Riachu said:
What JRPG series do you think is good? How is Tales mediocre? How does it get more hype than it deserves (because most of it comes from Japan)? |
Hmm... I like more odd JRPGs that most people would probably have never heard of. Riviera The Promised Land is a good example of a JPRG I like. A pretty nice soundtrack, fun characters, and a very interesting battle system all contributed to making the game very enjoyable. Xenosaga is a good example of a JRPG series that I like. Great character development, good story, and a battle system with 4 different flavors of awesome (in Episode 1 anyway).
For a series to be good, it has to be uniquely interesting to me. After playing several Tales Of games, the entire experience feels meh. There's no magic in it for me. The names are different, the stories are different but the game is the same. The attacks, the combat, the character stereotypes... all the same. It leaves a bit of the "Didn't I just play this game" aftertaste with me. It's very much like KotOR2. The game is a good, but so much is ripped from the first one (including storyline/character concepts) that it just feels like a hollow experience.
The series gets more hype than it deserves here, on these forums. Several members are excessively fond of the series and with ToS2 being the Wii's first "big" (if you can call Tales big...) upcoming JRPG series, the series as a whole gets hyped quite a bit. Plus these days Namco Bandai Games is crapping them out all over the place. They milked Phantasia dry so now they're milking the franchise as a whole. 2008 alone is getting what... 5 of them spread across various platforms? Heck, they've even made "Tales of" games for mobile phones in the past...
