7th gen ruined companies from making good JRPGs

>7th gen ruined companies from making good JRPGs

>after the tech demo des this gem was born to put JRPGs on the map again and ironically is the only good JRPG of that gen

How did they do it bro's?

From Sofware is one of the only companies that got better with the years. Hope Sony protects them from fucking EA or Activision

>JRPG

From is owned by Kadokawa

It's an action game with some RPG elements, not an RPG.

after Bloodbourne, i read Sony Japan want to team up with them for future projects.

Dark Souls isn't a JRPG.
It's an action WRPG like The Witcher or Dragon Age; it just happened that it was coded by japanese people.

has levels, experience, equipment, stat requirements, builds, etc. Not an RPG how, exactly?

The gameplay is about running through mostly linear corridors, killing the monsters in the way until a boss fight comes up and then continuing. That's what the game is about, that's why people play the game.

Adding stats and skills to Call of Duty wouldn't make Call of Duty an RPG. It would add RPG elements but it would still very much be an FPS.

He's retarded.

Dark souls is more of a rpg than most jrpgs with their predefined characters and linear story

Can you beat the game without killing anyone by going full stealth?
Can you beat the game without killing anyone, progressing through dialog?

OP has obviously never play Strange Journey

And yet much less of an RPG than actual RPGs like Bloodlines, Torment, etc.

>linear corridors

Dark souls 1 isn't linear. Stop mistaking your FF13 trash for a game who's whole is that it isn't a linear piece of trash.

You're aren't a already made character in souls with a set design and story so its more a RPG than your animu garbage

Yeah and Fallout 4

In Dark Souls you mostly navigate through linear, narrow passages so that you run into the enemies and can't avoid them.

By putting in good gameplay and staying away from cutesy anime shit. (Cutesy being the key word, we all know Dark Souls is a Beserk clone)

The shit with Final Fantasy is they always had a dumb boner for graphics and overdesigned J-pop trash. If they spent half as much time on the gameplay than they did getting Lightning's hair right then FF13 might not have been so garbage.

Also their engines tend to run like shit because their modelers do stupid shit like make a potted plant as many polys as a playable character and adding excessive detail on shit that'll never be seen like engraved knife handles.

The Soulsborne games are pretty much lineal corridor affairs with a boss at the end.
You simply can't deny it. Unless you're one of those idiots that sees Dark Souls 1 as the pinnacle of gaming.

>In Dark Souls you mostly navigate through linear, narrow passages so that you run into the enemies and can't avoid them.

Imagine trying to damage control this bad by lying.

RPG's can't take place in a setting where you have to kill to progress?

This looks like an edited skyrim image

The world is extremely non-linear, despite the levels typically having tons of corridors.

Yeah go fuck yourself, here's an actual design of a dark souls level with multiple paths that leads to a boss, not your shitty drawings

>implying it's not true
You can't progress freely in Dark Souls, you need to run through the corridors in order so that you unlock certain passages and the environment in Dark Souls is for the most part quite narrow and focussed.

If your game involves nothing but killing monsters in action-based combat then you end up in a different genre.

I'm seeing a lot of corridors here. Painting objects like the columns doesn't change that.

...

hey newfag

you proved his point faggot

So an action role playing game made by japanese. Hmm...

>Extremely non-linear
It only allows you to do a couple things out of order (like getting the rite of kindling instead of going straight through the Undead Burg), but it's extremely linear.
A Megaman game is far more non-linear.

>It's an action WRPG like The Witcher or Dragon Age
Both the Witcher and Dragon Age heavily involve non-combat interaction where the player explores non-hostile territory, talks to NPCs, etc.

In Dark Souls it's pretty much non-stop action because it's an action game.

Pathetic damage controlling, there's literally multiple ways for a guy to have reached the gaping dragon arena.

