Weirldy sexual henchman! Burn the village!
August 31, 2015 9:48 PM   Subscribe

 
OH HO HO HO
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 9:54 PM on August 31, 2015 [3 favorites]


That was more of a mashup of a bunch of easily identifiable moments from famous games than it was a bunch of cliches from every game.
posted by yeolcoatl at 10:15 PM on August 31, 2015 [3 favorites]


Yeah, I've played lots of JRPGs that didn't include all of those characters and scenes. This humorous YouTube video is playing fast and loose with universal quantification and I invite them to refamiliarize themselves with the principles of logic before offering their next proposition P.
posted by No-sword at 10:22 PM on August 31, 2015 [17 favorites]


*pages Joseph Campbell*
posted by Graygorey at 10:36 PM on August 31, 2015 [1 favorite]


This was pretty funny. I can forgive some shortcomings in the sketch because the ending is perfect.
posted by zixyer at 10:49 PM on August 31, 2015 [2 favorites]


Pardon me for asking, but what does the "J" stand for?
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 10:55 PM on August 31, 2015


Having not played a lot of these games I'd be interested in a list of identifiable moments more so than sarcasm about logic.
posted by Bistle at 10:56 PM on August 31, 2015


The identifiable moments are that you are Crono, a blank slate that you can project your personality on to. The two girls competing for your attention are Tiffa and Aeris from FFVII, the isometric perspective and weirdly technologically advanced neighbour is Xenogears, the flamboyant final boss is Kefka from FFVI (FFIII for us olds)

The crystal stuff is probably because the creators are watching Steven Universe right now.
posted by Space Coyote at 11:05 PM on August 31, 2015 [4 favorites]


But I've played several JRPGs where the main character doesn't talk. That seems relatively common if I can remember. It's been I while since I've played anything... Breath of Fire, I think was like that? Maybe Dragon Quest. The two girls competing for affection did reference FF7 a lot but I think I played the same basic idea in one of the Suikodens. Xenogears had the traditional vs. advanced society thing pretty heavily, but any game involving airships and laser cannons while at the same time most of the cities are medieval huts fits that criteria. These are pretty common tropes.
posted by downtohisturtles at 11:21 PM on August 31, 2015


Yeah the video was made so that people who've played the most popular Squenix games could be in on the joke.
posted by Space Coyote at 11:23 PM on August 31, 2015


Pardon me for asking, but what does the "J" stand for?

Japanese.

I laughed. I cried. Someone stole my stuff while I was distracted by a poorly animated CGI cutscene.
posted by Deoridhe at 11:23 PM on August 31, 2015 [3 favorites]


Its telling that my hands instinctively went into a "holding SNES controller" posture when I heard the opening music
posted by The Whelk at 11:31 PM on August 31, 2015 [6 favorites]


It seems a little more like every JRPG made before the year 2000, but I'm guessing that's for budget reasons (and ~nostalgia goggles~ even though I'm guessing most actual college-aged people are too young to have played the old stuff?)

You could put a lot of these tropes and cliches into Every Shounen Anime as well.
posted by picklenickle at 11:36 PM on August 31, 2015


yeolcoatl: "That was more of a mashup of a bunch of easily identifiable moments from famous games than it was a bunch of cliches from every game."

"Not all JRPGs"?
posted by barnacles at 11:54 PM on August 31, 2015 [3 favorites]


picklenickle: It seems a little more like every JRPG made before the year 2000, but I'm guessing that's for budget reasons (and ~nostalgia goggles~ even though I'm guessing most actual college-aged people are too young to have played the old stuff?)

Does anyone actually play the new ones? I mean, I guess someone must because they exist, but I knew loads of people who played them right up until the end of the ps1 era, and absolutely zero people who've played anything made since then, barring some deliberately retro ones.
posted by Mitrovarr at 12:31 AM on September 1, 2015 [1 favorite]


They say that one day a true hero will recover the Spirit Root from the Cave of the Abyss Oubliette and restore the JRPG to its former glory... but that's just a silly old wives' tale if you ask me!

