The Density of PSX JRPGs

[Neoleo2143]

Playing through Xenogears again has kinda illuminated something to me. While this game may be an outlier even for the time, PSX JRPGs were incredibly dense affairs, striking the balance between the relative sparseness of the SNES titles, and the graphical inhibition and push for Voice acting posed by the PS2 period and beyond.

In FF7, you had huge numbers of unique backgrounds that were visually arresting, not to mention sections like the Golden Saucer and the various Set Pieces alongside many other events.

Suikoden 2 focused heavily on the aftermath of defeating the main villain and had multiple unique combat systems to suit the scale.

Grandia was a great adventure. The Legend of Dragoon attempted to go toe to toe with Final Fantasy, something that seems almost unfathomable today (thanks to the balloon in Budgets).

It's sort of a shame that we've moved away from that level of density in events and balance in game size with JRPGs.

 

[Aters]

FF6 has two world map, CT has multiple. You will never have that in today's JRPG. 3D has limited the scale of JRPGs. That's why I think PS2 was the downfall of the genre.

 

[CognitiveAtrophy]

FF6 has two world map, CT has multiple. You will never have that in today's JRPG. 3D has limited the scale of JRPGs. That's why I think PS2 was the downfall of the genre.

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Except the fact that the PS2 had Dragon Quest VIII and Final Fantasy XII; two JRPGs that absolutely dwarf the games you mentioned.

 

[PlanetSmasher]

JRPGs of the modern era are kind of stuck in this weird limbo where they can really only be one thing or the other: smaller JRPGs don't have the ability to be flexible because they essentially need to appeal to one specific niche demographic (usually hardcore otaku) in order to succeed, and those players don't really care about that kind of stuff. They're in it for their comfort food, and everything else is secondary. Those games also don't generally have the budgets to go hogwild with content variety due to their low sales ceiling, so a lot of them tend to be either grindier or more linear affairs.

On the other hand, bigger JRPGs (a category that has rapidly devolved to just Final Fantasy and maybe Kingdom Hearts) are so focused on graphical fidelity and production values as the paramount goal that they spend all their time and budget on looking good and the actual gameplay almost always suffers due to that.

As weird as it sounds, FFXV might be the densest JRPG of the modern era in terms of the amount of stuff it lets you do. The Yakuza games also offer a ton of variety from a gameplay design standpoint that more anime-style JRPGs don't really even attempt to include, but their status as RPGs tends to be...contested.

Unless you're counting MMOs, in which case FFXIV runs off with that award like a bandit. XIV is a monster.

 

[tiebreaker]

Star Ocean 2 has you adventuring in 2 planets.

 

[Terraforce]

PSX is definitely my favorite system due to the RPGs. The quantity and quality is too damn high.

 

[Aters]

Except the fact that the PS2 had Dragon Quest VIII and Final Fantasy XII, two JRPGs that absolutely dwarf the games you mentioned.

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No? In terms of scale DQVIII and FFXII are not where near FF6, CT and DQ5. If you make FF6 in full 3D in today's AAA standard, you are basically making The Elder Scroll and Fallout in the same game. How can you make a story that spans through three generations like DQ5? Or different eras like CT? You simply can't! Not with big 3D space.

The 2D structure offers a layer of abstraction that allows developer to go crazy with their imagination while still make games that look AAA. Now you either go open world and severely limit the space and time span, or you make some small games that mainstream doesn't give a damn.

 

[Deleted member 14002]

Got to have large open world maps with tons of enemies to pretend there's "content" instead.

Who wants dense, crafted experiences? Give me a massive sandbox scattered with fetch quests and a million collectibles.

Spoiler

/ssssssss

 

[Inuhanyou]

It was easy to make those kinds of games with smoke and mirrors OP when "world maps" were just 2D flat planes with monsters, each "town" was only several illustrations and such that usually had the developers have players backtrack to them multiple times to stretch out playtime. Technology has changed and so has how games are made in general which doesn't allow for that to actually scale with modern technology. Every town would have to be to scale, every room would have to be crafted by hand, every location would have to be fleshed out in real time in the third dimension.

Its no wonder FF7R has had such troubles

 

[PlanetSmasher]

Got to have large open world maps with tons of enemies to pretend there's "content" instead.

