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What classifies a "jRPG"?

I don't think "Japanese Role-Playing-Game" should be taken literally. Saying that all RPGs made in Japan are JRPGs is like saying Halo is an RPG because you "roleplay" as the Masterchief. I think there's a lot of gray area for what defines a JRPG, but they tend to have 3-4 character parties and have cheesy storylines. Dark Souls is definitely not a JRPG. I'd say Breath of Death VII and Cthulhu Saves the World are JRPGs, even though they're made by an American developer.
 
Riposte said:
To put it simply, sure. Fire Emblem is particularly apt. If you threw away the maps of Fire Emblem and just lined up everyone (the combat animations included), it would look and play like a JRPG. My point here is that it is the map mechanics (i.e. movement and placement) usually fundamental to wargaming that separates something like Fire Emblem from Dragon Quest. In both cases they are still tactics games.

Again, I'm not sure what you are asking. Are you talking about how I use strategy choices/depth (i.e. what you do moment to moment in Fire Emblem) or strategy games? Or is it you don't understand how I differentiate action and strategy games as a whole (which isn't particularly important because I'm talking about games which play in a manner that is recognizably alike)? Given what you initially quoted you might be caught up in how I described "roll-playing" (in that case it doesn't matter if the combat system was based on wargaming or not, you can have role-playing use any type combat system as a vehicle). This is a bit too broad for me answer. Also a little too vague (for example you asked me about something I said in my definition of RPGs even though I didn't give one).
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The tactics part comes from the fact that positioning is damn important. Putting mages first will get them killed (obviously) so you put them behind tanks and wedge them behind impassable terrain. What is to separate Fire Emblem from Advanced Wars under your tactics as JRPG definition? I really don't get using tactics to describe games like Dragon Quest. I mean, Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest has rudimentary row positioning so do you count that as well? I feel like you're arguing 5 different points in the same paragraph.
 
Riposte said:
To put it simply, sure. Fire Emblem is particularly apt. If you threw away the maps of Fire Emblem and just lined up everyone (the combat animations included), it would look and play like a JRPG. My point here is that it is the map mechanics (i.e. movement and placement) usually fundamental to wargaming that separates something like Fire Emblem from Dragon Quest. In both cases they are still tactics games.
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And I think his/her question was: in virtue of what are they both tactics games? What is it that makes them tactics games but, I don't know, Counterstrike not?

Riposte said:
That is a terrible system to work from. Genres work best as exclusionary (other words: with distinction in mind).

Just because movie genres (though these may all simply be sub-genres) are confusing (and mind you, not particular helpful given a "genre film" is something often looked down upon by critics) doesn't mean videogame ones have to be. It probably doesn't help that inexplicably some genres are based on setting while others based on intended mood. I don't really care though, it doesn't necessarily affect arguments on videogames. Personally I'm not going to waste my time bridging my strong understanding of videogames to something I don't care to understand deeper.
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A few points:

1. A purely exclusionary method will eventually defeat itself by distinguishing every game from every game. If you want to work by exclusion rather than addition, you're still going to have to decide which distinctions are relevant, and that will involve some grouping task.

This is the signal problem with your proposed taxonomy: you've picked out some distinctions, but the ones you've selected divide games that most people consider sufficiently alike in other relevant aspects, and as a result the taxonomy seems unhelpful.

2. No idea where you're going with the "genre film" claim. Critics haven't looked down on genre fiction (on film or otherwise) in a long time, and many critically-adored films are unabashed "genre films" -- Chinatown, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Star Wars. And even if critics did look down on creative works hewing closely to genre conventions, that would not suggest that the genre conventions we had identified were unhelpful. If anything, the fact that the critics would so easily be able to identify a work as belonging to a particular genre tells us that the classification is working quite well.
 
Riposte said:
Naturally, I disagree with your conclusion. I just posted the most consistent and meaningful way to use "JRPG". The phrase itself is irrelevant of course, but I'm interested in how it is used as a classification.

With this though, you've solved nothing. You just restructured the current problem. Your JRPG definition just says every Japanese game is a JRPG. Okay lol. Why not just call them "Japanese games"? If you did that would still leave us with people treating Dragon Quest and Dark Souls as the same thing when they couldn't be farther apart.
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You've provided a consistent, meaningful classification system for RPGs. You've absolutely, utterly failed in making a bridge between "this is a good classification system" and "JRPG is a good label for one of the classes in my system".

