That's cool, but it is something expected of the genre, similar to adventure games. I think it would be hard to make a JRPG or a point and click adventure game without a strong focus on story and cinematics. And yet, gameplay should always be number one for both.

This is opposed to something like an FPS, where a classic like FEAR for example can have only the most basic of story sequences and still be amazing.

Dragon Quest 3.
Final Fantasy 1.
Many/most other JRPGs from that era.

Even Western RPGs back then had very little story, or kept it to the manual. I'm talking the post-"story in games" era.

No story? Sounds a bit boring, tbh.

IMO those sorts of games should tell a tale of some sort, else it's just going through the motions/button presses/etc like some sort of robot. :|

Games like Pong, Tetris, Columns (original), and many other have no stories, and I haven't seen anyone complain about such things.

I happen to like the gameplay mechanics of RPGs (which is why I often like to play them), so I find it annoying why, unlike so many other genres, people insist that RPGs need story to be interesting; they don't, as the turn-based combat is interesting enough on its own.

Anyway, this is getting a little off-topic here.

Those are outliers/exceptions....most people like certain genres to have stories as it makes one get more invested and immersed in a game.

Many play such types of games to escape reality and explore a new world and learn about it as they go, not to just go through the motions of beat up/kill/move on/repeat & button presses.

You are also a gamer/gaming outlier/exception(and I don't mean that in a bad way), though, as evidenced by your various posts on things you like/dislike in such games.

Many(as said above) like stories more than having no stories(or at the very least some lore of some sort in game) as they like getting immersed in a new world, not just fighting enemies and leveling up and moving on. As such, companies make games designed to make the most players enjoy them that they possibly can, to make money/more games/etc.

Fair enough....maybe later someone can make a thread about this, if there isn't one already, if there's enough interest.

Reminds me of Super Mario 64, where it's not possible to put the camera behind a wall, making things rather awqward in some areas.

The DS version didn't fix the camera flaw (though at least Yoshi appears much earlier in that version).

And people liked that game?

I really don't have anything new to add to the things already mentioned, aside from anything that makes the character models look like they've been dipped in a vat of vaseline, and especially chromatic aberration, which has become a meme almost.

You'd think a game where exploration is made meaningless by level scaling and quest compasses would be a failure, but sadly the sales figures disagree.
But it's good with the right mods, though.

So fixed cameras?

I think that can partly fall under technical limitation.

Dragon Age: Inquisition says hello :P

Yeeeeah, that was really...off-putting, to be nice.