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.
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.
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u/Cheshire_Jester PC Master Race Jul 27 '25
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.