Different strokes for different folks, I love it. :P

I thought it was very weird how long the "tutorial" part is and that it's very much like a visual novel, until it opens up a little after several hours only. But when it finally did and added more gameplay, I actually lost interest. At that point, I'd rather have continued to follow the story in this curious Visual Novel style than deal with the filler content of boring dungeon crawls along samey-looking corridors with repetitive combat encounters or the choosing of extra-curricular activities just to get better at the repetitive combat encounters. I'm not a fan of turn-based JRPGs in general, but this one looked like it might be something different. But it wasn't, the gameplay seems pretty standard. I guess the genre's just not for me.

Compared to western RPGs? I don't know, it feels like those always follow the same tropes and archetypes. There are no surprises and the characters (+ plot) tend to be dull with few exceptions. Only my opinion of course.

Japanese RPGs at least try to stand out and be creative. I don't always like the designs of the characters (I honestly like the western 'look' more), but I definitely prefer the gameplay and presentation of those games.

The story isn't appealing to me, I mean who wants to listen to a bunch of teenagers talk about their lives for hours? It doesn't help that the story has no stakes. I'm not saying that every story has to be about saving the world, but really what is there to care about in the P4 story? So far in my playthrough like 2 people have died, there's no real threat except that the serial killer might throw a few more people in the TV. Drop the supernatural content and it's basically just a Law & Order episode.

Rise is my waifu of choice

I think the problem is the developers trying to put both visual novel and RPG aspects in the same game, resulting in players who like one but not the other not enjoying the game as much as they would if the genres were separated out.

(In my case, I'm interested in the RPG aspect, but not the Visual Novel aspect.)
In my case, the music in many of the games is a major negative factor; it's one of the two reasons I quit SMT: Nocturne (the other being that hard difficulty, which I was playing on, was a bit too much in a game that only lets you save at save points). So, my preference would probably go towards games with more listenable sound tracks, like Last Bible (Revelations: The Demon Slayer).

With that said, I really have no excuse for not playing SMT: Strange Journey: The music is quite good (particularly the random battle theme, which I even used to replace the random battle "music" in Elminage Gothic), and I actually do own a physical copy (for the DS, not the later 3DS remake).

While I agree that WRPGs are often very uncreative in their choice of setting and stories, my impression was that JRPGs are full of tropes and archetypes, too. On the whole, I guess they are a bit more free and creative with regards to the themes, but I don't perceive them as creative with regards to the gameplay which seems very traditional in a lot of cases, with few innovations. But to be fair, JPRGs and WRPGs are such vague categories that include so many different types of games, that it's always a bit misleading to compare them directly. There are several (mostly older) WRPGs that I don't like for the very same reasons that I don't like (many) JRPGs, e.g. repetitive turn-based, static menu combat separate from the gameworld, overabundance of random encounters etc., while there are some JRPG-likes that I enjoyed despite not being a fan the genre in general (Chrono Trigger, South Park, or more action-oriented games like Fortune Summoners, Gurumin etc.). A difference in many (but not all) WRPGs though is that you get to create your own character(s) and that level ups offer real choices, which can make even repetitive gameplay a bit more rewarding, if you're into these kind of things.

I'm not a fan of visual novels either, I just happened to like the presentation* and characters in this game more than the mechanics of the dungeon crawling and the social sim, and the latter were distracting from it.

(* with the exception of the music, that is - the music was terrible, really cringy ... XD)

And then there are JRPGs with character creation. (Dragon Quest 9 is the best example I can think of right now, though of course the SaGa 2 remake on the same system does that as well.)

Dragon Quest 9 does have real choices for level-ups (you get skill points, though fortunately (unlike DQ8) you don't have to spend them right away); SaGa 2 doesn't have level ups in the first place, though it definitely offers real choice in terms of character growth (something that was not exactly common at the time of the game's original release).

I mentioned a SaGa game, and while that game is still clearly a JRPG with an unusual growth system, later SaGa games (starting with Romancing SaGa) might be classified differently, and may sometimes feel a lot like a Japanese-made WRPG.

Then, of course, there's the Wizardry-likes/DRPGs, which often have you creating your own characters. (The game I'm playing right now, Saviors of Sapphire Wings, does not have character creation (though you can customize the characters rather heavily), but Stranger of Sword City Revisited, by the same developer (and included with all copies of SoSW) does.)

This is my favorite type of combat, actually.

I'm well aware, and preferably stripped of anything resembling a story, just focussed on the mechanics, right? That's why we will probably never agree on favorite games in this life. ;)

First impressions of Persona games aren't great, 4 especially. The game gets more interesting later, if only because you're more invested in the characters by then.