(Ends conversation abruptly and walks off at 90° angle.)
posted by No-sword at 12:49 AM on September 1, 2015 [19 favorites]


I'm a huge fan of FFX, and the Megami Tensei series - all of which is post PS1. I recently picked up FF13 but haven't had time/attention to play it.
posted by Deoridhe at 1:06 AM on September 1, 2015


JK, I have two more forms!

Anyone know where most of the sprites were from? I recognized Celia (or Lede) from Final Fantasy Tactics, as well as a few other tactics characters. Was the town from Tactics Ogre?
posted by Ms. Moonlight at 1:14 AM on September 1, 2015


No-sword: "Yeah, I've played lots of JRPGs that didn't include all of those characters and scenes. This humorous YouTube video is playing fast and loose with universal quantification and I invite them to refamiliarize themselves with the principles of logic before offering their next proposition P."

∃ (x,y) | x ⊂JRPG, y ⊂ THIS, yx
posted by langtonsant at 1:31 AM on September 1, 2015 [2 favorites]


Pardon me for asking, but what does the "J" stand for?

The J stands for "Japanese", but it doesn't really mean "from Japan". The JRPG is a sub-genre of the RPG, defined generally by being very plot-and-dialogue-heavy, with a very linear or completely linear plot, a set protagonist and party members (no creating your own), and often a lot of anime tropes in the plot and characterization. A lot of JRPGs have simple, shallow combat systems, although this isn't a rule. The actual mechanics of the gameplay tend to take a backseat to the plot. The Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest series are the two great exemplars of the JRPG. The JRPG gets its name from the fact that the great examples of the 8 and 16 bit eras were all developed in Japan, but today you can see lots of examples from all over the place.

JRPGs usually offer little to no choice in mechanical, character, or plot development, so they're a lot more like playing a movie or novel than the traditionally-Western-developed CRPG (which is exemplified by games like Pillars of Eternity, or the Fallout or Elder Scrolls series).
posted by IAmUnaware at 3:39 AM on September 1, 2015 [4 favorites]


No JRPG that I ever played had voice acting. Fortunately, in the case of this cast.

The opening did remind me of DragonQuest, though. And that I need to revisit that franchise.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 3:45 AM on September 1, 2015


"Your silence makes you easier to project onto"

I already lost it at this. So true and so perfect.

also: "JK I have two more forms!"
posted by numaner at 4:55 AM on September 1, 2015 [1 favorite]


langtonsant: ∃ (x,y) | x ⊂JRPG, y ⊂ THIS, y ⊄ x

If that's a math joke I don't get it. And anyway I'd formalize the original claim as:

|{J | J ∈ JRPG ∧ !∃ t | (t ∈ tropes_of(J) ∧ t ∈ tropes_of(THIS))}| < 𝔓,

where 𝔓, the Pedant's Constant, is the number of exceptions to a generality expressed in natural language necessary for it to be considered false. The term is considered to be a misnomer as, in Pedantist systems of formal logic it takes on whichever value is necessary for a commenter to win the argument, while in other systems its value is "oh come on, now".

(That bit of math says "the size of the set of all things that are JRPGs and have no tropes in common with THIS is less than that constant.")
posted by traveler_ at 5:11 AM on September 1, 2015 [2 favorites]


To add on to what others have said about the tropes laid out in the video:

- The character portraits are all derivatives of Final Fantasy Tactics, aka highly stylized character art that barely matches up with the sprites.
- The secret princess is at least mocking (Spoilers? Would anyone who hasn't played it will at this point?) FFIX.
- Bareknuckle best friend is not only Tifa but also Zell from FFVIII, who is also weirdly attached to the protagonist.
- Except for Red XIII in FFVII and Frog (who's actually a cursed human) in Chrono Trigger not many games actually has a talking animal, although Boney from Mother 3 would also count, but that one is not really a traditional JRPG. I'm not counting Moogles since they're actually an intelligent race and not considered an animal in that universe.
- Sexy villain also refers to Sephiroth, who was quite "pretty" and had a lot of fangirls (and also two more forms!), and Edea, Flea (CT), and countless others.
- There's always a casino/gambling.
- The crystals were/are an important part of the Final Fantasy series, which the series director wanted to revive with FFIX and is more prevalent in FFXII onwards.
- Final Fantasy is actually one of the few series of JRPGs to not have some deus ex machina weapon that defeats the end-boss. You might need an item that allows you to properly fight them (either by getting you to the fight or make them weak enough to actually fight, plot-wise), but you still have to actually survive the battle. Knights of the Round might be considered such a weapon, but with the hassle to get it I better be able to kill the final boss in 2 rounds.

Tropes they left out:
- Secret super powerful bosses.
- Equally super powerful weapons that you don't need but you wanna get because duh.
- The sword is mightier than pretty much any weapon if I level grind enough.
- Ground vehicles that are not airship that are pretty cool until you realize they're only necessary for this one part in the game.
- Fuck that airship, we can fly/go anywhere now! (I love you gold chocobo and Godbird)
- Random battles.
- How the hell did we manage to get captured and how the hell did we manage to escape?
- Earth shattering magic during battles actually only hurts the enemy and doesn't affect the world at all. Thanks for putting back all the ground you broke apart, Titan!

Later JRPGs tropes after the 16 bit era should include:
- Life-like CG cutscenes
- That are also full blown music videos
- Sexy costumes (for females mostly, see the FPP yesterday about Tropes vs Women)
- Bottomless / crazy-amount-of-floors dungeons
- Stuck on this fight? Just shoot yourself in the head to change abilities, or take a quick costume change!
- Monsters! Gotta collect 'em all!
- We're not in spriteland anymore, giant monsters are actually giants now, but I can still kill it by hacking at its leg!
posted by numaner at 5:37 AM on September 1, 2015 [5 favorites]


No JRPG that I ever played had voice acting. Fortunately, in the case of this cast.

The opening did remind me of DragonQuest, though. And that I need to revisit that franchise.


DQ8 has full voice acting, from the non-Hero party characters at least, and a full orchestral score. At least it does on PS2, the fantastic audio got chopped for the 3DS and iOS releases. Play that one if you haven't played DQ since the 16bit era, it's by far the crowning example.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:13 AM on September 1, 2015 [3 favorites]


FFIV was utterly obsessed with crystals. Light crystals! Dark crystals! We have to save the crystals! There are six mysterious and powerful crystals filled with mysterious power. According to legend, if the crystals are brought together, their magic can be used to... make bad stuff happen? I dunno, the legends are pretty vague.

The plot centers around trying to stop the Once Good But Now Evil King from stealing the crystals. You're a garbage hero though because you utterly fail to save any of them. But wait, there are actually four more crystals! You fail to save those too. Later it will be revealed that the OGBNEK is being controlled from behind the scenes by the evil Baron Von Organfugue, who it turns out is actually your long-lost brother, and he in turn is being controlled by Supernatural Evil Guy of Supreme Evil, who when you kill him transforms into Grotesque Essence of Pure Hate. The plot kind of goes off the rails at some point, arguably around the time when you take your whale-ship to the moon to visit the ancient moonpeople.

Also your best friend is brainwashed and betrays you twice, in exactly the same way.

It's a great game.
posted by dephlogisticated at 6:23 AM on September 1, 2015 [13 favorites]


I am this close to changing my name to "Weirdly Sexual Henchman".
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 6:52 AM on September 1, 2015 [3 favorites]


Not enough "Aha, you thought you killed me in the last boss fight, but I've come back to be the Final Boss YET AGAIN!"

Or maybe I just really like FFX.

(Forget "I have two more forms", that bastard literally refused to die.)
posted by maryr at 8:09 AM on September 1, 2015


Hilarious video. To add to our beanplating discussion, it was totally wrong that the hidden princess character voiced her name GIRL after you typed GIRL. One of my favorite things about JRPGs is the way everyone avoids saying character names because there's no way to do arbitrary names with recorded voices.