>You can't progress freely in Dark Souls
Yes you can, that's why in dark souls many people have different orders of bosses or bosses they skipped

Haven't played Demon's Souls but in my opinion of the four Souls games I've played (five if 2 SOTFS counts as its own game) Dark Souls is the most "open" and Bloodborne the most lineal

A level will always have a beginning and an end. Otherwise it wouldn't be a level, it would just be an empty field. You could call any level linear if you tried hard enough, the point is that the levels are well-designed. Open-world games are trash because they don't have any level design at all so they just become boring sandboxes.

>Open-world games are trash because they don't have any level design at all so they just become boring sandboxes.
Clearly you've never played any of the Gothic games.

>Yes you can
Your picture proves that you can't progress freely. There are certain things where you might slightly deviate when it comes to the order and certain optional territories, but each territory itself mostly consists of linear corridors where you kill all the monsters in your way until you reach the boss.

But this is all besides the point: the important part of why Dark Souls is more action game than RPG is that you spend most of the time fighting monsters in action based combat and how well you do largely depends on your own ability as a player.

>there's literally multiple ways for a guy to have reached the gaping dragon arena
Going through the depths and...
I never tried going in reverse from Blightown to gaping dragon (because it's a dumb thing to do if you already reached Blightown)

>That's why in dark souls many people have different orders of bosses or bosses they skipped
Tell me. Can I fight Nito without obtaining the Lordvessel?
Can I fight Gwindolyn without defeating O&S first?
Can I fight the Four Kings without killing Sif?

>can ring either bell first
>can skip the Burg
>can skip the Depths
>can do Four Kings as soon as you have 20,000 souls for the Seal to reach Sif
>can acquire the other 3 Lord Souls in any order
>can backtrack at any time
The story has an overall linear timeline but the game itself is not linear. There are certain choke points of the story, but you can pick and choose which route to take more or less at your leisure. I mean, just at the start you can:
Go up the Burg and ring the first bell
Go to the Garden through the Burg, kill Sif and then Four Kings
Go and get the Rite of Kindling
>once you have Depths key or pick master key
Go to Blighttown and ring the second bell
Go to Ash Lake and join the Dragon Covenant
It's not open world but it's not linear either.

>linear corridors where you kill all the monsters in your way until you reach the boss.

Already been proved wrong when the levels themselves are designed to give you more than one way to meet a boss.
You're just waffling baseless shit. The game provides players with a choice on how they want to progress no matter how much you wanna downplay it.

Other JRPG'S don't even let you roleplay as they determine who you're character is and set him on a linear path to the end where the player has no say in their choices until the last 10 mins for a "bad ending"

But even the non-combat interrelation in Dark Souls is more interesting than anything in the Witcher, as every NPC in it serves their own unique purpose and will even do shit behind your back like kill other NPCs if you don't decide to kill them first.

>dark souls
>good

>Tell me. Can I fight Nito without obtaining the Lordvessel?
>Can I fight Gwindolyn without defeating O&S first?
>Can I fight the Four Kings without killing Sif?

See

jesus christ i love dark souls but this is retarded. dark souls npc's are 1 dimensional as fuck compared to most somewhat important characters in any good crpg or jrpg, why would you even post this

>Tell me. Can I fight Nito without obtaining the Lordvessel?
No, but you can do this with 4kings, and be rewarded for this.

>Can I fight Gwindolyn without defeating O&S first?
I don't even even know, but, yeah, I think you can actually.

>Can I fight the Four Kings without killing Sif?
This is already so lenient that I don't know why you're bringing it up. You can kill Sif before any other boss and then go straight down to New Londo. Unless you want the whole game to be a structureless wankfest what is even your point?

>Already been proved wrong when the levels themselves are designed to give you more than one way to meet a boss.
The levels are designed in a fashion that you run into the enemies, which is why you have mostly linear (we are talking about how the levels are geometrically designed - not about gamedesign!) or piece-wise linear, narrow passages. The game is about overcoming the respawning enemies and in the end fighting a boss so that you get to unlock new passages and progress.

