| brendude13 said: Wow, I should have just used its metascore instead then. 79 for Tales of Vesperia is a joke, almost every JRPG fan would agree that it's a stunning game. Anyway, those are only a few decent scores and are from IGN only. The highest rated JRPG on the PS3 is Demon's Souls at 89, and that's probably only because it's styled more like a Western game. Go further down the list to find a more Japanese styled JRPG and it is Valkyria Chronicles at 86. Do the same for the 360 and the high rated Japanese styled JRPG is Final Fantasy XIII at 82! I think review scores for JRPG are extremely deflated, there are at least a few JRPGs on each console worth a score of 90+, let alone 80+. (I might have missed a game or two out on the list, I only skimmed over the list) |
Again, 89 is an excellent score. 86 is also great. You could argue that Western RPGs were more well-received this generation, you could argue that the reason for that is because Western journalists are generally biased against Japanese games, or you could argue that it's because Western RPG developers made greater strides than their Japanese counterparts this generation. Compare Skyrim to Morrowind and the Mass Effect Trilogy to KOTOR, while comparing Final Fantasy XIII to Final Fantasy XII... yeah.
Of course, there were terrific JRPGs this generation as well, and they were generally rewarded with scores between 8 and 9. Maybe if you looked beyond the PS3 and 360, you'd see something you liked -- the DS has two JRPGs with Metascores over 90 (although one is a remake of a SNES game), and the Wii has one, the highest-rated original JRPG this generation (so far -- we'll see where Ni No Kuni winds up).
Anyway, it's irrelevant. I was originally responding to the suggestion that IGN is biased against JRPGs, and it seems to me that even if that is the case, they are less biased than most Western journalists. On the other extreme, there is a possibility that IGN is biased in favor of JRPGs, since their scores seem to hit above the average for the genre with decent frequency, while Metacritic claims their average score is 4.1 points below those of other critics.