Who wants dense, crafted experiences? Give me a massive sandbox scattered with fetch quests and a million collectibles.

Spoiler

/ssssssss

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Yakuza is here. Join us in Punch-Town.

 

[Deleted member 14002]

Yakuza is here. Join us in Punch-Town.

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I've been a resident of Punch Town since the PS2 ;)

 

[Alric]

Star Ocean 2 has you adventuring in 2 planets.

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So does Tales of Destiny 2 (Eternia)

 

[PlanetSmasher]

I've been a resident of Punch Town since the PS2 ;)

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Excellent. I wish more people saw Yakuza as the RPG it is instead of just dismissing it as a brawler.

I almost wonder if releasing Ishin here in the states would change people's perception of the series. Probably not, but maybe.

 

[Deleted member 14002]

Excellent. I wish more people saw Yakuza as the RPG it is instead of just dismissing it as a brawler.

I almost wonder if releasing Ishin here in the states would change people's perception of the series. Probably not, but maybe.

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Depending on how well 6/Kiwami2 do I don't see a reason why they wouldn't port the PS4 version of Ishin (minus the problematic stuff).

 

[PlanetSmasher]

Depending on how well 6/Kiwami2 do I don't see a reason why they wouldn't port the PS4 version of Ishin (minus the problematic stuff).

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Did Ishin have problematic stuff? I thought that the really bad stuff was in Kenzan. I played through Ishin in Japanese and nothing particularly struck me as hugely objectionable.

 

[Count of Monte Sawed-Off]

Yeah, the PSX was the peak of the JRPG genre for me. There's been some great ones since then, like the aforementioned FF12 and DQ8, but the PSX had the quantity and the quality.

 

[Deleted member 14002]

Did Ishin have problematic stuff? I thought that the really bad stuff was in Kenzan. I played through Ishin in Japanese and nothing particularly struck me as hugely objectionable.

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Youre completely right, I was thinking of Kenzan.

 

[duckroll]

It was easy to make those kinds of games with smoke and mirrors OP when "world maps" were just 2D flat planes with monsters, each "town" was only several illustrations and such that usually had the developers have players backtrack to them multiple times to stretch out playtime.

Click to shrink...

I don't think this is really true. It's never easy if we're talking about true density. While there are old JRPGs where it was all smoke and mirrors, the real classics are the ones where it was clear that every single room and screen was painstakingly handcrafted. It is "easier" because there was less work to do overall as assets were limited by technology? Sure. But teams were also much smaller and development cycles were much shorter.

Here's a quick example:

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Notice how the entire layout is really deliberate. It's a very specifically designed layout that feels like a central street which has been built upon itself over years, rather than something designed by a planning committee and pre-fabricated like modern buildings. This sort of design shows attention to detail and consideration towards the history and culture of the area being designed and how that is communicated to the player. Furthermore the actual signs on the street and each street vendor and the offerings are unique, even if they are really low res. It would be even easier to just use generic assets and copy them since most players won't notice or pay attention to the detail at such low resolutions, but it is precisely that extra effort that gives the entire scene a real sense of being lived in.

This is the sort of effort that western developers in AAA games put more effort into these days, while Japan has fallen behind in recent generations because the extra effort to do what they used to do but on the current technological level was too daunting for their production pipelines.

The most impressive thing about Xenogears is that EVERY building you go into in every village and every town/city is unique. Even if it is a one screen room, it is filled with detail and unique elements like a painting on the wall, some hanging decorations, or some unique textures on a table to show something different about who lives in there. Honne art direction is pretty crazy when he was firing on all cylinders.

 

[Mister X]

FF6 has two world map, CT has multiple. You will never have that in today's JRPG. 3D has limited the scale of JRPGs. That's why I think PS2 was the downfall of the genre.

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What? FF6 is one of the easiest, shortest RPG there is. Also almost no side quests at all.

PS1 is the peak of JRPG's imo. (or on par with SNES if you count the unreleased JRPG's in the west)

 

[Inuhanyou]

I don't think this is really true. It's never easy if we're talking about true density. While there are old JRPGs where it was all smoke and mirrors, the real classics are the ones where it was clear that every single room and screen was painstakingly handcrafted. It is "easier" because there was less work to do overall as assets were limited by technology? Sure. But teams were also much smaller and development cycles were much shorter.