>The game provides players with a choice on how they want to progress no matter how much you wanna downplay it.
You get to choose whether you kill Foozle A before Foozle B or whether you run to Foozle A through narrow passage X while killing Zombie u, v, i or through narrow passage Y while killing Skeleton h, j, k. And more often than not you don't even have that choice. Also, that does not change that you are navigating through narrow passages while killing monsters all the time. Get rid of the combat in Dark Souls and you have nothing left, because the game is the combat.

>more interesting
Not an argument.

That's your personal opinion and given that you're an idiot it holds very little weight.

I wish that "most overrated souls game" thread from earlier didn't die so I could link this post in it

You proved my point because you can't do all of those things freely. For example you can ring the bells on either order, but still you need to ring both to progress.

So what do you want? Multiple routes to get to the boss? is that what you're complaining about? Maybe you want a boring shitty flat plain like BOTW?

On one hand of the Souls games I've played I think Dark Souls 1 is the best by virtue of being the most balanced of the bunch.
On the other hand the Dark Souls 1 fanbase fills me with shame. Like, you can't discuss a game (any game) without one of them barging into the conversation and yelling "Dark Souls is better / does _________ better".

Well, you guys claim Dark Souls is the most non-linear game in the universe and get mad when we prove it's not the case. You tell me.

Also, doesn't everyone praise BOTW as the best game ever made?

>why would you even post this

Because they do actually allow more unique and creative interactions than most NPCs in a great deal of RPGs that you only meaningfully interact with by accepting quests from them. Hell, your interactions with Patches are way more dynamic than most of what happens in a typical RPG quest. Having walls of text isn't necessarily better than Soul's minimalism.

>you need to play the game to progress

>you can't kill Gwyn before fighting the Asylum Demon so the game is a straight line

Just think of the level of anger Activision could rise if they buy FromSoft and force them to make mobile game.

>Can I fight Gwindolyn without defeating O&S first?
Yes. Get the Darkmoon Seance Ring from the Catacombs and just enter the fight.

>Creative
>Deep

>Are you a cleric? yes / no
>Yes: he becomes hostile next time you meet him.
>No: he doesn't become hostile net time you meet him

So deep. So profound. So creative.

in the universe? no. in the world? nah.
at all? yes, there are non-linear paths you can take, letting you form the gaming experience to your liking. while there will be moments when you must do similar activities to other players, from there the game branches out again, letting you choose how you would like to go through the world provided to you.
you're given a goal, you must find the proper route to reach that goal. there are easy, expected ways, and then there are harder, more complicated ways.
the point of the game is to get to the end and to either link the flame or don't, to do this you need to get the lord souls, to do this you need the lord vessel, to get this you need to go through anor londo, to do this you need to ring the bells and get through the fortress.
what you do to do all this, is up to you. that's it.
how you do it is where you have freedom, that you have to do it at all, is what makes it a game.

>The levels are designed in a fashion that you run into the enemies,

Why do you keep insisting this? In every souls game you can run past the mooks and they'll lose aggro quickly. The game is designed like this for people who want to skip past them.

>And more often than not you don't even have that choice
Except you doYou keep claiming everything is a narrow path without even citing any examples. Dark is only big because of the interconnected levels.

>You get to choose whether you kill Foozle A before Foozle B or whether you run to Foozle A through narrow passage X while killing Zombie u, v, i or through narrow passage Y while killing Skeleton h, j, k.

Most JRPGs don't offer anything even as dynamic as this. You're mostly told by NPC A to go to place X and that's that, interspersed with tons of drawn out cutscenes with little choice about when or how things play out. Dark Souls lets you attack every NPC in the game, with different consequences for killing each one of them, gives you the freedom to avoid fighting bosses entirely and even allows you to befriend some of them. Hell, throughout Soulsborne you get stuff like characters treating you differently depending on your stats, how many souls you're carrying and what you're wearing. If this isn't RPG enough for you, then please tell me which RPGs actually, pound for pound, offer the same level of choice and interaction?

