General JRPG topic

Cause we don't have one. And That's Terrible. Anyway, here's a thread where we could discuss virtually anything about JRPGs.

Upcoming titles for the last quarter of the year:

Bravely Default: Flying Fairy for the 3DS on December 6th.

Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy X 2 Remaster for PS and Vita will come out at some unspecified point.

That's all I remember for now, anyway. If there are any more, let me know. In the meantime, here's an editorial on the Vita and its JRPGs.^note Caution is advised, since Dualshockers likes to indulge in speculation.

edited 3rd Oct '13 5:01:18 AM by lu127

Been playing King Abbadon, Enjoying it immensely.

First!

Been doing Mario & Luigi: Dream Team. Currently trudging along Hard Mode.

Big Massif has been beaten on Hard. Such horrible 2HKO attacks...

Playing:

Final Fantasy XIII 2, just beat Adam. Since I like going around sidequests, the game goes by too easily. Definitely better than the atrocity that was XIII.

Dark Cloud, currently in the Sun & Moon Temple. I love the weapon system and the old-school dungeon stuff.

Tales of Innocence: I don't really like the gameplay and I can't get the combat straight, but I like the story and characters.

Has anyone played White Knight Chronicles?

I have. It's average. I haven't really gotten anywhere in the second though.

Um...the plot is vaguely interesting, the locations have some really good gimmicks (Although I wonder how Greede was made) with one or two horribly designed dungeons, the characters are average, but the game really dropped the ball on the Avatar. He gets acknowledged once and I ended up with the impression that he's tagging along with the party, but they're all to nice to tell him to leave or they assume he's supposed to be there.

The gameplay is kind of generic. It's sort of the single-player MMO style like Final Fantasy XII, but much less grindy, at least in the first game.

Origins (for the PSP, Japan and Europe only) is pretty fun.

Apparently the game was built on the systems for an actual MMO that never got made, True Fantasy Live Online, and it's really obvious. There is technically an MMO attached to the game, but it's nothing special.

edited 5th Aug '13 3:44:10 PM by Zendervai

Favorite JRPG composer?

For me it has to be Mitsuda or Sakuraba. The former did Xnnogears, possibly my favorrite JRPG ever and due in no small part to the masterful soundtrack 1, 2 3 4

And then there was this perfect ballad from Xenosaga 1 and I honestly prefer it to Gears' Small Two of Pieces. Nostalgia probably plays a part here, as I beat Xenosaga first.

Atelier Rorona remake.

I've only played Atelier Iris 3, and it was thoroughly boring. Are the PS 3 Atelier games better?

edited 6th Aug '13 6:42:43 AM by lu127

If I may ask, what are we considering JRP Gs? Just RP Gs made in Japan?

If you're okay with games that don't have much of a plot, Atelier Meruru is a blast. Oh, and my friend really wants to spread the idea that the Atelier games are actually pretty feminist.

edited 6th Aug '13 9:11:16 AM by Zendervai

Could Demons Souls and Dark Souls count as JRPGS, or Action JRPG's in general (Like Kingdom Hearts and the Tales of series)?

edited 6th Aug '13 9:08:02 AM by Demongodofchaos2

I took a look at a combat vid, and it reminds me kinda of FFX. It looks pretty, too. But the story...?

edited 6th Aug '13 11:59:56 AM by lu127

No, the battle system works pretty differently. For example, there's no character switching in battle, and the two party members you chose protect Meruru if you've charged up their special attack meter enough. You also need to make any items you want to use beforehand.

And for plot, Atelier Meruru is based around Princess Meruru building up the little tiny kingdom of Arls into a major country. The game has a lot of character interaction instead of a strong plot. Uh, essentially, the Atelier Iris trilogy are the weird ones out in the series.

edited 6th Aug '13 1:39:29 PM by Zendervai

Considering Atelier Iris 3 was kind of terrible, that's prolly good news. Are there any mechanics associated with building the kingdom? Incidentally, I also found a copy of Ayesha. Hmmmmm.

edited 6th Aug '13 1:40:36 PM by lu127

Some of the buildings lower prices and expand store inventories. You need to collect points to build things, and you get the points by completing tasks which range from defeating enemies to synthesizing things. It's surprisingly easy to make a big trip around the kingdom and finish like 20 tasks quickly. The different areas change designs (not that drastically in most cases) and bosses are unlocked in the process. Admittedly, most of the bosses are dragons, for whatever reason, but there's a couple superbosses that are extremely difficult. (Protip: Don't go to the top of the Ent unless you know exactly what you're doing).

