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[Fbh]

Sorry but who fucking cares what game is and isn't AAA?

If Square pumps $200+ million (or whatever) into a mediocre game like FFXV while Atlus, Monolith, Old Mistwalker or even other teams at Square (DQ11 team, for example) make nice looking RPG's which are more complete, polished and content packed at a fraction of the cost then the news really isn't the lack of AAA JRPG competition but how terrible Square is at spending money.

 

[Danjin44]

What are you talking about? I am already disagreeing.
Are you ok, Danjin?

??? What I meant was you have your idea what’s considered as RPG so arguing is getting us nowhere.

 

[SlimeGooGoo]

.

 

[Danjin44]

It's getting us closer together, Danjin, can't you see???

Well we both love Dragon Quest series.

 

[SlimeGooGoo]

.

 

[Danjin44]

Hell yeah, let's make some babies!

 

[Sophist]

lunar and grandia on PlayStation had voice acting (unlike ff) , orchestral musics, anime cutscene.
grandia had 3d real time environments with a dynamic camera, an engine much more complex than FF7-8-9
they were definitively AAA of their times.

 

[eyesabitdull]

Its weird no one talks about White Knight Chronicles, it was huge during its release everyone I knew who liked RPG's was playing it.

Oh fuck. I completely forgot about this game.

The first game was pretty good, but what happened afterwards? Game went dead pretty fast.

 

[MvCSpiderman]

$60 million is not AAA nowdays anymore.
AAA = high budget game
It is not related to quality.

Game budget increased over the generations so $20 million was considered AAA in the past but today it is not.

A good exemple of AAA budget with bad quality... Halo Infinity being launched last year.

You keep repeating the lie that AAA is budget only while not being able to comprend the other points I made without confusing them for me arguing about quality, which I've never argued.

Sadly there's a miscommunication you aren't able to get around so you'll never actually get the point without doing so.

 

[ethomaz]

You keep repeating the lie that AAA is budget only while not being able to comprend the other points I made without confusing them for me arguing about quality, which I've never argued.

Sadly there's a miscommunication you aren't able to get around so you'll never actually get the point without doing so.

Truth maybe is hurting you.

AAA is about budget not quality.

 

[ethomaz]

lunar and grandia on PlayStation had voice acting (unlike ff) , orchestral musics, anime cutscene.
grandia had 3d real time environments with a dynamic camera, an engine much more complex than FF7-8-9
they were definitively AAA of their times.

They had all that but what defines AAA is budget and I could not find Grandia or Lunar development costs.

The biggest cost from FFVII come from GCI cutscenes.

 

[MvCSpiderman]

lunar and grandia on PlayStation had voice acting (unlike ff) , orchestral musics, anime cutscene.
grandia had 3d real time environments with a dynamic camera, an engine much more complex than FF7-8-9
they were definitively AAA of their times.

They had voice acting because they are on CD. Every tech jump will give a game certain optional advantages by default. FF6 was still AAA despite the lack of CD advantages that were provided with no effort to Lunar etc.

Also real 3D environments don't mean anything alone. There are early PS jrpgs that had 3D graphics and no one will say those games are AAA, the asset must be of AAA quality as well.

Grandia 2 for example isn't AAA but FFix was, even though Grandia 2 had the inherit tech advantage.

Truth maybe is hurting you.

AAA is about budget not quality.

At some point you should be tired of lying and twisting words but I guess that's who you are, good day.

 

[MvCSpiderman]

Sorry but who fucking cares what game is and isn't AAA?

If Square pumps $200+ million (or whatever) into a mediocre game like FFXV while Atlus, Monolith, Old Mistwalker or even other teams at Square (DQ11 team, for example) make nice looking RPG's which are more complete, polished and content packed at a fraction of the cost then the news really isn't the lack of AAA JRPG competition but how terrible Square is at spending money.

Your answer is half informal and half wrong. The part you got right is AAA isn't budget only because that wouldn't take bloat into account.

Ethoguys dumb logic means Busy 3D can lose 20 million in development back in the day and that would automatically make it AAA. Even EA doesn't follow that logic, they had shrunk devs costs for some titles yet didn't lose their AAA status.

