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This Week in Games - Diving Into The Crunchyroll Vault

Holy crap—Popful Mail is coming to the Switch! The original PC-88 side-scrolling RPG will be released on the Japanese Nintendo eShop this July 11th. Sadly, no word yet on an American release, but man, am I hoping... If you're planning on nabbing the Japanese port, just know that only certain menus are in English; the rest of the game is officially untranslated.

Not really sure I'd frame the PS3/360 generation as particularly hostile to JRPGs -- as I recall, the main issues facing the genre were threefold: there simply weren't very many JRPGs being released (especially relative to the golden age that was the prior two generations); of those few that were released, very few were really all that good; and, likewise, of that first few, many were stuck on the Xbox 360, a platform largely catering toward more casual players who were mostly just interested in first-person shooters.

For every genuinely great game like Lost Odyssey or Tales of Vesperia, there were a half-dozen (or more) mediocrities like Resonance of Fate, Infinite Undiscovery, Magna Carta 2, White Knight Chronicles, etc., etc.

And it's not like JRPGs were the only genre affected -- 3D platformers and flight combat games likewise were greatly diminished, arguably to an even greater extent, for similar reasons.

Fluwm wrote:

Not really sure I'd frame the PS3/360 generation as particularly hostile to JRPGs -- as I recall, the main issues facing the genre were threefold: there simply weren't very many JRPGs being released (especially relative to the golden age that was the prior two generations); of those few that were released, very few were really all that good; and, likewise, of that first few, many were stuck on the Xbox 360, a platform largely catering toward more casual players who were mostly just interested in first-person shooters. For every genuinely great game like Lost Odyssey or Tales of Vesperia, there were a half-dozen (or more) mediocrities like Resonance of Fate, Infinite Undiscovery, Magna Carta 2, White Knight Chronicles, etc., etc. And it's not like JRPGs were the only genre affected -- 3D platformers and flight combat games likewise were greatly diminished, arguably to an even greater extent, for similar reasons.

It was primarily JRPG’s that got the most pushback, with games media’s biggest mouthpiece being X-Play, which we’ve already litigated the mask off racism of.

For every genuinely great game like Lost Odyssey or Tales of Vesperia, there were a half-dozen (or more) mediocrities like Resonance of Fate, Infinite Undiscovery, Magna Carta 2, White Knight Chronicles, etc., etc.

Beatdigga wrote:

Fluwm wrote: Not really sure I'd frame the PS3/360 generation as particularly hostile to JRPGs -- as I recall, the main issues facing the genre were threefold: there simply weren't very many JRPGs being released (especially relative to the golden age that was the prior two generations); of those few that were released, very few were really all that good; and, likewise, of that first few, many were stuck on the Xbox 360, a platform largely catering toward more casual players who were mostly just interested in first-person shooters. For every genuinely great game like Lost Odyssey or Tales of Vesperia, there were a half-dozen (or more) mediocrities like Resonance of Fate, Infinite Undiscovery, Magna Carta 2, White Knight Chronicles, etc., etc. And it's not like JRPGs were the only genre affected -- 3D platformers and flight combat games likewise were greatly diminished, arguably to an even greater extent, for similar reasons. It was primarily JRPG’s that got the most pushback, with games media’s biggest mouthpiece being X-Play, which we’ve already litigated the mask off racism of.

Yep. And the lack of Japanese RPGs was only on home consoles--they were otherwise thriving on handheld like the DS or PSP. Nostalgia, Phantasy Star Portable/Zero, the Rune Factory games, Avalon Code, Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core, Final Fantasy: Four Heroes of Light... handheld RPG fans ate well in those days while everyone else was convinced the sky was falling.

End of Eternity/Resonance of Fate was one of the best JRPGs of the generation I have no idea what you're talking about. It had unique combat and fun characters and I'd hardly call it mediocre.

Sadly I don't think the anti-Japanese stigma has really gone anywhere given some of the complaints I usually see online. Only now rather than it just being Adam Sessler making outright racist jokes it's reviewers and people dressing up their anti-Japanese takes in progressive language and concern trolling.

Fluwm wrote:

For every genuinely great game like Lost Odyssey or Tales of Vesperia, there were a half-dozen (or more) mediocrities like Resonance of Fate, Infinite Undiscovery, Magna Carta 2, White Knight Chronicles, etc., etc.

End of Eternity/Resonance of Fate was one of the best JRPGs of the generation I have no idea what you're talking about. It had unique combat and fun characters and I'd hardly call it mediocre.

Will always hold out hope for RPGs stuck on past consoles to get ports.

I think it's unimaginably tone-deaf of Sakaguchi to snub a Lost Odyssey re-release, but then I recall the idiocracy I'd seen from a dev team interview where they were lamenting putting so much detail into the interior settings in that game when "it slowed down dev time and didn't offer players anything substantial". It's sickening, when the game is possibly one of the most artistic and well-written experiences of its generation, stuck on XB360 without access to all of its DLC no less.

Lost Odyssey has literally been part of the Xbox One & Series BC program since 2016, and often goes on sale alongside Blue Dragon (which is also BC), so to call it "stuck on Xbox 360" is just incorrect. You can play LO better than the 360 ever could right now, as long as you own an Xbox.

More than likely Sakaguchi was just being polite (if a bit blunt) with his answer instead of outright saying "We literally can't do anything with LO or BD outside of full-on remakes, and that's a bit too much of a job for us. Plus, Microsoft would have to get involved, and who the hell knows what they're thinking, at this point".