say ah, “Disgaea or Kingdom Hearts are JRPG, you’ll like them”.
But see, Dark Souls is very much an RPG but uses more western RPG design axioms than those of a JRPG, which is why this genre is not at all about being made in Japan. Disgaea, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Fire Emblem often get linked together as a strategy RPG or a tactics RPG. Kingdom Hearts is a real-time or action JRPG, Persona is a turn-based JRPG, and the "active time battles" of the late SNES and PlayStation era from Square sort of straddle a few of those lines, but there are commonalities among all of them that a fan of Earthbound could reasonably be into. Likewise, there are commonalities between western RPGs and JRPGs where someone who's just into "RPGs" would be into. These are just genres and subgenres.
The other thing too is that the definitions of these genres will change over time as more games come out that can be grouped together. When games inspired by DotA started getting released commercially, some tried to call them "Action RTS" games, but then you'd have games like Smite and Super Monday Night Combat that no longer have anything to do with the RTS genre, so Riot's coined "MOBA" stuck because, even though it's kind of a lousy name for that genre, it doesn't contradict itself by calling them a derivative of RTS games.
I’m a bit confused by this message since I was suggesting JRPG as a genre wasn’t clear, and the argument(?) Is that Dark Souls isn’t a JRPG and you’ve sub-classified a bunch of different JRPGs how I agree.
If the argument is that we can still use JRPG in conjunction, I think this is valid but I still feel that coining things based on country of origin isa bit off, almost like insinuating a stereotype when we also agree they don’t have to follow it.
Call it the SuperSwitch to mimic the nes -> supernes era. No new gimmick, just double the specs and ride the wave of portable consoles being “good enough”. Rival the steam deck and all the clones coming, with Nintendo’s amazing first party titles and milk the next 5-7 years
This is exciting of course, but alas, I haven’t touched my switch since I got a steam deck. There’s a few Nintendo games I would want to play but I’m not sure I’ll buy a new console for them.
Pikmin 4 just dropped. Super fun! I don’t know where else you’d play that. I haven’t even had time to touch LOZ TOTK, but that’s life stuff. There’s plenty to play on Switch. And there’s reason to play on the lighter package as well.
This is why the last Nintendo I used was a Nintendo GameCube. The last Playstation I used was a PS2. I just started to game on a PC. Console gaming might become a thing of the past if people get tired of this type of thing. You can hook a laptop or PC up to a TV now if you want.
Yeah, notice how I used “might” in my comment. That’s a modal verb of “maybe maybe not.” PC Gaming is just as easy to use as a console. PC Gaming, however, looks expensive. It isn’t, if you math geek yourself out and realize that instead of buying consoles multiple times, you can pretty much stick with the same PC in the same time period. With my gaming PC, all my stuff connects to it by Bluetooth. It’s ready to go when I switch it on. I can play most of the games on it that are available on whatever console, except the few that are exclusives tied to a particular console. Even better, I can play games to my heart’s content. I have a library to choke a horse and it will be viable probably until I’m dead. The problem is when we talk about money. To have a nice gaming PC or gaming laptop, you have to shell out double what a console costs. What a lot of people can’t think about is: You shell out more on the gaming PC, but it is viable longer because it is not subject to the whims of console makers. Sure, you can just shell out 400 bucks or whatever on a Nintendo Switch instead of shelling out 1000 or so on a gaming PC or laptop (some of them are 2000 or more). However, the computer, if you know how to take good care of it, is viable twice or three times as long as the console, so in the end, you’ve made a good investment and you don’t have to worry about changing consoles when the company that makes the console decides to produce a new product. This is what I was talking about. People don’t understand it perhaps because they don’t think about it, but they really should because it’s a money saver in the end. Plus: You can play your old games just fine for as long as you want.
Except when the console maker decides to make a new console and decides what games will no longer work on the new console and what will. Or, perhaps the console maker decides that you can play some of your old games on the new console, but decides that to do so you have to buy a subscription, or you have to buy the games again because they had to make a new version of the old games that work with the new console. A PC will outlast that. You can buy two or three consoles, or buy one PC. Doesn’t look cheaper to me. Then, I’ll add to my comment: When it’s finally time to buy a new PC, which for whatever reason you have decided on your own because nobody cancelled your PC, you take your whole collection of games to the new PC and they work just fine on the new PC, plus you can have the new games that your new PC can run.
I agree that PC gaming has a lot of benefits, and it’s also my preference, but if you want to keep a rig that plays current games at their best its not cheaper.
That’s the trade off. If you think you have to have the latest, greatest, fastest hardware you are going to have to shell out the big bucks. More often than not, a game looks the same to me whether its played on this year’s graphics card or last year’s graphics card or even the year before last’s graphics card. At some point speed and memory size are numbers that don’t need to go beyond a certain point to give you decent software performance. People will disagree with this and I think that’s fine. Maybe my eyes are wonky. Who knows? My wonky eyes save me money. The graphics look about the same to me using this or that graphics card.
You don’t need to buy a state of the art PC though. You can play most indies on a ten year old laptop, and you can build a good enough PC for the same price as a console and all its peripherals. The real savings are in the software though, you don’t need to pay full whack for games when you have steam sales, free giveaways, and the ability to play anything that anyone has made for the last few decades!
Yes. It’s a money grab more than anything else, designed to make people buy new stuff. In this case, a new console, new games, new peripherals, subscriptions, etc. I like my PC because of the freedom from this type of stuff it affords me, it is in fact cheaper to use a PC if you’re a careful shopper. If you’re the type of shopper that buys things as soon as they come out or you’re impulsive, well then, yes, PC gaming can get very expensive. But it’s like anything else in this capitalist world of consumption. Jeans can be affordable or outrageously expensive. So can hamburgers. I’m the type of shopper that never pays full price for ANYTHING and I never buy things on a whim. I study stuff, think about it, and wait. I do my own upgrades on hardware, too. Opening a PC tower and sticking things into slots is not exactly complicated.
I’m fully well aware of the benefits of PC gaming (I’ve not bought a console for a decade and I run a community for free PC game giveaways!), but you can’t really get mad at a console company releasing a new version. The point of a console is to be a fixed, known piece of hardware that children can use without needing to tinker with settings, and obviously they’re going to want to up the version of things every few years as technology progresses!
Oh, I guess my comment looked like I was mad at the console companies? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound angry. I just don’t like using consoles because sometimes it feels like there is a forced obsolescence placed on them like just about everything these days. I feel like investing in a console is submitting myself to the whims of the console maker, who will decide for me when it’s out of date and how I’ll be able to use the games for it in the future. You know, I have an iPad 2 that works just like it did when it was brand new but it’s not useful for very much because software updates on it were stopped a few years ago. Now it’s a digital picture frame. If the iPad was a person, I think it would shout at me and say, “I still work great! If somebody would just let me, I’d show you web sites! Why are you just using me as a silly digital picture frame? I’m way better than this, you fool!” I think if people like using consoles they should feel free to use them. I don’t like them for me because I like to have all my games in one place and usable in the future. I see a PC as a better use of my money (again, for me, not for everyone) and I’m glad I made the decision to stop buying consoles years ago. If I had kids, they would learn how to game on a PC or not play games at all, I guess! Anyway, I was mostly talking about money, but there are other good reasons to use a PC over a console. For example, you can upgrade a PC with newer hardware as needed, so that’s less wasteful, don’t you think? Anyway, no anger from me. Console companies will do what they see fit to make money. That’s how the economy works and that’s just the way it is. That being said, I refuse to participate in that system and I think if somebody reads this and decides not to, well I did something useful and helpful today.
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