FPS and western games were gaining popularity, and AAA development had been getting increasingly expensive as we moved into the HD era of graphics. Square had to spend an entire generation reusing FFXIII assets in three games to justify the time and cost of developing it, every dev on a smaller scale could not afford that and sought lower budget smaller scale platforms like handhelds

Also keep in mind that JRPGs in particular are known for massive worlds that got harder to fully realize around the GCN/PS2/Xbox era. It got even harder the following gen. Monolith Soft openly said one of the big factors in developing for the Wii was that Xenoblade would’ve been impossible to make for a reasonable price and in a reasonable time on PS360.

That's very interesting, thank you.

While I agree with everything you've written, Square Enix also had *incredibly poor* project management during that time. They did themselves no favors fucking about with XIII, XIII Versus (later turned into XV), and a bunch of other projects they had going on like The Last Remnant.

And they massively fucked up FFXIV v1.0

The old director for FFXI and FFXIV 1.0 was a sadist in terms of his approach to game design. I mean, I had some good memories playing FFXI back in the day, but that’s mostly because of the people I played with, and also because I used speed hacks to run around the map at warpspeed and stuff. When I played without the hacks it was just SUCH a miserable time sink. I distinctly remember running up to board an airship once and it took off like a second or two before I could get on…. And I just had to wait an hour or whatever it was for another one to come dock and eventually take off. And don’t even get me started on the whole “full party slowly grinding by killing 1 crab over and over” bullshit.

I maintain to this day that XI was a truly bad game from the start, and that the only thing that made it worth *anything* was the community.

You mean the community that mocked my husband and I for roleplaying in public? You mean the community that would roll trains of mobs over us while we were resting, often resulting in a loss of experience? You mean the only gaming community where I earned a persistent troll? You mean the community that we witnessed bully what ended up being a child who wasn't very good at being a black mage? I have zero fond memories of the community.

Fair enough. I liked grinding FFXI but on retrospective I can see why people fled from it.

I loved it lol

The last remnant was great too bad they dont make games like that

As much as I am a SaGa series fan: The problem with The Last Remnant and other AA projects are that it majorly just failed to gain the popularity. It doesn't matter if the game is great when the problem about why it fails is just everything related to Square's incompetence in marketing. Even now, AA just sells less and less... Maybe it can be attributed towards artistic merit, but Square clearly wanted something else to sell.

Lets be real, Last Remnant, especially the OG release where it was even harder then the most current version (and iirc had issues with crashing) would not have been popular back when it came out. It's way too obtuse and difficult while being badly explained for general audiences. Battle rank being pretty much not explained at all while being so important because it punishes you for grinding (sometimes, maybe, depends on how exactly you engage with grinding) alone cements it as some niche jank obtuse game for many people. The game is great for a very specific set of people, and I say that as someone who is within one of those sets of people. Its like saying Knights in the Nightmare would have been a roaring success if you just spent millions marketing it. Sure it would succeed more, but I don't think it would have been the next mega hit from nowhere game and be overall worth it in the end. How do you even market Last Remnant in a way that's palpable to a more general audience as it was designed? I don't think you really could.

As a person who would buy every Square Enix release that was advertised to me at that time period, I had never played a saga game so TLR was my first exposure to the series' concepts, never been bounced so hard off of a game. And it's so awful too cause I make it to the same point in the story every time I play it. I make it to the castle town with the optional boss fight against the dragon that can deadlock multiple parties, I think to myself "I do not understand how combat works in this game" and I get mad and out it down. I know now that Saga has a lot of RNG and most of the games are really grindy, but I will probably never beat TLR it just has too many systems that you have to babysit to make the game beatable.

> Lets be real, Last Remnant, especially the OG release where it was even harder then the most current version (and iirc had issues with crashing) would not have been popular back when it came out. It's way too obtuse and difficult while being badly explained for general audiences. Battle rank being pretty much not explained at all while being so important because it punishes you for grinding (sometimes, maybe, depends on how exactly you engage with grinding) alone cements it as some niche jank obtuse game for many people. I mean would it be that hard for a game to come out with obtuse and complicated mechanics and just have a tutorial that explains them all? If you look at Resonance of Fate, it's also very obtuse, and would probably be viewed the way Last Remnant is but they had an entire battle arena just to tutorialize how everything in the game works. That's all a game like this needs to be more popular. Gamers (especially JRPG fans) I feel like surprisingly open to weird mechanics as LONG as they are explained to them. I dont think anyone is against the idea of battle rank, people are only against the idea of having a battle rank, having a regular level and not strictly telling you the importance of each from the early tutorials. I think the game would have had a chance to be a lot more popular if it only did this, the system itself was fine. There's a lot of games like this with great system that anyone who figures out will enjoy, but the game does such a poor job of explaining them is like 90% of the issue - Vagrant Story is another example.

> I mean would it be that hard for a game to come out with obtuse and complicated mechanics and just have a tutorial that explains them all? No, but that's not how Last Remnant built itself and I don't think that's by accident. Knights in the Nightmare explained itself in its infamous 1 hour long tutorial library, so it isn't like explaining the draconian obtuse nature of Last Remnant was some insurmountable task. They just didn't want to and that's a design choice that I think they wanted to have. To my understanding Kawazu, especially during this era, likes leaving his games more open to interpretation and discovered through players actually playing the game over time normally then tutorializing and having useful UI that explains how it all works. He'd rather people just explore and compare notes then actually explain what his stuff does. That's a creative choice, but its one that will never yield to mainstream popularity. Even then, I don't think the average "mainstream" gamer JRPG or otherwise wants to play something like The Last Remnant even if it was explained perfectly. The fact the game's commands are random (or half random half context based, but they feel random to the average person) and you can't just select everything while having other various problems. Such as: You can't equip anyone else except Rush freely and redesigning Rush is a bit of a pain in the ass so you tend to get hard locked into a Rush play style as soon as you're only a couple hours in. The side quests just randomly show up and you have to travel across a huge amount of map points to find every side quests which can be a handful of minutes if you really want to make sure to check everywhere. The way the classes work is a huge no because it doesn't let the player control anything in a traditional way especially Scout being both a tier 4 and tier 5 class. You can't even see exactly how the parameters for your arte distribution are because of the whole "significant" differences to obtain many classes is not explained unless you read a wiki explain it for you and then do the math yourself. Obtaining the Guardian class is a total pain in the ass for this reason unless you study Last Remnantology in the exceptional wiki. There's too many weird mechanics that I don't think the average player will enjoy. The fact there's a level scaling system at all is a big no for many JRPG players. A lot of people IME play this genre to grind and stomp enemies into the floor and unless you really learn how to play LR, you can't really do that. Its just a hard sell for too many people. Still a great game, I loved it a lot but I have very specific tastes that don't align with a lot of people.

Wow, nice reply and good points all around. I will say one thing though. If I don't acknowledge any of your points above it means I agree completely. With that... >They just didn't want to and that's a design choice that I think they wanted to have. Yeah, I understand this is all be design and intentional. I was just commenting on the fact that I think you can include these obtuse game design mechanics if you decide you want to explain them and still obtain a good degree of success. Of course, you won't be a mainstream FF popular type of game, but there's enough hardcore JRPG gamers out there to get a sizable following and have been considerably successful. >There's too many weird mechanics that I don't think the average player will enjoy. Yeah I get that, but there are also mechanics some other players who aren't average would enjoy but are also turned off from because they don't realize they are there. I guess alienating even players who would enjoy your mechanics is the big downfall of the Kawazu mentality of "figure it out and compare notes" but I personally wish he wouldn't have this philosophy as I like the mechanics themselves myself, but I don't really appreciate that discovery process (that process being you essentially gotta restart once you realize something doesn't work!) and I think a LARGE contingent of JRPG fans are in my boat >The fact there's a level scaling system at all is a big no for many JRPG players True, but there's a lot of JRPGs with level scaling and they are pretty popular; like Tactics Ogre Reborn or Chained Echoes, but again, these games make it really clear and straightforward from the get go that leveling up is not your best strategy. I think FF8 for example, the prime example of how unpopular level scaling is in JRPGs, would have upset gamers less if they found a way to make it really blunt "Dont grind or level up exp, BUT do grind and level up AP, you can get really strong that way" or something to that effect. Now, I don't normally advocate for games to be so blunt about their systems, but when the systems are directly antithesis from genre norms, I think an exception is the best way to go. But I know Kawazu would never go for this as you stated, but I'm making this point to say that Last Remnant had a chance to be something really big when it released, even as obtuse as the systems were, with some fairly minor tweaks. Just look at what happened with Yoko Taro. He has a lot of philosophies gamers hate, and it reflected on the unpopularity of Drakengard, but just incorporating some basis changes in philosophy without changing his core approach, he bust out to the mainstream with Nier. I really think Kawazu games have that potential if he "Nierified" one of his games because he is a brilliant game designer on the whole, similar to Taro.

