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Pollyanna posted:It's more that SMT isn't "wacky god pokemon humor" in like the slightest. Maybe Persona, but Persona has almost nothing to do with the rest of the SMT games. Most of the SMT games have quite a bit of humor and comedy which people ignore in their desire to take poo poo too seriously. It's not straight-up comedy but neither is it completely lacking in self-awareness. It's a serious main story which is almost always trimmed by sillier side stuff. As far as FF (and JRPGs in general go): Every Final Fantasy is pretty anime-inspired. The problem is that 'anime' isn't one giant monolithic entity. It's animated products from Japan. That's it. The variation in animated media that comes out of Japan (or hell, out of every country) is wide and varied that it's kind of silly to lump it together. FF games aren't bad or good because they are inspired by something. They're bad or good because they're executed well or poorly. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Oct 17, 2012 |
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Oct 17, 2012 16:48
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Pesky Splinter posted:Shin Megami Tensei. Basically, Pokemon, but with Gods and mythological creatures (that's not entirely accurate, but close enough). They're quite good games. I know what franchise, I was more asking exactly what SMT game is humor focused/'wacky god..' humor. You could say that the persona franchise has a lighter tone than the rest of SMT but there's no 'wacky god humor' in that (Persona tends to focus on people, which is kind of the point and what separates it from Main Line SMT games). I mean, yeah the main series has humor elements here and there but I'm more than sure that they're rather serious in tone and story over all.
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Oct 17, 2012 17:30
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I played Nocturne and really liked it, but I'm hesitant to get into the Persona games since I just don't know if I want a high school simulator mixed up with my dungeon crawler.
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Oct 17, 2012 17:44
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Himuro posted:Chronicles is not worse than Anthology. FF4 psx is great and only save times are long. Chrono Trigger, however... Chrono Trigger and FF6 on the PlayStation were both unplayable for me and I love both games. I don't remember FF4 and 5 having any problems (other than a dodgy translation on 5).
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Oct 17, 2012 17:52
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voltron lion force posted:I played Nocturne and really liked it, but I'm hesitant to get into the Persona games since I just don't know if I want a high school simulator mixed up with my dungeon crawler. If it helps most of the Persona 3 and 4 cast are likable.
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Oct 17, 2012 17:54
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voltron lion force posted:I played Nocturne and really liked it, but I'm hesitant to get into the Persona games since I just don't know if I want a high school simulator mixed up with my dungeon crawler. I probably wouldn't have given the game a chance if I didn't have a roommate years back that played it. At first I laughed at the pretentious animu opening, but then the more I saw I was like holy poo poo this is neat. The relationship simulator part is actually compelling, and as ZMB mentioned above, the cast is likable and memorable. The turn based battles are actually challenging, and if you do things wrong you can wipe on trash monsters, which is a welcome change from the Mash A/X To Win Corridor that is most FF games. They are a bit of a slow burn though, and you'll have to get a couple of hours in before it really picks up, but on your first time it might not be too bad since it will be new to you.
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Oct 17, 2012 18:16
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That loving Sned posted:The initial screenshots of FFXIII suggested that you'd add commands to the ATB, and they'd be continuously carried out by Lightning, like in The Sims. I have to say that locking the entire FFXIII cast in a bathroom and then removing the doors would've improved the game tremendously.
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Oct 17, 2012 18:44
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Krad posted:I have to say that locking the entire FFXIII cast in a bathroom and then removing the doors would've improved the game tremendously. Sit on that row of chairs right in front of the fire place, Vanille. Light the fire. Don't panic, just let the flames consume you. Dive into the pool, Hope. Whoops. Forgot to add the pool ladder. "Oh, just ignore the banging coming from that pillar in the middle of the room. Snow managed to get himself stuck inside a 1x1 square room with no way out."
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Oct 17, 2012 18:54
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I like Lightning and Fang is okay too. The rest of the cast I could do without in a big way.
