JRPG fans have better taste than CRPG fans!

JRPG fans have better taste than CRPG fans!
>It’s been revealed in the latest publication of financial statements released by the “Official Gazette” (Kanpo) that Square Enix’s Tokyo RPG Factory studio saw a deficit of 244 million yen.
>Tokyo RPG Factory was created to make I am Setsuna, originally announced as Project: Setsuna, a throwback RPG made to appeal to the old school RPG fans.
At least people who love jrpg genre didn't bought garbage that only pretends to be oldschool while having all problems of modern games
Wish Pillars of Eternity would flop like this too

>At least people who love jrpg genre didn't bought garbage that only pretends to be oldschool while having all problems of modern games

That's because literally nobody who made "old school" jrpgs exists anymore. The genre died over a decade ago and all those involved are gone, so there's no one left to make a classic one again.

Also not to mention the retarded levels of hype around the FF7 remake, which has even more problems than any of the throwback cRPGs.

Pillars of Eternity was a solid RPG though. It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad. I'd say it was quite comparable to NWN2 (excluding MOTB).

I disagree
Pillars of Eternity gameplay wise was no different from the DA:I
Both are boring, unfun shit
And NWN2 never was a good rpg

Nobody wants to make an old-school JRPG.

They want to make a nostalgiabait JRPG, in hopes of attracting the nostalgiabucks from a gullible audience.

The difference is that a person wanting to make an actual JRPG has ideas for what they consider a good game, and thinks the JRPG is the best way to frame it. The nostalgiafucks instead decide that they must have a JRPG, so they put together what they think makes a JRPG good and then throw together whatever else the game needs to be completed. The reason that this nostalgiabait is failing is because JRPG nostalgiabait has been coming out for YEARS, and Compile Heart certainly made sure it was a polished and shiny bunch of turds the whole time. Anyone who wants JRPGs just for nostalgia has had their fill, which means that trying to put out another nostalgiabait (even from a well-known company) isn't going to find an audience.

Instead, we're going to need some decent games for a change.

Setsuna could have been good if they bothered to do any actual combat balance but because of that they just made a super casual RPG where you can kill everything with ease I guess to cater to new faces but like they're trying to get the old crowd. It's a shame because it does have some neat mechanics, but lack of balance makes all that pointless.

PoE was mechanically solid. In terms of role playing choices it was by no means worse than the other Infinity Engine games. The weakness of PoE - as well as the weakness of NWN2 were the combat encounters - and possibly the underlying system itself. DA: I suffered from completely different issues, most of all abysmally bad mechanics, e.g. the dialogue wheel, and the type of combat itself - there is absolutely no comparison.

NWN2 was - in terms of role playing opportunities and mechanics - not half bad. As I said before, it's weakness was the mass of filler combat.

NWN2 and PoE are best compared to DA: Origins, which was similar to them in that regard.

>but it wasn't bad
>it was quite comparable to NWN2 (excluding MOTB)
So it was bad after all.

>JRPG fans
>taste

Except for the part where NWN2 wasn't bad. It was mediocre at worst.

>Bravely default
>Square enix
>low budget
>niche genre
>influenced by SNES jrpgs
>released on the 3ds during 2012, when it was fucking dead and no one wanted anything with the console
>1.5m sales

>I am Setsuna
>Square enix
>low budget
>niche genre
>influenced by SNES jrpgs
>released on the vita during 2016, after slowly gathering a big user base
>30k sales

Should have released it on 3ds if they wanted sales. Everyone knows that contrary to popular belief, the only handheld where third parties sell more than 500k is on 3ds.

Vita and PS4.

Pretty sure it's on the pc too
Nope, Setsuna would bomb everywhere
Game was garbage

OP data is from before the game was released in the west, so before the PC version was made.

crpgs were always low budget, dated garbage that died for a good reasons, they are mechanically impractical and pointlessly tedious, modern wrpg tried to improve over those gigantic flaws but they still failed to reach a bigger audience making them go full action games which just suck dick as well and can be barely considered "rpgs". Japanese RPGs on the other side were always how rpg were supposed to be. They are simply perfection.

Does it really matter? I mean, no matter what they do, even if they pulled the perfect old-school RPG game out of their asses, you guys would complain about it and say it doesn't count.

