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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Are Western reviewers becoming biased against JRPGs?

Bingoo on 22 November 2008
Sullla said:
I think most of you are missing the point here. Reviewers aren't necessarily biased in favor of Western or Japanese RPGs; they're biased in favor of the big blockbuster franchises. Look, we all know review scores work something like this:

80% - marketing, hype, advertising
20% - is the game actually good

The comment on how Final Fantasy X-2 recieved higher scores across the board than ANY Japanese RPG this generation is classic proof. If the game is from a big name established franchise, it's going to get a higher score. (Call it the Famitsu effect.) I guarantee that if you changed the name of Lost Odyssey to "Final Fantasy 13" and stuck a 100 million dollar advertising campaign behind it, the exact same game would have scored 9s and 10s across the board.

Go on, tell me I'm wrong. We all know that's how the review system works nowadays...

 

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rocketpig on 22 November 2008

Big blockbuster WRPGs seem to evolve faster than their JRPG counterparts. Even so, this generation's WRPGs haven't been ground-breaking either. The real action in the WRPG scene was 1997-2005. Fallout, Baldur's Gate, etc. evolving into KOTOR. Not much progress has been made since then past the flashy graphics. Good games but hardly worthy of the adulation thrown at some of them.

As for blockbuster JRPGs, they've hardly evolved much at all, really. To find the good ones, look at some of the smaller Japanese publishers. JRPGs, while the gameplay changes slightly over time, rarely try to bust the mold and do something completely different. Kingdom Hearts was probably the last JRPG that impressed me with its completely different gameplay. I enjoy many JRPGs, I just tone down my expectations for new and exciting play when I buy one. On top of that, this generation has yet to produce a truly top-shelf experience. Shit, people talk about LO and I think Blue Dragon was a far superior game. At least the combat & action didn't feel like Mistwalker yanked it straight out of FFVII. The game felt fresh enough to keep me engaged all the way through. LO couldn't do that.




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Darc Requiem on 22 November 2008
Riachu said:
Darc Requiem said:
Riachu said:
Darc Requiem said:
coolestguyever said:
ever think that WRPG's are just better. Oblivion was amazing, Fallout 3 is great, Fable 2 is popular but I've never played it. WoW is hella popular even though its nerdy as hell.

 

I like RPGs period and Oblivion is overrated. The game is pretty, its well made, but its boring as hell. I actually had more fun with Morrowind. Mass Effect is one of my favorite games this gen, but it got great scores in spite of long load times, bugs, and repetitive side quests. TLR seems to be getting penalized for issues that were also present in Mass Effect. The difference is Mass Effect got a .5 to 1 point deduction. TRL seems to be getting a 1.5 to 2 point deduction.

The reviewers seems to think that the technical issues are more glaring in TLR than they were in Mass Effect

 

I'll make my final judgement when I get my hands on TLR but Mass Effect's issues were certainly more severe than Lost Odyssey's.

 

I played LO and I can safely say that framerate issues are actually the least of your worries in terms of flaws.  I can name some flaws that really bogged down LO from completely reaching its potential.

 

Mass Effect was a great game but it has several game breaking bugs. I never had a situation occur in Lost Odyssey that force me to reload my save data because of bug/glitch. I actually had one play through in which I couldn't equip Ashley with any armor or it would cause my game to lock up. Most of the bugs went away if you reloaded your save data but some did not.

 



naznatips on 22 November 2008
--OkeyDokey-- said:
mrstickball said:
--OkeyDokey-- said:
You think any of those JRPG's actually deserve a 90+ average?...

Compared to what? I think, of those 25 JRPGs I listed (I have a list of about 50 from this generation ranging from 56% to 88%) many of them deserved higher scores - especially the bulk of those in the 70-80%.

I don't know if any JRPGs thus far should of earned a solid 90% average. But from the ones I've played - Tales of Vesperia comes very well close to what would be a very solid, polished, great experience of an RPG. Reviewers agreed that it was the best of the series, and a very good game. Yet slashed points so severely, it doesn't even match up with half of the Tales series!

For example, the following PS2 RPGs are higher rated than ANY next-gen console RPG:

  • Final Fantasy X, X-2, XI, XII
  • Kingdom Hearts I, II
  • DQVIII
  • Dark Cloud 2
  • Persona 3, FES
  • Shadow Hearts: Covenant
  • Suikoden III

And the cutoff is there due to VC - take VC out, and there's another 5-8 RPGs before ToV shows up on the list. And that's 1 system.  

 

Compared to the WRPG's, duh.
I mean, you made the comparison in your OP, I thought it'd be obvious :P

The problem is, JRPG's this gen just haven't been that great. You can expect KH3, FFXIII and Versus, DQIX, Star Ocean 4, Persona 4 and White Knight Chronicles to get plenty of critical success.


I completely disagree.  The World Ends With You is my favorite JRPG since FFIX.  Valkyria Chronicles is my favorite SRPG ever, above every Fire Emblem game, and every Disagaea game.  Tales of Vesperia is far away the best Tales game ever released. 

These games are tops of their genre.  When you are giving 9s to shit like Fallout 3 and Oblivion and games like these are lucky to make mid 8s, there's a problem. 

That said, in a review system where entire genres of gaming (party games for example) can't score above 7s and reviewers are unable to review outside of their own demographic (25-35 year-old western males) the scoring for JRPGs is hardly the biggest concern.  There exists no validity in the world of video game reviews.  Games like GTAIV score much higher than their predecessors (highest of all time in a hilarious twist) when they are worse in every concievable way not related to graphics, and games that redefine their genres like Valkyria Chronicles are lucky to hold onto an average in the 8s. 

