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General discussionWhy are so many great JRPGs being created in Germany?(45 posts)(45 posts)
(45 posts)
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Posted August 27, 2020
We invite you to read a guest article by Michael Hoss from Deck13 Interactive

A few years ago it was pretty obvious when a game was developed in Germany. The games had this dry approach, an analytic feel almost. However, over the last decade, the industry has grown and a vibrant indie scene has emerged. Interestingly, there are quite a lot of games in the works, heavily inspired by classic JRPGs. And there is a reason for this.

To understand why Germany has become a country you should mark on your map when you are looking for an old school JRPG experience or game inspired by Japanese video games, you need to look at the people. Gamers that grew up with Nintendo Entertainment Systems, SNES’s, and original PlayStations are growing up and becoming developers.

If you ask these developers, nearly all of them grew up with and loved games such as Zelda, Secret of Mana, and Terranigma. Add to that games like Final Fantasy VI & VII, Xenogears, Chrono Cross, and Alundra, and you’ll start to see the bigger picture.



If you ask the CrossCode team about their inspirations, they will name quite a few of these. Especially in the RPG sector, Germany adapted very well to the games which were created in Japan. Today, many of the indie developers who grew up on such games are starting to recreate the experiences and feelings these games brought to them when they were younger and when they were exploring them for the first time.

In addition to that, the JRPG / JAA (Japanese action-adventure, e.g. Zelda) genre fits into the development culture of Germany: They are quite a number heavy and based on balance sheets which allow for great levels of min-maxing. All of these things are also represented in the quite popular management-games-sector in Germany.

We’ve already mentioned CrossCode as a good example of JRPG-influenced German games. And you might think it is a one-shot. But there are more coming. Chained Echoes is currently under development and if everything works out as planned, it will be released at the end of 2021. You can play the demo here on GOG.COM during the Indie Arena Booth Online event, actually. And when you play it, you will see how much influence certain games had on it!



You can see that Chained Echoes was heavily inspired by Xenogears, Suikoden 2, Final Fantasy VI & Tactics, and Xenoblade Chronicles. And it is not even a secret: The developer says that he grew up on these. The same is true for the whole CrossCode team. And yet, both titles also offer their own twists and innovations on the formula. Just take a look at the combat systems: CrossCode improves upon proven systems with a complex element system and Chained Echoes has an Overdrive-System that requires the players to choose their options wisely.

There are more in development of course. Or out there already. You have Resolutiion, which takes a lot of inspiration from the very first Zelda games. Also included in that same vein, Spindle is another one inspired by Zelda.

The list could easily be continued but if you ask the developers they’ll all give you the same answer in the end: They’ve grown up with JRPGs. And for one reason or another, they all want new (and old generations) to experience that feeling as well.
Posted August 28, 2020
Too bad I'm not looking for retro JRPGs; a blending of some of their aesthetics and mechanics with WRPGs would be cool though.

Also there's a huge difference between Zelda and FF6. The former (which is more action adventure) is interesting to me and seems to be what Crosscode takes after.
Post edited August 28, 2020 by ResidentLeever
Posted August 28, 2020
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NuffCatnip: I'm still wishing for a Dragon Quest XI release on gog...or Persona 4. I know, those games are pretty much out of the question, but nothing is impossible I guess! *peeks over at the Control thread*
Don't forget about Trials of Mana or the Tales of series. I'm still waiting for the day Tales of Xillia gets ported to PC.
Posted August 28, 2020
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NuffCatnip: I'm still wishing for a Dragon Quest XI release on gog...or Persona 4. I know, those games are pretty much out of the question, but nothing is impossible I guess! *peeks over at the Control thread*
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RoboPond: Don't forget about Trials of Mana or the Tales of series. I'm still waiting for the day Tales of Xillia gets ported to PC.
Never played any game in the Mana series. But I like the Tales of games, Tales of Symphony probably is still my favourite. :)
Posted August 28, 2020
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ResidentLeever: Too bad I'm not looking for retro JRPGs; a blending of some of their aesthetics and mechanics with WRPGs would be cool though.
Romancing SaGa starts to feel like this; you get JRPG combat and WRPG open world (albeit in separate areas you can only go between via the equivalent of fast travel; no walking from the Empire to the Frontier without opening the world map, for example).

