| rocketpig said: While some of the smaller sub-genres may be evolving, what major change have you seen in mainstream JRPGs over the past 10 years? I'm honestly curious because when I pop in FFXII, I see a game that take FFVII, puts a few minor twists on it (oooh, realtime! New stuff!), and is largely the same game. |
Okay, well before I get into this let me say that linearity is a property of the JRPG in the same way that guns are a property of First Person Shooters . The linearity is necessary for JRPGs to have a tight coherent plot (as opposed to the vapid plot you get in a game like Oblivion). It's simply a property of the genre, and if that bothers you, you'll want a different genre.
As far as gameplay goes, here are just a few games in the last decade that have had completely unique styles of gameplay from the standard FF menu click and attack buttons.
-The World Ends With You. That game uses an action combat system in which the bottom screen attacks are done with the stylus and the top screen with the D-Pad. And it is in fact from Square Enix (the Kingdom Hearts team), the people you complain about.
-Kingdom Hearts of course has its own gameplay as well.
-Dark Cloud 2 had an interesting take on an action combat system.
-Baten Kaitos has a unique card battle system. I would link you but in GT's only video they had no idea what they were doing and kept using a high number card, preventing them from using card combos. Just trust me that it's nothing like any other game.
-Eternal Sonata's turn based action.
-Star Ocean 3 did menu based action combat long before FFXII and did it much better.
-Odin Sphere of course.
-King's Story
-Valkyria Chronicles is looking very interesting.
-Fragile. There's no combat in that but the music and environments are awesome and I look for any excuse to link to it hehe.
Those are what came to mind when you mentioned gameplay variety, but I'm sure others could do a better job.