The closest thing you've put forth to an argument for using the term "JRPG" in this way is this milquetoast assertion that "JRPG" is just a random jumble of letters that don't stand for or mean anything. Understand that this is a personal failing on your part.
Labels are descriptive, rather than prescriptive, but that is not the same thing as saying that they have no meaning and should be assigned as if they have no inherent meaning. The "J" stands for "Japanese", and unless you can meaningfully connect Japan to the classification of game that you're making, you have no business using it in your nomenclature.

The classification of game that you're making has been made by many other people, even in this thread. The term that is far more widely used is "Command RPG". You'll notice that, unlike your own system (which says that Wizardry 1-8 and Might & Magic 1-5 are "JRPGs", and that Tales of Phantasia is something else), this is actually a consistent and sensible label to apply to all games that fall under that banner.



You've described a system that classifies RPGs according to the properties of their core combat mechanics. That is not the only criteria by which they can be classfied, and "JRPG" is a label that is apt for a classification system based on region of origin, and totally unsuited to any system that considers gameplay as a classification criteria.
 
Someone should ask Capcom/Bamco if Dragons Dogma/Souls is a JRPG just to see what they say.

Femmeworth said:
Do we classify games like Binary Domain and Vanquish as JTPS?
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If someone did I'd be like:

ige4F7s0YSgpN.gif
 
Anachronox is a jRPG. LotR The Third Age is a jRPG. I associate the term with the turn-based variant. Country of origin has no bearing on that.


Then again, I also differentiate between jRPG (my shorthand for the turn-based, menu-based RPG) and JRPG (a useless moniker for games made in Japan).


water_wendi said:
i reject the notion of whether a game is a wrpg or jrpg being based solely around which country the developers happened to reside in when making the game. If i go to eat sushi in Rome im not eating Italian food.
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Nailed it.
 
Y2Kev said:
I don't see this as a problem. We have plenty of sub-descriptors that more readily identify what each game is.

Consider this hierarchy I just created:

Z45QAlr.jpg


These games are all JRPGs, but are all clearly in different subgenres.
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Garbage RPGs
-Kingdom Hearts
-Tales of

iht6mm2fset37kqou4.gif
 
nasos_333 said:
Epic story driven story

Epic huge monsters, summons

Epic charatcers

Epic open worlds to explore

There are not really many JRPGs left though, mostly linear ones like FF13

Bravely Default is my next big thing in JRPG
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You can't classify things buy what you like.

The "RPG made in Japan" is the only real definition.

Finaika said:
What if an RPG was made in Japan by a foreign company compromising of 60% gaijins & 40% Japanese employees?

Is it still considered to be a JRPG?
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No, it would just be a very rare example of a RPG collaboration. Can't classify it as a JRPG/WRPG then.
 
JRPGs are role playing games made in Japan for a Japanese audience. Ocasionally some are popular enough to bring to the west.

I would not consider a Japanese style RPG made in America to be a JRPG. They are made with specific American and/or European audiences in mind.
 
Absinthian said:
JRPGs are role playing games made in Japan for a Japanese audience. Ocasionally some are popular enough to bring to the west.

I would not consider a Japanese style RPG made in America to be a JRPG. They are made with specific American and/or European audiences in mind.
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Oh? How would you tell that? Please define.
 
Absinthian said:
It's just my opinion, but I believe that companies outside of Japan cannot make a true Japanese RPG, but instead make Japanese style RPGs. I honestly don't know for a fact the target audience...
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It's just your opinion, but your definition completely useless for everyone else.
 
To me, the only distinction between a JRPG and other types of RPGs is that it's made by a Japanese developer.

I guess you could take the "Japanese RPG" meaning less literally, and use the term to identify games in the style of traditional Japanese RPGs, even if they were made outside of Japan. I'm not opposed to either uses of the term, but I prefer to define the term by the region in which the game is made.
 
This is why I do not use the term. Instead I have turned all video games that I play into an rpg using the power of my imagination. When my scarf got bigger in Journey I was actually leveling.
 
KojiKnight said:
Remember that the J stands for Japanese STYLE and W stands for western STYLE and not necessarily the origin of said game.


JRPGs are linear story driven RPGs.

WRPGs are non-linear action driven RPGs.

Simple.
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Simple Tomfoolery. And does disservice to JRPGs. If you mean a trend of average paint by numbers RPG games, ok. Linear story driven RPGs without choices, just leveling and map clearing does not define the RPG or the JRPG. There just happen to be a lot of devs who make games like that.
 
