Japanese Gaming is back!

[GORETAURO]

If they start making fun games again, then we'll play them.

The reason western gamers abandoned their games is because they got weird as fuck. They became maudlin and forced you to play these metrosexual male protagonists who look and speak like girls and-- in every facet of behavior and mannerism

Was this like The Swedish Sims or sumtin?

 

[Thunderflash500]

Zelda got worse with every installment since Ocarina. The interesting thing with Breath of The Wild is that gameplay went back two decades. They completely reverted gameplay. All the innovation, All the new gameplay they came up wIth they got rid of. And it's the reason it's good.

They stopped treating us like complete retards with endless tutorials. They stopped forcing us to play their way. Theyt tried to manufacture every single aspect of every moment. Over designed the game to absolute death. Now they did a total 180. Players can die now! What a novel idea. Players can role play again. Go where they want when they want. Explore a massive world. Take on different challenges in many different ways rather than be forced to play the Nintendo way. Breath of the Wild is the true successor to Ocarina. Not Twilight Princess.

 

[Evangelion]

Uhm Dark Souls, Bloodborne and a million other Japanese games argue ts is wrong.

Tbh Japanese games just tell weird, incoherent stories, and their male protagonists are whiny pussies. Thats why their best games have little to no spoken dialogue.

In terms of combat they make masterpieces like Nier, Bayonetta, Souls/Bloodborne

 

[Blayt7hh]

Eh lots of series that I grew up with are gone or turned to shit ( FF, Breath of Fire, Suikoden, Star Ocean,Fire Emblem etc) but if you ask me what my favorite games of this or the last gen are they are probably still 80% Japanese.

The Fire Emblem games have all still been really good

 

[Madmick]

While I agree with some of the points made about Japanese games main characters being too andogynous, I'm also just as sick of every single protangonist in western games being some scruffy old man that looks like he can barely get out of bed in the morning.

Theres nothing wrong with making attractive/youthful characters in games, western games seem to go out of their way to make everyone as unnattractive as possible while Japanese games try to take this to the opposite extreme, both serve different audiences, a middle gound would be preferable to me.

I don't consider these males to be attractive as males.

The "twink" look might be a look that is attractive to gay men, but I'm not gay. I would never want to look like them. I want something that is closer to an idealized version of myself-- a worthy avatar. Furthermore, I don't mind body variation and demeanor varying in games. I don't mind twink characters that reflect the actual number of twinks in real life. But the majority of us aren't anything like that, and Jap games make every damn male a twink. It's too much.

I mostly play western games besides the Souls series and fighting games, but right now I'm playing Nier Automata and it has reignited my interest in Japanese games.

Now at first glance you can look at vids/screens of this game and you will see an anime styled girl doing crazy physics defying moves against giant robots. At this point most will dismiss this game as typical 'weeb trash' but this is where they would be making a huge mistake. Any true gamer deserves to play this game and its 3 acts at least once in their life, thats seriously how good this game is. And the themes and storylines are more mature, darker and more thought provoking than 99% of all games out there, Western or Japanese.

We're not criticizing the controls. Games like Bayonetta 2 are legendary for their combat mechanics.

It's the art style, narrative tones, and general "culture" of the games that are turning off western gamers.

Was this like The Swedish Sims or sumtin?

Have you played a Japanese game, lately? If you get an hour in and the male hero you are playing hasn't cried yet (or at least glassed up real good to where it gets tense)...you've found a narrative diamond in the rough.

 

[Madmick]

Uhm Dark Souls, Bloodborne and a million other Japanese games argue ts is wrong.

I feel like you and I watched different children's programs when we were young.

 

[Xaralaboss]

The Fire Emblem games have all still been really good

Awakening and Fates ruined the series. Waifus, Lolis, marrying children, creepy petting, dating sim and atrocious sexualized character designs. Gameplay is still decent but actually worse than previous installments in terms of map design. Support convos ,due to the sheer amount are so watered down it feels like watching a shitty anime. Just pathetic. The new seems to remove most of that shit though so I´m optimistic.

 

[Blayt7hh]

Awakening and Fates ruined the series. Waifus, Lolis, marrying children, creepy petting, dating sim and atrocious sexualized character designs. Gameplay is still decent but actually worse than previous installments in terms of map design. Support convos ,due to the sheer amount are so watered down it feels like watching a shitty anime. Just pathetic. The new seems to remove most of that shit though so I´m optimistic.

I did have a hard time getting into Fates, but I loved Awakening. I think you are alone on not liking that one

 

[Evangelion]

I don't consider these males to be attractive as males.

The "twink" look might be a look that is attractive to gay men, but I'm not gay. I would never want to look like them. I want something that is closer to an idealized version of myself-- a worthy avatar. Furthermore, I don't mind body variation and demeanor varying in games. I don't mind twink characters that reflect the actual number of twinks in real life. But the majority of us aren't anything like that, and Jap games make every damn male a twink. It's too much.

We're not criticizing the controls. Games like Bayonetta 2 are legendary for their combat mechanics.

It's the art style, narrative tones, and general "culture" of the games that are turning off western gamers.

Have you played a Japanese game, lately? If you get an hour in and the male hero you are playing hasn't cried yet (or at least glassed up real good to where it gets tense)...you've found a narrative diamond in the rough.

Amen Japanese games have literally the best combat,(Nioh, Bayonetta, Dmc, Nier) but jesus are their characters terrible.

Its not just the twink thing though. Everyones a stereotypical nerd, jock or on. Their characters lack depth and at this point, outside a couple series, camt tell a coherent story.

Its no coincidence literally the most popular recent Japanese series, the Souls series, has almost no story. If you want a great narrative you dony buy a Japanese game

 

[Scarzi]

jap gaming back, that joke was really funny man. Thank you.