Many AAA and even some AA japanese devs are notorious for wasted spending going back to the 90s.

 

[EDMIX]

Persona 5 is quite clearly AAA.

Persona 5 isn't bad, but I think it goes to show just how far ahead FF is that its only second is something that sells millions and millions less.

AJUMP23 Agreed 100%. I don't know where any of this goalpost shit came from as I don't recall anyone legit calling those games anything other then JRPGs.

They come from Japan..... they are RPGs.

 

[Synless]

Persona 5 is one of the most overrated RPG’s, followed by Persona 4. I’d take FF13’s 20 hour tutorial again over the insanely linear overly long P5.

 

[AJUMP23]

Persona 5 isn't bad, but I think it goes to show just how far ahead FF is that its only second is something that sells millions and millions less.

AJUMP23 Agreed 100%. I don't know where any of this goalpost shit came from as I don't recall anyone legit calling those games anything other then JRPGs.

They come from Japan..... they are RPGs.

They are only doing what they are doing because they want the answer to be what they want it to be and not a legitimate conversation.

 

[Sophist]

They had voice acting because they are on CD

ff 7 8 9 were on CD and had no voice acting at all. Grandia had voice acting in both English and Japanese

Also real 3D environments don't mean anything alone.

ff7 8 9 engine was not impressive and definitively not on par with Grandia.
ff7 huge development cost came from the renderfarm; Square wanted to render the CGI by themselves and built a whole CGI studio.
ff7 only took one year of development.
if you consider a game being AAA or not on its budget alone, then ff7 and shenmue are the soles AAA games until the ps3/xbox360

Final Fantasy 7: An oral history

An inside look at the creation and fallout of Square's industry-defining role-playing game, as told by those who were there.

www.polygon.com

Shinichiro Kajitani
Vice president, Square USA

At that time, I was the head of system administration, so I arranged and bought all of the equipment. [Over the course of two years] I signed checks to Silicon Graphics totaling about $38 million. I bought more than 200 Indigo2 desktop machines, Onyx and Challenge rendering servers and other machines. …

During Final Fantasy 7’s development, we purchased 200 to 250 Indigo2s at $70,000 apiece. An Onyx server cost about $1,000,000. A Challenge server cost about $500,000. So we paid a total of around $17,000,000 on SGI equipment. … And also for software, we paid Alias approximately 2,000,000 yen multiplied by 250 for a total of around $4 million. So excluding labor costs, we spent around $21,000,000 on graphics hardware and software. About 90 percent of that was for Final Fantasy 7, but we may have used it on other projects as well. …

 

[MrA]

There isn't.

Lost Odyssey was a big game, and had a certain hype behind it but it obviously fell a bit short in terms of production values. I mean it was developed FeelPlus and Blue Dragon by Artoon. LO felt bigger budget than Tales of but not remotely close to FFXIII even though LO is way better. FFXIII had top of the line production values, a themed PS3 console, TV commercials and all.

When strictly speaking JRPG, there simply isn't anything like Final Fantasy. If we talk WRPG, then we have the likes of TES, Witcher which are huge AAA games as well. Bigger than FF, even.

lost odyssey had tv commercials in the US, that is big for a jrpg, Microsoft intended it to be big, it was supposed to be the game that made the xbox in Japan, without goalpost moving and the power of nuh-uh lost odyssey was definitely meant to be a big AAA tent pole game for the 360

 

[MvCSpiderman]

ff 7 8 9 were on CD and had no voice acting at all. Grandia had voice acting in both English and Japanese

ff7 8 9 engine was not impressive and definitively not on par with Grandia.
ff7 huge development cost came from the renderfarm; Square wanted to render the CGI by themselves and built a whole CGI studio.
ff7 only took one year of development.
if you consider a game being AAA or not on its budget alone, then ff7 and shenmue are the soles AAA games until the ps3/xbox360

Final Fantasy 7: An oral history

An inside look at the creation and fallout of Square's industry-defining role-playing game, as told by those who were there.

www.polygon.com

You basically accused me of saying the exact opposite of what I actually said.

Also you skipped the part where I said optional, FF7 chose not to have voices, but that's moving the goal post because the comparison was Lunar and FF6. Lunar was on tech that had the option inheritly for no additional effort of implementation. They didn't have to put in a ton of effort and expense to put vocals in a cart which FF6 would need to do if they added them.

