MD13
Formerly howler1313
- Joined
- Jun 27, 2009
- Messages
- 7,266
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- 123
I don't play them too much any more, mostly because Western RPGs have largely overtaken them from a story-telling perspective. It used to be, if you wanted a great, epic story, you had to buy Japanese games. Now, though, there are dozens of great RPGs from the US and other Western countries that have generally surpassed what Japanese companies have been outputting. Games like Divinity: Original Sin and The Witcher 3 feel almost light years ahead of what most Japanese companies are doing these days. It's hard for me to even think of a modern Japanese RPG that compares to either.
My favorites from the old days are FFIX and Chrono Trigger. Two classics. I actually replayed FFIX recently when they released the Steam remaster. It was still great. Love all the characters in that one, and I liked how, unlike most modern Final Fantasy games, it actually felt like fantasy rather than the shitty sci-fi the single-player games have mostly veered toward since.
And I still really wish Square would make a fucking Steam version of Chrono Trigger. Literally free money for them. No idea why companies that have an absolute classic like that just refuse to re-release it on the PC. All that does is promote piracy when many, many people would just buy it.
I started playing FFXV recently, and my first impression was how similar to The Witcher 3 it seemed: open world rpg, combat feels very similar, even the Chocobo aspect feels a lot like Roach. Turns out the team loved the Witcher 3 and played a ton of it while making their game, so naturally the fingerprints were all over the final product.
In the end, it feels like a bit of a blend between JRPGs and W3, but just a poor man's version of W3. That isn't criticism, just about any other game pales in comparison to the Witcher 3 in terms of storytelling and ambition in an RPG.
In comparison, Persona 5 feels as JRPG as it gets. The style was excellent, the storytelling started out incredible although I thought it lost a lot of steam as it went along, and the slice of life aspect was a great counter to the dungeon gameplay. My big problem with it was the boring combat system, which was really no different than anything that could have come out in the late 90s. I'm still not sure why most JRPG's keep the same combat system despite all the increased possibilities from better graphics and increased processing power, and it brings down an overall incredible game in P5.