What was so good about jprg 20 years ago?

What was so good about jprg 20 years ago?
Nowadays I still like them but only because of nostalgia.

Actually felt as if you were playing a fantasy game.

Modern JRPG usually fuck up their atmosphere regardless of setting (fantasy, modern, somesortofpunk, etc).

Nothing. Most of pre-PS2 RPGs are absolute shit and basically unplayable by today's standard.

Intriguing characters and story that actually developed throughout the game. Simple battle system that everyone can master easily, yet offers enough depths and versatility to your play. Focus on playing an actual game instead of being a marketing place for the latest tech.

>any mainline final fantasy combat system
>depth
don't be stupid, the only thing with even a semblance of depth is the gambit system

Ah yes the battle system which relies on avoiding the shitty battle system as much as possible.

>What was so good about jprg 20 years ago?
Nothing. They just were good for their time's standards. They completely pale compared to today's ones.

>Nowadays I still like them but only because of nostalgia.
And that's how it should be. There's nothing inherently good about them except for their historical importance.

this, Nier: Automata, Xenoblade 2, and Persona 5 all released in the same year and all are better than SNES era jRPGs, especially fucking FF4

FF4 is shit and overrated. FF5 is way better and underrated.

I like the gambit system too, but let's not write off the depth of the traditional final fantasy/jrpg battle system so easily

It forced you to plan your attacks to exit battles as quickly as possible to avoid using healing magic and/or items at the very least. There was a deeper strategy to it.

there really wasn't, each character did one maybe two different moves, there was 0 depth in the combat. I agree that resource management in dungeons took some foresight but that's outside of the combat system which is what I was criticizing

the fact that you hadn't played them a dozen times before

Most games back in that era were very short, arcade-style games where you went through a handful of levels and that was it. JRPGs were one of the few types of game that was a genuine adventure which you could play for days and days. There were better RPGs like Ultima on computer platforms but they weren't as accessible because real computers were still really expensive compared to game consoles. These days old school JRPG combat is pretty outdated and boring compared to what else is available.

disagree that resource management was outside the combat system, agreed that its simplicity was a weakness

The charm was in the story/characters, and its relative uniqueness at the time.

probably because most modern JRPG's have absolutely braindead shit battle mechanics, its one of the reasons why Sup Forums collectively shits on all the modern final fantasy's.

They provided a level of complexity in control, and story that no other genre of games did. They also often had a good atmosphere of travel due to the world map thing, which is an underrated mechanic that got lost to open world developments.

Playing IV for the time ever right now and the first couple hours were already more investing then most of the stuff thats being released today. The character tropes are established pretty early on but they are done well to make them look like actual characters with depths.

name an SNES jrpg with a less braindead battle system than xenoblade 2 or smt nocturne

There were a shit fucking ton of god awful JRPGs. FF is just the most consistently high quality franchise in all of vidya so you have fond memories of them.

What modern JRPG are you referring to? XIII with a battle system far more deep than ATB? SMTIV/P5 with Press Turn/One More? Something like Lost Odyssey or Last Remnant that's so deep you can't master it without an autistic number of playthroughs or a guide?

FF is consistently utter trash and has nothing against most mediocre RPGs.

The one that requires making the correct decisions.

I wanted specific examples so I could emulate something, I really want something on the level of those games but everything is just super braindead (FF, chrono trigger, secret of mana, etc.)

It was something new. JEPG didn't exist before. Nowadays JRPG went nowhere, same gameplay as 20 years ago, gets boring. They should move to isometric tactical combat at least to spice things up.

You're entitled to your retarded opinion. Go wank off Nocturne's baby puzzle system some more like you've been doing for the past decade, faggot.

>>and story that no other genre of games did

This is some grade-A weeb revisionist history. Point and click adventure games from that era demolished JRPGS when it came to storytelling. Even western RPGs like Betrayal at Krondor and Ultima 4-7 had way more sophisticated stories.

>people shitting on JRPG combat
Do you guys seriously perfer "Press a button, something happens!" combat?

Did Matador hurt you or something?

we're not shitting on jRPG combat, we're shitting on FF's and any equivalent historically brain-dead combat. Turn based can be done well like with SMT or bravely default

He's right though. Think about it, you're already being rewarded for targeting the enemy's weakness by making them take more damage, and (I think?) having a greater chance of landing the relevant status ailment (i.e. freezing an enemy that's weak to ice). The only thing the Press Turn system does is artificially elevate one strategy above all others, by rewarding you even further with free turns/free attacks, making all other strategies inferior by default. It's a complete no-brainer to exploit it, with no downsides or risks, so why wouldn't you? The result is that it ends up greatly reducing combat depth. I don't know what it says about the people at Atlus that they thought anyone needed such strong incentive to do something as straightforward as 'hit the weak spot of the bad guys'.