>In every souls game you can run past the mooks and they'll lose aggro quickly.
And yet they become aggro'd because the levels are designed in that way. There is no non-hostile territory. It's a game about running through a big dungeon and killing everything in your way in action-based combat which is why it's more action game than RPG.

>Dark Souls lets you attack every NPC in the game
Almost. You can't kill Alvina or Anastacia (though you can indirectly cause her death)

i think we have different definitions of 'rpg', user. you seem to define it as those in /tg/ would, something where you take an actual role, while here it's just a game with leveling mechanics, stats and such, and growing stronger as you play.
am i wrong?

>Dark Souls lets you attack every NPC in the game, with different consequences for killing each one of them, gives you the freedom to avoid fighting bosses entirely and even allows you to befriend some of them.
All that sounds a lot more involved than it actually is. Dark Souls does not feature faction dynamics akin to New Vegas or Age of Decadence, or NPCs with big dialogue. Killing NPCs barely has consequences and it won't significantly affect gameplay because you still run through the same corridors, killing the same monsters, etc. because that's what is the actual game. You don't spend time in non-hostile towns, talking to people.

Stats can be tacked on literally any game in existence, in fact, they usually exist already as they're an integral part of any kind of game logic. My point is that the stats alone don't make a game an RPG though.

Dark Souls has RPG elements, gameplay aspects that it shares with RPGs, but at its heart it's still mostly action game. Compare it with Bloodlines for example, which also has action based combat but is much more of an RPG because it has much more "down-time" where you're not killing monsters but navigating non-hostile territory, talking to NPCs, etc.

>Dark Souls isn't an RPG
>can create your own character, allocate stat points the way you want, choose how you progress through the world and story, choose what spells to learn if any, choose your own equipment, choose whether or not you'll be an asshole or a good guy to both NPCs and other players online

???

>Dark Souls does not feature faction dynamics akin to New Vegas or Age of Decadence

It kind of does though. There are NPCs that are allied with each other which will attack or refuse to interact with you if you kill other members of their group, and a number of times you'll have reason to attack or defend a given set of NPCs based on your choices.

>big dialogue

No, the game is minimalist with regard to dialog and filler NPCs, but this isn't some great negative. The fact that you have to compare it to a game like New Vegas in order to get something that actually exceeds the freedom it offers is telling. It's not an 'RPG' in the sense that you go around talking to villagers and doing tasks for them, if that's somehow what you require in order for it to qualify as one.

>You can't kill
I said attack, not kill, for this reason.

By this extremely loose definition GTA 5 is an RPG. I won't bother trying to turn back time on the dubious definitions of a framework for roleplaying vs. "RPG elements", just hoping that people become more cognizant of its worthlessness as a genre descriptor.

>The fact that you have to compare it to a game like New Vegas in order to get something that actually exceeds the freedom it offers is telling.
You were pointing out faction dynamics and I merely brought an example of a game which actually does faction dynamics on a sufficient level.

>It's not an 'RPG' in the sense that you go around talking to villagers and doing tasks for them
As I said: it's not an RPG.

It's a game about killing monsters in action based combat that happens to share some mechanics with RPGs.

Would you recommend the game to someone who likes Torment or Baldur's Gate 2? I would say Bloodlines can still be enjoyed by someone who likes these games because even though it involves fundamentally different combat gameplay it still involves enough non-combat exploration, dialogue, etc. to be fun to people who like the aforementioned games.
Dark Souls however would not necessarily appeal to someone who likes these games because it's too much of an action game. The game is fun to people who like pressing buttons on a gamepad to beat monsters up. It may not necessarily appeal to people who like RPGs though.

Well duh you stupid fuck, its part of the setting. Many souls have hubs that are entirely enemy free. There are many friendly NPC's in the game who aren't hostile and you can interact with so can't pretend this game is nothing but you and mooks/bosses everywhere . You're just grasping at straws at this point.

