Board 8 > Oh hey, FFX is 10 years old

(+) Yeah! (+)

as of 4 days ago. I don't know if this was posted or not. I thought everyone would to be reminded of the end of an era of greatness.

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Oh god I'm old

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Development began 12 years ago... in 1999.

FFX - Best FF to date. Albeit 4 and 6 want to give it a run for its money... :3

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It's been a decade since Square made a game I liked!

...also it signaled the beginning of the end for really great jRPGs. Persona 3 and 4, and a couple others are standouts since then but there's not a lot.

I can't believe I was 13 when I played it. That seems really young to me.

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I bet when FFX released most thought JRPGs were going to be at the forefront of gaming for a long time to come. Hah!

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I think a lot of good JRPGs came out after X. Sure, its no 90s, but to say the genre is dead is stupid.

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Best game ever

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I think a lot of good JRPGs came out after X. Sure, its no 90s, but to say the genre is dead is stupid.

I'd say it's pretty dead at this point. It didn't die after FFX but the most popular series taking a dive in quality after that definitely had a notable effect.

It's pretty dead yeah. The industry has moved on to other things, unfortunately. Still looking forward to Ni No Kuni.

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Best game ever

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RPGs are going towards action and western styles.

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In a few months it will have been 6 years since Square has given us a god damn console Kingdom Hearts game.

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10 years seems so long ago. I remember marathoning it for christmas and it became my yearly tradition.

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My first play of FFX was made without a memory card in the middle of a roadtrip through Oregon at my grandma's house with carpets that smelled like cat urine. got as far as Luca before having to turn it off for the day. that's a very clear memory in my head associated with the game and one I remember with some fondness. I was pretty blown away by the game when I first played it.

I think a lot of good JRPGs came out after X. Sure, its no 90s, but to say the genre is dead is stupid.

Yeah, the genre certainly isn't dead. It's been just over a year since we saw FF13 and DQ9 run away to mid 7 digit sales after all, even if it seems like a majority of gamers hate at least one of those (me, I love XIII and hate DQ9). And I certainly have a few RPGs from the last 2-3 years sitting on my shelf right now... Suikoden Tierkreis, Radiant Historia, Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, Star Ocean 4, etc. The genre's obviously not where it once was in terms of quantity, but dead is going much too far.

Also, I'd call the PS2 the best RPG console ever by a fair margin, so I can't agree with FFX signalling the end. Now, Square's turning to MMOs and sequels/spinoffs instead of new IP certainly had an effect of slowly choking things, granted... although I think the real dagger has been the console fragmentation that has happened since the end of the PS2 era. RPGs in the mold of Final Fantasy were one of the most international of Japan's gaming creations (obvious blockbusters such as main Nintendo franchises aside) and there's just no slam-dunk system to make them for any more if you want to succeed internationally.


EDIT: Ahh... somehow I made this post and forgot the reason I came here to post in the first place! Yeah, FFX is a great game, possibly the best the genre has produced. I never thought I'd like it half as much as I did; after being a little disappointed by FF8-9 and moving more towards more niche RPGs, I only finally sprung for FFX when it came out as Greatest Hits, and was promptly amazed. At gameplay it far surpasses any previous game in the series; at plot it at the very least has a good run at it, and has far better presentation. Just an all-around solid game, with its only major flaw (lack of sceneskip) being something that wasn't even a genre staple at the time.

</fanboy gushing>

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for whatever reason I still keep thinking of it as a relatively new game

probably because now jrpgs are dead and it is the genre i care about most...and my interest in gaming has plummeted since it's reign has ended

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OmarsComin posted...
Best game ever

TidusheartFour

Seriously, this traitor doesn't deserve the title of "Leon!"

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Not sure what liking FFX more than FFVIII has to do with me having Squall as my favorite character!

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It actually took me 10 years to play Final Fantasy X.
I finally played and finished it 4 months ago and I lol'd to myself whenever "10 Years" was mentioned in the game.

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From: Sakurafanboy | #009
I think a lot of good JRPGs came out after X. Sure, its no 90s, but to say the genre is dead is stupid.

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edwardsdv and swordz9 are basically the comedy heel tag team of this topic, why would people be taking them seriously?

I've been flipping through the EGM which reviewed FFX over the last few days (I found it while cleaning) and it's a massive nostalgia trip into a different era. The main article is about the massive onslaught of RPG's coming in 2002. What's really funny is how hype is distributed, with ultimate disappointments like Xenosaga getting a lot of play while only a little attention is given to an Xbox game by the name of Morrowind.