Press Turn is hilariously overrated and simplistic, m8, and outside of Press Turn Nocturne's combat is even simpler than Final Fantasy's because at least FF is ATB.

You're not wrong. But it's funny how I didn't say anything about Nocturne or SMT in general yet he immediately assumed I am talking about SMT. Nocturne's battle system is nothing special, but it's already million times more complex than any FF game because there's at least something to exploit.

All old JRPGs had combat like that. SMT didn't have press turn till much later. Plus there's nothing wrong with simpler combat. Difficulty =/= Quality

FF games have elemental weaknesses too, moron, you just don't get coveres in free attacks for exploiting them.

Lots of bad decisions caught on because they were tolerated but not enjoyed and JRPGs morphed from 'going on an adventure' to busywork.
Minimaps was one of the first. Then overly complex upgrade systems. Now it's glowy spots all over the map that contain useless items.

not him, ATB is fucking horrible and adds 0 depth. all it does is make games slower, press turn adds an additional layer to FF's basic turn based system both by giving the player and enemies more exploits to defenses

>All old JRPGs had combat like that. SMT didn't have press turn till much later
that's the idea, old jRPG combat system arn't as good as the ones out today

>Plus there's nothing wrong with simpler combat. Difficulty =/= Quality
true, but difficulty and braindead simplicity are different things

Likeable characters and interesting stories with as much effort put into their villains as their was in the main cast.

Nowadays they don't seem to give a fuck.

>FF villains
>effort put into them
the rose-tinted glasses are strong here

>didn't say anything about Nocturne or SMT
I assumed because in almost every JRPG threads SMTfags lord Press Turn over everyone else as if it's anything special or clever when in reality it's arguably easier than your generic DQ/FF combat because spam-exploiting static elemental weaknesses literally just gives you more turns to attack with during which the enemy is helpless. What makes SMT good is how useful buffs and debuffs are and how the game is built around that. Press Turn could be completely removed and the quality of the series wouldn't change that much.

I'm speaking mostly of the nes and snes generation. Not sure what was out on pc during that time.
point and click games did provide good stories but it wasn't in a way that signified traveling the world over a longer period of time with lots of separate events happening.

pc games were a bit more developed presentation wise, with voice acting, fmv and such things, but in my opinion that only took away from the book-style presentation that classic jrpgs often had, as opposed to voice acting being the beginning of movie-like presentation in videogames. It was just a different way of doing things and it had a certain atmosphere that you can't get anywhere else.

>chrono trigger
CT is only braindead because the difficulty isn't high so there's never a risk of dying or a need to exploit the combat, but the combat system has a lot of depth to it.

Xenoblade 2's combat is great but it's not "deep", it's just convoluted and poorly explained in dribbles throughout the game.

Not the FF games he's referring to, but Gaius from XIV is one of the best villains I've seen in vidya in a very long time. Zenos might be good too, YMMV.

>CT is only braindead because the difficulty isn't high so there's never a risk of dying or a need to exploit the combat, but the combat system has a lot of depth to it.

What depth? There is literally none. There are very little attacks. The position based system literally has you wait to have enemies move into position, which is more annoying than an actual mechanic.

There was a reason old FF villains were so popular my dude, they were well written, interesting villains with fun stories that made you actually care about them. Sure they aren't particularly deep, but they're a hell of a lot better than modern JRPG villains.

This is the exact reason why no JRPG villain in the last decade has been seen as "iconic". Because they're all shit.

mmos don't count.

>poorly explained
sounds like a personal problem, never had a problem understanding it
>not deep
please show me a jRPG with a combat system you consider deep. I'm not writing this to shit on you or anything, I'm genuinly curious and will try it out if I havn't played it.

oh, I liked Gaius too. he's an exception to an otherwise mostly bland and uninteresting villain selection of FF games. People also separate MMO and single player FF

Zenos is shit though

I'm a sucker for redemption stories. The protagonist being a murderous Dark Knight that confronts his inner evil and becomes a Paladin is right up my alley.

>What depth? There is literally none. There are very little attacks
Are you retarded? It feels like you're talking shit about the system without even understanding it, you realise you can chain a retarded amount of abilities from each character together to make different unique abilities with different effects, each of which is different depending on the characters your chose, and then the abilities they choose to chain. It's "deeper" than any other JRPG of that time at the very least.

>full story with lengthy cutscenes and everything just like any other FF
>it's just contained within an MMO
I disagree but I understand your reasoning.

Last Remnant.
Also Garland, Sephiroth, and Golbez are all pretty good, and despite how cliché Kefka may seem now, he was fairly novel and done in an interesting way.

I don't even like CT but you're fucking retarded.

let me rephrase that, I was talking about snes jrpgs from the start. Show me an SNES jrpg with a combat system you consider deep.

