i think the problem with jrpgs is that they are becoming less and less like jrpgs. they should go back to the old formula so that people who want to play jrpgs can play them and people who want wrpgs will still have those.

I'm not sure that you're talking about "faults", here. There will be aspects of some games that don't appeal to certain value sets, but that doesn't make those aspects into faults. Trying to please everyone doesn't make sense.

So do you mean "faults", or do you mean aspects that don't appeal to some audiences?

I read both faults and aspects as the same thing. There is one side who loves a great story and does not mind dealing with linearity to finish the book on their television screen. Conversely, there are more Western-oriented gamers who want more emergent gameplay where there is a story, but it is a backdrop to the gameworld, which is a sandbox where you can play the story at your own pace and play around aimlessly at times.

Emergent gameplay is a fairly esoteric term  that became readily apparent with Ultima Online. Emergent gameplay is where the developers create a game universe with very little restrictions on how players choose to play the game. In the early stages of Ultima Online, every single best weapon and armor was craftable and purchaseable, you lost all iterms and money for dying, guilds could control towns and levy entrance and other taxes on non-guildies to use the town, and players were allowed to grief other players with no penalties of moderation.

Once Tom Chilton AKA Kalgan in the World of Warcraft (WoW) came along, he and a team created a few expansion packs for Ultima Online, which took away some of this emergent gameplay with a focus on dungeon crawling with a group of players. If a player wanted the best gems to put in their weapons and armor, then they needed 10 other players to go into a dungeon with them to get them. The focus went from the players to the developers. The developers became the drivers of the content.

Now Tom Chilton AKA Kalgan is a big wig lead game designer for the World of Warcraft and I believe his area is PvP, but that may have changed since I quit WoW last July.

If you are interested and want a fascinating story on the demise of Ultima Online, then google "Tom Chilton Ultima Online" and  few other key words such as demise, downfall or fail. You will get forums filled with multi-paragraph explanations on how they perceived him as killing the experience they loved.

 In terms of sales I think the decline is simply that the people who bought JRPG's grew up. They're now 20 something adults with jobs, relationships, families, social lives etc to attend to and the idea of playing a 40 hour epic adventure is just not feasible. I certainly don't have time for JRPG's until my summer holiday from uni...

 And whereas the JRPG 'boom' in the west got tons of teenagers to buy FFVII and then a load of other JRPG's, the teenagers now are playing Call of Duty, Halo etc. 

 So to improve sales I guess there are two trains of thought 1) design a game around what teenagers like now but working the JRPG stuff into it (Which I guess sort of worked for Fallout and Borderlands, albeit not JRPGs) 2) design a JRPG that the millions of people who loved the genre as teenagers can actually find the time to play and enjoy now, which I think has been shown to have some success on the handhelds with the design of JRPG's I've played on them.

 Final Fantasy XIII has shown it is possible for JRPG's to still sell big (Declining sales or not) but it's a very very tough market to break big numbers when the genre leader isn't yet at 5 million (Correct me if I'm wrong lol).

When it comes to Dragon Quest, I approve.  That's because SquareEnix stuck to their roots while improving upon them.

Earthbounds ? In earthbound no one is emo because the game is around courage and friendship and nobody look like feminine probably because the character are ugly lol.

I agree on some level about what Killian1a said; i've played Rogue Galaxy recenetly and i couldnt be bothered to finish it, mainly because i would trudge through a dungeon for 3 - 4 hours, then i would have to watch 30 mins - 45 mins of cutscenes.

FF13 suffers from a similar trend, where theres so many cutscenes. but the massive problem is that FF13's cutscenes feel so empty, the story is sooo bland for the most part. also i've been playing Resonance of Fate, which is a good game, but the story is non existant and that means the games structure feels a bit too repititive and tedious.

although i think theres one exception to the way JRPGs have been going and FF12 is the exception. although the dungeons were a bit too difficult - forcing the game to be a bit too reptitive, the last half of the game was fantastic. pacing, characters, story, music, script - just amazing; i'm sure had Matsuno had finished his work this would've the FF we wanted.

Really often you can tell the personality of character just by looking at is face. If someone look like cheerful , she will be cheerful. If someone look like dark and emo, he will be dark and emo. And that something that really bother me.

yea cookie cutter characters the Tales series is famous for those.

@Killiana1a:

That was an interesting story, though only the first paragraph really involved what I was talking about.

@Xxain:

Do you think perhaps you're pigeon-holing JRPGs a little bit? You're referring to cliches of the genre which won't be true for all games, just the ones with lazy design.