Learn some small things about a game I knew nothing about (Like reading some facts about it, or listening to a song...

Dwarf Fortress.
Its everything you can imagine and worse.

If anything it's the reason I don't buy games.

Weeaboo grindan sims you mean. CRPGs were making some real good advancements up until recently. From Wizardry to Unlimited Adventures to the Infinity games to Neverwinter Nights.

Roguelikes require some imagination to put everything that's happening in motion.

Anyone who has to grind to beat JRPGs are terrible at the genre.

Blame EA for devouring good devs.

I don't have the answer to fix the RPG game industry sorry. Something new needs to be tried even if it doesn't work at first

Dwarf Fortress
someone already mentioned it, vut really it should be a requirement to play before posting on Holla Forums

Honestly, I just want a good 'God Sim' game. I just want to watch things happen and subtly, or not so subtly, influence them. Like dwarf fortress, if you could do whatever you wanted and the dwarves were actually not retarded.

play the panzer dragoon series of games OP. They're about as cryptic as you can hope for without going into retarded slav shit of "nothing makes sense lol just like like xD suffering overtones and undertones is all we can do."

fucking slavs, never a more incompetent group of people. Anyway, the panzer dragoon games have a lot going on, and a wonderful world set in the post apocalypse, a thousand or more years after the world properly ended. There's remnants of the last great civilization which the current civilization is built on, bizarre primal-future technology which makes it look like everything is powered by gigantic bones, people, places, and designs that all strike a purpose and all veiled in the mystery of the dragons themselves.

The 3 rail shooter games (PD1, Zwei and Orta) have an entirely fictional language which consists of all the spoken dialog in the game, the language is a combination of ancient greek, german, russian and Japanese. Orta and the most prestigious game in the franchise, Saga even have songs written in the language which are absolutely beautiful. Technologically the games are incredibly ambitious and are rightfully considered the best looking games on their platforms.

Seriously don't waste your time with slav shit. The game play is almost always first person, almost always terrible, unfinished and contrived. If you like star fox, panzer dragoon easily outclasses the best that franchise offers and is an arcade styled rail shooter where you are able to rotate the view freely, and it becomes a real challenge of nimbly dodging shots, managing swarms of enemies, and combating gigantic foes.

The genre went from being a system seller in the 90s - early 00s to being something very niche. The genre, as most have said here, has barely changed. The audience have changed but maybe the genre hasn't adapted to the technical advances modern gaming platforms bring. None of that "Turn based combat is outdated" nonsense but the way many go about their turn based combat, I think, is too formulaic.

Games that try to branch out their combat while are usually disliked too. Something like Final Fantasy 12 gets its combat called "MMO combat" simply because you auto attack and have the ability to freely move around. Gambits give you free control over your AI partners so you can have them play however you please but people complained that you can just let the game play its self, instead of just disabling gambits to have full control. It's a much better option than having your AI partner do dumb things like in Persona 3. Then there are games like Unlimited Saga, Knights In the Nightmare, and Sting Entertainment games where they really do something different but are so odd that people have a hard time grasping them. Or games like Tales of Destiny DC and Tales of Rebirth that never come out of Japan. I bet those games would sell great on the Vita.

I want the JRPG genre to stay niche honestly for I still like the genre the way it is.

Maybe the Black and White games? I haven't played them myself but they're essentially God sims.

I tried em. They're more like really, really shitty city builders with RTS elements. I mean a game where you truly are god, where you can do whatever, build the world however, be involved or completely passive, etc. Nothin like that, it seems.

Arx was pretty good about that for me, wasn't presenting the entire time and one of the last game I ever read the manual for besides Gothic Part Deux. If you want to go deep, there's always text adventures.

Quit playing Bethesdashit.