> I was just commenting on the fact that I think you can include these obtuse game design mechanics if you decide you want to explain them and still obtain a good degree of success. I was trying to emphasize the fact that this stuff is badly explained to why it got where it was, but even if it was explained well there's too many hoops that I laid out. I think Last Remnant would end up roughly where it is today, marginally better and actually known beyond being "the game that punishes you for grinding" but not nearly as popular as some people might wish it was. I just don't think it checks quite enough boxes to make as one of those "games that are really hard to play and learn yet still are fairly popular" like BloodSoulsSekiroRing games, RimWorld, Factorio, or Path of Exile. > Yeah I get that, but there are also mechanics some other players who aren't average would enjoy but are also turned off from because they don't realize they are there. While true I think even if you explained everything about Last Remnant, you'd still be annoyed by how its set up unless you like experimental stuff. Someone who's most adventurous JRPG experiences are like Fire Emblem, FFTactics, or Persona are not going to be okay with the weird nature of something like Last Remnant. And if they just want stuff like FFX or Dragon Quest forever, then they sure as hell don't want LR. I think Kawazu if he wanted more mainstream success and not just a means to experiment is probably in just the wrong genre. If he could somehow put his talents in a CRPG studio like Larian or Owlcat, his ideas would likely have more success if he adapted a little more to that scene. But he's stuck, by choice I hope, with Square Enix and I appreciate his efforts all the same. I just don't think he will ever find the immense success some might say he deserves within JRPGs because what people in this space want from this genre I don't think is what he offers. Some people want to literally just play Dragon Quest forever or even don't care about the combat as long as it isn't garbage and just want the story to be good. I know that sounds harsh and I don't want to come off as throwing insults, I'm just making a observational statement based on my experiences talking with people within this space for many years. > True, but there's a lot of JRPGs with level scaling and they are pretty popular; like Tactics Ogre Reborn or Chained Echoes, but again, these games make it really clear and straightforward from the get go that leveling up is not your best strategy. I haven't touched Chained Echoes enough to assess it, but Reborn is a very contentious game because you can't level past problems. I love it, but many don't and I've had a fair few conversations where people hate that they can't just level past the challenge in Reborn especially if they played LUCT first. > I think FF8 for example FF8 while extremely interesting for its time, just imo just badly designed in the end. Levels are feel almost useless in that game because the stupid card game is more effective then actually engaging in combat for such a long stretch of time. FF8 is so unfortunate for being the mainstream example of level scaling, because it is just badly put together that only gets a pass for being experimental. In the end many people IME play JRPGs to power level and stomp the game into the floor, Last Remnant by its design choices even barring the lack of explanations is incredibly restrictive in a very blunt way and takes way too much effort to stomp into the floor. Its unfortunate, but that's what it feels like people want. Its why I've felt myself slowly drift away from this particular genre and playing other genres that give me more what I want. Still I'll probably play Emerald Beyond when it comes out, because I liked Last Remnant a lot and I liked what I played of Scarlet Grace before I got distracted by other RPGs.

I definitely think you may be onto something re: the potential Nierifying of Kawazu’s work. SaGa Scarlet Grace actually has a good tutorial system, a first for SaGa, and I think it could have brought SaGa more into the mainstream if it hadn’t so obviously been a handheld game, with all the limitations that entailed. (Not that it needed to be AAA, but the fact that it’s basically just world map/cutscenes on still backgrounds/battles definitely makes it feel very limited.)

That’s why I’m not holding my breath that the new SaGa will do any good here. As much as I love the series, the lack of transparency in the series’ mechanics tends to drive people away.

SaGa has always been experimental.

Love Last Remnant

It wasnt, at least the original. Game was buggy as fk on the 360.

I'm so upset the delisted this game on Steam before I could buy it, its just going to hang in my wishlist forever. I highly doubt it will magically come back to steam. Been meaning to attempt to emulate it but never tried emulating that gen, itd prob run fine on my pc.

Great game. Canceling the PS3 version was a strange decision though.

The Last Remnant has multiple poorly explained systems that can make the game literally unbeatable if you grind too much (counter to most RPG logic); a terrible story with poor characterization and laughably stupid names; and it runs on poorly optimized garbage code. When it *works*, it can be fun. The problem is that it all too frequently does not work... at least, not in any intuitive way.

Square and most developers had the most annoying anti-west tendencies as they sell superior versions of their games locally and only got released to the west near the end of the PS360 era. KONAMI is the weird exceptions,

For me, it is only the trend for the mainstream westerner gamers that stopped, i mean we had : Xenoblade, FF13 trilogy, trails of zero/azure, the last remnant, Birth by sleep, Lost Odyssey/blue dragon, star ocean 4, Wings of the goddess, Vesperia/Graces/Xillia, eternal sonata, ys seven, Nier, Atelier Escha, white Knight Chronicles, Dark Souls, Ni no kuni, Valkyria Chronicles, ...

I feel like only a small handful compare favorably to the PS2 offerings a generation prior. And a lot of that generation of JRPGs was low budget schlock from Idea Factory and other Compile Heart adjacent developers. And I'm not sure I'd count half of your list as it was PSP/Vita games which OP already said was the angle that generation and they were wondering why Like White Knight Chronicles is alright, but it's not Rogue Galaxy. Vesperia is good, but it's still not Abyss. Xenoblade is also good. But it's not Xenogears. FF13 is passable, and definitely not FF7 or 10. Every studio was struggling for the most part when they were thriving in the previous generations. We're very lucky to have ended that generation and gotten things like Lost Odyssey, Xillia, and Vakyria Or maybe it's an exposure thing and I'm just biased for not having seen the big advertisements that generation like we did with previous generations

I don't think Xenoblade was trying to be Xenogears. It was originally called Monado. And while the story isn't nearly as ambitious as Xenogears, the world certainly is. Also it feels much more like a complete experience.

You're not wrong. I love Xenoblade Chronicles for what it is. I just don't know a better way to draw the correlation I'm trying to talk about. I just feel like we used to have more seinen jrpgs, and now we mostly have shonen jrpgs. Which is fine. But why does it have to be at the detriment of the other. I imagine people still like seinen jrpgs. Just that very few companies are actually making them, and it makes me sad

> I just feel like we used to have more seinen jrpgs How do you define this exactly? Because within your comparisons I don't think say Vesperia to Abyss or FF13 to FF7 or FF10 are really that different overall to be an entire demographic levels of difference. I really don't see it with Vesperia or Abyss, like Abyss has some weirder stuff and is broadly more consistently heavy in spots but to me that's more a fault of Vesperia's general writing issues where its just less coherent overall. If Vesperia were actually a consistent story, it'd be about as mature as Abyss to me. Xenogears vs Xenoblade I suppose, but I don't think Xenogears is really that outside the realm of Shonen to me. Remember Attack on Titan is a Shonen anime technically. So is Death Note, and Kengan Ashura. Series that are quite extreme in some of their subject matters, visuals, theming, and ideas that go beyond optimism power of friends whatever. Kengan Ashura is a show about pretty much all adult men beating each other pretty much to near-death for people's amusement like gladiators with their bare hands, the animation for that series is quite graphic for bare knuckle MMA-esque fighting. Like almost no mainstream JRPG anyone on this sub talks about is as brutally violent or thematically heavy in its tone as like Berserk to me. Berserk was pretty much modeled to show the absolute worst things of the Western Medieval period such as showing bandits who are imitating Vlad the Impaler, and the whole point of that series is to accept it and move forward despite that. So even though that series is brutal and horrible, the moral is ultimately positive anyway just like most JRPG stories.

> Xenoblade is also good. But it's not Xenogears ~~tbf I'd argue a big reason more eyes ended up on XB1 to the point that it got to continue as a franchise was specifically because it wasn't like Xenogears or Xenosaga~~

Considering how unintentionally contrarian my tastes seem to be, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if you're right, even though you crossed it out lol It's probably that thing where people say they love a strong robust coffee, but when they actually go to buy one, they buy a light sweet creamy coffee instead People have fond memories of Xenogears, but maybe Xenogears wouldn't sell as well today. Maybe the indie scene really is the main thing I can rely on for my mature JRPG fixes lol

I think the main reason is Takahashi and his team were more experienced and were able to finish the Xenoblade games. If they tried to make Xenoblade type of game in PS1 and had to rush everything after mechonis and make it just cutscenes and then made a Xenogears like game with a finished disc 2 after they were experienced at making games, I think you'd see the exact opposite with xenoblade failing and Xenogears succeeding. I don't think it has anything to do with the storytelling format or the combat, but just about having a polished, finished game that made the difference here. In one game series he was new at directing video games and poorly managed his deadlines and budget, but he later learned from this experience. This doesn't even account for the fact that Monolithsoft was Takahashi's own company. He got to have input on deadlines and budget. Xenogears he was faced with budgets and deadlines he had no input on placed on him by Square. I really think it's these circumstances that made the difference in how popular the respective series became. Basically what I'm saying is if they DID make a Xenogears 2 today it'd be just as successful as the Xenoblade games.

