Any experienced Japanese rpg player knows that rpg storylines tend to use the same story elements over and over. Normally people dislike storylines full of cliches, but sometimes the cliches are done well. If anyone remembers a time they liked a certain Japanese rpg cliche or a cliche rpg, please post here.
Please put any spoilers in spoiler tags and put the name of the game outside the spoiler tags. If you do that, people can see if it is okay to see the spoiler or not.
The reason for the title is that I got the idea for this thread when I started thinking about a few times I actually liked how an amnesia cliche was done.
Tales of the Abyss
I liked Luke’s amnesia cliche. While I saw the Luke really had no past twist coming, it was still cool to figure that out before it was revealed. Also, I really liked how the game went into how the truth affected Luke. On top of that, I don’t remember another game that the reason for the amnesia was the character had no past.
Jet Enduro (Wild Arms 3) also falls on the “No memory for having no past” cliche I believe. In fact, “Memories” and their importance, was a major theme of that game’s story. Heck, at one point, it is revealed that everyone in the planet had their memories messed with, since they couldn’t remember that the cause of their planet being barren was an accident that happened only ten years before!
I also liked how Galuf’s amnesia was handled on Final Fantasy V; caused by a crash landing, recovered slowly as he met certain people (rather than all at once) and actually being helpful (it prevented him from being hypnotized by The Siren since he could not remember his loved ones, unlike the other heroes.) Very nice!
Wil, you make me wish I had beat WA3. So, the story actually went somewhere, huh.
It’s very, very obscure, but Live A Live’s Medieval chapter blew me away because it set up a by-the-books story that seemed entirely predictable and then all the fantasy caricatures either die or betray you and it’s done in a decidedly unpredictable manner and that ending for that chapter. Geez.
Live A Live has a great deal of problems which have only been highlighted over the years, but a few of them are enjoyable, and just like when you reach Hollow Bastion in Kingdom Hearts, I felt like when you got to that point in Live A Live’s story, it finally decided to churn out the plot points and define the game’s theme.
Vagrant Story was more trouble than it was worth, but Squaresoft made an epic hero who straddled the fence of ambiguity instead of being the same lone, silent hero archetype. Sydney looks like a Sephiroth with short white hair to diffrentiate but through force of language, namely the best translation ever, he’s a more endearing and otherworldly villian than Sephy. Every character, except maybe Merlose, breaks the mold and is a lot more complicated than one would originally believe.
I didn’t really like the amnesia subplot in that game though. It’s told wonderfully through the narrative, but I guess I just didn’t like plot of the situation, although I did buy into it. If that makes any sense.
I agree with everything that’s been said so far, except that WA3’s story never really went anywhere, for the exact opposite reasons of VS. I found the writing to be so abhorrent (and the graphical style so ham-handed) that I couldn’t get into it at all, regardless of what happened. And yes, part of that has to do with an awful original script, and part of it with an amateurish translation.
Tales of the Abyss in general blew me away with its nuanced view of the characters and surprisingly original plot elements. I wasn’t expecting anywhere near that amount of depth from a Tales game.
LAL doesn’t really live up to being a modern game, but most chapters had something to recommend it. The Future chapter in particular had a startling story, and the other chapters were full of innovations (such as no speech whatsoever in the Caveman chapter, or the various ways of beating the Ninja chapter). And yeah, Oboro’s chapter rocked.
I’m partial to the kung fu and old west chapters in LAL with their movie influences. And the discrepancy of the boss’s weapon, after carefully preparing the defenses of the village a la 7 Samurais.
Whether WA3’s story goes anywhere is a matter of opinion; the ideas of it certainly were inventive, but the story is kinda long and may have one too many twists to it (in particular, Zeikfried’s return came out of the left field, in my opinion.) I’m currently replaying the game, and while Cid is right in that the translation doesn’t help, it’s far from the worst story I’ve seen. Most importantly, the characters are likable and there are some genuine moving moments in the story. Besides, in how many games do you end up fighting evolution itself? Oh yeah, and the book sidequest was an incredibly clever way to reuse another previous Wild Arm character (Marivel) without having her actually appear in the story. It was quite a touching tale, too. I’d recommend anyone who never finished the game to go all the way, and then judge it by themselves.
The best old school cliches I’ve seen were in Lunar SSSC and Lunar EBC. The remakes by Working Designs were exceptional. The writing, voice acting was top notch and made the usual stereotypes enjoyable and fun.
