Given how much I personally like the Tales series, that mindset makes me sad. x3

why?

I'm actually happy with that exact mindset.

If we look at this console generation as a whole,we've seen a dramatic shift in companies like Square and CAPCOM trying desperately to emulate Western conventions. From failed shooters (Lost Planet, or Mindjack), or taking well established franchises, and butchering them for the sake of appealing to the CoD crowd (Final Fantasy XIII and it's lack of a game, and DMC with it's lovely emo "Dante").

Japanese console RPGs should be what they are, and improve upon their concepts and strengths, while alleviating previous faults brought by a lack of tools available in previous generations. While taking influence isn't a bad idea (Xenoblade and the Last Story, for example), shifting your entire focus is alienating the people that care for them in the first place.

They're saying that the western audience isn't their biggest concern. The games are made for Japanese gamers for the most part, which perpetuates the fact that we don't get half the games in the first place. That's what gets my goat, really. It's not my place to say of course, and I know it all comes down to marketing and profits, but still... There're plenty of Tales games I wish I could play that will just never happen because of this.

here's the problem though; when they tried to appeal to Westerners is failed, almost always. Even back in the day, with "gems" like FF Mystic Quest.

Point is, it took a long time to cultivate an audience for Japanese Console-style RPGs; and after all that, developers have decided to alienate fans of their games by basically trying (and failing) to copy or dumb down their games to appeal to too many gamers at once.

What Baba is saying isn't that he doesn't want Westerners to like his games, what he's saying is that he shouldn't try to appeal to them, because the gamers who want these games do not need to be pandered to, they just want them. And with the release of Graces f, and the port of the Abyss; we can expect Xillia (and if rumors are true, and enhanced version) to be released here soon.

Well, I'm certainly hoping for Xillia. It's always nice to have another good JRPG to play.

here's hoping that rumor is true, and we get a complete version, a la Graes f

That is very well said. Now if he can convince other jrpg devs to go back to making some good ol fashioned turn-based rpgs...with sprites! D8 That'd be greaaat. For me atleast. 6.6

I have something for you:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects.....the-psp-system

I love traditional RPGs, action RPGs, turn-based strategy RPGs, and the like. It's what made Japanese console RPGs so great, the selection was vast, yet familiar.

I'm really hoping for Tales of Graces f and Xillia to do well enough here to actually have an impact, but knowing the gaming media in this generation, expect it to be either panned, or buried under the next shooter #20000.

I think Xillia would do well. I would like to think that.

Gosh darn that shooter #20000 ]:<

funny how ME3 got an IGN review fully rendered into the game, but we got no Tali model (instead a 5-minute photoshop of some chick).

Then, after the fan-backlash and disappointment, guess who came in to call all the gamers "entitled"

Oooooh that chick.

again, the gaming culture has been in a slippery slope for a long time. We've essentially allowed big name companies to buy reviews to sell us broken and half-assed products for too long; to the point where it's just common practice now.

That is indeed true. 6_6

That's actually a good thing to hear since that's exactly what I want out of a JRPG. Instead of trying to emulate Western RPGs, I think the JRPG and the way it does things are good as is if done properly. Instead of trying to worry about what other game players around the world might think of their game, this is a person who knows who they are trying to appeal to.

As he says, when possible, it's nice to see their games get a broader release, but it's not his primary goal. But this is where companies like Gaijinworks, formed by the former head of Working Designs, Victor Ireland, come into play. They are the ones that often will try and bring those opportunities to games that might not see a release outside of Japan otherwise.

To help with their endeavors, they started a KickStarter, and I'm hoping more people follow it and pledge to help them succeed.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects.....the-psp-system

What really saddens me is the constant shift in marketing here in the west. Reviewers are paid to throw around terms like jRPG to downgrade the legitimacy of RPGs made in the East; calling them tried and unoriginal, all while seemingly (obviously) being coerced (bribed) to play up any shooter or open world title to death.

It's tough out there for any developer thinking of releasing their game outside of Japan; because they have to think of what the "westerners will think". And at this point, I think they should just say "FUCK IT".

Dedicated consumers and RPG enthusiasts supported and loved these games, unorthodox as they were to our culture. The PS2 thrived with a myriad of console RPGs, and it was great.

Really, the only other hurdle they will have to cover is the costs of development. This generation has seen companies sink on one failed game. And with even those once-trusted companies *Cough* Square and Bioware *Cough* failing on many accounts, or just plain wasting resources on publicity and nonsense, it'll be tough to try to get their message out there.

Than have I got some good news for you! :D

Thanks to KickStarter, which I've been playing very close attention to, that may all change in radical ways VERY soon.

I would love and support this as much as I can.

