This translates to “that’s not up for debate, but I’ll mention something completely off topic to make a different point” since I was talking about the polish in the games not how much you personally liked any one element over another.
I said I prefer Western RPGs myself. The discussion wasn’t about taste. Risen is one of my favorite RPGs ever because it’s an actual RPG unlike Bioware’s recent offerings, that doesn’t make it any less shoddy in other ways. The same for the STALKER games and also the Witcher 2 which several patches and months later still has issues all over the place and some of the most inconsistent presentation which is downright beautiful one moment and super tacky and dodgy the next. Not to mention Bethesda’s reputation of having fans fix after their mess on PC with mods, though I’m not sure of Skyrim yet.
And I disagree with these too, all of these are lackluster compared to the Western RPGs of yesteryear, outside fancy graphics, and there are JRPGs with big worlds too, this and last gen, from DQVIII to Xenoblade. DQIX too, but I guess you’ll discount it for being on a portable and thus inferior looking. Still, it injects different styles to the genre, with its focus on wealth of content, side quests, and all that jazz. Xenoblade did the same with an actually big world too. Still linear games, but that’s not a failure since they don’t attempt to make branching paths. A failure would be to try and fail in something, not to try something altogether different. And they do try and have been trying different things for ages, almost every FF has a different battle system, Tales of games are completely different and approach a fighting game focus, all the tactics games employ different strategic systems, Xenoblade and TLS take from MMORPG combat, etc. There’s evolution and different elements introduced to the genre, whether you or others appreciate it.
Not just in RPGs either, as shooters like Vanquish show. Or the fact Gears of War’s developers cited Japanese games from Capcom and Namco like Resident Evil 4, KillSwitch and Bionic Commando as having inspired the mechanics…
And Fallout 3 didn’t push the genre, it was just another iteration of the same things we’ve been seeing with the Elder Scrolls, Gothic, and other such series for decades. Oblivion (which itself was a watered down but flashier Morrowind) with guns as it was rightfully called, though it was a little more successful in what it attempted than that game and I too liked it a little more even though as far as settings go I prefer fantasy, but at least it didn’t have broken scaling/leveling. It was certainly not nearly as open and flexible as the original Fallout games though, which goes back to my point that Western games haven’t improved beyond graphics either, people are just ignorant of what came before and perceive differences to Eastern counterparts as improvements over them, when they aren’t. The differences have co existed for decades, most console gamers just didn’t know of them, that doesn’t make their perception any more true in any way.
Not really relevant, I don’t see how Hollywood blockbuster type action games are any less safe bets for the companies. The same for WRPGs that are going toward that flashy action game route lately too, from Dragon Age II to Mass Effect to whatever else.
As for Ninokuni, I only mentioned it as a graphical showcase. Level 5’s games (those they made without guidance from the likes of Square or other companies at least) never impressed me in anything else, it’s not something exclusive to this generation, I’m not surprised it’s bombing. It’s a wonder the WKC games sold as much as they did even.
I’ll take your word for it about these particular games but in my experience many more Western games have such issues and many more Eastern don’t. I haven’t encountered serious issues in Pro Evo for the Wii and the last few years it’s the one soccer game that imo seems to have pushed the genre forward by integrating strategic aspects and near simultaneous control of multiple players to completely change the dynamics of a match and the skills one requires to the better, nevermind the lack of support from consumers who in this case go for the safe options, yet they condemn developers for doing that.
So are most Western games. It’s on par, overall. Detailed, fancy, smooth, with great animations and whatever else. It doesn’t show lack of know how in any particular area from lighting to normal mapping to shaders. Whether it’s the absolute top or not is not the issue and has more to do with style preferences anyway.
Then why are you mentioning the shrinking market? 10% may as well be a flunctuation anyway. Some companies do better, other worse. Capcom had major hits, Square had some failures but also success elsewhere, Nintendo too, and I would never have imagined I’d live to see a Tales of game from Namco pass half a million in Japan.
Sales matter when one game sells millions and thus more millions can be invested in the sequels, and one doesn’t, and thus can’t afford that, and is then ridiculed for lesser graphics or whatever else. The situation matters in this manner.
And it’s a fluke. So what? FFXIV was also a major failure. Shit happens. I’m going by the rule, not the exceptions. If I go by that then I could mention tons of Western studios that shut down this gen alone. Like those LA Noire dudes most recently, which I’m sure in another discussion would be praised for pushing facial graphics or whatever else.
Anyway, it’s clear you’ve said you don’t like Eastern games as much these days, nothing I can say will (or intends to) change what you like so if that was the whole point of the conversation, then we shouldn’t have had one to begin with. If you’re gonna keep involving what you like in this convo and attempting to correlate that to objective failures then it’s a pointless one and I’m most certainly done with it. You like what you like, I like what I like, you think what you think, I think what I think. The point is, nobody’s subjective opinion dictates an objective decline in terms of quality and not sales.
It all started on the wrong foot anyway, as from complaining about this gen Parn went on to list FFX among offenders, which is a last gen game showing flukes existed previously too, that’s why I said that to me it seems to be on par with previous generations, that didn’t imply all their games are perfect now, just that they never were all perfect. Some ppl always hated FF, others hated some of them, etc. Little has changed, XIII could just be this gen’s VIII. Another issue is the lesser focus on home systems, DS and PSP were the JRPG machines this gen but the West didn’t care about them, especially the latter.
it was the first game since years that I played through several times in a row.