Our review system is a beacon of shame on the industry.  If we want a 7 to be our review average fine, but it needs to be consistent and fair to all styles of games and genres. If reviewers want gaming to be viewed as an art form, the first thing that needs to go are the reviewers themselves.



DMeisterJ on 22 November 2008

Completely off topic:

Looks like JRPG of the year for next-gen consoles may be Valkyria Chronicles.

woot.



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SamuelRSmith on 22 November 2008

Finally, these games are churned up and shown as the shit that they are.

I kid, obviously, but I still hate 'em.



Riachu on 22 November 2008
naznatips said:
--OkeyDokey-- said:
mrstickball said:
--OkeyDokey-- said:
You think any of those JRPG's actually deserve a 90+ average?...

Compared to what? I think, of those 25 JRPGs I listed (I have a list of about 50 from this generation ranging from 56% to 88%) many of them deserved higher scores - especially the bulk of those in the 70-80%.

I don't know if any JRPGs thus far should of earned a solid 90% average. But from the ones I've played - Tales of Vesperia comes very well close to what would be a very solid, polished, great experience of an RPG. Reviewers agreed that it was the best of the series, and a very good game. Yet slashed points so severely, it doesn't even match up with half of the Tales series!

For example, the following PS2 RPGs are higher rated than ANY next-gen console RPG:

  • Final Fantasy X, X-2, XI, XII
  • Kingdom Hearts I, II
  • DQVIII
  • Dark Cloud 2
  • Persona 3, FES
  • Shadow Hearts: Covenant
  • Suikoden III

And the cutoff is there due to VC - take VC out, and there's another 5-8 RPGs before ToV shows up on the list. And that's 1 system.

 

Compared to the WRPG's, duh.
I mean, you made the comparison in your OP, I thought it'd be obvious :P

The problem is, JRPG's this gen just haven't been that great. You can expect KH3, FFXIII and Versus, DQIX, Star Ocean 4, Persona 4 and White Knight Chronicles to get plenty of critical success.


I completely disagree. The World Ends With You is my favorite JRPG since FFIX. Valkyria Chronicles is my favorite SRPG ever, above every Fire Emblem game, and every Disagaea game. Tales of Vesperia is far away the best Tales game ever released.

These games are tops of their genre. When you are giving 9s to shit like Fallout 3 and Oblivion and games like these are lucky to make mid 8s, there's a problem.

That said, in a review system where entire genres of gaming (party games for example) can't score above 7s and reviewers are unable to review outside of their own demographic (25-35 year-old western males) the scoring for JRPGs is hardly the biggest concern. There exists no validity in the world of video game reviews. Games like GTAIV score much higher than their predecessors (highest of all time in a hilarious twist) when they are worse in every concievable way not related to graphics, and games that redefine their genres like Valkyria Chronicles are lucky to hold onto an average in the 8s.

Our review system is a beacon of shame on the industry. If we want a 7 to be our review average fine, but it needs to be consistent and fair to all styles of games and genres. If reviewers want gaming to be viewed as an art form, the first thing that needs to go are the reviewers themselves.

Literature and movies are art forms and they're reviewers for them.  Reviewers(or lack of) doesn't determine what is and what's not an art form.

 



 

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The Ghost of RubangB on 22 November 2008

Game reviewers have all kinds of biases. They prefer WRPGs over JRPGs, they prefer consoles over handhelds, and they prefer tits and explosions over Katamari, which hurts me on a deeply spiritual level. I have biases too. I prefer the opinions of my friends and fellow VGC members over reviewers. OH SNAP.



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naznatips on 22 November 2008
Riachu said:
naznatips said:


I completely disagree. The World Ends With You is my favorite JRPG since FFIX. Valkyria Chronicles is my favorite SRPG ever, above every Fire Emblem game, and every Disagaea game. Tales of Vesperia is far away the best Tales game ever released.

These games are tops of their genre. When you are giving 9s to shit like Fallout 3 and Oblivion and games like these are lucky to make mid 8s, there's a problem.

That said, in a review system where entire genres of gaming (party games for example) can't score above 7s and reviewers are unable to review outside of their own demographic (25-35 year-old western males) the scoring for JRPGs is hardly the biggest concern. There exists no validity in the world of video game reviews. Games like GTAIV score much higher than their predecessors (highest of all time in a hilarious twist) when they are worse in every concievable way not related to graphics, and games that redefine their genres like Valkyria Chronicles are lucky to hold onto an average in the 8s.

Our review system is a beacon of shame on the industry. If we want a 7 to be our review average fine, but it needs to be consistent and fair to all styles of games and genres. If reviewers want gaming to be viewed as an art form, the first thing that needs to go are the reviewers themselves.

Literature and movies are art forms and they're reviewers for them.  Reviewers(or lack of) doesn't determine what is and what's not an art form.

 

 

*woosh* over your head.

The point wasn't that you can't have reviews, it was that you can't have these reviews.  These reviews make the industry look like a joke.  Our game media makes a mockery of the very thing they try to cover.  Movies and books have reviewers that understand critical theory.  Video games do not.



outlawauron on 22 November 2008
Khuutra said:
routsounmanman said:
outlawauron said:
--OkeyDokey-- said:
You think any of those JRPG's actually deserve a 90+ average?...

Tales of Vesperia, Lost Odyssey, and Valkyria Chronicles all deserve imo.

 

Also, FFIV, FF:CC and both FF tactics. Also, both top 2 western RPGs don't deserve such praise.

 

Let me see something here...

Do you even play WRPGs?

I certainly do. I just do not find them as entertaining.



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