I do not consider Demon's Soul a JRPG too. It is more like an Action/Adventure with RPG Elements since the focus is mostly on the action part. Kingdom Hearts has a brilliant story, but I do not consider it a JRPG too. I must admit that the genres somehow mingled in the last few generations but the core of Demon's Soul and Kingdom Hearts is the action part. The core of JRPGs is the complex story telling and the strategic battle system (so it has to have turn based battles to eliminate the action aspect, reflexes, etc).

Apart from JRPGs I do consider strategic RPGs its own genre. Final Fantasy Tactics, Shining Force, Tactics Ogre etc have a stronger focus on the strategy aspect and less focus on the story and character development. The different party members are often not really important for the overall story and you can often recruit even generic units... Unit placement is more important, even height level can play an important role and often you control more than 3-4 units.

Another variant of JRPGs are the monster training/breeding games like Pokemon, Dragon Quest Monsters, Azure Dreams, etc... While they share the turn based battle system they do not want to tell a complex story. They concentrate on the pure gameplay and the monster hunting/breeding/training aspect.

I grew up with the NES and at that time the genres where defined by some games. With the PS2 era the genres somehow mingled but at the core i think there is still a core aspect. Borderlands may have several aspects of WRPGs, but the core is still an egoshooter. Mass Effect was at the Core a WRPG with guns and whether you hit an enemy or not was calculated via the stats  ( at least I heard that. Never played Mass Effect myself and I do not intend to try it out after my ME2 experience) . ME2 played like a shooter and whether you hit or not was determined by your aiming instead. It seems that EA is forced Bioware to change their development style and ME2 and DA2 received some harsh critics by fans for this form of "streamlining". But I must admit that I just could be wrong on this parts. I just couldn't put much hours in DA and ME2 to be an expert in these games. I just wanted to point out that regardless of genre mingling there is still a core concept that defines a game and the whole importance of turn based vs. real time battle, hitting by status comparison or via proper aiming, evasion by status comparison or via reflexes etc. Therefore I do not think that we can really discuss whether WRPGS or JRPGS are better via Sales or Metacritics... we can just alter our definition of genre to gain better arguments. I could just say that Pokemon or Monster Hunter are JRPGs and point out its huge sales while I personally don't think they are...

That is just my point of view and I think we have reached an end to this part of discussion because I don't think that any argument could change my point of view in this fundamentally.

About modern FF's... I do think that they deserve this credit. FF X was a true masterpiece. It contained so many moral dilemmas an philosophic topics. After I have beaten the game I spent hours thinking about it and there are only a few games that can really approach heavy topics... FF X made me think about about blind belief, tradition vs technology, self sacrifice, propaganda, the role of religion, etc... I name anything that is bad about this game. Well, maybe the Dark Aeons and the Monster Farm part at the endgame were too time consuming if I have to name anything but in the End FF X was pretty close to a perfect game to me.

The main difference between us may be that I think Non-Linearity is a real bad thing because it is a real burden to thrilling story telling. If you can't ensure that you have seen Event A, B, C, D, E, F and G before you encounter event H you just may ruin the whole story. Just imagine the event in the Al Bhed head quarters where Tidus realizes what will happen to Yuna after beating Sin... It wouldn't be that magic moment if you hadn't seen the effects of Sins attack on the people of Spira (Kilika, Wakkas brother, ...). You wouldn't be able to understand what is going on in Yuna and why she is willing to defeat Sin even regarding the consequences... The linearity forces you through the story, but it rewards you with a deeper story and character development.

Non-Linear games give you the chance to avoid certain events if you don't like them. You get more freedom of playstyle but at the cost of a deep story and character development. I found that nonlinear games tend to have really weak main quests and a ton of relatively meaningless sidequests... So I would always chose linearity over non-linearity because I prefer the deeper storytelling and I do not mind at all that I have less freedom of playstyle.

