It's a difference in design, different boughs on the same tree
(Originally posted on September 16, 2023, this was an answer to an ask on Cohost.)
An anonymous user asked,
this is a question that keeps me up at night so as someone who loves both traditions of RPG I'd love to hear your take -> what is the difference between a JRPG and a Western RPG? Specifically, how are games like Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, and Persona different from games like Baldurs Gate 1-3, Planescape Torment, and Disco Elysium? If someone were to remake every single thing about Baldur's Gate 3, but make everyone look like an anime character and have the studio make it be based in Japan, would it still be a JRPG?
Short answer:
In CRPGs you determine what role you wish to play, in JRPGs you are assigned to play a specific role. Neither of these is necessarily inherently better than the other.
Long answer:
Genre labels are always kind of nebulous and vibe-based. I call Sea of Stars a JRPG even though it was demonstrably not made in Japan. If a dev in Japan were to make a hypothetical Baldur's Gate-type game that was all anime-style from the ground up, firstly that'd be sick and I'd want to see what they'd do with it, secondly I would still probably call it a CRPG.
(Aside: I did mod Ryoko Kui's fanart portraits into BG2 when I played it and it demonstrably improved my experience with the game)
(What I, personally, think of as) CRPGs are still heavily rooted in tabletop RPGs. Baldur's Gate 3 literally uses Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition (with necessary modifications) to determine how its underlying numbers work. Fallout was originally based on GURPS until they infamously had to pivot to a proprietary system late in development. Disco Elysium still has you roll 2d6 for skill checks with crit successes and crit fails.
Because of this there's generally a greater focus on player expression specifically via character build. What class are you playing as? What's your alignment? What about your party's classes? You can play Arcanum as a low-intelligence gambling fighter or as a hyper-charismatic thieving wizard, and these (and just about anything in between) are valid options because the designers include various vectors to complete your broad objective in an open-ended way to emulate the spontaneity and creativity that happens around a live game table.
The quintessential JRPG is Dragon Quest for the NES/Famicom (devs like Falcom are extremely important and should not be discounted but I am not writing a textbook here). Yuji Horii wanted to make an RPG that could be enjoyed by people who weren't the kinds of freaks who would read an entire Player's Handbook and learn the intricacies of D&D (read: kids), and the Famicom's tech limitations were tight compared to something like the PC-98. Thus, the systems were greatly simplified and - compared to the almost pure dungeon crawl RPGs of the time - there was a greater emphasis on storytelling.
Follow this branch of design further down a decade or so and you get something like Final Fantasy VII, which is basically a multi-season anime plot where you also have numbers to feel like you're getting stronger (I say this with love). The characters are all pre-set with their own strengths and weaknesses reflected in both the story and gameplay. Yeah, you can equip Aeris with a bunch of physical Materia, but she has naturally high magic stats and you're broadly better off sticking with those vibes not only to get the best mechanical results but to maintain plot verisimilitude.
Again, neither is "better" than the other; they're recognizably different lineages of design, but I'd still call them both RPGs.
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