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Oct 17, 2012 19:06
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Krad posted:I have to say that locking the entire FFXIII cast in a bathroom and then removing the doors would've improved the game tremendously. At first I read this as "outside a bathroom and then removing the doors" and then I realized that this would be redundant 
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Oct 17, 2012 19:09
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Though most Final Fantasy games are also a slow burn, so I do not think that is a major factor in the SMT games- most of them just throw you into a situation and you have to learn as you go along, rather than throw buckets and buckets of back story at you, which some RPGs like to do. The ones I would recommend would definitely be Nocturne (Or Digital Devil Saga) on the PS2 and SMT: Strange Journey on the DS, a dungeon crawler which is similar to etrian odyssey- just replace the character creation with recruit-able demons and it does not involve designing your own maps, it does it for you. I also would recommend Radiant Historia on the DS as well, which also has a very interesting storyline involving use of time travel to change things that happen in the past and is another refreshing change in comparison to press A to attack and win. It reminds me of chrono trigger in parts, but with a more military undertone.
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Oct 17, 2012 19:10
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Azure_Horizon posted:The Fal'cie are rulers in the sense that they are more akin to demigods of Pulse and Cocoon rather than their true rulers. And all of that is an interesting set up to what have could have been a very compelling story. Unfortunately, most of the main characters are entirely too shallow to hold up a story of that complexity, and FFXIII-2 went entirely off the rails. If the FFXIII project had a good editor to keep everything focused and a more talented writing staff driving the story rather than a series of visuals, it might have turned out pretty great. S-E at this point simply refuses to cut their losses. They are married to this FFXIII concept, but their writing staff simply is not up to the task.
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Oct 17, 2012 19:28
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To me, the only thing really missing from the Persona games is an interesting dungeon crawl setting. Maybe instead of having a tower with 60+ floors of the same design they could mix it up by adding a lot more areas that look different. Basically, I just want Diablo 3's dungeon crawling in Persona 5. That would make it the perfect JRPG.
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Oct 17, 2012 19:32
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Samael posted:Though most Final Fantasy games are also a slow burn, so I do not think that is a major factor in the SMT games- most of them just throw you into a situation and you have to learn as you go along, rather than throw buckets and buckets of back story at you, which some RPGs like to do. Persona 3 and 4 have long intros. I'm more talking about that to give them the ol' college try, you'll need to play for a few hours. I really like how the plot sections are interwoven into the gameplay more and have you make choices that effect progress, which is then tied back to Persona strength. I find that more so than in other jrpgs, I look forward to getting back to the daytime segments to find out what's happening next or advance a friendship more than other jrpgs.
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Oct 17, 2012 19:44
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The White Dragon posted:I can, speaking anecdotally. I loving hate anime and all that grabagey doe-eye poo poo with all its sweatdrops, gratuitous child sexualization, et cetera. Exactly. The Akihabara man-child crowd has turned anime into a disgusting collection of oversexualized children and shallow pretentious tropes. There was some truly great anime in the 80s and 90s, but the market has shifted, and anime that isn't just thinly-veiled boobs and moe or yet another introduction to 19th century German philosophy is very, very rare. This attitude has heavily infected JRPGs of the past decade or so, which is just too bad.
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Oct 17, 2012 19:47
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Boten Anna posted:Persona 3 and 4 have long intros. I'm more talking about that to give them the ol' college try, you'll need to play for a few hours. I really like how the plot sections are interwoven into the gameplay more and have you make choices that effect progress, which is then tied back to Persona strength. I find that more so than in other jrpgs, I look forward to getting back to the daytime segments to find out what's happening next or advance a friendship more than other jrpgs. Persona 3/4 has intros easily in the 2-4 hr range. The difference is that they focus on character building through that time, and world building in enriching their little settings. By the time your done with the intro you have whacky friends that you alrady sorta click with, and a little town/medium city that your growing fond of. Compare that to XIII... I think the last time FF did that right was X.
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Oct 17, 2012 19:58
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Thundercracker posted:Compare that to XIII... I think the last time FF did that right was X. X has the best party dynamic of any of the games in the series. Each character has an important role to play in both the story and in battle. They all have their own compelling back story, and each works to drive the story forward in their own way. X really has an organic feeling that grows out of the differences and perspectives of each of the main seven. Brilliant game, and it surprises me how far XIII misses the mark given how inspired it was by X.
