The Death of JRPG's
As the AAA landscape becomes increasingly crowded with high-budget, action adventure titles that take an age to develop and even longer to see the credits, there are a smattering of other genres that get pushed to the wayside.
Before RPG's the gaming space was littered with arcade-inspired games like Pitfall, Donkey Kong and Galaga, all exceptional and seminal titles in their respective field but none offered a sense of adventure and storytelling that table top games of the 1970's could with each passing D&D session. There was no doubt, video games had the potential to deliver such experiences, and developers were quick to make that a reality once the crash of '83 subsided. Fast forward to the SNES and PS1 era and we're swimming in top tier RPG goodness, each more epic than the last. It couldn't get any better, and as PlayStation broke the world with the sequel to its smash hit console with the aptly named PS2, the once loaded JRPG space began to quieten somewhat. Through the 2000's and into the 2010's grindy dungeons and endless menu management were becoming rarer gameplay elements than decades past, and arriving to today there's nothing frequent for fans to get excited about as we inch further into the 2020's.
Expecting the golden age of Japanese developed role playing games to appear from a time machine fresh from 1998 is wishful thinking, and the current scene of AAA games won't accommodate the sheer volume of games in the genre we got during the PS One and Super Nintendo days. Such systems took the fundamentals of the role-playing genre coined by Dragon Warrior and the like and advanced them in a way that forged timeless titles that are revered as the best gaming can offer.
Fans of dingy dungeons, epic stories and intricate character development through the means of turn-based battles and endless grinding are left with a gaming outlook that does nothing to satisfy their hunger for a new role-playing game from Japan. New franchises in the JPRG genre are so few and far between, with most coming from the indie scene thanks to offerings like Crosscode, Fell Seal, Ikenfell and YIIK. Independent game development often breeds the most creativity, but for those of us raised on Final Fantasy spectacles it's exhausting to try and get excited for a game that isn't as glitzy as it is refreshing.
The 21st century has seen the hijacking of the RPG genre from Japan to western developers, as titles like Bethesda's Fallout and CDProjekt's Witcher are more recognisable as role-playing games than Xenoblade and Valkyria Chronicles. As time passed, there was no longer a necessity for turn-based combat thanks to the PS2's advanced operating system, which allowed for a grander spectacle to better suit the epic stories that JRPG's so often wield; rendering he fundamental gameplay system that the genre relies on redundant. Hacking and slashing your way to success reigned supreme from here on out. Turn-based battles are further from the norm with each passing year, and with the birth of the ninth generation of home consoles, they're more often than not marketed as a niche that satisfies veteran gamers and retro-crazed hipsters.
It's hard to say if the industry's fixation on real-time combat is a change for the better. Surely, the immediacy of such mechanics are more exciting, and more suitable for the high pressure scenarios that our heroes are under in the game's narrative --not having to wait your turn as the world crumbles around you-- but with action combat there's far more to go wrong. Turn-based games' rigidity is simple, if a little unrealistic and slow.
Meeting somewhere in the middle with its (pretty obtuse, let's face it) approach to combat was Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, the last truly great JRPG, brought to western audiences in 2013. Telling the touching tale of a boy's journey to accepting his mother's death, tearing him from one world to another in the process, Ni No Kuni harkened back to what made JRPG's great while tuning in some modern mechanics to ensure the game doesn't feel like a relic. It feels right, yet there wasn't a single moment where I felt that my enjoyment was fuelled by just nostalgia.
"But what about Persona 5?! *Grumble grumble grumble*" (It's not as good as 4).
Fusing the combat mechanics of Pokemon and Tales of Vesperia, wrapped in a Studio Ghibli art style that elevates the presentation to unreal heights, Ni No Kuni wonderfully balanced traditional JRPG expectations with western influences that satisfied audiences of both and left out neither. You won't be shooting your way out of tense situations, but you will be enamoured by the graphical fidelity of the game and never overpowered by the masses of sprites on screen. Not even its successor, the superb Ni No Kuni II: Revenent Kingdom, could equal the magic of the first game, releasing some 5 years later to its own acclaim, but never to the heights of the first. It's no slight on the sequel, as no game in the JRPG genre, in my opinion, has lived up to the heights that Wrath of the White Witch reached, and I'm not optimistic that any game will in the near future.
Conversely, Square Enix' most recent crack at the whip was Final Fantasy VII Remake, which returned us to Midgar and reacquainted us with Cloud and Avalanche. Based on the seminal seventh entry in the crowning series and served to us using an all-new action combat system and delivering drop-dead gorgeous visuals, the Remake was everything existing fans could have asked for (aside from the appalling pacing), and new players found something to love as the western influences crept into both the gameplay and presentation. In its first three days, Final Fantasy VII Remake outsold its older brother by over one million copies. A promising sign for the future of the genre, right?
