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What's the most generic JRPG you've ever played?
- Thread starter Phediuk
- Start date
Lufia and the Fortress of Doom comes pretty close. You play as the descendant of a legendary hero who has to face a group of villains called the Sinistrals. It hits pretty much every genre cliche and plays them straight. I still love the game though.
It does distinguish itself with its memorable opening though, as well as a big plot twist later in the game.
It does distinguish itself with its memorable opening though, as well as a big plot twist later in the game.
Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth is my go-to example of an extremely generic RPG in a modern setting.
Several explorable neighborhoods of Tokyo as the game world, a mix of J-Pop and electronic beats for a soundtrack, separate world where you go to fight monsters and a bunch of anime cliches acting as the main characters in a similarly cheesy story. Not bad per se, but nothing about it is unique.
Several explorable neighborhoods of Tokyo as the game world, a mix of J-Pop and electronic beats for a soundtrack, separate world where you go to fight monsters and a bunch of anime cliches acting as the main characters in a similarly cheesy story. Not bad per se, but nothing about it is unique.
Sands of Destruction on DS. Shame because the initial story draft painted a picture of a more interesting scenario, at the least.
Fairy Fencer F maybe? It's the most aggressively uninteresting of the Compile Heart games I tried before completely writing them off forever. The Wikipedia story summary:
WHAT A UNIQUE AND INTERESTING PREMISE.
Would have mentioned it... But like, at least it's a crossover? A terrible one that wastes its potential, but it's got that going for it at least.
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OP
OP
The funny thing about Lufia is that it's a shameless ripoff of Lunar, which is about as generic as it gets to start with.
breath of fire 1
wild arms 1
super hydlide wasn't so much generic as it was just bad, but the OST knocked
wild arms 1
super hydlide wasn't so much generic as it was just bad, but the OST knocked
I may get some flak for this, but although I ended up loving the game, Dragon Quest XI was really paint by numbers. I don't play a lot of JRPGs these days though so I don't have a huge pool to pull from.
Correct post. Most vanilla game I have ever played. Everything about it is painfully generic
DQ can't be considered generic any more than Bayer Asprin can be considered generic.
Hey! How dare you!
(psst. You're right. I just played it for the first time recently, and found it to be pretty fun but not super memorable. Couldn't make it through the sequel, but I hear its better or something.)
Yeah, I love BoF1, but it was a pretty obvious me too RPG. Series really didn't come into it's own until 2, tbh
Fantastic OST, though
It is pretty generic, but there's worse stuff like Kemco RPGs. At least Golden Sun is a well executed generic.
This is entirely the fault of the localizations, which completely bungle the excellent Japanese writing. (They also screw up the numbering - "2" is actually 3, "1" is actually 4, and "3" is actually 5!) The PSP versions are also the worst versions of the games aside from the localizations.
This actually hurt me. And also makes me think you haven't seen what real "generic" looks like. The characters and worldbuilding alone are far above most of the genre.
I mean the OP was asking for generic, not what JRPG you think is mediocre or bad. Kingdom Hearts cant be generic just by virtue of being a crossover between Final Fantasy and Disney characters. That is unique, even if you don't think its particularly good
tales of graces managed to take a game that takes place on an artificial moon orbiting mars into a generic friendship fest with some of the shoddiest world-building i've ever seen
gameplay sucked too because they felt the need to take everything fun from Destiny R and go "let's not do any of that"
gameplay sucked too because they felt the need to take everything fun from Destiny R and go "let's not do any of that"
The story premise of KH is very generic though.
About heart and heartless and some generic disney villains + other worlds.
The combat is also very basic generic action combat. KH2 added a lot more options.
This all depends on where you see it from and hence why you can see different answers in this thread.
I will definitely get called out for saying this but on paper, Dragon Quest is what you can call generic:
- Town has a problem -> Go to dungeon to fight the boss -> Save town -> Repeat for next town
- Medieval towns 90% of the time (that changed with DQXI) and majority of the towns are indistinguishable from each other
- You're the hero of light saving the world from darkness
- Turn based battles with almost to little variation
- You've got slime monsters, demon monsters, etc.
But in the end, it's well executed and pulls it off well and doesn't make it look boring, in fact it's the complete opposite. I like the DQ series especially V and XI.
- Town has a problem -> Go to dungeon to fight the boss -> Save town -> Repeat for next town
- Medieval towns 90% of the time (that changed with DQXI) and majority of the towns are indistinguishable from each other
- You're the hero of light saving the world from darkness
- Turn based battles with almost to little variation
- You've got slime monsters, demon monsters, etc.
But in the end, it's well executed and pulls it off well and doesn't make it look boring, in fact it's the complete opposite. I like the DQ series especially V and XI.
Golden Sun has pretty awesome puzzles so it can't be fully generic. Trails of series has the best world building in any jrpg period so it can't be the most generic. Dragon Quest basically invented the genre so it only feele generic because everyine copies it to varying extents. Lunar, Breath of Fire 1, and FF4 all felt generic to me.
Lost Odyssey.
It's an uninspired store-brand Final Fantasy knockoff that fails to stand out as anything other than a collection of ideas taken wholesale from the series it's trying so hard to be.
Its only identity is that it's from the creator of Final Fantasy.
It's an uninspired store-brand Final Fantasy knockoff that fails to stand out as anything other than a collection of ideas taken wholesale from the series it's trying so hard to be.
Its only identity is that it's from the creator of Final Fantasy.
Tales of Zestiria.
The best and only damn good thing about this videogame is its theme song "White Light", it's epic.
I'm a Pokemon guy through and through, but I devoured Cyber Sleuth while I have yet to finish Pokemon Moon, ugh. What an awful game.
With all that said, I do agree everything else about Cyber Sleuth was generic
The best and only damn good thing about this videogame is its theme song "White Light", it's epic.
I found the DigiEvolving and Devolving feature extremely compelling, sure the game is far from a 10. But I enjoyed this game waaaay more than Pokemon Moon which I also bought that same month.
I'm a Pokemon guy through and through, but I devoured Cyber Sleuth while I have yet to finish Pokemon Moon, ugh. What an awful game.
With all that said, I do agree everything else about Cyber Sleuth was generic
I mean, in its structure maybe. But the combat is a pretty interesting thing imo, the story unfolds quite well and the characters manage to evolve past their initial "2D feel". Probably one of the biggest gaming surprises I've had, I would call it a 10 for sure. I've yet to play the rest of the trilogy and I am dying to, just gotta get enough free time to do so :s
you have no idea what generic is. Not liking it doesn't make it generic, stop being this dumb please
The psp legend of heroes series before trails is even more generic, at least I can still remember character name and story bit of trails fc when I start trails sc years later. I don't even remember the main character name of legend of heroes psp.
Okay I just google it, it's called legend of heroes: tears of vermilion
