@blakeyrat said:
From that point on, JRPGs split off and went in entirely the wrong direction and have been shit every since.
JRPGs strongly favor a fixed narrative over exploration, the idea being that it allows the telling of a more compelling and coherent story. CRPGs favor exploration as the vehicle and treat story as something secondary that is grown organically in the background.
They're completely different genres that were just awkwardly bunched together because some moron attached the wrong label to it way back when. The RPG moniker was stuck to the genre back in the day because it implements leveling, character attributes/statistics and dice rolls for battle that mimic what CRPGs do. The games didn't exactly fit within the bounds of an action, adventure, sports or puzzle game, so their heavy reliance on stats got them dumped into the RPG bin.
It doesn't make sense to hate on the entire genre because of that stupid mistake. Mind you: either type of game can work well or backfire within its own genre as well.
For instance: FF13 is a good example of too strong a push in the direction of the narrative and so little left to play outside of the 'on rails' battles that constitute some 90% of the game, that you can hardly call it a game anymore.
In contrast, Chrono Trigger (a decidedly japanese RPG) is still driven by a fixed, core narrative, but it was well-balanced with exploration and discovery and to this day is counted amongst the favorite games of many gamers.
When it comes to CRPGs, the choices of excellent games that hit all the marks are many. The Elder Scrolls ranks top, as do the older Bioware titles. They offer great diversity and exploration and use core world-building and lore as a solid foundation for the game world.
However, CRPGs are not without their black sheep either. Infact, one need look no further than the Elder Scrolls games themselves. Their open-endedness and the staggering amount of interactions and interconnections everything has, also leads to lots and lots of bugs and game-breaking events. The sheer amount of content in them and the way they are arranged as an open world also quickly leads to repetition when diving into another clone of generic dungeon/cave/crypt theme X for the umpteenth time.
Also, for all their effort to present a world that breathes and is alive, the actual cities in the Elder Scrolls games are no bigger than small townships. Look at something like the Imperial City in Oblivion. Can you honestly claim it is more alive than, say, FF9's Alexandria?
(Let me answer that for you: No you can't. You'd be lying through your teeth...)
That's the trade-off with making everything open and accessible. You can't hand-wave away any parts of the world, like you can with the fixed scenery of a more narrative-driven game.
Also:
@blakeyrat said:
And if the fact that you can't just walk around and explore isn't bad enough, the 45-minute long "cutscenes" consisting of pointless railroading dialog will finish anybody off.
I'm sorry; were we talking about JRPGs or Metal Gear Solid?