The 1 trailer of Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light

Exactly my thoughts.

http://www.andriasang.com/e/blog/2010/06/10/all_about_xenoblade/

This game might be what you're looking for.

What's wrong with portables? An RPG isn't exactly the most hardware-taxing genre of game, so it makes sense to release it on a portable console where it can be conveniently played.

On the part of both developers and gamers, that's exactly the kind of thinking that's killing any semblance of variety and distinctiveness this console generation. Seriously, I play pretty much every genre, but I've gotten to the point I can care less about the next Halo, Call of Duty, or other annual sequel announcement to what has become a first-person shooter-glutted market. And the games aren't exactly winning awards for trying to differentiate themselves (see God of War III vs. Dante's Inferno, or how many shooters you can find that don't involve killing zombies, Nazis, terrorists, or a combination of them. FPSes, third-person action games/platformers, sports games, and casual games now account for probably 98% of every disc-based game on the three major systems; the only place they or any so-called "niche" titles have a chance is on PSN or XBox LIVE, and we know how much respect and longevity downloadable games get whether they're great or not (anybody played Battlefield 1943 lately? How about Fat Princess? Hmm, why is that?). Those announcements are such a given anymore that there's no longer any reason to feel anticipation. But for RPGs, SRPGs, tactical sims, 2D schmups, puzzlers, or pretty much any genre that doesn't push those hardware specs (though they all could with decent effort), the gamers who love them have to petition constantly for years sometimes just to get thrown a bone, so to speak. Just check the statistics to see if I'm right or wrong; go on GameStop's website and run down the list, see what's out there. Other generations of consoles have certainly had their issues, but back then the industry was still small enough to focus on creativity and genre selection rather than regurgitating the same thing over and over again and saying, "Take it or leave it".

I guess I'm sick of watching all of these annual announcements leading up to E3 trying to get folks worked into a lather over a new sequel with incremental improvements or changes, where everything is mostly dark and depressing, where it all is starting to look, play, and sound like everything else.

Rant over.

"An RPG isn't exactly the most hardware-taxing genre of game"

Oh really?

What were the most hardware-taxing games for the NES?
Final Fantasy III
Dragon Warrior III
Dragon Warrior IV
Super Mario Bros. 3*
Kirby' Adventure*

SNES?
Final Fantasy VI
Chrono Trigger
Star Ocean
Tales of Phantasia
Treasure Hunter G
Terranigma
Yoshi's Island*

PS1?
Final Fantasy 7
Final Fantasy 8
Final Fantasy 9
Chrono Cross
Parasite Eve
Parasite Eve 2

PS2?
Final Fantasy XII
Kingdom Hearts
Kingdom Hearts II
Resident Evil 4*

Xbox?
Morrowind
Fable

Gamecube?
Baten Kaitos
Baten Kaitos Origins
Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Resident Evil 4*

RPGs tend to be the biggest, baddest entries on a system. Sure, first-person shooters have come up, though the programming on those are all quite similar to each other, and it's a rather new genre.

It's really too bad that J-RPGs seem to be on the the decline, with the majority of them going to handhelds and Final Fantasy XIII sucking so badly. Luckily there's Monando/Xenoblade and The Last Story, both due for the Wii, coming soon.

Hopefully Final Fantasy vs XIII won't suck as badly.

Where are you coming up with these figures, Elranzer? And how are you defining "most hardware taxing"? I also can't help but notice that Star Fox isn't on the list for SNES despite the fact that it, like several other later-SNES game, required a special chip be included in the cart to help render the graphics.

"Hardware-taxing" isn't exactly the best measurement of how graphically intense a game is anyway because a poorly-programed game with bad graphics, generic AI, and long loading times can be harder on the hardware than a well made one, and RPGs tend to be fairly lax in their performance.

agreed, but the first thing i thought when i heard the music is the absence of uematsu

The music is what is going to get me to purchase this, if anything.