The definition of a JRPG is... awkward, at best.Ā āJapanese role playing gameā conveys little beyond being an RPG from Japan, and many people consider that to be the definition, no more no less. Many others would consider JRPG to refer to a specific visual or gameplay style, something like Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, or Pokemon all very obviously being quintessential JRPGās. Personally I subscribe to the later reading; if I see someone say JRPG I expect it to fall in line with those franchises, within reason. Obviously modern Final Fantasy games have dramatically shifted gameplay styles, and while something like Darkest Dungeon is far closer to classic JRPG game formatting, it seems like less of a JRPG than say, Stranger of Paradise, and not just because one is literally made in Japan.
Thereās a sensibility to the tone and atmosphere, the visual style, the progression, etc. that is indicative of theĀ āJRPGā name, but it is of course not relegated to Japanese games. Undertale is for all intents and purposes a JRPG, except the creator is not Japanese. It has every nuance down when it comes to structure and presentation, but it doesnāt fit the literal definition, so some may say it doesnāt count. I think thatās stupid, and ultimately trying to box in games to the literal definition of a very poorly named genre is fundamentally pointless when the entire reason we have genres is for the ability to refer to them in shorthand and have people understand what were talking about, something which the name JRPG fails to do, self evidenced by me having to explain all of this in order to make sure any potential readers are on the same page.
Anyway; Turn based strategy games that fall into that specific subcategory? I donāt get em.
To make a way-too-long rant short; essentially, I feel that the genre has been stagnant for over a decade and what few entries have managed to find new and innovative ways to breath life into it have not actually pushed the genre anywhere of note. Itās one thing for a genre to simply not evolve, but itās entirely another for it to evolve and simply choose to ignore the improvements that have been made in favor of sticking to the exact same formula thatās now the bone dust of the horse that died when the developers were children.
Like most people I grew up on Pokemon. Far as Iām concerned we peaked at Gen 3 and not long after Nintendo started transitioning the series fromĀ āfor all agesā toĀ āaimed at childrenā and started acting like players are utterly incapable of understanding stories and concepts if they arenāt spelled out to them in the most infantilizing ways possible. Coincidentally, the gameplay as not evolved an inch in its entire lifetime.Ā
FF7 was one of the first games I ever played. I canāt say for sure if I beat it myself but I did play through the majority of the game and got to witness the entire story while watching someone else play. Itās not the last FF game Iād ever play, but as far as Iām concerned itās the only one of any real interest to me any more, because the world design is incredibly inspired and none of the other games in the franchise seem intent on following through with theĀ āecopunkā aesthetic and instead go for vaguely high fantasy meets steampunk visuals that bore me to death.
I tried playing Persona 4 in highschool and I got maybe 2-3 hours in before I gave up because I was just so very very bored of having to run around empty corridors engaging with the dull combat system in order to get back to the story elements that were the only thing keeping me engaged at all, which Iām told by some series diehards, is one of the weakest entries in the series in terms of story.