 

[MvCSpiderman]

lost odyssey had tv commercials in the US, that is big for a jrpg, Microsoft intended it to be big, it was supposed to be the game that made the xbox in Japan, without goalpost moving and the power of nuh-uh lost odyssey was definitely meant to be a big AAA tent pole game for the 360

Microsoft partnered with a bunch of studios for Jrpgs, whether they were their ip or not. They all flipped generally. They all had commercials and marketing. Once they got Square to come with XIII they put out a couple more than stopped.

 

[DonkeyPunchJr]

LOL. Make a thread about AAA JRPGs. Half the posts are arguing about the definition of AAA, the other half are arguing about the definition of JRPG. This thread is a shithole.

 

[Sophist]

You basically accused me of saying the exact opposite of what I actually said.

Also you skipped the part where I said optional, FF7 chose not to have voices, but that's moving the goal post because the comparison was Lunar and FF6. Lunar was on tech that had the option inheritly for no additional effort of implementation. They didn't have to put in a ton of effort and expense to put vocals in a cart which FF6 would need to do if they added them.

i was referring to lunar on PlayStation (and Saturn) and was doing the comparison with ff7-8-9.
Voice over has a cost; you have to pay for the actors, the recording studio, a director... The English cast was made of random people but the Japanese cast was made of idols and voice actors from the anime industry.

 

[Dream-Knife]

Xenoblade

Xenogears is the greatest turn based RPG of all time. But even that is a Square game (technically).

 

[MvCSpiderman]

i was referring to lunar on PlayStation (and Saturn) and was doing the comparison with ff7-8-9.
Voice over has a cost; you have to pay for the actors, the recording studio, a director... The English cast was made of random people but the Japanese cast was made of idols and voice actors from the anime industry.

It doesn't have an implementation cost.

The tech makes it easier. You need to keep that in consideration. Tech the games made on can make a A game look AAA until you see real AAA games on that hardware.

 

[MvCSpiderman]

Xenogears is the greatest turn based RPG of all time. But even that is a Square game (technically).

Betrayal at Krondor.

But yeah that was and is a Square game. To bad no sequel was made. Or at least none that I know of.

 

[Kokoloko85]

Numbers =\= RPG

Star Ocean and Tales are less influenced by player skill than character skill.
Dark Souls is HIGHLY influenced by player skill.

You can give a high level player to a Dark Souls novice, and he will likely lose.
You can give a high level party to a Final Fantasy/Tales/Dragon Quest novice, and he will likely win.

Like it or not, Souls series are not RPGs.

I kinda agree. I personally don’t class them as RPG’s or JRPG’s. But I guess they have alot of attributes that could make them an RPG, so I get why people count them as an RPG.
Levelling up, stats, classes/roles, loads of NPC’s. Levelling up helps alot and thats exactly my play style.

Sekiro is different because you beat bosses and enemies via pure skill. You cant win without blocking/deflecting the enemies timed attack. In Souls games you can grind till you mess them up lol

But then again is there a single RPG like the souls games? They play nothing like any RPG or JRPG really.

The old age question is.... is Zelda an RPG lol

 

[NahaNago]

The old age question is.... is Zelda an RPG lol

if you made hyrule the mushroom kingdom and switched link to mario I don't think folks would call the game an rpg.

 

[FStubbs]

if you made hyrule the mushroom kingdom and switched link to mario I don't think folks would call the game an rpg.

But yet the Super Mario RPG exists. And Paper Mario.

 

[Werewolf Jones]

This thread is fucking hilarious.

 

[Furball]

Dark Souls is not a JRPG and it's also not an RPG

For a game to be an RPG, player skill must have little influence in the outcome of the events, and instead character skill is what matters.
Final Fantasy is an RPG. So is Baldur's Gate. Both of them have events (combat) which result depends on character skill.

You can't beat Final Fantasy with characters on Level 1.
You can beat Dark Souls with a Level 1 character (because what matters is player skill)

The "J" in JRPG only refers to the game having some resemblance to an anime or manga (shounen usually).
That's it.

