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By Nelson Schneider - 07/03/11 at 11:10 PM CT
As I briefly mentioned in my E3 Impressions, Nintendo of America has failed, yet again, to confirm localization of three high-quality, first party exclusives, all of which are new intellectual properties: “Xenoblade Chronicles,” “The Last Story,” and “Pandora’s Tower.” Despite the gaming media and fans alike clamoring for these games, Nintendo has stonewalled everyone with such insightful comments as, “We never say 'never,' but we can confirm that there are no plans to bring these three games to the Americas at this time.” Comments like these are meaningless, as game companies – especially Nintendo and Sony – love to take one official position, only to completely reverse that decision a few months later. However, taken at face value, Nintendo of America is being flat-out idiotic by ignoring fan demand for these three RPGs.
Back in the Golden Age, Nintendo ruled the world, one foot astride their first party titles (Mario/Zelda/Metroid), the other foot astride RPGs (specifically those by then-separate SquareSoft and Enix). When Nintendo fell from grace with the N64, the cause of the fall was the lack of RPGs on that console. RPG developers couldn’t fit their epic visions on tiny and expensive cartridges. Many RPG developers were also perfectly happy to continue using sprites, a purposeful weakness of the N64 hardware, instead of switching to polygons. However, the deathblow was losing the next “Final Fantasy” game to Sony’s upstart PlayStation – a console that was initially intended to be devoid of RPGs. Over the next two hardware generations, Sony continued to eat Nintendo’s lunch by providing the definitive home for RPGs. Yet now, that domination has ended. The PlayStation 3 is an RPG wasteland.
But Sony isn’t alone in being devoid of RPGs where once there were many. The entirety of Generation 7 is a desert, with the tally of excellent RPGs looking like this:
Xbox 360: 0
PlayStation 3: 1 (“Valkyria Chronicles”)
Wii: 3 (“Arc Rise Fantasia,” “Fragile Dreams,” and “Final Fantasy 4: The After Years”)
Not only is Nintendo already winning this pathetic race of cripples (with only 3 games!), they also have the best new “Final Fantasy” game of this generation and the imminent release and localization of “Dragon Quest 10.” Those are three important milestones in setting up a platform to be the RPG machine. Yet while Microsoft and Sony continually pander to newbies and PC expatriates who only care about the latest gritty, realistic shooter, Nintendo is content to pander to their new “Blue Ocean” of casual non-gamers, completely ignoring the fact that there is a huge audience of disenfranchised RPG fans just waiting to give them money. Alas, Nintendo thinks we North Americans want garbage like “Fortune Street” more than we want some of the most promising RPGs made in the past 5 years. At least Nintendo of Europe has confirmed localization of “Xenoblade Chronicles” and “The Last Story,” so all of us who speak the Queen’s English can import and play these games on our hacked Wiis (You do have a hacked Wii, right?!).
But really, these types of work-arounds shouldn’t be necessary. Nintendo of America and its fearless leader, Reggie Fils-Aime, should be working to serve their audience, not just focusing exclusively on pinching every penny of profit they can.
On June 22, RPG fans on the IGN Forums decided to do something. They organized a write-in campaign to bombard Reggie with snailmail politely requesting the releases of these three RPGs on North American shores. This initial idea evolved into Operation Rainfall, which features a number of ways for RPG fans to unite en masse and let Nintendo of America know what we want, ranging from mass pre-orders on Amazon.com to a constant stream of Tweets and Facebook messages. As the public voice of MeltedJoystick, I would like to encourage all of our RPG-loving members to participate. But don’t just stop with “Xenoblade Chronicles,” “The Last Story,” and “Pandora’s Tower.” Nintendo is sitting on other first party RPGs that haven’t seen the light of day outside of Japan, and they are a well-known publisher for Square Enix titles in North America. Just look at this list of titles:
“Dragon Quest Anniversary Collection”
“Dragon Quest Monsters: Battle Road Victory”
“The Last Story”
“Pandora’s Tower”
“Takt of Magic”
“Xenoblade Chronicles”
“Zangeki no Reginleiv”
Nintendo is sitting on a gold mine here. All they need to do is look under their own asses! The Wii has already won Generation 7 hands-down, but Nintendo has the opportunity here to cement it as one of the greatest consoles they have ever made and restore their reputation among their oldest, though sometimes wayward, fans. While it is always possible that these games actually are not good, it would be nice if North American gamers were given the opportunity to judge for ourselves.
