do people actually buy those kemco jrpg's? There are so many better rpg's on the market I don't see why people would bother
I can answer this question. I have quite a few myself, and have played them. And the answer is very simple: Because people who like turn-based RPGs want to play them.
To everyone who always parrots "There are so many other turn-based RPGs to play", I ask you... ARE THERE? Like, SMT V came out late last year, and... what else? Maybe a yearly game from Atlus, Falcom, or Nintendo, and that's about it for output. Maybe more DQ11 and Persona re-releases?
It's no secret that RPGs have all been moving heavily to being stale generic "action-RPGs". Hack-and-slash games, but where numbers pop up. Devil May Cry, but with an anime paint job. And clearly there is an audience for this, much as there's an audience for in-your-face CG explosion movies, but there's also an audience for people who actually like slow-paced, decision-based RPG combat.
So if you take out the action-RPGs, then the number of already-rare major RPG releases diminishes considerably. And in fact, if you remove tactical RPGs, that number plummets to almost nil. Though in practice there's a large overlap between turn-based RPG and TRPG fans, since TRPGs are almost all turn-based anyway. (Except some like Diofield Chronicles, who decided they want to be an RTS, but this trend has never caught on.)
So if you actually like turn-based RPGs, what are you going to play? Who's making all these theoretical other games? Atlus used to be the king of them back in the DS/3DS era, but they've been slowing down their releases considerably in the modern era. There's still loli anime games from people like NIS/Gust/Idea Factory, but you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who would call those "better".
And Square Enix, the big dog, has long tried to abandon their roots and stuff action combat into all their releases. Most obviously with the Final Fantasy series, which hasn't been turn-based for like 20 years now. But even the new Valkyrie Profile game is doing it now, and they've been trying to steer Dragon Quest that way also. Somehow a bunch of RPG-haters are now leading this company. Though in their defense, presumably after being utterly shocked that Bravely Default actually had an audience, in the recent year or two they've finally stepped up their output. By creating their own budget-line releases (such as the humorously named "Tokyo RPG Factory"), and by re-releasing games from back when they were a good company. But the former category ranks consistently at "mediocre", and while the latter is cool to see, I don't really feel a need to play Chrono Cross or Tactics Ogre again. Been there, done that. And this is even assuming these games come out physically, which Square Enix seems very reluctant to actually do.
Which brings us to Kemco. They're making turn-based RPGs. And they're fun to play. (They mainly use a battle system close to the lauded Grandia one, which has been shockingly underused despite all the critical acclaim it got.) And the people who like this kind of game, buy this kind of game. Turn-based RPGs have always been a niche genre, and all the whining from people who don't like them and don't play them aren't going to make the fans disappear. They've been doing it for decades, and we still don't care. And while companies will try to hide the "RPG-ness" of the games to attract that mainstream audience, the core fans still know exactly what they want.
I mean just look at the common complaints on every Kemco release:
"But the graphics aren't cutting edge!" - Not why we're playing them.
"But they're all budget games that re-use assets!" - And? Look, I know what a tree is. I don't need them to re-draw it in 50 different styles. Also, AAA games re-use assets ALL THE TIME. Companies literally have entire divisions dedicated to pulling out old assets into new games.
"But the stories are hit-and-miss!" - Such is the risk with all games. But I'd rather spend 20 hours to finish these, instead of 100 hours to find out that a modern game's plot sucked.
"They're just RPG Maker games!" - See "graphics", above. Also, they are clearly not, and you are an idiot who has no idea what RPG Maker games are. Thank you for letting us know that your opinion is void. But even if they are, what is your point? You know like 90% of all games are "Unreal games" or "Unity games", right?
"But they're all the same!" - This has two camps. Either the person who's played a couple Exe-Create (Asdivine) games, or the person who's only seen screenshots and wants to act smart, like all those RPG Maker experts. But for the former, the people who matter: Play more games. Kemco has many developers creating games for them, and some of them are vastly different. Even Exe-Create, their main "crank 'em out" developer, has like three different styles that they use, and they constantly improve upon them with each new game.
It's like, what are these people even complaining about? It just reeks of all the same junk that non-RPG fans have whined about since the beginning. "Why is everyone just standing around waiting!" "Random encounters make no sense!" "They all play the same!" "They're so outdated in the current year!" It all just starts to blend in to a belligerent cacophony of "I don't like this thing, and nobody else should either!", that does nothing but make the speaker sound ignorant and the listener ignore them.
On a related note, these Kemco games also have the biggest player retention rates I've ever seen, judging from the PlayStation Trophy list values. They start off with the usual hilarious numbers. Only 90% of people who started the game finished the opening cutscene. Only 75% finished the first boss. But then, amazingly, it barely trails off after that, and something like 50% of all players got the platinum trophy. I have never seen that in any other games. It's usually like 10-20%. So yes, people are playing these games specifically because it's the kind of game they enjoy playing. They also consistently sell very well, despite LRG barely promoting them anymore, like it's their secret shame.
