The Nintendo Wii U is Great Thread

[N1njaSquirrel]

holy fuck. Does the WiiU even play Wii games?

 

I hear Xenoblade is good. I have nothing to back it up apart from my friends recommendation.

 

Your adamant hatred towards JRPG's reminded me - I have a spare copy of Half Minuet Hero, which is a pretty ace JRPG if you'd like to give it a go. I was going to mention it last time you ranted about P4 (which I really like :/) but forgot.

[Griddlelol]

I'm 99% sure it does! It has a Wii emulator on the menu.

 

The worst part is that I like pretty much everything about JRPGs, they're just too damn long. Half Minute Hero might actually be my cup of tea.

 

Most JRPGs have awful stories, P4G had a fantastic story. I dunno, I've tried so many, but I've only ever finished Pokémon.

[N1njaSquirrel]

I think the problem with most JRPG's is that their stories lie too heavily in anime tropes to be accessible. That and they're too wordy/lore ridden at the beginning to care or be invested at all.

 

Bravely Default is a great JRPG too, for what it's worth.

 

I'll PM you the steam code

[Griddlelol]

Yeah those anime tropes really don't sit well with me. The writing on most JRPGs is awful even if the story is acceptable. P4G is outstanding in those areas though. It's such a shame that I got bored of the long dungeons and repetitive combat.

I also find that many JRPGs do that Japanese thing of telling you a story, rather than letting you play it. The Tales of... games are the worst offenders in that respect. The little "skits" that are just full of exposition make me wonder why I have to sit there and read, when they could let me play the damn game. The Souls games do this fantastically, so it's not like it's a Japanese design philosophy, more just lazy or uncreative writing.

 

I've actually got 50+ hours of Bravely Default played already. The combat is great, I really loved the brave/default system, and combining classes to blaze through enemies was so much fun. The story was ass though, especially when you get to chapter 5. I think I made it to 6 and was like "fuck this."

 

Thanks! I'll definitely give it a go. I want to like JRPGs, I just don't think 100 hour dungeon slogs are for me.

[N1njaSquirrel]

I wonder if the problem with the writing lies with the translation?

 

certainly anime tropes do not convert well, especially the "moe" ones. And it's even worse when it's in english dub. P4's dub is consistantly fantastic though, and the story was compelling enough for me to get through the game all the way to the final boss, but that last boss was too much of a tank to complete it. It also turns out I leveled the wrong people for the battle to be easier.

 

I wouldn't say that the dissonance between gameplay and story is unique to just JRPG's. Certainly Bayonetta tells pretty much all it's story through cutscenes, same even with the new Wolfenstein game. I would say that it stands out more, as the gameplay in JRPG's are maybe not all that rewarding. Certainly Bravely makes an effort to change that up.

 

Would Fire Emblem count as a JRPG? That game is pretty great too.

[Griddlelol]

I love Fire Emblem, however that's more of a strategy game. I've completed the 3DS one twice and I'm playing it again at the moment. I think there is a difference in that it has story that isn't told through cut scenes.

A lot of the story comes from making a decision that leads to an heroic win or a sacrificial death of one character. That stuff gets you strongly attached to the characters. The characters also develop personalities depending on their skills. On my first play through I had two horse"men" one of whom was an absolute tank (Stahl) and I could set him up on a choke point so that he'd just have enemies bouncing off him. Not always killing them, but stalling an enemy advance.

The other was Sully, she was a machine for putting out damage. She could kill almost anyone in one hit, but wasn't great at defence. It made me care about the characters because they had personality in their roles, and that made the anime cut scenes far more interesting. 

 

Sort of like Xcom, but with more individual personality.

 

I've not played Bayonetta, but I'm very excited for it to come out on WiiU. I love The Wonderful 101 and Metal Gear Rising is a good game as far as I can tell (only played like an hour so far). 

[JonCole]

The Tales games are cutscene-heavy to the point where they almost seem satire. Watching my wife play Tales of Xillia, probably like 80% of the first couple hours of the game are either cutscenes or skit-style dialogue scenes. Add to that the fact that JRPGs love to introduce a vocabulary of in-universe jargon right off the bat and you're swimming in mediocre at best writing that you can't skip because you literally won't understand anything that's going on if you do.

[SuperBiasedMan]

I played quite a bit of Xenoblade, probably 20-40 hours(?). It's an out and out JRPG, with anime tropes, heavy lore as well as cutscenes and dialogue galore. Definitely not the worst offender for too much cut scenes but that's how the story is told rather than in gameplay. That said the gameplay is fun, the lore is interesting and the story's not overly generic and has some nice twists on the formula, but it's not a terribly unique plot.

