Japanese Games

[Umiman]

I'm curious what you guys think of the current situation of Japanese games. Evidently we are on the eve of gaming's ascent to glory, but here's the question... which region's game policy is the one that's making the shift?

I personally think Western games are produced much better than Japanese standards (with exceptions of course). But it was the Japanese that started it in the first place. Not to mention Japanese gaming seems to always be correlated with anime; a decline in Japanese games could mean a decline in anime as well.

Blah blah blah. Here's my views in simple point form. For the purposes of this discussion... I'd like to exclude Sony Entertainment, Nintendo, and Sega from being called Japanese Game Producers because they've become so international that the borders are heavily mixed. Think more along the lines of indie games or independant studios like Bioware and Square Enix.

Japanese game pros:
1. Focuses more on story
2. Is either stupidly easy or exceptionally difficult. It's hard to find something lying in between. Which is good if you either want something really easy or a huge challenge
3. Pretty with fancy artwork
4. Can usually run on any computer in existence

Japanese game cons:
1. Repetitive and completely lacking in ingenuity (with exceptions here and there). In fact, they've been producing the EXACT same kind of games with the EXACT same mechanics for over a century. Where independant games everywhere else in the world means young, up and coming developers creating never-before-seen-concepts... in Japan it means producing an erotic game, a shmup with magic girls, or a turn-based-rpg-rts-hybrid-thing.
2. Is content producing stuff solely for Japan and nowhere else. Localization? What does that word mean? Oh, you mean to take into account feelings of people from Nagoya? Ah? Who cares about America and Europe? Just get some third rate high school dropout to replace the voices and rewrite the script. Who cares?
3. Patch? What's that? We meant to put all those bugs there! Listening to the fans?! Who cares! Just pretend to listen to them and only put things that you want inside then randomly say that you listened to the fans.
4. A sequel means the exact same thing as the original but with 3 additional characters and a new stage.


I don't exactly hate Japanese games... I'm just worried of their future. I mean... seriously... who the hell wants to endure yet another Turn-based-rts-rpg-hybrid-thing? What do you think?

[Dan]

But, it's for the story that most people play. If it was just for gameplay that people played, you'd only end up playing one game, and then, probably only one type of game (RTS, FPS, RPG...). Also, sequals are usually produced for popular games so not much is changed since people might complain if things become too different from the original.

As for patches, the game has already been made and you bought it, there's really no more profit to be made. Not to mention if it's cross platform, it'll be difficult to implement it on all of them.

[Rectifier]

The problem I find with 90% of all Asian games is that they focus on the grind too much.

This is the age of the internet and high-speed connections, so why do I have to spend hours killing boars to gain a level?

The 10% of games that are well made in Asia, such as the FF series, realize that the grind shouldn't be the focus, and utilize ways to make the game possible for a casual player.

American games, however, suffer a different problem, simply put, they're somewhat shoddy in the sense that they tend to have more bugs and tend to have worse animations; but gameplay, as a whole, tends to be much more goal-oriented and not grind driven. This causes shorter, but generally more enjoyable games. This would explain why WoW has it's appeal, an American goal-oriented approach to the mmo grind.

However these differences are caused by cultural differences and are also visible in other mediums such as comics.

Manga tends to be more cyclical and focuses more on setting the scene before ensuing action, as well as using more realistic drawings.

Comics tend to be action or goal-oriented and focus on "getting the job done," rather than showing the readers what the scene is first, they also tend to use less realisitic, but more styilized drawings.

Course these are all huge generalizations, but for the most part, that's the difference between the Eastern and Western entertainment mediums.

[Setherzam]

hold on now, most of the games that "focuses on grinding" aren't meant to grinding game. However most people choose to kill endless amounts of simple enemies because its far easier then to get together a bunch of random people and rush into a dungeon. The second option is much more fun and faster if you have no idiots in your group (good luck with that) but most people are too lazy to.

Then there's games like Disgaea, that has some extreme grinding in it but you can skip it all and just continue with the story line if you want. The hours and hours of customizing weapons and armors are all optional and if you're in for the story (which is pretty good really) then it can be done with minimal effort.

The point is that most grinding games are full of grinding either as optional side stuff or laziness of players.

[fiendmaw]

There are no boars in Lineage ^_^

[Rectifier]

There are no boars in Lineage ^_^

Orcs

Trolls

Wolves

Skeletons

Boars

It's really all the same junk.

I'd like to play a game that forces you into parties after lvl 10 or so in order to keep the game interesting; screw grinding...for any reason, its boring and wastes far too much time.

[Beware the talking cat]

How about this for a game: you are an RPG monster, and your job is to track down and kill the protagonist before he becomes powerful.

[Fushichou]

How about this for a game: you are an RPG monster, and your job is to track down and kill the protagonist before he becomes powerful.

Believe it or not, I like that idea. That would also probably be a pretty hard game, if it's realistic.

The only Asian games that I have played admittedly weren't that great, but they're different, and different can be redeeming.

[Rectifier]

How about this for a game: you are an RPG monster, and your job is to track down and kill the protagonist before he becomes powerful.

Believe it or not, I like that idea. That would also probably be a pretty hard game, if it's realistic.

The only Asian games that I have played admittedly weren't that great, but they're different, and different can be redeeming.

Sounds kinda like Reboot except in a fantasy/medieval world.

[Umiman]

How about this for a game: you are an RPG monster, and your job is to track down and kill the protagonist before he becomes powerful.

Believe it or not, I like that idea. That would also probably be a pretty hard game, if it's realistic.

The only Asian games that I have played admittedly weren't that great, but they're different, and different can be redeeming.

Different for you maybe... not so for us. You're going to find a heck of a lot more Ragnarok clones than WoWs.

Hell, Nethack has more diversity than most KMMOS. Mmm... Nethack...

[Setherzam]

some people like grinding believe it or not. Anyways ever played FF11? that game is impossible to solo after like.. level 15 or something ask TGM

I remember seeing an RPG maker game where you actually play as a Slime and try to hunt down the protagonist in revenge for him killing all your Slime friends. It was pretty good but I can't find it anymore, sort of fun playing as the liquid metal slime for once instead of running away from them

[TheGiftedMonkey]

some people like grinding believe it or not. Anyways ever played FF11? that game is impossible to solo after like.. level 15 or something ask TGM

Yeah, FFXI is heavily community oriented. You almost literally cannot do anything on your own past level 20. Thus making friends and joining Linkshells (Guilds) necessary. FFXI is THE biggest time sink MMO EVER created. Guranteed. Plus it is the only MMO that I know of that still has an unbeatable boss. Absolute Virtue has been around for years and has still never been legitimately beaten. SE just loves to waste people's time.

[Rectifier]

Sony is a whore.

[Beware the talking cat]

I just noticed the lack of the poking word filter.

Poke those Sony Asakura Mikurus.

[ben1234]

Ya... nice job sneaking past the filter.