Custom Robo Arena
Electro plop.
I've got a big idea, readers. Why don't we all get together and declare that we've had enough of the same old clichés that lazy Japanese RPG developers like to foist upon us, eh? Just draft up a nice letter, get someone to translate it, and send it off to "All videogame developers, Japan." I'm sure it'll get to someone. And viola! No more amnesiac heroes with a vague but important secret. No more precocious young lads from tiny villages who turn out to be the chosen one. And no more heroes that stand mute, while their companions talk and the plot progresses around them.
Of course, it's entirely possible that Japanese RPG developers might not have any other ideas. Take Custom Robo Arena as a case point. Despite being built around a game system that features robots battling each other, using guns, bombs and all manner of excitingly destructive weapons, the developer, Noise, has wrapped the game with quite possibly the most tedious excuse for a plot I could imagine.
For example, the game begins with the main character waking from a dream of foreboding. On his first day at a new school! If we're going to count clichés, that's at least three already. Rolling out of bed onto a pre-packaged pair of sidekicks (one weedy but friendly, the other rambunctious, talkative, has a knack of getting into trouble) within minutes he's the lynchpin of their Custom Robo team, battling all comers on the way to the Robo Cup, where he'll finally become... The best Robo Commander of them all!