 

I... really don't know if it'll work for you? I put it down because I let myself get distracted by fetch quests and got tired of how long and slow that made the game feel, but also because I was playing on the Wii at my parents' house and I wasn't around enough to plough through an RPG epic.

 

Also I think the reason RPGs telling cutscene heavy stories is a problem is because RPGs have the legacy of being the story genre of games because they had the capacity to have a lot of information in times when games were constricted. But these days they try to feel massive and epic in comparison to other massive AAA games and so they load in more and more information instead of trying to pare down to a well told story.

 

Basically I wish RPGs were taking lessons more from Gone Home and the Stanley Parable to develop instead of just going 'bigger'.

[Larsen B]

The Tales games are cutscene-heavy to the point where they almost seem satire. Watching my wife play Tales of Xillia, probably like 80% of the first couple hours of the game are either cutscenes or skit-style dialogue scenes. Add to that the fact that JRPGs love to introduce a vocabulary of in-universe jargon right off the bat and you're swimming in mediocre at best writing that you can't skip because you literally won't understand anything that's going on if you do.

 

Tales of Vesperia is one of maybe 3 games in recent memory that I just couldn't finish* because the story and characters just weren't interesting at all. I said about Bravely Default (which was going the same way) that voiced dialogue in RPGs is almost guaranteed to make me zone out but I paid attention to Final Fantasy XIII (and, oops, enjoyed it) and Persona 3 and 4 have loads of talking and are so anime-inspired but are also two of my favourite games of all time.

 

*having already invested 65 hours

[JonCole]

I just think that JRPGs would do great to focus on mechanics in Act 1 and ramp up on story in Act 2. It's like casting a line and pulling a fishing rod as hard as you possibly can as soon as you catch anything. I think it's why FFXIII was so intolerable for many, because not only did it weigh players down with an overly long tutorial where the mechanics were painstakingly explained but at the same time they were throwing ponderous plot details at you about cities you don't care about and people you don't know.

 

The only reason Persona games get away with this is because they actually have moderately realistic characters and stories set in the "real world" that manage to be interesting to most people who like mystery/thriller things.

[Griddlelol]

Probably a miss for me. Shame. I'm sure I'd love it for the first 20 hours then I'd feel obligated to play and end up getting frustrated leading to me quitting 40 hours in. That is the JRPG cycle. I don't like not finishing games!

 

I'm sure it is to do with RPGs being the story games, but western developers have made fantastic RPGs that don't rely on cut scenes - look at the Mass Effect trilogy. I loved the first one so much that it convinced me to go read those long codices! No JRPG has done that, but then again, I've never played a JRPG that was about space exploration rather than magic.

Technically The Last of Us is an RPG, and that manages to do both environmental and cut scene story telling. 

 

Also as Jon puts it - JRPGs suffer from loading exposition on you, right at the start, when you don't know and don't care. Compare that to the classic western design which involved a character escaping a prison. For whatever reason, that's far more compelling that being told the world is about to end and your character is the only one to stop it before you even know the name of the character.

 

I also have some weird thing that I find the mysticism found in Japanese games to be dumb and boring, but a mage in a western game is cool. I don't know why, but Arthurian legend is cool, but all other forms of magic/mysticism are lame.  

[Larsen B]

Conversely, the lore stuff in Mass Effect and the Elder Scrolls games could not interest me less!

 

As far as good RPG beginnings go, Final Fantasy VII really had a fantastic start. It throws acronyms and proper nouns at you with abandon but, because you're starting in the middle of an exciting situation, it feels very involving. You're not a wide-eyed boy who has a chance meeting one day, you're an ex-soldier planning to bomb an energy reactor.

[JonCole]

FFVII benefits from having a somewhat analogous world to the modern world. It's a little easier to take proper nouns when they're referring to that big city with skyscrapers over there or that mega corporation will billboards everywhere, because that's not too different from what we have to do on a daily basis.

 

Seems like this go-around the PS3/PS4 is likely to be the platform for JRPG fans, is the only Wii U JRPG the upcoming Xenoblade title? I honestly can't think of any others at the moment.

[Bjorn]

It's 'Black Betty' Auto-correct get you there?

 

But yes, those end levels are absolutely fantastic and continue to be amazing!

 

I'm very happy they decided to do away with the concept of lives entirely. Makes the game feel less frustrating even when it gets much, much harder.

 

Ha, yes, fixed your spoiler.

[melmer]

Mario Kart bundle sold out everywhere i checked. guess its not meant to be

[N1njaSquirrel]

Edit: You can get it here still: http://www.shopto.net/video-games/wiiu/WIIUHW90-nintendo-wii-u-mario-kart-8-premium-special-edition

 

My bad, clicked send too prematurely!