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Jonzor
Wrote on08/07/11 at 09:59 PM CT
See... the thing... I...
Nope. I said in the last post I was done.
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Nelson Schneider
Wrote on08/07/11 at 06:06 PM CT
Yes, GTA and Oblivion have a lot in common. They both involve dicking-around with side quests and doing whatever you want for the bulk of their gameplay. That's the definition of 'Sandbox.' All of us on the staff agreed that it's a perfectly acceptable sub-genre of Action.
Your example of telling a GTA fan to try Oblivion makes perfect sense to me, provided you're only working from a gameplay perspective. If you're working from a setting perspective, though, you might find that the GTA fan hates Oblivion because it's in a fantasy setting. Personally, I hate the Persona series because of its setting, but I don't deny that those games are RPGs because they clearly are.
I was on the fence about classifying Muramasa as an RPG, but it was the auto-guard feature of the combat system that tipped me over the edge.
Bastion is a perfect example for you to add to a list of RPGs you think are excellent. However, it is a member of the 'hack n slash' sub-category, which rarely matches up with 'excellent.'
As for your other two candidates:
I played Eternal Sonata on PS3. Read my review.
I gave up on the Tales series after three strikes. Every entry in that series that I have played suffers from large amounts of the stuff typical RPG-haters like to rag on (cliched story, anime tropes, etc.).
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Jonzor
Wrote on08/05/11 at 02:57 PM CT
Oh, I also look forward to getting a chance to see if Bastion belongs on the list as well.
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Jonzor
Wrote on08/05/11 at 12:58 AM CT
*sigh*
Fine. I'm gonna make a few comments, and then that'll be that. I've been in forums where people argued if a game deserved to be on a list of "Excellent _______ Games" list because the quality of the game was in doubt... but I don't know that I've ever been in a debate over the GENRE of a game, and my desire to do so remains extremely low.
That being said...
1. Obvlivion being a "sandbox" game blows my mind. "Sandbox" isn't even a genre, I'd argue.
Here's a little experiement I like for you to conduct:
Step #1 - pull up the page for GTA IV.
Step #2 - pull up the page for Oblivion.
Step #3 - pull up the page for any RPG. We'll say... Dragon Age II.
What do you see? I see a website that tells me GTA IV and Oblivion have more in common than Dragon Age II and Oblivion. Good luck looking like a credible website with that little nugget in there. Are you going to go up to someone on the street and say, "Oh, what's that? You liked GTA IV, well then you should try Oblivion!"?
"Sandbox" should be used as a sub-genre (and in the case of GTA IV, it actually IS). But SOMEHOW, someone was in such a rush to label Oblivion as a "sandbox" game to make sure the world finally got set straight that we completely forgot what "sandbox" actually means. So... there are sandbox action games, but not sandbox RPGs? 'Cause that's what this website tells me. Saying a game just "sandbox" tells me nothing about what to expect. If you called Oblivion an RPG, people would at least have SOME idea of what game they'd be playing. You can have sandbox FPS games (Far Cry 2) or you can have sandbox RPGs (Oblivion) or you can have sandbox action games (GTA IV). This notion that "sandbox" completely sums up Oblivion as a game is comcial. It's an RPG.
2. Mass Effect is not an FPS. This is a no brainer. If you can classify Resident Evil 4 or 5 as third-person shooter (and do so correctly) then you can at least get the camera perspective right for Mass Effect. But once again, we're in such a rush to make sure NO ONE CALLS MASS EFFECT AN RPG that it actually got flat-out mislabeled. Here's another little experiment:
Step #1 - pull up the page for Muramasa: the Demon Blade.