The SaGa series are also notable for willing to experiment with core mechanics that other RPGs generally don't touch, like the growth system. There are no levels (excluding original SaGa 3, which many consider to not really be a SaGa game for this and other reasons); instead, there are other rules for stat growth. (For example, in Romancing SaGa, your stats have a chance to increase depending on your actions during battle; some other games in the series are like this (SaGa Frontier's humans), while others are not (SaGa Frontier 2 you only gain skill levels, and HP/WP/SP, SaGa 1 has humans use buyable consumables for stats and espers (mutants) gain stats after battle based off what the (rather poor) RNG decides). Also, in many of the games, sometimes when you attack, a light bulb will appear over the character's head, and that character will use (and permanently learn) a new technique; in Romancing SaGa, I once unexpectedly won a boss I should not have been fighting because this happened.

By the way, The Alliance Alive is currently 40% off on GOG and is apparently a SaGa-like. (I still haven't tried it, so I don't know how it is, and I don't know how linear it is.)

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NuffCatnip: I'm still wishing for a Dragon Quest XI release on gog...or Persona 4. I know, those games are pretty much out of the question, but nothing is impossible I guess! *peeks over at the Control thread*
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RoboPond: Don't forget about Trials of Mana or the Tales of series. I'm still waiting for the day Tales of Xillia gets ported to PC.
Or Romancing SaGa 2/3. (I would buy those two games if they were released here.)
Post edited August 28, 2020 by dtgreene
Posted August 28, 2020
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ResidentLeever: Too bad I'm not looking for retro JRPGs; a blending of some of their aesthetics and mechanics with WRPGs would be cool though.
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dtgreene: Romancing SaGa starts to feel like this; you get JRPG combat and WRPG open world (albeit in separate areas you can only go between via the equivalent of fast travel; no walking from the Empire to the Frontier without opening the world map, for example).
Right yeah, I should've mentioned that as I do know about them. :)

Didn't like RS1 much but I started playing the PC port/remaster of RS2 and it seemed fine, I quit due to having a bunch of other games going, might go back to it sometime. SaGa 1 was also pretty good for GB.
Post edited August 28, 2020 by ResidentLeever
Posted August 28, 2020
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ResidentLeever: SaGa 1 was also pretty good for GB.
It definitely was a really good game. One very nice thing about the game is that it's short (by RPG standards), yet it covers a lot of ground and has a decent number of options for building your party; this makes the game highly replayable. I wish there were more RPGs like SaGa 1 in terms of length and pacing.

What interesting is that SaGa 1 is actually a very buggy game, or at least its battle system is very buggy. You have things like blindness increasing accuracy and evasion for some attacks, multi-hit attacks hitting faster targets harder, and even a saw that can instantly kill an enemy, but works only when it's not supposed to. Surprisingly, the game manages to be fun despite (or perhaps because?) of all the bugs.
Posted August 28, 2020
Ah, yes. Jerman Role Play Games.

...These aren't JRPGs. They don't have enough belts & zippers! (And other unfortunate stereotypes!)

But more pointedly, one of them doesn't look like a JRPG, while the other looks like an ARPG.
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ReynardFox: Though I was posting with my tongue firmly in my cheek, normally someone trying to be articulate would say something like 'Japanese styled RPG' if they were referring to something like this, using 'JRPG" directly for a German made game hits my pedantic ears the same way as someone calling a Western made show "Anime".
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paladin181: There are Western Anime shows though. Anime has become synonymous with the style of artwork and animation used in the piece. Like the recent Castlevania animated series, which calls back a lot to Vampire Hunter D for its style and mood, as well as Berserk some. On the subject of Berserk, Dark Souls is a Western RPG developed by an entirely Nihonjin staff. Come at me bro!! :P
Or more directly to the point, Avatar: the Airbender.
Post edited August 28, 2020 by Darvond
Posted August 28, 2020
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dtgreene: By the way, The Alliance Alive is currently 40% off on GOG and is apparently a SaGa-like. (I still haven't tried it, so I don't know how it is, and I don't know how linear it is.)
It seems quite linear as far as I got, but is barely a game. The first several hours of the game most battles can be won without the opponant having a chance to do anything (there is no difficulty setting), the story is not that interesting, and the world is unbelievable but only in the literal sense. I stopped playing at that point. I suspect GOG intentionally waited over 30 days past that release to introduce the new refund policy.
Posted August 28, 2020
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GOG.com: ...
The list could easily be continued but if you ask the developers they’ll all give you the same answer in the end: They’ve grown up with JRPGs. And for one reason or another, they all want new (and old generations) to experience that feeling as well.
Osanna, German brothers & sisters! Waiting to play your JRPGs so I make one of my own.
Also, hopefully, JRPGs are just the beginning of something very special; do surprise us!
Posted August 28, 2020
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Darvond: Ah, yes. Jerman Role Play Games.