Speaking of gaming critiques, Feminist Frequency has a new video up: Women as Reward. College Humor's approach to gaming critique is nowhere near as detailed or serious, but sometimes I wonder if the satire approach works better than direct feminist critique.
posted by Nelson at 8:14 AM on September 1, 2015


I'm going to end all arguments with BUT I WAS THE FINAL CRYSTAL ALL ALONG now.
posted by The Whelk at 8:55 AM on September 1, 2015


Anyone else hear this rumor that monsters are coming back?
posted by brundlefly at 9:31 AM on September 1, 2015 [2 favorites]


A lot of JRPGs have simple, shallow combat systems, although this isn't a rule.

Oh, no I think they tend to be deeper. Maybe not in terms of sheer textual explanations they throw at the player, but JRPGs tend to be better at making in-game systems that the player is meant to explore and discover. Or maybe I should put it as: the reason Western RPGs tend to be so shit at making boss battles is precisely because they don't have enough depth of design to support them. And even another way to say it would be, yes the basic building blocks of JRPG combat are simpler, but they are used to make bigger, more complex structures than in Western RPGs.
posted by nom de poop at 9:47 AM on September 1, 2015 [2 favorites]


One of my favorite things on replays is to name hidden-identity characters with their real names, so you get silly conversations like "Garnet is Garnet!" and "Nanaki is Nanaki!"
posted by numaner at 9:47 AM on September 1, 2015 [1 favorite]


> Stuck on this fight? Just shoot yourself in the head to change abilities, or take a quick costume change!

I can't tell if this means to load a save/retry or if this is a Persona 3 reference.

One other thing which I found annoying was new abilities unlocking previously inaccessible portions of old areas. You either found a guide, or just did a massive sweep when at the point in the game where you unlocked all the exploration stuff.

Every game having DLC could be mentioned as a new development, but I don't mind the evolution of content selling itself, just specific examples.
posted by halifix at 10:05 AM on September 1, 2015 [1 favorite]


to add on to what nom de poop said: JRPGs have evolved over the years to develop combat systems that are accessible to more straightforward players, but can be deep and complex for players that wants to really dig into it.

Not to overuse the series in this discussion, but Final Fantasy is a prime example. I haven't touched FFV and FFVI (I know, for shame), but there's a huge combat gap between FFIV and FFVII. While IV only required you to level up whichever five characters you have at the time and learn to use their specific abilities, the materia system in VII lets you set up your characters either as straightforward as IV (by giving more spells to the magic-oriented characters and defense/strength buffs to the physical ones) or as complex as having the entire battle automated via counter supports, 4x cuts, attack all, hp absorb, etc.
posted by numaner at 10:07 AM on September 1, 2015


Yawn, it's no "Digital Estate Planning", but I guess it will do...
posted by jkaczor at 10:20 AM on September 1, 2015


Anyone else hear this rumor that monsters are coming back?

No, but it would surprise me. *sigh* Times are tough.
posted by maryr at 10:23 AM on September 1, 2015 [3 favorites]


Hey, there were a lot of great RPGs in the PS2 era. The Shadow Hearts series was a particular favorite.
posted by Naberius at 10:42 AM on September 1, 2015 [1 favorite]


Anyone else hear this rumor that monsters are coming back?

My father is a blacksmith.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 12:51 PM on September 1, 2015 [3 favorites]


*sigh* Times are tough.
posted by maryr at 2:39 PM on September 1, 2015 [1 favorite]


I like pants! They're comfy and fun to wear.
posted by No-sword at 3:43 PM on September 1, 2015


one of my favorite NPC statements that for some reason stuck with me all these years is from FF7. In sector 5 there's an old lady who meanders around and says

"I'm always keeping eyes on the ground as I walk, you never know what you'll find!"

After the plate falls, she says

"I'm keeping my eyes to the sky now instead of the ground, you never know what'll come down next!"
posted by numaner at 12:42 PM on September 2, 2015


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