To Don, WRPGs in a nutshell

[Julius Seeker]

I am not sure how this became it's own topic, but whatever.

At the core the combat system of a JRPG, which is where you spent about 80% of your time playing the game, sucks. Now the American based RPG isn't necessarily any better, but Japanese seem to have a hard time believing that someone can find their system sucks. So not only is the combat system bad but you got absolutely no way to go around it. FF8, FF10, and Chrono Cross are the only games I can think of where you've a reasonable shot at avoid having to particpate in the system, and ironically those had the better combat systems compared to most JRPGs. Now most of the time you got to beat it once to figure out where you can skip the stuff but at least there's an option.

In FF10 I ran away on 100% of the fight while inside Sin because it's a total waste of time (most of these guys are as hard as final boss). You can't do that for the entire game because you'd not be sufficiently powerful (without using silly tricks) but you can at least do it some of the time. FF8/CC you can basically fight nothing the whole game and still complete it.

DQ plays like a grinder and it seems to be implicitly assumed that you'll love their battle system, as the prospect of avoiding random encounters does not appear even possible and even if it was, the series prides itself in having exactly enough encounters to get you through the game at a sufficient level, which implies if you ran away from stuff you would never be high enough for the bosses.

The typical western RPG revolves around a few key points:
1. Fountains of blood.



2. LOTS and LOTS of grinding




3. Art direction that is about as interesting as the inside of a dumpster.







4. Genericized characters that usually have the choice of being good and evil after being forced to answer ~27,000 questions; most of which serve no relevance to the plot.




5. For some reason they seem to be obsessed with dice mechanics, probably to appeal to their target hardcore gamer l337s who lhave an obsession with collecting dice.


Not saying these are necessarily bad things, lots of people like these sorts of games. It is a matter of taste.

[Don]

Western RPGs are usually a bit better about giving you a way to avoid participating too much in the system if the system isn't your cup of tea. At least, it's more possible to avoid the system than say a grinder like DQ where if you're not level X you don't even have a chance of winning.

Now you might say grind is integral to the gaming experience, but it should not be the ONLY experience. It's like saying a Megaman game wouldn't be a Megaman game without having the disappearing blocks. Well X4 doesn't have them. X5 you can escape out of most nasty block situations with a double jump. Z1-Z4 don't seem to have them either.

A good example of where games are designed with the expectation that you might not like the core of the game would be the entire dating sim genre. While in theory these games are supposed to assume you actually want to read the pile of text, every one of them has a 'read text at 5 pages a second' button so that instead of needing 60 hours to scroll through the text in Fate/Stay Night it'd only take 2. If you're some kind of weird purist that insists on reading everything nobody is stopping you but there are options for those who aren't into that kind of thing.

[kali o.]

1. Lots of Blood
Probably true. I think western gamers prefer a degree of realism when compared to japanese. I think it applies to ALL western games.

2. Grinding
I think you are confusing MMO's with RPGs...and it's more of an asian thing than a western thing (you could apply this point back to JRPGs and be more accurate).

3. Art direction
Maybe and probably tied back to number 1. Current western titles seem to be focusing on off-rails gameplay, which tends to make them much MORE open and massive...sacrifices need to be made. Plus, your pics are KotOR2 (xbox), Daggerfall (lol, 1994?), a Fallout (1 or 2?) and a blurry Morrowind screen pic. Fair?

4. Crappy choices (dialog)
True, but pretty confined to Bioware. Its a big reason I hate Dragon Age. Not sure trying to apply it against KotOR series is the smartest choice (since dialog does GREATLY effect plot/story and probably the only time they really did the good/evil thing right).

5. Dice
True, but only because D&D plays a big role in western RPG roots. Not sure who the hell "collects dice" though, or what the fuck that means....

[Tessian]

I have to agree with Kali's response to Seek's list. #1 is more for realism, partly for style. I've rarely EVER even felt like I needed to grind in an RPG; only MMO's. #3 is entirely unfair because as Kali points out, you picked some pretty horrible examples of games that are quite old. #4 isn't really fair either since you're comparing it to JRPG's which have no choices. Is having crappy choices not better than no choices?

[SineSwiper]

I disagree.

The typical western RPG revolves around a few key points:
1. Fountains of blood.

It's true that some games take it to the extreme, but considering that all JRPGs seem to be geared towards 10-year-olds in some magical fairy land, it's nice to have some realism when you kill somebody.

Take games like Bioshock, where when you kill somebody, it's realistic to the method that you killed them with. (If they burned, they are on fire, etc.) Contrast with Borderlands, where the excessive gibbing is just part of the darkly whimsical nature of the game.

2. LOTS and LOTS of grinding

Not really. Not at all. Actually, most of them seem to be on the scale of Zelda-like time frames, usually 10-20 hours of gameplay.

You're confusing single-player RPGs with MMORPGs. Trying to fit those grindy mechanics into a single-player RPG will just cause your audience to not bother.

3. Art direction that is about as interesting as the inside of a dumpster.

Not true at all. Like Kali pointed out, you cherry picked some bad and old examples.

