MY BRAIN HAD A THINK ABOUT A GAM3

If you’re officially old gjones, then I’m officially old too. That hallow feeling and those ages-to-get-started introductions are two of the main reasons why my interest in retro gaming mostly ends at 2007ish, around the same time when Assassin’s Creed was introduced and when everything thereafter tried to be the same open-world thing. I sussed out that short gamey-games are how I best enjoy my time ages ago. It might have been Assassin’s Creed III on the Wii U that convinced me of that in all truth. I recall that I spent several hours boringly doing unmemorable things to move the story along, to be then greeted by a screen that read ‘Epilogue Complete’. That was me done, I turned it off for good.

There’s the odd Switch game that comes with a paper manual, and while I like the idea of them their helpfulness is truthfully limited. I’m looking at the manual for Taito Milestones just now, and it’s just sixteen pages of telling you how to move, add credits and access the options for ten different games – it’s the same way for each one. Ninja Warrior’s Switch instructions has PlayStation’s button prompts too. We’re a long way away from those brilliant Pokemon trainer guides.

Long-winded openings have long been one of my bugbears. It's not just the accepted triple-A canon either: Pokémon has for a long time been terrible at this. Every game for quite a while opening with an unskippable and unwanted catching tutorial. It's dire.

I can't say I share GJones' fondness for more immediate, more 'gamey' experiences though. One of my favourite things in gaming is getting lost in a world that's not my own, and that's an experience such games don't even pretend to aim for. Different types of games are good for different things, and we get a rich variety, and that's great. (Didn't have any interest in Ubi's open worlds even before they turned out to be shiters, mind...)

Joining the oldies for the "oh no it's going to take 20 hours to get to the second part of the map" brigade. The two big Zeldas have been the recent exceptions, but that's because they hit you with pleasant surprises every few seconds. I put Oblivion and Skyrim up at the top of my favourite games, but I'm really unsure about waiting years for Elder Scrolls 6 - I'm not sure I'm going to want to do that again.
Honestly I'm looking forward to getting past the few notable big games in the 2 charity bundles I bought on Itch, because I want to try someone's 2 hour long solo project about pushing a shopping trolley around a dungeon or something.

Oh shit I just made up another cool game idea right be back in a minute guys

I'm not sure about paper manuals mind - now that the digital world exists, we rely on the vital information in those to get forwarded (have you tried to play The Immortal on the NES Online thingy?) Having said that, I totally get the frustration of slow tutorials though - there's a right and wrong way to doing things. I started playing Final Fantasy XIV, with my sister and my brother-in-law very patiently explaining to me how to get into certain menus - to which the game brings up a tutorial screen explaining to you what you just did.

https://twitter.com/IGN/status/1683530897641857029

Thinking about a Nintendo Switch revision, where the JoyCon are detachable Ginster's Cornish pasties.

Is that controller thing real? I bloody hope not - anything plastic that's given a "smell" will usually end up smelling a bit toxic and unwelcoming in a few months.

There's not a single level at which that isn't cursed, including the fact that it links to 'X' now rather than Twitter.

There's a video showing how it's done which like a airlock thing you put inside the pizza part with a bunch of batteries.

Guess if take both of those out the pizza won't smell.

A Nintendo Wii remote, but it's a Greggs sausage roll.

Shut up and take my money!

Today's hot take, inspired by Cassette Beasts: I don't think you can have an open-world JRPG that's better than the same game would be if it were... erm, closed-world I guess. Levelling and story are too important in those games. There's no fun in wandering into an area of beasts several levels your senior and getting curb-stomped, unless it's a scripted stealth section. Level-scaling helps but I can only imagine that it would make the game feel seriously unfocussed. Meanwhile the story progression is never going to be better in the open-world case. I think Pokémon Legends Arceus, with its strict progression through a bunch of open areas, probably shows the best example of how to do a close-to-open-world JRPG.

This post brought to you by somebody dropping JRPG thoughts into a forum full of JRPG agnostics like he's not a fool.

See I do know when I played Xenoblade X at the very start I bumped into monsters that way higher than I was but then Xenoblade 3 was fine.

Xeno 3 wasn't properly open-world and XCX was. That's just another point in favour of my argument.

Yep, JRPGs don't work when the player can make choices or interact with them in any way.

