kid_gloves

12 Minutes

Mitt Roarie

Mega Man X6

346

@ziegfredzsm: Kinda right?

The characters aren't players, and the universe isnt strictly a game. Its a actual digital universe that was created that people in "4D space" can enter and interact with the inhabitants, its not a MMO and all the characters in the games are AI that came about naturally in the universe simulation. Any 4d people entering to interact would have their own different avatars and I dont think there has ever been an example of one in the games.... maybe welch?

Either way its a kinda silly twist that isnt completely pulled off the best way, but also its not bad and doesnt ruin anything.

Its a specific trait of japanese genre fiction, its not even particularly unique to JRPGs which IMO are less overrun by hero's journey than they are coming of age stories. A good example would be the Yakuza games, starring a man who starts in his late 30s then eventually is near 50 by the end of his arc, Kiryu is every bit as naive and idealistic as your typical JRPG lead. I think it comes down to a larger focus on ideals as a story telling device, they are less interested in gritty details and minutia and more on bigger ideas that divide or lead people/groups. You point out the plucky heroes but just as common is the well meaning idealistic bad guy who believes what they are doing is for the better of all. I do not see this as a bad thing or even an annoying thing, its just a different perspective on plot and character..... the very good ones do more with it and develop beyond cookie cutter characters and tropes while the lesser games use it as a crutch. As others have pointed out the western style is just as trope heavy and filled with identical plots but just with different tropes they focus on, to me an idealistic romp for well meaning good in a jrpg is an antidote to the countless gruff cynical everyone and everything is fucked tales coming out of the west. They are different types of unrealistic, in the jrpg sense it is realistic that a person would believe those things and work towards them..... unrealistic that they would accomplish much with it; for the western ones its realistic that a world is not black and white and good doesnt always triumph.... but unrealistic that the violent cynics are or would be heroic in any way (I BELIEVE IN NOTHING BUT KILLING THE BAD GUYS).

Anyways its not counter to your criticism of JRPGs sharing a lot of DNA but a game series like the Falcom Trails series or the Suikoden games take those starting points of common tropes, then just go the extra miles developing the characters and situations into being far more complex and interesting. Suikoden with its plots of civil war and family, Trails with its intense focus on developing every character (even npcs) into being fully formed 3d characters. And honestly that is what tropes are for, they are a shorthand so that we can understand a character quickly and get up to speed, the good stuff builds off that. Tropes are not bad.

There are JRPGs that deviate from this stuff, but they are rarely the big budget mainstays. Absolutely never expect DQ to be anything but what it has always been, the series is great but its almost about being a comfortingly similar tale each time, FF is designed to market to the largest base possible. Try stuff more off the beaten path, SMT games are rarely about coming of age (outside persona), the tactics genre is usually not as well so try Tactics Ogre or Front Mission. Radiant Historia is a really overlooked DS (and recently re-released on 3DS) traditional time hopping jrpg starring an adult mercenary with loss issues. The Shadow Hearts games are really good too (getting kinda expensive though) in their strange setting and oddball characters. I would stay away from Tales of games, I enjoy them enough but they are jrpg/anime trope heaven and much of the enjoyment is getting to know the characters and seeing how they will slightly tweak expectations of those tropes game to game.

Gran Pulse was fun for a short while since its open and lets you fully tinker with all the moving parts of the battle system, then I got tired of the battle system and never picked the game up again.

Basically I fell for the same trap you did @zombiepie, people saying it gets better at this point and me pushing myself to get there. But the story keeps falling apart in new and worse ways, why is anything happening? Letting me tinker with the battle system just burned me out on the one thing I kinda liked about the game..... IT WAS A TRAP!

I never continued playing past this point, I asked my brother a week after I got there "does the story ever make any good on any of my numerous questions" and he basically said no so I quit.

Yes the bosses are harder in games earlier than Ys Seven, but not greatly though. Grinding is a minor thing in these games and doing so can change a boss from seemingly impossible to not that hard (depending on the boss, and patterns). The game pre and post Ys seven are less about trading blows and more about not getting hit and memorizing patterns, if you made it though 6 Felghana shouldn't be too much of an issue.... but I remember the first couple of bosses being harder than normal. Just grind a couple of levels and you should be good to go, thankfully since the games combat is so fast paced grinding a couple of levels shouldnt take more than 15-20 minutes.... something I really love about the series.

@lentfilms: I only do so if they know they "like" the series. If you plan on playing them all or at least the modern ones then going back to less refined ones may not be the best idea.

I will agree with your choices for the best ones though, I think I may like Celcetta better than VIII just a bit.

As a long time Ys fan I can shed some light on why Seven is usually not considered one of the best. There are probably many minor quibbles like: the PSP being the target meant lower res textures and a less technically impressive game, it is the first game to go all polygons for character and enemy models and the old sprite work was great, it being handheld only (for a long time) being a big shift. But really the major reason Seven is considered a lesser Ys game is that it was the first game in the series to do a dodge button (instead of jump) and the first one to have multiple characters with switching and the slash/blunt/pierce dynamic. Now that is not a bad change it just replaces something that had been refined over the course of the previous 3 games and as a result you get a more unrefined experience that isnt as tightly tuned. The next game made (Celcetta) for Vita improved and refined the system and Ys 8 refined it further and are better games because of iteration on the concept. So it isnt that Seven is bad its that its the most unrefined of its combat engine, people have similar feelings about Ys 6 because it was the first with its combat engine too.

So I would recommend that 6 or seven be peoples first game in their respective engines (6, Felghana, Origins are the same engine Seven/Celcetta/8 are the same engine) because then you get to see the combat improve along with playing through them, going backwards might be more difficultt.

edit: Also welcome to the Ys series! There isn't a bad game in the bunch and they are all an old-school joy to play. No dev currently working understands what people liked about jrpgs in the 80s/90s more than falcom (i guess because they were making them then too!) and they are keeping the classic spirit alive.