[melmer]

yeah i just wanted to pick it up from a shop instead of waiting two days for it in the post

 

i'm kinda annoyed i missed this bad boy (they've stopped stocking it and were ditching all their stock, bit stupid as a few weeks later its sold out everywhere due to Mario Kart)

http://direct.asda.com/Nintendo-Wii-U-32GB-Console-%28Black%29-%28Premium-Pack%29-Nintendo-Land/003774372,default,pd.html

[N1njaSquirrel]

I'm pretty sure shop to does next day delivery on any console. And garanteed next business day if the order is done before 4.

[melmer]

bloody good deal... sold out. maybe i should hang on a wait for one of these crazy deals to come back into stock

[Griddlelol]

Conversely, the lore stuff in Mass Effect and the Elder Scrolls games could not interest me less!

 

As far as good RPG beginnings go, Final Fantasy VII really had a fantastic start. It throws acronyms and proper nouns at you with abandon but, because you're starting in the middle of an exciting situation, it feels very involving. You're not a wide-eyed boy who has a chance meeting one day, you're an ex-soldier planning to bomb an energy reactor.

 

I find Elder Scrolls lore to be incredibly boring too. It's so bland and cliché. Mass Effect was interesting to me because I'd never really seen a game or movie that had a universe as fleshed out as Star Wars. IT gave me the sense of discovery too. I, and the protagonist (who is essentially me in game) were discovering most of this stuff for the first time. Exposition didn't feel out of place because the protagonist needed to hear it. Plus I like aliens and space.

 

I would love Elder Scrolls/Mass Effect/Dragon Age/KOTOR style game (basically any RPG) set in Feudal Japan. Or ancient Rome. Or Greece. Or Egypt. Or Carthige. With real(-ish) world lore to read about and play through. I'd never stop playing that game. It'd be educational AND fun! In my head I'm imagining Crusader Kings where you play as a soldier and/or a general. 

 

I tried FF7 late, in the late PS2 era. What put me off the most was 2 things:

1) What character am I? Am I Cloud? (I fucking hope not) Who's the main character? This is a very Japanese thing to do and as someone who grew up immersed in western culture, the idea of there not being a main character was weird and I couldn't get past it. It's actually an issue I have with a lot of Japanese games. 

2) I fucking hate Cloud. All he does is moan. As someone who grew up in western culture  I couldn't empathise with this asshole. 

 

Oh and the obligatory 3) It was hyped and talked up so much that I was only going to be disappointed.

[lobotomy42]

I'm sure it is to do with RPGs being the story games, but western developers have made fantastic RPGs that don't rely on cut scenes - look at the Mass Effect trilogy.

 

Sorry, I have to disagree here.  The Mass Effect games - really, almost all Bioware games from the past five years - heavily lean on cutscenes for their storytelling.  Many of them are disguised by putting a dialogue wheel in front and waiting for the player to select one of three options, but they are still essentially cutscenes. 

 

The only real story-telling that is done through non-cutscene methods in Bioware games are the giant text-dump codex entries.  I can understand preferring that style to endless JRPG skits.  But might I suggest that at least some of your preference for Western RPGs to JRPGs probably comes down to preferring the *content* of the cutscenes to the fact that there are cutscenes?

[Bjorn]

Sorry, I have to disagree here.  The Mass Effect games - really, almost all Bioware games from the past five years - heavily lean on cutscenes for their storytelling.  Many of them are disguised by putting a dialogue wheel in front and waiting for the player to select one of three options, but they are still essentially cutscenes. 

 

The only real story-telling that is done through non-cutscene methods in Bioware games are the giant text-dump codex entries.  I can understand preferring that style to endless JRPG skits.  But might I suggest that at least some of your preference for Western RPGs to JRPGs probably comes down to preferring the *content* of the cutscenes to the fact that there are cutscenes?

 

Mass Effect is, in many ways, built on maintaining certain illusions, mostly all built on the idea that your actions and choices matter (by making cut-scenes somewhat interactive, by giving you a billion choices, etc).  If those illusions hold up for you, it's an incredible experience.  If the illusion breaks, you kind of see it for what it is.  It's like spotting the secret behind a magic trick.

[SuperBiasedMan]

Well, it is definitely a minor distinction but letting you actually choose dialogue makes the experience more interactive than a cutscene really. I'd say that the dialogue choices are a key gameplay feature of those games that is different to just reading/listening to dialogue that you have no bearing on.

I certainly didn't play Mass Effect for the shooting anyway.

[lobotomy42]

Right, agreed.  I'm just saying I don't think Tales of Xillia would be a markedly improved experience for Griddle if the skits stopped every thirty seconds to select a response. But maybe I'm wrong!

[melmer]

Shit. What have I done?

Posted a pictured upside down! That's what I've done

So how do these stupid nintendo machines work? Do I get a gamertag? I guess I'll find out in a minute