The Shrine

If only they put half as much effort into the IOS/Android FFVI remake. I would actual pay money to play FFXIII if it looked like this.

Eric wrote: I would actual pay money to play FFXIII if it looked like this.

Really? With the same characters and universe and PSICOMFALCIELACIECACCOOOOOONpfffft?
Nostalgia's a hell of a drug.

Blotus wrote:

Eric wrote: I would actual pay money to play FFXIII if it looked like this.

Really? With the same characters and universe and PSICOMFALCIELACIECACCOOOOOONpfffft?
Nostalgia's a hell of a drug.

I wouldn't have to put up with the horrific voice acting, or annoying anime style characterizations, that in itself would make the experience 10x more enjoyable.

I honestly believe the reason people dislike modern JRPGs(In North America anyway) is because we've gone from sprites that humorously used to try and convey emotion that we found charming to AAA development where there's voice acting which translated horribly from Japanese dialog, and the increase in a very anime style which is just annoying and embarrassing to sit through.

I had no problem with FFXIII's stand alone story, my issue was that I hated the entire cast, and have found every main cast increasingly annoying since Final Fantasy X, when, again, voice acting started coming into play and that AAA production value.

7-9 were anime as shit too, don't get me wrong, but back then again, the games 1) didn't have voice acting, and 2) the anime motions were still pretty damn restricted.

Fair points. I imagine if FF6 was given a FF13 makeover, I'd get sick of it pretty quickly. Locke's whole costume would just be belts, Terra would be emo as shit, Kefka would be entirely androgynous with horns or six-foot hair or some shit, and Relm would be a squeely kawaii doujin-bound annoyance.

Or maybe not. Maybe I'm just less and less accommodating of weeaboos and anime in general these days (though I was cetainly a weeaboo when I was a young teen).

Having said that, I recently enjoyed most of Attack on Titan and really liked Ni No Kuni.

I think there is some merit to that -- PS1 JRPGs are the last ones I could bring myself to like (with the exception of Lost Odyssey which, while a not a great game, did have great writing and style). Actually, I still like the persona series too...

Persona is pretty excellent, out of the gate, the voice acting is superb, easily some of the best voice acting in video games period.

I won't pretend it doesn't have those anime type things going on, hell the last 2 were about high school students for Christ's sake. On the other hand I don't have this annoying female protagonist making these annoying moany sounds and gasps every time they speak while looking down and grasping their own fist so Japanese gamers can feel better about "protecting her" and cringe worthy dialog that's supposed to make them "cute". I can very clearly tell when Yosuke is pissed off, or feeling good by the character art, and delivery of dialog.

To those of you that did play FFXIII could you honestly tell that Hope was "Seething with rage" towards Snow until his character actually got mad before he tried to kill him? Did you know Vanille was hurting on the inside before she broke down crying to Sahz?

What about the actual flaws in the game?
1. No towns
2. WAY too much time dedicated to battles
3. Intrusive battle system
4. Weak story
5. Exploration consisted of a corridor going forward or backwards.
6. Outside world was more like a dungeon disguised as the outside world.

I also found tons of great RPGs last generation including but not limited to:
1. Xenoblade
2. Dragon Quest 9 and the remake of Dragon Quest 4-6 were phenomenal
3. Radiant Historia
4. Rune Factory franchise
5. 3D reimaginings of Final Fantasy 3 and 4
6. Devil Survivor 1 and 2
7. The World Ends with You
8. The Last Story

Even the Pokemon RPG, Pokemon Black/White was shockingly good - surprisingly massive amount of content.

Xenoblade is what FF13 should have been. It just did everything a lot better, it showed that massive world RPGs can have lots of stuff to do in them, and have great pacing throughout. That they don't need to have highly limited worlds where backgrounds are just for scenery; and instead have big open worlds. It also took FF12's battle system to its potential, and unlike FF12, it gives the player a lot of control over battles - and unlike FF13, does it without feeling intrusive. There's also a lot of meat on the bones of Xenoblade, where FF13 felt simplistic and completely unintuitive - I remember Zeus running around not even knowing there was money in the game; and this is because money is not directly rewarded, but rather rewarded as a dropped value item which is only good for selling.

That said FF13 is not a terrible game, but after playing Xenoblade, it's obvious Square could have done WAAAAAY better in the design field.

Honestly I think people look at these old stuff fondly because the resolution is low enough to not offend you with its style. The dialogue was short enough so that you don't get offended by how dumb it is. If you look at the recap, they say so little that there's not enough time to get offended by what they say, even though the underlying story is still exactly the same.

For example FF14's seasonal event gets my vote for 'worst quest in MMORPG ever'. It's not because they're any less thoughtful than any other MMORPG quest out there. It's because they have this long cutscene telling you about stuff that you don't care about that you can't skip (or maybe you can, but you can't afford to in case something important happens). In a game like WoW, you just click 'Accept' and you're done with it. The text for those is actually pretty dumb, but they don't get in your way. Ironically, originally the quest dialogue in WoW scrolled on your screen Star Wars style by default and it was probably the first thing everyone turned off, and now of course it's off by default. The quest dialogue in WoW didn't get any better, but it's certainly no longer offensive by getting in the way.

Although, after watching the video, I think FF6 style art is actually a VERY interesting take

But I like 8-bit and 16-bit stuff.