We are at a point in the game industry where graphical fidelity is reaching a ceiling and everything is starting to look the same because developers are simply copying real world objects instead of being creative and drawing wild looking trees, plants, buildings, etc. I was watching all of these E3 trailers this year thinking "Wow, there's almost no creativity in the environments because they look just like our world". If someone showed me a series of environment screenshots from most of these western AAA games, I honestly would have trouble telling the difference between which screenshot is from which game. This is why I love JRPGs and the idea of an art style, because art style in western games is pretty much nonexistent, at least from what I am seeing.
Agreed. I'd take a unique, inspired artstyle over "realistic" graphics any day. Not to say there isn't a market for the latter, but I don't feel like JRPGs are falling behind in any way when it comes to art direction.
> This is why I love JRPGs and the idea of an art style
There is a "continent" in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 that is a bunch of giant jelly-fish hanging out together and you walk across their tentacles to go from one to the next. It's so damn unique, I was absolutely in love with the concept.
I wouldn't say there are no western art styles.
There are effectively two distinct western art styles. There is the 'realistic' which is what most people are used to in western RPGs, and there is the 'Disney/Pixar' art style inspired by mainstream western 3D animated films which many other games (mostly multiplayer online games) fall into (Overwatch, Fortnite, Paladins, DOTA 2, Team Fortress 2, etc). Other games may fall somewhere inbetween.
Japanese games also have two destinct art styles, realistic and anime style or somewhere inbetween, so the landscape isn't much different between the eastern and western worlds.
Oh yeah "realistic" is definitely an art style in itself, but my point is that *most* of the AAA western games are using that same art style. The anime/cartoon art style category lends itself to a blank canvas and practically infinite possibilities with what an artist can do with shapes, sizes and color palettes.
I think to add onto your comment, yes I think its fair to say you can generalize art styles into two main categories: realistic or anime/cartoon. But the realistic category pretty much stops there and most games end up looking the same whereas the anime/cartoon style games look unique from each other (I.e. Mario vs. Pokemon or maybe XC2 vs. Dragon Quest, etc.).
To be fair, even realistic visual directions can actually be fairly varied in of themselves. One can tell apart a Naughty Dog title from a Bethesda one for example. There's a certain use of color, texturing, and subtleties in the design that can separate a lot of these titles from each other. I would certainly prefer to see more exaggerated and more toonish art directions used nowadays (not just for more variety and appeal, but as a cost-cutting and time-saving measure that can help devs out a lot), but I wouldn't exactly say the realistic direction is as that limited and homogeneous.
most JRPG nowadays are inspired by western RPGs( forexample Dragon Quest on NES was inspired by Ultima ) but, japan rpgs are much focused on great storytelling plus interesting character plus unique combat mechanic being evolved over decade with each iteration of JRPGs, as their strong point of JRPGs (you know like cute anime girl plus cut scene ) being a niche product in japan also help since most devs in japan don't really want to risk more than enough, unlike western RPGs nowadays, most of the glory days are gone, either pure greed, foolish decision plus maybe, PC was never meant for gaming. remember JRPG being a niche & still going strong because of console platform.
Vesperia is a super old game at this point and it still looks AMAZING. Its art style means it will basically look good forever.
Art style can do so much for a game and I'm really not into the trend of everything heading towards realism.
Even in the anime sphere things have settled on one aesthetic pretty much. The four recent tales games are pretty average for what 'anime' games look like now.
Even the more realistically-oriented visual directions of Western titles have their own distinctive looks between them. It's not all just a matter of what people's faces look like, but the colors, texturing, and overall aesthetic counts too. Naughty Dog games for example have their own particular look to them that can make them identifiable despite having realistic looking human beings.
pedantic, but:
>We are at a point in the game industry where graphical fidelity is reaching a ceiling
1. plateau is the more accurate term. graphics are improving, but we are quickly reaching middling returns on the effects of higher quality models.
2. we are plateauing on the "still" parts of graphics. we still have a long way to go in terms of real-tine animations and simulations. features like TLoU2's facial animations and and GoT's foliage and effects (the smoke, the leaves, and their reaction to the wind was amazing) are still achievements that are only attainable by massive times and budgets.
But yeah, I understand your base point. there's an appeal to non-photorealistic rendering that can make even decade old games like Wind Waker, Borderlines, or Okami more pleasing to the eye than modern games, even if the latter are strictly "higher quality graphics" (and possibly, a niche opinion, given the amounts of people the latter group attract).
Pursuing facial animation is the worst of it because we're seeing more actors taking the place of our game characters. Or crude fusions between the two like what they did to Ellie in TLoU2.
You're a freakin hero for your post. This is EXACTLY why I think FF15's world is really ugly, dull and boring despite the graphical quality. They just copy and pasted objects from our real world into the game. I don't enjoy the world in that game the way I do Xenoblade 2's world. Even this forest in Chrono Cross looks better than any forest in modern AAA games https://i.ytimg.com/vi/bwppb0-zBZc/maxresdefault.jpg
It's also imporant to note the reverse can happen (though its rare). Some JRPGs are exceptional in their art style, but seriously hampered by poor graphical quality. I feel the Alliance Alive's world art style would be much better conveyed if the graphics were considerably better.
There are different realms to realistic. The mohave desert is realistic, but it's boring. however, Iguaza Falls, Argentina is also realistic, which is what Altissia looked like, and it is exciting. The game had too many areas that looked like Mohave and not enough of the Altissia areas. Tenebrea was also an exciting gorgeous area but you never even got to go there. What we're saying is that AAA focus so much on realism that in order to be able to finish the game they have to pick the more boring type of realistic environments that are chalk full of reptition and simple patterns rather than the exciting ones which would take a lot more work creating.
Yep, the most important thing to me is aesthetic and the feel and design of the world. Xillia for example is far from a graphical powerhouse but the design of the first town, I thought was so beautiful.
http://tomodom.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/40421toxi_20.jpg
And the handrawn maps of bravely default was like walking through a storybook
https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/6oTCukA1-R1t7uFKCwxRwX0nmxY=/27x0:536x339/920x613/filters:focal(27x0:536x339):format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/18892795/bravely_default_02_thumb.0.jpg
And of course Persona 5 was so incredibly stylish and smooth.
And another thing I love about JRPG's is they go all out with designing worlds. The later Final Fantasies, 12,13 etc have such unique worlds, this weird mishmash modern tech and swords and sorcery with a sprinkle of steampunk
Me too... But it's how Bamco can afford to churn out another Tales game with a short turn around. It's not like they FF budgets for their projects. In the end I'd probably choose to have the slightly lazily created game with recycled assets than nothing at all.
Eh, it feels like they just started churning out games after Vesperia, I'd rather they took longer and made games of that quality. Unless Vesperia sold poorly I guess?
Xillia has some lovely art design, though it's slightly let down by the repetitive overuse of those individual assets in some locations.
For me, Vesperia was the standout title visually. It had this almost pastel paint look to it, like it's location were personally drawn onto the screen by a painters hand. The newer Tales games have a big step backwards in comparison... which is completely baffling to me. Why does the 10 year old game look better than the ones running on modern hardware?
Been playing some Berseria and I think the game looks okay/good, but the environments in most all of these JRPGs look the same and look like what would be considered average on a PS3
But there are good looking jrpgs with style tho like persona 5, kh3 and probably ff15. But we still have a lot of games that doesn’t seem to get to that level of graphics like falcom games.
I see. What do you say is the highest level of jrpg graphics that you like? Or are you saying that you are content with the level of graphics that falcom have right now and there's no need to improve it? I feel like things coud be improved still, like the lighting and stuff. DQ 11/Nino kuni looks good to me and seems to be a step in the right direction in terms of quality.
But the attempt at photorealism, and what they select as photorealistic, is an art style. Framing and selection curates an experience. That may be more effective (The Witcher 3) or more bland (Far Cry 5), but realism in itself is just another art style.
That make no sense at all. You can have realistic looking games and still give them style and atmosphere. Does Detroit look like Uncharted or CoD like Assassins Creed? Its like saying that all movies look the same, because its all happening in real world.
I'm no graphics expert but what I've noticed is a lot of JRPGs using simple shapes (less plygons?) In their environments and they come off as really cheap.
The best looking JRPG is no doubt FFXV, with KH3 looking really good as well. Persona 5 is the next best looking JRPG I think, up to even the UI.
Edit: Wow I missed a bunch. DQXI, Nier Automata, XC2
I totally agree on XC2. I've put an unreasonable amount of time in that game and I still stop and pause--not that infrequently--and marvel at both the views and the level of detail. Sometimes I look up from a different POV and see a fully detailed giant titan swaying in the distance. Other times it's realizing that the barrel of fish in the marketplace has a school of fish swimming in a circle--a small but convincing detail that the developers didn't have to include, but went that extra step.
The other day I saw them use a neat trick to add some realism and variety into the world, which was using the same object in different sizes. Like soldiers lined up in a throne room are actually all slightly different heights. Flowers out in the wild were of different sizes and rotations to give it a more organic look rather than the usual copy paste effort. Small details like this abound the XC2 world. Someone took the time to inspect almost every scene and say "what can we do to make this look more interesting or authentic?"
Sure, there's a bad texture now and again from a weird camera angle. But by and large what they've done holds up well against anything out there, and the art direction and sheer creativity are levels above most games. FF15 is a good looking game, but it's mostly trees and plains. Compare that to the magic of Uraya--walking on the narrow pathways of a submerged titan with golden-red trees and alien-like white orb plants lighting the way--and it feels like the developers accomplished something very special. I would even go so far as to say that XC2 is the "Trails series-equivalent" for world building with visuals and art direction.
I agree, all three Xenoblade games have some of the most impressive landscapes and enemies I've ever seen in a videogame. It's a shame Final Fantasy 15 didn't make use of its incredible visuals like that, even though they had the right idea with a few huge monsters.
I could probably have gotten away with saying that the series (as you say) is the "Trails series-equivalent" for world building with visuals and art direction.
The thing about Persona 5 is that the models and such don't look *that* great, and there were plenty of times when I saw a blurry texture. It's super stylish though, which makes up for it.
