On the topic of Square Enix, they have released 8 or more Dragon Quest games, yet no one complains about them. It seems that people just hate FF becuase it's popular, a common theme I see here on The Escapist.

There is definitely something wrong there ff is awesome and dragon quest is not worthy of being played.

AHEM!

WILD ARMS

FOR.....THE.....FUCKING...WIN.

Joeshie:

shadow skill:

harhol:

Joeshie:
Nice going on completely failing there, Mr. Weeaboo.

How/why is he a weeaboo?

I don't think he really knows what it means. It's also funny that he brings up straw men when you actually look at the previous responses what Terra is talking about in the last quote block isn't a straw man at all.

My calling him a weeaboo is a joke, due to the fact that he will go to lengths of using logical fallacies to defend Japan.

I don't buy this whole "but it's just a cultural difference!" bullshit. That kind of excuse has a place, but certainly not in this discussion.

You keep telling yourself that, I see two very, very dead genres being pumped out of the West and the East (one each.) I could say that the entire gaming industry is behind when it comes to techniques used in the rest of the software development world (Apparently code sharing is a new concept to these people.) but it doesn't matter at all as long as the games are good. The problem with the idea that Western developers are ahead of their Eastern counterparts is that the quality of the games themselves isn't actually any better for all of their technical wizardry even if we are jusst talking big names! Haze is probably a very competent, perhaps even amazing product technically, but it's still horrible as a game, where as Tales of Vesperia may be a very simple product technically but is good as far as a game goes, or there is this one Dragon ball game for the PS1 that was so bad technically it was laughable. I remember saying to my brother "This game is someone's final exam, granted it's an A++, but it's still a final exam." it still managed to be kind of fun too.

There is definitely something wrong there ff is awesome and dragon quest is not worthy of being played.

You know that Dragon Quest games are not allowed to be released on weekdays in Japan. That series is actually bigger than FF in Japan where as it's kind of dead over here.

Daymo: They do not really try to bring the DQ games to western territories as much as FF in the first place it still doesn't negate the need for FF to die though. Do you honestly expect people living in Western territories to make remarks about a franchise that is relatively obscure in the territories they actually live in?

Mizaki:
This thread is starting to smell like vogue-cynicism, nostalgia, bias, and wank.

Seriously, guys, only elitist RPG fans who hate everything are ranting about Japan falling behind. And by that, I mean wsterners who equate intellect to worth. We live in the west. So when we go to our local game stores, we see western titles. We look at the TV, and see western titles. Well, we're in THE WEST. Of course in an ethnocentric and xenophobic society, only the big fish in the other ponds will be visible with the awful telescope we're given. When it comes down to it, both gaming cultures are falling behind. We just live here so we're being bludgeoned with the games that are popular here. Everything is a franchise. These companies are old now. They're riding off of previous success. Most of them at least. And I will shamelessly go against the grain and say Square Enix is not one of them. If you want to say this and that or blow the other out of proportion due to the inevitable Gamer's Nostalgia, that's just fine. But there actually are people who really like the games made after the year 1997. In fact.. gasp.. things are actually likeable after '97! I'd hate for Enix to stop making Final Fantasy games because of the ridiculous backlash people have bandwagoned themselves into starting. There are always the bunch of people who claim that everything on the planet was better when they were young. And really, I wish people would understand if even just for a WEEK, that they're saying it for all the wrong reasons and it isn't at all constructive. It gets annoying when everything leads to "All RPGs (read: All 3D Final Fantasy games) are bad! And about emo (WHAT?!) feminine (....WHAT?!) boys (okay you got that one)!" There's plenty of people who like these games and play them with their eyes open and their hands on the controller. Please respect them.

Great post. I agree with pretty much everything you said, especially the part about people dismissing every single RPG because of their experiences with a Final Fantasy game.

Alphavillain:

geldonyetich:
As a 25 year gamer, I'm left thinking anyone who classifies games by their ethnicity is inadvertently demonstrating a kind of racism. Games are games, nationality hardly matters, and whether you want a JRPG-style command box or a point and click interface is just a difference in design decision.