...These aren't JRPGs. They don't have enough belts & zippers! (And other unfortunate stereotypes!)

But more pointedly, one of them doesn't look like a JRPG, while the other looks like an ARPG.
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paladin181: There are Western Anime shows though. Anime has become synonymous with the style of artwork and animation used in the piece. Like the recent Castlevania animated series, which calls back a lot to Vampire Hunter D for its style and mood, as well as Berserk some. On the subject of Berserk, Dark Souls is a Western RPG developed by an entirely Nihonjin staff. Come at me bro!! :P
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Darvond: Or more directly to the point, Avatar: the Airbender.
In Japan, Anime just means animation in general, but when the term is used in the west it is specifically used to refer to animation from Japan, to make a clear distinction, so I still believe calling Western animation Anime is a misnomer. I absolutely love Avatar:TLA, but it's not Anime. It's really well made and obviously inspired by Japanese Animation, but it doesn't actually pass for it.

Castlevania is a rather nice facsimile though.
Posted August 28, 2020
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Darvond: Ah, yes. Jerman Role Play Games.

...These aren't JRPGs. They don't have enough belts & zippers! (And other unfortunate stereotypes!)

But more pointedly, one of them doesn't look like a JRPG, while the other looks like an ARPG.

Or more directly to the point, Avatar: the Airbender.
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ReynardFox: In Japan, Anime just means animation in general, but when the term is used in the west it is specifically used to refer to animation from Japan, to make a clear distinction, so I still believe calling Western animation Anime is a misnomer. I absolutely love Avatar:TLA, but it's not Anime. It's really well made and obviously inspired by Japanese Animation, but it doesn't actually pass for it.

Castlevania is a rather nice facsimile though.
Castlevania's anime, or should i say manga... literally confused at this point, wasn't nothing to sheep about, 'bit short maybe but cool. Koei's team did well ( if i got the right company in front of my eyes )
Posted August 29, 2020
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GOG.com: Why are so many great JRPGs being created in Germany?
Because marketing teams mindlessly stick popular labels to increase sales. And equally mindless customers consume that.
When you see advertisement like this you understand why descendants of Amaterasu do not count gaijins as a proper human beeings. LOL
Post edited August 30, 2020 by Schwertz
Posted August 29, 2020
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EnforcerSunWoo: Hmm, must be a Chinese riddle.

I think it is because they are turning Japanese, I think they are turning Japanese, I really think so.
Underrated comment. Thanks for the chuckle before work. *thumbs up*
Posted August 29, 2020
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dtgreene: By the way, The Alliance Alive is currently 40% off on GOG and is apparently a SaGa-like. (I still haven't tried it, so I don't know how it is, and I don't know how linear it is.)
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joveian: It seems quite linear as far as I got, but is barely a game. The first several hours of the game most battles can be won without the opponant having a chance to do anything (there is no difficulty setting), the story is not that interesting, and the world is unbelievable but only in the literal sense. I stopped playing at that point. I suspect GOG intentionally waited over 30 days past that release to introduce the new refund policy.
I saw some reviews that seem to agree with what you said for the early game, but say the game does get better. Specifically:
* There's a difficulty spike at one point, and after that the difficulty doesn't quite drop to what it was at the start of the game.
* Apparently, the game gets less linear later.
* There's optional content that is apparently much harder.

Anyway, we'll see what I think once I get around to playing the game.

(Also, it's possible that someone could make a difficulty mod for the PC version. A "lazy" difficulty mod, that just tweaks some numbers shouldn't be too difficult technically; one just needs to find those numbers and change them. (There would, of course, be some work involved in determining what those number should be, and making sure the modded game is still fair, balanced (within reason), and fun to play.))
Posted November 14, 2023
One big reason also is the RPG Maker was huge in germany. There was a big community where lot's of kids/teenagers got their first contact point with developing RPGs they grew up with.
Vampire Dawn for example was even on disk of one of germans biggest gaming magazines.
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Community
General discussionWhy are so many great JRPGs being created in Germany?(45 posts)(45 posts)
(45 posts)