The Atelier series can sort of be described as having a vaguely similar approach to Harvest Moon. You have a bunch of goals and a time limit, but instead of farming, you collect items out in the world and beat up monsters. And alchemy is really simple.

edited 6th Aug '13 1:46:00 PM by Zendervai

I'm almost at the end of Final Fantasy XIII 2, and while I enjoy it a lot, one of the main issues that has consistently bugged me is that the dialogue is atrocious. Very repetitive, and it feels like it doesn't really know where it's going. Like the developers couldn't structure a conversation about the time mechanics properly.

Which brings us to a new topic: are we experiencing a regression in translation quality?

To elaborate: cheesy dialogue is nothing new for JRPGs, nor is it deal-breaking for most fans of the genre. But looking back at, say, Final Fantasy VI and its woolseyisms, like Terra, Espers, etc. or Final Fantasy X and Aeons, the translation teams didn't seem so afraid to make changes and make the script sound more natural to a non-Japanese audience. Final Fantasy XII had a brilliant localisation, from differing accents to in-game prose.

Fast forward to past 2010, and for some reason, localisations are much more reluctant to alter the script. Both Final Fantasy XIII and XIII-2 have almost word-for-word translations, and very often end up sounding awkward. Tales Of Graces F had the same problem—preserving the original dialogue too faithfully bogged down the delivery of the final product.

Has anyone else noticed this? Why do localisation teams seem to want to go backwards?

Because it's easier. It presumably takes less time to do a straight translation, and you don't need to worry about woolseyisms falling flat or breaking the immersion more. And I don't think Tales of Graces was that bad. Apparently the dialogue seemed kind of stilted in Japanese, compared to the usual standards, so I think that was kind of a hopeless case.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the Neptunia games actually might be pretty liberal with their localizations.

NISA, Atlus, Xseed and Aksys all try and do the Woolseyism thing. Xseed was apparently founded by former Square Enix translators, and Aksys was founded by people who worked for Atlus. NISA was basically inspired by Atlus as well.

I think some of the good Square Enix translators went over to Xseed.

I haven't had time to look into NISA much, since I've only played Disgaea 4. But seriously, where is Alexander O. Smith? We need more translations like Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy XII.

He has his own company now. I think he's mostly doing book translations. His most recent game translation was Crimson Shroud.

Keep in mind, you get people on the Japanese end of things who hate it when anything gets changed. Even to make the dialogue flow better.

edited 9th Aug '13 1:44:21 PM by Zendervai

Man, I don't get it. Everyone on S Omething Awful was complimenting 8-4 for games like Nie R and MGS Rising. The former sounds like they damn near rewrote the whole story and made it focus on someone else, (that's what I've heard anyway)

But then they also localized Star Ocean 4, a game of dubious dubbing quality according to many and outright appalling localization according to most.

I didn't mind it but it seems like they aren't as OMG amazing as the folks on SA led me to believe.

Hey, the 8-4 crew did Xenosaga III. Maybe that's why the Database felt so much more natural and tongue-in-cheek at parts than in Episode 1.

edited 9th Aug '13 2:04:35 PM by Nikkolas

Well, when I tried playing Star Ocean 4 in Japanese, I immediately swicthed back to English after one cutscene because for some reason, the Japanese script annoyed me even worse. I think this may be a case like Elfen Lied: the product had a dodgy script to begin with.

edited 9th Aug '13 2:08:54 PM by lu127

Also, you get the Mario RP Gs where Nintendo basically throws out huge chunks of the script completely. In Thousand Year Door, there's a bit with the Mafia Piantas and a parody of Romeo and Juliet/West Side Story. In Japanese, it uses a totally different set of tropes pertaining to the Yakuza and the romance is pretty much played straight.

So yeah, it's kind of a bad translation, but it's an excellent localization.

Star Ocean 4's localization is okay. The voice acting isn't great, but the script is fine.

Ugh that just reminds me of how barebones the story of Sticker Star was compared to the other Paper Mario games. At least Mario & Luigi: Dream Team makes up for it a little.

See, I felt that way too and I figured it was just the perpetually unhappy fringe segment that disliked the translation. Then I founds ome actual reviews by RPG sites that said the localization was shit too and so I was confused.

Glad to hear others feel the same as I on this particular aspect of the game.

Zendervai,, you said in my JRP Gs with the Best Plots topic that these trilogy of games for PS 2 and PS 3 were good. It was "Ar something."

You would recommend those games then?

Also I'm gonna be getting a 360 soon so I plan to get quite a few JRP Gs for that. A lot of them have hatedoms but bleh. I loved SO 4 in spite of its hatedom. There's Infinite Undiscovery, Enchanted Arms, the tri-Crescendo game (whatever it was because I liked Baten Kaitos a ton) and Tales of Vasperia.

edited 9th Aug '13 2:29:08 PM by Nikkolas