The Fuss Over The Term 'JRPG' Says A Lot About The State Of The Genre
The Fuss Over The Term 'JRPG' Says A Lot About The State Of The Genre
JRPG or RPG didn't matter when creativity was at the forefront of the industry.
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I think in the modern era JRPG is an outdated term.
Turn-based vs Action is the real differentiator from these categories. There are Japanese RPGs with real control over the actions, and western RPGs with turn based combat, so this division can be misleading.
The other differentiator used to be custom character vs fixed character, too. JRPGs used to be you stepping into an existing character (the most you could change was their name and their abilities) in a fixed story. Not so much anymore.
Imo, this kinda reflects how the term RPG is used so loosely used leading it to be both a misused and overused term.
It's just so generic and meaningless now since it's just anything with stats, equipment, or you pretend to be someone else. Before you could refer to RPGs as games that used systems from the Tabletop scene because that's where they got their inspiration from. It combined a giant world, the importance of player choice, a vast world, and character stats which served as a sandbox for the player to explore. Then it sorta changed into CRPG which people are now also trying to redefine into Western RPG for some reason?
For me though, the key defining feature of a CRPG was always the power the player had to control the story. They're given real choices that impact the story and the world within it. I haven't seen an JRPG have that same scope since most of them play out similar to Visual Novels (this isn't me making it a negative but outlining what CRPGs focus on compared to RPGs)
RPGs also weren't ever locked into turn based or real time. Games like Baldurs Gate 1 and 2, and Pillars of Eternity could be considered CRPGs rather than just RPGs and they use both turn based and real time. Baldurs Gate 3 is the exception to the Baldur's Gate series with it locking into Turn based only. But even then, you had games like Underrail staying completely turn based.