Teamspeak: Why I’m Officially Done with Japanese RPGs
So folks, we hit a bit of a posting lull there for a bit, eh? Blame real life, work (actual work, day jobs, work that pays the bills!) and everything in-between. We’ll get back to our regularly-scheduled posting program starting this week, but in the meantime, here’s a blast from the not-so-distant past, my Teamspeak piece from a couple of months ago. I didn’t quite get the responses I wanted to elicit from our loyal print readers (aside from sterile threats and terribly unwitty retorts that completely miss the boat), so let’s see what kind of responses we get from you filthy freeloaders reading this site! New media forever!
As a professional man-child/quote-unquote games journalist, I have the liberty to let my opinions be known to the general public, no matter how absurd and/or unbelievably incorrect they may be. This month on Teamspeak, I’ve decided to embark on a topic that is sure to get quite a few feathers ruffled: Japanese RPGs, or why I am henceforth done with them as a general genre, and how most of these games lack any sort of artistic and entertainment value.
I’ve tried hard for years to keep up with RPGs month after month—as a poor high school/college student, I felt that playing the flavor-of-the-day JRPG and seeing each and every one of them through was the best way to spend my time when I was otherwise unoccupied with inebriation, chasing skirts, or well, actually playing games that I like.
Then, several years ago, I came to an epiphany: I have better things to do than play Japanese RPGs all week. Moreover, I finally came to a self-realization that I actually hated JRPGs as a whole; and hated myself as well for investing so much time playing said videogames. After a string of playing plain awful games such as Radiata Stories, Ar Tonelico, Magna Carta and Tales of Legendia, I realized that something had to be done. I was going through all of these games not because I permissibly liked them; rather to serve as conversation pieces and/or for “collection” purposes (this period also coincides with the beginning of my pack-rat days, another sad tale for another day).
Really now, the respective characters, trappings, and plots of these games over the past few years have been so uniformly homogenized throughout different series/companies that it sickens me. I know Anime fans have overarching terms for respective character stereotypes to excuse this sort of laziness (i.e., tsundere and yandere and all that gunk), but the point I’m getting at is that this sort of one-dimensional casting really needs to go.
How many times do we really need to see over-excitable, spiky-haired protagonists (and their silent compatriots with well-kempt hair on the other side of the spectrum)? Developers really need to think twice before integrating yet another mysterious brunette, submissive blonde, red-haired tomboy princess, tanned dude in a halter top or klutzy loli in their future videogames. Even the writing in general got progressively terrible as the years go by—it’s not as if my tastes have matured or anything pretentious like that, but I’ll take an outdated Vic Ireland political potshot over the usual gag-inducing, manufactured obnoxiousness Anime fans fall for.
And therein lies the problem: no matter how atrocious your product is, as long it depicts an underaged Anime character in tight spandex on the box, it’ll sell to at least a niche audience. A very smug fan-populace that exists only in the Deviantarts and Livejournals of the world, often seen dressed up in styrofoam and polyester regalia, prepared to lash out with very sterile threats at disruptors of the hive.
That being said, I lied—I haven’t kicked the JRPG habit cold-turkey. Like a battered wife, I’ll jaw on about the genre’s general failings yet come back for more. And unsurprisingly the last few RPGs that I’ve legitimately enjoyed embody these same complaints that I’ve outlined above–Suikoden Tierkreis, The World Ends With You, and Persona 4, to name a few. While I and I’m sure a lot of you out there realize that this ilk of games have deeply flawed gameplay systems and hackneyed writing, there must be a certain incommunicable something that keeps us all hooked.
What do you think? Are we all just collectively gullible and/or writhing for that same nostalgia all Japanese RPGs seem to promise, but never deliver? Deep inside, are we all filthy, simple-minded japanophiles? Or is there something truly understated in the genre that just keeps us all hooked?
I’ve discovered while back that hating JRPGs and realizing weeaboos are a plague is a step foward in gamer evolution.
Congrats.
Well, it’s not about being in the “upper crust” of anything; what really miffs me is how modern JRPGs are pandering to a smug niche audience instead of “the rest of us.”
Because “these filthy Japanophiles” have more monies to spend for their obssesion than the average gamer?
Well… I agree on some points. They need to improve on their RPGs. I think what gets us hooked are the cut scenes and well… the cute artwork that is a bit refreshing since most of the games are almost in 3D and the charm of the JRPGs that is like a feeling of nostalgia when we watch Anime(or maybe it’s just me). Although there are some exceptions to that. There are some JPRGs that are well written like the Suikoden Series.