Also, a lot of Western RPGs are trying to be realistic. If it's on a barren dustbowl of a planet, it's going to a barren dustbowl of a planet. But games like Mass Effect, Bioshock, Dragon Age, etc. all have excellent graphics and scenery.

4. Genericized characters that usually have the choice of being good and evil after being forced to answer ~27,000 questions; most of which serve no relevance to the plot.

The whole good/evil aspect is something that is still being explored and only with some games. (BioWare and the Fable guys are the biggest proponents of these type of games.) I agree that there needs to be more done with the direction these games take, like more integration into the plot, more shades of grey, etc.

However, characters in Western RPGs are FAAAAAAAR better in terms of complexity and believability than their Japanese counterparts, which adds a ton of depth into the story. Look at something like Uncharted 2, for example. The whole game plays like a movie.

There are some exceptions in JRPGs, like Xenosaga/gears and some of the FF games, but you just can't help but think that some of the interactions seem too unrealistic sometimes. MGS can take this over-the-top dialog unrealism to a totally new level.

And hell, if you going to pull out a Fallout screenshot, at least pull out a recent one:

http://kendlesworld.com/wp-content/gall ... lout-3.jpg
http://blog.pricegrabber.co.uk/buttonsm ... lout-3.jpg

5. For some reason they seem to be obsessed with dice mechanics, probably to appeal to their target hardcore gamer l337s who lhave an obsession with collecting dice.

Typically only on MMORPGs, and maybe a few with more D&D roots. But, so what? The Japanese are still obsessed with stats, which have much of the same roots from D&D.

[Don]

When your character in FFWhatever makes an attack for 5823 points of damage, that probably involves something that can be simulated by a 100 sided die.

Sure the Western RPG have their roots in AD&D so they'll probably have something like 'you got to make a Will save at -2' but it's not like you actually have to roll a dice to see this. There's really no difference than say in FF8 where it says after you junction X to the Y you now have a 23% chance to resist sleep and 35% to resist poison. It's not like when something casts poison on you, the game stops to show you that there was a 35% chance you could've resisted it. All this happens transparent behind the players so it really doesn't matter if it's a random number generator, a simulated 6-sided die, or whatever.

While all RPGs have some kind of grind, I find that western RPG games tend to be more possible to avoid the grind. For one thing most of them tend to have enemies available in the overworld that you can avoid instead of just randomly walk 3 steps and get jumped by an invisible enemy. They tend to have less focus on pure stats which means it's not as impossible to beat it at a low level. Finally, since most WRPGs are on the computer, they tend to allow you to save anywhere with plenty of save slots so you can easily retract your mistakes. Of course, it's not like being on a console precludes you from saving constantly, so I'd attribute this to ignorance on the Japanese makers.

I'm guessing back when they don't have enough space and need to make 3 hours mazes to fill the space, it didn't make sense to allow you to save anywhere because that'd make it easier and get you less gameplay, and if you only got enough room to save 3 games you also don't want people to accidentally save in the middle of a dungeon and found out they trapped themselves to death (like if you used one of your 3 saves before Wiegraf and found out you can't win, you could be set back pretty far). Of course I'd argue that's also poor design if you let players save at a spot where they might never be able to get out alive.

[Julius Seeker]

When your character in FFWhatever makes an attack for 5823 points of damage, that probably involves something that can be simulated by a 100 sided die.

Sure the Western RPG have their roots in AD&D so they'll probably have something like 'you got to make a Will save at -2' but it's not like you actually have to roll a dice to see this. There's really no difference than say in FF8 where it says after you junction X to the Y you now have a 23% chance to resist sleep and 35% to resist poison. It's not like when something casts poison on you, the game stops to show you that there was a 35% chance you could've resisted it. All this happens transparent behind the players so it really doesn't matter if it's a random number generator, a simulated 6-sided die, or whatever.

While all RPGs have some kind of grind, I find that western RPG games tend to be more possible to avoid the grind. For one thing most of them tend to have enemies available in the overworld that you can avoid instead of just randomly walk 3 steps and get jumped by an invisible enemy. They tend to have less focus on pure stats which means it's not as impossible to beat it at a low level. Finally, since most WRPGs are on the computer, they tend to allow you to save anywhere with plenty of save slots so you can easily retract your mistakes. Of course, it's not like being on a console precludes you from saving constantly, so I'd attribute this to ignorance on the Japanese makers.

I'm guessing back when they don't have enough space and need to make 3 hours mazes to fill the space, it didn't make sense to allow you to save anywhere because that'd make it easier and get you less gameplay, and if you only got enough room to save 3 games you also don't want people to accidentally save in the middle of a dungeon and found out they trapped themselves to death (like if you used one of your 3 saves before Wiegraf and found out you can't win, you could be set back pretty far). Of course I'd argue that's also poor design if you let players save at a spot where they might never be able to get out alive.

In JRPGs nowadays, very few use random battles anymore outside of remakes. Even the latest Dragon Quest branded titles (post DQ8 ) don't use random encounters anymore. I still really enjoyed the Earthbound system (a game I know you disliked) where you could A) see all the enemies on the screen, B ) They will avoid you if you are too powerful, and C) If you are a certain strength above them, the on screen enemy is destroyed instantly when you chase it down and reach it, without transitioning into a battle. Of course, no Ogre Battle or Fire Emblem games had grinding or random encounters either. You had to fight, but the core of those games was to eliminate the opposing armies. The stat upgrades are to simulate experience growth.