You can do it in FF 8 and FF12 . Even FF15 , you can beat it level 1

Numbers =\= RPG

Star Ocean and Tales are less influenced by player skill than character skill.
Dark Souls is HIGHLY influenced by player skill.

You can give a high level player to a Dark Souls novice, and he will likely lose.
You can give a high level party to a Final Fantasy/Tales/Dragon Quest novice, and he will likely win.

Like it or not, Souls series are not RPGs.

I think you need better understand about those series before argument or just dont use it .

The first few game like SO1 and 2 , old Tales sure they dont require much skill but SO3 and 4 , Tales of GraceF.... pretty much require , player skill , understanding of combat system , enemy partten , AI behavior ... to beat on high difficult which as hard as soul game .

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

Xenogears was better than every FF game to date

 

[SlimeGooGoo]

.

 

[UltimaKilo]

Xenoblade and Dragon Quest... already been answered!

 

[Thabass]

Xenogears was better than every FF game to date

It probably would have been if it were actually finished.

 

[MvCSpiderman]

Xenogears was better than every FF game to date

Nothing to do with the thread but I guess hardcore Jrpg fans hate FF so much the anger changes the text in the thread title

Xenoblade and Dragon Quest... already been answered!

No and a Square game.

if you made hyrule the mushroom kingdom and switched link to mario I don't think folks would call the game an rpg.

If Zelda's an RPG then all the Action Adventure games that came out before or the same time on computers would be rpgs. Those had more rpg elements too.

Heck the CDi games are closer to being rpgs.

 

[German Hops]

It probably would have been if it were actually finished.

 

[Kokoloko85]

if you made hyrule the mushroom kingdom and switched link to mario I don't think folks would call the game an rpg.

But Mario never increases his hearts like HP/leveling up. And there arent towns and areas with loads of npc’a to talk to lol.
in reality its an action adventure with RPG elements, especially breath of the wild lol

 

[NahaNago]

But Mario never increases his hearts like HP/leveling up. And there arent towns and areas with loads of npc’a to talk to lol.
in reality its an action adventure with RPG elements, especially breath of the wild lol

Interesting... Would you consider devil may cry a jrpg then. You can increase your hp and mp(?) and level up your skills but with fewer npcs. Honestly in my opinion the only thing that makes zelda possibly a rpg is because of the ability to increase health. Without that it is just an action game. So here's an interesting question then are 3d platformers that allow you to increase your health bar/hp rpgs.

 

[MagnesG]

It's hard to have complaints addressed and have staff listen to feedback if you don't need to because your the only cop in town.

Well they just have a look at their sales to have some feedback. Last time FFXV only sold around 10m, quite famous for its bargain bin $10 price. FF7 Remake sold only 7m even with all the hype.

That AAA JRPG title can be quite shakey now.

 

[Kokoloko85]

Interesting... Would you consider devil may cry a jrpg then. You can increase your hp and mp(?) and level up your skills but with fewer npcs. Honestly in my opinion the only thing that makes zelda possibly a rpg is because of the ability to increase health. Without that it is just an action game. So here's an interesting question then are 3d platformers that allow you to increase your health bar/hp rpgs.

I think the Zelda RPG thing was because back in the day you wouldnt get too many non RPG’s that have NPC’s, quests, items etc. A bit like Secret of Mana but without all The stats. I wouldnt class it as a pure RPG, but it feels like it alot of the time.

Yeah I woudnt class DMC as an JRPG or 3D platformers so you got me there lol.

 

[MvCSpiderman]

But Mario never increases his hearts like HP/leveling up. And there arent towns and areas with loads of npc’a to talk to lol.
in reality its an action adventure with RPG elements, especially breath of the wild lol

Gaining hearts isn't the same as rpg leveling up. Gaining lives would be leveling up in that case. Slippery slope.

 

[MvCSpiderman]

I think the Zelda RPG thing was because back in the day you wouldnt get too many non RPG’s that have NPC’s, quests, items etc. A bit like Secret of Mana but without all The stats. I wouldnt class it as a pure RPG, but it feels like it alot of the time.

Yeah I woudnt class DMC as an JRPG or 3D platformers so you got me there lol.

