Topic: Wii RPGs

I have all of those, Mickey, and indeed they're all good.

But other good-to-great ones I highly recommend include Dragon Age, White Knight Chronicles, Oblivion, Fallout 3, Disgaea 3, Resonance of Fate etc etc etc.

Which brings me to another problem with Nintendo and RPGs - it lacks variety. And by that I mean the only RPGs that have ever appeared on Nintendo consoles have been JRPGs. Which means a whole lot of people are missing an entire genre by sticking to Nintendo.

Very True. There was a western RPG coming to the Wii, but something happened and it never came to fruition. Is fighting Fantasy a Western RPG? Or Deep Labyrinth?

Enclave is still slated for the Wii but about WRPGs if you look at last gen then there was little(no?) WRPGs on the PS2. It's nothing to do with Nintendo, it's the fact that WRPG are/were PC developers and only really came into the console market with the Xbox and this gen expanded to PS3 because of uber high budgets.

Buldar's Gate, Champions of Norrath, and The Bard's Tale, and that's just what I found at Gamestop Last week. I I think there are as many as there were on the Xbox, actually. You're right that Western RPGs are rare, though. That's why Console and PC RPGs were usually counted seperately until this gen (Possibly last gen).

Was also on the Gamecube.PS2 had nowhere near the amount the Xbox had. Xbox had KOTOR(1&2), Fable, Jade Empire(what a bizarre example) and Morrowind just as examples off the top of my head. Also the Wii does have Overlord: Dark Legend but they actually took away quite a bit of the RPGness with that... and of course the aforementioned Epic Mickey.

WRPGs are very rare on Nintendo systems, but not completely absent, they're still quite rare on the Sony systems but with the Xbox they're one of its star genres.

Still more than the Wii has. But anyways, I think that has more to do with the market and development costs than anything else.

Yup but still not many.

The main factor in the PC>Console migration was actually ease of development for the Xbox, It was pretty much a lowish end gaming PC which meant making a Xbox version of a game was a very good value proposition. This gen though the budgets exploded due to simply the scale of RPGs but they were already making a console SKU of the games so expanding to PS3 was made much easier, although PC centric devs still tend to rely on other developers for their PS3 ports(which is also why some ports are horrible).

Yeah, Sony only started picking up Western RPGs with the PS3 (before I forget, Sacred 2 is another good example). The Xbox, however, had quite a few good ones.

Nintendo has utterly failed at this genre. One or two half-heated releases of lesser examples of the genre don't do the case any great favours.

Mickey - Deep Labyrinth is not really a WRPG. Firetop Mountain is closer as a dungeon hack, but very limited (fun though).

They could only fail if they were trying, which neither Nintendo or Sony were. It's much more a case of Sony getting lucky(with the PS3) as Microsoft was the one who went to all the effort of courting the developers, and in quite a few cases funding the game. Although admittedly Sony may have actively provided incentives behind closed doors.

You only have to look at the portables and see that there's less than a handful WRPGs but the DS has more than the PSP(unless there's a whole bunch of PSP WRPGs I just don't know about). I think the iphone has both beat though and I think that is because it, like the OG Xbox, is a platform much closer to the PC(although still much further than the Xbox).

I'd eagerly wager that if Microsoft hadn't entered the console biz Bethesda and Bioware would still be sticking with the PC only.

Regardless of the reason, Nintendo's lack of effort has left it without a single representative of a pretty good genre (as a whole) on the Wii. It's a problem, and once again, representative of the fact that the HD consoles are capable of much more than just looking better than Wii games. (We are just talking about RPGs here)

And yes, it's a new thing for Sony, but it's a good new thing to have. All of a sudden the PS3 has a richer variety of RPGs than the PS2, and it's part of the reason I enjoy the PS3 more than the PS2 as a result.

I've yet to see a western RPG on the iPhone or iPad. Perhaps I've just missed it, mind.

You're right that until really recently it's a genre that has been exclusively PC, but since that has broadened out, the PS3 and Xbox 360 have picked the ball up and run with it, while the Wii hasn't even made a play.

I guess what I'm saying overall is if you are a serious RPG fan, than the Wii will only ever play second place to the HD consoles.

ds has thosands

But the Wii has few.

Yes I will really enjoy a great RPG for the Wii (better if it had a great online) im waiting for The Last Story, not sure how much RPG elements it have, bu it looks truly great.

I think there's just too many variables when you consider a theoretical Wii that's on par with the 360, such as the difference in install base. The obvious precedent would be last generation when the Gamecube missed out on a number of games despite the fact that it was arguably the most powerful. Then there's the issue of the controller and how that would effect multiplatform development at all or even whether some publishers would concentrate on just two platforms because ports are already problematic(a lot of games don't have PC SKUs for instance). I guess I just don't think it's right to say they failed because it was never part of the plan. I think next gen might be a better test when it comes to support overall(and WRPGs would probably be a good indicator of the general publishing Zeitgeist) as I think they'll much closer in power(as I suspect 3DS and PSP2 will be).

I don't actually own an iphone myself but I've hear that there's a lot of WRPGs on there... they just happen to be really, really low profile( or from Gameloft. and I know how you feel about them:P).

But yeah PS3 definitely has better variety when it comes to RPGs and that's certainly helped.

I don't actually own an iphone myself but I've hear that there's a lot of WRPGs on there... they just happen to be really, really low profile( or from Gameloft. and I know how you feel about them:P).

Gameloft doesn't have any. It has a Final Fantasy rip off, but that's JRPG.

There is a few published by Chillingo (The Quest, Raven-something), but not enough to really call the iPhone a good place for WRPGs.

Well, if you are counting virtual console games, Phantasy Star IV is a great one!

I thought they have two called dungeon something or other.... and I was told there's a whole bunch of indie ones. Of course it doesn't help that genre labels mean next to nothing now... Infinity Blade is an RPG according to Epic. I don't think the iphone is necessarily a good platform for (W)RPGs but it sure makes the DS, PSP and Wii look even worse.

Anyway I have to go!

Yeah, the VC is where the RPGs are at right now on the Wii. But how sad is that?

I cry myself to sleep every night because of it.

Fragile Dreams is as much an RPG as Baroque. There's more JRPG fun to be had on the Wii than most gamers realize as long as they don't let a narrow definition of role playing keep them from seeing it.

Quantity over quality.

Probably because it's so old school, but cheer up, I'll be playing it soon. I just don't know what to make of it yet.