Here's a quick example:

Notice how the entire layout is really deliberate. It's a very specifically designed layout that feels like a central street which has been built upon itself over years, rather than something designed by a planning committee and pre-fabricated like modern buildings. This sort of design shows attention to detail and consideration towards the history and culture of the area being designed and how that is communicated to the player. Furthermore the actual signs on the street and each street vendor and the offerings are unique, even if they are really low res. It would be even easier to just use generic assets and copy them since most players won't notice or pay attention to the detail at such low resolutions, but it is precisely that extra effort that gives the entire scene a real sense of being lived in.

This is the sort of effort that western developers in AAA games put more effort into these days, while Japan has fallen behind in recent generations because the extra effort to do what they used to do but on the current technological level was too daunting for their production pipelines.

The most impressive thing about Xenogears is that EVERY building you go into in every village and every town/city is unique. Even if it is a one screen room, it is filled with detail and unique elements like a painting on the wall, some hanging decorations, or some unique textures on a table to show something different about who lives in there. Honne art direction is pretty crazy when he was firing on all cylinders.

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I mean, there are exceptions, but the rule still applies to a majority of old JRPGs in general. Whether your talking about Chrono Trigger, or FF7, the same rules generally applied.

 

[duckroll]

I mean, there are exceptions, but the rule still applies to a majority of old JRPGs in general. Whether your talking about Chrono Trigger, or FF7, the same rules generally applied.

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Chrono Trigger, Xenogears, and Chrono Cross are absolutely not smoke and mirrors. The world maps in Chrono Trigger have far more additional detail and animation that pretty much any other 2D world map back the day. C'mon son, I know you're bad at this debate thing but dude.

 

[Inuhanyou]

Chrono Trigger, Xenogears, and Chrono Cross are absolutely not smoke and mirrors. The world maps in Chrono Trigger have far more additional detail and animation that pretty much any other 2D world map back the day. C'mon son, I know you're bad at this debate thing but dude.

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No need for backhand comments duckie. Like i said, there are exceptions to the rule, but there is no quantifying "true classics". A majority of old school JRPG's followed a smoke and mirrors pattern that would be hard to duplicate to scale in a modern day scenario. The last tales game to do it was vesperia, and since, Tales has been raked over the coals for not being able to translate that into a 3D environment, especially with the budget given to them.

Even in your example with Xenogears, while impressive in the third dimension's early experimentation days, the assets are easily replicated and very low quality looking at it from a today's perspective. Absolutely incomparable to having to replicate that to a modern scale without a budget pretty big and investment pretty large.

Which is my whole point. People complain about games not being to the same scale, but the way of scaling games has fundamentally changed too, which is hard for many Japanese devs outside of the biggest ones to manage, and even then....

 

[Scrooge McDuck]

No? In terms of scale DQVIII and FFXII are not where near FF6, CT and DQ5.

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I think this usage of the word "scale" is causing some confusion here. FFXII is absolutely a large-scale game; just one look at Rabanastre you know that it dwarfs most other JRPG cities in scale. The size and scale of one area in FFXII is larger than all CT maps combined. FF6's towns is of miniscule scale with only 6 or so small houses. Etc, etc.

Maybe "scope" is a more suitable word for the stuff you're talking about.

 

[duckroll]

No need for backhand comments duckie. Like i said, there are exceptions to the rule, but there is no quantifying "true classics". A majority of old school JRPG's followed a smoke and mirrors pattern that would be hard to duplicate to scale in a modern day scenario. The last tales game to do it was vesperia, and since, Tales has been raked over the coals for not being able to translate that into a 3D environment, especially with the budget given to them.

Even in your example with Xenogears, while impressive in the third dimension's early experimentation days, the assets are easily replicated and very low quality looking at it from a today's perspective. Absolutely incomparable to having to replicate that to a modern scale without a budget pretty big and investment pretty large.

Which is my whole point. People complain about games not being to the same scale, but the way of scaling games has fundamentally changed too, which is hard for many Japanese devs outside of the biggest ones to manage, and even then....