Darn BotW and TotK must actually be JRPGs, why they don't work.

Well done Buska, you've inspired Mas to more BotW s**tposting. I hope you're happy.

Well if openworld doesn't work to tell a story and might come across higher level enemies, if that's a negative then surely that be applied to BotW and TotK which you know I don't like how it open and how story is told.

Maybe it be better as linear game as well.

Okay by calling Cassette Beasts (a game made by a UK dev) a JRPG I take it you mean it's a traditional RPG ala the style of Dragon Quest with its turn-based battles. Personally I don't really like the term JRPG and from what I gather neither do Japanese devs (including Xenoblade's) because of the presumptions people make about Japanese RPGs since they can actually be quite varied. So I just say traditional rpg or turn-based RPG. Anyway that's just semantics and I'm not really bothered about people using the term. Just putting that out there.

As for the actual topic at hand I'm gonna have to be a radical centrist here and say it depends. Depends on what kind of game you like and your feelings about open world games in general. I like games being open world but I wouldn't want every game to be that way.

I will say though that I think it works well with the traditional rpg and that there are merits to it. For all its faults I think Pokemon Scarlet and Violet being open world was the right direction for the series to take for the inherent attractive qualities of an open world game, and because the series formula was getting a bit stale.

Wandering into an area with enemies much stronger than you and getting destroyed is pretty cool, actually. The world feels more immersive this way. As you allude to by saying level-scaling makes the game feel unfocussed - it makes the world feel too gamey. That levels of any creature are arbitrarily rising alongside you. Much higher levels communicates to the player that they're not really supposed to be in the area yet, but that they can venture into it if they want. With enough skill or knowledge - perhaps form a prior playthrough - you can maybe get by and experience the thrill of doing certain late-game things much earlier.

(as an aside I like that Scarlet/Violet didn't scale wild pokemon encounters or the villain bases, but level scaling could have been well implemented in gyms with badges)

As for story progression, yeah, it's probably not going to be as strong were it a linear game. But there's also a lot of story potential there - you could experience the story in a different way by visiting certain places first. That's obviously going to be harder for the dev to pull off though for several reasons.

Balladeer wrote:

Well done Buska, you've inspired Mas to more BotW s**tposting.  I hope you're happy.

I'm fine - I'm not joking when I say I have him on mute! Usually I click on his posts and read them anyway, but in this case I won't. Plus I've put you in the funny position of either having to take my side or his.

I just found it funny that a issue Balla has, is one I've had with a game.

Buskalilly wrote:

Balladeer wrote:

Well done Buska, you've inspired Mas to more BotW s**tposting.  I hope you're happy.

I'm fine - I'm not joking when I say I have him on mute! Usually I click on his posts and read them anyway, but in this case I won't. Plus I've put you in the funny position of either having to take my side or his.

Ooft, what a burn!  Now watch as I expertly avoid that dichotomy.

Kriken wrote:

Okay by calling Cassette Beasts (a game made by a UK dev) a JRPG I take it you mean it's a traditional RPG ala the style of Dragon Quest with its turn-based battles.

I am - indeed I used to know one of the Cassette Beast devs and I've never been anywhere near Japan sadly.  I'm very much talking about a game in that vein, with a strong levelling up emphasis and maybe not so much gameplay beyond fighting and levelling up.  As for the general point about the term, you've said you don't mind and I don't think we have any Japanese people on here to tell me if I've made a faux pas (shout if I'm wrong!), so I'll respond to that point separately since you've said it doesn't bother you.

Many JRPGs don't have as much going on in the gameplay department, especially against over-levelled enemies who can obliterate most battle strategies; and so lean more heavily on story.  (This is where the BotW comparison falls apart and can safely be ignored, BotW has lots of gameplay.)  So if you're sacrificing the story on the altar of freedom that's going to be denied you anyway because of levels, for the benefit of maybe some immersion, is that ever going to be a worthy sacrifice?  I personally don't think so, not in this genre.  One thing I found absolutely rubbish in SV was how they dealt with the evil team compared to other games.  Even SwSh had a much stronger progression of questline against the villains.  Did we get many improvements in gameplay to offset it?

