WRPGs versus JRPGs, or: My mis-adventures in KOTOR

[ishiki]

blkfish92 said:

Nem said:
WRPG's are generally more buggy, but make up for it with open-endness.

JRPG's are very tight on bugs but also tend to throw you in very linear paths you cant derive from. From a testing point of view, the JRPG is alot easier to optimise.

Hmm? I don't know about that, that more pertains to the new jrpgs, more specifically ff13.

Of course we cannot forgot the openess of Dark/Demon's Souls and Xenoblade.

Pretty much every FF is more linear than a typical wrpg, atleast in the past... when FF7 was released on PC (where western RPG's used to be from). one of the major complaints with the PC (WRPG crowd at the time) was that it was too linear, and that square/eidos did a lazy port. Thats why it scored around an 8/10 average for PC at the time.

Not just level design either. WRPG's like planescape torment, baulder's gate weren't completly linear from a story perspective either, with cause and effect from actions. Again it's generally speaking. Dragon Quest V lets you pick your wife, FF7 let's your pick a date on the ferris wheel, FF10 lets you pick who rides on the snowmobile, Chrono Trigger lets you do a lot of crazy things, Tactics Ogre lets you majorly effects things like a WRPG.

And many WRPG's have become increasingly linear. There are JRPG's and WJRPG's that overlap in design, like say anachronox (WRPG that's like a JRPG), or demon soul's generally considered a (JRPG that's like a WRPG). For whatever reason this thread is about generalizations despite both sides bringing a variety of linear/non-linear styles.