Are Western reviewers becoming biased against JRPGs?

[naznatips]

Riachu said:

naznatips said:

I completely disagree. The World Ends With You is my favorite JRPG since FFIX. Valkyria Chronicles is my favorite SRPG ever, above every Fire Emblem game, and every Disagaea game. Tales of Vesperia is far away the best Tales game ever released.

These games are tops of their genre. When you are giving 9s to shit like Fallout 3 and Oblivion and games like these are lucky to make mid 8s, there's a problem.

That said, in a review system where entire genres of gaming (party games for example) can't score above 7s and reviewers are unable to review outside of their own demographic (25-35 year-old western males) the scoring for JRPGs is hardly the biggest concern. There exists no validity in the world of video game reviews. Games like GTAIV score much higher than their predecessors (highest of all time in a hilarious twist) when they are worse in every concievable way not related to graphics, and games that redefine their genres like Valkyria Chronicles are lucky to hold onto an average in the 8s.

Our review system is a beacon of shame on the industry. If we want a 7 to be our review average fine, but it needs to be consistent and fair to all styles of games and genres. If reviewers want gaming to be viewed as an art form, the first thing that needs to go are the reviewers themselves.

Literature and movies are art forms and they're reviewers for them.  Reviewers(or lack of) doesn't determine what is and what's not an art form.

 

 

*woosh* over your head.

The point wasn't that you can't have reviews, it was that you can't have these reviews.  These reviews make the industry look like a joke.  Our game media makes a mockery of the very thing they try to cover.  Movies and books have reviewers that understand critical theory.  Video games do not.