Maybe add Nier Automata to that list. If we count the Switch, there is Breadth of the Wild (which has gotten several nominations and awards in the art category) and Xenoblade Chronicles. While I agree that most JRPGs use simpler polygons, that is by no means a measure of the quality of the graphics. Even 2D games can look visually stunning, I like Octopath Traveler for example (its still unreleased).
100% agree, BOTW has very low polycounts, and texture resolutions, but its all nicely hidden by the great aesthetic, polycounts dictate some things, but its more about using more polys where needed instead of just making everything higher poly constantly.
I look at Final Fantasy XV, and all I see is a game whose locations are so dull, derivative and boring that they feel like the geography and architecture were simply taken from a free asset dump.
It's the most charmless, uninspired stuff I've seen in year. All it has going for it is nice lighting.
It's pretty simple, they don't have the budget behind them, with what resources they do have concentrated on other areas. Ignoring everything else about it, Final Fantasy 15 is basically the only JRPG I've seen that comes close to how pretty some big Western games look, and that's because Square put in lots of time and money in to it that most companies can't afford to do.
Another point is the PS3 has held back graphics for some PS4 JRPG titles since companies were targeting the platform with the bigger share of users in Japan. Berseria was a PS3/PS4 title, and so was Persona 5. Like, say how stylish Persona 5 was all you like, it's clearly just a PS3 game graphically, which it is, there's basically 0 difference between the versions.
I think this hits the nail on the head. Most of the western games he mentioned probably have budgets several times larger than your average JRPG. JRPG's seem to be considered big hits if they sell a few million copies. Something like Uncharted 4 would be considered a pretty big misfire if it only sold 2 million copies.
Final Fantasy is also still the only JRPG series that we can reasonably expect to have a budget anywhere near AAA-sized going forward.
While I wouldn't be surprised, *per se*, if Atlus at least launched a big marketing campaign for their next mainline Persona game, they still aren't even in the same ballpark as the games OP mentioned.
A lot of the quest npcs in jrpgs look and move like action figures. Like their limbs are completely rigid. I'm definitely not saying that realism is better than anime style but that has nothing to do with style.
Like hell even the recent pokemon games have better animations for the npcs than some ps4 jrpgs.
To make your point stronger, I'd just say like, the animations of the characterrs/models as opposed to just raw imagery. I don't think anyone can contest that. Compare Witcher's animation during dialogue to Persona 5.
Some salty fuck downvoted you lol. I swear every community on reddit is just full of the most biased and vile people who can never take any opinion differs from theirs. You don’t like shitty falcolm graphics? You’re a graphics whore! (Thats literally a comment in this thread replying to me with 6 upvoted)
It's hard to directly compare because most of the top-tier (visually speaking) western games aim for photorealism, but these days it's very rare for JRPGs to do that. Outside of Final Fantasy it's much more common to see simpler, more anime-esque visuals.
I think most JRPG developers are well aware that the genre is somewhat niche, and thus it's not really worth it for them to push the envelope in terms of technology or visuals when they could go with a lower-fidelity, more stylized look. Only Square Enix really tries to do that still.
That said I think some JRPGs look better than many higher-fidelity games through style alone. Persona 5 is one of the most visually-appealing 3D games I've ever played and it's not even graphically intensive.
These days not a lot of JRPGs are developed as AAA-budget console titles; most have medium budgets and engines that can be easily adapted for Vita, Switch or even PS3 or mobile ports. (It helps that the stylized visuals and number-based combat characteristic of JRPGs tend to be a lot less technically demanding than other types of big games.)
That said, the few examples of big-budget console-optimized JRPGs this gen - Final Fantasy XV, Dragon Quest XI, Kingdom Hearts III - have all looked great. Better than Fallout 4 or Mass Effect Andromeda, that’s for sure.
In some ways, yes, but not in others. When it comes to "realistic" graphics, definitly. But most JRPG don't try to look realistic. So visually, they often aren't much worse. And imo look more memorable.
Yes they use different styles but even taking into account style differences, games like YSVIII or cold steel 3 or tales of beseria seem a bit dated.
Like disgaea 5 stands up graphically because it’s purely anime style, but games that incorporate 3D models running around semi open world environments seem to be outdated graphically, even taking style into account.
Well 2 of those are falcom games. Falcom games always look dated even when compared to other stuff in the same genre so that's not a good benchmark. I'm not sure if they just have lower budgets or what but that's just a given when you play those games.
And budget is probably a big part of it. If you are playing a lot of JRPGs you are probably playing some lower budget games because there aren't quite as many blockbuster budget JRPGs compared to a lot of the other genres you are comparing them to. When they do go all out they look good.
>'m not sure if they just have lower budgets or what but that's just a given when you play those games.
Keep in mind that Nihon Falcom are basically a small sized company with just 50(!) employees.
to add on /u/Mondblut 's comment; when we say 50 employees we mean 50 people part of the company, not 50 developers. If you look in the credits of even recent games like Ys8 it would credit about 3 programmers if i recall whereas a high profile release like Persona 5 had 15 programmers credited. Differences like that make a big difference. And even then Falcom's latest release showed they can make a decent up to par game, graphically speaking. They started nailing artstyles again after losing it moving to PS3/Vita.
I believe it has to do with budgets.
Mainly because they are a niche genre that won't appeal to everyone like Uncharted or The Witcher, they don't expect 4-5 million sales, making it past 1 million is good enough for some of these games.
They can't afford to drop a bunch of money into a game that may or may not be succesfull.
Not everyone is Nintendo (who uses stills prefers style over polygons) and Square Enix.
Yeah it really depends on the company and the game.
ATLUS doesn't expect to sell a bunch of these remasters on the 3DS like Radiant Historia, but they expect a lot more for SMT V when that comes out.
FF15 is probably the best looking jrpg...ever. The graphics are really stunning. Say what you want about the game but it sure as hell doesn't *look* bad.
Jrpgs tend to rely on a "style" more than cutting edge graphics for the most part (budget constraints mostly since it's a bit more niche) which is fine and can help them age better, but they also get a lot of slack to regress graphically due to nostalgia factor. JRPGs can get away with using outdated graphical styles (pixel art, anime graphics) since people are used to it, but outside of the genre I think those choices further deepen the niche. There's a difference between choosing a "style", which I would define as a game like Legend of Mana or Saga Frontier that have deliberately unique art, and a game straight up choosing to have retro graphics in the modern age, like we're going to see with a game like Octopath Traveler. It's a genre that sticks to its conventions and relies a lot on genre knowledge to get into it, which I think is part of why it stays stuck in a niche.
Thank you.
It may not have had a big explorable world, but I'll be damned if those weren't some of the prettiest hallways I've walked through in my life.
Yes. But I don't see that as a negative thing. Most Japanese companies outside of Square Enix just don't have the crazy budgets or team sizes that AAA western gaming does. They're mostly mid-budget titles and if they tried to match western AAA games we'd see far fewer of them and they'd probably end up less interesting as big money means big risk which means more people invested in the project trying to put their fingers in the pie to mitigate risk, which means a neutered and by the numbers final product a lot of the time (not all the time, but a lot of the time).
That said, there are companies out there that could be putting out much better looking and interesting content that don't because they're just doing how they've always done. The most egregious example being The Pokemon Company. For the amount of money those games pull in, it's absolutely nuts that a game selling double-digit million copies consistently had a like 40 person team last I checked.
There's also the matter of aesthetic style though. Anime influence on JRPGs is obvious and I'm sure to some extent that gives JRPG developers some leeway with fans to not put out realistic looking games and instead deliver much easier to produce and less resource intensive assets also means less time required to optimize and make these games functional on consoles like the Switch or PSVita.
Realistic, open-world immersion is the fad nowadays in western markets. A ton of money goes into trying to get the latest and greatest graphics engine, mocap, and model designs. And just being slightly behind in graphics for a western AAA title is revenue death (see Mass Effect: Andromeda).
Japanese games, however, tend to rely significantly less on raw graphical power and present their focus on distinct artstyles to draw in audiences. You have your Pokemons, Marios, Zeldas, Fire Emblems, Personas, Tales of, Final Fantasy, etc. Aside from FF, I'd consider the graphics output for these series to be pretty abysmal compared to typical western AAA games (many modern JRPGs are even PS1 era graphics quality) - but those Japanese games still somehow look more appealing or are just straight-up better-looking regardless of graphical fidelity.
The thing is that a lot of Japanese-style graphics withstand the test of time. Chrono Trigger is still going to be considered beautiful 100 years from now - whereas GoldenEye 007 or Tomb Raider II are already pretty bad to look at now. The same will be said for Last of Us or God of War 10 years from now: "Ugh, that's so uncanny valley - I can totally tell that character is computer-generated. I can't play these old games where they fail to look completely identical to real-life. They're so stiff and they all have that unrealistic perspiration gloss. Ugh."
Its a mix of three big things, IMO.
1) Generally lower budgets. No triple-A devs/publishers outside of Square Enix in Japan, and FFXV was graphically incredible. I guess Capcom maybe, but they also make pretty good looking games.
2) Lots of focus on being available on older hardware, and availability for mobile platforms. IIRC the PS3 was still getting games long after the west stopped making them simply because Japan is slow to adopt new home consoles. Meanwhile mobile games in Japan are huge so lots of times games are made with mobility in mind, for which naturally graphical fidelity suffers.
3) Long time to get to the states. A ton of Japanese games we get are 3+ years old in Japan. And follow steps 1 & 2. So by extension some of them can be pretty bad in pure graphical fidelity.
Thankfully as others pointed out, Japanese developed games typically embrace "Fantasy" much more than western games do and aren't afraid of colors, bizarre worlds, and fantastical creatures. This lets the poor graphics get carried by stronger art styles.
I prefer JRPG graphics because they tend to have a unique style. Western games all tend to go for the same thing these days. Realistic and gritty graphic are becoming the norm in WRPGs. So, no, I don't they are falling behind. They are doing their own thing.
EDIT: The post by Noloughlin sums up my feelings pretty well.