Japanese RPGs to me:

- Developed in Japan and Asia (because of some instances where the games are developed in Korea like MagnaCarta and Crimson Gem Saga).
- They also have a story going on no matter how good or how terrible they are.
- They also have battle systems that involve whacking various enemies that appear from time to time. They don't need to be fancy or anything though unlike action games.
- They involve stat adjusting and/or manipulation, together with equipping specific items. There is a focus on these too.
 
How about we drop the whole JRPG/WRPG thing and just describe RPGs based on the subgenre they belong to:

Dungeon Crawl - take a character or group of characters through a hostile environment. Exploration, combat, loot, and mapping (either directly or automatically) are fundamental.

Dragon Quest-like - town, overworld, dungeon. Battles take place on separate screen from the exploration aspects. Largely linear and townspeople say one line of dialogue. Used primarily towards the function of telling a narrative of adventure.

Open World - player has the freedom to engage in a variety of different quests at any time, at his own discretion. If there is a quest log, it's probably open world.

The Not-RPG - a game from a different genre which has RPG trappings without fundamentally leaving its genre boundaries. This confuses people into thinking that everything is an RPG. Is Secret of Mana an RPG? Fire Emblem? Dark Souls? River City Ransom? No, but they have RPG elements, thus people don't know what the hell is going on.
 
Sqorgar said:
How about we drop the whole JRPG/WRPG thing and just describe RPGs based on the subgenre they belong to:

Dungeon Crawl - take a character or group of characters through a hostile environment. Exploration, combat, loot, and mapping (either directly or automatically) are fundamental.

Dragon Quest-like - town, overworld, dungeon. Battles take place on separate screen from the exploration aspects. Largely linear and townspeople say one line of dialogue. Used primarily towards the function of telling a narrative of adventure.

Open World - player has the freedom to engage in a variety of different quests at any time, at his own discretion. If there is a quest log, it's probably open world.

The Not-RPG - a game from a different genre which has RPG trappings without fundamentally leaving its genre boundaries. This confuses people into thinking that everything is an RPG. Is Secret of Mana an RPG? Fire Emblem? Dark Souls? River City Ransom? No, but they have RPG elements, thus people don't know what the hell is going on.
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Fire Emblem is most certainly an RPG.
 
chaosblade said:
An RPG made in Japan. I don't understand why people are so adamant about arguing against that.
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Because every other genre is categorised by how they play, not where they are made.

JRPG imo = turn based, party based rpg. No distinction based on where it was made. The name JRPG is because it resembles classic Japanese role playing games like Final Fantasy, Pokemon etc.
 
Littlegator said:
jRPG and wRPG don't specify the developer but the style. Both kinds started around the same time but in different regions, so the naming convention started.

jRPGs tend to have parties.
jRPGs tend to be turn based.
jRPGs tend to have loads of plot and exposition.
jRPGs tend to have a linear dungeon structure and story.

wRPGs tend to have a single player character.
wRPGs tend to be real-time.
wRPGs tend to be open world.
wRPGs tend to have you tell your own story through game mechanics.

If you play a lot of RPGs, you'll realize that very few games blur the lines, and if they do, you'll probably just call them by their subgenre. I.e. Fire Emblem is a sRPG, not a jRPG.
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jRPGs tend to have a fire zone, ice zone, dark zone, poisonous zone...
 
Anything in the lineage of Dragon Quest. Roam around the world and combat that is vaguely turn based are the major characteristics. I don't think they have to be designed by a Japanese firm, but I bet 99% are.

edit:

the difference between a JRPG and SRPG is that in a SRPG the characters are really just personification of squads, and positioning of said squad on a field is a major gameplay mechanic.
 
demidar said:
So an SRPG? The other definition seem pretty solid though, where would you put FFXIII and Valkyrie Profile?
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Both of those games have very little in the way of towns or overworlds - or really anything to do outside of going through dungeons. FFXIII, however, had dungeons that are literally a straight line, so while I argue that it belongs in the dungeon crawl category, I would also suggest that it is, in fact, a terrible dungeon crawl who has put narrative and cutscenes ahead of gameplay. Maybe FFXIII belongs in some sort of Arena category, which consists of a series of linear battles and little else.
 
NBtoaster said:
Because every other genre is categorised by how they play, not where they are made.