My time with JRPGās is not short, it is not shallow, and it does not just so happen to avoid all of the classics. These are just the ones I put a solid effort into and which people seem the most invested in, Iāve played plenty of others - Chrono Trigger being another example, which ended up getting the same treatment as P4 - but the number of JRPGās I would wholeheartedly recommend can be counted on 1 hand; Thousand Year Door, Undertale, Parasite Eve, and Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Explorerās of Sky. Maybe thereās a few more over the years that Iāve forgotten, but generally speaking every other game in the genre Iāve played I either couldnāt stand, or which I feel was enjoyable in spite of the attempts at having the game disembowel itself by making it as tedious as possible.Ā
Understanding games and what works and what doesnāt is something that has fascinated me for most of my life now, and while I wouldnāt call myself an expert and sayĀ āthis works and this doesnātā I have a good understanding of what concepts I do and donāt like in games, and I feel like I have a decent enough understanding of being able to see why others might enjoy a game in a different way or despite the fact that I canāt enjoy it. I donāt like Bloodborne, The Last of Us, Breath of The Wild, etc. but I can SEE what things the game has on offer and get an understanding of what specific parts people enjoy, what parts bother me, and typically a lack of consensus comes down toĀ āthe things that bother me donāt bother other people as muchā and somewhat rarely the inverse, where things that bother others donāt bother me as much, but thatās another topic.Ā
So I look at popular JRPGs, and I look at what parts have me interested, and its invariably the writing and world design every single time. And then I look at what keeps me from playing, and itās the gameplay systems, every single time. And then I look at what the differences are between the JRPGs I actually enjoy and all the other ones people endlessly praise but which cause my eyes to glaze over, and the prevailing trends are a complete lack of player agency, or a weird enforcement of tedium and grind. And while obviously the aspect ofĀ āthings that bother me that donāt bother others as muchā is in play, Iām still left stumped as to why people seem to love the genre when most of these games could be translated to other gameplay styles and lose next to nothing, or at the very least pull from the entries that have found ways to build off the very VERY basic framework of the genre and actually provide some kind of depth beyond trial and error to fill in spreadsheets.
Pokemon will be the sacrificial lamb so to speak. Itās definitely on the very bottom of the complexity ladder when it comes to these games, but frankly I think thatās a point in its favor. If youāve ever played a game before, you probably understand how Pokemon operates; you got stats that dictate your hp, damage and defense values, your moves have their own values that scale off of your stats, and there are modifiers dependent on the typing of the move you used and of the Pokemon itās targeting. Thereās a lotta other bits and pieces but at a foundational level thatās more or less it, and you can blast through the games with just that understanding and mashing A most of the time to spam your stronger moves and mostly disregard even the type advantages system. If you scale up the game to be harder, what you are essentially just doing, is requiring the player to start learning the underlying systems of what's weak and what's stronger more thoroughly, which can and usually does spiral into building the aforementioned spreadsheets in your head through trial and error. That one Miltank dumpstering your team? Well, time to learn what itās type is, and the types of the moves its using, and then find Pokemon that can counteract itās strengths and which can learn moves that are strong against itās type but whoās base type is not weak to itās moves etc etc and thatās for a singular encounter. In this regard Pokemon is a lot more complicated because you CAN theoretically get into the weeds with all of that information and require someone to become an encyclopedia for all game knowledge, able to spout off the stats and movesets of every Pokemon to be able to play at any reasonable level, but thankfully thatās not required. Instead, you kind of just mash A every fight until its over and if you lose, go mash A somewhere you were previously until your A mashing abilities have improved. Itās just kind ofĀ ādamned if you do damned if you donātā.
And this bleeds into comp play in some ways, where when you really get down and dirty and learn the ins and outs and do all the math... there just isnāt really that much depth. Objectively best strats start cropping up and you just have to bite the bullet or donāt play. Any kind of agency is removed and it mostly just comes down to the ability for someone to predict their opponents actions, and good ol RNG.Ā
This system can be extrapolated onto other similar franchises like Persona, and share the exact same criticisms, though usually not 1:1. The difficulty tuning decides if the game is a snoozefest where you donāt have to think about anything, or if youāll need a strategy guide or wiki to your side to let you know what you should be pursuing in terms of party composition, and spending hours building that up, or learning it all by brute force trial and error and multiplying the time investment required by an absurd degree.Ā