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Nowadays the quality of JRPGs is measured in the number of WRPG-like elements it successfully implements. Think about it.

If a genre needs to copy other genres to be good, I think it's safe to say the genre is dead.

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I wonder if we'll ever be able to have an ffx topic that won't end up with people complaining about the current jrpgs

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Nowadays the quality of JRPGs is measured in the number of WRPG-like elements it successfully implements. Think about it.

Maybe some people do that, but I sure as hell don't. Lost Odyssey and Tales of Vesperia are my favorite JRPGs of the generation, and they don't have any WRPG elements.

EDIT: And happy belated birthday to FFX, second best game of the past decade (Okami number 1).

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mnkboy907 posted...
I can't believe I was 13 when I played it. That seems really young to me.

This. Doesn't seem that long ago...

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Great game, I was completely blown away when I played it. I can't believe it's been so long.

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From: foolm0ron | #026
Nowadays the quality of JRPGs is measured in the number of WRPG-like elements it successfully implements. Think about it.

By whom?

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PurpleMonkDish posted...
Oh god I'm old

The Matrix came out not last decade, but the decade BEFORE that.

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Super Mario 64 is 15 years old, by the way.

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From: foolm0ron | #026
Nowadays the quality of JRPGs is measured in the number of WRPG-like elements it successfully implements. Think about it.

By whom?

By WRPG fans, of course. No idea why some places have them reviewing JRPGs, but I've never put too much stock in review scores anyway so it doesn't bother me.

My favourite RPGs of the generation (Radiant Dawn, Wild Arms XF, FF XIII, Radiant Historia) also aren't WRPG-like at all, and my tastes are quite particular... there are plenty of other popular JRPGs in sub-genres I dislike (such as DQ9, TWEWY, and ToV) that aren't WRPG like.

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NeoElfboy posted...
although I think the real dagger has been the console fragmentation that has happened since the end of the PS2 era. RPGs in the mold of Final Fantasy were one of the most international of Japan's gaming creations (obvious blockbusters such as main Nintendo franchises aside) and there's just no slam-dunk system to make them for any more if you want to succeed internationally.

JRPGs slipping in terms of quantity and budget started happening before the end of the PS2 era, though. Shadow Hearts 3 showed signs of having a lower budget than Shadow Hearts 2, for instance. Wild ARMs 4, for all that I love the final product, clearly made some choices to make development more affordable than Wild ARMs 3, like removing the world map, and using a small collection of still-sprites for speech. The Grandia 3 team ended up being used to develop fighting games as their next two projects. And I can't really think of any stories of small independent studios springing up during that time, unless you count those funded by Microsoft like Blue Dragon.

To be fair, the same thing was happening to WRPGs around that time. A broad spectrum of WRPG developers were reduced to just Bioware and Obsidian, and I suppose Bethesda, but they were taking so much stuff from FPSs that most WRPG fans I knew at the time were starting to question whether Bethesda games even counted as RPGs anymore.

Obviously WRPGs are in a healthier place today, and there are actually more WRPG companies surfacing outside of the old 3 survivors. So...it's conceivable that the same could happen to JRPGs. The problem with a JRPG revival right now is partially just Japan--Japan game development in general is just falling way behind right now, so unless Japan gets itself sorted out or western developers pick up the JRPG torch, the JRPG genre is not well-positioned to make a comeback.

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I don't think JRPGs were really slipping in quantity at any time during the PS2 era (the sheer quantity of Gust/N1 games alone in the later years...), but you're absolutely right about budget in some cases (late Shadow Hearts and Wild Arms are obvious examples, as is Suikoden). You would probably be in a much better position than me to speculate on why that is, though it's probably related to diminishing sales as the medium got older. My memory is that the sales dropping happened with the PS1 as well (for sales: FF7 > 8 > 9, BoF3 > 4, WA1 > 2, S1 > 2, etc.), but game budgets in general were higher in the PS2 so that might be a factor.

I can't find much to argue with about the rest.

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WRPGS are terrible.

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From: metroid composite | #036
The problem with a JRPG revival right now is partially just Japan

Exactly. But recently Japan has started climbing out of its rut, but the most successful ones do it by using western techniques and influences to improve their worn-out Japanese styles, as opposed to refining their genres and coming up with brand new stuff. Games like Xenoblade, Skyward Sword, new Ace Combat, Demon's Souls, and such are distinctly Japanese, but you can see loads of western influence in them. Eidos basically carrying SE right now, too.