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Oct 17, 2012 20:09
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voltron lion force posted:I played Nocturne and really liked it, but I'm hesitant to get into the Persona games since I just don't know if I want a high school simulator mixed up with my dungeon crawler. Nocturne is, to me, the least "anime" of the SMT franchise in that it's on a completely different level than the rest of the series.
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Oct 17, 2012 20:09
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PhilippAchtel posted:Exactly. The Akihabara man-child crowd has turned anime into a disgusting collection of oversexualized children and shallow pretentious tropes. There was some truly great anime in the 80s and 90s, but the market has shifted, and anime that isn't just thinly-veiled boobs and moe or yet another introduction to 19th century German philosophy is very, very rare. This attitude has heavily infected JRPGs of the past decade or so, which is just too bad.
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Oct 17, 2012 20:13
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Endorph posted:Actually I'd argue that anime in the 90s had way more weird sexual poo poo but okay. Definitely more weird sexual poo poo; contemporary sexual poo poo is so banal by comparison. I have no idea how serious I am being in this post.
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Oct 17, 2012 20:48
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PhilippAchtel posted:X has the best party dynamic of any of the games in the series. Each character has an important role to play in both the story and in battle. They all have their own compelling back story, and each works to drive the story forward in their own way. X really has an organic feeling that grows out of the differences and perspectives of each of the main seven. Lulu and Blue XIII were completely worthless, storywise. They were only there to appease the teenage boys demographic... and furries I guess.
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Oct 17, 2012 21:08
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PhilippAchtel posted:X has the best party dynamic of any of the games in the series. Each character has an important role to play in both the story and in battle. They all have their own compelling back story, and each works to drive the story forward in their own way. X really has an organic feeling that grows out of the differences and perspectives of each of the main seven. Definitely disagree. IX has a helluva lot more humor between many characters in the party, reinforced by ATEs when you get to new areas. Not only is the dialogue ten million times better, but the characters grow and change slowly but surely as you watch them interact with each other. And they have conversations about things that aren't related to the main story, whereas pretty much every FFX cutscene is either about Yuna's pilgrimage, Sin, Yevon, or Tidus whining.
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Oct 17, 2012 21:10
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Krad posted:Lulu and Blue XIII were completely worthless, storywise. They were only there to appease the teenage boys demographic... and furries I guess. Lulu's past pilgrimages are key context as you get closer to Zanarkand. Her relationship to Chappu, Wakka, and Yuna, and the one she develops with Rikku are anything but worthless. I will grant that Kimahri has least compelling role in the story. His position in the Sphere Grid is even smack in the center, showing that they either intended for him to play a kind of fill in the blank role or weren't quite sure what to do with him. Still, he and Auron bridge the gap between Braska and Yuna. Azure_Horizon posted:Definitely disagree. IX has a helluva lot more humor between many characters in the party, reinforced by ATEs when you get to new areas. Not only is the dialogue ten million times better, but the characters grow and change slowly but surely as you watch them interact with each other. The FFX story is definitely about Spira first. But that doesn't mean that the characters don't talk about things tangentially related to the main story. Yuna and Tidus talk about their fathers, there's the Chappu arc, Wakka dealing with losing his faith and coming to accept the Al Bhed, Rikku and her fear of lightning and how the other guardians react, and so on. Yes, these things are related to the general thrust of the story, but I don't see how that's a bad thing. FFX has a tight narrative, and that's a good thing.
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Oct 17, 2012 21:34
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I just don't agree that it makes for a compelling party dynamic or that it's better than something like FFIX, which was written with such finesse for its characters that almost every scene is jam-packed with nuance and flair. In comparison, FFX's dialogue is full of stereotypes and cliches, as well as melodrama. While the game has eccentric characters, the dialogue nor their interactions match that eccentricity.
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Oct 17, 2012 22:10
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Endorph posted:Actually I'd argue that anime in the 90s had way more weird sexual poo poo but okay. This is also missing the massive irony of saying " I loving hate anime and all that grabagey doe-eye poo poo with all its sweatdrops, gratuitous child sexualization, et cetera." and then "It's a really sweeping designation, the JRPG. It's like saying Alpha Protocol, Champions of Krynn, and Skyrim are all WRPGs. It's true, but you can classify and describe them totally separately."