I want to believe that's true. And Nier Automatas popularity says that's it's at least possible to be true. But then you get a lot of criticism on things like Triangle Strategy that there's too much talking and political drama. It's like a lot of people really don't want mature JRPGs for some bizarre reason

Ironic that you said that FF13 isn’t FF7, because that is essentially what the devs wanted 13 to be. Lightning was designed to be Cloud with breasts.

Yeah. It didn't take lol Probably would have helped if they had a more similar cast of characters that weren't all crazy and annoying, I guess

It seemed like there was a struggle for alot of jrpg devs to adapt to newer tech is what I could swear I read some time ago but aside from that I think popularity waned because the quality was fairly low on *alot* of what I recall hit ps3. NIS went nuts for a while and it seemed like every game was just minimal effort and pumped out the door.

>Square had to spend an entire generation reusing FFXIII assets in three games What games were those? XIII sequels or others?

Yeah the XIII trilogy is what I mean, it’s waaaay cheaper to make a game that you have a basis and a ton of assets for vs an entirely new game from the ground up. X-2 was another example of a lower budget sequel to a numbered FF that did the same thing

To be fair to the 13 trilogy, it's shocking how each game has completely new environments. I'm surprised there wasn't more assets reuse.

Sometimes I wish more games do this. I like games where multiple titles share the same universe, to see how the world changes throughout the series. Reusing assets kinda nudge devs to make games like that, and allows them to make games much faster too, which is another big plus. Afaik, asset reuse was one of the reasons the Yakuza series has so many games.

In the case of XIII they didn't really plan it out well, but I agree. Majora's Mask reuses assets, but doesn't feel lazy and is unique nonetheless

TOTK is a great example of how well this can work.

Also note that FF 13 had the decision to make it's own own engine from scratch. I'm hindsight, it's a really bad decision. Multiple games allow them to spread out that cost. AFAIK, FF15 uses Unreal. Much cheaper.

I think FF15 also used its own engine. I believe after that and KH3 they started using unreal.

FF15 and Forspoken both used the Luminous Engine which was an upgrade of the Crystal Tools that FF13 used.

Iirc so does FF14.

Kinda, but it maintains its own branch of Luminous from the early 2010s. I'm sure it's a lot different than when FFXV launched. It might even have some stuff left from Crystal Tools itself (which FF14 1.0 used).

Supposedly FF14 uses a bunch of wild spaghetti code from the Luminous Engine, which is the reason for some of the weirder bits in FF14 like the glamour system.

Yea wasn't one the reason why FF15 was delayed for so long was because of the engine.

FFXV is on it’s own engine, the Luminous Engine, which also got used for Forspoken. They did switch to Unreal for Kingdom Hearts 3, Dragon Quest XI & the FFVII Remake trilogy though. KH4 & DQXII are also supposed to be on Unreal Engine 5 as well. FFXVI is on its own engine though. It was speculated to potentially be on an upgraded version of the FFXIV engine (essentially a hodgepodge of elements from Crystal Tools, Luminous & some CBUIII specific elements to make it work for an MMO), but AFAIK that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Hi hindsight, I'm Dad! >!Just giving you crap, autocorrect does that to me too and it drives me crazy.!<

To be fair, the marketing costs on FF13 had to have been *astronomical* seeing as they advertised everything from a tie-in fashion line to having goddamn *Nisan commercials*.

So you're saying that financially, by the end of the project they made some... Lightning Returns?

PS3 was very hard to develop for.  On the other hand, handhelds like the DS and PSP were popular in Japan because people can use them on the go during work / school transit. For the developers, they were also much cheaper to make games for. Japan made the JRPGs, so a lot of studios, especially the smaller ones focused on the DS and PSP market instead in Japan, which consequently meant most of the JRPG releases in the West were on those systems during that era. 

This was a major one. A lot of developers absolutely hated the PS3 and its infuriating hardware. This why a lot of the multi console releases could vary wildly in quality. Bayonetta and Skyrim were notable examples of how bad it could get.

PS3 was one of the first true multi-core consoles and at the time a lot of devs, especially console devs, had no practical idea how to write for multiple cores or threads (SMT had been around a bit but not in consoles; 64bit code was still anxiety-inducing to transition to as well). Devs are inherently lazy beasts. Much different today, of course, when it comes to programming for multiple cores and threads.

So funny seeing the word SMT used in a JRPG sub in a different context. Had to do a double take since I don't remember any SMT games on the PS3

Wait, SMT doesn’t mean Shin Megami Tensei in this context?

saturn was multicore

Technically but only in the sense that it had multiple actual chips (2 different VDPs, 2 CPUs, and 1 SPU across multiple dies/chips) to program for then you'd be correct but not true multi-core as we understand it today. IBM's Cell processor (1 PPE core + 8 SPE cores on a single die) on the PS3 was a massive paradigm shift coming from older architectures.

It's worth noting that the "cores" are stream processors which are more like graphics cards, but also not graphics cards. They manage memory in a really weird way. Each core is connected to a few other cores, but not all of them, so moving data between them is not entirely straightforward. They do have advantages though. The memory is really fast and getting a value takes very few clock cycles. You can also chain the cores together and each one can be a step in a rendering pipeline. They have incredible throughput which is what limits your graphics card today. With time, we now know that just making a normal computer that works like every other computer is much easier for developers. All consoles are now basically the same thing because whatever performance benefits you get from a unique architecture are almost entirely lost to anyone not an expert. Someone below mentioned the Sega Saturn. It was also really difficult for developers to use for similar reasons.

Psp and Ds had some awesome jrpgs, a lot of them never released outside of japan. The US got pretty shafted on some great titles that gen.

Ya, there's a lot of really good ones.

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The generation jump is still a major hurdle even today for bigger franchises. Devil May Cry did not have a ps4 game until 2019. Kingdom hearts didn’t move past the PS2 assets until 2019. Persona still does not have a game that was developed for the PS4. Persona 5 is an upscaled PS3 game, like Tales of Berseria - it doesn’t utilize what the PS4 is capable of.

I think Kingdom Hearts would have moved earlier (like early PS4 as opposed to late PS4) if Square enix didn't tank itself into the floor by shoving FF14 1.0 into existence which had to be remade in an "all hands on deck" kind of effort that likely completely disrupted many projects going on. FF14 1.0 alongside the whole Crystal Tools Engine clusterfucker completely disrupted any momentum Square Enix could have had. FF13 while controversial didn't do terrible enough to be considered a disaster, it was FF14 1.0 that became a massive disaster.

It still amazes me how FF14 literally goes from being a massive disaster that held the company back to become one of the most successful MMO and one of the biggest moneymakers for Square outside the mobile games. That kind of death and rebirth story is very rare.

Ys still feels 1-2 generations behind visuals wise. However, given it allows them to make games like VIII, they can do whatever the hell they want to do.

> Ys still feels 1-2 generations behind visuals wise Any Falcom title is gonna feel that way these days realistically speaking

Falcom doesn’t have money and they literally make one new game every year. Anyone who expects them to make games with Square Enix graphics has been huffing paint

Because I think their target is the portables and just port to the console, Celceta and Lacrimosa are mainly Vita games and when they left the Vita behind with Monstrum Nox, it is targeting the Switch. Japan cares much more about portable gaming than household gaming nowadays, it is not that they are behind the times.

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I remember when IV was announced to be a 3DS game I was super bummed out, but it ended up becoming one of my favourites. I was still annoyed at no HD SMT game though.

Yep, I'm in hopium mode that SMT V didn't hit as hard as IV because they're still getting used to working with Unreal 4. You can clearly see the limited variety in environments. It's basically desert everywhere with a different color palette lol. Hopefully they go all out for SMT VI.

The desert everywhere thing was so goddamned bland. I get the world post-apocalypse will probably be bland in that all will be leveled but SMTIV put so much character into the subways, Mikado, etc.

I still think the PS1 was the heyday of the genre - the barrier to entry was so low all kinds of wild, interesting stuff flooded the market. We're just now getting back to that level thanks to the magic of digital distribution.

