Keiji Inafune talks about Japanese Games: how it relates to XIV

[OJtheLIONKing]

Inafune was spot on. An article linked on that one talked about the reasons why the Japanese have diverged so much in tastes from us. Thankfully Yoshi-P has a good vision for the game, but the industry as a whole is focusing too much on its domestic market while the global market is increasingly integrated and their own domestic economy has been dwindling for 20 years now. He referred to all western devs as American, but the fact is many titles are produced by teams all over the western world now.

SE has also had these symptoms of myopia, but as I have said since before its release, it is still trying to innovate in some games at least. FFXIII's battle system may be controversial among the hardcore nostalgia fans, but it's picked out consistently as one of the best points of that game in reviews. I've played every mainline FF and most of the side games, and I can say without exaggeration that FFXIII and especially FFXIII-2 had by far the hardest boss fights for me, especially the super-bosses, with the possible exception of FFIX's Ozma. Having to run from a save point doesn't make the boss any harder, just more tedious to kill.

I also found the paradigm system much more engaging in all battles, including the 99% that aren't boss fights, specifically because it's something that I can't just mash attack to clear. My characters are min-maxed to the limit with the best gear in FFXIII-2, but they will still get annihilated by a random spawn behemoth in the northwest of the final dungeon unless I'm pretty careful. I never had that happen with the other games. FFXII was one of my favorites as well since it had an epic story and an innovative, if a bit overcomplicated, gambit system to streamline the boring bits while adding interesting strategy to boss fights.

Compare this to many other games this generation that have held onto the same combat system as their predecessors and have the same trite stories and almost all have failed to do well. For all that Sakaguchi has done for Square and the industry, Mistwalker hasn't made much of any impact sales wise, and last I heard they're just working on an iPhone game. Not everything needs to be a shooter, which is something western devs could stand to learn, but I think gamers have voted with their dollars that they don't want the same JRPG they got 10 years ago with prettier graphics, either.

[Firon]

Inafune was spot on. An article linked on that one talked about the reasons why the Japanese have diverged so much in tastes from us. Thankfully Yoshi-P has a good vision for the game, but the industry as a whole is focusing too much on its domestic market while the global market is increasingly integrated and their own domestic economy has been dwindling for 20 years now. He referred to all western devs as American, but the fact is many titles are produced by teams all over the western world now.

SE has also had these symptoms of myopia, but as I have said since before its release, it is still trying to innovate in some games at least. FFXIII's battle system may be controversial among the hardcore nostalgia fans, but it's picked out consistently as one of the best points of that game in reviews. I've played every mainline FF and most of the side games, and I can say without exaggeration that FFXIII and especially FFXIII-2 had by far the hardest boss fights for me, especially the super-bosses, with the possible exception of FFIX's Ozma. Having to run from a save point doesn't make the boss any harder, just more tedious to kill.

I also found the paradigm system much more engaging in all battles, including the 99% that aren't boss fights, specifically because it's something that I can't just mash attack to clear. My characters are min-maxed to the limit with the best gear in FFXIII-2, but they will still get annihilated by a random spawn behemoth in the northwest of the final dungeon unless I'm pretty careful. I never had that happen with the other games. FFXII was one of my favorites as well since it had an epic story and an innovative, if a bit overcomplicated, gambit system to streamline the boring bits while adding interesting strategy to boss fights.

Compare this to many other games this generation that have held onto the same combat system as their predecessors and have the same trite stories and almost all have failed to do well. For all that Sakaguchi has done for Square and the industry, Mistwalker hasn't made much of any impact sales wise, and last I heard they're just working on an iPhone game. Not everything needs to be a shooter, which is something western devs could stand to learn, but I think gamers have voted with their dollars that they don't want the same JRPG they got 10 years ago with prettier graphics, either.

I agree with this and I'm glad your not too blind to see that FF 13 battle system was better than the rest FF-10 all had the same system with different icing on them. I would to SEE someone try to spam auto battle vs a Gui long in 13 and see how long they last

[Jinko]

Compare this to many other games this generation that have held onto the same combat system as their predecessors and have the same trite stories and almost all have failed to do well. For all that Sakaguchi has done for Square and the industry, Mistwalker hasn't made much of any impact sales wise, and last I heard they're just working on an iPhone game. Not everything needs to be a shooter, which is something western devs could stand to learn, but I think gamers have voted with their dollars that they don't want the same JRPG they got 10 years ago with prettier graphics, either.

Mistwalker backed the wrong horse, anyone could see that making games for the 360 would not sell in Japan.

That being said Ninokuni didn't sell very well on the PS3 either, as the article said even Japanese games aren't selling very well in Japan any more.

That being said both Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey where much better than FF13 and FF13-2.

Better story and battle system, they even had an open world with airship, submarine and boat, as well as HD towns.

Sadly both games were technically lacking, LO suffered terrible texture pop in and load times and BD had slow down and framerate issues.

