Yay, its yet another 'FFXIII sucks, therefore all JRPGs are dead' thread.

Seriousy people...just, arg.  You know what.  I'm not even gona go into it.  I'm tired of this.

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?

Metal Gear Solid had the same problem. Final Fantasy felt like a half assed strategy game, because of that auto-battle button. 

Which isn't mandatory and has been used in tons of other JRPGs as well, like the Persona series

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?

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?

Persona 3 is the only one I think, and even then you can indirectly control your allies which doesn't really make it Auto-Battle.

Persona 4 also had the same Auto-Battle. Dragon Quest has Auto-Battle if you set the tactics to it, Tales series has a similar Auto-Battle due to tactics. A lot of JRPG's use a automated battle system. I agree that FFXIII's one was probably one of the worst, but that doesn't make it the only one.

Plus, the whole argument of Auto-Battle is completely annuled for the fact that it wasn't mandatory. No one forced you to play the game with it. That's the same thing about people complaining about Gambits on FFXII.