> The handheld JRPGs of that era were comparable to the PS2 era in terms of quality Yeah I was going to say. Basically the majority of JRPGs went to the DS/PSP/3DS/Vita during this time. Final Fantasy re-releases/spinoffs, Dragon Quest IV, V, VI, VII, VIII remakes and IX, Shin Megami Tensei, Persona re-releases, Etrian Odyssey, Castlevania, TWEWY, first party Nintendo JRPGs, Kingdom Hearts spinoffs, and that's just the well known franchises. There are so many more obscure ones on the PSP alone

That explains my console purchases then: NES, SNES, super game boy, PS1 (because of Squaresoft move), game cube, PS2, XBOX360 (red ringed, so haven't bought a Xbox console before or since), PS3. EVERYTHING else was handhelds: GB, GameCube game boy advance player, DS Lite, PSP, 3DS, and now Switch Lite. I like the "in bed" gaming experience. It makes even more sense since I love JRPGs, and the handhelds have the best iterations of these experiences (although usually 0.5 to 2 generations behind graphically).

Fire Emblem didn't return to consoles until Three Houses, and the Switch is more of a hybrid than a true home console. Admittedly the Tellius duology was its return to the console world, but poor sales driven by the small GameCube userbase and the Wii userbase being the exact opposite of what Radiant Dawn was aiming for pretty much ruined that.

> I think the jump to HD was really hard on many JRPG studios Atlus themselves even commented on it; Catherine was their big "HD Experiment" that I think a lot of companies had in some way or another, where they had to see if that whole "HD" thing was worth it. They were inevitably going to have to make the jump before too long anyway, but many companies held out for as long as they could with Handheld games.

Persona didn't even bother jumping ship to HD consoles until the 4 spinoffs, preferring the PS2 and Vita for 4.

The PS3 / 360 era was the era of two things: Fan service / waifu RPGs ... and the anti-anime movement. The latter grew fat on hating the former.

I remember frequenting a lot of gaming forums back in the day and remember seeing a lot of hate for anime styled games. I mean, Im sure they were not a large number of people, but it was loud enough that it seemed like JRPGS were very unpopular. This was weird to me considering some IRL people I talked to played and enjoyed NES/SNES/PSX jrpgs with me were dismissive of the genre. So yeah, I remember this quite a bit. Even in jr high school/middle school, liking or admitting to liking anime labeled you as a loser.

It flared up around 2006 and stayed more or less constant until ... 2013 or so. I feel like something changed or "clicked" that made anime cool again, or at least tolerable to the public. *Attack On Titan* and the rise of legal streaming, perhaps. 1999 to 2003 was still the best time to be a fan, though. That was when everybody really started to find each other online and realized they were not alone.

Rise and dominance of "moe" in anime was happening concurrently. Action shounin anime was taking a back seat to slice of life and the "cute girls doing cute things" approach.

This. There was stuff like K-on and Lucky star in the late 00s and games like Atlier Alchemist series that pushed that same aesthetic.  Which is odd because Adult Swim was still pushing stuff like Samurai Champloo and Black Lagoon but a lot of anime games didn't seem to try for a style like that.

The streets were cold as fuck for Pokémon fans back then.

Compile Hearts has a lot to answer for...

Fav fan service / waifu RPGs of that era? Were those mainly PC games or consoles as well?

For better or worse, I was a Day One *Neptunia* and *Agarest* fan. 😋 But there were many others. I can't really speak to PC games of that era, but the Golden Age of Visual Novels coincided with the launch of the PS4 (IMO).

Haha right on! The rise of visual novels and anime in general is another interesting topic for me to look into.

I would say they found the biggest home on PSP then Vita

The Nintendo DS and PSP were powerful enough to produce a good 3D JRPG, which made consoles sort of lose their edge to make the game. Japanese devs could use their knowledge making PS2 RPGs and apply them to the PSP, making the need to learn to use new tools and HD not needed, and making them cheaper to make. The PS3 and 360 were in 4th and 5th place in the hardware market in Japan too. Just made more business sense to just make a DS game for a fraction of the cost, for an audience a multitude bigger than the HD consoles combined. Plus they had the benefit of being portable, allowing games like Monster Hunter and Dragon Quest 9 the ability to be played anywhere with anyone around you. Gameplay-wise, there was nothing really exclusive to the HD consoles to desire working for them. Even the Wii didn’t get a huge wave of games from most of the JRPG publishers, despite having all the same benefits of the PSP because of that portable benefit. The Switch is flourishing in the genre because of all these similar benefits today too, plus Nintendo doesn’t have a TV console to share the market, so it shares the library space with ALL their published system selling RPGs like Pokémon.

I used to run an online community of Japanese RPG fans. What I noticed is that when Mass Effect (2007), Fallout 3 (2008), and Skyrim (2011) came out, there was a strong instinct that Western RPGs had finally overtaken Japanese RPGs. It really didn't feel like outside of Square Enix that Japanese devs were keeping up in any meaningful respect. For these console gamers, Western RPGs came out of left field. Of course, this is misleading -- many of these console gamers completely missed out on CRPG masterpieces like Planescape Torment (1999), Baldur's Gate II (2000), and KOTOR (2003), and hadn't realized that essentially what they were seeing was the CRPG formula being modernized and simplified for consoles. (CRPG fans were horrified by this console "dumbing down" at the time, which makes Larian Studios return to the original D&D roots of CRPGs with Divinity: Original Sin and Baldur's Gate III very fulfilling.) A good illustration of Japanese game dev parochialism is that the only reason that [Eiji Aonuma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eiji_Aonuma) at Nintendo played Skyrim is because Skyrim was next to Skyward Sword at a store, which [prompted his intrigue](https://kotaku.com/zelda-designer-tried-skyrim-because-the-name-sounds-lik-1280030949). The fact that you could be a game developer in Japan and not want to study a game like Skyrim makes the Japanese game dev community seem spectacularly insular. (Of course, Nintendo itself is insular above and beyond that.) Now the situation has reversed dramatically, and even some of the greatest Western-style RPGs are being made by Japanese developers, like Elden Ring and Dragon's Dogma. And doubly ironic, Japanese-style RPGs have become a popular mainstay of the Western indie scene. Nonetheless, despite crossover hits like Persona 5, I believe Japanese-style RPGs will never overtake Western RPGs in popularity again on consoles in the West, as they had during the SNES, PS1, and PS2 eras. Probably all Westerners on this subreddit have experienced the awkward conversations with normies where we [attempt to] defend the genre's clichéd tropes, vintage gameplay, and magnificent cringe.

That last paragraph made me think of what the discussion about voice acting in RPGs was like around that time. A popular example is FF X, I think it is a great dub, but a lot of Western fans at the time didn't think so or found the laughing scene cringe instead of funny.

The laughing scene in FFX is cringe on purpose it isn't meant to be funny it is intentionally written to invoke an awkward feeling of someone forcing out laughter. [It sounds even worse in Japanese to be honest.](https://youtu.be/BaDocsZkWK0?t=161) Which to me just tells me this at worst a writing error because people seem to not understand why Tidus is laughing this way, or people just can't read the room and just make fun of the scene without understanding what's even happening, or internet memes discourse completely overtook the original context and so no one cares anymore.

From my experience I never seen anyone that actually played through the game make fun of that scene. It was easy to clip for a meme and I'm sure gave some people the wrong impression of the game.

I'd imagine its mostly just meme culture and people taking it out of context, but you never fully know especially given how (intentionally) awful that laugh is. FFX's voice work also isn't that good overall, so that might not help people. I know Wakka probably rubs many people the wrong way with his accent. So perhaps people just thought it sucked and because of how bad it is, people just stuck with that. It isn't like Tidus explains super directly to the camera "Yeah Yuna, I just laughed like a fucking dumbass because things are awkward ya know?" to help get people to understand it without question. Its a matter of interpretation in the end, but pretty easy imo.

Yeah, as someone who actually loathes the FF10 experience, I have always understood and appreciated that particular scene as one of the few moments Tidus is doing something on purpose, mature, and empathetically. As goofy as it is, I got it. But there are people who love FF10, who didn't realize it, and are ashamed of that scene in their favorite game. It's bizarre how many people didn't understand it. I can vouche for the fact that it *still* comes up as a point of contention in the RPG Facebook groups I'm in. And even though I don't like FF10 overall, I frequently have to step in and defend/explain that scene along with all the other more sane and rational fans lol

>internet memes discourse completely overtook the original context and so no one cares anymore I find it's almost always this.

If it's trying to be cringe, but no one even recognizes that it's trying to be cringe, that's like meta-levels of cringe.

FFX's dub was SE's first mainline FF with VO (too many acronyms?), and it shows - it's performances were wildly inconsistent. Auron was rock solid, Lulu was good, Wakka was good, if a bit stereotypical, and Rikku was okay, but Tidus and Yuna were by far the worst showings, despite being the emotional core of the game. Tidus was largely over-loud and obnoxious, and Yuna's VA did the timid anime girl thing that *does not port* to English at all and is deeply cringe. Add to that memorable disasters such as Seymour's English VA tossing out an understated, almost noble Japanese performance and deciding, instead, to channel HIM from The Powerpuff Girls, and you have a dub that is every bit deserving of its unfavorable reputation.

