JRPGs Are Being Left Behind in the PC Market For the NA

Japenese Role Playing Games (JRPGs) are being left behind in the NA PC market. You are basically screwed without a console, and saddly the best JRPGs still remain on the PS and PS2. We really only have five JRPGs that I can even think of and those are the Ys: The Oath in Felghana, Ys Origin, Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale, Chantelise - A Tale of Two Sisters, and The Last Remnant.

These games are exactly "new" and some aren't really that great. Out of all of these I'd suggest The Last Remnant. It was made by Square Enix, and it's on the PC and the Xbox, but it plays much better on the PC. The Xbox version is ruined by techinal problems and a ton of bugs. The PC version has less noticeable texture pop-in and while the graphics look great evem though the land sometimes look unispiring and kind of dull.

Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is a really addicting JRPG and a pretty unique one at that. Recettear is a combination of the two main characters' names in the game, Tear, and Recette. What's Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale about? Basically you run a shop. It's not as simple as that though. You have to make sure prices are set a in way that will make you money while allowing you to pay the rent, but also at the same time you must make sure not to anger customers by making your items to expensive. Otherwise you will have no business. This sort of sounds unexicitng at first, but there's more. The way you get your items to sell is by doing dungeons. Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale has a lot to offer and is fairly addicting (plus the story isn't too bad either). I'd suggest anyone who enjoys JRPGs to give this one a try. "Capitalism ho!"

Chantelise - A Tale of Two Sisters is okay, but not really great... I played it but I didn't like it that much. I'd still suggest it though if you enjoy JRPGs. The main plot of the story is that there are two sisters. One gets kidnapped by a witch and the other is now on a journey to rescue her. Chantelise - A Tale of Two Sisters is made by the same developers of Recettear, and it does have some things going for it. Just because the graphics are cute doesn't say anything. The bosses in the game are quit difficult to beat and because of that the game has earned itself the title of Demon’s Souls Jr. (it doesn't have traps though and you won't find yourself falling off the edge all the time either). The graphics are kind of icky at times and then at other times are quite alright (it's a 3D game with some of the NPCs ingame being 2D, which gives it an odd feel at times). Again, if you're a fan of JRPGs and don't have access to a console I'd give this one a try.

The problem that I've come to now is that there arren't enough JRPGs game for the PC. Japan has tons of them for the PC so I don't know why the console gets the most focus when translating JRPGs over to the NA. I'd really love to see more JRPGs for the PC because I think some games transition much better to the PC. A great example would be The Last Remnant, which was filled with bugs and texture pop-ups in the Xbox version but was much better in the PC version. I'd also think that companies could make more money if they introduced more JRPGs to the PC, but maybe not because you don't see many of them out there. I guess I'll just have to wait and see what happens for JRPGs with the PC.