Anything to show Japanese developers that they don't need to pander to the lowest common denominator of our gaming culture to enjoy sales here.

Meanwhile, Xenoblade sits atop my most favourite JRPGs, and indeed one of my favourite games ever, while Tales of Vesperia - while good - had its impression tarnished by Namco being a bunch of selfish dicks, taking up their financing money in order to actually complete the game and make it Japan Only and for the PS3 Only. Dick move, guys. Dick move.

Xenoblade seems alright, I'm not one for the simple DPS-Tank-Healing team set up that it has going.

Really, I just don't like it when you get less room to play around with your team. In my honest opinion team sizes of 4 to 5 usually give you just the right bit of wiggle room to experiment, or just be a very balanced team. Games with a 3 party system tend to outright punish any attempts to be creative, or experiment with balance.

As for what happened to Vesperia, they did the same thing with Graces, and it was worse for the Wii owners, since their version was bugged. Was a shitty businessmen decision? Not really, since they got money from it, and in the end, gave out a much better product on a much more powerful platform. Was it a dick move? No doubt. But I can safely say that we were lucky to at least get Vesperia when it came out, and PS3 users who are decent enough with their Japanese can import the PS3 enhancement. And at least we got the enhanced Graces f; which is a lot of fun.

Hopefully; if rumors are correct, we'll be seeing an enhanced edition of Xillia (apparently, while still praised heavily, the game had some time constraints that held back a lot of content), so maybe that Tales of Xillia copyright isn't just for name usage protection lol

I went through the game primarily with tank - mage - DPS.
It's very possible to play around with a team, although Shulk tends to be required for a number of boss fights, particularly in the first third of the game. However once your roster expands somewhat you're more free to do as you like.

Yeah, I'm grateful we got Vesperia at all (albeit 10 months after the US in my case) but Namco seem blatently determined to mak sure their Tales Of games completely flop outside of the US. In the EU they shipped something like 200,000 copies with no advertising. The games sold out within a month and until they went on Games on Demand on the 360 they were fetching outrageous prices because they were so bloody rare. Namco might have done a second print run, but that could just have been in the US. It's like they're trying to say "See? Only sold 200,000 in the EU. Clearly they don't want it there."

I won't make any excuses for their lack of drive to push some of their titles over here. Part of that comes from fearing a great loss and the fact that the strong yen hurts sales no matter what. And the other half of the issue is marketing in the West. Big games are put together cheaply, but hyped up to outrageous levels, each year marketing and publicity spending goes up and up, with developers not interested in cutting back on quality falling behind in sales.

It was a freak accident that Catherine managed to sell as well as it did, thanks to some favorable reviews and great word of mouth. . . and obvious interest from gamers tired of shooting shit.

We can only hope that stronger sales for the newer titles push Namco Bandai into taking bigger risks with Tales of.

I can understand when people push the argument of Japanese games beeing too japanesey, and something like Catherine I'd understand if it didn't do well (despite the fact it did pretty well).

But the Tales Of series is very anime...and westerners love anime, don't they? o_0

Cartoon Network recently got a huge boost to rating from just trolling about Toonami coming back.

I think people like anime here

Oh yeah, the Toonami april fool.
Can't count how many angry journals I saw about that.

Cartoon Network is a whole other story. CN (Which I believe translates out to Cunt Nuggets) basically has 3 good cartoon shows, which only air new half episodes. When back in the day, they were a channel dedicated to animation. Anybody actually watching Level Up? I thought so, there's a reason why it's commercial free; it has no advertisers.

Hmm... well there are merits to such an approach.

Really, I buy games like Final Fantasy and Tales of to play RPGs with a Japanese flare to them, not to buy games that are blatantly wRPg lite.

(shrug) there is danger of snobbery in such a viewpoint though.

I'm not being snobbish here, I'm being honest.

Developers need to do what they do best, and what they do best is produce unique Japanese style console RPGs.

I'm not against influence, mind you. I appreciate games like Demon's Souls, Dragon's Dogma, Xenoblade, the Last Story, etc. blurring the line a bit. But at the end of the day, I wouldn't trade the homogenizing of a;ll RPG concepts into one, over having each be a unique style, that can be emulated at times, but is still uniquely reflective of cultural story-telling.

What's snobbish is the idea that you HAVE to follow what "works". That has never once helped the Japanese RPG industry, and each time, it's just hurt it, with games like FFXIII.

It's also rather snobbish of developers to essentially ditch their audiences in favor of appealing to the lowest common denominator of gamers, only to turn out a really half-assed product to be consumed by the masses.

Still, sometimes there are negative traits to be found in certain genres, and cherry-picking solutions or alternatives from other interpretations can work well.