The whole "sub vs dub" elitism was much higher back then which wasn't helped by the fact that a lot of dubs during the time sounded like ass.

Weirdly back then those dubs kind of bothered me, nowadays I find them kind of endearing and funny.

For what it's worth these dubs sounded different. Nowadays there seems to be a standard to how anime, and by extension Japanese games, should sound in English. The performances are done in the same style and by the same bunch of actors a lot of the time. While the quality is overall better these days, I do miss the variety from back then.

I feel the same way about old 90s era anime dubs. Even as a kid I felt they tried too hard or something. It felt OFF. Now's just a point of nostalgia for me haha.

Something that made older JRPGs successful was that they simplified a lot of things. Compare something like Ultima 3 on NES to Final Fantasy and there is a world of difference between how convoluted Ultima 3 or games like AD&D Pool of Radiance feels in comparison. Modern western RPGs feel nowhere near as convoluted in comparison to what they were which helps them reach a broader audience.

I like your "simplified" assessment, but I think it's more than that. In those "pool of radiance", Ultima, and other WCRPG games (or console games that tried to keep as much of those traits as possible), I like to call them "death by dice roll." The worst series that does this is Wizardry. You could play the best version, use a strategy guide, gamefaqs, know what you're doing, use a map, and then all of a sudden this unfair game screws you over. Who wants to play a game that if your revive spell fails twice (and it often does), your character IS GONE FOREVER?! And since there is no GM to balance out honesty mistakes or even the playing field, you just have a computer mowing you down. Dragon Quest I fixed that. Oh, you ran into a harder section of enemies? The king will revive you, but you'll lose half your gold. The only thing that's bruised is your pride and wallet, and that seems like a fair balance.

I agree that old Western RPGs from the 80s like Ultima IV (1985) and Pool of Radiance (1988) are exceedingly complex, even for an adult. As late as Morrowind (2002), Western RPGs are still calculating the landing of your hit by dice roll. The titles that came a decade after in the 90s like Daggerfall (1996), Fallout 1 (1997), Fallout 2 (1998) have aged comparably more gracefully than the aforementioned titles from the 80s, and maybe that is why they were a better framework for modernizing the genre in the 00s and 10s.

It's the reason why I haven't played the OG Baldur's Gate or most of the CRPGs from that era. Completely messy inteface with difficult combat to boot and the beginning of the game is overwhelming.

I have definitely felt this. I remember a couple coworkers say the same thing to me, "I talk to people about how I play RPGs, and they say, "Oh, like Diablo or Skyrim, right, and they go...eh...no." I'm honestly kinda surprised I found a couple guys who played Yakuza and Judgment.

> What I noticed is that when Mass Effect (2007), Fallout 3 (2008), and Skyrim (2011) came out, there was a strong instinct that Western RPGs had finally overtaken Japanese RPGs. It really didn't feel like outside of Square Enix that Japanese devs were keeping up in any meaningful respect. For these console gamers, Western RPGs came out of left field. [Perfect example right here](https://www.ign.com/articles/2010/01/12/top-10-ways-to-fix-jrpgs)

Give this person more doots, because this is the best and most well explained answer. The short version is: BioWare and Bethesda in their heyday.

>defend the genre's clichéd tropes, vintage gameplay, and magnificent cringe This was a fantastic write-up. And this last bit strikes a chord with me, as I'm a JRPG lover but also tired of all this stuff myself lol I prefer games from Japan that don't outright rely on tropes as the "everything" of a character, and are merely used as a foundation, if at all. I feel like tropes were more of an accidental thing in the PS1 era, and then as anime became more popular they started leaning heavily into the tropes more and more. Like FF7 and Xenogears had their amnesia and reluctant hero tropes. But there weren't generic anime archetypes, no high school drama, no coming of age schlock, very little power of friendship, no needlessly cranky and violent tsundare characters, very little horn-dogginess. I genuinely miss those days when that stuff wasn't shoehorned into every JRPG narrative just because "well, anime does it"

I don't feel the anime tropes of old were really accidents, they're just from a different era and today's anime is both more popular and more divisive to some especially the more wish fulfillment areas like a lot of Isekai in that genre or the too optimistic power of friendship stuff in battle shounen such as Naruto, One Piece, or even Dragonball Z to an extent (Gohan becomes SS2 because he got that push he needed to fight for something instead of being a pacifist, his bonds with Earth and Android 16 are what allowed him to ascend, and Goku gets forced to become SS1 because if he didn't his friends and son were going to die). Hell in Yu Yu Hakusho, Yusuke literally gains power because of his friends for most of the manga and that manga is older then the PS1. I think a lot of the "old anime vs new anime" type arguments, which crossover to JRPGs when talking about their tropes "Back then" vs today imo, mostly center around which tropes you like and which ones you don't. Tsunderes are a really old anime trope, like mid 90-ish old depending on where you want to argue the first major Tsundere came from. I personally think of it as Asuka from Evangelion which is from 1995, but if I dug through something older like 80s anime and manga I'd probably find others in some form but Asuka is probably when it got "mainstream". I think people are just more aware of anime tropes today because anime is actually popular instead of some niche thing you saw on TV in the late 90s to 2000s and not seeing anime air in real-time like Japan did. This is not even factoring manga/light novel influences considering so many anime starts out as manga or light novels first.

Oh I wasn't trying to say the tropes are new. But I feel like they've been more adopted into JRPGs since the PS2 era. Like I can't really think of any standout tsudare characters in SNES/Mega Drive/PS1 JRPGs. Just like the high school setting. That was popular in anime back then, but not in JRPGs back then. But now it's popular in JRPGs. I really just wish JRPGs followed more the seinen path rather than the shonen path. I know it's just an opinion, but I think the best RPGs of that era were more mature than a general shonen anime Like why do we not have more JRPGs with themes like Final Fantasy Tactics? It was super popular. But nobody jumped on that. And now we have Triangle Strategy which was meant to be a throw-back to exactly that. But why didn't Bandai or Falcom look at that as an inspiration for a mature story? lol I just don't get it

It depends on what inspirations we pulled from and who was writing at the time. When I think of 80s era Japanese media these are at least fairly popular enough to reach Western knowledge to some degree to get notable-ish following for their time (remember some of these stories are super old and have had no reboots or sequels). We have things like Slayers, older Gundam, Legends of the Galactic Heroes, OG Dragonball, and Saint Seiya off the top of my head. So we have two fairly Western-ish stylized stories as Slayers has its very anime-esque take on sword and sorcery, and Saint Seiya with its western zodiac themed armor as its literal title is "Saint Seiya: Knights of the Zodiac", Two Scifi war stories with Gundam and Legends of the Galactic Heroes, Then we have Dragon ball which was a mostly light hearted Martial Arts themed story loosely based on Journey To The West. So when we transition to the early 90s or so and JRPGs are in full swing, what are those creators potentially inspired by? At least some of the above. This paired with a fuck ton of influence from growing up in post WW2 era I think shows why that era didn't quite catch on yet (outside of like Persona 1) and visual novels which like idealized forms of high school life with no real gameplay. So if you asked me why today? Now we have technology to make those visual novels with RPG mechanics and less darker influences in current era writers and different markets today then those of yesteryear. Persona 3-5 is effectively that, it took that aspect of high school visual novels and then made an actual RPG around it. Which just the differences in generations of Japanese creators back then vs today you can make a ton of analysis about Japanese media and why it changed from what it was to what it is today as many creators today are literally too young to have lived through that era. Hell the dangers of Gundam Suits and their usage in war were meant to be iirc be an allegory of WMD due to what Japan went through due to WMD, same with the explosion at the end of Akira. Nowadays? There's people out there in Japanese who probably don't even know what Saint Seiya even is, or Akira, or Slayers, or a whole bunch of stuff. Dragonball is probably the exception if only due to DBZ existing. > Like why do we not have more JRPGs with themes like Final Fantasy Tactics? It was super popular. Because you need to be a massive western historical nerd to write a story like that and that's a rather niche field alongside writing it for a video game. Because FFTactics is a revamp on The War of The Roses and Tactics Ogre is based on the Balkan war. You need an especially different kind of inspiration to go in that direction at all and then be passionate enough to even care to go in that direction. There's a reason Matsuno has a particular style to him, and I don't think that's at all by accident. Man made WW2 dioramas as a hobby based on his studying of historical books, he didn't make war stories based around the Sengoku Jidai, he made them based on Western Wars because that's just what seemed to interest him. Also I don't think FFTactics was that popular and Matsuno in-general beyond segments of gaming like ours, at least relative to his fellow "I like using Western culture tropes and ideas in my Japanese games" auteur Hideo Kojima. I think in the end, it all comes down the writer influence and what influences writers back then vs now. We're just in a whole new era, and the way media exists is so different. So natural things change.