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Oct 17, 2012 22:21
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ZenMasterBullshit posted:This is also missing the massive irony of saying " I loving hate anime and all that grabagey doe-eye poo poo with all its sweatdrops, gratuitous child sexualization, et cetera." and then "It's a really sweeping designation, the JRPG. It's like saying Alpha Protocol, Champions of Krynn, and Skyrim are all WRPGs. It's true, but you can classify and describe them totally separately."
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Oct 17, 2012 22:50
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Anime is literally just animation from Japan, though. Lumping it all together as poo poo for pedophiles is stupid.
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Oct 17, 2012 22:54
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The White Dragon posted:Come on dogg don't willfully misinterpret my meaning. Lumping JRPGs together as anime is like lumping all Japanese broadcast TV together as anime. Lumping all anime together is like... well, lumping all anime together. No, it really isn't. It's like saying a cartoon like Totally Spies is the same as The Triplets of Bellevue because they both come from France. Literally all anime is is "an animated feature that comes from Japan." ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 23:04 on Oct 17, 2012 |
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Oct 17, 2012 22:56
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ImpAtom posted:No, it really isn't. It's like saying a cartoon like Totally Spies is the same as The Triplets of Bellevue because they both come from France. Okay, point taken. Truth told, I haven't watched anime in the better part of a decade now and all I hear about is generally the worst of the worst. Once in a while I'll hear about some really basic "edutainment"-level stuff marketed at the 4-8 demographic or one of my old buddies will try to sell me on some diamond in the rough I'll never watch. It's not like I think I'm too good to watch animated poo poo, just... me and anime, we had a falling out and from what I hear is hot-ticket shows these days, I'm really in no hurry to get back into it.
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Oct 17, 2012 23:01
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The White Dragon posted:Okay, point taken. Truth told, I haven't watched anime in the better part of a decade now and all I hear about is generally the worst of the worst. Once in a while I'll hear about some really basic "edutainment"-level stuff marketed at the 4-8 demographic or one of my old buddies will try to sell me on some diamond in the rough I'll never watch. Well, I don't blame you for thinking 90% of it is poo poo because 90% of it is poo poo. Probably more than 90% of it. The stuff that is popular is almost universally poo poo. It's just that it's like any other country's media output. There's a lot of stupid poo poo which should be rightfully ignored and very rarely there's something actually worth looking at. A whole lot of stupid poo poo which should be rightfully ignored and very rarely there's something worth looking at. Man, Final Fantasy really is the biggest anime, isn't it? The fans are another matter entirely but I stand by my feeling that fans will ruin anything. I can't blame you for wanting to run screaming in the other direction because you have to descend into the realms of My Little Pony to find people who are worse. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Oct 17, 2012 |
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Oct 17, 2012 23:13
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Every anime is the worst anime in the anime.
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Oct 17, 2012 23:15
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ImpAtom posted:The fans are another matter entirely but I stand by my feeling that fans will ruin anything. I can't blame you for wanting to run screaming in the other direction because you have to descend into the realms of My Little Pony to find people who are worse. The way I guage it, is if someone is a fan of [thing], it's fine. When it's used in the sense of "like". I am a fan of FFIX, for example. But that doesn't mean just blindly accepting the good of whatever it is. It's recognising the bad and the flaws, also. However, when people say they are in the fandom of said thing, then head for the hills - furries, bronies, porn and madness that way lies. "Fandom" to me, is just another word for "circle-jerk". Pesky Splinter fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Oct 17, 2012 |
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Oct 17, 2012 23:23
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I don't much care for Final Fantasy IV. Every time I play it I can usually make it to the Water Crystal Kingdom, and then I lose interest.
