Love 'em or hate 'em JRPG's are a very popular force. I like some of them, I even love a few, but it's a genre with some serious issues. The main problem I find is that they all adhere rather strictly to the same archaic formula they've had ever since the freaking 1980's. That's fucking ridiculous when you think about it. That's almost 30 years with only a few major changes. Imagine if that happened in music. Imagine if someone decided to halt musical creativity around the 70' or 80's and just keep making those same popular albums over and over again except just changing the cover art or mashing up the lyrics a bit. "Fuck that!" is what we'd say "I'm not paying for that shit, I'll just download it of the Internet for free."Hey...wait a minute. Anyway about 2 years ago Final Fantasy XII was released and it actually changed quite a few things withing the genre for the better. The combat, for example, is livened up a lot by abolishing random encounters and making the AI customisable. It was very refreshing. However I found that the game is still a bit too long and samey for my liking which brings me to my next point. Game length. JRPG's are legendarily long, with playtimes often up to 50 hours to get through the main storyline. I would normally say that the solution to this is rather simple, cut alot of shit out, but it's actually not that easy. I can think of two reasons this would fuck the genre up. One is that the devoted fans would be mighty pissed off to have precious gametime reduced. Secondly is that JRPG's tell epic tales and if the gameplay was cut short the story would have to be aswell for the sake of balance. So I have two solutions here. One is to have multiple difficulty levels in JRPG's. I don't wanna have to be forever bogged down in leveling up my character just for one fucking almighty boss that pops up out of nowhere amoungst a sea of fucking retarded regular enemies. Save that shit for the freaks who love nothing more than masturbating as their tanked up character kicks the shit out of the games superboss. My other suggestion is to mix other gameplay elements into the mix. Other genres do it. Bioshock isn't JUST a shooting game, it has rpg and puzzle elements. Blue Dragon, forgiving some other faults, had the right idea here I felt. The odd rail shooter part certainly spiced things up. Next to go under the microscope is the story. As mentioned earlier the stories are Lord-of-the-Rings-Trilogy-esque. Overall the story is usually the best part of a JRPG and the main thing that the genres devotees go nuts for. In many ways it's also the biggest flaw within the JRPG genre because it tries so hard to excuse the anceint combat mechanics. But there are some very VERY annoying things that feature in many JRPG stories that I just flat out want erradicated. Let's just list 'em 'ay?
- I don't give a fuck about the motives of the minor characters
- Drop the non-human character who leaves behind their secluded villiage, their family and their culture.
- Make a protagonist that isn't a straight up dick
- Don't even think about designing an annoying, "cute" character who you just want dead (examples include Marumaro from Blue Dragon and the kids from Lost Odyssey, they were more horrible than you could ever imagine)
- Thou shalt not say "I believe in myself"
- same with believing in friends and the power of friendship or love
- Make more slick charaters like Balthier from FFXII
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