With FF X Square took a step into a new direction. They no longer focused on 1 hero vs. 1 villain (like Cloud vs. Sephroth). In FF X you had at different times the Al Bhed, Sin, Seymour, the Guados and  the Order of Yevon. Seymour was just one of a few Villains. Jecht personally was not meant as main villain but he was the impersonation of Sin....You see, the games just became more complex... The same with FF XII. You have no clear hero (was it Bash, Ashe, Balthier, Vaan?) and no clear Villain (Sid, the gods, Vayne?). FF XIII also doesn't have an order of importance in the playable characters and Barthandelus was just one of the Fal'cie...(While most FF pre FF X had a clear main character... Dissidia showed how hard it was to choose characters. I mean Jecht as "evil" character from FFX... He sacrifices himself to break the endless cycle of destruction and to beat Sin ultimately... not really a villain in my opinion) .

In my opinion Final Fantasy started to get a much more mature form of storytelling. That doesn't mean that I can't appreciate classic games. I just finished Final Fantasy 1 on my PSP two weeks ago and I am really looking forward to the FF4 and FF5 remakes on the PSP. The only FF that I had a really hard time so far was FF6, because it had far too many characters with too little importance to the story. I don't mind reading through "walls of text". I grew up on the NES and SNES and I still fondly remember some special games... but as I stated before most JRPGS didn't make it to Europe. FF 7 was the first one, Dragon Quest 8 was also the first one....I have yet to play a single Tales of... And Chrono Trigger only came on the DS like two years ago. I bought it soon after Launch but still hadn't the time to start it... When I heard that it had multiple endings I just put it back in the row a few places every time after I have beaten a new game... As I said non-linearity is a real throwback in my opinion. I just want to be able to see everything in the game in one playthrough...

Hey guys, bringing this back on topic, did we get trolled by Namco again?

It was only a rumor, i thought? So we got trolled, but not by Namco

What you consider JRPG, I consider traditional JRPG. I mean how many turn based JRPG's are out there now? It makes no sense to limit the entire JRPG genre to at best one console game a year. After all Demon Souls and Tales of Vesperia are Japanese RPG's.

I define JRPG by fact it's Japanese. Japanese developers have a very different plot to their games then western RPG's. It's never a medevil type setting with fantasy, and goblins.

Pokemon I consider a JRPG, and the original Pokemon games were one of the best. Although the style is not the same as a typical Final Fantasy game, nor is the story as deep, the gameplay is similar and damn fun. I don't define a JRPG by the type of story they have, it's about the experience. It's just a different type of RPG.

Also for Stretegy RPGs like Fire Emblem, Tactics Ogre, and Disgaea, I still classify them as JRPG's. Fire Emblem games has stories just as deep as any other handheld RPG, so even though generally the genre is less story deep, there are exceptions. In the end I look at these games as Strategy RPG's because the gameplay is so different, but as a secondary genre, I still classify them as JRPGs. The ones with bad or weird stories are just bad JRPG's, but good strategy games.

As for Mass Effect 2, It is largely a shooter, and I would go and say it's Shooter first then RPG. I still hold the RPG element because When I went to play the game again for the second time on the hardest difficulty, the very first level was harder then any shooter I have ever played before. After the first level all my stats imported from the first game, and I could change them, and suddenly the difficulty dropped significantly. Although the RPG elements have diminished significantly, I still consider ME2 an RPG as a secondary genre.

Mass Effect 1 is still an RPG at heart because most of the game is focused on stopping combat and using upgradable biotic powers to defeat your enemies. Most of the difficult battles in ME1 involve very little shooting. Dragon Age 1 is the same way, but I have only played the demo of DA2 so no comment on that.

I think the differences between our definition of JRPG relate to different games we started out on. I grew up on the SNES generation, my first real RPG was Super Mario RPG. Now although the story in Super Mario RPG is deeper then any other Mario game, it's still not that deep compared to a SNES level Final Fantasy. You grew up on Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior, story is more critical for you.