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Oct 17, 2012 23:41
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TurnipFritter posted:I don't much care for Final Fantasy IV. Every time I play it I can usually make it to the Water Crystal Kingdom, and then I lose interest. Thats cuz its pretty boring
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Oct 18, 2012 00:11
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ImpAtom posted:Well, I don't blame you for thinking 90% of it is poo poo because 90% of it is poo poo. Probably more than 90% of it. The stuff that is popular is almost universally poo poo. It's just that it's like any other country's media output. There's a lot of stupid poo poo which should be rightfully ignored and very rarely there's something actually worth looking at. Well, I want to repeat this, because this is not so far away from what I'm saying. People are being pedantic about this by trying to make the dispute about how "Anime is just a term for Japanese cartoons. You can't generalize." Well, if you can't do that, you can't say "90% of it is poo poo" either, which is closer to what I'm saying and I imagine what White Dragon is getting at. "Hollywood movie" is a broad term too, but if someone thinks you can't say things about them in general, I'd have to wonder if they are discussing in good faith. 90% of any mass-marketed entertainment is poo poo. That's a general rule no matter what country it's from. In this particular case, though, it's poo poo for the reasons above, and it's popularity bleeds over into Japanese games, which is unfortunate because it makes them poo poo for the same reason. Some poo poo I can overlook. Moe moe bullshit (she's really 18, we promise!) and pretentious philosophical nonsense are not some of those things. But I think that's about as far as we can go with this subject.
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Oct 18, 2012 00:59
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PhilippAchtel posted:Well, if you can't do that, you can't say "90% of it is poo poo" either, which is closer to what I'm saying and I imagine what White Dragon is getting at. "Hollywood movie" is a broad term too, but if someone thinks you can't say things about them in general, I'd have to wonder if they are discussing in good faith. Saying "90% of Hollywood movies are poo poo" is one thing. Saying "90% of Hollywood movies are Transformers 2" is something else entirely. Even when something is poo poo, it isn't necessarily poo poo in the same way, which is pretty relevant to discussing how it is influencing Final Fantasy. A lot of the lovely things you see in FF games (and in JRPGs in general) are related to trends in Japanese media. They're just not the same trend every time. Even games people like tend to fall into this, it's either easier to ignore (because the game is good) or because it's referencing some obscure bullshit that only Japanese fans care about. Like, with Tales? poo poo, the people who make Tales flat-out admit that they're just remaking things that are popular at the time, up to and including costumes and voice actors from the show or book or whatever they took inspiration from. With Final Fantasy you tend to get more generalized inspiration more than anything else, which is at least part of the reason why the franchise jumps from tone and idea like a rabid bat. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 01:20 on Oct 18, 2012 |
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Oct 18, 2012 01:13
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Is there a reason JRPGs like to mimic anime as apposed to Japanese history and heritage? It seems rather odd to me that a culture so rich wouldn't be used as a basis to build your JRPG off of. Most western RPGs have an underline premise of European history. Older RPGs took stories from ye olden times and incorporated fantasy that was based off of western mythology to build a game. Even a game like Skyrim took influences from ancient Norse culture. I think it would be pretty cool to play a JRPG based largely around one of the Classical or Feudal Japan eras. They could even incorporate some of the ancient Asian mythology to make it more fantasy based. I can't really name a single JRPG that makes me think "Oh, wow, this really does make me feel like I'm in 1185 Japan. Maybe I just need to play more JRPGs?
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Oct 18, 2012 01:50
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I thought most WRPGs tried to mimic lovely genre fiction.
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Oct 18, 2012 01:53
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Cardboard Fox posted:Is there a reason JRPGs like to mimic anime as apposed to Japanese history and heritage? They do though. There's a ton of things in Final Fantasy that read as historical/mythological references to Japanese audiences, but don't to us because they're not explained. I think 6 and 7 in particular have their fantastical, "magical" elements working in ways that mirror Japanese spirituality. 7 is really indebted to Pure Land Buddhism for its kinda sci fi spritual framework. Plus if you're japanese there's not as sharp of a divide between your culture and... your culture, you know? There's not a single definite break between the past and the present.
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Oct 18, 2012 02:13
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Persona 4 is pretty heavily referential of Japanese myth. That said, there aren't that many feudal Japan themed RPGs, though there are plenty of games set in that era. Not to mention like 95% of JRPGs have a Samurai party member, regardless of when they take place or whether or not it even fits the setting.
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Oct 18, 2012 02:19
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