I was staying at a hospital with my dad an I ended up playing DQI and II mobile versions, I ended up enjoying them but also, it made me realize JRPGs haven't evolved at all, they just got better graphics but mechanically they're still the same. I played Ni No Kuni 2 a little before that stay and the game, despite not having random encounters, is still all about walking fighting walking fighting facing the monsters that beeline towards you which in practice is the same thing as random encounters, you just walk around and fights are forced on you because the enemy party has super high speed anyway. But the worlds still feel like wildernesses, there's no finding anything interesting in their worlds, it's always funneled to combat.
There's no finding a npc who needs a potion in a cave or any sort of non-combat content that makes it worth exploring. It's just repetitive encounters and maybe a chest with shit loot. There was that comic about the caves in Pokemon games being annoying with the zubat encounter just before the player leaves it, but the thing is that JRPGs do that with the entire game outside of towns, it's just a boring and lazy way to do an overworld, just make all places behave the same with the same monster distribution regardless if you're in the middle of nowhere or right outside of a town gate.
>I ended up playing DQI and II mobile versions, I ended up enjoying them but also, it made me realize JRPGs haven't evolved at all, they just got better graphics but mechanically they're still the same
So you played 2 old ass games and had some revelation that all new games haven't changed it up at all? Nice job, genious.
The newer ones are exactly the same. Every JRPG is and has been exactly the same for 30 years now.
Aside from DQ, you somehow came to the conclusion that ALL jrpgs have been stagnant for 20+ years? And you came to this realization by playing 2 games that are 20+ years old?
Man, I sure loved it when Dragon Quest 1 had classes, branching skills paths, alchemy, 3D graphics and multiple enemies.
Xenoblade is different
RPGs of the last two gens WISH they could be as good as PS1/PS2 ones.
Other genres aren't like this, though. If you analyze bing bing wahoo you'll notice the jump to 3D alone allowed a whole plethora of new mechanics that enhanced the platforming, they have experimented with a water gun, the planetoid systems and more. That's a lot of change in a single IP alone
Jrpgs frick around with there mechanics. Especially the Final fantasys after SNES. Yes they all had turn based combat but that's like complaining about all Mario's having jumping.
>Yes they all had turn based combat
Except for the huge amount that went action combat. Or card battles. Or tactical. Or mimicked WRPGs.
But yes, OP. All JRPGs are exactly the same because you only know a handful of them.
The thing is, the combat different in NNK2 being real time combat, and DQI/II doesn't change the fact both of those games you only walk around and fight. I guess there's also skirmish which is another form of combat that is shit. The exploration of those games is quite remarkably similar, despite the modern one having technology that would allow to do so much more than "having monsters everywhere"
>Other genres aren't like this, though.
>FPS
>fighting games
>beat em ups
>shmups
>RTS
Most other genres are just as, if not more stagnant than JRPGs.
>games focus on combat because that is what is historically most interesting and fleshed out in RPGs
>games need to find a way to drain the player's resources as they travel while still leaving room for it to be interactive
>games make travel through the wilderness and through hostile territory a continuous resource drain by throwing monsters at you
That sounds to me like an elegant gameplay solution, not a lack of evolution.
>have a large ass overworld in a modern game
>only thing to do in it is to fight
It was ok in older games because of graphical compromises, but making every single spot outside of town the very samey monsterfest just comes across as lazy really. What's the point of having those enormous worlds if there's no any remote effort to make them seem alive?
>resource drain by throwing monsters at you
Eventually you become stronger and it just becomes evident it's repetitive and arguably soulless, because it feels like an algorithm designed the world, here put a monster every 20 square meters or whatever is the formula. Or use random encounters which is the same thing with whatever formula works for the encounter
>What's the point of having those enormous worlds if there's no any remote effort to make them seem alive?
there isn't and everyone who makes open world games is falling for the world's largest meme, the purpose in old RPGs was hidden stuff
>What's the point of having those enormous worlds if there's no any remote effort to make them seem alive?
In that game you go outside and it's still the same stuff, step right outside of a town and all you find are monsters. Anywhere outside of a town is the same sterile environment where you fight and find chests with shit loot. Is that an alive world to you?
>step right outside of a town and all you find are monsters.
>very next sentence he admits there's treasure chests and other stuff to find
Also, the major appeal of Dragon Quest, along with item progression, is NPC interaction. What makes the world feel "alive" is exploring it. Finding new locations which leads to new items and NPCs. It's basically the same as Zelda games, just with turn based battles instead of action battles.
