Is JRPGs dying?

[lestatdark]

Icyedge said:

lestatdark said:

 

The problem is that JRPG's, today, is a genre that's on the "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation.

For as many expert media, gamers and even JRPG fans rage about the fact that the genre's molds have trying to adapt to standards that don't have anything to do with genre itself, forgetting, as you said quite well, what made them be an exceptional genre back in those days; there's a counter-force who's always criticizing JRPG's for being a genre that's subject to similar cliches and that they don't feel the genre has changed anything from those days. 

And then, in the end, there are those who constantly forget that handhelds do exist and that the genre is quite alive and well in them. But this is more of a "la-la-la-la I can't hear you, if I don't acknowledge it, it doesn't exist, la-la-la".

I dont think jRPG fan are blind to the handheld releases. First theres people who prefer to play on TV. Second, handheld RPG arent generally the same experience. Most of the time they are either a remake, short, a repetitive grindfest or a multiplayer action/RPG, they can even be all of that at the same time.

Take Suikoden tierkis as example, its one the few handheld jRPG I really liked, but its nothing compare to the PS1/PS2 one. No army battle, no 108 characters to recruit ect. Same goes for Final Fantasy crisis core, it was enjoyable, but it was also damn repetive even though it was actually a short jRPG. I guess with bigger storage capacity on the next generation of handheld it might get better for my taste.

I could easily counter that last paragraph with another two examples.

Dragon Quest IX is easily the biggest DQ game ever made, with massive amount of unique quests, which extend the story-line of the game for over the 100 hours mark, some of the biggest character customization options in any JRPG and it's an overall massive game. You can easily put 200 hours into it, without becoming repetitive and you wouldn't still have done everything in it.

Kingdom Hearts BBS is also one of the biggest, if not the biggest KH game so far. It also has the largest amount of mini-games, the most complex battle system and an overlaying story spanning three characters which easily crosses the 25 hour mark for each one, and the entire game will easily cross the 100 hour mark, if you wish to do everything in it, easily out-shadowing previous PS2 iterations.

These are just some few examples. I could have also talked about TWEWY, Mario&Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story and many other JRPG's available for handhelds. While there's bound to be some disappointing continuations to existing series (situation that happens even on home consoles) and some short JRPG experiences, there's also a lot of games that are quite unique and expansive as the previous home consoles games were.