So then, the other formats. Itās been quite awhile since I touched it, but Final Fantasy 7 and many similar games has a pregen party setup the majority of the time, with each party member having preset options for equipment and moves. With such a limited roster and abilities, the focus becomes more on resource management and countering the actions of the opponent; applying and removing buffs and debuffs whenever possible and learning the patterns where you can most effectively do your damage or where you need to take specific actions to avoid some super move. This will, again, share many of the above issues; a lot of fights come down to just mashing attack because youāre so overequipped to be dealing with the enemies at hand, and when that isnāt the strat you usually just have to try shit until something works. More enjoyable than the worst scenarios of the above, since the pool of knowledge you need is a lot more feasible to digest, but still fundamentally existing just to eat up time, and whoās only gauge of player ability is how good they are at like, understanding cause and effect I guess. The goal at basically all times is to find the most efficient way to kill the enemies in front of you, but devoid of skill expression, it just kinda turns into simon says at a point.Ā
So thatās where I think the games I enjoy much more come in. Using Thousand Year Door as the prime example, and really most Mario RPGs, they have a somewhat unique mechanic of requiring inputs while performing most moves in order to increase their power, and similarly, you can do specific inputs when enemies are attacking you to reduce damage or effects, or avoid them entirely. A very simple but clear source of skill expression that asks for a lot more engagement with the game and rewards the player in turn for doing so, and which can easily be lifted and dropped into basically any game with the same turn based party format and which would only require tweaking to values for it to fit.Ā
So....... where is it? Why have basically no games post Mario RPGās taken the time to implement these mechanics? I personally think their ingenious inclusions, and while I am clearly biased, I donāt think I have EVER seen anyone dislike the format outside of abject hatred for all JRPG games. Iām sure someone, somewhere thinks these somehow detract from the experience, but generic RPG maker shovelware is a dime a dozen so theyāre never going to run out of games to play, and the vast majority of people would either have no opinion if more involved gameplay was added or would outright prefer it, so what gives? Iāve never gotten a real answer from anyone, JRPG lover or otherwise, but itās something that continues to stick with me and the more I think about it the harder it is for me to try to enjoy ANY JRPG because I just think about how easy it would be to improve the formula and how often any game in the genre I enjoy in any capacity, I only enjoy for everything OTHER than the gameplay, and which would be directly improved by having a different gameplay style.Ā
Obviously budget can play a big role in why one wants to make a JRPG, since it cuts down on art assets and uses some of the most basic mechanics you can implement in a game, reducing the actual programming workload. Thing is, the majority of companies making these games and not making any improvements have the budget to do so, and I donāt really see where else the budget is going because big name studios have not be the ones at the forefront of storytelling for a very long time, and frequently go for very milquetoast visual styles in an attempt to reach as big an audience as possible. FF has adopted a more realistic visual style and actually moved towards being more action-y, Persona 5 has a very striking visual style with flashy animations and a lot of emphasis on characterization and atmosphere through music, etc etc. but I look at whats on display, and then I look at what their contemporaries in other genres are doing, and I think to myselfĀ āsurely this isnāt the full budget on displayā because there are games in more much mechanically intensive genres with similar budgets that still reach that same threshold of visual flair and presentation. If it IS the full budget on display, then I wonder why in the hell the gameplay is so expensive to produce and why theyāre even going with it when tangential alternatives exist, are well received, and clearly cost about the same to implement.
Basically I look at this whole thing in the same way I imagine detractors of Death Stranding do; it just all seems pointless. An intentionally limiting style of gameplay that doesnāt seem to add much to the experience, and which can see dramatic improvements through simple additions, but just... doesnāt. The difference is, I can explain why I and many others like Death Stranding. Itās slow and methodical, which makes it relaxing, and what really makes the barebones gameplay work is the problem solving in the moment of figuring out how to traverse a particularly difficult piece of terrain, and in the end result of being able to see how far you traveled while keeping everything together.
But Iāve never had anyone give me a reasonable explanation of what makes JRPG combat click for them.
RE4 Remake, rewriting media history, andĀ ānew mediaā.
Does the original really exist if no one plays it?
I donāt watch many streamers, and I definitely donāt watch streams unless itās someone I know or a game I care a lot about, so I can see someoneās reaction to it. Still, thereās one streamer whoās vods I watch regularly. Usually when Iām going to bed or just want some background noise.
