Oh, another "it's all Square's fault!" thread.

Nothing prevents other jRPG devs from innovating and pushing the genre. Constant bitching about Square games is getting annoying. Just buy other games from other devs, ignore everything SE does, and learn japanese so you'll have access to hundreds of niche jRPG games.

There is nothing wrong with jRPG genre. It's just you not really trying to find what suits your tastes.

Step 1: Buy DS.

Step 2: Buy The World Ends With You.

Step 3: Learn to love JRPGs again.

Step 4 (optional): Forgive Square for a decade of milking old ideas.

Because a Snes sprite with stupid hair and too much emotion is funny and cute and innocent, an HD realistic looking character model with stupid hair and too much emotion suddenly loses all cuteness and innocence. The kind of people who old RPG's appealed to are left behind my new RPG's. Once you develop the technology to allow these games to take themselves seriously, you pass up all the people who could never take this shit seriously.

 They are "going down the drain" with this "one button smashing" RPG's that appeal to the western market destroying what alot of us hold dear...Turn-based

This probably isn't that far off. It's why the storytelling had to change in Final Fantasy 12.

Though it's curious, then, why FFIV DS still manages to be so good...!

I think you are wrong. In the old days probably ratio of crap to good JRPG was the same - but much less of them were released in US (and even less in PAL) so we have mostly seen best titles.

Square tried to put them on the 360 where they don't sell and lack legs in Japan, and for some reason are slammed by the majority of western game critics even though my favorite game mag says they haven't been as bad as portrayed. Simple solution, put them on ps3 instead. they get double their first week's sales in japan, and 80 through 90 review scores instead of 70 to 80 review scores in the West thus increasing their games sales in both regions.

He's talking about quality, not sales.

like i said, my favorite game mag, said these games aren't as bad as they're being made out to be, so if they are on ps3 instead of 360 where they're being reviewed by western and pc rpg snobs, then you would probably see a 10 point turnaroud in the review scores of some of these games, so that a title like the last remnant that got a 7 on 360 would be an 8 or one that got an 8 would get a 9 therefore making it harder for people to come up with the idea they are all bad.

in Play's 2008 Year in Review Issue, 7 of the Nick Des Barres' Top 10 Japanese Games Released in the US in 2008 were JRPGs even more of his Top 25 Japanese Games of 2008 to only be Released in Japan were JRPGs. And 3 of Casey Loe's Top 5 Games in 08 that didn't get a fair shake were jrpgs including Wild Arms XF on PSP and Tales of Vesperia and The Last Remnant on 360. Most Nintendo Tales fans will also tell you that Tales of Symphonia II wasn't given a fair shake either.