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.
I’m at 183 hours and kind of feel the same way, not enough monsters or interesting armor abilities etc. for a monster hunter game that’s pretty low seeing as I have 1300 hours or world and around 700 in rise (even though those both got their expansions). Monster hunter has a very high bar to hit, especially if they want to pull the whole live service fomo thing.
mad respect for y’all, but you monster hunters are crazy. I have like 100 hours in games like Cities: Skylines or Crusader Kings, but 100 hours in an action game is so wild to me. But I love y’all for it.
If someone has those kinds of hours in a new game it’s a sign of having no life, but playtime starts stacking up real fast - just three hours a day gets you to 1000 total in a year, and MonHu World is already seven years old.
For me that game was Deep Rock Galactic, I played it for around 700 hours in the first year or so just by running a few missions each day.
EA have one of the worst records for re-releases of any of the major publishers/IP Holders. Whether that is a pro or a con depends on you and I really don’t care.
That said… Look, I still think DA Origins is one of the greatest CRPGs ever made… gameplay wise (I could do without “What if Game of Thrones but even MORE rapey!!”) and wish basically anything else had continued on that mix of isometric-ish strategy and simple conditional based AI. DA2… DA2 had a REALLY good story and atrocious gameplay and level design. And I hated Inquisition so much that I never even did the DLC about the most boring fascist ever who then became a hero in the decade or so between games.
And considering all three (?) of those are different engines? It would have been a LOT of money for a re-release. And… most of these discussions would have been happening around the time Larian/Obsidian/inXile/Owlcat were fighting for kickstarter scraps against frigging Spiders.
In a post BG3 world… it would still be a stretch. But at the time when “We should re-release thse games to build hype for DAVe”? Frigging nobody would expect anything close to a CRPG to be worth that kind of investment. Hence why the DAs have been ARPGs in the vein of Divinity 2 for the past 15 or however many years since DA2.
And I say all of this as someone who loves CRPGs and who actually backed most of the Larian/Obsidian/inXile/Owlcat kickstarters.
And just as an aside because I have seen it come up a lot.
No, Wizards of the Coast were not genius visionaries for thinking BG3 could work. By all accounts, they were looking to shop around one of their old IPs (Baldurs Gate) and lucked out in that Larian got involved. And Larian largely forced what would have been the same mobile slop WotC had been funding for years into being one of the all time great CRPGs. And that is why Swen et al want absolutely nothing to do with WotC for a sequel.
Paizo (Pathfinder) have been a bit better but it is similarly telling that Pathfinder Kingmaker cannot be updated because of how shitty the publisher to that game is and that Owlcat, after Wrath of the Righteous (arguably THE greatest CRPG ever made), mostly are focusing on one off contract work with IPs that care less about the actual RPG side of things.
Reverse engineering projects such as these are technically made legal because the developers involved do not use any leaked content or copyrighted assets. They also require players to provide their own legally-sourced ROMs for them to work.
This specific PC “port” comes from a team that has done several other PC ports of N64 games in recent months, all released under a similar legal framework. Nintendo has yet to challenge any of those previous releases, so one can imagine that they may actually be safe from Nintendo’s fury.
I went to the store the other day and found it amusing that they were advertising the switch 2. I thought pre orders are sold out, who the heck is going to be able to get one who is seeing this advertising?
i guess hype is still valuable to Nintendo, even if people can’t buy the thing right this second? Nintendo are the masters of intentionally restricting supply to increase demand and hype. They honed their strategy with the Amiibos, NES Classic, and SNES Classic, and then i’d say they mastered it around the time of the COVID Switch 1 shortages.
By all accounts, Nintendo is not artificially restricting supply with this launch. - it seems like they are really trying to have as many as possible available for launch day. But they still know how to make the most of a shortage.
I wish them the best of luck at these prices though. I get that the enthusiasts will clamor for it. There’s a couple million people that would buy a half eaten shoe for hundreds of dollars, if only Nintendo stamped their logo on it. Once the dust clears though (and this is a personal opinion and hunch), I bet Joe Public scoffs and it’s the WiiU#2.
They are making a remake, supposedly. But it appears to be in development (or possibly publishing) hell. Something that is caught up in all the other shit going on with Embracer Group.
tbh it seems okay except i’m not sure where the ring and pinky fingers are supposed to rest. The dual-mouse possibilities are very intriguing, but i remain cautiously optimistic. this vid didn’t change my feelings one way or the other.
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