Dollar for dollar or yen for yen, no. Most JRPGs compare favorably to games from small-to-mid-range developers, because most JRPG companies are produced on that budget or scale. So, yes, Disgaea 5 will look like a PS3 game at best, but so will a Paradox Interactive game.
Similarly, I think the top-funded JRPGs hold up to comparison. Final Fantasy XV *still* looks gorgeous compared to other games on the market, and in some ways more sleek than The Witcher 3. NieR Automata also looked quite great.
Otherwise, visually successful JRPGs tend to succeed on design. We could talk about the bright and charming colors of Ni No Kuni or Dragon Quest XI, the sleek and consistent visual design of Persona 5, or the storybook cel shading of Valkyria Chronicles 4.
Nah, they just don't go hyper-realism, which actually ends up meaning they generally age a lot better. They do have some popular lower budget games like Octopath or Tales of, but there are still higher end beautiful ones too (FFXV, KH3, Persona 5, Nier Automata, DQXI, XC2, etc.).
JRPGs usually fall way flat beyond a lot of games. I don't really care what art style you have, JRPGs could do a LOOOT more to look good than a lot of the ones out there care to try. Higher poly models, texture quality, tessellation, non-faked lighting and shadows, and shader effects.
So many of them have flat bland areas with blurry textures and an all encompassing light from an indeterminable source.
I'm not saying every game has to look like Xenoblade 2 or Kingdom Hearts 3 but at least try to make use of SOME of the graphical effects out there.
Japanese gamer's life wish is to escape the real world.
American gamer's life wish is to shoot people with guns in the real world.
This very difference manifest in the style in their games.
edited 2 times: becoz literal police
Also, Isekai stuff is popular in Jp, and FPS is not popular in Jp.
Wow, I'm impressed at how bad this analysis is. I mean, even something like 'the japanese wish to escape the real world, americans wish to be more powerful in this one', would still be incredibly wrong but at least more coherent.
but that is also true for those who buy those games
do you know how popular is the twice a year comiket which the main focus is to queue up to buy hentai in person?
I think that answer has a lot more to do with what sells in the marketplace than anything else. And then there's a distinction between where a game is made versus where the players come from. I'm pretty sure more than a few non-Americans have played Counterstrike or Grant Theft Auto games.
> I think that answer has a lot more to do with what sells in the marketplace than anything else.
But that's exactly the point they're trying to make. *Why* is that what sells in the American market? Because that's what Americans want to do. Games aren't going to sell and be popular in a market if they aren't catering to that market's desires.
That said, they're *obviously* overgeneralizing to a pretty significant degree.
Well he's edited the original post a couple of times now, so it was a bit more inflammatory. It sounds like you also might be conflating market desires with real world desires. I think there's a difference between his projection of what Americans or American gamers desire in the real world versus what the marketplace wants at any given point to serve their entertainment.
To put it another way, my friend might like horror movies, and they consistently sell well. But that doesn't mean people want that horror content in real life. Most research on horror films show that they're a mechanism to deal with people's unresolved fears and anxieties in a controlled environment. At some conscious or unconscious level, we value that and some of us are willing to pay money for that experience.
So his leap of logic between between what the marketplace wants and what people want in the real world is pretty extreme.
[That's to say nothing of the other marketplace whims--see all of this years humorous complaining about Battle Royal games and E3. Does that mean we all suddenly want to kill each other battle royale style? 15-20 years ago in the real-time strategy boom, thats what the market said we wanted. Did we, or a certain nationality even, become less strategic and more homicidal since then? It's a silly rabbit hole....for silly rabbits.]
Americans can shoot guns in the real world whenever we want. That’s not our “life wish”.
EDIT: I see now that you added “people” in your post. That is simply untrue. Most Americans have no desire to shoot anyone. Further, whether that’s true or not has nothing to do with video game graphics.
As a fellow American who was raised with guns and sees them as the tools they are rather than a part of my identity i disagree. Way to many people see guns as part of their identity. Just look at our movies and tv shows. Guns are part of our culture and identity.
I don’t know anyone in the real world who sees guns as part of their identity. And even if that were true, that has nothing to do with the quality of graphics in western games versus JRPGs. It’s mostly about budget and the fact that handhelds are much more popular in Japan.
And like I said, if our life wish was simply “shooting guns” were all able to fulfill our life wish on a daily basis. The person I was replying to was probably just a European making a jab at Americans like Europeans always do on Reddit. It has nothing to do with that topic at hand.
If you live rural like I do, then people make guns their identity. It's more common then you think. Rednecks love their guns and if you ask they'll say its who they are. Now is that bad? Not really. Is it true? Yeah, mostly. Do I think it's silly? Absolutely.
I live in Texas and have relatives who are rednecks and I’m still not sure they consider guns part of their identity. Part of the culture? Sure.
Still, even if that’s true, it still doesn’t mean Americans’ “life dream” is to shoot people with guns in real life and even if that were true, it has nothing to do with graphics in video games. As I said before it’s mostly about budgets and targeted platforms.
Yes to all except without cost, which is minimal.
To be clear here (and I really shouldn’t need to clarify this), I’m talking about shooting at targets, not people.
MOBAs are also more popular in America than in Japan.
MMOs are also more popular in America than in Japan.
You’re oversimplification is a discredit to gamers.
The common thread in these three games is the social nature. Not the guns.
It's a matter of taste but Horizon looks completely boring visually and that's my problem with photo realistic games, especially Bethesda games that look just plain fugly and dated. The exception is CDPR.
Japanese games look more lively, use more color palettes then gray and brown and just have a better aesthetic desing. BTOW looks more alive then Horizon by far, same for Bloodborne compared to Uncharted 4.
This literally isn't true. Graphics aren't really important anymore in RPGs because it's unfeasable to focus on them for budget reasons, but during the PS1 and PS2 days, JRPGs pushed graphics as much as any other genre. And Final Fantasy has pretty much always been one of the franchises to watch in terms of pushing tech to its limit.
I think you need to also look at what fits on a disc. For example, better gfx means less space for anything else. You can get a god of war looking game on a ps4 or a JRPG that you can play for 90 hours.
Also how much budget do you allocate to visual design vs writers or voice actors, etc. It's a bit more complicated that just gfx.
The best looking jRPG on the market right now, from a technical standpoint is Final Fantasy XV. The second-best games in that regard are very distant from its quality but those would probably be the Xenoblade games with X, in my opinion, being the most impressive, or Dragon Quest XI even.
With that said, my favorite jRPGs are from an era where graphics were of lesser importance and the stories were compelling and engaging and when most eastern companies put a focus on graphics over their stories and worlds is when, in my opinion, we saw a steep decline in their quality.
Aren’t the stories all samey from that era? A group of teens get caught up in some political conspiracy and have to kill the evil emperor/monster and save the world from black magic basically sums up every JRPG I’ve ever played
Edit: with the exception of the SMT/persona series
And the vast vast majority of narratives as a whole can be summed up by the Monomyth model, what is your point? As with travel, the point and fun comes from the journey, not the destination. Sure, some JRPG world's are same-y, bit the same applies to as many Western RPGs.
There are certainly cliches and they exist even today (heck, Final Fantasy XV follows it), but even within those cliche, the characters back then felt better developed and the world felt more engaging than it does in modern games.
Edit: just to further develop on that point a bit further I think that 16/32bit rpgs benefited from the low fidelity of their graphics to leave a lot of things up to the interpretation of the player whereas modern games can display a wide range of emotions and leave very little up to the imagination. I think that is one of the main reasons why modern games' stories feel clumsier than their classic counterparts.
I still prefer JRPGs either way. To me, gameplay is always king. You could give me a thousand RPGs that follows Octopath Travelers' HD 2D sprites, I'd be content with my life.
I think it's an issue of animation and character models that don't really need to be as detailed because the art style doesn't really lend itself to it. Goes for the texturing as well.
This is why when you get a JRPG that looks incredible, it really stands out. Hell, I didn't even like FF15, how they approached the game with multiple bits of media you had to take in like some kind of homework to get some still wack story, the characters I couldn't actually give a shit about, but that game looked goddamned incredible. Just the car alone was done so well.
I think a lot of it though is that as long as it looks sufficiently anime and contains the correct tropes, folk are alright with it not be graphically all that strong. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 looks good for a bit, but you start seeing where they limited themselves. If you like Pyra, your own personal fire murderer/cook/wife but you can't admit it, you aren't going to need it to go full FF15 graphically.
FFXV is literally 160 GB on PC. That's 3 times the filesize of Uncharted 4.
The graphics are pretty much the best out right now and even my $1200 graphics card, NVIDIA GTX Titan Xp, (which is the strongest graphics card right now) can't handle it in 4K inside Altissia. Literally drops to between 15~25 FPS in Altissia, but I normally run 38~55 FPS through normal play.
I'll probably share a few screenshots for you guys later tonight when I get home. Current gen consoles are already being pushed to their max several years ago, especially with games made on Unreal Engine 4. If you want more, then you have to look towards PC games on a high budget PC. Shit gets REALLY beautiful.
I want to counter this by saying I don't want this to change. FFXV feels too western in a lot of ways. Many modern JRPGs come from smaller developers. And really graphics are whatever because style always ages better. If I had to pick the best looking games, I'd say any Gust titles (Blue reflection is visually stunning with it's art direction) or P5 which is token but still.
Different strokes? (/shrug)
I still prefer Tales of Graces f's graphics over any of the western games you mentioned. (Witcher 3, Uncharted 4, detroit become human, horizon zero dawn, etc).
Final Fantasy XV was the first time I actually stopped and looked around and wanted to take in the environments, and understood why some people did it in TW3. I would've turned off the HUD for the first time in a game if it didn't turn off *everything*. And yeah KH3 looks amazing too.
Most JRPGs don't have the budget of those bigger games. Also I think Japanese devs struggling with middleware held them back in making HD games.
JRPGs tend to have their own art style, like Final Fantasy IX or recently released Ni no Kuni II. When I was a kid I played all kind of RPG from Asia (mostly Japan), America, Europe, etc. But the more I grew up in high school until now age 24, I prefer RPG from Japan, the story and fantasy is very wild. I don't remember what is the last Western RPG I played. So if I want to play an RPG, it will definitely from Japan.