"fight monster" and "find chest" are the only things you do outdoors in that game, there's hardly a large list of activities that can be done, there's no such thing as finding someone who's lost who needs help, a tiny side quest, or a traveling merchant, so basically the places that aren't towns are just wildernesses filled with monsters that would make traveling around impossible, it just doesn't make any sense. I liked DQ11 but it's kinda stupid to step outside of a small village and there's a huge ogre right next to the entrance that you can fight, wouldn't that be a problem for poor villagers who just want to go outside to fetch some berries or whatever?
So? Fiction still benefits from having coherence, if you're building a large world it would improve the game to make it feel more like a world, otherwise what's the point of making all those vast landscapes if they all behave like a very samey dungeon, except you reskin the kind of monster you find at the desert and the one you find in the snowy area?
>there's no such thing as finding someone who's lost who needs help, a tiny side quest, or a traveling merchant
Literally all three of these happen in Dragon Quest VIII. Good job proving you never played it.
Also, you're stupid because you're trying to claim "quests" are variety when finding items and interacting with NPCs aren't. Play a game like Final Fantasy XIV or hell, Skyrim, and see how doing 1000 quests isn't variety. Especially when it's all the same 5 types of quests with slightly altered triggers. And who does those triggers? NPCs.
Where are the traveling merchants in DQ8? You have to go to towns to do anything trading/selling. The world is absolutely barren.
There are at least two on the overworld I can think of. One on the path to the mysterious spring and one on the way to Trode. Plus some in outposts, churches and morrie's pit.
>outpost
So in another designated-NPC-area yet again. By traveling merchant I mean a merchant in the overworld, but they have this philosophy that only combat can happen everywhere outside of a NPC area for some reason.
Are you moronic? I said the difference between the turn based DQI and NNK2 matters less than how the overworld of both games are barren. Yes NNK2 has side quests for example, where you go around and fight a fricking monster, truly innovative stuff and not the stuff we have been doing for dozens of hours already.
>By traveling merchant I mean a merchant in the overworld
And I provided two examples. Which you completely ignored.
>wah it has to be on the overworld where combat can happen!
Are you an idiot. Next you're going to claim Ultima and Diablo don't count.
>it has to be on the overworld
When I am making an argument that the overworld of those games are barren, devoid of any content besides finding mobs, yes that's important
>When I am making an argument that the overworld of those games are barren, devoid of any content besides finding mobs
And multiple examples have been given where there are things. But you ignore them each time. Perhaps, just perhaps, the problem isn't that these overworlds are "barren" but you WANT them to be barren so you have a reason to complain. So you shut out any examples that prove otherwise.
>Is that an alive world to you?
It's a video game.
Pokemon gens 2-3 are the peak of jrpg.
They just never did shit with it, so the games are easy toddler time wasters.
>JRPGs are fossilized in time
I mean first off, not every genre needs to re-invent the wheel when people like what works.
JRPG's innovate inside the system. They can have different settings like Sci Fi, modern day or something completely whacky like Mario. Or different hooks like FFV's job system, SMT's negotiating with monsters, action commands and so on.
>There was that comic about the caves in Pokemon games being annoying with the zubat encounter just before the player leaves it, but the thing is that JRPGs do that with the entire game outside of towns
First off, Pokemon is a JRPG. Second, no lot's have reasonable encounter rates.
>The newer ones are exactly the same. Every JRPG is and has been exactly the same for 30 years now.
I don't think they've fossilized, they just innovate within their niche. I think you've played too few to say they are all this or that.
Changing a setting is not innovation, that's like basic shit and doesn't really have anything to do with gameplay mechanics. I know Pokemon is a JRPG, but it does a more interesting way of having encounters with the tall grass compared to random encounters everywhere or have the mobs on the map that dash towards you at lightspeed which is the same thing as random encounters in practice
So... you just don't like random encounters then...
the problem is obviously not only random encounters, play something like Trails in the Sky, you have monsters on the map, and they dash towards the player very fast, the way those games are designed are all about putting a formula of monster encounter and doing it everywhere without any effort to make areas feel apart other than you fight cactus mob in the desert, seal at the beach and snow wolf in the tundra
those games basically treat the entire world outside of towns as a samey dungeon
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
you realized that now?
i realized that in like 2004
I prefer this because modern Western RPGs are instead filled with boring and tedious sidequests that bog everything down. I prefer RPGs that focus entirely on combat, instead of collecting 5 dildos for some homosexual or shit like that
Is your dad ok anon?
yes he got treated and he's doing fine
That’s amazing! I’m so happy for you both!
remind me again how many mandatory one-off minigames entirely unrelated to combat FFVII has again
JRPGs do have a formula. But it's changed a ton since DQI and II. You have to either be totally ignorant of any JRPGs besides those two or be a total idiot to think they're all the same.