I'm mostly talking about gameplay mechanics mind.

And I pretty much gave examples of how you can modernize the Japanese console style RPG, without getting rid of what actually works.

People think that throwing concepts together will equal success, when you have to think about how well certain gameplay aspects will play off one another. With the push to make more Western RPGs action-based, we've seen a real push back on the RPG elements. Mass Effect lost it's RPG with shooter gameplay, in exchange for Shooter with some sprinkles of RPG bits here and there. It wasn't done to enhance the gameplay, mind you; it was done to appeal to a wider audience of gamers, that like shooters. Dragon Age II threw out careful management, setting up party members, and battle preparation, in exchange for cartoon-y special moves and button mashing. Final Fantasy XIII took out any semblance of strategy, and replaced it with a single auto attack command, that occasionally required you to do something like heal, or switch from a preset bar of roles for your three completely annoying characters.

Are you seeing a trend with a game trying to lower itself to appeal to wider audiences? Instead of trying to create a great game, that requires effort to enjoy to the fullest, developers are more concerned with tossing out unfinished products that are advertised as so many things at once, that they are basically less than the games that tried to be one thing, and one thing done well.

I hate to have to keep returning to this, but it's the exact same issue I have with the Star Wars prequels. No vision, no effort, just shit covered in so much merchandising and advertising. It's so homogenized and neutered, that it doesn't even compare to half of what makes the older installments so memorable. Rushed, lazy attempts to appeal to so many audiences at once, that it instead comes off as what it actually is: SHIT.

Uhhh, going to have to disagree with you partially on both the Dragon Age and Mass Effect franchises, I think they were effectively streamlined from rather clunky first installments, some strategy and complexity was perhaps lost, but there was still engaging gameplay and a degree of choice in how you built a character/fighter.

With ME to ME2, I wouldn't know. After all, I've only played ME2 and ME3. I can tell you now though, they don't play like action RPGs at all.

You're free to disagree with me on an opinionated level with DA2, but it was obvious what was going on during development. Less specializations (with the ones existing basically forcing you into a set role. Man was it awful to be a Mage), less wiggle room for building your characters, basically no customization for your teammates, reused areas that became laughably obvious, no depth to conversations, romances were essentially copy pasta, dialogue choices were vague (often resulting in your character saying things that didn't really reflect the choice), smaller areas resulted in waves of enemies that became hilarious as they would just spawn from nothing, less compelling origin to your character (who is always human), weaker story that jumps around too much to give you enough time to connect to any character (instead, we need to be told what happens), and the icing on the cake; it has no ending. . . but oh wait, it's got an expansion coming soo- oh wait, that was canceled too.

Look, I can understand why some people liked it, it was simple and provided a much easier and less thought provoking gameplay style, as well as easily consumable characters and stories ( I say stories since it lacked an overall plot, just a sequence of stories that were spread out over "10" years).

I'm not denying it had plenty of flaws, but I still think there are some areas in which people don't give it enough credit...

I will give it credit in at least trying to speed up combat, and being able to avoid attacks was a nice touch. . . It was very useful when you're mage couldn't do a thing, due to there being a lack of Arcane Warrior (still not gonna drop that lol). The real issue is that it took out too much of the careful strategy involved in it. Half of my battles devolved into just mashing buttons, and only occasionally having to think about an approach to combat. Hell, the only "surprises" were the randomly spawning enemies. In DA: O, we could see a group of enemies, and set up spells, traps or just prepare ahead of time. It was great, and rewarded the clever player for their creativity and planning.

I will say that they could've also not done away with healing item usage, especially since enemies seemed to have no limits = ,=

Any personal gripes I have with eh game are nonessential to the list; like the fish people Elves, the complete lack of female Dwarvs, the hilarious Darkspawn redesigns also made me chuckle. But that could just be chalked up to it being easier to model for then before.

Mm, well there weren't that many dwarves in the second game full-stop, that's a pretty incidental missing thing to me, and I don't actually mind the darkspawn redesigns, they seem more distinctive now, admittedly a bit silly but some of them actually look pretty cool, it's mostly the basic hurlocks that come off the worst, which are sadly the most common type outside the Legacy DLC.

I think the only race they did any justice were the Qunari. They looked badass overall. . . too bad their conflict wasn't the main focus of the game.

Mm, they did look a bit plain in the first game... as did most characters and enemy types if we're being honest with ourselves.

And it'll be interesting to see if they come into their own as a primary antagonist in future games.

considering they are pretty much dropping DA2, one can either assume they are going to continue down the same road, or at least attempt some marrying of the two games.

Honestly, if DA3 were half as good as Origins, it would at least be worth a rental.

I guess we'll see...