The latest vod of his I watched opened with his usual ~45 minutes of pre-stream banter; heās funny, it lets him talk about more current events, it just kinda works. During this period he talked about how he was playing the RE4 Remake and he had some not so nice things to say about it.
Generally he was positive, but he was confused by how people were giving the game perfect 10ā²s when it has such glaring flaws, like some particularly obnoxious encounters. He listed the catapult section near the beginning of the castle as a prime suspect; if Ashley getās hit once, you canāt get her back up in time before another shot lands on her and kills her. In fact, if YOU get hit, youāll often get knocked down and not have enough time to get to safety before another shot hits you, you can almost get stunlocked by catapults.Ā
Heās not a gaming god or anything, but he isnāt incompetent. Heās also had some wacky opinions in the past, but I donāt think this was one of them. While that particular section was no problem for me, I do think his points are apt, getting hit by anything sends Leon flying in an overly long animation and you can frequently get comboād with no way to recover after being hit the first time.
The problem is that he was under the impression that the game had adapted itself too good and brought overĀ ābadly designed encountersā instead of just cutting them, being TOO faithful to the original. Heās not someone who played the original, in fact the first time he even touched it was for a randomizer he did on stream, and after double checking, the furthest he got was right after rescuing Ashley from the church.
That encounter is way easier and far less punishing in the original and he had never done it before.
āok, so heās wrong, and?ā
Well, me and many others have put forth worries about this exact scenario and the response every time isĀ āthe old game isnāt going anywhereā. And sure, itās *technically* not, I can still go set up my PS2 and play RE4 on it, I can still download it on my PS4, I can still download it off steam, and absolute worst case scenario, if it ever somehow became abandon ware, well, the internet will do itās thing. But thatās not really the point, nor is it a valid solution to the problem proposed.
A lot of classic movies, particularly foreign movies, have gotten remade here in the west, or had a long break between their releases. Take John Carpenterās The Thing. Iāve met a handful of people who only ever saw the 2011 prequel/reboot that absolutely BLOWS in comparison and decided that the movie that people hyped up was a classic horror film was not actually any good. And of course, the 1982 film is in itself a remake of a 1951 sci-fi B-movieĀ āThe Thing From Another Worldā. Even people who know about the 1982 movie might not know that! I know I didnāt for a good few years after watching it. Do I particularly care about going back to that? Not really. But understanding the history and the context surrounding a piece of media is, or at least should be, a requirement for properly understanding the media.Ā
Despite their age, games are still aĀ ānew mediaā. Arguably theyāre the most versatile piece of media weāve ever conceived of, at least until something akin to Star Trek holodecks or fully immersive VR becomes a thing. Looking back on the creation of film, we have some very crude and simplisticĀ āfilmsā to look back on as the progenitor of the technology and the art form. Going further we start seeing where narratives start to form and where movies as we know them begin to take shape. We have a lot of that preserved.
Or at least, we think we do.
If you havenāt dabbled in cinema studies thereās a good chance you donāt know about this, but there was once a type of movie simply referred to asĀ ārace moviesā. Simply put, they were movies made by and generally for black folks at the time, the time being the 30s-50s. Thousands of these movies were made, but they werenāt archived like movies from the Lumiere brothers or any other contemporary filmmakers of the time were. The only reason we have any of these films on record today is because a warehouse was discovered that just, had thousands of these film canisters lying around, dusty and forgotten. Important cultural and artistic history, left to molder away in the corner of some hot Texas warehouse. What about the stuff we didnāt find? What are the odds we find some more classic films hidden away in some random storage unit? Not likely.
Now, you might say that we have the internet now, that means all media will forever be preserved! Not true at all, and youād know that if you had actually tried to find some of the stuff Iāve took the time to track down. And itās especially true for games.