Rubbish. Where something comes from defines what it is. How sad you have to use the racism card: very simplistic reasoning

I live in America. While we certainly have our flaws (such as an unfortunate preponderance to vote conservative Republican by mistaking them for a completely different philosophy that existed 30 years ago - a mistake which has ultimately fucked our economy and the rest of the world and their opinion of us) one thing we do have going for us is a good perspective to understand of the flaws of cultural relativism.

In "the melting pot" (as this country is sometimes referred to) people tend to come from everywhere, and their culture rubs off on the inhabitants. You can have a fellow living here, without any Japanese descent anywhere in his family tree, and he might like to draw Anime. What's more, how old you believe Anime is? People are inventing new art forms all the time. Just because it was invented in Japan does not make it a uniquely Japanese artform.

You find it sad that I'm not willing to accept the concept of art being restricted by national boundaries due to simplistic reasoning. I find it sad that you're insisting art is restricted by national boundaries because that is the simpler reasoning - a common assumption made by any philistine. Assuming the art a person is capable producing is due to their descent is very close to racism. It does, at least, make it easy to sell you bric-a-brac and insist it's worth so much because it's genuine Japanese.

On a more even-handed reflection, sorting art by nationality is simply a classification made to make it easier for ourselves to keep things organized in our head. Personally, in seeking the truth of things, I try to remove unnecessary classifications. That's why I found the falsehood in the argument that Japanese games are inherently flawed: the individuals within Japan, and their unique perspective, make it impossible for all members of a culture to make the same mistake.

Are you really 25?

If you read carefully, you'll see I said I was a 25-year gamer, not a 25-year-old-gamer. I just turned 32 on Christmas.

shadow skill:
You keep telling yourself that, I see two very, very dead genres being pumped out of the West and the East (one each.) I could say that the entire gaming industry is behind when it comes to techniques used in the rest of the software development world (Apparently code sharing is a new concept to these people.) but it doesn't matter at all as long as the games are good. The problem with the idea that Western developers are ahead of their Eastern counterparts is that the quality of the games themselves isn't actually any better for all of their technical wizardry even if we are jusst talking big names! Haze is probably a very competent, perhaps even amazing product technically, but it's still horrible as a game, where as Tales of Vesperia may be a very simple product technically but is good as far as a game goes, or there is this one Dragon ball game for the PS1 that was so bad technically it was laughable. I remember saying to my brother "This game is someone's final exam, granted it's an A++, but it's still a final exam." it still managed to be kind of fun too.

If you are using Tales of Vesperia as the best the East has to offer, then you are just proving my point. I mean, I'm playing through Tales of Vesperia right now and enjoying it, but it's nowhere near the execution or quality of games like Fallout 3 or Fable 2.

It's pretty simple to see that America beats out Japan not only on technical execution, but quality as well. I mean, what fantastic games came out of Japan this year? Basically, just Metal Gear Solid 4 and Super Smash Brothers. What did America put out? Fallout 3, Dead Space, Far Cry 2, Left 4 Dead, World of Goo, Rock Band 2, Braid, Boom Blox and the list goes on.

I guess you could continue to ignore actual Japanese developers agreement with me on the matter or you could just continue to blindly defend Japan.

You know there was Disgaea 3, Valkyria Chronicles, Tales of Vesperia, Persona 3 and 4. But oh my god an opinion from a developer who really is just one person is so valid on something that is predicated almost entirely on opinion! I have news for you developers of any kind can sometimes be the absolute worst people to ask about the quality of a software product precisely because they know so much about it! Case in point a programmer might tell you that having whitespace be meaningful to the computer is a good thing, where as someone who actually understands how the human brain works on the subconscious level will tell you that syntactic indentation is just one way to screw up programmers more and is not a good thing to have.

Let's get back to games, Fable 2 is bug riddled mess, how is that an example of such awesome quality? Gears of War 2 has it's own share of rather interesting online related bugs, Socom Confrontation was practically unplayable, Far Cry 2 had a game breaking bug on the PC. Assassin's Creed had some interesting bugs too.

