XSeed - Japanese Games a Trend on PC

Aubrielle

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It looks like the trend of Japanese games coming to PC is on the rise. In a recent interview, XSeed CEO Ken Barry talked about what the trend means for PC gamers and Japanese developers.


But while “pretty much every single Japanese publisher” is now putting its games on Steam, there are still challenges to be overcome, particularly with regard to player expectations. “PC gamers are very demanding when it comes to play options, and that's something that's been difficult to relay to our Japanese development partners that are used to working within a very confined environment on consoles," Berry said. "Oftentimes they will wonder why we need more than three screen resolution options or as many options as possible to turn graphical settings on/off that may affect performance, but thankfully PC gamers tend to also be technically proficient and patient, so they tend to give us a lot of great feedback and advice post-launch so that we can continue refining the games together.”

Berry also extended words of assurance to long-time fans of Xseed who may worry that the move to the PC could blur the company's focus. “There will always be some concerns about us publishing a title outside of our usual comfort zone may be preventing us from publishing something else that some of our fans may want or expect,” he said. “But hopefully they understand that we are trying to grow the business by publishing titles in addition to that ones that we normally would rather than instead of.”
More.

More information.
 
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May that trend become to a halt.
I just cannot get into that japanese styled stuff.
 
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Well, even if you can't, it is not like you have to buy those games on steam. More diversity and options is a good thing! Besides I am sure there are some J-RPG's you'd love too, not all of them are about pre-teens needing to save the world.

There is a lot of diversity... and there is for example dark souls... one of the best games ever!
 
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May that trend become to a halt.

I certainly hope not! I don't play JRPGs much anymore but this kind of trend is great for any PC gamer. It means more devs and publishers want to bing their games to to the PC - and that's a sign of a healthy ecosystem. Many have complained in the past about games going to console and not the PC and it's nice to see evidence of that trend reversing.
 
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As someone who just finished Trails in the Sky FC and SC, I'm very happy about this turn of events.
 
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JRPGs are strange beasts. Often as not, the initial description is extremely unappealing to me. For example, I was reading about Trails of Cold Steel, and it described how you start off in a high school for heroes, and spend friendship points on building relationships. To which, my initial reaction was:

3xZDtVB.jpg



But then, when I occasionally give one a chance, quite often the wackiness becomes quite natural, and I find myself pretty well into the damn thing.
 
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It means more devs and publishers want to bing their games to to the PC - and that's a sign of a healthy ecosystem.

So unlikely. The japanese video product industry is struggling. They are dying for air.
That attempt look like flushing products down on the PC market that is known not to be overtly picking. An attempt to push up new revenue lines at the cheapest cost.
 
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Well, even if you can't, it is not like you have to buy those games on steam. More diversity and options is a good thing! Besides I am sure there are some J-RPG's you'd love too, not all of them are about pre-teens needing to save the world.

There is a lot of diversity… and there is for example dark souls… one of the best games ever!

True darksouls is great, for me it is the so called manga style that is non appealing at all. Also true that diversity is a good thing, but an exception is manga ;-)
 
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I hate manga style too, but i don't need to buy every JRPG in PC. So i am fine with the fact that there are many more JRPG coming to PC or Steam. Besides, you never know when there will be some good ones like Trail Series coming into the PC platform.
 
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Darksouls is trashmobrespawns junk. Sorry guys.

I have a problem with japanese games and it's their general determination not to risk. By that I don't mean graphics, music, style or combat. It's their stories that don't have enough of juice.
The best example, mentioned it before, is The Last Remnant. Enormous new combat style potential flushed through the toilet because of designers' obsession with unstoppable trashmob revival and decision not to "upgrade" already existing innuendo into extensive emotion voyage.
Add the mushroom fetish into it and there, you get one of biggest disappointments ever.

There are exceptions, sure. But these are so rare that present exotic execution in already exotic style. While garbage is not easy to number as it's a list of thousands of titles, a few games are easy to pull out as must haves:
- LoH: TitS is not about tits really but that now old game has everything we want from RPG. Not perfect ofc, trashmobs are godlike, but designers made them easily avoidable.
- Chaos Rings 2 draws you in with it's unique setting and unexpected story turns, has godlike trashmobs but also a skill to avoid them, sadly it's a phonegame.
- MGS5 makes no compromises when it comes to it's story (which series fans' hate and those who avoided MGS1-4 adore), ruined by it's publisher determination to sell scamware and bundled MMO
- Valkyria Chronicles which dared to exclude endless trashmobs and created one of best turnbased RPG/strategy systems I've seen, but still didn't manage to show all horrors in a war and kept it too romantic.
- I mised a title? Probably.

