It's an interesting divergence compared to the sorts of enemies you fight in most Western RPGs. Imagine running into any of these guys or the evil house from FF7 in an Elder Scrolls
Honesty the one thing that bugs me about Wrpgs is the lack of monster diversity.
The West has many cool Celtic monsters to draw from and a whole pack of demons (have you seen Buer?!
Showlook at this!)
In fact you are more likely to see cool western monsters in Jrpgs! What is wrong with the west, they don't even know their own cool shit, hell, they only just discovered what biblical angels looked like.
I think in the West game devs just treat monsters like large, aggressive animals and try to have them make sense as biological organisms
It's such a different take on the concept of a "monster." I feel like most Western devs try to stay within fairly tight genre trappings or approach things from a lore/ecological/biological perspective
Not to mention so many of them are beholden to D&D and an rpg MUST have the usual rogue's gallery of orcs, goblins, golems, dragons etc.
I think it's also just residual Tolkien influence where they want their worlds to feel immersive and realistic
half the time in final fantasy games i'd rather play as some of the generic monsters/goons rather than the overly be-buckled generic JRPG protagonists. i like almost everything about final fantasy except for the protagonist outfits/character designs. lemme play as the magitek armor mecha from FF15, idc about the generic k-pop boy band with exactly 1 personality trait each (i am even less interested in the problematic age gap relationship with the trenchcoat beanie guy and pink hair protagonists little sister in ff13). i wish more kinds of games had level editors and custom game modes.
on a tangentially related note i thought Scarlet Nexus had great monster designs, but i never finished that game because it let you 'date' a character who is 'trapped in a child's body since they stop aging after getting super powers' (plus it was kind of a generic hack n' slash, even if it did have cool setting visuals and political intrigue etc.)
this is why I like the "monster battler" subgenre of Jrpgs because you actually get to be the cool monsters (Play Cassette Beasts you nerds)
i wish there were 'monster battler' games for generic faceless power armor goons, i guess xcom etc. kinda approaches that but those badguy soldiers in ff13 have some exquisite looking gear and neato vehicles, western devs rarely put the same thought into their sci fi designs imo
i am even less interested in the problematic age gap relationship with the trenchcoat beanie guy and pink hair protagonists little sister in ff13
lmao, I'm glad I wasn't the only one who thought that was weird. I'm sure they're supposed to be the same age if you look up their character profiles but it just looked like a 25-year-old dudebro
datingengaged to be married to a middle schooler. So much of that game's emotional thrust is placed on that relationship and it just made most of the drama land with a wet thud.Amusingly, both of that game's sequels focus entirely on the bond between Lightning and Serah and ditch Snow almost completely. You play as Serah in FFXIII-2 and the guy barely makes an appearance
yea there's official lore saying she is 18 but she very much looks underage to me, idk maybe i'm overly sensitive.