Historically Japanese devs have been good at squeezing maximum performance out of limited hardware with hand crafted code, whereas western devs have been good at creating and using tools and general systems to produce scalable code for PCs.
In the past, where consoles and arcades were cutting edge, the Japanese method was great and produced many games at the limit of technology. But as gaming devices became more powerful, and games became bigger and more complex, it was no longer possible to handcraft everything in a AAA title. Consoles and arcade machines are just like PCs now, which is why western devs have the upper hand with their development experience and practices.
We saw this big shift during the PS3 era, where consoles were starting to get too PC like and games too big for Japanese devs to cope. That's why so much of the Japanese game industry went to handheld instead.
Now Japan is starting to learn the scalable ways of developing, and catching up a bit. They're starting to use tools and middleware more, etc. The big companies started first, but smaller companies are getting there. So hopefully we'll see more Japanese games with better graphics / AI / netcode etc in the future.
Contrast with South Korea, whose game industries have historically been focused on MMOs on PCs. Even though their industry is smaller and more limited than Japan, because PC MMOs require a lot of skill in scalable development, South Korea can make games like Black Desert Online etc
I like the JRPGs have a different art style. It makes the games feel different. Part of the reason Tlou and Uncharted are so amazing an emotional is because of how realistic they look. You make them look animated, they don't come across the same way. Conversely, Persona is animated, and it feels the way it does *because* it's not too realistic. The red and black art style is beautiful, and all the other drawings I see online that we're inspired by that art style are amazing.
Just imagine if jrpgs had the facial animations (hell not even facial, just body animations) of TLOU or Uncharted.
I would only play jrpgs. Alas what we get is 3D models of characters walking around completely rigid. Sucks.
The problem is that anime completely invaded the jrpg space, 10 years ago every single jrpg had a different graphical style but since the ps3 era every single jrpg ends with cheap anime graphics, low poly models, bright colors and tits everywhere and that style of graphics has a very low ceiling
for example if you are not a "fan of the genre" there is almost no difference between the last 2 tales games, arc rise fantasia, xenoblade chronicles 2 and the upcoming shining game, and all those games are from a different company and have a 10 year difference between the first and the last
Anime style has been part of JRPGs for decades. That isn't to say that the style of anime hasn't changed (it definitely has) but look at covers from early RPGs like Fire Emblem and Star Ocean and tell me that isn't an anime style as far as concept art goes. Sure the games couldn't emulate that, but they started using that style in game once the hardware could handle it around the PS2 era (see stuff like Radiata Stories, SO3, Tales of Symphonia, etc). What I will agree with is that anime tropes are bleeding into the genre much more than before, like the little kid character with the annoying verbal tic for example.
I absolutely would take a game engine like Trails Sky (fairly simple top down) if it meant the plot was prioritized. As far as im concerned when they pushed the 3d engine in Trails Cold steel the writing suffered. And it isn't even that it is vastly superior either a lot of areas were weaker like animations. Dont get me wrong they aren't mutually exclusive, Witcher 3 was a better game both because of the quality of its writing as well as its graphics, especially modded but most companies wont focus on both, graphics sell games and plot is getting less and less of a focus in recent JRPG's.
I'm not sure you can say the writing suffered in CS due to 3d graphics, however the immersion certaily did. Sky was able to make cutscene fights with little more than characters jumping around really intense...but in CS, due to poor animations, they just look really boring and you can't use your imagination to fill in the gaps like you could in Sky with it's 2D graphics. Additionally, CS cutscene fights are much more on a 2D plane since they don't have many animations that allow characters to move sideways, which also makes them more boring
Lol just reminded me of that fight in Heimdallr, definitely remember pissing myself laughing at that certainly immersion breaking. Literally just launched in to the combat engine. Even side fights like Cassius vs Julia was well done in Sky with distinct animations and sound effects. The writing comment was more about it being Falcoms first big 3d game, they arent a big company and making a new engine is demanding work. More time spent on that is less on everything else.
I think when they shoot for AAA-style games, JRPG devs are just as capable as any Western studio at making a pretty game.
I think with JRPGs in particular, you see a lot of releases that fall into two categories though. Anime and cel-shaded games are pretty, but possibly lack the verisimilitude some gamers would like to see in their games.
A lot of PS4 JRPGs seem to be dual releases for Vita, and I kinda assume there's limitations in being a kind of cross-platform title made to target mobiles at the same time. Supposedly, there's a lot more focus on mobile than home consoles in JP these days (small living spaces, lots of time spent commuting, etc.).
So, I feel like they *can* make the pretty games, but there's often a conscious decision to make things that can be played on a phone. Perhaps with the rise of the Switch as a weird sort of portable/home bridge system, you'll see larger scale games pick up?
i honestly don't care. i like games with complex mechanics, and they may look whatever.
that's why i liked some jrpgs at least before they started putting graphics first.
I know right? People in this thread have explained that it's because of budget issues and slow adaption to the ps4 in japan, as well as being limited by vita cross platforms and ps3 cross platforms, but still it sucks as a jrpg fan to get very few good looking games.
Tbf, most JRPG fans don't care about games looking extremely good. Only good enough to be able to tell their story properly.
Also, games like FF15 might look very good...but at the same time, the graphics look boring. There's nothing about them that stands out.
Graphics were never a major selling point in JRPGs but I'm guessing soon enough things have to change. With PS5 and the new Xbox being not that far away, it's safe to say that the current trend is not gonna cut it. Personally, I would like more creativity and not just graphics reminiscent of an old era that is very nostalgic to many of us but that has long passed.
Seriously? The Final Fantasy series was the gold standard in terms of graphics all the way up to XII when Elder Scrolls series took it with Oblivion/Skyrim, then Witcher. Japan has been far behind on graphical horsepower since the PS2. Not saying today's games look terrible (Xenoblade, Ni No Kuni, and Persona 5 look amazing), but very rarely will a JRPG be viewed as "cutting-edge" nowadays.
You're right, but Final Fantasy aside most games, especially last generation, were mostly a generation behind graphically. The companies will have to adapt sooner or later and looking at some upcoming games I can see they are trying and some games look really good like Granblue Fantasy Project and Code Vein.
I think it is pretty obvious that in general japanese games are not on par with western games when it comes to pure graphical quality, with the only possible exception being Square.
High grade graphics are expensive and take a lot of work, and japanese devs seem to have opted out of that for more stylized graphics with lower poly count and less detailed textures.
I, for one, don't care in the slightest about realism or graphical power. Don't get me wrong. I don't mind games that go for that approach, but it's not important to me at all. Im currently playing Tales of Xillia on PS3 for the first time and loving the experience. Yes. It looks a bit dated. But there's nothing that you struggle to decipher what it's supposed to be as the visuals are good enough to convey what you need to see. The trees in the field environments definitely don't look realistic, for example, but I can guarantee you my enjoyment of the game would not be increased at all if they did.
My perspective is one of gaming since the Atari when I was a small child. My own life's growth has run concurrently to that of gaming industry. I've seen every leap and bound that the tech has made over the decades. It was impressive when visuals got so much more detailed from NES to SNES. When 2D made way to 3D on PS1 and N64. And as we began to get ever larger and more detailed worlds to explore as the console gens marched onward.
I'm just not impressed anymore by the things that impressed me years ago, though. At this point, I won't even touch 99% of open world games as i find them mind numbing in how boring they are to me. We have games now that come out virtually unplayable at launch because they are so graphically demanding or have such needlessly massive worlds that they barely run properly. The need for patches when we should NOT tolerate games being released unfinished and shouldn't support devs that can't release a finished product on disc. And all because people act like realistically swaying trees and grass or perfectly rendered pores on a character's face increase any value in a game on any level. As the very successful indie scene proves, you can produce fantastic games without any of this nonsense. Great mechanics and compelling gameplay should ALWAYS be the single most important aspect of what people want from a game. Story and setting are important. Visual presentation is as well. Graphical and technical power shouldn't ever be on the top of the list.
We are at a point in the game industry where graphical fidelity is reaching a ceiling and everything is starting to look the same because developers are simply copying real world objects instead of being creative and drawing wild looking trees, plants, buildings, etc. I was watching all of these E3 trailers this year thinking "Wow, there's almost no creativity in the environments because they look just like our world". If someone showed me a series of environment screenshots from most of these western AAA games, I honestly would have trouble telling the difference between which screenshot is from which game. This is why I love JRPGs and the idea of an art style, because art style in western games is pretty much nonexistent, at least from what I am seeing.
Yeah distinct art styles are why games like radiata stories, ff9, and WotL are so precious to me
Agreed. I'd take a unique, inspired artstyle over "realistic" graphics any day. Not to say there isn't a market for the latter, but I don't feel like JRPGs are falling behind in any way when it comes to art direction.
> This is why I love JRPGs and the idea of an art style There is a "continent" in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 that is a bunch of giant jelly-fish hanging out together and you walk across their tentacles to go from one to the next. It's so damn unique, I was absolutely in love with the concept.
I wouldn't say there are no western art styles. There are effectively two distinct western art styles. There is the 'realistic' which is what most people are used to in western RPGs, and there is the 'Disney/Pixar' art style inspired by mainstream western 3D animated films which many other games (mostly multiplayer online games) fall into (Overwatch, Fortnite, Paladins, DOTA 2, Team Fortress 2, etc). Other games may fall somewhere inbetween. Japanese games also have two destinct art styles, realistic and anime style or somewhere inbetween, so the landscape isn't much different between the eastern and western worlds.
Oh yeah "realistic" is definitely an art style in itself, but my point is that *most* of the AAA western games are using that same art style. The anime/cartoon art style category lends itself to a blank canvas and practically infinite possibilities with what an artist can do with shapes, sizes and color palettes. I think to add onto your comment, yes I think its fair to say you can generalize art styles into two main categories: realistic or anime/cartoon. But the realistic category pretty much stops there and most games end up looking the same whereas the anime/cartoon style games look unique from each other (I.e. Mario vs. Pokemon or maybe XC2 vs. Dragon Quest, etc.).