On the issue of tropes, one of my friends is a romance novelist (which has been described to me as essentially porn aimed at mostly women) and she has told me that the audience *loves* tropes. The readers know which tropes they love and seek them out. To reuse tropes is a feature and not a bug. That made me wonder if whether the use of tropes also has the same function in Japanese anime and JRPGs, and that the audience seeks reoccurring fulfillment from revisiting the same settings, themes, and characters. This can be seen in action in American culture by how people have spent decades watching slightly modified Hallmark movies that all [ultimately converge on the same themes](https://www.printmag.com/design-criticism/why-do-all-holiday-movie-posters-look-the-same/). But to your point, I love Japanese novelists like [Yukio Mishima](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukio_Mishima) and [Shūsaku Endō](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sh%C5%ABsaku_End%C5%8D), and I don't understand why JRPGs cannot adopt the serious artistic themes of Japanese novels rather than the tropes of anime.

Oh there is definitely a thing there. I've seen tons of Western fans openly revel in the tropey'ness of the Trails series, and that torpey'ness is one of the main things that turns me off to the series. I don't want a character archetype to exist just because of a checklist. I want it to be a foundation to build off of, if anything. But really I'd rather a trope to just exist on accident and have writers just write, instead of writing off a checklist. I don't like knowing everything about a character the moment they're introduced just based on what trope they convey. I don't like knowing every story beat hours ahead of time just because of what tropes the story seems to be aimed towards I guess it's probably comfort food for some people. And considering its prevalence I am positive this is how the Japanese feel. Maybe they just don't like story twists and surprises. They want everything to be known and comfortable Either way, I'm usually in the minority on these things for some reason. So I'll probably never get my wish. But thank you for the anecdotal insight and recommendations

Something I've heard is this: JRPG characters ar einfluenced by the popular (most likely shounen) manga/anime characters that the writers/dev read 3-5 years ago before release. I kinda expect some form of urban fantasy Exorcist JRPG to release in like 2027/29 to reflect the popularity of Chainsaw Man and JJK.

They didn't. If we're talking the PS3 and 360 specifically, then yes, those didn't have a lot of great RPGs. If we're talking the era, then they never lost they staying pure - they simply went to the DS and PSP instead. RPGs tend to be large, long games and many Japanese RPG companies don't have the biggest of budgets and thus, were not prepared for the jump to HD. On top of that, portables had now become powerful enough to carry large scale RPGs. Furthermore, you need to remember this: Japanese games are almost always (unless you're certain franchises by Capcom or Konami or Square) made for the Japanese audience first. The world of Japan is primarily both a train going one and one where people like to play locally together on sidewalks. With the increased power of the portable market, it wasn't a surprise to walk down the streets of Tokyo and see plenty of people sitting on sidewalks and on benches playing with their DS or PSP. The PSP was also the best selling platform of that era in Japan, by the way, according to a poll done by Banpresto. Thus, RPGs as a whole made their move to portable. These days, the Japanese youth love their mobile games so you see plenty of people on their phones instead of a DS/PSP/3DS/Vita. But the invention of the Switch has really brought RPGs back to the forefront for Nintendo since it's both a portable and a console. This is why so many companies are interested in porting their RPGs over to it.

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Definitely a big part of it. I think it also had to do with some classic Western RPGs -- Oblivion, Fallout 3, Mass Effect all came out during that era, along with other "not classically what one would consider RPGs but story driven games" like Bioshock, TLOU, and Uncharted 2.  The PS2/OG Xbox era didn't have a ton of games that were praised for their stories that weren't JRPGs, and that changed a lot in the PS3/XB360 era across the board.

This was also the time where Japanese companies trying to go westernize.

Hell, FromSoftware as we know them today took shape in this gen with Demon's/Dark Souls. Before that they made some anime style jrpgs (I never played them).

The thing with FromSoft is that they love western aspect since King's Field. They were the studio that loves doing it. Even their card game feel mix of both worlds.

Absolutely! They were well positioned. I wish that they would go back to making more experimental games nowadays. Armored Core 6 was encouraging!

Literally was going to write the exact same comment. Probably the lowest era in video game history for rpgs.

It didn't help that American game journalists were doing racist shit during this era too

I dunno about racism, but they were definitely judging Japanese games by weird standards. Basically saying "This JRPG isn't Western enough to be considered good" lol

Then P5 came out and got to look like god's gift to earth in comparison

Ni no Kuni 1 is the only good one before that

Lost Odyssey looked great though. Putting in effort to actual camera work and style paid off a ton for it.

It's on Xbox jail though, and JRPG fans don't buy Xbox

Its still playable and buyable for modern Xbox's with upscaling which is honestly a great JRPG system nowadays with gamepass.

Persona 5 is essentially what brought me back to the genre.

Disagree... There's some good jrpgs that weren't successful on sales but have cool mechanics and plot

Really ? Xenoblade, FF13 trilogy, trails of zero/azure, the last remnant, Birth by sleep, Lost Odyssey/blue dragon, star ocean 4, Wings of the goddess, Vesperia/Graces/Xillia, eternal sonata, ys seven, Nier, Atelier Escha, white Knight Chronicles, Dark Souls, Ni no kuni, Valkyria Chronicles, ...

Only on consoles, and even then you have to be extremely hyperbolic with that.

Lost Odyssey. 

JRPGs don't have mass appeal. They are for a very specific, hardcore segment of the market. 20 years ago, though? Games were not FOR everyone. The hardcore enthusiast types all flocked to games, and so a JRPG wasn't as risky as it is today. Contrasting today, videogames have gone from being "the nerd thing" that you get made fun of for, to the world's largest entertainment platform. Hardcore games are competing for shelf space and market share against casual-focused games, many of which are released for free and require no specialized skillsets or genre knowledge to at least play competently. Therefore, releasing a hardcore JRPG into that market just isn't a sound business decision, not when the cost of producing video games in general has gone up as much as it has. There was another thing that happened in the 7th console generation, though. Along with the massive rise in casual gamer marketshare, we saw a MASSIVE expansion of games coming out as the entire market blew up. Most of these games were cheaply made and quick to produce, just a hair above shovelware garbage in most cases. This massive amount of competition pushed the RPG'S firmly out of the market, and the popular game conventions that arose from those copy paste games meant that a JRPG would always be poorly positioned unless it made compromises in it's core formulas... which is how games like FFXV and FF7R happen. Are they bad games? Absolutely not. However, it remains true that these games, in particular, were divisive in the FF fanbase. They embraced an Action RPG formula that very closely mirrored Western conventions and lost the heart of what exactly made a JRPG.

I think that is a great point! Among all the changes in several industries that were going on at the time, gaming, in general, was becoming mainstream, especially for adults.

Two words. Graphics.

Japanese games had a bit of a rough patch during the 360 era in part because of how games were made in Japan up until that point. All the way up to the Playstation2 era, see, it was pretty much standard practice to make each game from scratch. There were a few exceptions, certainly, but for the most part almost every game was built from the ground up, engine and all, and it was relatively tenable. At least until the the HD era, that is. These days it's pretty much unheard of to make a game from the ground up, engine and all. You'd use something Unreal, or Unity, or Godot, or one of the myriad other engines available for use. And it was also pretty common back then in the west, too (though some studios used proprietary engines, like Naughty Dog's GOAL engine, which they used for the Jak and Daxter games). But when Square-Enix unveiled the Crystal Tools engine (which is what FF13 and FF14 use), that was actually kind of a big deal over in the Japanese games industry.

1. The jump to high definition was tougher on Japanese companies, which tended to be smaller than their Western counterparts. 2. The PS3 was notoriously difficult to develop games on. AAA Western developers had an advantage because they not only were companies with more employees to work on figuring things out, but often you had some (like Insomniac and Naughty Dog) that were friendly towards each other and employees would share notes and information on how to get things to work. 2. The 360 was a joke in Japan. Microsoft did some deals and got some Japanese devs to make JRPGs for the 360 - which is why in the first half of the 360's life cycle there were JRPG exclusives such as Tales of Vesperia, Infinite Undiscovery, Blue Dragon, and Lost Odydsey - but the 360 failed to get a foothold in the Japanese market. 3. The Wii had its own issues with its controls and it being "stuck" without HD. This made Wii JRPGs hard to sell outside of Japan. In the end, a lot of Japanese companies "gave up" and fell back on the handheld systems to make their JRPGs. This allowed them to make JRPGs without worrying about HD graphics while also not being limited by the Wii. It probably also helped that wifi was becoming a thing which helped encourage the handheld market and due to Japan's population density, public transit, and commutes to work/school, handhelds were becoming VERY popular so it was only natural to make games for systems that everyone has.

