RyanDodd: Anyone here into Japanese games? I just picked up Hyperdimension Neptunia Rebirth and a PS Vita to play it on. I'm kinda leaning toward console JRPG's these days due to being disappointed with all the dude bro shooters that people see as the go to thing for pc gaming these days. I digress, I grew up playing 90's and early 00's Pc games and my tastes for pc gaming never really changed from that.
I resent the rise of the dude bro shooters as well, it started with the first Halo and spread from there. Fortunately for me, I had stopped to play games around that time anyway so I didn't have to suffer the descent of AAA gaming and its capitulation to the lowest common denominator and pandering to the new demographics.
On returning to the world of gaming last year, I found there's a plethora of really cool indie games, many surprisingly decent freeware games and a TON of older games I haven't yet played or even heard about back in the day, more than enough to get me through the next couple years with ease.
Thanks to the internet and fast connections, there is now more choice and easier access to games than ever before and there's wonderful people who write patches for older games in their free time so I can't complain.
As for JRPGs, I've played countless of them but finished only a few. In terms of gameplay (not story), most of them are generic/formulaic to a fault and their challenge is virtually always based on soul-numbing uncreative grinding rather than in-game choices and creative problems - the grinding is true for most Western RPGs as well, but the generic formulaic feel is something I get way more often from JRPGs or more precisely, console RPGs in general. Console RPGs can't have too many options leading to wacky bugs that later get patched as in PC games, hence you won't see anything like Arcanum developed for consoles, ever. Arcanum being a complex and original game but an extremely shoddy release.
Of all the traditional JRPGs I played, only a handful were so memorable that I can still distinguish them from the rest:
Final Fantasy 6, Suikoden 2, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 7, also the Mother series which has a fun story but the gameplay is the same old generic formulaic stuff.
Valkyrie Profile is memorable because of the excellent concept art. The art book is one of the best, the Yoshinari siblings being absolute pros.
There's a ton of very solid and well made JRPGs like the Phantasy Stars, Dragon Quests, Xeno-whatevers, Tales of whatevers etc etc but they've all turned into a big muddle-puddle in my brain and I didn't finish any of those games.
If I ever play/replay a JRPG, it's only going to be the tactical ones where gameplay is more interesting: Tactics Ogre, Final Fantasy Tactics etc.
Hoping to get Valkyria Chronicles sometime (never played before) but other than that I have zero Japanese games on my wishlist. Yume Nikki looks very interesting but I'm not sure if it's a good game or just a good art piece?