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Hideki Kamiya thinks Japan should be proud of ‘JRPG’ and wants to use ‘J-Action’
(www.videogameschronicle.com)
this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2023
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I shortened the definition for the sake of not writing a book, but the point is that no one game will satisfy all of the criteria of a genre, but they evoke a common set of responses and scratch a similar itch. The genre would be more anchored to early Final Fantasy titles than Earthbound.
I wasn't suggesting all games should be labeled "earthbound-inspired", the term JRPG is so broad that just suggesting it's inspiration is more informative.
But then it's only informative to people who've played that game, as opposed to people who've played that genre. Far more people have played a JRPG than people have played Earthbound.
This just goes back to JRPG being vague and not giving any real info anyway.
If I told you I like Dark Souls which is arguably a JRPG or a more obvious Earthbound, why would it be better to say ah, "Disgaea or Kingdom Hearts are JRPG, you'll like them".
But see, Dark Souls is very much an RPG but uses more western RPG design axioms than those of a JRPG, which is why this genre is not at all about being made in Japan. Disgaea, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Fire Emblem often get linked together as a strategy RPG or a tactics RPG. Kingdom Hearts is a real-time or action JRPG, Persona is a turn-based JRPG, and the "active time battles" of the late SNES and PlayStation era from Square sort of straddle a few of those lines, but there are commonalities among all of them that a fan of Earthbound could reasonably be into. Likewise, there are commonalities between western RPGs and JRPGs where someone who's just into "RPGs" would be into. These are just genres and subgenres.
The other thing too is that the definitions of these genres will change over time as more games come out that can be grouped together. When games inspired by DotA started getting released commercially, some tried to call them "Action RTS" games, but then you'd have games like Smite and Super Monday Night Combat that no longer have anything to do with the RTS genre, so Riot's coined "MOBA" stuck because, even though it's kind of a lousy name for that genre, it doesn't contradict itself by calling them a derivative of RTS games.
I'm a bit confused by this message since I was suggesting JRPG as a genre wasn't clear, and the argument(?) Is that Dark Souls isn't a JRPG and you've sub-classified a bunch of different JRPGs how I agree.
If the argument is that we can still use JRPG in conjunction, I think this is valid but I still feel that coining things based on country of origin isa bit off, almost like insinuating a stereotype when we also agree they don't have to follow it.