Also, I think you can do the immersion thing without making a game fully open-world!  It's tough, but the Xenoblade series pulls it off.  Have a linear story path through a world, with lots of ways to divert from that and look for side quests guarded by higher-level encounters. (An excellent way of engaging with the genre. Dichotomy avoided. (bows))

The term JRPG:

For the most part, I actually agree. I think an open world is less important than open areas. Legends felt less linear than Scarlet and Violet, in many ways.

I also think a contiguous world is what's key to immersion. The fact that in YotK Rito village, the climb to the sky temple, then the temple itself, a whole sky kingdom, a jump back down, through a chasm and into the depths is all the same game without a loading screen is phenomenal. When similar things are done in a Mario or Bayonetta level, it can be amazing too.

"Many JRPGs don't have as much going on in the gameplay department"

While this is undoubtedly true because there are a lot of JRPGs, and a lot of JRPGs that have fairly basic combat, it doesn't have to be the case.

There are plenty of battle systems where skill is a key component and you can surmount level disparities to an extent. Obviously it's going to be impossible in some cases but I guess the casual player does not realise they don't necessarily need to grind sometimes.

For example most Fire Emblem games can be tough to get through for even veterans of the series but you can also beat most of them with restrictions like your characters not being able to level up, or even have level ups that decrease stats via romhacks.

And again the story is not necessarily sacrificed for immersion. It's just harder to pull off because obviously the scope of the game's development has to be bigger.

I flat out don't agree that Sword/Shield had a better progression of the villain questline, because for most of the game it is non-existent until the main baddie right near the end is like, "um guys we need to stop this tournament right now to solve this crisis we're facing. No, I can't wait a few minutes apparently". Team Yell aren't good either.

Balladeer wrote:

One difficulty I have with trying to move away from 'JRPG' is that there's no other broadly accepted term for the same thing.  They're not all turn-based: TWEWY for example is a JRPG to me, with its cordoned off battles, strong emphasis on levelling, and linear story path.  As for traditional, would that not technically be closer to a WRPG?  Since they came first.  JRPG is unfortunately the most convenient term we have right now.  Which is no excuse for using it if Japanese developers broadly dislike it, of course.

But the lack of specificity is another reason why I don't like the term JRPG. Yes, not all JRPGs are turn-based. Some are action-rpgs like TWEWY, so call them action rpgs.

Cassette Beasts isn't by a Japanese dev so it just seems a bit silly calling it a JRPG. It can neatly be described as a turn-based RPG.

Like all labels, it's not perfect. Like all labels, it's a generalisation. But like most commonly used labels, it still has some value. There's a throughline from the likes of Dragon Quest to the likes of TWEWY and also Cassette Beasts that I can feel but struggle to articulate. I would accept an argument that the Xenoblade games aren't JRPGs actually, but they have enough elements in common that I still see that throughline, and they're definitely not WRPGs.

You don't have to use the term, natch. And I'm still open to arguments/evidence about how it's a term some devs find offensive.

Kriken wrote:

While this is undoubtedly true because there are a lot of JRPGs, and a lot of JRPGs that have fairly basic combat, it doesn't have to be the case.

And Cassette Beasts is arguably one example, true - but even there levels tend to have a disproportionate effect, effectively gating off areas and making the 'open' thing a sham. I don't think open-world Fire Emblem would work even with its great combat. Maybe if you organically combined exploring the open world and the battling, and made the exploration more fun; but I can only think of Ys and Xenoblade of the JRPGs I've played that manage that.

Kriken wrote:

I flat out don't agree that Sword/Shield had a better progression of the villain questline, because for most of the game it is non-existent until the main baddie right near the end is like, "um guys we need to stop this tournament right now to solve this crisis we're facing. No, I can't wait a few minutes apparently". Team Yell aren't good either.

Yep, and it's amazing how SV had even less/worse of a villain questline than that!

Buskalilly wrote:

For the most part, I actually agree. I think an open world is less important than open areas. Legends felt less linear than Scarlet and Violet, in many ways.

100% with you here.

Balladeer wrote:

You don't have to use the term, natch.  And I'm still open to arguments/evidence about how it's a term some devs find offensive.

This was the most recent one doing the rounds.

He was the one to bring it up, or I saw first but then someone else I want to say Harada of Tekken fame was we should celebrate are culture.