There are still plenty of modern JRPGs that use random encounters. I don’t understand where this “nearly nonexistent” claim is coming from.
Etrian Odyssey
Bravely Default
Cthulhu Saves the World (and Breath of Death VIII - both Indie titles)
Pokemon (probably the most popular RPG franchise in the world, has a mix of truly random encounters in tall grass/caves/water/etc, with predictable encounters with trainers)
There are also games with “semi random” encounters where after a certain period of time or when you enter a new area, a monster icon will appear on your map and if you touch it, you’ll go into a battle. Tales games have this type of encounter system.
And there are probably many others I am forgetting. Random encounters are still a staple of many JRPGs.
And are also clearly designed with heavy “retro” philosophies. As far as I’m concerned, if you make a new game and deliberately use some old convention from 20 years ago because you’re trying to evoke games from 20 years ago, it doesn’t count as a “new” game deliberately choosing to use that convention on its own merit. It’s basically someone making a new OLD game. Same rule applies to Wasteland 2 here. You could ALMOST make the same argument for Etrian Odyssey and Bravely Default. The former, in particular, basically exists for the purpose of saying “Here! It’s just like those games you remember from 30 years ago!”
Oh ok, so random encounters are nonexistant if we don’t count all the games that still have them. Because any game that employed random encounters isn’t REALLY a new game. And no true Scotsman would play such a game, would he?
And Americans can make JRPGs. Cthulhu saves the world isn’t a WRPG just because it was made by Americans.
Not really finite, any more than the enemies in Skyrim or Fallout are. They’ll respawn, eventually (save for bosses), but are visible on the worldmap, and always spawn in the same places. For FF, this started with XI (an MMO), was controversial in XII (people thought it was too MMO-y), and absolutely unremarked in XIII (or XIV, another MMO).
The most recent Dragon Quest available in North America (IX, on the Nintendo DS) also had enemies visible on the map (though they were randomly generated and went into a standard battle screen when you made contact with them, much like Chrono Trigger), FTR, and Kingdom Hearts (Square’s other big recent(ish) property) has always had visible enemies fought on the map.
I think the SMT series is the only really big series that hasn’t mostly dropped the random battles…and even there I’m not terribly familiar with SMTIV or the recent Persona games, so they might have, as well.
That doesn’t make any sense. But I’ve always thought the idea of a “Western” RPG was pretty dumb. JRPGs have a very specific style to go along with the (mostly) turn-based random battles. Zeboyd’s games try to ape that in a way, but they are very American in the way they play. Especially their Penny Arcade RPGs.
A French person could open a Chinese restaurant and make Chinese-style food. It may be French-Chinese food, it may not be authentic, but it won’t be appropriate to call it a French restaurant.
JRPG and WRPG is a style of game, as we’ve outlined here. It’s not defined by who makes those games nowadays, but they got their name because of the history of the two. Western game developers tended to make RPGs that were pretty different than what Japanese developers were making, and so now we have two brands of RPG, regardless of the nationality of the developer. As an American, I could go out and make a JRPG just as a French person could open a Chinese restaurant. It may not be “authentic” or whatever, but it would still fit the category.
And anyhow, I didn’t say that ALL JRPGs are still random encounter based. A lot do have visible “icons” that will pull you into a battle when you touch them. But many, many JRPGs still have random encounters.
And whether the encounters are random, or happen when you touch a visible icon while traveling around, the more important point, that I didn’t make before, is that it pulls you into a separate screen/area to do a battle in, in JRPGs. In WRPGs, the “battle” almost always happens in the exact setting where you are traveling/exploring. There is no separate battle menu or screen, usually, in WRPGs. In JRPGs, whether the encounters are random or predetermined, or brought up by colliding with a monster icon, the screen usually fades and a whole new battle menu and system starts up. That’s a big difference between JRPGs and WRPGs, which is really what I should have referred to instead of saying random encounters specifically.
The problem with your JRPG definition, drewtwo99, is that there are big JRPGs that have their encounters on map, particularly all of Final Fantasy since XII. What it does still have is a sort of menu-based combat, but it’s menu-based in the MMO style instead, where the menus are part of the action. You basically queue up commands as you play.
I wasn’t kidding when I said random encounters are basically DONE. The only games that have them now are games that deliberately are trying to “retro”.
Final Fantasy disposed of them ages ago.
Tales of hasn’t had them in over a decade.
Dragon quest doesn’t have them anymore.
SMT:Persona and SMT: Devil Summoner don’t have them. SMT4 might have them, but its nature as a handheld game makes things a little more muddled.
Legend of Heroes doesn’t have them.
Fire Emblem certainly doesn’t, but then SRPGs have basically never had them.
Atelier series doesn’t have them.
Ni No Kuni didn’t have them.
Neptunia doesn’t have them.
I literally cannot think of the last non-retro RPG I played that had them. And yes, Bravely Default counts as a retro RPG as far I’m concerned.
Airk, you are making the biggest no true scotsman argument I’ve ever seen. “No JRPGs have random ecounters if you don’t count the ones that do.”
There are plenty that still have them.
There is no single RPG series as popular as Pokemon, and they still have them. That alone is enough to debunk the “No modern JRPGs have random encounters.” Let alone all the others I mentioned.
Hand-wave them away by saying they are all “retro” but they are still JRPGs and there are still several of them.
And BigT, there are always exceptions. I was just speaking in generalities. I know that some JRPGs are going more MMO style where the encounters don’t fade away into a separate battle screen. But many/most do.
What really separates JRPGs and WRPGs, as already mentioned by me and others, is player agency and how the story is told, and what kinds of stories get told. The gameplay mechanics themselves… there’s so many different exceptions it’s hard to speak generally.
Just because you can see an encounter on a map before the fight start, doesn’t necessarily make them any less random. DQ9 lets you see them on the field first, but they’re still as much random as they’ve ever been.
By THAT metric, EVERY game has random encounters, including western RPGs. Skyrim? Yeah, full of 'em! So…sure, I guess? If you want to make the metric useless.
And okay drewtwo99, cite me some modern JRPGs that have random encounters and see if you can get anywhere near the list I just threw out. Good luck.
A) Even if it isn’t, it’s still one game out of a LOT
B) C’mon, for serious. The game REEKS of “this is nothing but an homage to old Final Fantasy Games.” How can you not consider it retro? The characters are superdeformed, for crying out loud.
I suppose it comes down to how you define “retro” but unless your definition is “has pixel art” Bravely Default fits.
Because it’s basically Final Fantasy V with new graphics? (Oh, sorry, and an ‘enhanced’ battle system.)
If someone makes an original platformer with fancy graphics that is exactly the same gameplay as Contra, does that make it retro? I sure think so. Retro is more than graphics. Certainly, the word “Retro” appears in plenty of reviews of Hard Corps Uprising.