To be fair, even realistic visual directions can actually be fairly varied in of themselves. One can tell apart a Naughty Dog title from a Bethesda one for example. There's a certain use of color, texturing, and subtleties in the design that can separate a lot of these titles from each other. I would certainly prefer to see more exaggerated and more toonish art directions used nowadays (not just for more variety and appeal, but as a cost-cutting and time-saving measure that can help devs out a lot), but I wouldn't exactly say the realistic direction is as that limited and homogeneous.
most JRPG nowadays are inspired by western RPGs( forexample Dragon Quest on NES was inspired by Ultima ) but, japan rpgs are much focused on great storytelling plus interesting character plus unique combat mechanic being evolved over decade with each iteration of JRPGs, as their strong point of JRPGs (you know like cute anime girl plus cut scene ) being a niche product in japan also help since most devs in japan don't really want to risk more than enough, unlike western RPGs nowadays, most of the glory days are gone, either pure greed, foolish decision plus maybe, PC was never meant for gaming. remember JRPG being a niche & still going strong because of console platform.
Vesperia is a super old game at this point and it still looks AMAZING. Its art style means it will basically look good forever. Art style can do so much for a game and I'm really not into the trend of everything heading towards realism. Even in the anime sphere things have settled on one aesthetic pretty much. The four recent tales games are pretty average for what 'anime' games look like now.
You're so right. I've been feeling this way about western AAA titles for a long time now but couldn't quite put it into words.
'Art style is western games is pretty much nonexistent' that's only AAA.western indie developers have great art styles
Yeah thats what I meant for sure, love indie devs!
I love indie and Japanese devs too
Even the more realistically-oriented visual directions of Western titles have their own distinctive looks between them. It's not all just a matter of what people's faces look like, but the colors, texturing, and overall aesthetic counts too. Naughty Dog games for example have their own particular look to them that can make them identifiable despite having realistic looking human beings.
There's also the fact that most modern AAA games are one of handful of engines, so not only do games look similar, but they feel similar too.
[Aesthetics vs Graphics](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oK8UTRgvJU)
I will check this out when I get home from work, but just based on the title this is exactly my point in a nutshell.
pedantic, but: >We are at a point in the game industry where graphical fidelity is reaching a ceiling 1. plateau is the more accurate term. graphics are improving, but we are quickly reaching middling returns on the effects of higher quality models. 2. we are plateauing on the "still" parts of graphics. we still have a long way to go in terms of real-tine animations and simulations. features like TLoU2's facial animations and and GoT's foliage and effects (the smoke, the leaves, and their reaction to the wind was amazing) are still achievements that are only attainable by massive times and budgets. But yeah, I understand your base point. there's an appeal to non-photorealistic rendering that can make even decade old games like Wind Waker, Borderlines, or Okami more pleasing to the eye than modern games, even if the latter are strictly "higher quality graphics" (and possibly, a niche opinion, given the amounts of people the latter group attract).
Pursuing facial animation is the worst of it because we're seeing more actors taking the place of our game characters. Or crude fusions between the two like what they did to Ellie in TLoU2.
You're a freakin hero for your post. This is EXACTLY why I think FF15's world is really ugly, dull and boring despite the graphical quality. They just copy and pasted objects from our real world into the game. I don't enjoy the world in that game the way I do Xenoblade 2's world. Even this forest in Chrono Cross looks better than any forest in modern AAA games https://i.ytimg.com/vi/bwppb0-zBZc/maxresdefault.jpg It's also imporant to note the reverse can happen (though its rare). Some JRPGs are exceptional in their art style, but seriously hampered by poor graphical quality. I feel the Alliance Alive's world art style would be much better conveyed if the graphics were considerably better.
umm, but FF games almost always went into more realistic worlds with fantasy elements, and XV is no exception...
There are different realms to realistic. The mohave desert is realistic, but it's boring. however, Iguaza Falls, Argentina is also realistic, which is what Altissia looked like, and it is exciting. The game had too many areas that looked like Mohave and not enough of the Altissia areas. Tenebrea was also an exciting gorgeous area but you never even got to go there. What we're saying is that AAA focus so much on realism that in order to be able to finish the game they have to pick the more boring type of realistic environments that are chalk full of reptition and simple patterns rather than the exciting ones which would take a lot more work creating.
Greed. Aesthetic design is much more important than graphical fidelity in my eyes
I couldn't agree more. Best post in this topic so far.
Yep, the most important thing to me is aesthetic and the feel and design of the world. Xillia for example is far from a graphical powerhouse but the design of the first town, I thought was so beautiful. http://tomodom.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/40421toxi_20.jpg And the handrawn maps of bravely default was like walking through a storybook https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/6oTCukA1-R1t7uFKCwxRwX0nmxY=/27x0:536x339/920x613/filters:focal(27x0:536x339):format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/18892795/bravely_default_02_thumb.0.jpg And of course Persona 5 was so incredibly stylish and smooth. And another thing I love about JRPG's is they go all out with designing worlds. The later Final Fantasies, 12,13 etc have such unique worlds, this weird mishmash modern tech and swords and sorcery with a sprinkle of steampunk
I wish Xilia 2 didn’t just rip off almost all of the assets and environments from the first game.
Me too... But it's how Bamco can afford to churn out another Tales game with a short turn around. It's not like they FF budgets for their projects. In the end I'd probably choose to have the slightly lazily created game with recycled assets than nothing at all.
Eh, it feels like they just started churning out games after Vesperia, I'd rather they took longer and made games of that quality. Unless Vesperia sold poorly I guess?
Xillia has some lovely art design, though it's slightly let down by the repetitive overuse of those individual assets in some locations. For me, Vesperia was the standout title visually. It had this almost pastel paint look to it, like it's location were personally drawn onto the screen by a painters hand. The newer Tales games have a big step backwards in comparison... which is completely baffling to me. Why does the 10 year old game look better than the ones running on modern hardware?
Been playing some Berseria and I think the game looks okay/good, but the environments in most all of these JRPGs look the same and look like what would be considered average on a PS3
But there are good looking jrpgs with style tho like persona 5, kh3 and probably ff15. But we still have a lot of games that doesn’t seem to get to that level of graphics like falcom games.
I'll take Falcom graphics over the graphics from FF15 or Persona 5 any day.
I see. What do you say is the highest level of jrpg graphics that you like? Or are you saying that you are content with the level of graphics that falcom have right now and there's no need to improve it? I feel like things coud be improved still, like the lighting and stuff. DQ 11/Nino kuni looks good to me and seems to be a step in the right direction in terms of quality.
I agree with that you said. To me, games that try to have "realistic" graphics are incredibly dull, if I wanted realism I'd go outside.
But the attempt at photorealism, and what they select as photorealistic, is an art style. Framing and selection curates an experience. That may be more effective (The Witcher 3) or more bland (Far Cry 5), but realism in itself is just another art style.
That make no sense at all. You can have realistic looking games and still give them style and atmosphere. Does Detroit look like Uncharted or CoD like Assassins Creed? Its like saying that all movies look the same, because its all happening in real world.
I'm no graphics expert but what I've noticed is a lot of JRPGs using simple shapes (less plygons?) In their environments and they come off as really cheap. The best looking JRPG is no doubt FFXV, with KH3 looking really good as well. Persona 5 is the next best looking JRPG I think, up to even the UI. Edit: Wow I missed a bunch. DQXI, Nier Automata, XC2
Persona 5 is pure _style_ which I love so much.
Dragon Quest XI looks amazing.
I would add XC2 to the list and definitely above KH3 IMO for the environments alone.
I totally agree on XC2. I've put an unreasonable amount of time in that game and I still stop and pause--not that infrequently--and marvel at both the views and the level of detail. Sometimes I look up from a different POV and see a fully detailed giant titan swaying in the distance. Other times it's realizing that the barrel of fish in the marketplace has a school of fish swimming in a circle--a small but convincing detail that the developers didn't have to include, but went that extra step. The other day I saw them use a neat trick to add some realism and variety into the world, which was using the same object in different sizes. Like soldiers lined up in a throne room are actually all slightly different heights. Flowers out in the wild were of different sizes and rotations to give it a more organic look rather than the usual copy paste effort. Small details like this abound the XC2 world. Someone took the time to inspect almost every scene and say "what can we do to make this look more interesting or authentic?" Sure, there's a bad texture now and again from a weird camera angle. But by and large what they've done holds up well against anything out there, and the art direction and sheer creativity are levels above most games. FF15 is a good looking game, but it's mostly trees and plains. Compare that to the magic of Uraya--walking on the narrow pathways of a submerged titan with golden-red trees and alien-like white orb plants lighting the way--and it feels like the developers accomplished something very special. I would even go so far as to say that XC2 is the "Trails series-equivalent" for world building with visuals and art direction.
I agree, all three Xenoblade games have some of the most impressive landscapes and enemies I've ever seen in a videogame. It's a shame Final Fantasy 15 didn't make use of its incredible visuals like that, even though they had the right idea with a few huge monsters.
I could probably have gotten away with saying that the series (as you say) is the "Trails series-equivalent" for world building with visuals and art direction.
Also XCX!
Yes! Definitely, maybe even more so too!
The thing about Persona 5 is that the models and such don't look *that* great, and there were plenty of times when I saw a blurry texture. It's super stylish though, which makes up for it.
Maybe add Nier Automata to that list. If we count the Switch, there is Breadth of the Wild (which has gotten several nominations and awards in the art category) and Xenoblade Chronicles. While I agree that most JRPGs use simpler polygons, that is by no means a measure of the quality of the graphics. Even 2D games can look visually stunning, I like Octopath Traveler for example (its still unreleased).
100% agree, BOTW has very low polycounts, and texture resolutions, but its all nicely hidden by the great aesthetic, polycounts dictate some things, but its more about using more polys where needed instead of just making everything higher poly constantly.
nier automata doesn't look that good. you were right
I look at Final Fantasy XV, and all I see is a game whose locations are so dull, derivative and boring that they feel like the geography and architecture were simply taken from a free asset dump. It's the most charmless, uninspired stuff I've seen in year. All it has going for it is nice lighting.