>goes on to claim all JRPGs are turn based and have no quests
Oh I see. Ignorant and stupid.
I just came to this thread to say I recently bought the famicom originals of DQ1-4. I'm playing through DQ3 right now (on hardware, not gay emulation) and it's really improved my enjoyment of JRPGs. All JRPGs are essentially spinoffs of these games, so it's fun to play through the history and pretend I'm a 12 year old japanese kid from the 80's.
Based. You should try later releases of DQ3 after you finish it on NES, they add a new class and a personality system to influence stat growth (plus a post game dungeon if you're into that).
Which later release? I don't really enjoy weird mobile ports. I know there's a Super famicom version of 1&2 I wanna try after I beat the Loto trilogy
there's a new one coming out soon, but they have a port on switch that's really good
Just googled the switch port and I see this. Sorry, I'm playing the original carts on famicom because I enjoy "soul". This looks like it's running on an iPod nano
that's fine. I'd play the originals if I had them
Play it on SFC or GBC, they both look much nicer. And, the monster sprites are animated on both of those versions, whereas they're not on Switch.
SNES version introduces the personality system which is like a shittier version of pokemon natures. NES is still the way to go.
dragon quest 4 & 5 kick ass too
The version of Dragon Quest 3 I played was the SNES remake one but I think its a fan translation
I didn't even realize that existed. Looks neat. I can finally see my harem of warrior, pilgrim, and wizard babes
Considering there's unique gear and personality types for the ladies, that's a pretty powerful way to play DQ3.
Hero - Lewd
Fighter - Sexy
Sage - Sexy
Sage - Sexy
Every time.
not even the best personalities
Lewd and Sexy are the best all around. You can min/max a little more with Smart/Sharp for the sages and Amazon/Valiant for the Fighter. But it's arguable Sexy is still better for the Fighter since you're losing a lot of agility. While Sexy gives you bonuses to every stat, no negatives.
my bad I was thinking vamp. yeah same thing as sexy
The ios ports are just that, ports. They're ports of the Super Famicom version, which is the best version of the game. There's a new 2.5D remake coming. But who knows if it will be good. I'm kinda worried because I feel like you need the grid movement system for Dragon Quest III. But Dragon Quest has a good track record for remakes so hopefully it will be good.
Avoid the smartphone ports.
>They're ports of the Super Famicom version
But they look different?
Super Famicom and/or Game Boy Color. GBC version even has a second extra dungeon that no other release has.
The port on Switch is the mobile port, and while it's functionally fine for 3 (1 and 2 have some atrocious screen scrolling), they're ugly visually due to mixing new character/NPC assets in with tilesets that don't match. I am, however, excited for that remake.
the remake looks amazing
It does, frick I can't wait man. I hope we get physical releases.
https://www.nintendo.com/search/?q=dragon+quest+3&p=1&cat=all&sort=df
pretty much all the dragon quest games are good for the most part
If you like 3 them get ready for 4 because it's essentially 3 but with a stronger story and "what if your party members were actual characters". The chapter system is also a fricking awesome idea.
4 is really good, but I think 5 has the most unique story. and you can train monsters
and you can make crotch goblins
Nah, 4 is better. 5 suffers from a lot of issues like
>story
Has a lot of cool concepts that don't get explored properly. The game just brushes over the different eras and skips over potentially cool moments like watching your kids search for you or going on more adventures with your dad.
>characters
Way weaker than 4's. Everybody but Debora is constantly sucking your dick (figuratively). It doesn't feel like your actions can be ever perceived as selfish or plain wrong, because your party has no autonomy of its own. They exist to praise and love you.
>monster catching
The mechanic rewards brainless grinding and some monster encounter rates are way too low. Killing 81 king cureslimes sucked ass.
>Pointless side quest (remake only)
Helping out the ghost of an old man for no rewards worth a damn. You sacrifice potentially useful accessories and the motherfricker has the guts of talking shit because you are missing one or two.
>medal collection
Not as bad as 3's but I dunno why in the name of ass they made it a currency. It just incentives the player to skip earlier rewards to get the metal slime items faster.
>forgettable final boss
What a letdown after Psaro being such a solid antagonist. Even the main cultist was more memorable than that Piccolo looking guy.