But oh the opinion of one developer or a company or two now means that your argument is true as if there are no developers or companies that think the exact opposite! There are plenty of companies that do not find the PS3 difficult to develop for, which of course implies that the issue isn't relative difficulty; but rather how different the PS3 is from other more conventional architectures and the fact that parallel programming is still extremely new. But I should ignore all of those facts and conclude that the PS3 is hard to develop for.

Go ahead and ignore all the game destroying or near game destroying bugs in these supposedly higher quality western games if you like. But I do have an advantage over Japanese people living in Japan when it comes to critiquing western games..... I actually live in a western territory.

Eiseman:

Cadren:

I'd really like Square to make a JRPG with a realistic sense of politics or games where they world doesn't end up supporting you and some armies that continue to fight for reasons that aren't demon possession or something similar.

They did that in FFXII. And yeah, it was very refreshing to end up fighting to save your country instead of the whole damn planet. And yet the game brought on more haters than lovers. And guess what their number one complaint was?

Ungrateful hacks.

I don't really see how it was it was that different. FFXII had a villian manipulated by other worldly forces that would free the world trough the deaths of thousands, a standard anime trope. Not to mention that all of Dalmasca was united against a common foe, if only using different methods, as well as Rozarria. Even in the ending, the opposing army that you had been fighting stops fighting and helps save Rabanastre.

In terms of character development, Ashe and Balthier are well developed, but Fran, Penelo and Basch just seem along for most of the game. The only time the get any important screen time or development is where their particular story side quests take the light for a few seconds.

So have you guys who are bashing JRPGs played...

- any Suikoden games
- any Xeno- games
- any MegaTen games

?

Because it doesn't sound like it. Square Enix aren't the be all and end all.

Never played Mega Ten, but I love Suikoden and he Xeno games. But, considering that there hasn't been a Xeno games in over two years and no talk is on the horizon of another one, and the last Suikoden was close to three years ago with just a spin off coming up anytime soon, I don't think those series are very strong right now.

Joeshie:

What did America put out? Dead Space, Rock Band 2.

To be honest, Rock Band is nothing more than Guitar Freaks with a different play list, and Dead Space isnīt very original either.

minoes:
To be honest, Rock Band is nothing more than Guitar Freaks with a different play list, and Dead Space isnīt very original either.

True, neither are necessarily original, but both are of fantastic quality. That was my original point.

shadow skill:
You know there was Disgaea 3, Valkyria Chronicles, Tales of Vesperia, Persona 3 and 4. But oh my god an opinion from a developer who really is just one person is so valid on something that is predicated almost entirely on opinion! I have news for you developers of any kind can sometimes be the absolute worst people to ask about the quality of a software product precisely because they know so much about it! Case in point a programmer might tell you that having whitespace be meaningful to the computer is a good thing, where as someone who actually understands how the human brain works on the subconscious level will tell you that syntactic indentation is just one way to screw up programmers more and is not a good thing to have.

Tales of Vesperia, as I and many others have already explained, is a good but very flawed RPG. Disegaea 3 is pretty good, but has it's fair share of gameplay flaws, and Persona 4 and Valkyria Chronicles were excellent games, no doubt.

Apparently though, you have missed the fact that there are several Japanese developers who pointed towards this problem, and not just one or two. Perhaps you should have actually read the articles I linked.

shadow skill:
Let's get back to games, Fable 2 is bug riddled mess, how is that an example of such awesome quality? Gears of War 2 has it's own share of rather interesting online related bugs, Socom Confrontation was practically unplayable, Far Cry 2 had a game breaking bug on the PC. Assassin's Creed had some interesting bugs too.

Buggy those games were, certainly. However, they also blow away 99% of Japanese games released this year in terms of gameplay quality. I'll take a fantastic game with a few bugs than a decent game with no bugs any day of the week. Plus, it's not as if Japanese games are immune to buggy problems either.

shadow skill:
Go ahead and ignore all the game destroying or near game destroying bugs in these supposedly higher quality western games if you like. But I do have an advantage over Japanese people living in Japan when it comes to critiquing western games..... I actually live in a western territory.

No, that's really not an advantage. It just means that you are possibly a weeaboo.

And what with you continuing to ignore the increasing number of developers that think Japanese developers have lost their edge, it just makes you sound more and more like a pathetic weeaboo.

