Lol. To be honest I don't remember her voice in Advent Children at all. And I can't remember her being in Dirge of Cerberus.

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.

Why are people even comparing sales of this gen to last??? its not really fair, considering there are way more Rpg games that were released last console gens than this one. I think finance has to do with it. RPGs have always been more expensive games to make than others. In terms of consoles there just not that many, and WRPGs have stolen some of the thunder. When FF7 was released it opened up the floodgates in the US for alot of RPGs to come in and get recognized. It was a very cult genre b4 that. YOu couldnt go to a game store without seeing 10 dif. RPGs on the shelf in those days, way more than FPSs now today the situation is reversed

They simply don't have the financial power/income to make great JRPG's that would appeal to the big part of the audience.

Most of the gamers don't want a good story they want a decent multiplayer something JRPG's can't offer and that cost JRPG's devs a lot of money...

Serious..Halo, Cod, Monster Hunter, the wii franchise would ll not be so popular if their was no option to play with friends. 

Persona 4 renders your whole argument invalid....good day

Persona 3 too :(

When other genres started adding in RPG qualities, it became easier to get the RPG experience from a wider, and better array of games.  It's not so much the story that's killed JRPGs for me, but the RPG elements like loot, levels, and loadouts that have enhanced other games beyond the tired, tired, tired menufests, random battle slogs, and stale action.

This is the type of thread makes me wanna leave the internet. 

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