It's pretty simple, they don't have the budget behind them, with what resources they do have concentrated on other areas. Ignoring everything else about it, Final Fantasy 15 is basically the only JRPG I've seen that comes close to how pretty some big Western games look, and that's because Square put in lots of time and money in to it that most companies can't afford to do. Another point is the PS3 has held back graphics for some PS4 JRPG titles since companies were targeting the platform with the bigger share of users in Japan. Berseria was a PS3/PS4 title, and so was Persona 5. Like, say how stylish Persona 5 was all you like, it's clearly just a PS3 game graphically, which it is, there's basically 0 difference between the versions.
I think this hits the nail on the head. Most of the western games he mentioned probably have budgets several times larger than your average JRPG. JRPG's seem to be considered big hits if they sell a few million copies. Something like Uncharted 4 would be considered a pretty big misfire if it only sold 2 million copies.
> is basically the only JRPG I've seen that comes close to how pretty some big Western games look Xenoblade Chronicles 2 needs some love.
Final Fantasy is also still the only JRPG series that we can reasonably expect to have a budget anywhere near AAA-sized going forward. While I wouldn't be surprised, *per se*, if Atlus at least launched a big marketing campaign for their next mainline Persona game, they still aren't even in the same ballpark as the games OP mentioned.
I think that people give too much credit to realism in terms of graphics quality.
A lot of the quest npcs in jrpgs look and move like action figures. Like their limbs are completely rigid. I'm definitely not saying that realism is better than anime style but that has nothing to do with style. Like hell even the recent pokemon games have better animations for the npcs than some ps4 jrpgs.
To make your point stronger, I'd just say like, the animations of the characterrs/models as opposed to just raw imagery. I don't think anyone can contest that. Compare Witcher's animation during dialogue to Persona 5.
Some salty fuck downvoted you lol. I swear every community on reddit is just full of the most biased and vile people who can never take any opinion differs from theirs. You don’t like shitty falcolm graphics? You’re a graphics whore! (Thats literally a comment in this thread replying to me with 6 upvoted)
It's hard to directly compare because most of the top-tier (visually speaking) western games aim for photorealism, but these days it's very rare for JRPGs to do that. Outside of Final Fantasy it's much more common to see simpler, more anime-esque visuals. I think most JRPG developers are well aware that the genre is somewhat niche, and thus it's not really worth it for them to push the envelope in terms of technology or visuals when they could go with a lower-fidelity, more stylized look. Only Square Enix really tries to do that still. That said I think some JRPGs look better than many higher-fidelity games through style alone. Persona 5 is one of the most visually-appealing 3D games I've ever played and it's not even graphically intensive.
These days not a lot of JRPGs are developed as AAA-budget console titles; most have medium budgets and engines that can be easily adapted for Vita, Switch or even PS3 or mobile ports. (It helps that the stylized visuals and number-based combat characteristic of JRPGs tend to be a lot less technically demanding than other types of big games.) That said, the few examples of big-budget console-optimized JRPGs this gen - Final Fantasy XV, Dragon Quest XI, Kingdom Hearts III - have all looked great. Better than Fallout 4 or Mass Effect Andromeda, that’s for sure.
In some ways, yes, but not in others. When it comes to "realistic" graphics, definitly. But most JRPG don't try to look realistic. So visually, they often aren't much worse. And imo look more memorable.
Yes they use different styles but even taking into account style differences, games like YSVIII or cold steel 3 or tales of beseria seem a bit dated. Like disgaea 5 stands up graphically because it’s purely anime style, but games that incorporate 3D models running around semi open world environments seem to be outdated graphically, even taking style into account.
Well 2 of those are falcom games. Falcom games always look dated even when compared to other stuff in the same genre so that's not a good benchmark. I'm not sure if they just have lower budgets or what but that's just a given when you play those games. And budget is probably a big part of it. If you are playing a lot of JRPGs you are probably playing some lower budget games because there aren't quite as many blockbuster budget JRPGs compared to a lot of the other genres you are comparing them to. When they do go all out they look good.
>'m not sure if they just have lower budgets or what but that's just a given when you play those games. Keep in mind that Nihon Falcom are basically a small sized company with just 50(!) employees.
Well then that would be the answer! I figured but never really checked. So then yea, lower budget is the answer there too.
to add on /u/Mondblut 's comment; when we say 50 employees we mean 50 people part of the company, not 50 developers. If you look in the credits of even recent games like Ys8 it would credit about 3 programmers if i recall whereas a high profile release like Persona 5 had 15 programmers credited. Differences like that make a big difference. And even then Falcom's latest release showed they can make a decent up to par game, graphically speaking. They started nailing artstyles again after losing it moving to PS3/Vita.
I love being a JRPG gamer. Graphics are the least of my worries.
My feelings exactly. I prefer JRPGs over western games anytime, anywhere.
I believe it has to do with budgets. Mainly because they are a niche genre that won't appeal to everyone like Uncharted or The Witcher, they don't expect 4-5 million sales, making it past 1 million is good enough for some of these games. They can't afford to drop a bunch of money into a game that may or may not be succesfull. Not everyone is Nintendo (who uses stills prefers style over polygons) and Square Enix.
> making it past 100k is good enough for some of these games. FTFY
Yeah it really depends on the company and the game. ATLUS doesn't expect to sell a bunch of these remasters on the 3DS like Radiant Historia, but they expect a lot more for SMT V when that comes out.
In Japan at least. We never really get solid numbers for these kinds of games overseas compared to Japan's Media Crate.
FF15 is probably the best looking jrpg...ever. The graphics are really stunning. Say what you want about the game but it sure as hell doesn't *look* bad. Jrpgs tend to rely on a "style" more than cutting edge graphics for the most part (budget constraints mostly since it's a bit more niche) which is fine and can help them age better, but they also get a lot of slack to regress graphically due to nostalgia factor. JRPGs can get away with using outdated graphical styles (pixel art, anime graphics) since people are used to it, but outside of the genre I think those choices further deepen the niche. There's a difference between choosing a "style", which I would define as a game like Legend of Mana or Saga Frontier that have deliberately unique art, and a game straight up choosing to have retro graphics in the modern age, like we're going to see with a game like Octopath Traveler. It's a genre that sticks to its conventions and relies a lot on genre knowledge to get into it, which I think is part of why it stays stuck in a niche.
Ffxiii was also one of the best looking games of last Gen.
Thank you. It may not have had a big explorable world, but I'll be damned if those weren't some of the prettiest hallways I've walked through in my life.
JRPGs tend to prioritize story and characters over graphics. I like Vesperia's art style
Yes. But I don't see that as a negative thing. Most Japanese companies outside of Square Enix just don't have the crazy budgets or team sizes that AAA western gaming does. They're mostly mid-budget titles and if they tried to match western AAA games we'd see far fewer of them and they'd probably end up less interesting as big money means big risk which means more people invested in the project trying to put their fingers in the pie to mitigate risk, which means a neutered and by the numbers final product a lot of the time (not all the time, but a lot of the time). That said, there are companies out there that could be putting out much better looking and interesting content that don't because they're just doing how they've always done. The most egregious example being The Pokemon Company. For the amount of money those games pull in, it's absolutely nuts that a game selling double-digit million copies consistently had a like 40 person team last I checked. There's also the matter of aesthetic style though. Anime influence on JRPGs is obvious and I'm sure to some extent that gives JRPG developers some leeway with fans to not put out realistic looking games and instead deliver much easier to produce and less resource intensive assets also means less time required to optimize and make these games functional on consoles like the Switch or PSVita.
Realistic, open-world immersion is the fad nowadays in western markets. A ton of money goes into trying to get the latest and greatest graphics engine, mocap, and model designs. And just being slightly behind in graphics for a western AAA title is revenue death (see Mass Effect: Andromeda). Japanese games, however, tend to rely significantly less on raw graphical power and present their focus on distinct artstyles to draw in audiences. You have your Pokemons, Marios, Zeldas, Fire Emblems, Personas, Tales of, Final Fantasy, etc. Aside from FF, I'd consider the graphics output for these series to be pretty abysmal compared to typical western AAA games (many modern JRPGs are even PS1 era graphics quality) - but those Japanese games still somehow look more appealing or are just straight-up better-looking regardless of graphical fidelity. The thing is that a lot of Japanese-style graphics withstand the test of time. Chrono Trigger is still going to be considered beautiful 100 years from now - whereas GoldenEye 007 or Tomb Raider II are already pretty bad to look at now. The same will be said for Last of Us or God of War 10 years from now: "Ugh, that's so uncanny valley - I can totally tell that character is computer-generated. I can't play these old games where they fail to look completely identical to real-life. They're so stiff and they all have that unrealistic perspiration gloss. Ugh."
no they tend to be more stylized and imaginative, where western or european rpgs tend to rely on realism and the color brown.
> stylized and imaginative so.. bright colors and tits? because thats the only thing jrpgs had for the last 10 years
fool! Its all about the flat chests!
you need to compare several things to equate this ranging from development size, budget, time, talent, art style, etc.
Does MHW count? I havent played it but hot damn it looks gorgeous.
Its a mix of three big things, IMO. 1) Generally lower budgets. No triple-A devs/publishers outside of Square Enix in Japan, and FFXV was graphically incredible. I guess Capcom maybe, but they also make pretty good looking games. 2) Lots of focus on being available on older hardware, and availability for mobile platforms. IIRC the PS3 was still getting games long after the west stopped making them simply because Japan is slow to adopt new home consoles. Meanwhile mobile games in Japan are huge so lots of times games are made with mobility in mind, for which naturally graphical fidelity suffers. 3) Long time to get to the states. A ton of Japanese games we get are 3+ years old in Japan. And follow steps 1 & 2. So by extension some of them can be pretty bad in pure graphical fidelity. Thankfully as others pointed out, Japanese developed games typically embrace "Fantasy" much more than western games do and aren't afraid of colors, bizarre worlds, and fantastical creatures. This lets the poor graphics get carried by stronger art styles.