SeeWhy the fuck should animu JRPG's be classed as RPGs but your autistic mind wants to pretend Souls isn't

No, you see, REAL RPGs have ton upon tons of inane dialog where characters explain every possible thing is detail, including the elaborate backstory to how Timmy fell into the well, which nets you 50 gold if you rescue him. It absolutely has to have 10 NPCs for everything that could be achieved by a single one in Souls, and at least two cutscenes that play after every transition between an area between plotpoints.

>Many souls have hubs that are entirely enemy free.
In these hubs you can't do anything though, they are singular islands within a sea of corridors filled with monsters for the player to beat up.

>There are many friendly NPC's in the game who aren't hostile and you can interact with
You can trigger them and they'll spout their line. Maybe ask you a yes/no question or open up a menu for buying things. NPC interaction is not a big element of Souls games. How much time do you spend in dialogue compared with how much time do you spend beating monsters up? Probably a lot more on the latter, because it's an action game.

I could argue with you but arguing against sophistry isn't worth the time.

>It absolutely has to have 10 NPCs for everything that could be achieved by a single one in Souls, and at least two cutscenes that play after every transition between an area between plotpoints.
Clearly you don't get the appeal of RPGs. RPGs are about immersion. About giving the player the opportunity to explore the role of his character within a given narrative. Getting rid of the NPCs that form a believable world because their function within the logic of the game could be handled by a single NPC is contrary to the immersion aspect as the world would turn out less believable if you strip it to its bare bones. And essentially that is Dark Souls. It's a game that could be an RPG if it involved more RPG elements than mere stats. I could easily imagine an RPG that involves Dark Souls like combat - but an RPG is more than just combat.

>JRPG

>run through the same corridors, killing the same monsters, etc.

Cuck is still damage controlling with his buzzowords. Literally complaining about the setting not having many normal people walking around casually to talk to despite the premise of the game.

You attack the weapons smith the guy will hunt you down for the rest of the game and if you don't kill lautrec he'll kill the slut in firelink shrine and make it inactive for a while

>Clearly you don't get the appeal of RPGs. RPGs are about immersion. About giving the player the opportunity to explore the role of his character within a given narrative.

Well, this is exactly what happens in Dark Souls except the narrative is told visually instead of by overly chatty NPC's. Sounds like you're more interested in books than games.

>You attack the weapons smith the guy will hunt you down for the rest of the game and if you don't kill lautrec he'll kill the slut in firelink shrine and make it inactive for a while
Barely noticeable and completely meaningless to the actual game which you can play just the same way.

The narrative does not matter. You can run through the game the same way, kill everything in your way and at some point you'll arrive at the end. You can beat the game despite completely ignoring the narrative because at its heart you're playing a game about beating monsters up.

>You can beat the game despite completely ignoring the narrative because at its heart you're playing a game about beating monsters up.

You can do this in any RPG with combat.

>In these hubs you can't do anything though
>upgrade and buy weapons
>buy specific items
>get specific spells off the different NPC's in there
>fuse your boss souls in to special weapons
>level up your character
>depending on the questline you interact with NPC's who visit there

Yeah man you totally do NOTHING here.

>NPC interaction is not a big element of Souls games.
Another lie when there are dozens of questlines you can follow and require interaction. Retardd actually trying to call it a action game when you can't even pull off a long string of combos. Keep waffling all you want.

No, because in most RPGs you wouldn't know where to go and thus wouldn't progress but wander around aimlessly.

In Dark Souls you navigate through corridors, kill everything in your way, and as long as you stumble into the occasional boss fight you will progress, because every time you kill a boss you're closer to the end because the game is about killing monsters.

You're completely right here but you're wasting your breath arguing against people who are completely clueless about roleplaying, will define RPGs as "stats n loot" and when the cognitive dissonance hits, try to hamfist some questionable definition of roleplaying ("you can choose to do this and that") to justify that part

>Barely noticeable and completely meaningless to the actual game which you can play just the same way.

Don't you get tired of damage controlling already? Since when did you think your opinions matter here?