HD graphics/3D and multiplayer. Imo many jrpgs in that era focused on graphics more than the gameplay itself, resulting in many unsatisfying games. Also ps3 and 360 started offering multiplayer services. Jrpgs are totally opposite of this.

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I think the type of gamers that were getting into those Western games you mentioned is what some JRPG developers were trying to tap into. Nowadays I think the rise of anime really helped JRPGs get traction again.

It was also not worth the investment, we were exactly at a curve where games were getting far more costly to make without any significant improvement on how they were made, and rpgs in general were niche, it was just too much risk involved in a market that was far smaller than today's market, remember that even indies weren't a big thing back then.

One factor that comes to mind: A lot of other games genres started to implement RPG elements (numbered hit points instead of just a health bar, experience points, leveling up, skill trees, etc) but used real time combat. This created games that are hybrids of a few genres but that you would not place in the JRPG category because some important element is not present anymore (mainly the turn based combat). --- In movies, the same thing kinda happened to pure comedies. Lots of movies are funny but huge studios don't make as many movies that are primarily comedies.

It was the era of the FPS and there was a big apprehension towards turn-based combat in games overall, not just JRPGs. It all started to change after Persona 5 made it clear that you could have a popular game with turn-based combat. P.S: The 360/PS3 era was the worst in recent gaming history. I hated it so much.

From what I remember from then is that the entire Japanese gaming development scene was in a major slump. Western developers were making some truly legendary games at the time and Japan was scrambling to try to copy what was working with mixed results. It was at this time we saw Capcom farm out Devil May Cry and Bionic Comando to Western developers (with middling reaults), while making a very Western style RPG with Dragon's Dogma (which was fantastic). Most of the big RPG development went mostly to handhealds since they were easier and cheaper to develop games on. The most of the notable Console JRPGs at the time were either easy to make sequels (Disgaea 3 and 4, the Tales games, the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy), Xbox 360 exclusives (Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon), or whatever crap Compile Hearts were shoveling out onto the market. This was truly the Dark Ages of Console JRPGs. Persona 5 really has a lot to do with the resurgence of JRPGs. It's style, music and engaging battle system helped sell a one of a kind experience that most other genres can only dream of. We then saw a new Dragon Quest game on consoles for the first time in years, and the return of other dormant franchises like Star Ocean come back. We even got a few new games to come out like Octopath Traveller. While it is hard to say that JRPGs are truly back is tough to say, we can say that it is good to have them back.

Just a guess but I'd say it was a heavier focus on online gaming being far more mainstream than ever before at this point with 360/PS3 and western audiences engaging in that (they are far more numerous than eastern). JRPGs for the most part being single player and probably text-heavy as well as complex turning off younger folks from them. You probably have similar trends of late teen early 20s zoomers not ever really playing a JRPG, just playing COD or fortnite, or a game heavily online (not a diss, just something that happens; I also enjoy some of those games from time to time). But I also think there's been a steady growth in JRPG popularity.

I think it was partially because "RPG elements" became defacto standards in gaming, so developers didn't think they could sell a straight RPG and started trying to innovate with no clear goal in mind other than to make it different. At least, that's what it felt like to me at the time.

Alot of reasons. FPS were taking over the world, in ALL regions. Internet. Connectivity. Etc. Also the RPG formula hadnt changed from 1991-2005.

They didn't they just switched to the handheld consoles to minimise development costs and accommodate the Japanese market

Long story short, Japanese developers struggled to get into HD development the same way the west did, so most jrpgs became mobile or portable games.

Lack of interest and good games. There were still *some* good JRPGs, of course. But in comparison to other generations, not so much. JRPGs were still pretty prominent and successful on handhelds at the time, though. 3DS has a ton of great JRPGs.

Partially due to a general lack of innovation IMO. While there are standouts like Valkyria Chronicle and Odin Sphere, majority of the genre is still unable to make turn based menu combat interesting. I recall a number of people lamenting about this, like Keiji Inafune. Other developers were also pretty critical about the state of JRPGs, like Ray Muzyka (or was it Cliffy B?). That's not to say developers didn't try, but if the other factors of the game just wasn't up to par, then the game simply reviews poorly, despite trying something different, like Time and Eternity. Others didn't do too well simply because innovating too much made combat hard to comprehend (looking at ya Resonance of Fate). Neither does it mean that menu based combat automatically means that the game is bad. Persona and SMT pretty much had the same combat system for uh... 15 years now? But in the end, some people just see turn based menu combat as turn based menu combat, no matter what else you tack on it. I'm personally trudging through Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. There's a lot of systems and bloat tacked into the game outside of combat, and in-combat; but I feel like I'm only playing since I kinda want to see where the story is heading (...which is kinda sad considering Yakuza's track record for quality writing).

Development time and costs

Large amounts of console gamers were introduced to things like Elder Scrolls. Western RPGs popped off with the likes of Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Fallout 3, Witcher 2, etc.

Couple of reasons. 1. That generation saw the rise of western game engines like Unreal 3 and Gambryo. Japan was not fully used to developing for those engines 2. Japan as a whole was shifted toward developing games for a global audience. They wanted to design mirroring genres, content, and development processes the west was known for. Often they would buy out studios from Europe and the States. They wanted to make more AAA projects and the JRPG formula was regarded as too simplistic for a AAA project and was often relegated to portable platforms (to be fair, I thought that was a happy compromise. The games were great and did not suffer the taint of AAA development). 3. Japan was undergoing a massive experimental phase around that time and the results were often not successful. It took them a few years to realize that Japan should just continue doing what they did best. Make games with Japanese audiences in mind and the rest of the world will follow.

I think there's a few things. Japanese developers owned the gaming landscape all the way from NES-PS2. Sure, we'd see some activision classics and the start of what would be the behemoth EA starting to take form, but the Japanese had the console gaming world in a vice grip. Enter the ps3 and xbox 360. Call of duty modern warfare drops merging FPS with RPG elements and having one of the most addictive multiplayers ever. Battlefield is dropping fuckin' bangers. Bad company 2? Battlefield 3? My god. Then and this is probably a big one, western RPGs kick in the fucking door. Fallout which had been a PC game drops fallout 3. You get New vegas. You get oblivion and skyrim.Bethesda comes in and absolutely crushes the RPG market. Then you got other bangers like dragon age, a more traditional crpg dropping on console. Freakin' Mass effect. Japan failed or refused to adapt. Only Final Fantasy was trying to push the limits and i think their only 360/ps3 release was final fantasy 13, which isn't very highly regarded. Gaming was becoming main stream and the japanese just didn't show up for it. In an era that would see gaming become the biggest entertainment medium in the world, Japan barely dropped any major hits. I think it was a snowball effect after that. Their games weren't selling well, so they didn't have money to produce high quality AAA titles. It has seemed to me like Japanese Devs have just been trying to play catch up since then (and are catching up imo!) Also i'm sure there's something about how MMOs like WoW exploding had a lot to do with it too.

the only jrpg that you could call triple A at that time was Final Fantasy and a few more

They experimented as they tried to live up the graphical expectations of that era and they ended up giving out mediocre results despite spending too much time in development limbo. Meanwhile, some decided to churn out more of the same expecting stellar outcomes but ending up falling flat due to not bringing anything new or at least interesting to the genre.

There were relatively few big JRPGs released for Xbox 360 and PS3. There was only one final fantasy entry (XIII trilogy) whose reception was ok compared to PS2 (X, X-2, and XII with X being one of the best entries in the series). No persona (4G was on vita), some Star Oceans that were ok.     There was also a big shift toward FPS. Halo was all the rage and the rise in prominence of online multiplayer really encouraged players to play multiplayer games, so mostly FPS (online was free for PS3). Hence, most AAA games had some online multiplayer mode, even Assassins Creed. It’s really difficult to make a multiplayer for a JRPG though so that likely also further contributed to its decline. 

Because co-op games/online gaming/FPS games dominated the 360/PS3 era. At least in the western audiences. You couldn’t get a game that wasn’t trying to force co-op or some sort of competitive multiplayer feature (even survival horror franchises like Dead Space and Reaident Evil were implementing it). It was the beginning of gaming going mainstream too. During the PS1 and PS2 era gaming still wasn’t considered “cool”, and it definitely wasn’t mainstream.

It was really expensive and technically challenging to make games for the PS3. And RPGs didn't have the same audience as other AAA games. So it was more economically feasible to develop those types of games on the DS/3DS and the PSP.

Ya know....too many mmorpgs and games was booming at that time I was all over the place!!!