Step #2 - pull up the page for Mass Effect.
What do you see? I see that Muramasa (a personal favorite among some of the Melted Joystick staff) is labeled as THREE WHOLLY DIFFERENT GENRES. Mass Effect, a game some people on the site may have a grudge against, is only (incorrectly) labeled as an FPS. Granted, I'm only halfway through, but I would argue whether or not Muramasa is so difficult to pin down from a genre standpoint compared to Mass Effect. I'm a midlly curious about what your definition of action RPG is, maybe it excludes Mass Effect, but I am on PINS AND NEEDLES to hear why Mass Effect isn't at least a third person shooter and Resident Evil 5 is.
I'd also be curious why Muramasa isn't a beat 'em up with "stats and some kind of leveling system." Since it's labeled on this site as a pureblood RPG (among other things). Even Mass Effect had a more interesting character progression than Muramasa.
So, to get to the point, my list would contain Oblivion and Dragon Age (not the 2nd one). And to your list of games you haven't played yet I'll add two that I've not played either, but I'm looking forward to playing when I want a good new RPG to try.
Tales of Vesperia
Eternal Sonata
And I'd probably add Mass Effect 2 to my list, but that's because I think it's a more involved game than you may be giving it credit for. But if it doesn't go on some Master List of RPG Purebloods then I'm not going to lose sleep over it.
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Nelson Schneider
Wrote on07/27/11 at 01:14 AM CT
Ha, yes, I forgot to add Muramasa to my list (score 4 for Wii!).
I'm not playing games, Jon. I really get pissed when I see some poor sap go into a forum and say, "Recommend me some good RPGs," and the morons that inhabit the forum provide the following list:
Borderlands
Mass Effect (series)
Fallout 3 & New Vegas
Those are not RPGs! They are FPSes that just happen to have stats and some kind of leveling systems. All "Ratchet & Clank" games after the first one include leveling as well, so I guess those must be RPGs too! Right?!
I also absolutely despise when people use the term "JRPG" (most use it as a pejorative). There are RPGs, then there are other games that are NOT RPGs but either feature light RPG elements or just happen to feature a character who uses a sword. It's disgusting how many people think the "Zelda" games are RPGs.
Come on, give me a list. I'll even help you start with some games I haven't played:
Lost Odyssey
Blue Dragon
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Jonzor
Wrote on07/10/11 at 10:07 PM CT
Is there a point to playing that game? When someone lays out a set of rules beforehand to narrow the list so that they can nix a game 'cause they don't feel like allowing it... I dunno... seems like one of those pointless internet arguments I keep hearing about.
You've essentially let your taste define a genre. Unless it's a good JRPG (not good RPG) you get to say it doesn't count.
No thanks, I've got better things to do with my free time.
PS - your OWN WEBSITE lists Muramasa: the Demon Blade as an RPG. I assume it wasn't "excellent" enough to warrant inclusion?
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Nelson Schneider
Wrote on07/08/11 at 06:01 PM CT
@Jonzor: Okay, let's hear your comically long list of excellent RPGs. Here's a heads-up before you start:
Oblivion is not an RPG (Sandbox)
Fallout is not an RPG (FPS)
Mass Effect is not an RPG (FPS again)
The only game I can imagine possibly including would be Dragon Age, but it doesn't even play like an RPG unless you play it on PC.
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Jonzor
Wrote on07/04/11 at 02:18 AM CT
I think your definition of "excellent RPGs" might be a tad narrow, because those numbers are comically low (oh... and comprised ONLY of JRPGs). Are you thinking of exclusive RPG titles only, or what?
I get that you're talking about localization of games, so that essentially means automatically the article will have a Japanese slant to it, but surely in the definition of RPG there are more than 4 that qualify as "excellent".
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