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bobobologna on 02 April 2008
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rocketpig said:
naznatips said:
Torillian said:

@Naznatips

But you are talking about diversity in story Naz, where he was talking about diversity in gameplay. Sure all of those games had completely different stories, but none of them really openned up gameplay like Rocketpig seems to enjoy. Personally I do not like open world games particularly more than linear games, but for someone that likes open world more I can definitely understand how he sees Japan as the land of old fogy gameplay.


Er... yeah, you definitely don't want to get into gameplay in RPGs... that comparison ends even worse...

Turn-based, turn based action - Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest
Hack-and-slash - Kingdom Hearts, FFCC
Turn-based strategy - Fire Emblem, Jeanne D'Arc, Ogre Battle, etc.
Side-Scrolling action - Odin Sphere, Oboro Muramasa
Real-Time turn based (Every time you move, your enemy moves) - Mysterious Dungeon
Card-Battle - Baten Kaitos
3rd person action strategy - Valkyria Chronicles
Turn-based action (characters move freely during their turns) - Eternal Sonata
Linear Action or instanced action - Tales of
Turn-based Action Combo system - Valkyrie Profile
Stride Cross Battle System (This one is a bit complex, but I'll explain if you want) - The World Ends With You

There are so many more but those are the ones off the top of my head...


While the Japanese do several different forms of RPGs, have any of them really changed in the past 10 years?

And you're seriously undercutting western developers if you think their gameplay doesn't vary greatly. You can go from anything like Oblivion to some RTS games (some containing RPG elements) to the sim genre to Mass Effect/KOTOR to World of Warcraft to some of the older turn-based stuff.

There's a lot of variation there, it's just that some of it isn't labeled "RPG" even though there are heavy elements of RPGs in them. Shit, you can even include some shooters like System Shock in there if you want. I think your view of what RPG means is different than mine. Many western devs are bending genres and end up kinda in their own realm by mixing and matching multiple game elements. Just because it's called an "RPG" doesn't mean it qualifies as such and some of the games not considered RPGs have significant enough elements of the genre to deserve recognition.


No offense, but you seem pretty close minded about Japanese developers and gameplay. The same arguments you use against Japanese developers, are probably the same arguments other people use against western developers. They think "typical FPS gameplay" without looking at any of the underlying gameplay mechanics. On the surface, most RPGs look like they play the same. But underneath I'm willing to bet there's a lot of variations of the core gameplay mechanics.

I hate it when people write off every FPS as just another FPS, and in the same way, I hate it when people write off every JRPG as just another JRPG.

Edit:  I'm not even that big of a JRPG fan.