First of all, Final Fantasy is not the Dark Souls of the NES. Every game was Dark Souls on the NES, or even worse. The whole thing about Demon's/Dark Souls was trying to return to some of the more challenging gameplay of earlier game design so I resent applying a label of a throwback to the very original thing those games are throwing back to! Not that FF itself was particularly hard, but still...
That's not to say there aren't any good JRPGs after 2010 or so. They've started to evolve with things like Xenoblade Chronicles X bringing more action and dynamism to combat, and throwbacks like I Am Setsuna trying to clear away a lot of the cruft that built up over time, but if you don't like anime you're only going to get a few options a year if that. Anime is what the genre offers to a large degree at this point, and its what the real audience expects.
TL:DR After action games got good stories JRPGs went up their own butts with anime bullshit in order to offer something different to their fanbase. Now there are very few games coming out in the genre that are appealing to people who don't want that. It's kind of sad, but it makes business sense.
I know, the Dark Souls thing was a joke. ^_^ tee hee. I couldn't agree more, technology and adaptability created stagnation in the style of Japanese RPG development. On one hand they have steady jobs and don't outsource at such a high rate, on the other hand a lot of modern Japanese game development seems to be expensive and disastrous with questionable results. Xenoblade is a series I've always been desperate to play, it looks like it was made for me, but the barrier for me is not wanting to buy another Nintendo system until it has well proven its worth. First party titles aren't enough for me. I hear I Am Setsuna's creators are making a new game Lost Sphear that appears to improve upon the first games issues. I guess I need to get over my anime issues, it isn't impossible. I watched Seven Deadly Sins, that's a start right?
I think JRPGs have always been anime adjacent, it just became more obvious over time. There's plenty that are bad but I really enjoy Valkyria Chronicles (the og), Xenoblade Chronicles, Tales of Berseria, Dark/Demon Souls, and Ni No Kuni. I emjoy their anime bullshit more than not.
True. All amazing games. Being one trophy away from a Ni No Kuni platinum still haunts me.
This game is straight up garbage. I'm surprised you even listed the soundtrack as a positive since a number of the tracks are just lifted right out of 3 and 4. I gave up after dying once against the human commander guy where it hits a big difficulty spike and never finished it but I feel like I played enough to be justifiably offended by it's existence.
See, that's basically what I was saying in many more words. I was trying to be nice, I don't think they even re-recorded the tracks from SO4, just pasted the files in. It also felt like the battle animations were directly lifted from that game, too. You do all the same moves and the new ones take a ton of quest grinding to learn.
Terrific write-up. You can and should expect more from your JRPGs. I haven't played this entry, but I've played most of the others and your assessments are spot on. Dumbing down ROGs isn't what Japan needs - it's a change in the formulaic anime trope stylings and characters that would reinvigorate the genre for the west.
I agree, I felt like tri-Ace set a high standard for battle system complexity in the PSX era and there isn't any good reason to dumb things down. A game like Nioh is accessible, despite several complex systems and gameplay mechanics, because you can still find success if you ignore most of those intricacies. As for your point about anime tropes, I was going to point towards Persona 5 as a step in the right direction... but there is so much of the game I haven't seen I could be way off.
Your mentioning Tales of Phantasia and all the buzz around that game in the SNES emulation scene at the time definitely brought a lot back :) That was one of the first games I ever emulated as well.
Have you played Lost Dimension on Vita/PS3? I really enjoyed that one.
As for getting your money's worth, I reviewed a couple recently that I got sent for free and still had a terrible time. Akiba's Beat and Dark Rose Valkyrie. After the shallow fun of Akiba's Trip Akiba's Beat was just a boring slog (steals the Tales of combat system actually). Dark Rose Valkyrie is better but I think the main issue with it is every battle taking so long, the characters and story are actually pretty decent.
I don't have Lost Dimension but I'd certainly give it a try, PS3 games are pretty cheap right now. Akiba's Trip was on sale at a GameStop a while back, didn't buy it because normal people were looking, lol. I was looking up Exist Archive on Vita, which I guess is tri-Ace in some capacity. Wondering if that is any good?
To me Star Ocean has always been a series I wish was better than they actually were. Granted I've put spent very little time with second story which is usually considered the best one.
As for Vita recommendations, gonna bang the Trails of Cold Steel drum (and by extension Trails in the Sky). They're anime rpgs done right.
I'd say you're spot on, really. I mean you could argue that Grandia II and a few Tales games did it better, but they also did it even more anime. I'll definitely start the Trails of Cold Steel games, since they're highly recommended in general... but if I play as a teenage girl I'm gonna be pissed.
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