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Forums - Gaming Discussion - The Most Annoying Parts of JRPGs

The_Liquid_Laser said:
About the only thing that annoys me about JRPG's is the plot raisins thing mentioned by the OP. I am actually irritated far more by WRPGs.

1. Pointless leveling because monsters scale with you.
2. Huge maps that take forever to walk across.
3. Lack of a coherent narrative.
4. Lots of characters with no personality.
5. Uncanny valley graphics.
6. Lack of polish in general.

In the end it probably comes down to taste though. Most of the points in the OP are things I actually like. On the other hand I loathe the Elder Scrolls, but I know a lot of people love the Elder Scrolls. Really it's good that there are different kinds of games that appeal to different tastes.

I agree with alot of this.



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Can't really think of anything I'm universally annoyed by in JRPGs, as pretty much any element can be done well or poorly, just depends on the implementation. The things I might find annoying are the same things that are annoying about every other type of game as well. Poorly written or acted characters, badly told story, uninteresting battle system, and so on. In general, I find WRPG to be much less interesting most of the time, though again, that depends a lot on the game.



Long battle animations
Unavoidable random battles
Fighting the same bosses over and over (I´m looking at you, Bravely Default1!)



I'm trying really hard to think of some, but most of the things you guys are mentioning I don't actually mind. I guess I'm not fussy. If i was to really nit pick, I'm not a fan of kids being part of my party.



Louie said:

The often incredibly long main story. I like JRPGs a lot but 90% of them seemingly want to impress players by shoving an extremely long main plot down your throat.

Take Octopath Traveller: Great game, great characters, great style... but after 40 hours of playtime I was less than halfway through the game. I don't have time to invest 100 hours into a game. I'm perfectly fine with a 25 hour storyline and then devs can add DLC and post-game stuff as much as they want.

Same with Dragon Quest XI, which looks totally gorgeous to me but after reading some PS4 reviews the game apparently lasts around 100 hours. It would take me 6 months to finish the game! I'm considering Final Fantasy XII because of the speed-up function but I doubt this will reduce play-time significantly enough for me. The longest I played a game this gen was Breath of the Wild at around 55 hours for my first (and so far only) play-through.

Theoretically, you can finish your chosen character’s path and put the game down, but that is probably still 60 or so hours (80 if you are me, I can’t say no to npcs).  

I agree with too much dialogue (try playing some snes rpgs to see how heavy dialogue has gotten) and the complaints about sexualization of girls. Unskippable scenes are bad too, but most game are over that now.



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Kuksenkov said:
Do you guys just hate the Xenoblade series? Lord.

I love Xenoblade (XB1 and X, I haven't played XB2 yet), they both belong in my list of favourite games of all time, but I would lie if I said I didn't have any issues with them.



Thankfully a lot of newer JRPGS have change fixed most of the issues I had. Random battles being to much (almost all visible enemies now), to much grinding (I don't mind some), Long battle animations.



Most of the stuff in the OP are things I like about JRPGs. Except the lengthy special moves, but that came about a bit later in the JRPG life cycle.

Bring on the grinding, random battles, and abstruse-as-fuck dungeons.



collint0101 said:
HylianSwordsman said:

Right, it can be done tastefully, in a way that's actually funny. Haven't gotten around to playing XBC2 yet, it's sadly in my backlog, but I've heard it has a fair bit of the cringier parts as well. I've also heard it is an awesome game otherwise, so I'm sure I'll love it to pieces, but it might end up on the "awkward to play with girlfriend" pile.

Imo the writing never gets too bad or cringy but pyra and mythra's designs are almost distracting. Every now and then you can't help but notice pyra's massive D cups in her skin tight outfit and it just takes you out of the moment in what should otherwise be a darker or more touching scene. 

So long as the writing isn't too bad I can handle it. The clothing becomes a problem depending on the camera work during the cutscenes. Some games will focus on it in an obvious and cringy way.



I thought of another one. I hate battle systems that don't give a place for as many party members as I want. If there are 8 recruitable party members, and all of them interest me to some degree, and I find their fighting styles interesting, I should be able to have them all fight with me. It makes no sense to me that I get a game over from a nearly defeated enemy when there are 4 or 5 more characters just sitting on the sidelines that could keep fighting. Not to mention, it's an enormous pain in the ass to constantly switch party members out to keep everybody trained, so especially if there isn't experience sharing, you end up with several characters massively underleveled compared to the ones you tend to use the most. When you have to sideline certain characters, not only do they not get stronger, they barely even feel like part of the journey. I hate it. It really sucks if there's a main character that you want in the party because duh, he's the main character, but then the main character has a best childhood friend that would never leave his side so duh, he has to be in the party, and the father figure that always bails him out of tight situations isn't going to sit on the sidelines when the main character is in trouble in a tough battle so duh, he has to be in the party, and then you're out of slots, or if you have one more, it goes to the love interest, because the story wouldn't make much sense if these people were sidelined in every battle. But then that means you don't really get to know the other recruitable characters. So just let me put all 8 characters in battle! Why are they there if they can't all battle? Where do they go when the other characters are fighting? Oh what's that? You were just too lazy to balance the encounters for more than 3 or 4 characters? Well fuck you then, developer! Some of my favorite RPGs are ones that only have as many characters as character slots because by the end of them all the characters are well developed and you feel close to each of them because you fought alongside them the whole time instead of just the one or two sidequests where they were mandatory or something.