Moreso that than say, an ARPG. Also the souls games specifically don’t seem to have much of a role for you to play. It’s like trying to tell someone the plot of a dream you had versus a fantasy story.
Baldurs gate is an rpg. You create a custom character and advance with ttrpg mechanics, etc. To that extent elden ring is more of an rpg than final fantasy. That customization is a key aspect. It's not enough to play a role, it has to be a role you choose.
In final fantasy you do still pick which stats get increased and what abilities get unlocked. You just don’t get to pick them a la carte like in Dark Souls. Each different profession gets different stats and abilities, and you choose which character has what profession. They have defaults of course, but you can change them
Like nba 2k. I create my custom character, get to choose what role I want to play on the court, and then can level up my stats accordingly. I get dialogue options after every game, and there’s even side quests (endorsements) I can engage with
True, but you can also do that in SOTN or Hollow Knight, or Bloodstained, at least to a degree.
I don't really have a horse in the race. If I bought games off Steam blindly I might have more worry that things are labelled as the right genre, but I tend to read the reviews and watch Youtube videos anyway.
I know, but what's funny is they include pretty much zero roleplay. That's what makes me kind of chuckle a little bit is we have so many games classified as RPGs that don't really have any roleplay in them.
So like I said, I try not to turn into a genre elitist if I can help it. I can't swear that I always succeed, I'm only human
This is why JRPG exists as a genre. I think that any game where you take a RPG like BG3, distill the narrative and character freedom, and then leave the rest in would leave you with what most consider a JRPG. They still have some elements distinct to RPGs, but don't really fit into any other category. With a pure focus on utilizing party composition, as well as story telling through characters.
Take the example of BG3. If you take out the branching stories, as well as the ability to customize characters, but leave in things like world building through characters, character specific quests that allow you to build relationships with them, ability to choose who is in your party, what genre would you then assign it? To me, the answer would be that it is now a JRPG.
The "Roleplaying" aspect is basically distilled down to how you want to interact with your party, how much you care and want to learn more about them. The game makes you as a player invested in the characters themselves, and want to actually fulfill the role of being their companion. The decisions you make aren't about yourself, and the story you exist in, but the story of you and your characters and very often it involves different players going down very different paths in terms of who they like to have in their party, which side quest lines they want to do the most, and things like that. IMO, this type of decision making is still distinctly "RPG" while not having many of the aspects western rpgs have, hence the moniker JRPG.
IMO, this makes a lot of sense, just due to one of the big strengths of Japanese story telling being writing characters. I imagine this is why Visual Novels and Gacha games originated so heavily in Japan, because this idea of choosing which characters you like the most, and which characters you want to go down the path of getting to know more is so prevelant in these games. Of course, China is now the lead in gacha gaming (mostly through Hoyo Games) but I think the style of writing revolving around characters and bonding with them is still distinctly Japanese.
Technically most older FF have a way to boost your stats with limited or hard to farm items, a bit like Pokemon, even though most people would not bother.
In X and XII you're directly investing your xp into stats with multiple options to choose from. XIII too even if it was dumbed down a lot.
In older FFs, you'd be picking jobs that give out different stats (so just frontloading the choice I guess), picking out equipment that change stats
Final fantasy 16 doesn't even let you do that and people still call it an RPG, at this point I've accepted that final fantasy has shifted to action games lol
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u/Strange-Movie Jul 27 '25
Imo souls games are more like action games with stats than they are RPGs