The Last Days of the Japanese RPG?
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Another sign of the declining Japanese RPG market is the proliferation of rereleases and remakes of the genre's classic titles. While it certainly helps maintain the audience's flagging enthusiasm and is invaluable for preserving the history of JRPGs, it can't be a healthy development for some of the best games of the year to be revisited classics.
This year the PlayStation Network got Final Fantasy VII, the 1997 PlayStation game that brought JRPGs to a mass audience. It's fashionable now to dismiss Final Fantasy VII as a jumbled mess of a game that hides an incoherent narrative behind visual smoke and mirrors. The game's memory is not well served either by Square-Enix's determined efforts to extract every last bit of emotional (and physical) currency from players with the "Compilation of Final Fantasy VII" project.
However, spend some time with Final Fantasy VII, and you'll find a game that is still as engrossing as you remember it. The next game in the series, Final Fantasy VIII, was a late December release to the PlayStation Network store. Perhaps I can finally figure out the "correct" way to play this game so that it is fun.
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None of this is to suggest that the RPG genre is going away for good. On the contrary, North American and European developers are making some of the most compelling RPG experiences in recent years. Western developers seem far more willing to take creative chances and push game play in new directions. They also have the money and manpower to tackle big, ambitious projects.
While the future of RPGs is secure in the hands of the West, I fear that as the Japanese become less relevant to the genre something essential will have been lost. As more "badass biotic bitches" take center stage, the RPG will slip away from the world of dreams and longing. The fantasy will be gone.
