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
That’s bit harsh to say that all his great works are not his.
I do share the sentiment that Kojima’s writing has been in downhill for quite sometime and he really in need of a good editor. I actually think that his stories are more coherent or at least entertaining in his earlier works, e.g.
Snatcher
Policenauts
MGS 1
Some like MGS 2, but I think the boring oil rig setting broke me, and the constant chatter with ‘Colonel’ didn’t help
MGS 3
Peacewalker
MGS Rising
What I actually like is his obsessive attention to details that barely matters when it comes to gameplay, e.g. melting ice cubes, aiming at enemy’s crotch to get dog tags, etc.
Kojima games started clicking for me when he introduced the ‘R&D system’ in Peacewalker, where it’s actually a RPG progression system but the rewards are absurd equipments. As the matter of fact, I like the ‘walking and R&D’ parts of Death Stranding a lot, but really dislike the enemy encounters and the story in that game.
And it’s okay, not every games are for everyone, I’m glad that someone is giving him blank cheques for his absurd ideas that are not the norms.
They should pause when showing item description and after the end credits, they should link to youtubers explaining what happened actually in the anime.
Nic also has a movie coming out digitally this week, titled Sympathy for the Devil, no idea whether it’d be an okay movie or just another direct to DVD garbo, but still gonna watch it since I’m on the quest of watching every Nic Cage movies.
Also since he was sighted with Kojima recently, and Kojima has been wearing Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent’s t-shirt, I do hope that Nic would star in his next game. (He’s probably already scanned for Death Stranding 2 cameo)
Also Lucas Pope surprised me when he used Minnan / Hokkien / Formosan language in that game, it’s very close to my native tongue.
But of course
spoiler___ the game is less of a sealed murder mystery, more of a supernatural mystery. While I would love to see a realistic whodunnit, that requires you to research on physics / chemistry / actual real life tools, etc.
Sealed room murder mystery, with no quirky characters. And with puzzles that require you to wiki stuff.
RPG that takes place outside of western European / American / Japanese setting. I wanna see games that take place in Korea, India, Africa
RPG that takes place in a small city where you can interact with most people, a small open world like Kamurocho (maybe larger), but allows interaction with most people, instead of just handful of quest givers.
Igavania but with modern sci-fi settings. Shadow Complex exists, but that’s more metroidvania (no leveling up or equipment drops from enemies)
Flight simulator but for road trip. Truck simulator but with real world map data
Flight simulator but for underwater exploration, with real world data.
PS3 Africa, but expanded to more regions, more animals.
God of War, but other mythologies, e.g. Egyptian, Chinese, South East Asians, Africans, Polynesians, etc.
I have hard time aiming the stomp, handling the motion control, and by the time I reached the underwater level, I’m exhausted.
It’s a good game, but sadly it’s not for me, at least not for long term session of playing. Maybe one day I will play the game in short bursts, but platformer is sadly not my genre.
I basically have a spreadsheet to tackle my backlog, I add 10 - 20 games to my list of games that I’ve bought (mostly on discount, some from bundles, and some from PS+, some emulated games, etc), then I’d just stream them.
If I don’t feel like the game is resonating with me, I’d just stop, assign Not Resonating tag and move on.
I do admit that when I see a big backlog, I tend to exhibit these behaviors:
Guilt in buying new games, which is not bad, now I only buy full priced game once or twice a year, and mostly buying discounted stuff
The need to power thru games that I don’t like, until I started using Not Resonating tag, which I give games that don’t click with me two tries, before giving up
Yeah, vocal animations for side quests are off, some are saying this is the aftereffect of the pandemic. They also didn’t lipsync for Japanese dub, so you might want to stick with that
As per overworld map, it’s similar to FFX
Side quests are very sparse around the beginning of the game, by the end of the game I was complaining at how unevenly distributed they are that they just drop large number of them before endgame. They are there to flesh out the side characters
Not sure about graphics, but the music is by same composer Masayoshi Soken
Is it really Kingdom Heart’s combat? I played 90% of KH games and DMC games, and I’d definitely say that it’s more DMC combat than KH, considering they hired Ryota Suzuki who designed the combat system for DMCV and Dragon’s Dogma as the combat director
If you’ve played FFX, XIII, 7Remake, Crisis Core, then you’d be less shocked by how linear it is.
Steam Deck seems to be a good fit. If you wanna get a gaming laptop, maybe wait until there’s one where you can easily swap out the batteries / components. I’ve seen videos about Framework laptop, and that does sound like a good investment for longer period.