Well, maybe?
Sure, it sold in astronomical figures, but it was marketed on the understanding that it was an 'updated' take on arguably the gaming medium's greatest ever offering. It did a great deal to alter the DNA of the original, modernising the score, redesigning the combat and re-recording the script to make (now excellently voice acted) conversations far less robotic. Characters, setting and story are all reminiscent of the 1997 original, but the technical make-up of the remake is nothing like what we had 23 years ago, for better or worse. This was modern audiences' chance to jump into a revered world and finally understand what the fuss is about, as the deceptively ugly graphics of the OG fool people into thinking it doesn't hold up (spoiler: it absolutely does). I have a hard time believing that Final Fantasy VII remake is a tell tale sign for the resurgence of the JRPG genre, as it deviates so far from the roots of the original while promising new fans the opportunity to learn the world and characters the 1997 game introduced us to. The HD upscaling of the original that became available on current-gen systems sold nowhere close to the Remake's numbers, despite being a far superior game, breaking out of the Midgar walls and continuing the journey until the very end.
I's not even as though the landscape of RPG's was more competitive now than in 1997, as Fallout, Wild Arms, Grandia, Breath of Fire III and even Final Fantasy Tactics all released in the same year (as did I!), vying for the attention of gamers and their parents' wallets throughout that seminal year. The mid-late 1990's was the golden age of role-playing perfection, with wonderful experiences coming from the predictable prowess of SquareSoft through to the most obscure of eastern game developers. RPG's of quality were seemingly releasing every month, and once you'd caught up there was a new Final Fantasy right around the corner, as the PS1 trilogy of VII, VIII and IX all released within 4 years of each other. When's the next Witcher due out again?
In a sea of substantial open worlds and a barrage of blinking side activities that light up the map like a Christmas tree, it seems rare when a AAA developer doesn't use the very same formula to ensure their game moves with the times. Even titles that fall far from the JRPG genre like Assassins Creed and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy have greatly altered their approach to fit the ever-expanding mould, and those franchises have seen nothing but success since the mid-2000's. It's of no surprise, then, that Japanese Role Playing games --a genre that's been dying for years-- adapts to survive too. That's why franchises like Final Fantasy, Tales and Xenoblade are so different from their roots, as the landscape of role-playing games changes, they must find a home in the new world, even if it means ditching the familiar.
What we're left with is an ecosystem that lacks the grandeur that the genre is known for. It speaks volumes that the three most anticipated games in the genre are Bravely Default II, a sequel to a somewhat popular 3DS title, Shin Megami Tensei V, the fifth entry in the series best known for spawning an entirely different series and Tales of Arise, the next instalment in the long-standing Tales franchise. New fans who cut their teeth with Final Fantasy XV and have since wanted to experience more in the genre are left with a wasteland of offerings on current and last-gen consoles, so the best of recommendations often come from a console generation some 20 years ago. Making the jump from the bright lights of 21st century gaming to the unspectacular --albeit gorgeous-- sprites of Chrono Trigger is immensely jarring, and though the experience of Super Nintendo and PS1 games are often far superior to their modern contemporaries, there's no escaping that graphics and spectacle has come a long way since the mid-1990's.
Franchises have their fans, and will likely be sustained by a small, passionate crowd of people who unapologetically buy whatever the developer releases in whatever development cycle they're willing to commit to. It's not necessarily a bad business model, as companies like Level 5, Atlus and Namco don't have the reach that Naughty Dog, Bungie or Bethesda do, so sustenance to continue practicing is more valuable than setting the world ablaze with one release every 10 years.
I guess the final question is this: why should you care?
In a word: you shouldn't. The impact that JRPG's had on gaming going forward was immense, but as it passes the baton to western developers, the scarcity of the genre is, largely, a product of disinterest. Old-school JRPG fans had their appetite satisfied by games of old, and any hankering for experiences in rich worlds with relatable characters are catered for by a helping of nostalgia. I'll return to Inaba and reunite with Chie, Kanji and co and a thirty something will check in on Lock, Terra and Shadow by re-experiencing their story once again.
Nobody needs an influx of Japanese role-playing games to their shiny new system, because turn-based battles and chibi character models simply aren't as impressive as the Geralt's and Aloy's of the world.
Like fans of the V8 engine or great lovers of the cassette tape, old-school JRPG fans are relics.
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