haha take a look on my post above yours!!!

I've only played Fable of all of these...

EDIT: I guess you got ninj'd by me there ;)

Title of this thread says "vs" so I want to say that a decent WRPG beats a great JRPG any time.

Why is everyone saying Fable 2 is subpar when it's been game of the year by multiple publications? More ironic is that it's been claimed game of the year because of its RPG elements. Note I haven't played through much of any Fable, I thought the combat in the first was horrid so I haven't bothered with the series and am just going by the media and what my friends have told me about the game.

GTA4 got game of the year and also is a subpar game. 

Now, everyone says WRPG's have bad gameplay mechanics, maybe. But it's not like JRPG's are refined either. I mean Final Fantasy (despite it being my favorite franchise) has fairly mediocre mechanics. There's pretty much a way in everygame to break the battlesystem where 99.9% of your enemies aren't a  threat. They're easy and too many spells/abilities are redundant. I find a lot of the flaws similar between the 2.

Demon Soul's, SMT, etc are pretty sound mechanically, but to say WRPG's aren't mechanically sound when you've played a few WRPG's is silly.

Xenoblade and FFX12's Battle systems are very similar to Kotor/Dragon Age, with skill trees. 

Yes, it was also the best, if not second, sandbox game released at it's time (Note I don't think that genre of games is very entertaining).

Well, you would know what we are talking about if you had played the game.  Fable 2 at the time (remember, it came out like 5 years ago) wasn't a bad game.  However, the comments were about his comparison to xenoblade, a very recent game.  Comparing a recent game to an older, less well recieved game that is an outlier of the WRPG genre isn't a very good comparison.  

As far as the RPG elements, lionhead removed a lot of them for fable 2 and almost completely removed them in fable 3.  I would classify the first fable as an action RPG, but fable 2 and 3 I would probably call action/adventure games.  

Yes I would know better :P.  All I remember is that Sessler and Webb gave Fable 2 game of the year because of its RPG elements, talking to people, being a polygamist, etc.  Though a game as highly acclaimed as Fable 2 should be able to stand the tests of time regardless so I think it is fair to compare to Xenoblade, one of the best WRPG this gen vs one of the best JRPG this gen.

again, having played it would help you make this argument.  Fable 2 was not a highly acclaimed game, a good game, but by no means was it universally enjoyed.  It's rpg elements were bare bones, if you think hearing the same two lines of dialogue from four different randomly generated character models qualifies as talking to people, then we are going to have to agree to disagree.  

It's interesting you bring up sessler and webbs game of the year award there.  Because that choice was incredibly controversial.  Especially since Fable 2 didn't even win their RPG of the year award (again, a reflection that fable is an outlier of the RPG genre and not really an RPG).  Sessler actually got called out to defend his position because so many people were upset with him over that award.

http://www.g4tv.com/videos/35498/adam-vs-kevin-over-game-of-the-year/

By the same token, Zelda could be considered a JRPG (and a great one at that).

If you want to compare the best WRPGs and JRPGs of this console gen then there are plenty of other games that could be put forward ahead of Fable 2 and are fairly true to the WRPG genre (e.g. Witcher 2, Skyrim, Dragon Age Origins).

I suppose the problem with using KoToR to compare WRPGs with JRPGs is that there is just so much variety in WRPGs. It would be like saying Demons Souls is representative of all JRPGs. This gen alone there seem to be numerous examples of genre mixing for instance (e.g. Mass Effect series, Deus Ex Human Revolution, Fallout 3) on top of the more traditional and strategic games (like Dragon Age Origins, Neverwinter Nights 2 and Witcher 2) to your typical loot based Hack n' Slash (Diablo 3). To top it off there still appears to be quite a market for old school top down RPGs if the Kickstarter projects and the Baldurs Gate remakes are anything to go by.

So basically, there are a lot more varieties of WRPGs out there to try, especially to people making blanket statements about this particular sub-genre.