Thoughts on the evolution of JRPGs?

[Good Apollo]

I still really enjoy the traditional turn based jrpg. That's why I liked DQX1 so much. back in the SNES and PS1 days I play a ton of jrpgs so the nostalgia of that turn based style is comforting

[Inside_Smoke]

Dragon Quest is another series that has kept its original creators up to this day and it is successfully evolving the genre in the most obvious way. Best thing about DQXI was the retro version included in the Japanese release, sadly we never got to play that version.
Some people think that Final Fantasy is supposed to divide fans, but it didn't really start doing that until after the merger. The first problem i had with Final Fantasy XV was the combat, i felt like i was playing an over the top beat em' up.

[Leonzell]

I Feel like another aspect to it is the possible lack of people who are spearheading the rpg genre to keep a portion of them in their roots (though i might not be articulating this well.) an example i'll give is shigeru miyamoto for mario. and Takashi Tezuka for zelda with them at the helm at nintendo for the flagship series there is a sense of keeping the reasons why people loved those games in the first place while still shaking things up to try and innovate. until the PS2 era for final fantasy and the merger with enix final fantasy had Hironobu sakaguchi and while not all the FF games he produces from 1-9 were masterpieces they all embodied what an RPG is (at least his version of them) and after he left the focus changed and we can see the results now, though i haven't finished 13-2/lightning returns and 15 yet (though i don't think anything negative to people who enjoy them) as well as the fact that i really liked 10 and 12. there is still a clear change which has even led to 15 being almost not a traditional final fantasy game when an action rpg could have been a side project.

[Inside_Smoke]

I've always seen the original SMT games as first person grid based dungeon crawlers, another genre that i really like. i think that's a genre that shouldn't evolve any more than looking nicer and quality of life improvements. i was disappointed with SMT IV and i much prefer Strange Journey.

[MrLacksOriginality]

I think JRPGs havent really evolved since SMT on the SNES. It had a branching story as well as choice and consequence. It is a shame but I also think WRPGs are in the same boat. I think it has to od with devs being scared to take risks with games now because of how much they cost to make.

[Inside_Smoke]

I've wishlisted Legrand Legacy. i can see the similarity with Legend of Dragoon. I'm glad there is still developers out there keeping the dream alive.

[ryan_]

You should check out Legrand Legacy on Steam. It's not bad. The story isn't too great. It's about on par with Legend of Dragoon. Came from an Indonesian studio. Most jRPG game that's come out in decades (and that includes actual jRPGs)

[Inside_Smoke]

That makes a lot of sense, its kind of depressing too. The Indie title seems to be the best way we can experience the true evolution of 80s and 90s style of JRPGs today. a lot of these game made with small teams and small budgets like the old days are hit and miss, but i believe that if there is a demand for more of these game i.e. we support the indie market we will have a larger pool of hits to choose from and we will have some true classics just like the old days.

[ryan_]

I think the industry's focus on high res 3d graphics handicapped the genre, for one. The scope of jRPGs had to be dramatically reduced because of the sheer amount of art at that fidelity that was required to reproduce them. This is one of the reasons jRPGs largely migrated to handheld devices during and after the PS2 era.

Secondly, I think the Japanese recession majorly affected them. Around the end of the PS2 era, most developers switched to a domestic market business model instead of an international market one because the cost of appealing to American sensibilities at the expense of Japanese accessibility in conjunction with localization costs didn't make up the difference for small and mid-sized developers. This is the era where Square-Enix bought Eidos and Crystal Dynamics and essentially made a "Western" division and an "Eastern" division. These events caused the jRPGs that were produced in Japan to be much more Japanese, more anime, more Japan-specific, more focused on Japanese devices (DS & other handhelds have a larger install base in Japan), and jRPGs lost ground as a mainstream genre, receding to appealing to Japanophiles and anime otaku. The Tales series is the most obvious and best example of this, but you can see it as well in the Trails series.

Third, there are a number of industry wide factors that dramatically reduced the clout and importance of writers/designers on games teams. One, the aforementioned upscaling of 3d modelers; two, the upscaling of engineers; and three, the upscaling of business personnel. Second, there was a longstanding academic debate in game design circles called "Narratology vs Ludology", or, another name for it is "Embedded Narrative vs Emergent Narrative". It essentially was an argument between "games should have stories" and "games should not have stories". Most business people and engineers sided with the concept that stories shouldn't belong in games, both for philosophical reasons and because it increased their clout inside the companies. Games with no stories are much cheaper to produce, and fit nicely into the games as service model. Narrative games still struggle to compete with this business model, most opting for episodic DLCs or hastily thrown together multiplayer modes. The reality of the 1990s in Japan was that the writer/designer was the leader of the team, usually had an education in literature or the classics, and the workers implemented their vision. Nowadays, producers and other business unit members are the leader of the team and have the final say on creative decisions, unless the director or company president came directly from that writer/design path. Engineers have always had outsize power in dev teams because if there's a disagreement on content, the engineer can just say "Nah, not gonna build that. Gonna build my thing." It's hard for writers to maintain authority when they're the least numerous, lowest paid, and most replaceable employee on the dev team. Writers are having a presence on games teams again nowadays, but usually it's either for transmedia (they write comics or something within the IP) or for game dialog, but it's never a real decision making role.

Fourth, the genre leader, Squaresoft, merged with Enix and became Square-Enix in 2003. It lost its first generation management and became corporate, just like we're seeing now with Blizzard, and just like we saw happen with Bioware. This left an enormous void in the market that wasn't ever filled except partially by Atlus and was devastating for the jRPG landscape. In an effort to retain relevance in the West, Square Enix opted to play follow the leader with a number of Western trends, from MMOs to action RPGs.

Fifth, the jRPG market has a cap. That cap seems to be 4 million units globally, but more like an average of 1-2 for big name releases (like Persona 5). When that was at the upper echelon of sales, they were an industry leader and people looked to emulate them. Nowadays, at least in the West, God of War sold 5+ million in a much shorter period of time. Action and FPS dominate here, by huge margins. In Japan, RPG remains the dominant genre.

Finally, in the 80s and 90s, Japan was the #2 economy in the world. Western companies and Western culture were extremely curious and excited about partnering with them on a variety of levels. Starting around 2000, Japan's economy started rapidly shrinking and China's started rapidly growing until 2010 when China's GDP surpassed it. Now Japan is significantly dwarfed by China; all of that business interest in creating ties to Japan and opening up the Japanese market has shifted to China.

I 100% agree with you. The solution is to support indie companies making jRPGs, of which there are very few. Most indie devs (and I've met a lot) are rich kids with ivy league or equivalent educations who make procedural roguelikes. I don't want to stereotype, but most of them are incredibly douchey. You might watch out for Gravastar, which is reminiscent of BoF3/4. https://studioatma.com/ but they have no dedicated writer and the story looks uninspired and generic. Battle Chasers from Airship Syndicate was alright, but, again, bland, uninspired story, and a lot more influence from Diablo/WoW than classic jRPGs.

I made an indie jrpg (not a great one) in Unity using film actors like Mortal Kombat 1-3 in 2013, trying specifically to take some of these issues into account, but it didn't get much traction (positive or negative), so I'm not sure the market is there. Of course, the production quality wasn't high enough either and I mixed in a lot of influence from 90s film-based adventure games which I didn't realize no one but me really remembers, so certainly those were issues. But I'm working on one now as a hobby. I might ask for input at some point.