My guess is that Bethesda’s marketing department is going for generic. Bro-shooters sell, after all.

God dammit, multiplayer folks. Stop stealing our singleplayer franchises.

I was stuck on Locke’s section for months. Months! Too dumb to figure out I could steal disguises during battle.

My enjoyment of Zestiria has primarily been due to the interaction between the characters. They interact like real friends would, and each has their own interesting quirks and flaws that subvert the visual tropes they fall into at first glance. Lailah and Edna are hilarious, and Edna’s relationship to Meebo (Mikleo)…

Fair point. Take FFVIII, for instance. It doesn’t just fall apart towards the end, it outright implodes.

On top of the amazing open world gameplay, the ending is what cemented AC IV as my favorite Assassin’s Creed. Rare is the game that pulls my heartstrings like that moment did.

Yeah, it’s certainly true that we see a billion “scruffy but handsome” male action heroes in the west. I think there’s a bit of a difference though. Japanese tropes are harder to relate to (for me, anyway) because they often don’t act, talk or react like real people.

Agree wholeheartedly. I’m still waiting for an RPG (East or West) with the depth of character development that FFVI had. That wasn’t just one of my favorite video game stories. That was one of my favorite stories of any medium and inspired me to tell stories of my own.

Reliance on tropes made me quit JRPGs for quite a few years after playing through the PS2 generation. I’ve recently come back to them though and feeling that old sense of fun again purely because the mechanics are great.

I’m kind of okay with this, and I’m okay with it for a reason I’ll probably get flamed to high hell for.

I’m three quarters of the way through the first game and still waiting for the story to pick up. I get the appeal, as the characters are interesting, but man if this isn’t the most laboriously slow RPG I’ve played in some time.

With recent trends in Japanese PC releases, chances are that most of the games you mention will see a PC release. Yes, most will come on on PS4 first, but as Ishmael said, we’re seeing more JRPG publishers releasing on both platforms same-day. Square Enix has been pushing their back catalog to Steam on a fairly rapid…

I don’t know. Steam has been getting a huge backlog of JRPGs lately, and many upcoming ones as well. Sony’s losing the advantage there, and I say that as a Sony fan.

I’m curious what it is about Microsoft achievements that you don’t get from Sony’s trophies. I’m a Steam achievement monger, so I feel you. I’m just curious what the difference is for you.

I think my problem is that it’s still hard to justify a console purchase if you have a moderately capable PC. I own a PS4. I would LOVE to have more to be excited about on my PS4, but the fact that I can play nearly every game on my PC — with mods, graphical upgrades, cheats and other options consoles don’t have —…

I love that in a time in which Ubisoft is frantically scrambling for diversity after their “women are hard to render” debacle, this guy says that their London is not diverse enough.

I’ve also come to recognize that a lot of what I loved about JRPGs before PS1 was the fact that the lack of voice acting or detailed character sprites allowed me to place my own voice and interpretation on top of those characters. If my favorite game of all time, Final Fantasy VI were made today, we’d probably hear…

I wish there were more examples like the games you mentioned that had been made in the past ten years. There just isn’t anything on the level of storytelling o Suikoden 2 or Chrono Trigger anymore and that’s a big part of the problem JRPGs face.

JRPGs are in an interesting place right now, which is that they’re in more or less the SAME place that they’ve been for quite some time. Since the PS1 era, I’d say. As a culture based on tradition, there isn’t as big of a focus on innovation or creating something new, so we do tend to see the same character,…

As someone who until recently dated a lawyer, I’m sad to say that plainspeak isn’t something feasible for a legal agreement. An addition or a companion piece would leave an unacceptable amount of room for interpretation. If EVERY word isn’t stated in EXACTLY the right way, a company may be vulnerable to legal action.…