So far I haven't seen a japanese game I could call a masterpiece. Among enormous amount of avoidware (platform doesn't matter) there are quite a few good and great games, sure. But for some reason, japanese devs seem scared of creating a game that would trick players' senses like their horrors can do.

As usual, wool won't be lacking as long as there is sheep so there is that positive industry part.
But maybe this opening to a superior platform will bring out some courage in japanese devs to finally make that damned masterpiece. Here's hope for that.
 
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I have a problem with japanese games and it's their general determination not to risk. By that I don't mean graphics, music, style or combat. It's their stories that don't have enough of juice.

I sort of agree in a sense they're very "kitchen sink fantasy" when it comes to stories. Or settings in general, now that I think about it. Which is why I appreciate it when a JRPG has a very clear intent and identity. Valkyrie Profile always comes to mind when I think about it - it's a JRPG set in Nordic mythology about recruiting fallen souls for the final battle because that's a critical and unavoidable outcome.

Far too many JRPGs fall into that "oh, it's a group of adventurers doing adventurous something something because reasons… and it all ends in a dramatic battle against god or some equivalent deciding the fate of the world or something". People tend to remember exceptions, but vast majority of JRPGs are precisely this.
 
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Was it xseed who did the VC port? I really like that game; wish there were more than just the one. Yes i know that there are other with the same name but from what I hear they are not the same sort of game (but with different and high quality story).
 
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Darksouls is trashmobrespawns junk. Sorry guys.

No need to apologize for being wrong, we're used to it.:biggrin:

Anyway I don't really see dark souls as a JRPG, at least not in a traditional sense.

As for JRPG's coming to PC? I'm all for it I'll buy the ones I like and skip the ones I don't. I'd love to see them port the wizardry games.
 
Anyway I don't really see dark souls as a JRPG, at least not in a traditional sense.

That's part of the reason why the JRPG label is useless to me. Japanese RPGs also include western-style RPGs, hybrids of western and traditional Final Fantasy-style RPGs, as well as dungeon-crawlers, etc.. There are tons of old-school, Wizardry-style Japanese-made dungeon-crawlers out there, since that sub-genre of RPG has been very popular in Japan.
 
That's part of the reason why the JRPG label is useless to me. Japanese RPGs also include western-style RPGs, hybrids of western and traditional Final Fantasy-style RPGs, as well as dungeon-crawlers, etc.. There are tons of old-school, Wizardry-style Japanese-made dungeon-crawlers out there, since that sub-genre of RPG has been very popular in Japan.

I think it's a term that meant something 20+ years ago, but not so much today. Hell, if you look back you'll see games like Septerra Core, Sudeki and Anachronox. Are they JRPGs or not?
 
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Even 20+ years ago, it seems Japanese-made RPGs were heavily influenced by western PC games at the time, from what I understand. I think the JRPG term today is sort of speaking specifically about Final Fantasy 7, because usually the next word to describe what JRPG means is usually "spiky-haired protagonist". People also usually mention the random, invisible encounters, but that was a feature basically taken from the Wizardry games as well.
 
Actually a lot of the early JRPG's copied the north american Ultima's. IE dragon warrior and final fantasy.
 
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Actually a lot of the early JRPG's copied the north american Ultima's. IE dragon warrior and final fantasy.

They were strongly influencedby Ultima, Wizardry, and other Western RPGs, but they were hardly copies. Dragon Warrior/Quest I and Final Fantasy I were very different (in combat mechanics especially).
 
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So far I haven't seen a japanese game I could call a masterpiece.

I would put Dark Cloud 2 in that category: beautiful, evocative cell-shading, excellent and responsive real-time combat, amazingly deep crafting system, tons to do in the world, and a great soundtrack to boot. In fact, I can't find much to fault the game for. It's in my all-time top 5, next to classics like BG2, Deus Ex, Morrowind, etc.

But, I will agree that such masterpieces are very rare (maybe one a generation).
 
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