FWIW, Persona 4 is easily the least good Persona game out of the three that anyone's ever actually played (3, 4, and 5). Persona 3 has a great story and characters but awful dungeons, and Persona 5 has great dungeons but a much weaker story and inconsistent quality in the social links. Persona 4's bad qualities aren't as bad as either P3 or P5 (though P4's dungeons are ALMOST as bad as the average Tartarus run), but it's good qualities also don't match the high peaks of 3 and 5.

Persona games definitely aren't for everybody. IMO no game should ask you to play it for 10 hours before it gets good. Persona has a tendency to do that (not as badly with 3), but at least the other games in the series do a better job at drawing you in and making you WANT to stick with it, unlike 4 where you have to get past the sauna before you start getting invested.

If you write off P4, nobody would fault you. I would instead suggest playing 3 and/or 5 first, then coming back to 4. P3 FES is emulated really well on PCSX2, P5 (non-Royal) has a PS3 version you could try to emulate but I've never managed to get the emulator to do anything except segfault. I played P5 on a real PS3, and aside from occasional slowdown it's the same as the PS4 (non-Royal) version.

Yeah, you're right. They are full of tropes as well, I completely disregarded that.Quite a few JRPGs f.e. are centered around a school setting, I mean the thread is about Persona 4. xD

I'm more of a fan of real-time-combat, turn-based combat can be fun (like the Shin Megami Tensei series), but as you said, it can be static and tedious.

I do agree that customizing your character or whole party is a great feature that adds a lot to the game. :)
Sadly this feature isn't implemented in JRPGs as often as it should be.


Sorry if this is post an unreadable mess, I'm having a bit of a migraine. :/

One of my favorite RPGs, SaGa 1. is done before the 10 hour mark.
Having been playing Saviors of Sapphire Wings lately, I've started to wonder if it's approach to character customization would work in a Final Fantasy 4 remake, and thinking about it it would be a remake I would like to play.

(FF4 is notable for having a party controlled solely by the plot and no character customization; it's also notable for having 2 different remakes (GBA and DS) that are dissimilar.)

JRPGs tend to have amazing visual creativity and great soundtracks, but in my experience their dialog, exploration and combat are extremely guided and boring.

I like it when it involves positioning and making use of the terrain and such (e.g. Divinity: Original Sin, the Shadowrun trilogy etc.), I just don't find it very immersive when your exploration of the world is interrupted, your characters are transported to a different screen and you just click on the same menu options and watch the same animations again and again. Admittedly, there are JRPGs with tactical positioning in terrain as well, I just haven't had any experience with them yet.

Anyway, headaches suck, I hope you get rid of it soon!

To me, the positioning mechanic just slows down combat. It also has a tendency to overly favor ranged attacks over melee attacks (though the problem is worse in games like Ultima 3-6 and Nox Archaist where you can either move one square or make a ranged attack). I find that the strategic space is big enough without the factor of positioning, particularly when there's mechanics like status ailments, resource management, and the occasional high level ability that affects the very turn structure. (Or, rather, such abilities *should* be high level, at least those that change the number of turns the character gets; Stranger of Sword City Revisited's Clock-up ability is probably too powerful for a level 1 skill.)

When games with non-tactical combat get hard, combat can actually become quite interesting. I've seen this happen in Dragon Quest 2, particularly when fighting enemies by the final save point, where you need to think carefully about each battle. (And in the original version, there are no animations, so no need to worry about watching them every time.) There's some scary enemies there, so you're never safe (not even at max level, unless you're playing a remake and are running from everything), but with practice, you can get to the point where the chance of having a character die is fairly small (not 0, because what if a Blizzard casts Defeat before you act and you get unlucky?). Also, unless you're playing the original Japanese release, the penalty for dying is not severe; just go back to the final save and your party will be revived (on game over, you lose half your gold, but you're well past the final store in the game at this point).

Also, the games of this sort that I play usually don't involve clicking. (Well, in some versions of Bard's Tale 1-3 and the PC version of Elminage Gothic, you *can* click, but that's not the only way to do so, and is not the way I prefer to play those games.)

By the way, what's your opinion on games like Final Fantasy Tactics and Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark? (Those two games, and others like them, have tactical combat, but don't have any exploration outside combat.)


To me, turn-based combat is the reason that I play RPGs; if I want real-time, I'll just play an action game (like a typical Ys game, for example, or a Metroidvania, or even a bit of Celeste).