I'd say that it's not just ones that try something different combat-wise that wind up hit or miss in terms of sales. Looking at something like Shadow Hearts (which as a series did do some neat stuff in regards to add more player input to the combat), the Japanese playerbase complained that the first PS2 game was "too dark", "too scary", and the monsters "too freakish" compared to more standard JRPGs. The devs took a lot of pride in getting that response to their game, but needless to say, their publisher Aruze wasn't happy between that response and the game not selling as well as they'd hoped (and I suspect they had ultimately taken a bit of a risk with it, given that Shadow Hearts spawned from Koudelka, a PS1 game that wasn't too well liked worldwide), and ordered them to make more normal stuff that would sell better (FFX being released in the same timeframe and selling like hotcakes). Ultimately, while the devs did cut down on the darker tones in increasing amounts, in turn they made the games fucking weird, even compared to other JRPG standards, as if to try to keep the audience for their games niche and not go "We want the Final Fantasy audience" like Aruze was probably wanting. They carried on like that for another two games before Aruze finally had enough of their rebelliousness, dissolved Nautilus, and killed the series entirely (aside from whoring character out to Idea Factory). Thus, the series has remained niche both in Japan as well as out here, and hasn't had to conform to CURRENT YEAR development/localization standards because it's already dead.

Essentially, customers are sadly more prone to wanting stuff that feels more familiar to what they're used to (there are outliers though, I suppose), and publishers can wind up expressing the same feeling since they want more of an audience to bring in more money for them.

Much as I wish Namco would have made some big, budget bundle of 2D Tales games for the PS3 or Vita (Tales of Phantasia X, Tales of Destiny DC, Tales of Destiny 2, Tales of Rebirth, and NDX at the very least), I don't think they're inclined to at this point since the series has gone 3D for both console and handheld now (some of the older 2D ones used to see PSP ports), and even if they did, there's no way that it would be brought west: given how many of those would have to be officially translated for the first time, it likely wouldn't be within their budget to release them all as some $40-60 bundle, or in the customers budget if they charged full price for each individually. Also, given their excuse against Tales of Vesperia PS3 coming over, that it's "too late" to have been considered back when Xillia was on the way, it's likely way too late for them to consider doing anything for the west involving those titles, short of leaving cameos in the games we do get.

Tales of Symphonia similarly rewards exploration with hidden locations and items. Probably because in a lot of ways, Symphonia is a mash-up of elements from both Phantasia and Eternia.

Sir, this is an illegal opinion. You are under arrest.

The Atelier series is basically this - you're this cute girl alchemist, now go do alchemy stuff, solve your town's problems to prove that your workshop is important to the realm, explore locations to get ingredients, and so on.

I got Dark Souls 1 for Christmas last year and feel like it does a good job of filling my imagination up with what the boss encounter will be like and how badly it's going to kick my ass.

It's a real shame Namco barely takes any risks. At least it's not as bad as a decade ago where they would just give the finger to the western audience and bring over absolutely nothing.

Are you the Shadow Hearts user from the JRPG threads? Those threads always seem to have someone who's always an expert on a series. Like that Ion user who knew all about Ar Tonelico and would spread around the AT2 restoration patch.

I still need to get into that series. I have 2 of the games and haven't even touched them.

Big issue has been them not thinking the west would even want the 2D entries anymore, though between Destiny and Eternia flopping in sales (and being pretty damn expensive now) and both ports of Phantasia they've brought over being disliked (for good reason; GBA is a bad frankensteining of the SFC and PS1 versions, and the mobile version had shit changed such as pay-locking save points to encourage microtransactions), I suppose they have enough "reason" for it. Thankfully there's groups like Absolute Zero.

Yeah, I'm the guy that's been trying to push Shadow Hearts (Wild Arms as well), to the point of making infographics to encourage others to get into them. I enjoy JRPG discussion in general, so I tend to pop-up in what threads are made for them. Shame there's no good replacement for JRPGG here, and /jrpg/ is long dead now. I miss being able to get decent JRPG discussion anytime of the day or night, but not enough to ever go back to halfchan at this point.

Your story, OP, that's 100% No More Heroes 2.
I was drawn in by REAPER REAPER, expecting something extremely bold and stylish like a new JSR, but it barely had any enjoyable style or music to it, on top of being a very boring game to boot.
The only times in the whole thing I was having fun was REAPER REAPER, and No More Riot.