Okay, we get it, you love fetch quests given to you by NPC's. Go play your "true RPG," Skyrim, while the rest of us enjoy an actual challenge.

>upgrade and buy weapons
>buy specific items
>get specific spells off the different NPC's in there
>fuse your boss souls in to special weapons
>level up your character
None of that is relevant to the narrative. The hubs have been reduced to function. They are akin to the village in Diablo (which is another example of games that aren't really RPGs).

>Another lie when there are dozens of questlines you can follow and require interaction.
By interaction you mean triggering them to spout their one line and then answering yes/no, right?

>trying to call it a action game when you can't even pull off a long string of combos
See, that's my whole point. RPGs are about character skill, not about player skill. The games appeal to a completely different demographic. "git gud" is fundamentally opposed to the whole concept of RPGs because it's the player character who needs to get good, not the player. The player makes the decisions, the player character executes them as best as he can.

>while the rest of us enjoy an actual challenge.
cupheads my niggnog

How am I wrong?

Both examples are utterly meaningless to the game. You can still run through your corridors and kill your monsters in the same way. Whether you can rest at firelink or not is meaningless.

>In Dark Souls you navigate through corridors

In fallout NV you navigate through empty as fuck deserts with a few empty stores.

This is how you sound.

We're still discussing RPG's, m8.

my dubs on that post shows cupheads as the truthfully challenging game

This is a total non sequitur and notions of "true RPG"ness are orthogonal to the game's quality. "RPG" is a common but misleading shorthand to describe games where you level up and pick loot, Dark Souls is however not a roleplaying game because it doesn't facilitate roleplaying.

What does qualify as 'roleplaying' then? Because what most games that people will call RPGs have in common is the elaborate focus on dialog, regardless of how much impact this has on the actual gameplay. Souls has minimalist dialog and tons of dungeon crawling, but otherwise offers everything that you'd need to qualify as one in spades.

I mean, if you play through a game like Baldur's Gate1, you can just play through the main quest by ignoring most NPCs, running through the dungeons and otherwise just doing what's marked in your quest journal when it comes up. There's only really one way to play through that game's main quest anyway as far as I know, yet no one would doubt its status as an RPG.

>Dark Souls is however not a roleplaying game because it doesn't facilitate roleplaying.
It does for me, guess your theory needs a revision.

Where did I name Skyrim? I was talking about Torment, Bloodlines, Baldur's Gate 2, etc. - what does Dark Souls have to do with these games?

And RPGs are not about challenge. They may involve challenge, but that's not what they're about.

But you do navigate through empty deserts. The point is that you also navigate through towns, interact with NPCs, get quests, solve them in reference to your individual skillset which often involves choice that in turn will reflect upon how the various factions view your character. From time to time you navigate through hostile territory and kill things, but killing things is done within the framework of completing quests given by the narrative. In Dark Souls, killing things is a purpose of its own. You literally play the game to kill things. Killing things is the game. And that is why Dark Souls is more action game than RPG, because the framework that surrounds the killing things has been reduced to an absolute minimum.

are souls topics the worst userbase on Sup Forums?

Only when autists come out to prove inane shit that most people don't believe.

>Dark Souls isn't an RPG
>But everyone says it is and it plays like one to me, I even RP with my character
>NO, IT IS NOT A ROLE PLAYING GAME BECAUSE YOU CAN'T DO FETCH QUESTS. WHERE ARE THE BEAR ASSES?

right now, yes. smashfags were worse but it looks like all of them are on /vg/ nowadays

>Only when autists come out to prove inane shit that most people don't believe.
i think you are apart of that same circle, user

>you can just play through the main quest by ignoring most NPCs
No, you can't because you cannot progress past certain points if you don't go through certain story events. And in order to know where to go and what to do you need to keep track of the narrative, talk to NPCs, etc.
The dungeon crawling that takes place is embedded within the narrative. In Dark Souls you have a paper thin narrative framework. The game is mostly about killing monsters.