No it was called that by Nintendo fan mags and reviewers specifically because it had text. They called Castlevania 2 and some other games for the same reason.

The concept of an adventure game earlier in the NES life was foreign to a lot of people because few touched a computer or any of Atari's 2600 competition.

What's strange though is while rare there were Atari games on the 2600 with text. But I suppose most of those guys never saw those games.

Well they just have a look at their sales to have some feedback. Last time FFXV only sold around 10m, quite famous for its bargain bin $10 price. FF7 Remake sold only 7m even with all the hype.

That AAA JRPG title can be quite shakey now.

I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not.

 

[A Rifter in Space]

Falcom has taken over as the king of JRPGs from Square anyway. They don't care about graphics that take forever to make and instead pump out games filled with content, amazing stories, great music, and great characters that all come together in one big awesome package. Then, they churn these masterpieces out like every year and a half.

I'd rather have that than overwrought graphical masterpieces that take 5-7 years to make. I mean, given how many fanboys told me I wouldn't have to wait that long for FF7R: Part 2 and we still haven't even gotten a whiff of Part 2's release date I think I'll probably be retired by the time they finish releasing the actual full game with a complete story and we'll be looking at the remastered collection for what was already a remake for PS7 in 2035.

Square used to be my jam, but they really dropped the ball after FFX. XIV's recovery of good storytelling and content gives me hope but that's because I'm only waiting for a year and a half or so for stories in that world rather than a decade for mainline series releases that may or may not be good and may or may not be incomplete development hell releases.

 

[Tschumi]

Persona isn't AAA?

Wild...

 

[FStubbs]

No it was called that by Nintendo fan mags and reviewers specifically because it had text. They called Castlevania 2 and some other games for the same reason.

The concept of an adventure game earlier in the NES life was foreign to a lot of people because few touched a computer or any of Atari's 2600 competition.

What's strange though is while rare there were Atari games on the 2600 with text. But I suppose most of those guys never saw those games.


I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not.

I remember Zelda being called an "Action adventure".

And let's be clear - Nintendo often doesn't even call Dragon Quest a RPG, IIRC they usually call it an adventure game.

 

[MvCSpiderman]

I remember Zelda being called an "Action adventure".

And let's be clear - Nintendo often doesn't even call Dragon Quest a RPG, IIRC they usually call it an adventure game.

It wasn't called that on the NES.

Falcom has taken over as the king of JRPGs from Square anyway. They don't care about graphics that take forever to make and instead pump out games filled with content, amazing stories, great music, and great characters that all come together in one big awesome package. Then, they churn these masterpieces out like every year and a half.

I'd rather have that than overwrought graphical masterpieces that take 5-7 years to make. I mean, given how many fanboys told me I wouldn't have to wait that long for FF7R: Part 2 and we still haven't even gotten a whiff of Part 2's release date I think I'll probably be retired by the time they finish releasing the actual full game with a complete story and we'll be looking at the remastered collection for what was already a remake for PS7 in 2035.

Square used to be my jam, but they really dropped the ball after FFX. XIV's recovery of good storytelling and content gives me hope but that's because I'm only waiting for a year and a half or so for stories in that world rather than a decade for mainline series releases that may or may not be good and may or may not be incomplete development hell releases.

Doesn't have much to do with the thread but glad you like falcon.

 

[Gameplay Gods Bless]

It would be nice if Namco would give Tales better production since they shrunk the production values of a lot of their other internal franchises.

But I guess they make so much off them being made with peanuts.

They are doing this with the new one. It's called Tales of Arise.

 

[Astral Dog]

No, its like Resident Evil and horror games sure there are many but most don't come close to the big production a RE is.

And in some ways MARIO too, who makes platformer games as big as Mario? Last time Sonic had a AAA budget was Sonic Unleashed.

Now if we are talking all RPGs then Witcher series is more successful than Final Fantasy this and last gen even if i don't think its better.

 

[MvCSpiderman]

They are doing this with the new one. It's called Tales of Arise.

No, just doesn't look as lazy as the last few titles but it still doesn't look like they are really giving it a budget.

 

[MagnesG]

can't tell if this is sarcasm or not.

AAA standards doesn't mean much these day, especially for JRPG.