An Opinion on the State of JRPGs, Persona and Pokemon — Re-post
This is an edit of an opinion piece I wrote in early 2015 while attempting to review Persona Q for the Nintendo 3DS for the now defunct OXCGN games media site.
I’m re-posting and editing it, since the original version can no longer be accessed, and I’ll want to refer to this from time to time — plus, I still believe some of this stuff.

A few years ago I was attempting to play through Final Fantasy VIII for probably the fourth time.
I had never been able to finish it — not because it was too difficult, but because I inevitably lost interest in the game and story, and just put it down.
This time, however, I was determined. I had planned to play through all of the Final Fantasy games, but had so far only finished VII months earlier — I had a long way to go. After, seemingly, the one millionth random battle, I made an audible enough sound of anger, boredom, frustration, or some mix of the three for my girlfriend to ask me:
“If you aren’t having fun, why are you playing the game?”
I laughed it off and continued playing, but within about 15 minutes I realised she was right.
I wasn’t having fun, in fact, I was so over the game that I was playing through it simply to see the ending. Why did it matter? I didn’t even like the characters, and the story was getting pretty stupid at that point.
I turned the game off, again, and can’t imagine ever picking it back up.

The JRPG (Japanese Role Playing Game) has been a niche genre for many years, and while I’ve always given it the benefit of the doubt, it’s seeming inability to evolve into something not mired in it’s own traditions and flaws has finally pushed me away — I simply don’t have the time to dedicate 80+ hours to watch a few stereotypical characters attack, throw magic and summon beasts to defeat their foes in random battle after random battle.
I don’t consider myself a casual or hardcore gamer by any stretch of the imagination, but more and more the most hardcore games I play are feeling far too safe, relying on tropes of whichever genre they belong to and adding one or two new features that barely impact the experience overall — all the while feeling less interesting and fun because of it.
My most recent attempt at playing through a JRPG, Persona Q: Shadows of the Labyrinth on the Nintendo 3DS, has met a similar fate to that of Final Fantasy.
I have, so far, put 21 hours into the game and I’m no longer having fun. I’m not a hardcore Persona fan (I’ve played most of Persona 4 Golden), so the thrilling aspect of having characters from both Persona 3 and 4 together isn’t enough to make me blindly love the game’s fan service in spite of it’s flaws.
In fact, because I don’t know half the cast, it’s become easier to see how dumbed-down the characters have become in this title. The characters I’ve seen in Persona 4 Golden have had one aspect of their complex personality thrown into this game, and the rest is ignored.
Teddie, for example, will only speak when he is hitting on the female members of your group. Yosuke will only say something that will get him made fun of, Chie will only talk about Kung-Fu or meat, and Kanji will only make veiled jokes at his sexual identity or act tough. It’s a shame, considering how deep these characters were in Persona 4, that these are the aspects that are represented in PQ.

The characters from Persona 3 are largely unknown to me, and so it’s a shame that they so easily fit into a predetermined anime-character-mould in this game, and can be understood because of this immediately.
It would have been far more rewarding to explore the relationships between these characters on my own, instead of hearing their first line of dialogue and being able to brand them with a character trope.
Persona is lauded for mostly doing away with final-fantasy-esque character designs, and instead focusing on relate-able personalities that can tug at your heartstrings because they could actually exist, and it seems a shame that this aspect is mostly omitted in this title.
I believe, personally, that a game’s story can be forgiven for being lacklustre if the mechanics the game are great. I also believe, sadly, the turn-based battle system is beginning to show some grey hairs.
This is a battle system that has gone mostly unchanged for decades, and I personally believe it is the first thing that needs to be solved. The newer Final Fantasy games (XII, XIII 1–3, and the upcoming XV) made attempts at changing this system out for something more active, and I applaud Square’s efforts — they had the foresight to realise a change had to be made — but their experiments were not met with particularly great fanfare.
I am unsure of which direction the genre needs to go in, honestly, but many — myself included — are becoming more interested in faster paced mechanics that reward precise input, and I think Final Fantasy XII: Lightning Returns’s battle system is a direct response to that.

Perhaps, something akin to Supergiant Games’ Transistor could be employed, creating a hybrid of a Strategy RPG and JRPG that also caters to the more action-oriented needs of today’s audience.
Controlling a party of 3 with such a system could become not only fun, but incredibly strategic, allowing you to queue up commands for your party — switching between characters to set up a series of events to best take advantage of not only the attacks and abilities you have amassed thus far, but also your characters positioning in the environment.
This way, the traditional turn based system is not necessarily thrown out the window, but merely used in a new context that breathes some fresh air into the genre.
Plot and narrative in video games have largely been pretty bad across the board — you can count games with an excellent story on one hand.
JRPGs are, considering the amount of time required to play through the entire game, at a distinct advantage to other genres in that they can have much more characterisation in the title as well as a deeper narrative.
Instead, many end up ignoring their characters and instead focus on stopping the generic bad guy, who leads you around the world in an effort to, probably, destroy the universe.
It’s a shame that something like Portal, which can be finished in a few hours, delivers incredible characters and builds a more interesting world than most JRPG’s I’ve ever played — in a fraction of the time.
How can you expect someone to spend days in this world if they don’t care about anyone in it?

It isn’t all bad, however: I’m still able to play, and enjoy, Pokemon titles.
The lack, or obscurity, of a major, overarching plot-line makes the game more digestible in short bursts, and the battle system, while incredibly generic by most standards, serves multiple functions in training your team and expanding your roster.
In these games, I feel encouraged to actively seek out battle — not because I’m under levelled, but because I have no idea what is hiding in the grass, and I want to know.
It’s a great system, and one I feel unfortunately won’t work with other titles as smoothly.
I loathe, for example, the Persona fusing system in both 4: Golden and Q. The creatures I create feel temporary, and without any personality or importance. I know they will be refused within a few hours so I simply equip and forget them.
Yet, Pokemon has it’s own slew of issues, the most important one being it’s difficulty. Pokemon games are, by design, way too easy. It is far too simple to create a team of 6 creatures that can steam roll over anything in the game, and it becomes difficult to experiment when all you need to do is switch to your water Pokemon to finish off the rock gym.
The thought of a secondary difficulty available at the beginning of the game that allows you to play through the same story, while going up against revamped trainers and gym leaders would be awesome — a Master Quest, if you will.
Perhaps, that rock-type Gym Leader that was so easy before now has a rock/grass Pokemon, and can destroy your water-type. Maybe, you actually have to start thinking about the composition of your team for each battle, rather than getting one of each major type and brute-forcing your way through the game.
Just to be clear, I don’t want to see the JRPG go away, but I also don’t want to play most of what I’ve seen so far. I’ve been told that Child of Light, Ubisoft’s bite-sized take on the genre, is a breath of fresh air compared to bigger titles but truthfully I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t know if I can be bothered jumping into another of these games for quite some time.
If Persona 5 or Final Fantasy XV are received incredibly well, with specific praise targeted at a revamped gameplay system, I’ll return and see if I like what I see, but until then I have far better uses of my time.
Tradition is holding this entire genre back — and I’d love to see some radical, new ideas reinvent it.