>>They want to make a nostalgiabait JRPG, in hopes of attracting the nostalgiabucks from a gullible audience.
So exactly like kikestarter wrpg shitfests like wasteland 2, poe, tides,etc.

Most rpgs besides Dragon Quest usually try to put a spin on the mechanics. FFX is basically Grandia without the positioning, Saga Frontier 2 allows you learn moves during battle, Parasite Eve is basically a 1 person strategy game.

This is a vanilla paint by numbers game.

At least it would sell, like BD
But they instead decided to go for the look alike, so of course people who want "fun" games back didn't bought it
Same reason why people who played Baldurs Gate consider PoE a trash. It's just isn't fun to play

>At least people who love jrpg genre didn't bought garbage that only pretends to be oldschool while having all problems of modern games
No the game is indeed pretty oldschool. And actually has old schoo flaws to it too. It just wasn't Chrono Trigger.

Nope, gameplay and story wise it's something that you would expect from the modern jrpg

No. The game has some serious flaws but the pacing and general keys of the story beats are indeed quite classic and traditional.

Like the number of NPCs in the game. How they actually all have unique dialogue. How said dialogue changes frequently for just about every NPC in the game for each piece of story progressed.
The topics of the NPCs are also quite classic. What with how the vast majority of them discuss quite simply speak about their own lives and perhaps immediate society they live in. Which may often be tangentially related to the general story of the region, but seldom ever directly related to it and is really mostly ever about how their personal lives relate to the situation.

To actually learn anything major about the story, general situations, or major characters, items and typical beasts and places included. You need to read the chronicles/journal. Which is again pretty oldschool.

In all these manners it can very well be compared to old RPGs like Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, or even Chrono Trigger. The major difference is that in (the later instalments of) those games you had much more influence over events and could find alternative outcomes.
Which interestingly was just about Chrono Trigger's biggest strength, which makes the comparison really unfair to I am Setsuna when it should really much more accurately be compared to Final Fantasy 1 or something.

>JRPG fans have better taste
>Jrpg fans think garbage like Persona 5 and FF15 are good
nah you have shit taste

>The topics of the NPCs are also quite classic. What with how the vast majority of them discuss quite simply speak about their own lives and perhaps immediate society they live in. Which may often be tangentially related to the general story of the region, but seldom ever directly related to it and is really mostly ever about how their personal lives relate to the situation.
This is not that makes game old school
You could even saw it in the more modern games, like final fantasy 7

I just finished my pirated copy of pillars of eternity and loved it and now I'm playing (and loving ) a pirated copy of I am Setsuna

>complaining about games that aren't even out yet
At least limit yourself to recent failures. There's more than enough examples.

>like final fantasy 7
Final Fantasy 7 was a quite drastic departure from Final Fantasy 6 and previous Final Fantasies. But that element is one thing that has stayed mostly consistent throughout the franchise. Making it a classic element.

Besides. Final Fantasy 7 was 10 years. That's as long as had passed from Final Fantasy 1 to Final Fantasy 7's release. It stands clear in the midway point. And shares lots of both truthfully classic elements, and lots of cancer of modern gaming.
It's from right when games started branching out and from when lots of these trends started. Fuck it, the game popularized a lot of the poorer trends even.

The biggest thing is less that and more that their conversations keep changing.

I liked pillars of eternity tho
It was like the DA:O sequel we never got
It did end kind of abruptly and if the gods weren't real then why did we need to collect their blessings? And it makes the whole white March confusing because you have a whole Convo with this fake god

And I am Setsuna is pretty fun imo it's the music is comfy and it's fun taking everything out in one move

>I am Setsuna
>Squeenix funds a whole new port of a PC version
>Doesnt release an english Vita version even though it already exists
>Game flops

They funded a whole new port that flopped and then didnt bother releasing the version the platform that people actually play this shit on

I have a Vita. And quite like it actually. But I am so glad that they made this for PC.
The assets are actually quite beautiful even in their simplicity. And looks a lot better on PC on an HD screen than on the Vita even if upscaled from the Vita.

That was one of the better things about the game really. If I had to walk through all those snowy environments, then it's nice that it actually looked good because otherwise it would have just been so damn boring. Arguably it was anyway so it must have been very lacking on the Vita.

