For the JRPG fans... Questions?

[domflo]

I've played alot of them this year.

I played every Fire Emblem game and Valkyria Chronicles 1 and 3 (have yet to get 2), if these count.
I played Persona 4 Golden, SMT Devil Survivor Overclocked and 2, The World Ends With You (still not finished with that), lots of Pokémon games (X/Y, Mystery Dungeon 3, and I went back to Ruby/Sapphire), I aquired and played Final Fantasy 3 and 4 (both of which I didn't finish yet), Ni No Kuni, Lufia II for the SNES, Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story and Pandora's Tower, EarthBound, Mother 1 and Mother 3 (got those two for my birthday), and to round it off some on the PSP (which I got this summer) like Star Oceans 1 and 2 and Tales Of The World: Radiant Mythology, and most importantly Mario & Luigi Dream Team and SuperStar Saga, which I go back to regularly. I also yearly play Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door.

If I count all the JRPGs I played this year, my favourite would be Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, since it's my favourite game of all time. If I had to limit myself to those that I played for the first time this year, it would probably be Fire Emblem Awakening, and if we're talking about more traditional JRPGs (non-strategy ones), I'd go for Persona 4 Golden, which was also the biggest surprise for me this year.

Why do I like JRPGs... pretty good question actually. I don't really know. As probably became apparent, I play almost nothing else, but I'm not even sure why. Probably the combination of story, gameplay and characters. It's also pretty important that the game isn't too dark. I don't really like that. It's also the reason why I held off of buying Persona 3 or most of the SMT games in general, since I'm told that they are pretty dark. I just don't like that as much (see Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door being my favourite game).

I don't think that there's much to be improved upon. I like my classic JRPGs and wouldn't have them any other way. I know that changing nothing would damage the genre, but I can't really suggest anything as I'm quite content with what there is. This also explains the amount of old games in the list of games I've played this year. Only recently I quired an SNES (AND a Super Famicom actually) and a Famicom, looked into the GBA again and got a PSP. I also got 6 original PAL PlayStations with my SNES, 2 of which seem to not have region locking (chipmodded?), so there'll be plenty of JRPGs I have yet to uncover. Also planning on getting an american PS2 in the future (damn you regionlocking). I'm all set, even if the genre would vanish completely. :P