I heard there were issues with ROG Ally, the device gets too hot, and the fan exhaust was near the SD card slot. So it frequently dislodges the SD cards from the slot because of the heat.
All the mainline games are not interconnected at all, they are pretty much very separate in terms of story / settings / characters. So you can jump into any one of the games. Also, their turn-based systems, aka Active Time Battle, aren’t anything interesting, compared to say Shin Megami Tensei’s Press Turn system. All FF games have very linear / streamlined experience compared to other games, i.e. choices don’t matter much, you don’t choose the stats, equipments are streamlined.
Here’s some overview:
First 6 games were 2D games, the best of those bunches are Final Fantasy 6. Great story, great villain, great music
original FF7 is the one popularized the JRPG genre, and probably broke the base between older 2D fans and newcomers. It has memorable characters, music, story about eco-terrorism. The gameplay revolves around materia system, it’s like logic system where say if you connect Fire magic with All-effect and 2x-effect, you can casts double Fire magic that hits every enemies, etc. FF7 Crisis Core is one of the best FF spinoffs out there, while FF7 Remake is a ‘remake’. It’s advised that you finished the original FF7 before playing those two.
FF8 also broke the base. The game is more romance-centric in some way, but still sci-fi. The gameplay revolves around junction / draw system, where you draw magic from enemies to junction it to your stats.
FF9 is kinda back to original game. It’s more high-fantasy setting, and was released during the end of PS1. It wasn’t as popular as FF7 or FF8, but there are definitely fans. I had hard time getting into it, because the animation is kinda slow, but maybe I should replay the HD version
FFX is very well received, it’s a sci-fi romance story that takes place in south east Asian-like tropical islands. The first FF game on PS2. FFX has a sequel, FFX-2, which is also well received
FF11 is MMO, I don’t play MMO, so I have no idea about it.
FF12 is great, it’s more political than usual FF games, because it’s written by Matsuno, who made Tactics Ogre and FF Tactics. The gameplay is bit weird, bit MMO like.
FF13 was not well received, the only mainline FF game on PS3. It spawned two other games FFX-2 and FFX Lightning Returns. The main complaint about FF13 was that the story was incomprehensible, the game is very linear, and the battle mechanics is very confusing. I think what happened is that
they used tons of opaque in-game terms (Fal’ Cie, La’ Cie), that’s barely explained until very late in the game.
the game also opens up very late, there’s a one large wide region for you to roam around and engage in enemy encounters, but they only give it to you very late in the game
the combat wasn’t explained clearly, the paradigm shift system is actually fun, and a step up from ATB
annoying characters, they focused too much on Hope and Snow. Hope is a whiny child, but he’s a child, so it’s ok. Snow on the other hand, is just an annoying character who likes to talk about himself.
FF14 is another MMO, I don’t touch MMO
FF15 is kind of a mess, it was in development hell. I like the roadtrip story, where you just drive around. The open world is bit sparse and serves mostly for enemy encounters. One of the main issue is that some of the stories are gated behind DLCs. The gameplay is bit more weirder than normal ATBs. I like this game, but not as much as others.
FF16 is great. Devil May Cry combat, very streamlined and nicely paced story, those huge spectacle Asura’s Wrath-esque battles, etc. This game is my current GOTY.
There are other spinoff games, e.g. Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, World of Final Fantasy, but they are mostly spinoffs, mostly for fans who want more after playing the mainline.
But there’s one that I want to recommend, and that’s Final Fantasy Tactics. It’s a strategy RPG and it’s amazing. There’s an updated version released on PSP, called Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions, which is probably the one you should play.
There are rumor swirling around about FF9 and FF Tactics remakes, but can’t say anything until we see it.
Nintendo Switch is great for 1st party games and some exclusives, but frame rate / resolution might not be able to compete with other consoles, plus the MSRP of many games on e-shop can be 1 - 3 bucks more expensive compared to, say PSN.
If this is your only gaming device, then maybe consider Crisis Core, Hollow Knight, Octopath Traveler 2, Live a Live. If it’s not, then stick to 1st party games, exclusives, and graphically less taxing games.
As for discounts, I use DekuDeals to keep track of the price drops. Most 1st party Nintendo games only have discount up to 33%, and those discounts happen like 2 - 3 times a year. While 3rd party games… I swear to god I’ve seen games that are on sale every month or so.