I Am Setsuna was a good game.

The problem was that the price tag was inexcusable.

You could have gotten it for $20 during the sale.

No. They burned that bridge when they tried to release it at a ridiculous price. I pirated it instead.

SE has been on a roll of making terrible games, anything outside of FF or DQ does shit and their mobage games don't even stay on the top 10 grossing that long in Japan.

>Steam

There's the problem. Nobody buys anything over $10.

Pillars of Eternity was a great game, but it wasn't a RPG. It was a h&s game similar to the Icewind Dale games - the IE games that Sawyer actually worked on.

The price was definitely a lead factor for the western release: $40 digital only, no physical, no Vita release, and a PC port SE would have to pay out of pocket for. They pretty much burned all the western hype and goodwill the niche crowd had for the game, with Vita fans feeling robbed, and PS4 fans not wanting to trust that high a price tag for digital only. PC players are probably the only winners here, but it's not enough to make the game profitable for SE, especially since many are going to be waiting on a sale.

ID games were fun to play
PoE combat was so soulless, it's not even funny

It was RPG enough in my opinion. You created your character, you got to define he personality through your choices, etc. - mechanically it was solid. The combat system was flawed and the combat encounters were mostly boring (and there were too many meaningless ones).

That's just your opinion. I loved the combat and the challenge and PoE was definitely way more challenging than both IWD games combined.

>combat takes up 80% of the game but I'm going to pretend that combat mechanics aren't core mechanics meme
literally the reason wrpgs have always been shit and always will be

Combat mechanics are core mechanics in the sense that they're important to the game, but they're not role playing related in the sense that the game's status as an RPG is unaffected by them. Whether you have action-based combat like in Bloodlines, RTWP like in Baldur's Gate or turn-based combat like in Fallout doesn't matter.

Also, even in relatively combat heavy games like Baldur's Gate 2 you spend probably at least as much time navigating the maps and talking to NPCs in dialogue as you spend in combat.
In terms of gameplay, they easily surpass JRPGs in my opinion, simply because they have more to offer than just combat.

The sale was at launch. But whatever works for you. I am not one of those people crusading against pirates.

There's no fucking way they staked that much money on this game. It didn't even get any real advertisement.

It certainly didn't sell well, but if that number isn't a load of horseshit there's something else at foot here.

More than anything we learned why Square Enix will never make another Chrono game. That fanbase will never be content with anything you give them. Just pander more to the Final Fantasy audience with shit like Bravely Default.

>but they're not role playing related in the sense that the game's status as an RPG is unaffected by them.
The mechanics are literally what makes them RPGs in the context of videogames.
Do you think old videogame RPGs were attributed as "RPGs" due to the wide and deep roleplaying possibilities? No that was certainly not it. It was because they had mechanics derived from real roleplaying games. Not they themselves actually provided opportunities for real roleplaying or anything.

>but if that number isn't a load of horseshit there's something else at foot here.
The game did indeed sell poorly. But there is also the fact that the numbers from the OP are after all the expenditures of making the PC port, but also before any of the profits of the PC port. Making it seem extra bad.

Then again, I doubt the PC sales makes this thing break even so it will probably look pretty bad in the end anyway.

Again: combat mechanics are not 'role playing related' mechanics. Whether you kill things in turn-based or in action-based combat doesn't matter at all to a game's status as an RPG. It is entirely unrelated.

>jrpgs
>taste

>More than anything we learned why Square Enix will never make another Chrono game. That fanbase will never be content with anything you give them.
They fucking bought up Cross and Trigger DS by the truckload and Square did nothing. Anyone that seriously thinks this was their attempt to "test the waters" instead of it being some shitty cash grab is retarded.

>Again: combat mechanics are not 'role playing related' mechanics.
No here's what you're not getting. These combat mechanics you're calling entirely unrelated, are mechanics directly derived from real roleplaying games. This adaptation is indeed what makes them qualify as videogame RPGs. That's it.
The number of choices or story branches and whatever else literally do not matter when it comes to this. That's not actual roleplaying anyway.

Is Wizardry an RPG? Is Ultima an RPG? Is the first Final Fantasy game an RPG?
Yes they are. Why are they RPGs? Because they adapted their mechanics from RPGs. It's the mechanics that makes them RPGs. Not how well you feel like you can play pretend in them.

i didn't particularly disliked setsuna, but i don't understand why would a game that was made in unity and does not particularly have much variety in terms of assets lose so much fucking money

game looks and plays like a fucking mobile game

???

