THE APPEAL OF JRPG'S

There's something about the aesthetic, feel, sound, and flow of a JRPG that's fundamentally different than a WRPG. It's hard to put into words right now, but I love both genres, but for different reasons.

For example, JRPGs have a very distinct 'cool factor', that when done well, is very appealing aesthetically. For example, Xenogears. However you felt about the story, or the game itself, it had a lot of 'cool shit' happening throughout; Id throwing the Yggdrasil on Bart, Grahf's dramatic entrances, the Raid on Nortune by the Hecht fleet, Weltall smashing through the skybridge in Solaris, and fuck, half of the Deathblows are pure eye candy. That type of cool is generally the monopoly of JRPGs, even though 'cool' itself is universal.

That apostrophe on JRPGs is hurting my feelings tremendously. ;-;
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I don't know why I'm particularily fond of JRPGs.

I mean, there is a thing about the pacing -- I love the pacing and progression found in JRPG gameplay, as wildly different as it can get (fom the first dungeon-town backtracking present in oldschool games to the plot-driven progression full of License Boards to the nonlinear progression accompanied by a somehow pleasing cacophony of random, hard to foresee post-battle statups)

Then, comes the wild settings and narratives. People say JRPGs often boil down to formulaic save-the-worlds and I beg to differ. The tolkien-esque WRPG staple is much more common on its genre than the... What even is the JRPG staple anyway? Greenlands and slimes? Despite loving some good old slime whacking my favourite RPGs have unique settings, narratives and themes.

-Chrono Trigger / Radical Dreamers / Chrono Cross deal with dimensional & temporal theories in a way that hasn't ever came close to be brushed upon by other games (I think. I'd love to find something just as great.)

-Valkyrie Profile puts you as a Valkyrie on a very interesting interpretation of Norse mythology, and has you recruit the souls of fallen heroes at the time of their deaths.

-Persona plays with materializing, making tangible aspects of the human consciousness in a very interesting way.

-SaGa Frontier lets you choose between 7 characters with unique stories and bosses to play in a shared world, playing with the concept that we all have our stories, and while we're all the protagonist of our own story, countless people cross by us everyday living their highly complex lives and stories, unfolding in ways that are completely and absolutely unknown to us. I think it's beautiful. Haven't you ever asked yourself what would've been if you & your friend or loved one hadn't, by coincidence or fate, wound up in the same place at the same time? You'd be living your stories in parallel, without them ever touching.

i could give other reaosns but i'm tired and itching to write on my fourth spacial dimension theory thingy so i'll finish this by here but yep i think JRPGs are extremely rich and innovative means of communication, more or elss, and I love how bold and daring JRPG devs can get (chrono cross is a fantastic and amazing game despite being so wildly different from chrono trigger, and if it were just chrono trigger 2 it'd be almost certain shit)

The primary distinction between JRPGs and WRPGs is that you're given a character with a specific backstory and character development in a JRPG, while a WRPG lets you craft your own character that rarely has any background relevant to the plot. As such, the narrative of a JRPG is usually more focused on the protagonists while a WRPG has more depth in the world and major NPCs.

Also, you can't say that JRPGs typically start you in a rural village and make you whack slimes if its most iconic entry starts you in a cyberpunk dystopia where you fight trained soldiers and blow up a power plant.

Well, FF7 is, in my opinion, the most well-known JRPG there is. However, when people think of a typical JRPG, it'll look more like the Dragon Quest series.

Alot of what I'd write has been touched upon already: Direction, focus on playable-character development, town-dungeon patterns.

For me, one of the most appealing aspects of jRPGs is the inherent cheesiness. Games like the Tales series and Persona put a stupid amount of effort in demonstrating positive values such as trust, friendship, teamwork yada yada yada, and to be 100% honest I eat that stuff right up. It's a nice contrast to the cynicism of many modern, predominantly Western games.

...and then there's stuff like mainline SMT which is a whole different ballgame. Idk, there's just something really cool about those. I like anime? Is that a reason?

author=Sooz
Same. Though the FF games seem to be inclined away from the happy cheesy scale, at least in the post-cartridge era.

Happy? Yeah, maybe not so much...I'd class them as bittersweet. Cheesy? IMO very much so - out of the post-cartridge ones I've played (VII, VIII, X, X-2, most of XII), most have delved into a lot of the so-called 'positive' values I mentioned in my last post (especially VIII and X).

I think anime and JRPGs share a lot of the same stylistic and story conceits. (Much like WRPGs and popular fantasy fiction over here.) If you enjoy one, you probably also enjoy the other.

Yes, I think so too. As diverse as anime is, there are usually certain tropes that make one go, "Yeah, this is an anime alright", and I think similiar tropes hold for jRPGs.