Perhaps JRPGs are suffering from what I call the Playboy Paradox. The PP states simply that anything that is popular long enough will eventually find itself under the contradictory expectations and demand that it change and innovate while staying exactly the same.
Playboy was once considered very avant garde and daring but eventually was facing competition from magazines that were far more explicit. If they didn’t go pink they would lose out with the new young subscribers and if they did they would lose long time subscribers who had grown older and more conservative. It took the middle ground and survived but was never the icon it once was. National Geographic faced the same conundrum, stuck pretty much to its traditional format and saw its readership age and shrink to the point they had to (God forbid) sell it off the rack.
I’ve seen successful game IPs and genres get to where they are being hit by critics and fans for being both too same old-same old and too different depending on the reviewers. IPs often seem to respond with changes that appear significant enough to please the one group yet leave the game fundamentals intact enough to please the others. Sometimes the result is gimmicks and sometimes that actually works.
Mario Karts Double Dash on the GameCube seemed different enough to justify a new version but if you just ignored the second guy the game was virtually unchanged. Mario Kart Wii offered enough change in control system that they could go back to the old one man-one kart game. Otherwise Mario Kart could have become Mario Bus.
I’ll get jumped on for this but in my personal opinion, GTA 4 replaced the genuine creativity seen in GTA SA with gimmicks like cell phone calls and TV shows which did little IMHO to actually improve the game.
Need for Speed ran out of good new ideas long ago and has resorted to gimmicks instead.
COD responded to increasing groaning and moaning about “another WWII FPS” to bring out one modernized version to show they could and then returned to the mothership immediately.
JRPGs have been around since the 80s. Fresh ideas may be in short supply. People are either into them big or not. If you read the postings here you definitely are hearing both cries. Those that are disappointed that the low score seems to indicate little new excitement and those that keep responding with, “if it’s like xyz I’ll be happy.”