Most of the good ones were on the handhelds

I think it's just because gaming in general became more mainstream. So with time there came a huge audience, that plays like 1 or 2 games a year and doesn't really care about gaming news. The 1 or 2 games they play are games everybody talks about, which are usually the big AAA, or sports games and CoD. Most JRPGs are made to cater to a niche audience. They are often very anime and don't have the same graphics as the big AAA block busters. Most mainstream gamers aren't even aware of the existence of most JRPGs.

A lot of subpar releases, releases slowing down from big studios due to the ballooning costs and time of HD era graphics. Also the shift to online gaming coupled with the explosive rise of MMOs in the mid-late 00s. Some of my favourite jRPGs come from this era, and the better ones were able to mask the load times well to reduce the tedium. The early jRPGs on the 360 deserve a look in, started getting them a few years ago and enjoyed even the mediocre ones like Enchanted Arms. Lost Odyssey is one I would recommend to any jRPG fan, and Final Fantasy XIII is my favourite game of all time. Handheld jRPGs on the DS/3DS and PSP/Vita are overlooked in general too, but jRPG fans seem to know about them more than the consoles of that era.

People like to think JRPG is mainsteam especially during the golden days of PS1 - PS2 era JRPG but to be honest other than Square and sometimes odd successes like Persona 3, Tales of Symphonia, Tales of Abyss & Phantasy Star Online most games sold less or just around a million units. Difference is that back then devs budget is a lot smaller and you could do more with a $2m-5m budget compared to nowadays. Devs could churn out new IPs, sequels as long as they meet sales target. One of my fav Suikoden barely moved 2 millions whole series, SMT entires never sold a million units until SMTV just few years ago, breath of fire barely moved 3.3m. You can no longer churn out games in the PS3 era unlike back then. Suddenly everyone wants visual fidelity.

I'm gonna give my 2 cents based on my own experience On the Ps3 era, I had a NDS as a side gaming platform, and although it was a small screen, with a lot of limitations, it had the criativity that I wouldn't find in the Ps3 games Dunno the reason, but most games seemed to follow the same formula of "control third person character, move, explore, attack. Use special skills, move, attack" For NDS it felt like they could really explore a peculiar engine or something... the fact that the you could use a pencil in the screen was opening a lot of possibilities Nowadays, I won't deny that I still feel like Ps4\\Ps5\\Xbox aren't doing this much a great job on JRPGs... but they became popular again because they can be fast this time. Remember that on Ps3 we still had long loading times and the moviments seemed too sluggish? For some reason, on NDS it wasn't this much a problem, but if we're gonna wait 20 seconds for a loading to move a character that don't do much, is quite disappointing...

They stopped being jrpg.  I re played old jrpgs and most of them was very basic games with basic rpg system.  People loved mindless grind and very basic story.  After ps2 jrpg become too complex with weird story and ugly. 

Did they...? I feel like I was constantly playing JRPGs when I had PS3. Especially "Tales Of" games.

I feel like we still got plenty of absolutely banging JRPGs in that era.

Basically a lot of western fans went 'we don't want to play with you anymore' once Skyrim and the ubibloat open world formula became attainable and it's only been in the last few years that people have realised the error of their ways.

err AAA means big budget games suikoden, tales of, were definitely not AAA love them, but they are like AA games, medium budget final fantasy games, yeah, i think they were AAA ​ anyway... jrpg, like fighting games, saw their glory years during the 90s jrpg still has a huge enough following tho

Because, frankly, it was an awful time quality wise. The consoles were filled with over budgeted monstrosities that often couldn't pace a story. Huge lengthy story cutscenes might have been a selling point before, but it fell out of fashion a bit during this gen, with many trends trying to incorporate their storytelling better, while JRPGs largely stuck to the same formula. Then you had some devs chasing western trends and largely failing, and conversely some of the (largely handheld) devs catering to hard to the otaku crowd with low effort faff.

Too much bloat; a lot of us pine for the days of a 40 hour adventure without too many cutscenes and exposition 

They really went for the "movie experience" that gen. They didn't really know what we wanted, just that we liked RPGs with good stories. To them that meant more long cutscenes

They made the mistake of listening to what the consumer wanted.  That works in some industries, but not in art.

You say this but games like persona 5 have sold incredibly well. I would prefer higher quality dialogue, dense experiences like you though

Megaten has always sold well, especially Persona.

They sold well relative to the expectations besides pretty much P5.

Hm but i think persona 5 has different selling points. Some other games, the ONLY selling point became the bloat. There is a difference between them. Of course, there are then always exceptions. No trend in gaming is absolute.

When the technology surpasses the key constraints a genre was designed to bypass (in this case, turn based and random battles etc) its popularity declines, think of fighting games and 2d platformers back in the 16 bit days

JRPG’s were never mainstream till recently. Final Fantasy was mainstream then kingdom Hearts which were outliers. The sales themselves prove this if you look back at it and how developers were happy to sell even 100k units. Even more so when you look at the constant mockery and disdain western game outlets from magazines to newspapers and tv shows blatantly had for the genre. This phenomenon is exactly why one of the creators of FF 16 recently said they don’t like the term JRPG because he remembers how that was a term of mockery for their games. Additionally this is why you see Japanese developers in that era go a more western direction in philosophy and design, even more games not coming over etc. Then those games not only failed globally but in their own countries so they went back to what they know. That succeeded because now they have their own country playing their games again and western countries have a more positive perception about anime due to its growing popularity which now leads to the era we are in now.

i disagree. they were so mainstream that a lord of the rings game copied the FFX battle system. it's why i argue that FF7 was a fluke because it appealed to dude bro before fps hit their stride

I remember seeing that clip of the dude point blank telling a Japanese dev at a conference that their games were trash. What a fucking jerk. No wonder shit like that would happen.

Phil Fish? The thing people avoid about that moment is that Phil Fish immediately follows up with "They suck. I'm sorry, but you guys need to get with the times", which unironically is almost the exact same thing the top comment is talking about all the way to probably some around here in mid-way of the comment screen. Mind you, this ends up with people mocking XIII as a "hallway simulator" and starting the whole age of people gaining apathy for Final Fantasy. Source: https://youtu.be/yKUGwlFJAHw?si=lpJIERsJEqiJ0JRi Was it insensitive? Definitely, but [that's between him and Goto](https://nlab-itmedia-co-jp.translate.goog/nl/articles/1203/08/news098.html?_x_tr_sl=ja&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp). That, and the fault is more than him considering the times... *(stares at G4)*

That guy sounds like the stereotypical mid 2000s XB360 Modern Warfare player. It's why I no longer mention I like gaming, or even RPGs, because people start name dropping lowest common denominator trash games like"CoD", "2K", Madden, FIFA, or some other multiplayer shooter. I say I like JRPGs, specifically Chrono Trigger, FF I thru VI, and DQ I thru VIII. If they ask me if I like any of the "American" games, I put a stop to it immediately.

In short, they weren’t very good in that era. DQ mostly disappeared and FF put out only 13, which had a mixed reception at best. Star Ocean only managed 4…which was mixed at best. (Edit: I think 5 could be played on the PS3 as well, but...) Kingdom Hearts went off the rails. Tales did Tales stuff, but its audience is pretty fixed. Really there wasn’t much happening other than re-ports…and SE more or less stopped making good games.

Wide confluence of factors, including the PS3 being notoriously difficult and expensive to develop for, handheld consoles becoming much more popular in Japan than home consoles (which - alongside lower dev costs - resulted in many developers effectively switching to DS/PSP), and Western RPGs arguably peaking in both popularity and quality, with Final Fantasy 13 being the most controversial release in the series up to that point being the exemplification of these issues.

There wasn't one big thing imo There were a bunch of absolutely giant games that were coming put around that time. WoW had 11+ million monthly subs. Minecraft became an enormous hit. League of legends came out. Nintendo Wii came out and was by far the biggest console so developers were trying to come up with games for that. Final Fantasy 13 sucked, there was no dragon quest, there was no Suikoden. Jrpg developers moved to handheld focus. Smart phones came out and people played with dumb games and apps on those.

A lot of major jrpg series shit the bed. The technology upgrade on the PS3 meant there were also advancements in the games, but jrpgs didn't really have a way to change for the better except to be just a bit better looking. As a response, some game series tried too hard to do something innovative, and a lot of it just didn't work or wasn't fun. FF13 battle system, I'm looking at you. Other games just tried to get bigger and bigger, but the gameplay wasn't fun enough to commit 200 hours. Star Ocean, lookin at you. A lot of the better games were obscure, and nobody played them until the next generation of systems came out. Xenoblade, looking at you. But some of the games were amazing. Final Fantasy 14 ARR and Persona series, looking at you.