Oh and I played LR, good game

People simply didn't know anything better. Hell, I'm not even talking about some obscure RPGs, but if you seriously think Sephiroth or Kuja are better written than Fou-Lu, you have some serious brain problems.

>old jRPG combat system arn't as good as the ones out today
Not really. Press turn if anything promotes the learning of a game for more casual players that don't play them as often. Instead of having the player mindlessly bash they're brains again enemies with something that doesn't work they're punished for using incorrect methods and rewarded for using correct methods. It just ramps up later and assumes you learn the system.

It's literally RPG training wheels.

>What makes SMT good is how useful buffs and debuffs are and how the game is built around that.
This. Usage of buffs and debuffs definitely play a bigger role SMT than Press Turn. Unlike most FF games which doesn't require you to gather multiple buffs/debuffs with the early ones normally having them be either useless or bugged. That being said the early FF games aren't even that bad, except maybe FF2 fuck that game. Also FF8 Draw & Junction is fucking dumb.

I dunno about deep but Earthbound is certainly clever with the way you manipulate the HP roulette. Also Jeff attacking exclusively using weird items.

EB isn't deep at all, the HP scaling is used intelligently only a very few times in the game, other times it's just a crutch

mother 3 is more deep with it's rhythm based auto attack system. I'm surprised no one's ripped it off, it was a lot of fun

>>I'm speaking mostly of the nes and snes generation. Not sure what was out on pc during that time.
point and click games did provide good stories but it wasn't in a way that signified traveling the world over a longer period of time with lots of separate events happening.

>>pc games were a bit more developed presentation wise, with voice acting, fmv and such things, but in my opinion that only took away from the book-style presentation that classic jrpgs often had, as opposed to voice acting being the beginning of movie-like presentation in videogames. It was just a different way of doing things and it had a certain atmosphere that you can't get anywhere else.

lolwut. JRPGs were the genre that popularized cutscenes. If you look at western RPGs from the time, they never really took away control from the player: the story was told through the player's actions. JRPGs on the hand have always had a strict separation between gameplay and story, and never the twain shall be allowed to meet, with constant non-interactive scenes where the characters do things outside of the player's control.

The only RPGs that have a book-style presentation are WRPGs that use prose in addition to dialogue, such as Betrayal at Krondor and Planescape: Torment.

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>>le 'if it's popular it must be good' meme

JRPG villains were always garbage.

>old FF villains
>well written, interesting stories
>cared about them
no, not even close. The minor villains in xenogears are written better than any old FF villain

Not much, really. It's the same horribly linear, heavily story-based bullshit as modern JRPGs and hell, even modern WRPGs.

The only good RPGs are old CRPGs like Wizardry and EOTB. Hell, even Ultima was able to avoid getting bogged down in LOLSTORY by weaving it into the gameplay and having dialogs be just another part of the puzzle and gameplay instead of sitting through hours of scrolling text.

I'm not talking about presentation, but the actual quality of writing. SNES rpgs had extremely simplistic plots, world building and characters. SNES cartridges had an actual limitation for the amount of text they could store. Even in critically acclaimed jrpgs like Chrono Trigger and FFVI, the characters are basic archetypes with no more than a few lines of dialogue.

Compare that to early 90's adventure games like Loom and Gabriel Knight, where the protagonists actually undergo character arcs where they face trials (that don't consist of shitty boss battles) and grow as characters.

You understand I could stick Alduin on the right side of that picture, right?

You could, but it would be missing the point. WRPGS are far more niche than JRPGs, having been on life support since the 90's, and story is an afterthought in many WRPGs. For every 100 story-driven JRPGS that are released, less than 5 story-driven WRPGs exist. Yet despite that humongous disparity, the best WRPG villains are much better than the best JRPG villains. This speaks volumes about how creatively bankrupt JRPG writers are.

I suspect that's because WRPGS are generally more grounded, and villains are usually calculating humans rather than giant monsters (or psychopaths who transform into giant monsters).

They were the only story-based adventure games of their era. Or at least the only accessible/mainstream ones. Most games back then had no compelling character arcs or narrative structure.

>>
They were the only story-based adventure games of their era. Or at least the only accessible/mainstream ones. Most games back then had no compelling character arcs or narrative structure.

This is what weebs unironically believe.

tfw you misplace the quote tag and it screws up your post

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So you can name 5 games from 91 time with better stories than these weeb games?

PD2/GC/Dreamcast is objectively the best era for JRPG
prove me wrong, protip you can't

>Cherry Picking: The Official Post

>Cherry Picking: The Official Post

Cherrypicking of what? How is it cherrypicking when Kefka is routinely voted as best video game villain of all time while Kreia is relatively obscure (and a lot of people dislike her and her game, Kotor 2)?

So what would you hold up as a JRPG villain comparable to Kreia?

honestly the right fits FF villains. They're fucking shit