>party chat
Since you spend such a long time traveling with monsters, it goes unused for way too long. By the time you get some proper human companies you get the overly sweet dialogue worthy of an animal crossing character.
there was a spin off game for 4 too. it was the merchant
was this game based off of 4s character?
Yeah. Torneko is a DQ4 party member, a fat family oriented merchant who eventually had his own series of roguelike spin offs. Apparently they are pretty good too.
Jrpgs peaked with Golden Sun LTA. This is not up for debate.
Golden Sun is way too easy to be enjoyable.
most JRPGs are easy, at least Golden Sun has the puzzles that add a much needed variety to the gameplay
No, I mean easy to the point of being incredibly boring. The game has its strengths but the combat being so lacking in challenge becomes increasingly more dull as you go. It would be fine if it was just a bit harder.
don't level up
Ah yes, the contrarian homosexual priding himself on ease in a jrpg. As if any of the other games in the genre are any harder than it anyway. Just have a nice day
Take your own advice, itoddler.
you don't need to fix it if it isn't broken
hell all of the dq games kick ass except for that multiplayer game on the ds
Frick phones! Dragon Quest 1-3 should be on Steam. Especially since the Builders games put some attention on the old titles.
Congratulations, you're the kind of idiot Square has been catering to for over a decade now and why they've sucked that entire time. How does it feel to be the problem?
squenix has been catering to gays who like brainless action over thinking. just look at the nu final fantasy titles
As someone looking to explore the genre which jrpgs should I play? Are ps1 offerings still good?
Depends on what you are looking for. Some people like JRPGs for the story, others like the grind and some like the gimmicks. Some may also be looking for self insertion.
I'd say for a mix of story and gameplay so I can go either or. Gimmicks are fine more or less.
I'll check a couple of these out, thanks
May as well ask any good handheld jrpgs? Superior ports are okay, too.
a lot of the series I mentioned are on handheld too.
breath of fire 1 and 2 are ported to game boy advanced,and dragon warrior/quest is on ds. there's a lot of ports for handheld
lots of good handheld castlevaina games too if you're into symphony of the night types of games.
breath of fire, final fantasy, suikoden, dragon quest, legendary of legaia, legend of the dragoon. yeah ps1 has a lot of great jrpgs
There's also the PS1 port of SMT1 could play too, speaking of good PS1 RPGs. I personally prefer the GBA port for a few things, but it's still super good on PS1 and has an expert mode for difficulty.
I could never get my hands on smt on ps1.
You'd have to emulate it or burn it to a CD, but here
https://cdromance.com/psx-iso/shin-megami-tensei-jpn/
oh cool thanks
No prob, I hope you enjoy it Anon!
does this work with epsxe?
I have no clue, but I also have no reason to believe it wouldn't. Considering it's only 23MB, you might as well download it yourself and check.
what's the difference between a b and c?
I think c just had some minor text/bug fixes.
It's not running for you? Damn. You could always try the GBA port out, has a redone overworld and some lore items you get after certain bosses for worldbuilding.
https://cdromance.com/gba-roms/shin-megami-tensei-japan/
For what it's worth too, this is an official localization in practice, as it's the iOS port's script.
no it supports epsxe
Oh, that's good.
I can actually play this on my phone If I want.
iOS port? Depends on the age of your OS I would say; from what I heard newer systems can't run the game. Atlus never bothered to update it when it stopped running so it was eventually taken down.
I have 7 zip and epsxe on my phone
Ah, nice.
it works
thanks for that link. I'm going to check out some more of those games
Based. Have fun.
For 2 and If.., we currently only have SFC translations. I thought 2's was fine but some people say it has a Chaos alignment slant to it. If..'s is from 2018 and pretty polished.
never mind. aw damn I want that thousand arms game too
lunar sssc, and the sequel. xenogears
I play jrpgs for the juicy math.
I have a game note book with maps, cheats, character stats I've made myself. breath of fire 3 is awesome for end game math
that’s cool. the games can become pretty complex, I like that.
>JRPGs are fossilized in time
and that's a good thing
This is why so many japs have recently become obsessed with things like Bethesda's titles. The concept of an open, interactive and (comparatively) deep world is just completely alien to them. To the Japanese, RPGs are defined by
>big number go up
>boil genre down to its bare essentials
>wtf those elements are still present in modern games, it hasn't changed
b8 thread
Do Pokémon fans ever get tired of playing the same game for 26 years?
I would hope they do. I'd love to see Pokemon go for a 4 active mons in a row type of battle system just like DQ. Instead of catching legendaries, make them tough bosses.
