Are you completely put off of a game if it has anime/ish aesthetics no matter the mechanics/story/music/everythingelse?

I don't like anime, but I played Ni No Kuni, Valkyria Chronicles, Tales of Symphonia, etc.

Not 100% of the time but not far either.

Not if it's the art style alone. It just so happens that most games with an anime art style suffer from having the kinda story and characters I can't tolerate.

No because I'm not an idiot who hates things I don't understand.

Of course not, that's silly.

Nope. I don't really like anime that much (though I guess the fact that I have watched a couple subtitled anime means that I probably know more about anime than many) but I certainly don't mind anime games. I grew up on JRPGs and my favorite fighter is P4A.

Anime art style is totally fine. I'm more put off by it if the writing seems way too anime. Looking at you, every Tales and Kingdom Hearts game ever.

I make exceptions if the game doesn't take itself too seriously and is just good, lighthearted adventure (Chrono Trigger, Skies of Arcadia, etc.).

No, I had an anime phase like 80% of people who grew up in the Toonami (DBZ, that dude with all the girlfriends, the one miniseries with Blue in the title) / WB (Pokemon, Digimon) era so it doesn't really bother me.

But I do sometimes worry that if I jumped on my eagerness to replay Kingdom Hearts II in its HD Final Mix state I'd get fed up with the Heartless end of things way too quickly even if that game was fun enough to hit level 99 the first around.

I get put off when writing and dialogue and voice acting is bad, which anime visuals usually portend.

No.

This for me. The aesthetic gives me a bad first impression, the gameplay and writing would have to convince me otherwise.

I'm not the biggest fan of anime (got into it briefly during the 90's like everyone else), but no.

I've stopped playing games that had that art style because the story plods along and feels like it's catered to 11-year-olds. Y'know, the ones where the spunky, platonic female friend constantly puts her hands on her hips? That's incidental, though.

What about hating things that the visual artists of those games seem to not understand (coherent facial anatomy)?

Anyway, not completely put off, but poor graphics do make games a hard sell for me.

It really depends. Straight up anime doesn't immediately put me off, but whether or not it adheres to some of the more gross/unfortunate aspects of anime will decide if I continue to be interested. Ni No kuni is a perfect example of an anime centric game being wholly enjoyable for me.

No, but I do find they obey negative stereotypes of that kind of story/writing/acting more often than not though.

I made a real effort to like Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, Eternal Sonata and Ni No Kuni this generation and felt they were all deeply hampered by older, creaky writing and pacing conventions of their genre. I loved elements of each and spent many hours trying to learn to love them despite their flaws. But holy christ... No wonder that genre is dying.

I weirdly enjoyed Nier though.

I share the same feelings. As someone that grew up watching anime, I can deal with the visual style, but when it's compounded with shitty writing and uninteresting ideas, I lose interest fast.

It's the reason why I don't mess with anime too much anymore; same ol' shit, just a different name.

Yes. Get that Japanime shit out of my face.

I don't think I'm ever put off by anything just from inspection of visual style. I won't necessarily be offended by anyone who does, though.

I mean accepting artwork as stylized as anime is basically a matter of taste, just like there was an impressionistic style of artwork and a realist style of artwork two-ish centuries ago. Some people appreciate certain styles, some people reject them. No use getting upset at each other over preferences like that!

We can all coexist!

Hell no. I wouldn't have given Recettear a chance if I cared that much about artstyle.

Then again, there's the part where artstyle actually can have a negative impact on my impression of a game as a whole if the game isn't that great to begin with, like Skullgirls.

Gimme all the visual novels.

I dislike the anime aesthetic and I tend to avoid games that have that art style. However, that's always due to the fact that the majority of mainstream games with those kinds of visuals are JRPGs, a genre I strongly dislike and avoid like the plague (with maybe the exception of Pokemon, which I don't think really counts).

Not completely. But it definitely starts in the red more often than not. Just the kind of thing I often like.

Absolutely not, that's completely dumb. I can't imagine how someone could think that way. I mean, there are bad anime art-styles, but instantly being put off by anything approaching it? That's just closedminded.

Only if it's over the top it will put me off. I remember playing a Star Ocean game (I believe it was on the Xbox 360? I can't remember). I had an idea of what I was getting myself into, a Japanese RPG with teenagers and swords, I expected some anime quirkiness.. but there was a character in it that looked ridiculous and spoke in the most irritating voice and it basically put me off the entire thing.

It depends. What kind of "anime-ish" style are we talking about?

Anime is pretty wide-ranging, and preferences can vary quite heavily depending on the specific style.

Not at all. Unless it affects other parts of the game and the story starts being way too cliché

Absolutely not. It's only an art style, why would I be put off?

It can certainly have a deterrent effect but it's usually if it figures into more than just the aesthetic. For instance, Money Puzzle Exchanger is anime as all hell and that game is super fresh. Same goes with a ton of fighting games from Japan and series like Persona.