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You're missing the entire point of the thread and what is being discussed though. It's not about how how easy or hard it is to replicate today on an AAA level. It is about appreciation of density in design and how good it feels as a player experience even today. It's something that never ages. It's the reason why when playing FFXII, Rabanastre is mindblowing as the starting town, and the rest of the game never lives up to that. That's the sort of gold standard that was set when art direction and level design meets that created something truly magical. No one is including Tales games in this conversation. They were never that sort of JRPG and never will me. We're mainly talking about Xenogears, Grandia, Chrono Cross.

 

[Dark_Castle]

I felt like Xenoblade 2 captured the spirit of older JRPG's the most among recent games of the genre.

 

[ffvorax]

Huge worlds in 3D are for sure more expensive and hard to create, but we still have some example nowadays.

But my favourite JRPG are mostly on PSX, both in 2D and mix of 2D/3D.

Recently I played the series Bravely Default, but it feel not so huge in comparison, because you have a world map and cities, but these don't feel interesting and full of things like older games for some reason...

 

[Inuhanyou]

You're missing the entire point of the thread and what is being discussed though. It's not about how how easy or hard it is to replicate today on an AAA level. It is about appreciation of density in design and how good it feels as a player experience even today. It's something that never ages. It's the reason why when playing FFXII, Rabanastre is mindblowing as the starting town, and the rest of the game never lives up to that. That's the sort of gold standard that was set when art direction and level design meets that created something truly magical. No one is including Tales games in this conversation. They were never that sort of JRPG and never will me. We're mainly talking about Xenogears, Grandia, Chrono Cross.

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I get that, but your response to me was based on level of investment needed for old games.

My original post was musing on why in many cases new JRPG's are not to the same density as the old ones, and that comes around full circle to the fact that the level of investment needed in those older games was completely different at the time compared to today to make that density. Maybe i shoud not have said "easy", because obviously game development is never easy, but it was certainly different. You could include so many different other things into those games if you were not trying to make an entire three dimensional town and all the NPC's to scale. You could spend so much more time on sidequests and optional content than you would today having to draw the nose hairs of some guy in the backround.

 

[daninthemix]

I agree OP. Going from Suikoden 1/2 to 3/4 really shows how much development time is consumed by the move to 3D. The worlds in the latter two games feel absolutely miniscule by comparison.

 

[Neoleo2143]

I felt like Xenoblade 2 captured the spirit of older JRPG's the most among recent games of the genre.

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I felt that as well. The great towns were a nice part of that.

 

[Redcrayon]

JRPGs of the modern era are kind of stuck in this weird limbo where they can really only be one thing or the other: smaller JRPGs don't have the ability to be flexible because they essentially need to appeal to one specific niche demographic (usually hardcore otaku) in order to succeed, and those players don't really care about that kind of stuff. They're in it for their comfort food, and everything else is secondary. Those games also don't generally have the budgets to go hogwild with content variety due to their low sales ceiling, so a lot of them tend to be either grindier or more linear affairs.

On the other hand, bigger JRPGs (a category that has rapidly devolved to just Final Fantasy and maybe Kingdom Hearts) are so focused on graphical fidelity and production values as the paramount goal that they spend all their time and budget on looking good and the actual gameplay almost always suffers due to that.

As weird as it sounds, FFXV might be the densest JRPG of the modern era in terms of the amount of stuff it lets you do. The Yakuza games also offer a ton of variety from a gameplay design standpoint that more anime-style JRPGs don't really even attempt to include, but their status as RPGs tends to be...contested.

Unless you're counting MMOs, in which case FFXIV runs off with that award like a bandit. XIV is a monster.

Click to shrink...

I agree with the thrust of your point with the 'pandering to otaku' but DQXI and Octopath don't look like they sit easily within either definition here.

 

[duckroll]

I felt that as well. The great towns were a nice part of that.

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Xenoblade 2 towns are absolutely the first time I felt this "magic" of town density since FFXII. It's amazing.

 

[Neoleo2143]

Xenoblade 2 towns are absolutely the first time I felt this "magic" of town density since FFXII. It's amazing.

Click to shrink...

There's even quite a few of them which is even better. It's not just setting up expectations that won't be met. It's the standard of the game.

