• BurgerPunk [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I haven't watched this. But i never cared for the term jrpg. I grew up loving squaresoft rpgs on SNES, and we just called them rpgs back then. I don't know when the term was introduced, but it always seemed like a very restrictive and culturally essentializing term along with its counterpart the "western" rpg. Theres so many better and more specific terminology to describe games that those terms never seemed necessary to me

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      To me JRPG describes a particular style of RPG game - basically the old final fantasy games and everything that uses similar mechanics

      CRPG is games in the Dungeons and Dragons lineage - 3/4 perspective, characters moving around a 2d landscape for tactical advantage, classes, soemwhat free-form character levelling, whatever

      ARPG is diablo and it's successors.

      FPSRPG is Deus Ex, EYE.

      There's one for games where you have a first person perspective with all your party members represented by little boxes and it's turn based but I can't remember it.

      Roguelikes are Rogue, Nethack, Angband, etc, though that's gotten complicated because so many games are using roguelike as a descriptor and all they really have in common is a fail forward, perma-death but you unlock stuff mechanic.

      And there's lots of stuff that doesn't fit in anywhere. But if someone says "JPRG" I expect a turn based game where your dudes stand on one side of the screen bouncing on their toes, the bad guys are on the other side, and you take turns using different moves, attacks, spells, and items.

      I never attributed any other meaning to it except a set of game mechanics.

      • invo_rt [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Same here. I've used that vernacular for years to describe a set of mechanics that was popularized by games like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. They're too different from games like Baldur's Gate to just be called "RPGs" without having to add in a dozen qualifiers.

      • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        There’s one for games where you have a first person perspective with all your party members represented by little boxes and it’s turn based but I can’t remember it.

        First person dungeon crawler.

        though that’s gotten complicated because so many games are using roguelike as a descriptor and all they really have in common is a fail forward, perma-death but you unlock stuff mechanic.

        Those are roguelike-likes.

        There's also SRPGs (Fire Emblem, FF Tactics).

        • Findom_DeLuise [she/her, they/them]
          ·
          2 years ago

          There’s one for games where you have a first person perspective with all your party members represented by little boxes and it’s turn based but I can’t remember it.

          First person dungeon crawler.

          Damn it, and now I kinda want to fire up an SNES emulator and play Arcana. Or an NES emulator for The Bard's Tale.

      • charly4994 [she/her, comrade/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        There’s one for games where you have a first person perspective with all your party members represented by little boxes and it’s turn based but I can’t remember it.

        Isn't that just a dungeon crawler RPG like Legend of Grimrock?

        I'd agree that at this point I associate JRPG more with the style of gameplay than the origin since most JRPGs I play are made outside of Japan these days since RPG Maker is such an accessible engine to create games as a solo dev.

      • TylenolJones [none/use name]
        ·
        2 years ago

        There’s one for games where you have a first person perspective with all your party members represented by little boxes and it’s turn based but I can’t remember it.

        Blobber.

    • Abraxiel
      ·
      2 years ago

      I don't know, there's just a lot of shared conventions and design philosophies in jrpgs that have to do with their history. There's a lot of back and forth of influence between rpgs in the states and Japan, sort of like with westerns and samurai movies, but there were pretty influential and interesting divergences early on that inform how the overarching genre has developed in different places. I like this video about it: The Birth of the Japanese RPG | Design Icons

    • refolde [she/her, any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I feel weird nowadays referring to games as JRPGs just based off the fact it implies specifically a Japanese game, even though there are RPGs that would fit the mold of one that aren't... you know, made in Japan. There's also the fact that JRPGs can be turn-based or real-time, or whatever other sort of style they're going for, like any other RPG. I just call them turn-based RPGs or Action RPGs, or whatever RPGs, no need to attach a nationality to it.