Will we ever see a JRPG resurgence?

In my opinion, JRPGs have been increasingly hamstrung by the demand by western gamers for a branching cinematic experience (as seen in Final Fantasy XIII), which has meant that their once grand scope has been diminished as more production time goes towards the visuals.

People said it about Final Fantasy VII compared to VI, X, compared to VII and XIII compared to X. The demand for graphical perfection has meant that what people actually want (a large overworld, a compelling story and interesting characters, situations and side-quests) is getting prioritised out of existence.

The reason Final Fantasy XIII was so streamlined was because if had been broader in scope (comparable to say, Final Fantasy IX) with the same production values, it would have taken years longer to make, probably wouldn't have fit on 10 DVD discs and will have been even more astronomically expensive to produce than it already was.

So what I'm saying is that High Definition killed the JRPG, and as soon as we settle with the new concept, just as we did with 3D, and as the next generation of consoles rolls around, all games (JRPGs included) will see a return to the breadth of content that we used to expect from games. Hopefully. Alternatively production costs will continue to rise, gamers will continue to demand increasingly Modern Warefare-esque attention to set-pieces, and thus highly specific graphical design, at the cost of the developers time producing an open, expansive and interesting world. That actually sounds far more likely. Skyrim is proof that such a game (scope-wise) can still be produced, it's just a question of whether the Japanese games industry will return to what made it great, or continue to pander to Western tastes with slapdash emulations of Western design.

@Bourbon_Warrior said:

@Tuffgong said:

The question really is whether JRPG's will make a comeback in the states akin to their heigh between the NES and the Playstation era. Like fighting games I doubt it will be the same but I'm sure we'll see it happen. However what those games will be that are labeled "JRPG" will have to be different in some way to justify itself. It can't just be the same old tired hat and that's been the reality of a lot of major JRPG releases for the last decade. That difference has been handhelds for Japan domestically but handheld gaming is most obviously a drastically changing beast now with the advent of iOS gaming.

Really what it takes is more than just one, maybe two, exciting devs from Japan to bring over their JPRG's over successfully to justify it like it once was. It can't just be Atlus making the cool stuff and Squeenix making these bloated projects that people might not even like anyway. Part of the reason we're even having this discussion is that the Japanese game industry is in a weird spot right now.

Never, JRPGs were only Popular in 90s/early 00's cause they did the most you could do with the tech limits. Look at skyrim its just leaps and bounds ahead of FFXIII now, who new to games would seriously pick up a JRPG over a Skyrim. I really want a good JRPG again but maybe just one real good one every couple of years but I cant see them surviving as really I think the only people that are even interested now are people who gamed in the 90s and has the nostolgia attached to them and that will slowly drop away as more people keep getting burned again and again, Square Enix just needs to figure out to cater to these people instead of going in crazy new routes like 13 did, and just accept they not gonna pull in the numbers they used too so maybe just lower the budget of these games and set their sales expectations lower.

I'm actually that 1% of people who chose a JRPG over Skyrim. Christmas time came around and Skyrim was the only major title I haven't played. The game received much praise from everyone so I got it - while at the same time somewhat intrigued by FF13-2 I ordered FF13 used. I put in a solid 10 hours or so into Skyrim and when FF13 came in the mail I popped it in to see exactly how that weird battle system worked. Now I'm roughly 28 hours into FF13 and I feel no desire to go back into Skyrim anytime soon. Not to say it's a bad game or anything like that - just FF13 offers narrative, characters for me to care about and a plot I want to see to the end on levels that Skyrim just can't touch.

I couldn't disagree more about just catering to the same crowd. I believe in exactly the opposite of trying to continuously innovate their systems and exploration elements until a broader and broader audience feels more at ease giving them a try. I'm not a huge fan of JRPGs at all and the reason I keep going in FF13 is that I enjoy the battle system quite a lot and am genuinely interested in the plot and seeing how it plays out. The world of fal'cie and l'cie, Cocoon and Pulse is much more interesting to me than another high fantasy RPG with wolves, elves and swords because I've played those games so many times already. The worst thing to happen to the JRPG genre would be to stay stagnant and keep reproducing the same type of game catering to an older audience that is slowly dying out. Technology has progressed and we definitely need more action in our RPG's to have some sort of a show. On the NES those turn based systems were great because that worked. Currently I want that dream I had as a kid of watching cool cutscenes for games and thinking "one day in the future this will be gameplay and it will be so awesome."

If they can afford it they should definitely release their games with as much fanfare as possible. Gain more fans and spur the interest of people that are curious about the world and are willing to give the gameplay a chance.

@vidiot: Yeah I neglected to mention in my post that the graphic capabilities of the consoles of the JRPG golden era weren't able to produce the artwork so you could see that Japanese style I was talking about.

Now with the better graphics you have the Japanese fashion/culture (that Koreans are also fond of) much more visible. Harder to identify with coming from a Western view. A big part of RPG's is being able to identify with your character. Hence why I said JRPG's death is probably due to the cultural influence. Sure, its a big generalisation but I believe it rings true.

The traditional JRPG has fallen out of favor with the general gaming public because anime and manga have as well. RPGs couldn't be more popular, but the western audience at large isn't interested anymore in the Japanese storytelling style and character archetypes. When/if anime becomes popular again, I suspect that JRPGs will see a resurgence as well.

I finished Shadow Hearts Covenant a week ago and I'm now playing Shadow Hearts From the New World and I like the SH series. It's not as good as WRPG's though which has been my cup of tea ever since KotOR in 2003, but JRPG's are still fine. you just have to look at some of the less known games like Mana Khemia, Shadow Hearts and such instead of the Final Fantasies. I've not cared for FF in over a decade.

My biggest problem with JRPG's is that there is no role-playing. I can't choose anything, or at least not much compared to KotOR, DA and ME and such. All I can do is push X and read whatever the devs have decided my character is rather than choosing myself who he or she is. Also I prefer to create my own character and never play as the default model, that is my biggest problem with The Witcher as a WRPG btw.

I still look forward to every Dragon Quest release (the RPGs not the spin-offs) and hope that the "big news" from Atlus is a firm date for Persona 5. I don't know if we'll ever see the same type of widespread popularity with JRPGs among Western gamers again, but the same can be said of RTS and simulation games. Change is a natural phase of life and sometimes entire genres fall out of taste. As hard as it may be for some to believe, someday military shooters might loose favor with the mass audience. The upside is that this brings in opportunities for developers to create something new. Maybe, someday there will be something as equally captivating coming out of Japan for Western gamers as JRPGs once were, or maybe we'll all be playing Eastern-Block RPGs with slapped together U.I.s and and wonky stability issues.

@SoldierG654342: In Japan and Korea they are still very popular.

@Rebel_Scum said:

@SoldierG654342: In Japan and Korea they are still very popular.

I know, I was assuming that this topic was directed specifically at JRPGs and Western markets.

@vidiot: I wouldn't say that your argument about FFXIII is a particularly strong case. While XIII does remove towns and NPC interaction almost entirely, its core combat system is its own take on the Active Time Battle that Square devised decades before. Even with very narrow gameplay focus, the combat is not that far removed from, say, Final Fantasy VI or VII, as there's an obvious relationship there. FFXII on the other hand has a very different combat system that, while it might have some relation to Active Time Battle, it is so buried underneath everything else going on between gambits and active character positioning and everything else, that it's arguably its own beast. XII also takes focus away from the characters and puts it more on the wider conflict. At the same time, it still has a sort of structural consistency with earlier games.

But yeah, this debate has been done to death. :P