Posted by YK on 7/15/2009, 12:59 pm, in reply to "Re: Dragon Quest IX"
: We don't see it as much because we're
: insulated from the Japanese media, but
: really, a lot of JRPGs really are pretty
: formulaic, heavily-focus-group based, and
: driven by corporate media interests, just
: like games made in the US. Look at the
: recycled plot points and the increasingly
: common moe-licious character designs
: calibrated to generate maximum fanboy
: appeal.
:
: It seems a little hyperbolic to me to pull
: this "zOMG AMERICANS ARE STPUID! JAPAN
: IS SUPERIOR!" routine because your
: preferred series of mediocre JRPGs isn't
: popular enough.
Ha. You actually took the words right out of my mouth... I was gonna make a post remarkably similar to this one, but decided against it.
I remember feeling, for the longest time, that we got the shaft regarding a lot of games not being released here... then I started *playing* them. Amazingly enough, I discovered we... really weren't missing anything at all. Very few Japan-only RPGs actually impressed me, with a number of the better ones being released here in some form eventually anyhow (FF5, DW5, Front Mission).
Two big examples of this can be found in FF4 Hardtype and Lennus 2. As a kid, I was totally intrigued by all the content cut out of the game I knew as FF2. All those items, extra commands, and even a few spells. Then, not long ago, I played FF4 Advance, which had all the cut content restored... and found that most of it was completely useless. *All* the extra commands were garbage (Dark Wave was all right early on; the rest, nope.), most of the items (everything except Apples, Soma Drops, and Alarms) were useless, and the extra spells were just kinda "there", and made no difference whatsoever. As for being "harder"... I didn't really even see much of *that*. Many of the changes for Easytype were to make the game less cumbersome, as I would discover. Remedies/Heal Potions "replacing" the individual stat items in Easytype/FF2 US, for instance, made a lot more sense, due to the limited inventory; you could carry a stack of Remedies easily enough, but it didn't make sense to waste so much space carrying around a bunch of items to cure individual status ailments you may not even get inflicted with. Mercifully, later FF games removed the limited inventory, making such items actually *useful*.
As for Lennus 2... I was a big fan of Paladin's Quest. It was a weird, quirky JRPG with vibrant colors, a quirky cast, and a setting that could've only been inspired by drugs. =P To say that I was eager to play its sequel would be an understatement, especially considering the kick in the face regarding the fact that there was a 100% complete translation patch many years ago that died in the testing phase when the translation group broke up. Then a patch was released not long ago, and there was much rejoicing... prematurely. Sadly, Lennus 2 was several significant steps *backwards*. The graphics were significantly muted and less charmingly weird, the cast was bland, the gameplay was much more limited, and most damning of all, the whole game was one big fetch quest. I couldn't even finish it...
So, yeah, rant aside... the *best* games actually usually *do* come here. If your preferred style of RPG doesn't get released here, Kalisiin... well, I'm sorry. But Americans aren't "stupid" for not agreeing with you; they just have different tastes than the Japanese. This... should go *well* without saying.
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