>These combat mechanics you're calling entirely unrelated, are mechanics directly derived from real roleplaying games.
Combat mechanics are not what defined the role playing games. These kinds of mechanics existed well before RPGs, namely in the tabletop war games, which came before and upon which the first RPGs were built. What defined the RPG was the cooperative storytelling and the interaction with the narrative. Fighting things in turn-based combat existed well before RPGs, and it existed in computer games well before the first CRPGs.

My guess is the main reason was because of the formation of the development company. Tokyo RPG Factory was founded by SE, and filled with external staff. Setsuna was their first title. Starting a new branch is still an expensive endeavor.

Either SE was expecting the loss from this due to the foundation, or they honestly thought Setsuna would sell 250000 in their home country alone. And knowing SE, I'd go with the latter.

>Combat mechanics are not what defined the role playing games.
You could make the argument that simulation defined them.
Either way the combat mechanics are part of their mechanics.

I am just laying down some videogames history on you. Why they were considered videogame RPGs.
Would you disagree with convention and argue that the aforementioned games were never RPGs to begin?

>Would you disagree with convention and argue that the aforementioned games were never RPGs to begin?
Again: they were not RPGs because of turn-based combat. A game need not borrow combat mechanics from a tabletop game in order to be an RPG. Much more relevant than the combat system was the aspect of visual stats that would grow depending on the player/world interaction.

>Again: they were not RPGs because of turn-based combat.
Partly they were.
>A game need not borrow combat mechanics from a tabletop game in order to be an RPG.
But it needs to borrow mechanics from them, combat or otherwise.

So with Setsuna's failure, what does the future hold for jrpgs? for Tokyo RPG Factory?

BD was sold like hot cakes
So next time we will get real jrpg and not garbage like Setsuna

>Partly they were.
It is obvious that the first CRPGs were mostly about combat simply because combat is something that is most straightforward to code and a task that a computer handles quite well (opposed to people who usually are bad at calculating things and handling lots of dice).

I still wouldn't consider the combat system characteristic however, because similar systems have been used by games that weren't RPGs. Even the 'real' RPGs weren't the first to use these kinds of combat systems.

you're still missing the point, which is that none of that shit matters except to autistic neckbeards. no matter what you want to call the genre the fact remains that if the thing that takes up the majority of your time while playing sucks then the game as a whole sucks.

>BD was sold like hot cakes
Then they made the terrible sequel that reused 90% of assets and censored bad endings and outfits in the west.

Sounds like jrpgs are finally dead for good then.

I didn't even realize that this setsuna thing was a square enix rpg until now. I saw pictures like this posted here a couple times, but I figured it was some indie trash. how is this supposed to look like the cover of a jrpg?

Doesn't bother me.

I only give a shit about Atelier and Vannilaware games really.

i thought EXACTLY the same thing

it looked like your typical indie walking simulator splashscreen when it went scrolling across the Steam banner. by the time I found out it was actually a jRPG the Summer Sale had already happened and I have a backlog to work on

I've only played Atelier Rorona Plus. How has the Atelier games changed over the titles? I've not heard good things from the latest ones.

>Dude lets make a phone game and charge fourty bucks for it
At least they had a sense of humour

What makes an "old school " jrpg?

What you don't seem to get is that not everyone has comparably bad taste as you.

>nobody who made old school jrpgs exists anymore

Monolith Soft exists

>Final Fantasy 7 was 10 years

FF7 was released 19 years ago

I'm inclined to believe that's just the cost of setting up the studio.

I'm just surprised people didn't like I am Setsuna.

It's low budget sure, but it's not bad. The battle system is fun to tinker with and it has some great music.

Certainly a step above current Gust shit or IF garbage.

it's not a question of taste. if you make a city builder where 80% of the game is actually a shitty gta clone you can't pretend it's a good game no matter how good the city building part is. autistic neckbeards insisting that "muh dialogue" is the only thing required for a good rpg is allowing devs to get away with putting out trash games like dragon age and pillars of eternity.