And that's why a lot of JRPGs suck, lol
Yeah, they got rid of "random encounters" and replaced them with monsters walking around in the map. That doesn't change the fact that 90% of the time you spend in the game is going to be fighting trash encounters that aren't interesting at all and really have no reason to be there. You will just end up spamming attack and healing options, AoE attacks, and sometimes buffs.
If the point is to "reduce resources" then
1. Resource management in these games almost never ends up mattering anyways
Because it's so easy to grind for gold and potions it's ultimately irrelevant, most players will eventually just end up with 99 of every potion anyways
2. This can be accomplished with fewer, more difficult fights anyways, you don't need trash mobs to have fights that reduce your resources
Also consider the fact that JRPGs tend to be heavily story focused. That's fine, but the problem with that is that narratively the sheer amount of combat in these games makes little sense. Say your protagonist is a 17 year old adventurer. Does it really make sense, tonally, that he's constantly slaughtering hundreds and hundreds of monsters, and sometimes people, all the time? It feels a lot less like an adventure and more of a bloodbath then
To fix this problem JRPGs need to either double down on the story elements, reduce the amount of trash encounters, and make the remaining encounters actually tactically interesting, or look at gameplay beyond just combat. Like stealth or interesting options while traveling and exploring,
Baldur's Gate 2 and 3 I think do this pretty well. The encounters in those games are (usually) well thought-out
>90% of the time you spend in the game is going to be fighting trash encounters
That's most games with combat
Wrong. Like I said, Baldur's Gate 2 and 3 have very few, close to no trash encounters. The only time it has anything close is when you travel the map and that's to (admittedly, unsuccessfully) punish rest spamming. All of the fights in those games are carefully designed or have some kind of actual meaning or purpose
The Torment games (especially Tides of Numenera) do this pretty well too, you don't just fight for no reason
>just grind
just admit that you like to play on easy mode
Yeah, resource management doesn't matter if you can just get gold easily. In fact in some of these games you don't even need to grind for gold, the monsters just flat out drop potions. The whole "well the monsters exist to reduce your resources" argument is pitiful. It ONLY applies to very specific games, like Dark Souls (but only the first one because other games in the series let you grind for consumables or have abundant bonfires)
again, just admit that you want to play on easy mode. Making the choice to farm so you can overpower enemies is exactly the same as selecting easy mode from a menu.
JRPGs by default are easy mode. You will inevitably have to fight trash encounters to proceed because you can only avoid them so long
If they decided to have no trash mobs, but one dedicated area specifically for grinding (like the Tower of Grinding, or whatever) then your argument would hold true. But the majority of these games are designed around the fact that you will inevitably have to fight tons of trash mobs even if you try to avoid them
In fact some of these games outright tell you "hey, don't try to avoid the trash mobs, the game is designed around them" (see Mother 3)
there are plenty of JRPGs where going only to main story objectives will leave you under leveled. Bravely default and FFTA2 are two examples. the first even lets you turn off or increase the encounter rate if you want.
>dude Racing games are fossilized in time all you do is drive around a track or area
you could say this about any video game genre
RPGs from the Snes/PS1/PS2 era:
Tactics Ogre LUCT
FF Tactics
Persona 2 IS&EP
FFVII
FFIX
FFX
FFXII
Chrono Trigger
Chrono Cross
Vagrand Story
Tales of Phantasia
Tales of Symphonia
Tales of Destiny R
Tales of the Abyss
Wild Arms~5
Suikoden 1~5
I'm sorry, if you honestly think FFXIII or the Neptunia games are remotely similar to these, you're completely moronic.
Started playing Ys I & II yesterday. It's pretty neat so far.
Combat is literally run into enemies at specific angles to avoid their attacks. You can do shit like blindside an enemy as he walks through a doorway and press him against a wall until he dies. Some dungeons are narrow at points so avoiding damage requires you to bait the enemies out of the hallway if possible.
First boss was literally a game of whack-a-mole, but with rows of fire. The boss popping up and the fire are not in sync, so it's hard to find a good rhythm. Took me an hour to beat a 1 minute boss.
>enemy party has super high speed anyway
Enemies have different movement speeds. Fastest one I think are wild dogs.
>There's no finding a NPC who needs a potion in a cave or any sort of non-combat content that makes it worth exploring.
It has optional sidequests that give you a lot of money, exp, and weapons that really help. Like eating a special item that let's you talk to a character that gives you the best weapon.
Why would you mess with literal perfection?
Sadly Dragon Quest did with XI. But people love it anyway...
jrpg is such a nebulous term. There are a bunch not anything like dq
you will never be a youtuber