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« on: January 09, 2017, 01:59:36 am »
I'm talking about things like those old 2d games on PC. I was only a console kid and completely passed them by when they were a thing. Final Fantasy 7 was about the time where these type of western RPGs had their swan song.
I've recently found a game called Planescape Torment on gog, and I think it's fascinating. In jRPGs, in all but a few rare games, the choices you are allowed to make make no difference. We know the clichés of getting asked questions in jRPGs which have only one right answer to be able to continue. You can be an a-hole to everyone and they just keep repeating the question until you're nice. In Planescape Torment, your answers very often matter and can change the story. This is the best thing that these western RPGs have above jRPGs, imo. There seems to be much more choice and more playing of a role in general in these western games than jRPGs. jRPGs are exactly the rhetoric I remember reading about them, from the time they were dawning: that they were the 'streamlined' version of PC RPGs like Ultima, but some would say more childishly simple.
With that said, I still think jRPGs can be great. I wouldn't trade any other single player RPG for FF6, western or not. It still kind of sucks to have missed out on this era, and from what I've read, Planescape Torment was not a hit and that's why no more games were made. All the RPG nerds were playing Final Fantasy at the time, including myself. The analogy I would use is that jRPGs are like pop music and western RPGs are more like classical, jazz or at the very least blues.