My problem with JRPGs in general is that they're stuck with stories that seems out of fanfic land, as far as quality and maturity is concern.
Their stories are targetting the teenagers crowd, and usually has very young protagonist with effeminate features. When it comes to the actual stories, they're more often than not very similar to those we found during the SNES era, with the same clichés, but most importantly the same kind of treatment. To me, it's as if the Japanese JRPG developers seem to think their audience is too dumb to understand more mature, deeper, complicated and meaningful stories.
Games like Final Fantasy Tactics, Lost Odyssey, Tactics Ogre, Suikoden and the most popular Final Fantasy VII are the exceptions, not the rule.
Heck, if I take FF VII for example, the story was deep enough to be talked about for years. People debating this and that about the meaning of Jenova, the Reunion, the ecologic message behind the story and the place of us humans in our own world. Sure, the game came out when such messages in mainstream media were still scarce and has become kind of old in this day an age. But back then, it was groundbreaking, deep, and meaningful.
The JRPGs of today feel to me like some random Saturday morning Anime. Which is lame, because I like when a game story makes me think, feel and analyse the event of the game in comparison to the state of our own world's politics, economics, ecology, etc... Few games this gen has given me this.
In a nutshell, I think that the JRPG makers are still doing games for a much younger audience, where WRPG makers are more inclined to making games for adults, or young adults. Games like Mass Effect 2 and Fallout 3 (like them or not) are 2 very good example of that.
It's very sad to me, because I tend to very enjoy the gameplay style of JRPGs, but if a story doesn't hook me, I won't like the game as much, and might even just quit and do something else. Happened to me half way through Tales of Vesperia (man, do I think this game is overrated!).
Maybe I'm wrong about all this and it has always been in the same state, and the reason I don't enjoy them as much is because I'm just getting older.
It's late here, very tired I am, I hope I still managed to make sense.