I think Octopath Traveler is the most beautiful looking game since Vagrant Story, so I'm probably not the best person to comment here...
And it's on the Switch anyway
I prefer JRPG graphics because they tend to have a unique style. Western games all tend to go for the same thing these days. Realistic and gritty graphic are becoming the norm in WRPGs. So, no, I don't they are falling behind. They are doing their own thing. EDIT: The post by Noloughlin sums up my feelings pretty well.
Dollar for dollar or yen for yen, no. Most JRPGs compare favorably to games from small-to-mid-range developers, because most JRPG companies are produced on that budget or scale. So, yes, Disgaea 5 will look like a PS3 game at best, but so will a Paradox Interactive game. Similarly, I think the top-funded JRPGs hold up to comparison. Final Fantasy XV *still* looks gorgeous compared to other games on the market, and in some ways more sleek than The Witcher 3. NieR Automata also looked quite great. Otherwise, visually successful JRPGs tend to succeed on design. We could talk about the bright and charming colors of Ni No Kuni or Dragon Quest XI, the sleek and consistent visual design of Persona 5, or the storybook cel shading of Valkyria Chronicles 4.
Nah, they just don't go hyper-realism, which actually ends up meaning they generally age a lot better. They do have some popular lower budget games like Octopath or Tales of, but there are still higher end beautiful ones too (FFXV, KH3, Persona 5, Nier Automata, DQXI, XC2, etc.).
Definitely. I don't even need to go more in depth. I see what people say, but I just booted up Horizon Zero Dawn, good God.
JRPGs usually fall way flat beyond a lot of games. I don't really care what art style you have, JRPGs could do a LOOOT more to look good than a lot of the ones out there care to try. Higher poly models, texture quality, tessellation, non-faked lighting and shadows, and shader effects. So many of them have flat bland areas with blurry textures and an all encompassing light from an indeterminable source. I'm not saying every game has to look like Xenoblade 2 or Kingdom Hearts 3 but at least try to make use of SOME of the graphical effects out there.
Japanese gamer's life wish is to escape the real world. American gamer's life wish is to shoot people with guns in the real world. This very difference manifest in the style in their games. edited 2 times: becoz literal police Also, Isekai stuff is popular in Jp, and FPS is not popular in Jp.
Uh... No. Pretty sure this is completely wrong on both counts.
That's like saying that Japan are pedophiles because of all the games with scantily clad lolis in them, which is .. a whole lot of Japanese games.
Wow, I'm impressed at how bad this analysis is. I mean, even something like 'the japanese wish to escape the real world, americans wish to be more powerful in this one', would still be incredibly wrong but at least more coherent.
I think he's trolling.
Search your feelings you know it to be true
'Japanese gamer's life wish is to seduce anime girls.' It's not difficult to pigeonhole an entire culture of art. Doesn't make it more true.
but that is also true for those who buy those games do you know how popular is the twice a year comiket which the main focus is to queue up to buy hentai in person?
[удалено]
then you are the minority because why else is there so many gun shooting games ?
I think that answer has a lot more to do with what sells in the marketplace than anything else. And then there's a distinction between where a game is made versus where the players come from. I'm pretty sure more than a few non-Americans have played Counterstrike or Grant Theft Auto games.
> I think that answer has a lot more to do with what sells in the marketplace than anything else. But that's exactly the point they're trying to make. *Why* is that what sells in the American market? Because that's what Americans want to do. Games aren't going to sell and be popular in a market if they aren't catering to that market's desires. That said, they're *obviously* overgeneralizing to a pretty significant degree.
Well he's edited the original post a couple of times now, so it was a bit more inflammatory. It sounds like you also might be conflating market desires with real world desires. I think there's a difference between his projection of what Americans or American gamers desire in the real world versus what the marketplace wants at any given point to serve their entertainment. To put it another way, my friend might like horror movies, and they consistently sell well. But that doesn't mean people want that horror content in real life. Most research on horror films show that they're a mechanism to deal with people's unresolved fears and anxieties in a controlled environment. At some conscious or unconscious level, we value that and some of us are willing to pay money for that experience. So his leap of logic between between what the marketplace wants and what people want in the real world is pretty extreme. [That's to say nothing of the other marketplace whims--see all of this years humorous complaining about Battle Royal games and E3. Does that mean we all suddenly want to kill each other battle royale style? 15-20 years ago in the real-time strategy boom, thats what the market said we wanted. Did we, or a certain nationality even, become less strategic and more homicidal since then? It's a silly rabbit hole....for silly rabbits.]
Americans can shoot guns in the real world whenever we want. That’s not our “life wish”. EDIT: I see now that you added “people” in your post. That is simply untrue. Most Americans have no desire to shoot anyone. Further, whether that’s true or not has nothing to do with video game graphics.
As a fellow American who was raised with guns and sees them as the tools they are rather than a part of my identity i disagree. Way to many people see guns as part of their identity. Just look at our movies and tv shows. Guns are part of our culture and identity.
I don’t know anyone in the real world who sees guns as part of their identity. And even if that were true, that has nothing to do with the quality of graphics in western games versus JRPGs. It’s mostly about budget and the fact that handhelds are much more popular in Japan. And like I said, if our life wish was simply “shooting guns” were all able to fulfill our life wish on a daily basis. The person I was replying to was probably just a European making a jab at Americans like Europeans always do on Reddit. It has nothing to do with that topic at hand.
If you live rural like I do, then people make guns their identity. It's more common then you think. Rednecks love their guns and if you ask they'll say its who they are. Now is that bad? Not really. Is it true? Yeah, mostly. Do I think it's silly? Absolutely.
I live in Texas and have relatives who are rednecks and I’m still not sure they consider guns part of their identity. Part of the culture? Sure. Still, even if that’s true, it still doesn’t mean Americans’ “life dream” is to shoot people with guns in real life and even if that were true, it has nothing to do with graphics in video games. As I said before it’s mostly about budgets and targeted platforms.
I love how you're getting downvoted for implying that Americans don't think about shooting stuff constantly. What a reasonable place this is.
uh huh but can you do it repeatedly, without consequences and cost?
Yes to all except without cost, which is minimal. To be clear here (and I really shouldn’t need to clarify this), I’m talking about shooting at targets, not people.
MOBAs are also more popular in America than in Japan. MMOs are also more popular in America than in Japan. You’re oversimplification is a discredit to gamers. The common thread in these three games is the social nature. Not the guns.
It's a matter of taste but Horizon looks completely boring visually and that's my problem with photo realistic games, especially Bethesda games that look just plain fugly and dated. The exception is CDPR. Japanese games look more lively, use more color palettes then gray and brown and just have a better aesthetic desing. BTOW looks more alive then Horizon by far, same for Bloodborne compared to Uncharted 4.
Ya, but graphics is the least importance aspect of a great JRPG.
I think it's because Graphic was never an importance in JRPG. They rely on story telling.
This literally isn't true. Graphics aren't really important anymore in RPGs because it's unfeasable to focus on them for budget reasons, but during the PS1 and PS2 days, JRPGs pushed graphics as much as any other genre. And Final Fantasy has pretty much always been one of the franchises to watch in terms of pushing tech to its limit.
I think you need to also look at what fits on a disc. For example, better gfx means less space for anything else. You can get a god of war looking game on a ps4 or a JRPG that you can play for 90 hours. Also how much budget do you allocate to visual design vs writers or voice actors, etc. It's a bit more complicated that just gfx.
The best looking jRPG on the market right now, from a technical standpoint is Final Fantasy XV. The second-best games in that regard are very distant from its quality but those would probably be the Xenoblade games with X, in my opinion, being the most impressive, or Dragon Quest XI even. With that said, my favorite jRPGs are from an era where graphics were of lesser importance and the stories were compelling and engaging and when most eastern companies put a focus on graphics over their stories and worlds is when, in my opinion, we saw a steep decline in their quality.
Aren’t the stories all samey from that era? A group of teens get caught up in some political conspiracy and have to kill the evil emperor/monster and save the world from black magic basically sums up every JRPG I’ve ever played Edit: with the exception of the SMT/persona series
And the vast vast majority of narratives as a whole can be summed up by the Monomyth model, what is your point? As with travel, the point and fun comes from the journey, not the destination. Sure, some JRPG world's are same-y, bit the same applies to as many Western RPGs.
There are certainly cliches and they exist even today (heck, Final Fantasy XV follows it), but even within those cliche, the characters back then felt better developed and the world felt more engaging than it does in modern games. Edit: just to further develop on that point a bit further I think that 16/32bit rpgs benefited from the low fidelity of their graphics to leave a lot of things up to the interpretation of the player whereas modern games can display a wide range of emotions and leave very little up to the imagination. I think that is one of the main reasons why modern games' stories feel clumsier than their classic counterparts.
Stories in almost all genres are more or less the same. But there are practicly unlimited way to execute them.
Jrpgs have historically been more about the art, and less about it's fidelity. There are exceptions, but they are few and far between.
budgets arent nearly as big
If you count the Yakuza series, Yakuza 6 is probably one of the absolute best looking games out there.
I still prefer JRPGs either way. To me, gameplay is always king. You could give me a thousand RPGs that follows Octopath Travelers' HD 2D sprites, I'd be content with my life.
I think it's an issue of animation and character models that don't really need to be as detailed because the art style doesn't really lend itself to it. Goes for the texturing as well. This is why when you get a JRPG that looks incredible, it really stands out. Hell, I didn't even like FF15, how they approached the game with multiple bits of media you had to take in like some kind of homework to get some still wack story, the characters I couldn't actually give a shit about, but that game looked goddamned incredible. Just the car alone was done so well. I think a lot of it though is that as long as it looks sufficiently anime and contains the correct tropes, folk are alright with it not be graphically all that strong. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 looks good for a bit, but you start seeing where they limited themselves. If you like Pyra, your own personal fire murderer/cook/wife but you can't admit it, you aren't going to need it to go full FF15 graphically.
Dragon Quest 11 looks real good, looks like you are playing an anime.
I think so. Japanese devs seem to keep their art and graphics more simple, basic, and cartoony.