 

[Aeana]

I think a lot of us who replayed XG recently had this same thought independently. I think the PSX era is probably the sweet spot, if not the apex, of content density in Japanese RPGs. They had become just mainstream enough to command larger budgets than before, but the asset scale was still relatively constrained compared to how it ballooned on PS2 and afterward. There are a lot of absolutely enormous games in that era that would just be entirely too prohibitive to make at what is considered the acceptable level of detail these days. Sure, later on you got larger individual maps, but the scope of the worlds continues to shrink because each area requires so much more attention.

 

[Vault]

In FF6 every town looks the same there is so much asset reuse its not really comparable to the best of PSX

 

[Aokiji]

I get what you're saying but they definitely took advantage of the technology of that time. Trying to do some of those things would be ridiculous by today's standards. But JRPGs are getting back to their older feel, just look at Persona 5. They're still trying to figure out how to adjust between the core of JRPG world design & "open world sandbox" making sales easier

 

[Cikay]

As weird as it sounds, FFXV might be the densest JRPG of the modern era in terms of the amount of stuff it lets you do.

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Don't forget the Xenoblade games. Only these games give me this oldschool feeling of massive adventures, with a lot of varied places to explore, and many, many things to do. After playing 70h I was still discovering new places in Xenoblade X and Xenoblade 2.
I loved FFXV, and yes it's filled with content, it has quite a number of optional dungeons, but it does not offer a lot of variety in its environments, and nearly everything can be seen and explored in like 35h.

 

[lordlad]

i mean..the cost of render giant world maps in sprites and/or low fidelity polygons or blurry pre-rendered backgrounds are so much less compared to the expectation we have now in terms of interactivity and fidelity.

i'm kinda sad yet understandable that FF7R needs to be split up because it's almost impossible to render all of that in real time high fidelity without a huge budget.

 

[Dark_Castle]

Xenoblade 2 towns are absolutely the first time I felt this "magic" of town density since FFXII. It's amazing.

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There are so much secrets and hidden spots with good stuffs scattered in just this trade guild alone that I often find myself coming back here and discovering new things throughout the game, many requiring tricky jumping and observation skills.

 

[PlanetSmasher]

I agree with the thrust of your point with the 'pandering to otaku' but DQXI and Octopath don't look like they sit easily within either definition here.

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What kinds of side content does DQXI have? Do we know yet? Because the last full-spec console DQ game was large in terms of world scale but also very linear in structure and lacking in things to do aside from walk places and fight monsters.

 

[Redcrayon]

What kinds of side content does DQXI have? Do we know yet? Because the last full-spec console DQ game was large in terms of world scale but also very linear in structure and lacking in things to do aside from walk places and fight monsters.

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Dragon Quest VIII had the photo quests and monster arena and item creation in the 3DS version, I don't know how much any of that differs from the PS2 edition but was one of them a late addition made to lean in to modem demands for sidequests?

I was more replying to this specific paragraph, where you suggest there's little between otaku stuff and FF/Kingdom Hearts.

On the other hand, bigger JRPGs (a category that has rapidly devolved to just Final Fantasy and maybe Kingdom Hearts) are so focused on graphical fidelity and production values as the paramount goal that they spend all their time and budget on looking good and the actual gameplay almost always suffers due to that.

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I don't think DQVIII gameplay suffers from having a relatively small amount of sidequests- a good enough RPG shouldn't need endless padding, as opposed to the odd bit of choice in tasks to help with pacing, as the plot should compel you to advance. Perhaps it's a matter of whether you view it all as 'value added content' or 'unnecessary bloat', but seeing as the average run time of RPGs seems to be on an ever-upwards curve I'd also argue that they aren't exactly getting shorter.

Regarding smaller RPGs, I play a few of Falcom's ones, and certainly recent Ys and Trails games seem to be packed with sidequests, fishing, crafting, cooking, optional objectives etc etc.

As for 'extra stuff to do in Yakuza/FFXV', I think the precedence of the open world genre and how that crosses over with modern high-budget games perhaps has something to do with it- there's loads to do in Zelda too, perhaps too much.

Like I said, I agree with the broad thrust of what you're saying as lengthy, costly development forces developers to focus on getting the game out, the extra stuff in FFXV released in the year after release seems like stuff that would have been there at launch 20 years ago, but I don't think Dragon Quest is short-changing the player on content.