Dragon Ball was massively popular in the West and still is today. Japanese animation has always been much more popular than jRPGs in the West, so it has not much to do with the comic style. The thing is Enix never cared for its western sales, Dragon Warrior was fairly popular to American gamers during the nes/snes times like Final Fantasy. Enix didn´t bother to promote their flagship when it was direly needed, like Squaresoft did.

@arsenal: Westerners though like wasting their time with the same FPS levels and kill each other on multiplayer again and again. Far from being any better than grinding.

I personally rarely ever needed any grinding in any good jRPG to make it through. Bad ones need grinding, good ones don´t. Otherwise you suck or are a noob.

Dragon Quest VIII sold over a million in the US + Others combined. It's not as popular as in Japan, but it sells fine in the West actually.

Grinding is fun just like repeat killing in FPS games.

I love grinding because being overpowered is a lot of fun.

Multiplayer in FPS games are always fun in some cases jsut to hear people scream (on the mic. FFAs in cod4) when they get killed. Each person is different lol

cos there are better rpgs like fallout 3

never a big fan of jrpg, although I played a lot, but proper dnd rpgs are much more better.
anyway best RPGs are on PC not consoles

Because it's cell shaded and uses anime designs. The same reason ToV sells less in the west than The Last Remant, Infinite Undiscovery, ...

But even so, the game sold very well, especially in Europe. 600k in Europe for an RPG is extremely good.

First, the games weren't frequently released in the west, limiting their broad appeal. Second, the games feature a "dated" gameplay system which many in the west aren't interested in.

@Pristine: The point is that each is fun for different people and boring for the others. That´s what I wanted to show to Arsenal. I only grind for the optional superpowered bosses and for that I only do the minimal. And anyway, it´s not as if Westerners don´t like grinding in their RPGs. MMOs are full of that.

@student: I don´t buy the dated gameplay system, because FF has been having the same ATB system for 10 years and FFX, the second best selling FF ever, had a more traditional gameplay system than the previous ones. It´s merely the fact that Japanese developers never bothered much, they believed they were the best developers in the world until recently and that the Japanese market was enough. Only Squaresoft did, because it was their only field.

@memory2zack: I always grind. Being overpowered is just too much fun.
Also, ATB wasn't created untill FFIV and FFX had CTB. I kind of miss ATB. It was a bit more challenging...

Unlke those other ones, western gamers can see how dated and lame this particular brand of JRPG is.  It should be caled 'Cliche : The Video Game'.

You are an idiot.