East versus West: Our taste in JRPG's.

[Ivo]

I never got the idea behind this stereotype.

I think it is based to some extent on reality.

You made some good points but I think you left out some important parts. You mentioned shmups and fighters, but you should add the other arcade games. Stuff like puzzle games, including stuff like tetris, rhythm games or generally other score-attack games (including perhaps stuff like racing games? Not sure there), i.e. consider all those archetypal "game" genres that were there before
before RTS (still dominated by Korea anyway), FPSs and MMOs even existed.
I think in a good number of those the top scores do belong to Japanese gamers, to the point that I've seen some people here in the boards discuss separate "non-Asian" records instead of world records at times.

Also, while demanding, flight sims, WRPGs and stuff with complexity does not necessarily have a high difficulty (despite being hard to "get into" and having a high barrier of entry). Another point is that they don't have the same tradition of competition that the arcade games have, being designed around scoring in many cases.
Conversely JRPGs may not be hard but if they are "grindy" some people value that more than complexity I guess.

Ivo.

[Violent By Design]

JRPGs is not something that I associate with difficulty when it comes to gaming. RPGs that came after the 8 bit era from Japan have been soft and very accessible for the most part. In fact, I am pretty sure it is because JRPGs are easy and relatively simple it is why they have caught on in the United States (also them being plot based helps, which was a novelty in the 90s).

[Opa Opa]

@AQ- I don't disagree about fan translations but I do question their quality. My personal example, I beat the Silent Hill Visual Novel on GBA using a translation guide. It was an okay guide but I have to question "How accurate was it?" It was the only guide available; there isn't a complete English patch ever created to my knowledge. Granted, there are translations/patches that have really great translation effort (Mother 3 for example); so fan works aren't without merit.

@Xeogred- I could be wrong but I feel Type-0 didn't come here because the PSP is practically a dead system; only Atlus and a couple other publishers have released anything as of late.

---
And I didn't really want this to go into WRPG vs. JRPG. (Although, with the topic title I wrote I should've known better. )

I don't think WRPG's can be any more "hardcore" (whatever the hell that means) than JRPG's. Or vice versa.

There are games in both genres that have very steep learning curves and require a lot of time and effort to become a proficient player.

[brunoafh]

This is somewhat on topic I suppose, but I always found it interesting that, while Japanese gamers are often considered more "hard-core", that in Final Fantasy VII, the 2 hardest bosses in the game were added in for the US release.

This practice is mainly to help justify/create International re-releases. The idea is to release the game once, add content to and polish the localization, then release it again in the original territory with the stuff added to the localization as the selling point, and typically a few more additions. We still see some games doing this today. As for why localized games sometimes receive difficulty spikes or dumbing down, I don't think there is really any conclusive or important answer. It is just something that sometimes happened during the localization process.

Mostly I agree with Bone though, we don't have it too bad over here. My finger is pretty tight on the Japanese gaming scene, and frankly I'm both surprised and impressed by the efforts that are made to bring niche games over here. We missed out on a lot during the 16-bit era for sure, and the PSP's death in NA definitely deprived us of a lot of quality stuff, but for the most part localization has always been very healthy and still is. It has also taken leaps and bounds in terms of quality in the past decade. Most every console JRPG makes it way over here one way or another (physical or digital). These days, it is primarily games that can't get past licensing entanglement that don't make it over. But even then, stuff like Project X Zone comes out of nowhere.

[dsheinem]

necro-bump...

I have a friend in Japan who is looking for respondents on a survey about JRPGs: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1BsZoD3 ... rm?c=0&w=1

It should just take a minute or two if you have it. Thanks.

[Ack]

necro-bump...

I have a friend in Japan who is looking for respondents on a survey about JRPGs: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1BsZoD3 ... rm?c=0&w=1

It should just take a minute or two if you have it. Thanks.

Sure, I threw my hat into the ring and answered the survey.

[samsonlonghair]

I filled out the survey. I'm not sure what your Japanese friend hopes to accomplish with such a short survey.

It should take 5-10 minutes to complete.

This took me about 90 seconds. Did I miss something? There doesn't seem to be enough questions to draw sufficient data.

On the other hand, it's not my survey to design.

[IminDE]

Interesting point of view -thank you for sharing.