I`m not a fan of Mass Effect`s Gears of War-esque combat (obviously it`s not completely like GoW since you have skills but you know what I mean). Different strokes.
RPGs were not in nowhere land prior to ME2. Western RPGs have been going strong for awhile now. You have your Bethesda rpgs (Elder Scrolls, Fallout), you have your Bioware rpgs (Mass Effect, Dragon Age, KOTOR) and you have Fable.
Jrpgs are the ones that have been hurting on consoles. The audience for this genre is moving away. And rightfully so, the genre is getting stale. Jrpgs don`t need to be like wrpgs. If anything, I think jrpgs need to borrow pages from the srpg playbook instead. Combat design wise. And they need to trim down on the narrative (much of which is pretty bad and overrated) and the whole `going around town talking to people so that you are allowed to progress the plot` tedious crap like that. I think Etrian Odyssey is a positive example to follow. Little to no narrative (thank you) allows the developers to focus on gameplay. Only catch is that the game is too hardcore for a mainstream audience. Of course there is stuff like Demon`s Souls on consoles but games like Demon`s Souls are not the target of my criticism. Demon`s Souls is Japanese-made and has RPG elements but so do SRPGs and you don`t call those jrpgs. They are from different genres.
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