http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2009/12/20/why-final-fantasy-xiii-is-a-bad-game/
So there’s some impressions from japanese players of FFXIII.
I can’t say I disagree with them but I did have some expectation that this is going to be a good squeenix game.
This gen, JRPGs have been, in my opinion, pretty much shit except Lost Odyssey and Tales of Vesperia.
I used to be into JRPGs when I had a PSOne and a PS2. But midway through the lifespan of the PS2 I got tired of them.
There are multiple reasons why I can’t stand most of the JRPGs nowadays.
For one, you have the horrible character design. Everyone’s a pretty boy. Most of the time they’re also underageb&s. The clothes are mostly pretty revealing. Now this isn’t always a bad thing on the female party members but this trend also carried over to the male members of your party. Belts, Zippers, holes here and there to show some skin, shorts, etc.
While I’m not really homophobic and don’t mind some nudity on either side, it’s getting really ridiculous in these games. I never really understood why Tidus is wearing the clothes he’s wearing. Same with Wakka. Or take a look at some of the cast from Star Ocean. To me this is getting really dumb and boring. As if the developers try to be edgy and hip with their pretty cast.
Then the characters are so overly emotional to the point it’s sickening.
Let me remind you of Edge from Star Ocean. I quit the game the moment he continuously cried over blowing up counter earth.
Tidus from FFX wasn’t any better. One big crybaby.
Cloud, while he was an acceptable main in FFVII, turned into a complete whiney douchebag in Advent Children.
Watching the dialogues of modern JRPGs is like watching a bad soap opera. Full of clichés and awkward emotional baggage unloaded at ungodly times.
Next there’s the battle system.
I grew up with the simple turn based battle system and many variations. Sure, the same old System gets old and boring over time. I’ve seen quite a lot of variations of turn based battle systems and up to this date I prefer them over the real time stuff that some companies tried to pull off.
I feel that the current, real time, systems don’t give me the full control over my party – which in some way defeats the point of having a party. There was Infinite Undiscovery. You could only control one character in battle. Your other party members spread out and randomly beat up other enemies. Healing was done by the press of a button. Of course, that didn’t always work out because the Healer, more often, was caught up pounding enemies or preparing some long attack. (Don’t get me started on the inventory).
Then there was Star Ocean. To me the whole battle system felt confusing as fuck when it came to ordering your other party members. I somehow get the feeling, that the developers aren’t even really trying to give you proper control over your party. These days it feels like your party is just there to distract the enemy while you pound the hell out of them.
I heard people complain that turn based battles are boring and unrealistic, but we’re talking about JRPGs here, nothing in those games is meant to be realistic and most of the time, those real time mechanics feel like a big clunky mess.
Playing Lost Odyssey between these messes really made me appreciate the turn based system again and love how I could control the actions of my party. While dated, it still gets the job done better than most other systems I’ve seen.
I really wonder what happened to having a “normal” cast of characters, having a solid battle system and a not so emo loaded story.
And, while this is actually well known, have at this anyway.
http://project-apollo.net/text/rpg.html