Cryostasis, Vivisector: Beast Within, You Are Empty. 3 forgotten FPS games that can no longer be purchased anywhere, and whoās presence online is nearly nothing. Somewhat suspect sites like Abandonwaregames.com claim to have them, but who knows how long sites like that can operate? A private tracker I joined had them, but thatās an even larger target for companies to try to take down, and thereās still quite a barrier to entry anyway. Iām sure thereās a handful of other sources, but the usual suspects, legal or otherwise, didnāt have anything. I asked around for suggestions and got nothing, until I asked someone to check the private tracker for me, which is the only reason I bothered to get on that site.Ā
RE4 is obviously not these games, and theyāre miles apart in terms of relevance and impact, but the point remains. If a remake isnāt a near perfect 1:1 adaptation, and also isnāt wildly different enough that mistaking the 2 is impossible, like RE2 vs the remake, you run the risk of the uninformed taking it at face value and ASSUMING itās a 1:1 remake, or at least fairly close, and attributing any grievances they have with the original product. This happens enough, the original might just die for all intents and purposes when the sphere of public consciousness. Just because some nerds like me who are about preservation remember doesnāt change shit, at least not in of itself.
Not to get all existential, but Iām sure most people have at one point or another questioned what theĀ āpointā of humanity is. Like everything else on the planet weāre ultimately just trying to survive, so while weāve done some crazy feats of science and engineering to achieve that, to me that loses a lot when you view it asĀ āthe thing weāre genetically predisposed to do, foreverā. To me, our art is the realĀ āpointā of humanity. People donāt want to live a life of survival, nor they do want a monotonous day to day 9 to 5 with no kind of enrichment. They want entertainment in all its forms, and many also want to create that entertainment.Ā
So, I just donāt get why we treat our creative histories with such disrespect. Yeah, I donāt plan on reading Moby Dick or much from Shakespeare despite them being literary classics. But I still understand their important, and why people feel the need to preserve their existence and legacy! The 1996 Romeo and Juliet movie where they use guns like swords does not replace the original even if I am definitely more interested in that, and Iād never pretend otherwise, and if someone did most people would call their dumb ass out for it. Why arenāt we doing the same for games?
After many years of tumblr being basically useless I have once again found a use for mine; containment of my many many rants that can also act as a quick reference sheet, since stuff like pastebin will eventually delete my stuff and you canāt really just keep a big repertoire of stuff.
Anyway if I followed you in the past and now I dont, its cause this isnāt gonna be for random shit anymore so I tried to clean up my feed in case I ever actually look at it. Nothing personal.
Iāll be leaving all my old posts and such intact though. Anything posted earlier than this is basically just a timecapsule for myself and probably shouldnāt be considered anything of substance.
I am currently in the process of moving to twitter. Iāve already got a SFW one I only really use for ps4 screenshots and various questions but I might use it more.Ā
The girl grave robbing and selling human bones online
The white american girl who pretended to be an interracial lesbian couple living with hiv in india, just so she could write hamilton hiv fic
The girl everyone thought was the native lesbian writer of my immortal, who wrote it to find her brother, but it turns out she was white and lied about her backstory and probably didnāt even write the fic
Iāve been going on /x/ when I wake up and canāt get back to sleep for some reason and here are just a few of the choice posts that get made nowadays
a japanese guy who made a bunch of creepy pasta videos a long time ago (youāve probably seen Youtube666, he made that) is playing through minecraft for the first time and heās not using any guides or anything other than the in-game guidebook and heās fucking. doing it in such a buddhist way.
like, heās so patient and detached from all of the stuff heās gotten.
in the newest episode he destroyed 14566 blocks of bridge and blew up his original house just because he learned about xyz coordinates by accidentally pressing F5 and he wanted his house to be at the X:0 coordinate.
also look at this quarry. itās his 5th quarry.
look at this absolute fucking massive hole.
and itās not like āHELLOOOOO EVERYBODY WHAT IS UP, TODAY WEāRE GONNA BE PLAYING MIIIIIINECRAAAAFTā heās just like. a quiet 30 year old japanese man who speaks very precisely and politely. and he even does his own english captions which are overlayed on the video and he uses emoticons like (0u0)/
