LogFAQs > #972122276

It is very much an antiquated term, now that it's much more difficult to divide the gaming industry into Japan vs. everywhere else, Japan's RPG output has grown to encompass most styles of RPG, and the rest of the world is also producing games that would qualify as JRPG's but for the fact that they aren't Japanese. Originally, Japan was such an overwhelming presence in the gaming industry (especially the console market) that identifying them as their own thing kind of made sense. Similarly, the Final Fantasy approach to interpreting RPG's as video games (a defined story with little player influence on the world/outcome, incorporating the "role-playing" aspect in the form of character/party progression and customization) was mostly only found in Japanese games (at least the higher-profile examples of it), while stuff like Baldur's Gate that aimed to more closely replicate the flexible story of playing D&D was primarily coming out of Western developers. These days, though, the delineation isn't nearly as clear.

Saying that, though, plenty of genre names don't make much sense for what they represent. "Adventure" is a far more narrow genre than the name would suggest, with "action-adventure" being used to describe games that more intuitively fit the concept of "adventure" games. Heck, if anything, "JRPG" just means an action-adventure game that isn't action but can't be called "adventure" because that's taken by Myst et al (though even then there are games that are indisputably JRPG's that aren't turn-based, like Tales or Xenoblade 1-3, and any ATB games straddle a weird line between being turn-based and being action). "Action RPG" or "ARPG" has been mostly taken over by Diablo-likes, leaving, action-based RPG's kind of weirdly genre-less or left to be lumped in with "action-adventure."

If anything, I'm personally inclined to just stop using "RPG" as a genre name altogether, J or otherwise. These days, RPG elements (character growth/progression, customization for variable playstyles, player influence over the world/story, etc.) show up in a ton of different games regardless of which genre they most closely fit, and even for those games that would traditionally be just called "RPG's," calling them "adventure games with significant RPG elements" is a much more accurate description (albeit a little wordy). The only real purpose of applying a genre name to something is to be able to suggest that somebody who likes other things that fit that genre might like this one, and "RPG" is just too broad for that to really work. Liking Chrono Trigger does nothing to predict liking Dark Souls or Borderlands, despite all three being quite unquestionably RPG's.

So... should "JRPG" be retired? I dunno. I'm inclined to agree with the assessment that it's not a useful genre descriptor because it's too broad and inconsistent, and I get what Yoshi P is saying about it making him feel bad because the term was used so derisively for a while (it may not be anymore, but it can be hard to shake that response). At the same time, though, there is still a distinct flavour that characterizes games like Tales, Xenoblade, and Persona that's part of identifying them as "JRPG's," much like there's a distinct flavour that's common to shonen anime (JRPG's mostly being video game shonen). As much as it's excessively reductive to distill things down to "RPG's made in Japan" and "RPG's made anywhere else," Japan still represents a very substantial portion of the game industry and the culture that shapes a lot of their media comes through in what we call JRPG's (often more so than it does in Japanese games of other genres). To that end, identifying the Japanitude of a game as part of its genre is potentially going to be helpful, depending on how much one likes that particular flavour. It's not useless as a genre descriptor, it's just one that needs a bit of thought to use effectively, and the knowledge that many Japanese developers aren't fond of the term means it should be used carefully.