Several versus how many Japanese developers, I've been saying in this entire thread that both Western and Eastern developers are suffering from uninspired games. To talk only about technical edge is to miss what a game is, as a whole. It really doesn't matter if your physics engine is more advanced if the game does not friggin work in the first place. You sound like someone in an abusive relationship, you would rather have bugs that literally destroy the fun you have with a game than have a game that actually works with slightly flawed mechanics. (Which all games will have anyway.)

Let's take a look at some of these links:

Takeuchi confesses to Japanese magazine Famitsu: "I'm worried about the movements of Western developers. Japan is now their target — it's the last big marketplace. The truth is that Western studios are making great games, and they're going to continue to do so next year too."

The Capcom producer hopes that his company (and other companies, too) can churn out big hits to lure Japanese players back. "It's not good if Japanese developers are making games that can't be enjoyed by Japanese people," he adds. Competition is a good thing, and something that will hopefully help all players benefit.

Better Western games, better Japanese games, happier gamers everywhere.

Where does he say Westeners are making better games than Japanese, The Wii is completely destroying both the 360 and the PS3 in Japan, the PS3 is doing better than the 360 in Japan. What he is saying is that Western developers are trying to make in roads into the Japanese market frankly he sounds more paranoid than anything else. Possibly even xenophobic. Japanese numbers overall say differently than Mr. Takeuchi.

As I said earlier in the thread, it's companies like Square soft that have a real problem but that problem started long before this generation of consoles. They did lose it, but they meaning compaanies like Square lost it, I haven't seen a Capcom game this generation that was made of fail yet. In fact the last two major releases from Capacom that I have played in Bionic Commando: Rearmed, and SFII HD Remix were excellent.

When people see something different for the first time there is a certain degree of novelty. Being so quick to say "ZOMG the sky has fallen" does not make them correct. It's not fun to have your game crash on you or lag to shit etc. As soon as they stop hyper ventilating like idiots they will see that this kind of crap happens fairly often with this generation' biggest western titles.

Looking at this with a clear head I see that Western developers are having a bit of trouble figuring out the Japanese gamer, and Japanese developers are having the exact same problem when it comes to the Western gamer. This doesn't translate to one actually being better than the other when it comes to making games, both have their own very clear problems.

I wonder what the Japanese gamers actually think, really I do. I already know that here in the West many gamers think Final Fantasy (and some of the other bigger names.) are all that there is when it comes to Jrpgs. I know from experience that people who are actually on the inside of an industry can't always see the forest for the trees (Like how broken many big name western games actually are.), hell there are plenty of developers who can't seem to have someone actually hold a goddamn controller in their hands long enough to figure out how shitty their controls are.

I can't count how many games I've had fall apart on me because I dared not to use the defaults because the other options made certain essential things all but physically impossible to do.

What are people's thoughts on Suda51's games (killer7, No More Heroes)? They are Japanese and original IPs, and have attracted quite a following among certain circles. I have not played any of these games (yet!), but I have heard good things.

We also need to remember that at the end of the day, all of these games companies are out there to make money, so if the new brain training sells 5 tmes as many copies as Zelda, it is clear where the developers attention and money is going to be focused.

notascleverasithinkiam:
What are people's thoughts on Suda51's games (killer7, No More Heroes)? They are Japanese and original IPs, and have attracted quite a following among certain circles. I have not played any of these games (yet!), but I have heard good things.

We also need to remember that at the end of the day, all of these games companies are out there to make money, so if the new brain training sells 5 tmes as many copies as Zelda, it is clear where the developers attention and money is going to be focused.

Those guys are the future, plain and simple. See the big dev houses like Square are all running around like idiots because they don't know what to do right now. It's these guys that really need to just go away so that the people with real creativity can step in.

Furthermore the new crop need to get away from game engines that run on the level of the PS2. It's fucked up to look at a game that is lots of fun, but looks like a damn PS2 game on my PS3 or 360. It seems as if the people actually making the Jrpgs worth playing are largely still on the PS2, I can't blame them for that but they should not be afraid to actually make a game that is visually worthy of the current consoles.

If the games industry has a God it is Suda51.

I don't think you can really argue that all of the games from an entire country are going downhill.