JRPG imo = turn based, party based rpg. No distinction based on where it was made. The name JRPG is because it resembles classic Japanese role playing games like Final Fantasy, Pokemon etc.
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The problem is that people keep trying to call JRPG a genre. The whole point of the term is simply to classify where the game originates from. Beyond that we are just making up shit as we go along. And there's nothing wrong with having a term that simply states where something is from, we don't have to keep tacking on all these rules about what makes something "Japanese" as if it can all be defined in a single word. It's also funny that you classify Final Fantasy as a classic example of a Japanese RPG, whereas if you had bought the game in North America in 1987 you would have no clue or indication that the game had ever come from Japan. "Japanese" is not a genre.
 
Sqorgar said:
Both of those games have very little in the way of towns or overworlds - or really anything to do outside of going through dungeons. FFXIII, however, had dungeons that are literally a straight line, so while I argue that it belongs in the dungeon crawl category, I would also suggest that it is, in fact, a terrible dungeon crawl who has put narrative and cutscenes ahead of gameplay. Maybe FFXIII belongs in some sort of Arena category, which consists of a series of linear battles and little else.
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Fair justification. What about games like Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale, Fallout 1/2, Neverwinter Nights 1/2? They aren't really open-world like Morrowind/Oblivion/Skyrim/Fallout 3. Are they under dungeon crawl?
 
demidar said:
Fair justification. What about games like Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale, Fallout 1/2, Neverwinter Nights 1/2? They aren't really open-world like Morrowind/Oblivion/Skyrim/Fallout 3. Are they under dungeon crawl?
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Those games are open world in that you can engage in a variety of different "quests" simultaneously or at your own discretion. Planescape, for example, might have one large area, but six or seven different story arcs going on it. Icewind Dale is more linear and combat/dungeon orientated, but it's been a while since I played it.
 
Sqorgar said:
Both of those games have very little in the way of towns or overworlds - or really anything to do outside of going through dungeons. FFXIII, however, had dungeons that are literally a straight line, so while I argue that it belongs in the dungeon crawl category, I would also suggest that it is, in fact, a terrible dungeon crawl who has put narrative and cutscenes ahead of gameplay. Maybe FFXIII belongs in some sort of Arena category, which consists of a series of linear battles and little else.
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visual novel. like 999 or VLR.
 
chaosblade said:
An RPG made in Japan. I don't understand why people are so adamant about arguing against that.
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The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age is a JRPG, and it was not made in Japan.

In other words, there are actual game mechanics that fall in that genre. It isn't just a term for country of origin.
 
chaosblade said:
An RPG made in Japan. I don't understand why people are so adamant about arguing against that.
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Does Crimson Gem Saga and MagnaCarta count as JRPGs? The were developed in Korea though.
 
Jake Tower said:
The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age is a JRPG, and it was not made in Japan.

In other words, there are actual game mechanics that fall in that genre. It isn't just a term for country of origin.
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Except that it is. Otherwise you are literally calling the word "Japanese" a genre, and then creating a definition around that based on your own pre-conceived notions. Do people not see how absurd this is?
 
knkng said:
Except that it is. Otherwise you are literally calling the word "Japanese" a genre, and then creating a definition around that based on your own pre-conceived notions. Do people not see how absurd this is?
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I had chinese food for dinner.

pretty sure nothing I ate actually originated in china.
 
knkng said:
Except that it is. Otherwise you are literally calling the word "Japanese" a genre, and then creating a definition around that based on your own pre-conceived notions. Do people not see how absurd this is?
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How come every other genre isn't predicated on a region then? It describes a style that arose from a region.
 
knkng said:
Except that it is. Otherwise you are literally calling the word "Japanese" a genre, and then creating a definition around that based on your own pre-conceived notions. Do people not see how absurd this is?
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Japanese people call anything animated anime, but that's not how the term anime gets used by English speakers. We've co-opted the term and refer to animation that kind of looks like it was produced in Japan, even if it was actually done primarily by Chinese or Korean animators.

So, likewise we should be able to call anything a jrpg even if no one Japanese was actually involved.
 
The difference between a western RPG and a JRPG is not going to boil down to a list of the necessary and sufficient conditions for each.

It's inevitably a matter of "I know one when I see one".
 
Noirulus said:
So a SRPG. Which can also be classified under JRPGs.
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No, it's a tactics game. For instance, Jagged Alliance, Rebelstar Tactical Command, X-Com, and Fallout Tactics all have RPG trappings, and yet they are most certainly not JRPGs.

Just because something has PARTS that are RPGs doesn't make the WHOLE THING an RPG. If nothing else comes from this discussion, I want people to stop calling strategy games RPGs.
 
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