This site started in 2004, it’s 20 years old, assuming it’s audience is GenZ is rather shortsighted

Unless I really know the mechanics well, I will turn the difficulty all the way down to story mode and not even feel bad anymore. Why would I want to get frustrated with a video game I barely have time for?

I swear, it’s the ghastly young people who work at Kotaku that do this to me. I’m 46, so was turning 19 in 1996. So I always think of these games as part of everyone’s childhoods, until the Gen Alphas that work here all remind me they weren’t born then.

This. Someone who was a child in the 90s would be in their 30s now; either John thinks the readers here are all in single digits or he didn’t think that quip through.

I could easily be one of the parents they’re talking about. We read this site too >_>

When Kotaku calls out for the Zoomers, Gen-X and Millennials get titchy.

There could be a lot of zoomers that read the site. Let me try out my Zoomer Call.

“Before Starfield, before Skyrim, before Fallout 3 and Oblivion, before your parents even knew how to make you, there was The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall.”

Definitely this. I consult guides if I can’t figure out a puzzle or beat a boss in 5-10 minutes.

Arguably, my parents never knew how to make me, that's why I'm the mess I am today

Bandwidth my ass. All that cash money made from shark cards because everything is price-gated unless you have hours and hours of time to grind or you happened to have modded money back from the old PS3/Xbox days. And yet, all that money goes towards the shareholders and the CEO. There's nothing of value in GTA online…

Only if all you played was FF games.

People really need to specify when they’re referring to JRPGs. Persona 5 didn’t revive turn-based RPGs. It came out in April 2017. Turn-based RPGs that came out in the years preceding it include:

There aren’t more or less turn based RPGs than when Persona 5 came out. It didn’t save the genre, and also the genre wasn’t really dying. Persona 5 is fine, but this reads like it came from one of those hyperbolid Persona 5 fans who need to play another game.

Aside from Dragon Quest which has been a reliable seller in Japan (And those ports you referenced barely made it stateside), and Undertale which is... Its own thing. Almost everything you listed was either incredibly niche or an outright flop.

I have a lot of mixed feelings about Persona 5. But definitely the 7th generation was a bleak time for JRPGs with a few series keeping the genre on life support and it was not a fun time.

I freaking love Persona 5. But it is wildly hyperbolic to claim it saved the genre

Okay, but like... *dying*? Just a wee bit hyperbolic, innit? lol

I’ll be spending the final hours of 2023 like I have every year for the past 20 years, in my Animal Crossing village.

Lifelong fan of JRPG’s, never enjoyed the Persona series games because they always had you on a ticking clock which didnt give you time to take your time and explore properly.