 

[Xaralaboss]

I did have a hard time getting into Fates, but I loved Awakening. I think you are alone on not liking that one

Not, really. They both got more or less the same scores but Fates has objectively the better gameplay.( Much better map design than the empty fields of awakening) Still being able to marry characters like Nowi in a video game should put people on a government watchlist. They abandoned the more traditional grounded characters for anime cliches.

 

[MMAmathwiz]

I don't consider these males to be attractive as males.

The "twink" look might be a look that is attractive to gay men, but I'm not gay. I would never want to look like them. I want something that is closer to an idealized version of myself-- a worthy avatar. Furthermore, I don't mind body variation and demeanor varying in games. I don't mind twink characters that reflect the actual number of twinks in real life. But the majority of us aren't anything like that, and Jap games make every damn male a twink. It's too much.

We're not criticizing the controls. Games like Bayonetta 2 are legendary for their combat mechanics.

It's the art style, narrative tones, and general "culture" of the games that are turning off western gamers.

Have you played a Japanese game, lately? If you get an hour in and the male hero you are playing hasn't cried yet (or at least glassed up real good to where it gets tense)...you've found a narrative diamond in the rough.

Well you have to consider that the twink look may not be targeted to men at all, but more to younger women under 25. Which makes sense if you take into account alot of young women and teens seem to be into jrpgs and anime, jrpgs are more story/romance and have simplistic gameplay which would appeal to young women.

Also I think you're speaking on more a certain segment of Japanese games, mostly the FF series and JRPGs that feature these twink characters. Japanese character action games can be more diverse, if you think about the most popular Japanese games recently released in the last few years, almost none of them feature these types of characters you speak of:

Dark Souls 1-3
Bloodborne
MGS Series
Resident Evil series
Nioh
Last Guardian
Zelda (not really twink, its going for more a classic old school look)


And most of their popular fighting game series like SF, Tekken, etc feature more masculine type of characters.

TBH the reason I play Japanese games is that they excel in melee combat, the Japanese understand melee better whereas Western games excel in Shooters and MP games. Whether thats in pure fighting games or melee games like Dark Souls.

In terms of story I think they are both pretty equally bad with a few standouts on both sides such as Nier Automata and Bioshock Infinite, which imo are 2 of the better story based games I've played in recent times. Finding a good story in a game is like finding a needle in a haystack, its very rare for both western and japanese games.

 

[MMAmathwiz]

Yakuza 0 - dudes look like men.

Massive sleeper.

Last Metal Gear, you're also a mature scarred man.

True, I didn't see any twinks in RE7, Silent Hill or any Fromsoft games either.

 

[Plissken]

I'm glad at the resurgence. It seems to come at a time when many of the big western devs have gotten lazy and complacent too (and they got big when the same downturn happened to Japanese developers).

 

[Madmick]

Well you have to consider that the twink look may not be targeted to men at all, but more to younger women under 25. Which makes sense if you take into account alot of young women and teens seem to be into jrpgs and anime, jrpgs are more story/romance and have simplistic gameplay which would appeal to young women.

Also I think you're speaking on more a certain segment of Japanese games, mostly the FF series and JRPGs that feature these twink characters. Japanese character action games can be more diverse, if you think about the most popular Japanese games recently released in the last few years, almost none of them feature these types of characters you speak of:

Dark Souls 1-3
Bloodborne
MGS Series
Resident Evil series
Nioh
Last Guardian
Zelda (not really twink, its going for more a classic old school look)


And most of their popular fighting game series like SF, Tekken, etc feature more masculine type of characters.

TBH the reason I play Japanese games is that they excel in melee combat, the Japanese understand melee better whereas Western games excel in Shooters and MP games. Whether thats in pure fighting games or melee games like Dark Souls.

In terms of story I think they are both pretty equally bad with a few standouts on both sides such as Nier Automata and Bioshock Infinite, which imo are 2 of the better story based games I've played in recent times. Finding a good story in a game is like finding a needle in a haystack, its very rare for both western and japanese games.

Okay. That western women market sure is proving to be a lucrative one, isn't it?

 

[MMAmathwiz]

Okay. That western women market sure is proving to be a lucrative one, isn't it?

Lol, well I doubt that's even a fraction of their target audience its probably to appeal more to Japanese female gamers who are more used to these types of characters, its just a difference in cultural archetypes. They still put in the sexy female character to get the guys and the twinks to get the Japanese girls, makes sense to me.

If they do make a decent profit on top of that by getting some residual income off western female gamers thats just a bonus for them. Tbh though every girl I know that plays games are really into JRPGs and FF series, but it could just be a coincidence.

Japanese games that are more targeted towards western gamers in general would be franchises like MGS and DS, where the devs probably have full intention from start of development to create a game more marketable in the west. Also its not like Japanese games aren't selling well lately, theres no reason for them to change their present strategy.

 

[method115]

If they start making fun games again, then we'll play them.

The reason western gamers abandoned their games is because they got weird as fuck. They became maudlin and forced you to play these metrosexual male protagonists who look and speak like girls and-- in every facet of behavior and mannerism-- seem more interested in posing for a magazine cover shoot than killing an evil king or somehow else restoring harmony to their world/people.


Also, enough with the fucking 15-foot swords. We've seen your porn. As hard as you've tried to scramble the truth you're not fooling anybody.

I was getting ready to lay into your abou the metrosexual male protag as I've been playing JRPG's for well over 15 years now. Looks like I was wrong though looking back at some of my favorite JRPG's all the guys looked a lot more normal. From Beyond the Beyond, to Phantasy Star, etc. Oh well guess I never noticed the subtle change.