I enjoy the in depth discussions. JRPG threads and the Vita threads seem to be the only few threads here where people really go in depth on discussing games they're passionate about. You don't find that much on Holla Forums.

Bravely Default/Second showed that people still enjoy JRPGs. Fire Emblem Fates showed the western audience is full of waifufags and that TRPGs can sell. I know something like this would sell if they would actually advertise it. Hearts had some buzz but I have no idea how well it sold.

Never again. Holy shit you fucking had to buy save points. YOU HAD TO BUY SAVE POINTS WITH REAL MONEY! They even made everything in the game extra expensive to encourage players to spend real money on in game money. I don't even think EA has went this far.

Borderlands. Some of the setpieces and music are really good and get me in the mood for shootin' niggas in a Mad Max setting, but then I actually play the game and it's utter shit.

Games that lived up to hype:

I can't think of a single modern game and I'm trying

Oh, Namco knows people enjoy JRPGs. Tales, anyhow (probably some of their others like SAO, and more recently, Digimon), considering how they've actually had a string of bringing over the bulk of the mainline titles since Graces f. It's more that for a long time now they've only bothered to focus on the 3D ones, again, probably on some notion that the 2D ones aren't wanted, or that spriting is "outdated" in the west at this point. They don't even have Destiny or Eternia on the PSN out here, despite the fact that it would be easy money given how much both cost to buy actual copies of. As for Hearts R, I heard something that it had sold better than they'd anticipated, but not enough for them to bother with Innocence R, let alone patch out 8-4's garbage tier English script (8-4's worked Tales before and done pretty decently, so I suspect it was an issue than Namco simply didn't give a shit about holding them to any sort of leash for Hearts R, as they didn't even want to bring it west to begin with). As an aside, barring stuff like Radiant Mythology 1 and Tales of Symphonia 2, you will NEVER see them bother with the escort titles here either.

The hilarious thing is that Namco, or at least Baba, is aware, perfectly aware, that Tales has a decent fan-translation scene out here (he generally doesn't care much as long as the fans aren't making money on Namco's work, and finds it more of a novelty than anything that the western fanbase is that devoted), and yet they STILL insisted on bringing the microtransaction hungry mobile version over. People can play the PS1 version with a patch for free and not have to deal with being nickel and dimed. Poor Phantasia just can't catch a break here when it comes to official releases.

This. The setting could've actually been really fun, but it's all wasted on a bunch of uncreative, horribly written meme games.

AoE3 is the worst age of empires by far you trash

That description seems to fit most good jRPGs. Final Fantasy III, Golden Sun, Chrono Trigger, and so on.

I suppose the secret to a good RPG is a story that isn't 2deep, a plot that actually has arcs instead of being a twisted mess, a comfy semi-open world that you learn about gradually, and party members that you don't wanna strangle.

Expect nothing going into games. If it's good, then you will look back on it with fondness. If you go into it expecting the best thing ever, you look back on it thinking what could have been.

I don't get hyped for games anymore. Just seems pointless to do so. Though only a few games have exceeded my expectations recently.

Reminds me of the Fire Emblem musou art. One of those series that should have a musou game.

Besides Graces F and Hearts R, I find they really do better with combat with 2D games as opposed to their 3D ones. The 3D games are definitely harder to pick up but the 2D combat feels much more satisfying to me. Like Symphonia's combat feels like Eternia's combat translated into a 3D environment but without the polish it needs that the other 3D games get.

I agree with you there. Charming characters and an interesting world to discover definitely make those games feel like an adventure.

Tales actually does to my knowledge. It's called Tales of the Heroes: Twin Brave, hence that fan art.

Symphonia in general feels like a mix of elements from both Phantasia and Eternia. My personal thought is that development may have started before Destiny 2 was out, and with the big push being to try and see if Tales could make the jump to 3D well, Eternia was probably the most advanced "complete" Tales game to use as a basis for the combat.