This is a good thing, of course, since it's like a best of both worlds, but it means that Japan is just playing catchup right now. And since the JRPG is really the one genre that is made only in Japan (and maybe fighting too but that's completely different), it is the one that has fallen behind the most in the last decade, and will require legitimate geniuses in game design to revive. They can't just copy the west, because no one in the west makes JRPGs.

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NeoElfboy posted...
You would probably be in a much better position than me to speculate on why that is, though it's probably related to diminishing sales as the medium got older.

From what I've read it has more to do with the Japanese market--which is really not my area of expertise. I do remember reading that JRPGs just weren't selling well in Japan, though, and a lot of JRPGs (at least the ones not named "Final Fantasy") got over half their sales from Japan.

Specifically, around the time of the DS launch (so...2005) my understanding was that the entire Japanese gaming market was in a slump, partially because the best-selling genre (JRPGs) were in a slump in Japan. The games market then picked up thanks to the DS, but the DS wasn't really driven by RPGs, what with games like Nintendogs and Brain Age driving a lot of the sales. So...suddenly the Japanese market was back, but the top-selling games in Japan were not JRPGs. As Japanese developers have a strong bias towards developing for their homeland and worrying about translation at a later date, this reconfigured the kind of game most Japanese developers were working on.

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

Hard to believe its 10 years old. I'll never forget my first playthru. One of my favorite moments in gaming.

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From: PurpleMonkDish | #002
Oh god I'm old

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foolm0ron posted...
From: metroid composite | #036
The problem with a JRPG revival right now is partially just Japan
Exactly. But recently Japan has started climbing out of its rut, but the most successful ones do it by using western techniques and influences to improve their worn-out Japanese styles, as opposed to refining their genres and coming up with brand new stuff. Games like Xenoblade, Skyward Sword, new Ace Combat, Demon's Souls, and such are distinctly Japanese, but you can see loads of western influence in them. Eidos basically carrying SE right now, too.

This is a good thing, of course, since it's like a best of both worlds, but it means that Japan is just playing catchup right now. And since the JRPG is really the one genre that is made only in Japan (and maybe fighting too but that's completely different), it is the one that has fallen behind the most in the last decade, and will require legitimate geniuses in game design to revive. They can't just copy the west, because no one in the west makes JRPGs.

Yeah, this sounds fairly accurate.

Part of the issue is just the number of Japanese developers who have been making Wii and DS games because that's what was popular in the home market, so...now they need to catch up with current technology and techniques.

I also suspect, however, that a big part of the problem is just how little Japanese developers have participated in GDC and similar conferences. Western developers happily spill all their secrets, and instruct each other on this new technique they found. Japanese developers keep secrets, which I'm sure helps in the short-term, but hurts in the long term.

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first melee... now ffx


they grow up so fast these days....

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SuperNiceDog barked up the right tree.

jrpgs are still packin', just mostly on handhelds. DS and PSP are monsters in this field almost to the level of the PS2. those 3 are basically the holy grails of jrpgs.

and while this console gen has had less in general, they've at least spread around a lot across the systems.

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But recently Japan has started climbing out of its rut, but the most successful ones do it by using western techniques and influences to improve their worn-out Japanese styles, as opposed to refining their genres and coming up with brand new stuff. Games like Xenoblade, Skyward Sword, new Ace Combat, Demon's Souls...

I hesitate to call that a list of JRPGs, let alone most successful recent JRPGs. I'm also not sure what the point of it is; obviously some Japanese games are going to be borrowing ideas from North America; I'd be worried if they weren't.

On the other hand, I definitely agree with you that if JRPGs are going to become more relevant again (although I do think their current relevance is being a touch underrated here) then they'll have to do it without just copying the west. WRPGs have lots of traits that I have no interest in (heavilly exploration/quest-based rather than a structured narrative, combat based around reflexes rather than planning, only one customisable/controllable PC, etc.), and I know lots of JRPG fans feel the same way, and you can bet for sure that Japan has oodles of like thinkers.

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Great RPG.

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From: PurpleMonkDish | #002
Oh god I'm old

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FFX was the first ever Final Fantasy that I did not play. Something tells me I stopped 1 entry too soon.

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From: NeoElfboy | #046
I hesitate to call that a list of JRPGs

It's not, I was just talking about Japanese games in general at that point.

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