So to me a JRPG is more about the experience. I consider any RPG from Japan a JRPG because I feel the arrative is very different, and the gameplay is often times unique. Your focus is on story, so you only consider the turn based-story driven Japanese RPG's as JRPGS.

What you consider a JRPG, I consider a traditional JRPG, and to me it is just one of the many different types of JRPGs forming. Tales of ... , Demon Souls, and other Action JRPGs, I consider Action JRPGs. Fire Emblem, Tactics Ogre, and any other Japanese Strategy RPG, I consider a Strategy JRPG. Fallout, and Mass Effect I consider Shooter WRPGs, etc.

FFX - I got bored about halfway through. I thought the pacing was far too slow, and there were too many random battles and grinding. I didn't like the overall plot about some magical spell bringing back Sin every thousand years and some silly cycle to restore him. I also didn't like how the main character was from some dream world. The amount of fiction in this game was just too much for me, in older FF's the most fiction possible was magic, monsters, and an afterlife. I don't like games when they get too fake. The gameplay mechanics were solid, I just did not enjoy the overall plot.

Just quickly, I can relate this to Lost Odyssey. In Lost Odyssey almost all the main characters are immortal and from another world. However after that initial concept, all the fiction in the world is limited. No afterlife, but there is magic and monsters. The plot to me makes sense, and the part of the game where Kaim finds his daughter and grandchildren, I found to be much more touching then any moment in FFX because it felt real. I could feel sympathy for him because, after the immortal part, the story makes sense.

I feel FF has gotten too main stream, and plot has suffered because of it. It seems like the story is trying to be too mainstream, and the developer seems less willing to takes risks to make a better plot. Sales to me tend to feel more important then story when I think of FF past FFIX. I mean what story does an MMP FF game have? That's a cash grab..

As for your point about there being no real enemy or hero in FF games, I don't think that is a giant step forward. I beat FFVII after FFX, and the concept of good versus evil was still present. In FFX yes there was Sin, Seymour, Al Bhed, and the Order of Yevon, but they were all linked. Wasn't Seymour a member of the Order of Yevon who was trying to become the next Sin or something like that? I beat the game a long time ago, but  to me it still felt like there was one bad group, all with their own agendas. Either way, that doesn't change the genre. The game is still largely the same.

As for your linear vs. non-linear arguement, I feel you have Fallout on your brain. A non-linear game can still have main story events take place in the A,B,C,D,E,F,G fashion. However, like in Mass Effect 2 you can tackle these story missions as any time you choose. Also these types of game typically have a structure where 3 different story events can be viewed in any order because they are independant of one another. FFXII incorporated some non-linearity as I believe you could tackle missions between any of the main characters. This is what makes a game good. Also being able to completly stop the campaign to complete side quests really makes the game feel more like a game. Not all games work non-linearly because they put a vast majority of the focus onto the main story, and story events cannot be performed independently of ane another, but I feel that it's a welcome addition into gaming.

Also... PLAY CHRONO TRIGGER!!!!! IT'S THE BEST JRPG EVER!!!

It has multiple endings, but 11/13 of them are only viewable on a second playthrough. The main story itself has two endings, but it's basically based on whether you save the world or not. It's a very linear game, and as you play it, you will see where the alternate endings come in. Basically the alternate endings of the second game, are what if situations if you didn't interfere with certain past events. I have yet to see the bonus endings from the DS version... now I want to play it.

BTW what do you think of Golden Sun. Is it a JRPG to you, or does the inclusion of Dijin make it more like a training/breeding RPG like Pokemon? To me this is a full fledged JRPG, and the best JRPG to ever be released onto a handheld.

Dear god! A bump, wall of text and offtopic at the same time.

As far as i know, the last thing we heard from Namco-Bandai was that they have more plans for this series other than release Tales of Vesperia on Games on Demand. That's all, right?

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=127185&page=1

Yea thats all so far

Yea, but no one is arguing, so who cares if were off topic?