Generally this stems from my inability to get into anime in general which bleeds into a ton of games from Japan in a way I have a harder time getting behind. It also happens that tropes follow along with them and it's rather easy to ignore in those cases.

While I think there's utility in drawing out divisive answers in a pole, it seems like a lot of people's posts are either no or sometimes.

EDIT: Also how is this thread title able to be that long? I don't recall being able to make it that long.

Glad to see most of you people are rational beings.

I probably used to be more closed minded about this sort of thing. But I think a lot of that came from a feeling that a lot of eastern games were stuck in the 90's. Now it seems all western games are stuck in 2004, so the 90's are starting to feel like a breath of fresh air. For instance, I'm in middle of playing No More Heroes, Ni No Kuni, and Dragon's Dogma. They're all kind of great in their own ways.

I suppose I'm going off region of origin and not artistic style though. Whatever. If the aesthetic looks good, I'm completely okay with it.

I would actually say I'm more interested if it does. I like cutesy anime things.

That would be silly. If a game is good, I'll give it a chance. Although I like anime, so I guess it doesn't apply.

I like Jrpgs, even the generic cliche ridden ones like the Tales of series so no, I'm not put off by the art style.

@video_game_king: ANIMU HATES YOU TOO.

No! I'm playing The Guided Fate Paradox and it's anime as fuck and I love it!

It takes a lot for me to overcome the anime bullshit. I think a few games have managed to do it. Like Catherine (although I wound up hating it anyway), and... that's the only game I can think of with an anime aesthetic.

I hope the OP isn't conflating obviously Japanese aesthetics with Anime aesthetics. They really aren't the same thing, although there can be some overlap.

I don't think it's that closed minded, I often attribute a japanese anime look to a certain writing style that I dislike intensely thanks to a majority of games I've played with the art style reinforcing that for me, Star ocean the last hope I'm looking at you!

There are fantastic games with an anime style, Valkyria Chronicles was absolutely stellar when I played it but it still managed to tread the path of the kind of story alot of anime looking games do. The art style to me often indicates a type of writing that I'm just not very fond of and so I use it as a warning that the game may not be what I'm looking for in the same way that someone with a distaste for seaweed would avoid sushi or some other crap analogy.

Absolutely. Anime is the worst

(because the sailor moon reboot isn't out till january)

It's closed-minded as long as people equate a particular art style with particular writing. Writing something off because it's "anime" is engaging in reductive, simplistic thought that does nothing good for anyone.

I've played bad games because they had an anime style.

Nearly there. As fewer and fewer anime style games contain mechanics I enjoy, my ability to look past the tropes dwindles more and more

I should clarify it's not the artstyle that puts me off, just the other stuff that usually comes with it

Voted yes, but I'm rounding up by doing so. I'm also reducing the definition of anime artstyle to its most generic, as there are more realistic 'anime-inspired' art styles that don't influence me at all.

Not in the slightest

@hailinel: I just bring a heavily reinforced preconception of my own experiences to what I like and dislike since I am at this point in my life very sure of what I enjoy and do not. I do not enjoy anime art styles, other people may like or love it but it does nothing for me and detracts from my enjoyment of a game oftentimes.

You can call my personal tastes reductive and simple all you want but I know what I like and anime games certainly do not fit the criteria.

It depends on what style of anime it is. Some styles do put me off, others I find really appealing.

But to call them "anime games" is reductive, in that you're basically going in with the assumption that because a game has a particular art style, you will not like its writing or its mechanics. And what exactly constitutes an "anime" when it comes to games, anyway? Fire Emblem: Awakening, for example, features character designs that are very much in the realm of traditional anime/manga designs, yet the mechanics are widely considered top notch and the writing is good. Do you just automatically assume any game with an anime-like art style is going to be like Dragon Ball? How does this mindset even work?

I simplified to "anime games" because yes it's a way to group the style easily without dedicating a paragraph to describing styles that I'm not overly enamoured of and can't speak to in a very technical way, I'm sure people better entrenched in the games that use what I termed "anime game" style could speak in broader terms about it.

I disliked ni-no-kuni, I disliked blue dragon, fire emblem bores me to tears etc. It's not the art style itself causing my dislike of the games but it's indicative if not symptomatic of games I just do not enjoy and as such it is just pavlovian like flinch response at this point that I can near guarantee I won't enjoy what games that often use the style are offering, not through their own failings but through my personal taste.

No, because I like anime but I will say when I first say Dust: An Elysian Tale I had to double take a bit as I'm not really into cutesy, anthropomorphised characters. Luckily the combat and the game itself was supposed to be good so I gave it a shot, still need to go back and play it actually, only played about an hour or two and got distracted.

I wonder how much of a part localization plays in peoples distaste for the dialogue and writing in anime inspired games. Quite a bit if I had to hazard a guess. Voice acting is what's killing JRPG's more than anything else.