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this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2024
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I'm surprised this post has so many comments with many comments that apparently don't understand the point of JRPGs. Like seriously, why bother playing a JRPG if you're just going to skip the story lol
Some more pet peeves I have seen:
Thinking RPG is a cohesive genre when the four main branches of RPG have already split from one another during the early-mid 90s with nothing in common. What do Nethack, Pool of Radiance, Final Fantasy VI, and Fallout 1 have in common? Very little once you look past the genre they belong to and actually take them on their own terms.
Thinking CRPG/WRPG is a cohesive genre when it's just the non-JRPG branches that split from one another during the early-mid 90s. What do Nethack, Pool of Radiance, and Fallout 1 have in common? Also very little. Even if you replace Fallout 1 with Baldur's Gate 1, you can say that Nethack, Pool of Radiance, and Baldur's Gate 1 all have game mechanics that are based on D&D and takes place in some Tolkien/Forgotten Realm-inspired setting, but that's complete surface level. Despite being labeled CRPGs/WRPGs, they are all three completely different games. Liking one of them tells me absolutely nothing about whether you would like the other two. Since the 90s, the branches have diverged even more from each other. Path of Exile vs Starfield vs Disco Elysium. They have absolutely nothing in common with each other. You might as well be comparing a Metroidvania with an arena shooter at this point.
Thinking CRPGs/WRPGs have good narrative when it's really only one particular branch, the isometric RPG or Wasteland 1-Fallout 1 branch, that has good narrative. The roguelike-ARPG branch's narrative boils down to "kill the big bad in order to grab their loot." The dungeon crawler-open world branch doesn't really do narratives either. Good RPGs that come from branch like Morrowind or Dark Souls have great environmental storytelling and expansive lore, but there isn't an actual narrative to write home about. It's the branch that gave us the first two Fallouts and the Baldur's Gates and Planescape: Torment and Arcanum and the Shadowruns that actually try to tell a story.
Thinking the definition of JRPG is contingent on game mechanics. JRPGs have surprisingly little in common in terms of mechanics. I feel like most people just played Chrono Trigger and Earthbound once and think that all JRPGs since then largely follow the same core mechanics when those two games are very much products of a particular phase. It's like how a lot of JRPG stereotypes like turn-based combat (which I suppose technically isn't true since ATB isn't turn-based proper) or using some flying blimp to navigate a top-down map are more stereotypes of NES/SNES era JRPGs. I honestly can't think of a modern mainstream JRPG outside of Persona and Pokemon that is still turn-based.
Oh well, at least people aren't saying "JRPG = RPG made in Japan." That shit drives me up the fucking wall lmao
Great post! The lines between genres are complicated and weird because genres develop organically and strict rules cannot be easily applied to them. Some of this I hadnt even thought of before, like that Nethack, Pool, and Fallout 1 really shouldnt all be in the same category. (You didnt even mention how Souslikes are put in the same genre category and are also I think a very different thing. And for awhile Ive been unsure if you can really put Skyrim and Mass Effect/Dragon Age in the same genre even though they commonly are.)
And yet I do confidently say that Tales of and Chrono Trigger are the same genre, despite some people disagreeing and categorizing Tales of as ARPGs. Its a whole mess lol.
The one that really trips me up is whether SRPGs are JRPGs. I used to think so, but then I learned that the earliest SRPGs actually predate Dragon Quest if we choose Dragon Quest to be the first definitive JRPG. There's Bokosuka Wars and The Dragon and Princess. They look more like Ultima-inspired games. For Bokosuka Wars, you could draw a line between that game and Advance Wars that would come out 2 decades later. For The Dragon and Princess, it ever so slightly looks more similar to something like Wasteland 1 than Dragon Quest. In general, the branches didn't diverge that heavily until the 90s, so these old RPGs look more similar with each other than with their descendants. But this would mean that SRPGs aren't JRPGs, that they are either a sister branch or perhaps even belonging to the branch that would give rise to isometric RPGs. This would mean a hypothetical SRPG-isometric RPG branch that quickly split off into two daughter branches in the late 80s.
It tracks somewhat. None of the Advance Wars play like JRPGs at all. At least for me, GBA Fire Emblem and Tellius Fire Emblem don't feel like JRPGs either, not in terms of narrative or character tropes or general aesthetics. Fire Emblem only started to feel more like JRPGs with Awakening. Maybe there needs to be a distinction between "pure" SRPGs like Advance Wars and SRPG-JRPG hybrids like Fire Emblem and FFT? And I don't know how you would classify something like Valkyria Chronicles. An SRPG-JRPG-FPS hybrid lol
I don't know a whole lot about JRPGs, but I've always felt there's a divide between old/classic JRPGs (NES/SNES JRPGs, Pokemon) and new/modern JRPGs like Tales of and modern FF with PS2-era JRPGs perhaps acting as a transitional period. But I haven't really met anyone who insists on liking JRPGs from a particular time period outside of reactionary types who think treats made after they graduated from college automatically sucks.
Flashbacks of a million forum flame wars on whether Zelda is an RPG. My idiosyncratic answer is everything before BotW no, BotW and its sequel yes.
Idk if you saw me post this old ass video in c/videos about the direct line between tabletop games and Dragon Quest but its really interesting
But yeah that stuff about SRPGs is interesting. Generally I say no, even a lot of later Fire Emblem plots follow JRPG tropes and such. And even if FFT exists. I think I agree that there are pure SRPGs and one that hybrid in some JRPG elements and tropes though.
The reason I talk about "does Tales of count" was when Projared (verbotten I know, but I still watch him, and this was before anyway) made a "top 10 JRPGs not by Squarenix" videos and one of his "rules" was "no action RPGs" and he showed Tales of Symphonia footage. I was kind of blown away at the time because I absolutely thought of ToS as a JRPG because it has most of the tropes and mechanics, it just also has actionized combat.
Also Tales of goes back pretty far. And as far as I know always had actiony combat. Same with Star Ocean. Like SO2 was on PS1 and had actiony combat. But they're definitively JRPGs in my mind.
Oh god the old days of "is Zelda an RPG" I remember that too. I think I agree that it wasn't an RPG until BotW.