[Kye]

I love Inafune ^^ "Legends Never Die!"

[Vaer]

It's ok, they still have Pokemon, Tales of, Monster Hunter and Dragon Quest. Those still sell pretty well.

I think it's just many franchises in the RPG genre have ended and not many to replace them. Shadow Hearts is gone, Star Ocean is gone, where's my Suikoden VI, Valkyrie Profile?, Wild Arms?, Grandia?, Dark Cloud 3?

Kingdom Hearts has a game coming out every other month, can't even keep track of it anymore. III hasn't been released and barely talked about.

Still waiting for any info on Persona 5.

lolversusXIII

Sega doesn't even want to localize Valkyria Chronicles III here in the states.

You have to drag Namco kicking and screaming to localize their Tales of games.

Think a lot of people are just tired of waiting for jRPGs.

[Mireille]

I found this Q&A

But I also see it this way: We shouldn't shy away from being critical about something we feel strongly for (so long as it's constructive). That's what these forums are for. It can't all be hugs and kisses here.

Being critical is fine, but being rude or belligerent isn't necessary to being critical. I mean that as a general comment about what I often see in the forums. Its not directed at this post.

[RemnantWolf]

I have to agree that this article does make the future of FFXIV look very bright, not only because they opened themselves up to criticism with this forum but because of the fact that, while they have a direction they want to go, they are letting us dictate it to a degree. If they need direction they won't find any better direction than from the players themselves!

[Resheph]

I found this Q&A very interesting.





Thinking back to how this game got a 4.0, I think that's what happened. Harsh criticism, and we're seeing a rebound. And what's more:



From what I've seen, Yoshi-P has the right idea on where this game should go. I think they're on the right track, and to hear the above quote from not just a Japanese, but Keiji Inafune, gives me a great deal of hope for 2.0.

But I also see it this way: We shouldn't shy away from being critical about something we feel strongly for (so long as it's constructive). That's what these forums are for. It can't all be hugs and kisses here.

If you find this interesting check out this series by Extra Credits about the difference between Western RPGs and JRPGS. They make a lot of the same points and hit on the decline in innovation involved in game development in Japan.

Part 1 - http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode...se-rpgs-part-1
Part 2 - http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode...se-rpgs-part-2
Part 3 - http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode...se-rpgs-part-3

The first two are kind of set up, the third one hits it right on the nail.

[OJtheLIONKing]

Mistwalker backed the wrong horse, anyone could see that making games for the 360 would not sell in Japan.

That being said Ninokuni didn't sell very well on the PS3 either, as the article said even Japanese games aren't selling very well in Japan any more.

That being said both Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey where much better than FF13 and FF13-2.

Better story and battle system, they even had an open world with airship, submarine and boat, as well as HD towns.

Sadly both games were technically lacking, LO suffered terrible texture pop in and load times and BD had slow down and framerate issues.

For sure, I think a major part of the decline of the Japanese game industry was taking Microsoft's...well, I'm going to call them bribes to release 360 exclusives when JRPG fans the world over clearly wanted nothing to do with that console. By the time they snapped out of it, they were already far behind in the game. Even now, the only JRPG I've owned on a 360 and really liked was Star Ocean 4, and I still traded that one in for the superior PS3 international version when it came out.

I'm going to disagree with you on those Mistwalker titles. Even now, looking to see gameplay videos since it's been years since I played them and I had to remind myself, I find myself almost instantly bored by how slow the combat is. It wasn't methodical or complex, it was "hit attack for 99% of fights" just like most FF games were, but seemingly even slower than I remembered. Maybe it's because I just finished FFXIII-2 recently. I also think, at least FFXIII's story had the strongest character development of almost any game I've ever seen, including BioWare titles. It took FFXIII-2 for them to add something resembling towns, though. I'm not going to attempt to defend FFXIII-2's story because, although pretty interesting, it had that terrible ending that was only overshadowed by Mass Effect 3's even more terrible ending.

All of these games, however, do show one thing: Japan still has far better art direction than most western devs. Even the more realistic looking RPG titles, like FFXIV at launch with its super-practical armor and somewhat muted color palette, were still overall more visually interesting than most western games, to say nothing of FFXIII or Lost Odyssey's fantastical backdrops. I salute the Japanese developers' ability to use colors other than brown and gray on landscapes that aren't a ruined city or military base.

[Jinko]

It wasn't methodical or complex, it was "hit attack for 99% of fights" just like most FF games were, but seemingly even slower than I remembered. Maybe it's because I just finished FFXIII-2 recently.

Heh it seems so many people play turn based games wrong

I'm always using magic classes in turn based games, Lulu in FFX was awesome.

Of course the fact you liked Star Ocean 4 would suggest to me you prefer real time combat over turn based, so can probably understand why you like FF13 because of its faster paced fights.