Sophie was garbage without any redeeming qualities
Even EL and Sophie were good for at least one playthrough
And next atelier game looks even worse

If you play Atelier games you contributed to the death of jrpgs, congrats.

Your opinions are of great importance to me. Truly.

People don't like it because game was advertised as an old school jrpg, but it ended up being modern trash
It's a very bad move than their other game knew exactly how to pander nostalgia fans

Are people still salty over time limit removal?

Sophie is the best Atelier though. Better than any Arland title as well.

What part of it is "modern trash" ?

>I care so little I posted to let them know I didn't care

gameplay and story

...

The point remains that some people like the dialogue aspect of RPGs. If you don't like it that's fine - I can't expect everyone to have good taste after all.

>That's because literally nobody who made "old school" jrpgs exists anymore. The genre died over a decade ago and all those involved are gone, so there's no one left to make a classic one again.

This isn't the problem.

First, I think that it's worth pointing out that the actual gameplay mechanics of JRPGs for last generation consoles and beyond are not the issue. Atelier, Tales, Star Ocean, Rune Factory... I'd say that in terms of mechanics, we're actually continuing to grow here. Before anyone says CH, don't disregard the examples that I just gave in favor of the one that best suits your narrative. They're not the only successful players in the industry.

The problem is that they've lost their feeling of exploration and adventure. Why? Because making a Final Fantasy VII that's up to modern graphical standards would be very expensive. Furthermore, while this might be possible for a rich AAA western game developer, Japan has spent all of its time since the 80s getting more and more fucked financially. The end result is that making a large modern JRPG that feels like a grand adventure is cost-prohibitive.

Good art direction doesn't cost an astronomical amount of modey, it just costs good artists (videogame artists are not overpaid rockstars).

There is no "problem" besides the fact that the studios that make jrpgs nowadays just have bad artists.

The artists you want don't exist

I don't disagree with your actual argument, but your examples are poor. The only one of those series that has had consistent improvement is Rune Factory. For Atelier, Sophie's gameplay was a step down from both Arland and Dusk. Tales just throws whatever new system they feel like into each game, to mixed results. And Star Ocean doesn't really have enough of a presence to represent this generation, but the one game we got recently doesn't show anything revolutionary.

They exist, they're just in more competent studios working on more high profile releases because they're a rare comodity.

>a stepdown from Arland

literally impossible, arland trilogy is about as hollow and barebones as jrpg gameplay gets

Yes, making things more detailed totally doesn't up the workload, no matter how great your artists are. You don't need more artists to cover the greater workload, which in turn makes things more expensive.

>Then don't make things more detailed!

People wouldn't buy FFVII, exactly as it were released in 1997, if it were released today if it were a new title. Unless you're some kind of amazing outlier (unpredictable and largely based on luck), you can't count on getting more than an indie-tier reception unless you meet modern graphical standards.

That's the current situation. Huge budgets are currently prohibitive to Japanese devs, so classic JRPGs are dead until the country's economy gets out of the gutter.


>*can't exist, outside of his fantasy land


It was more of a comparison of generations.

Compare the "modern JRPGs" (generally used to describe things released post-PS2, when shit got cost-prohibitive) mechanics to your favorite titles of whatever you consider to be the golden age of JRPGs. They've improved.

>the options that you select from in combat are the only mechanics that exist in a game

>making things more detailed ups the workload

literally lmao

you still don't get it. a flight sim where you have to play a kart racer with bad controls for 50 minutes for every 10 minutes you actually get to fly isn't a good flight sim, it's a bad kart racer with a flight sim minigame. autistically insisting that dialogue is the only thing that matters in a rpg is what leads to shitfests where you spend 5 minutes talking and then an hour killing trash mobs with garbage real time with pause mechanics.

Why did Bravely Default succeed where I Am Setsuna failed?

It's also devoid of any party customization or branching progression for characters, and fights are literally spank & heal. Hello ?

Next you're going to say the crafting was good. Even fucking Iris 1 had crafting miles above and beyond the Arland games.

Bravely Default was a game for the 3DS when it was needing games and has a fun abusable too job system and 10/10 music.

Meanwhile Setsuna was ported to platforms in the West to platforms people normally don't even give a shit for that niche of games and didn't even port the game to the original platform it was made for along with being mostly mediocre overall.