I didn't really say that dice was an incorrect choice, but I felt it was really funny that they would be so blatant about it. I am not very familiar with dice games aside from the more mainstream ones like Monopoly and Risk. I did know a very VERY nerdy guy who collected dice and was very much into Western RPGs, especially World of Warcraft and Bioware.

As for saving anywhere, I am fairly sure that all Japanese developed RPGs, including remakes, have included the feature to save everywhere for years. There are two save types, the permanent saves which are always in places which give the player the opportunity to escape to safety (Yeah, FFT was really broken in its execution of saving) and then there is the quicksave which can be utilized anywhere, but this is not a permanent save, it disappears once it is reloaded; even all the ports of all the old RPGs on Wii Virtual Console now have this feature as it is built into the platform itself. Dragon Quest is actually one of the better game series here; when you die, all your treasure and experience is preserved, but you will lose half your pocket money (money invested elsewhere is unharmed).

In Dragon Quest games, I have generally found the battle systems to be superior to more recent Final Fantasy games as you can do things very quickly, and not have to wait for long drawn out animations (I am playing FF7 right now and this is my biggest problem with the game, it seems like most monsters have longer than usual animations when attacking, almost all of them longer than all DQ monsters). It is fairly painless. There are also spells and items which eliminate/reduce encounters, often available from very early on. You probably don't need to fight half the enemies along the way in order to defeat a certain boss. It is more like - if you are an average player, and you play straight through the game fighting all enemies along the way, you should be able to sneak in a win against every boss in the game; if you are a below average player, you will probably lose and will require higher levels; if you are an above average player, you will win all fights with ease and can handle lower levels and less fights. There are no DQ games I have found overly hard, or overly easy; this is the opposite of Final Fantasy (save 10) where I found all of them either overly hard or overly easy. Though I will say the Final Fantasy Legend (SaGa) games seemed well balanced to me.

[bovine]

WRPGs are more interesting because they are doing more exciting things with them. Valkyria Chronicles was cool (JRPG) because it was actually /mildly/ different than what had come before it. If you look at borderlands, diablo/torchlight/titan quest, fallout 3, bioware games, the Elder Scrolls series, etc. you can see that they are actually trying new mechanics and ideas, rather than just changing
a) the battle system so that it modifies/masks the turn based nature
b) the leveling system so that you can learn new skills or abilities in fun and exciting ways

Western RPGs take more risks and they are better for it.

[SineSwiper]

They have roots in different gameplay systems, too, which is probably the reason why there's such a deep separation. WRPGs have their roots in FPSs and third-person AD&D systems, so a lot of WRPGs are based around those two. It would be nice if you saw a Japanese RPG that was FPS based, but the Japanese are so adverse to the FPS format that it's really hard to find.

The only exception would be the new Metroid series, but I think that's only because games like Goldeneye proved that Japanese could have fun with FPSs. (No, Goldeneye didn't invent or popularize FPSs everywhere, but it did have an effect on the console and Japanese markets.) Even then, it took a American company (Retro Studios) to bring Metroid into an FPS system, and a British one to bring Goldeneye.

I think Capcom is the only Japanese studio equipped to handle a FPS, RPG or not.

[Don]

Sega's Shining Force Neo/Exa turn out to be a respectable Diablo 2 clone, so it's not like the Japanese are inherently incapable of producing games that are not 100% based on the traditional RPG stereotype.

Take a game like Diablo 2, or Shining Force Neo, where a boss can kill you in one hit from full to 0. That'd seem like a hardcore grinder that makes Japanese RPG look weak, but it's not, because it is actually possible to avoid those instant kill attacks since these games feature real time elements. Sure, the attacks are very hard to avoid, but you can at least think about other options besides 'got to level up more'. This just isn't true in a Japanese turn-based RPG. If the boss can drop you from full to 0 in one hit, you're not going to beat that guy unless there's a gimmick involved no matter what.

And now I guess some of you might say that's unavodiable in a turn-based RPG, but go play Grandia 3 which is still turn-based (though the turn units are very fine). You have regular enemies that can kill you from full to 0 (like Buster Horn on a caster) but it's not unbeatable because unless you totally screwed up, you can either interrupt the attack or at least defend through it on time, and yet the game is entirely turn-based. And if you turn off the friendly guide that tells you exactly when you need to defend, it can be quite challenging to figure out what's the optimal way to deal with bosses that can basically put you in an infinite lock if you didn't use your interrupts at the right time.

And that's a good example of a choice. If you're hardcore you can turn the help hints off and then possibly die every 3 encounters, or you can wimp out and just trust the game's nearly 100% accurate predictions on when to use interrupts. And if you get really good at the game, you'll even figure out things that the hints don't cover since it doesn't account for aerial combo time and movement time/speed, nor does the game tell you anything about whose attacks have priority over each other.