So I'm playing FFXIII and watching the opening cut scene.  We have all this fantastic crap going on and I'm sitting there thinking damn that's cool, can't wait to do that!

And then I get control and I get two basic attacks and whatever the hell blitz (which looks just like a basic attack).  In the meantime the guy I'm not controlling is doing cool stuff, meanwhile, I'm not.

So while I was bored tapping the X button picking auto-battle because there really wasn't much else to do I started thinking-- what would I be doing in a good game?

I started thinking about Uncharted 2.  In Uncharted 2, all that fantastic stuff going on in that cut scene at the start of FFXIII, I would be doing that shit instead of sitting there with my hands behind my head watching it happen and then doing boring stuff when I do get control.

Now, so why do I say JRPG's are dead?  They love to rely on those crazy cut scenes doing fantastic stuff because that was just stuff you can't do in games.  Now, we can do that.  That means we're sitting there watching Lightning be some sort of action hero asking ourselves why we aren't the ones doing that.

Instead, I get to do auto-battle and then I'm greeted with 30 pages of a datalog?  This is the best JRPG's have to offer me?  JRPG's can't even tell me a story anymore, they have to have me read it in a datalog?

You can put a J in front of it, but it's not an RPG.

You can keep telling yourself that. Because it is no matter what you or the others say.

FF13 is barely, barely able to be considered a JRPG.

You do get access to attacks like Aero and Water, but in FF13, they might as well be called "Spell #1" and "Spell #2".

Go play Shin Megami Tensei games or something.

And how the shit is FF losing its JRPG qualities make the entire GENRE dead?

JRPG's aren't dead. And your datalog excuse is far from being fair. Mass Effect tells a ton of story through the logs themselves. Why suddenly that's a different standard for JRPG's?

I do agree though, that FFXIII relied way too much on cutscenes, but that's an inherent fault to FF itself, especially the post-SNES FF's and the appearance of FMV's.

But as a genre itself, JRPG's are far from dead. DS  JRPG catalog alone can pretty much put to shame every home console WRPG and JRPG combined (except maybe Demon's Souls and Lost Odyssey).

Does Twesterm ever not complain?

JRPG's are terrible when you lose control.  Then again, I hate games with dozens of cutscenes so I'd have something against them either way.

If JRPGs die out, then i'll probably be not playing games anymore. Maybe once in a blue moon. But if you take out the best genre, then what's the point?

FF XIII is a RPG trying to be a action game... and it trys way too hard too. there are several cutscenes like the beginning of ch12 and and the beginning of ch11..that are absoulutely pointless

You have such diverse tastes in gaming.