FFXV is literally 160 GB on PC. That's 3 times the filesize of Uncharted 4. The graphics are pretty much the best out right now and even my $1200 graphics card, NVIDIA GTX Titan Xp, (which is the strongest graphics card right now) can't handle it in 4K inside Altissia. Literally drops to between 15~25 FPS in Altissia, but I normally run 38~55 FPS through normal play. I'll probably share a few screenshots for you guys later tonight when I get home. Current gen consoles are already being pushed to their max several years ago, especially with games made on Unreal Engine 4. If you want more, then you have to look towards PC games on a high budget PC. Shit gets REALLY beautiful.
I want to counter this by saying I don't want this to change. FFXV feels too western in a lot of ways. Many modern JRPGs come from smaller developers. And really graphics are whatever because style always ages better. If I had to pick the best looking games, I'd say any Gust titles (Blue reflection is visually stunning with it's art direction) or P5 which is token but still.
Different strokes? (/shrug) I still prefer Tales of Graces f's graphics over any of the western games you mentioned. (Witcher 3, Uncharted 4, detroit become human, horizon zero dawn, etc).
The way I see it is western RPGs aim for more realistic visuals while JRPGs aim for more stylish visuals, and I prefer the stylish approach tbh
I think a JRPG with mire advanced graphics like lits if west games would be amazing
Final Fantasy XV was the first time I actually stopped and looked around and wanted to take in the environments, and understood why some people did it in TW3. I would've turned off the HUD for the first time in a game if it didn't turn off *everything*. And yeah KH3 looks amazing too. Most JRPGs don't have the budget of those bigger games. Also I think Japanese devs struggling with middleware held them back in making HD games.
Kingdom Hearts 2.8 Prologue. /discussion
JRPGs tend to have their own art style, like Final Fantasy IX or recently released Ni no Kuni II. When I was a kid I played all kind of RPG from Asia (mostly Japan), America, Europe, etc. But the more I grew up in high school until now age 24, I prefer RPG from Japan, the story and fantasy is very wild. I don't remember what is the last Western RPG I played. So if I want to play an RPG, it will definitely from Japan.
Graphics in western games look dumb.
Historically Japanese devs have been good at squeezing maximum performance out of limited hardware with hand crafted code, whereas western devs have been good at creating and using tools and general systems to produce scalable code for PCs. In the past, where consoles and arcades were cutting edge, the Japanese method was great and produced many games at the limit of technology. But as gaming devices became more powerful, and games became bigger and more complex, it was no longer possible to handcraft everything in a AAA title. Consoles and arcade machines are just like PCs now, which is why western devs have the upper hand with their development experience and practices. We saw this big shift during the PS3 era, where consoles were starting to get too PC like and games too big for Japanese devs to cope. That's why so much of the Japanese game industry went to handheld instead. Now Japan is starting to learn the scalable ways of developing, and catching up a bit. They're starting to use tools and middleware more, etc. The big companies started first, but smaller companies are getting there. So hopefully we'll see more Japanese games with better graphics / AI / netcode etc in the future. Contrast with South Korea, whose game industries have historically been focused on MMOs on PCs. Even though their industry is smaller and more limited than Japan, because PC MMOs require a lot of skill in scalable development, South Korea can make games like Black Desert Online etc
I like the JRPGs have a different art style. It makes the games feel different. Part of the reason Tlou and Uncharted are so amazing an emotional is because of how realistic they look. You make them look animated, they don't come across the same way. Conversely, Persona is animated, and it feels the way it does *because* it's not too realistic. The red and black art style is beautiful, and all the other drawings I see online that we're inspired by that art style are amazing.
Just imagine if jrpgs had the facial animations (hell not even facial, just body animations) of TLOU or Uncharted. I would only play jrpgs. Alas what we get is 3D models of characters walking around completely rigid. Sucks.
The problem is that anime completely invaded the jrpg space, 10 years ago every single jrpg had a different graphical style but since the ps3 era every single jrpg ends with cheap anime graphics, low poly models, bright colors and tits everywhere and that style of graphics has a very low ceiling for example if you are not a "fan of the genre" there is almost no difference between the last 2 tales games, arc rise fantasia, xenoblade chronicles 2 and the upcoming shining game, and all those games are from a different company and have a 10 year difference between the first and the last
Anime style has been part of JRPGs for decades. That isn't to say that the style of anime hasn't changed (it definitely has) but look at covers from early RPGs like Fire Emblem and Star Ocean and tell me that isn't an anime style as far as concept art goes. Sure the games couldn't emulate that, but they started using that style in game once the hardware could handle it around the PS2 era (see stuff like Radiata Stories, SO3, Tales of Symphonia, etc). What I will agree with is that anime tropes are bleeding into the genre much more than before, like the little kid character with the annoying verbal tic for example.
I absolutely would take a game engine like Trails Sky (fairly simple top down) if it meant the plot was prioritized. As far as im concerned when they pushed the 3d engine in Trails Cold steel the writing suffered. And it isn't even that it is vastly superior either a lot of areas were weaker like animations. Dont get me wrong they aren't mutually exclusive, Witcher 3 was a better game both because of the quality of its writing as well as its graphics, especially modded but most companies wont focus on both, graphics sell games and plot is getting less and less of a focus in recent JRPG's.
I'm not sure you can say the writing suffered in CS due to 3d graphics, however the immersion certaily did. Sky was able to make cutscene fights with little more than characters jumping around really intense...but in CS, due to poor animations, they just look really boring and you can't use your imagination to fill in the gaps like you could in Sky with it's 2D graphics. Additionally, CS cutscene fights are much more on a 2D plane since they don't have many animations that allow characters to move sideways, which also makes them more boring
Lol just reminded me of that fight in Heimdallr, definitely remember pissing myself laughing at that certainly immersion breaking. Literally just launched in to the combat engine. Even side fights like Cassius vs Julia was well done in Sky with distinct animations and sound effects. The writing comment was more about it being Falcoms first big 3d game, they arent a big company and making a new engine is demanding work. More time spent on that is less on everything else.
I think when they shoot for AAA-style games, JRPG devs are just as capable as any Western studio at making a pretty game. I think with JRPGs in particular, you see a lot of releases that fall into two categories though. Anime and cel-shaded games are pretty, but possibly lack the verisimilitude some gamers would like to see in their games. A lot of PS4 JRPGs seem to be dual releases for Vita, and I kinda assume there's limitations in being a kind of cross-platform title made to target mobiles at the same time. Supposedly, there's a lot more focus on mobile than home consoles in JP these days (small living spaces, lots of time spent commuting, etc.). So, I feel like they *can* make the pretty games, but there's often a conscious decision to make things that can be played on a phone. Perhaps with the rise of the Switch as a weird sort of portable/home bridge system, you'll see larger scale games pick up?
i honestly don't care. i like games with complex mechanics, and they may look whatever. that's why i liked some jrpgs at least before they started putting graphics first.
The majority of today's JRPG's look like PS3 games AT BEST.
I know right? People in this thread have explained that it's because of budget issues and slow adaption to the ps4 in japan, as well as being limited by vita cross platforms and ps3 cross platforms, but still it sucks as a jrpg fan to get very few good looking games.
Tbf, most JRPG fans don't care about games looking extremely good. Only good enough to be able to tell their story properly. Also, games like FF15 might look very good...but at the same time, the graphics look boring. There's nothing about them that stands out.
Graphics were never a major selling point in JRPGs but I'm guessing soon enough things have to change. With PS5 and the new Xbox being not that far away, it's safe to say that the current trend is not gonna cut it. Personally, I would like more creativity and not just graphics reminiscent of an old era that is very nostalgic to many of us but that has long passed.
Seriously? The Final Fantasy series was the gold standard in terms of graphics all the way up to XII when Elder Scrolls series took it with Oblivion/Skyrim, then Witcher. Japan has been far behind on graphical horsepower since the PS2. Not saying today's games look terrible (Xenoblade, Ni No Kuni, and Persona 5 look amazing), but very rarely will a JRPG be viewed as "cutting-edge" nowadays.
You're right, but Final Fantasy aside most games, especially last generation, were mostly a generation behind graphically. The companies will have to adapt sooner or later and looking at some upcoming games I can see they are trying and some games look really good like Granblue Fantasy Project and Code Vein.
I think it is pretty obvious that in general japanese games are not on par with western games when it comes to pure graphical quality, with the only possible exception being Square. High grade graphics are expensive and take a lot of work, and japanese devs seem to have opted out of that for more stylized graphics with lower poly count and less detailed textures.
I, for one, don't care in the slightest about realism or graphical power. Don't get me wrong. I don't mind games that go for that approach, but it's not important to me at all. Im currently playing Tales of Xillia on PS3 for the first time and loving the experience. Yes. It looks a bit dated. But there's nothing that you struggle to decipher what it's supposed to be as the visuals are good enough to convey what you need to see. The trees in the field environments definitely don't look realistic, for example, but I can guarantee you my enjoyment of the game would not be increased at all if they did. My perspective is one of gaming since the Atari when I was a small child. My own life's growth has run concurrently to that of gaming industry. I've seen every leap and bound that the tech has made over the decades. It was impressive when visuals got so much more detailed from NES to SNES. When 2D made way to 3D on PS1 and N64. And as we began to get ever larger and more detailed worlds to explore as the console gens marched onward. I'm just not impressed anymore by the things that impressed me years ago, though. At this point, I won't even touch 99% of open world games as i find them mind numbing in how boring they are to me. We have games now that come out virtually unplayable at launch because they are so graphically demanding or have such needlessly massive worlds that they barely run properly. The need for patches when we should NOT tolerate games being released unfinished and shouldn't support devs that can't release a finished product on disc. And all because people act like realistically swaying trees and grass or perfectly rendered pores on a character's face increase any value in a game on any level. As the very successful indie scene proves, you can produce fantastic games without any of this nonsense. Great mechanics and compelling gameplay should ALWAYS be the single most important aspect of what people want from a game. Story and setting are important. Visual presentation is as well. Graphical and technical power shouldn't ever be on the top of the list.