While I enjoyed Vagrant Story, VS is neither stereotypical or cliche.
I agree. Other than Lunar, the Phoenix Wright games are consistently hilarious in terms of the writing (although I felt the second one was a bit of a downward dip in that regard).
I can’t believe I forgot the Lunar games. I really wish I had played SSSC first, because I’m sure I might enjoy it, but EBC successfully built upon the first’s story and ruined the heck out of it by design.
But yeah, the Lunar games had plenty of unique touches which made it more than just a mediocre RPG. Characters like Ronfar for example were entertaining folks and I actually enjoyed talking to the populace.
I just note VS a great deal because of that translation. They really went all out on it. IIRC, the same folks who translated it actually did FFXII, which, er, doesn’t exactly have the same majestic narrative, but those games are different beasts so it might be unfair to compare those translations.
I wonder if I’m playing a different version of Lunar SSSC from you guys, because the voice acting was for me like a squadron of cats sliding down a chalkboard, claws extended. Well, okay, Kyle was fine, but for instance, Royce gets the award for “least appropriate voice for a sexy evil chick” and Phacia talks like GLaDOS.
FFT’s translation needed work; but I guess your referring to the PSP version, did they clean house on the translation on that version?
I think it was the plot themselves that the narratives were centered on that changed the effectiveness of the writing for me. Vagrant Story struck me as this rousing but very dark tale of a knight. It’s focus was narrow and focused so incredibly on what it needed to say. FFXII, is written well, yes, but it’s got so much space to cover that it doesn’t.
The writing is so focused on building up Ivalice to the degree that they built up Lea Monde that nothing is really left for some of the characters. Since it’s just a translation though, there’s little they can do; if Penelo and Basch are underwritten after their introductions, they can’t just throw some more background in there. That’s what I meant when I said I was probably being a bit unfair in the comparison.
To stay on the topic, I’ll say that FFXII as far as I can remember, pulled off one anti-cliche in the tried and true spectator. Vaan at first seems like the typical “young adventurer” who wants to see the world but instead of forcing him to have a tie into the real plot of the story through some inane plot development, they made an interesting turn into having him evolve into someone who just wants to make a difference and not stand on the sidelines. Justin from Grandia had the same dynamic for awhile.
Hell yeah. The PSP translation was absolutely gorgeous. The original was one of the worst translations in the history of RPGs, and the new one is one of the best.
I find myself repeating this often, but I found FF12’s story to be astoundingly deep - but only if you worked at finding the depth. Practically every line that the main characters speak has meaning. VS was the same way. And yes, one of the main characters is Ivalice itself; taking the time to talk to NPCs and read the Clan Primer will net you a much broader and deeper experience than just watching cutscenes.
See, if I actually beat the game past the Phon Coast maybe I would see what your talking about. -__- Goshdarned college.
I’ll also be honest, sometimes, I can’t understand what the characters are saying, as in, I’ve lost the context of the situation. I was able to keep up with FFT with the help of the bestiary no less, but I guess I’m going to have to youtube a couple of scenes because they went way over my head. I suppose I should finish it and if I don’t understand something, I’ll just look at the Compendium to fill me in; seeing as how the Clan Primer seems to be a little random in how it dishes out information. Do you have to beat a certain amount of enemies for info to appear?
Yes, there’s a little number to the right of each enemy indicating how many you need for it to appear. But worry not, the entire Clan Primer is on the Internet. I should add a link to the site on the Compendium, since I don’t have it on me. Also, not every entry in the Clan Primer is story-related; some have to do with the bazaar items.
FF12’s story really picks up towards the end. Unfortunately it does have terrible pacing, with way too many interchangable giant dungeons/areas with boring enemies.
I believe the entire FFT:WotL script is on GameFAQs as well, although if memory serves it was riddled with spelling errors. I love the poetry of FF12 and FFT:LotW, the use of metaphor. Take Balthier’s line when he’s in the dungeon: “There are more turnkeys than cutpurses down here.” He could have been much simpler and said “There are more guards than criminals down here.” But the imagery not only makes you think harder about what he’s saying, but is also far more colorful and alive. There are also extended metaphors, where one character will say a metaphor and then two characters will banter about it; the banter makes perfect sense in terms of the script, but is within the context of the metaphor. It’s very satisfying.
Oh yeah, and the book sidequest was an incredibly clever way to reuse another previous Wild Arm character (