Why I love JRPGs

According to most Western game websites and blogs, the market for Japanese RPGs, at least in North America, Europe and Australia, is dying. Players crave freedom and deep, engaging storylines. Games like Bethesda's Fallout 3 and Oblivion, or Bioware's Mass Effect series and Dragon Age, are leading the charge in this regard. They're sometimes traditional in the Dungeons and Dragons sense of the term, but they're presented in engaging ways that challenge expectations.

Almost all of what I've said here isn't true of JRPGs. In fact, if we're talking about stagnant genres, the JRPG is generally considered to be the paramount example. Final Fantasy games have, at their essence, not really evolved in any meaningful ways in the last twenty years. The Tales series (Tales of Symphonia, Tales of Graces, Tales of Vesperia, etc.) of games basically repackages the same combination of its (admittedly really fun) battle system and anime-influenced storyline again and again and again. There's of course exceptions to the rule (i.e., the Shin Megami Tensei series), but for the most part, JRPGs have managed to stay very much the same throughout the years.

You know what? I don't care. And I don't think a lot of the people who generally enjoy JRPGs care either, because these statements are just as true of Final Fantasy VII as they are of Final Fantasy XIII. There's probably a couple of reasons for this, but I think the reason why I enjoy them so much is a combination of things that I'll list below.

1. I'm not very good at videogames.

It's true. I'm actually really bad at games that involve dexterity and skill (like any first-person shooter outside of the Metroid Prime series, for example), and JRPGs, for all of their depth, are quite easy to pick up and play. My first JRPG was Chrono Trigger (which is probably my favourite or second-favourite game of all time), which really was the perfect entry point. It taught me how to play pretty well every JRPG that I've played since then. The combination of exploration and menu based fighting is simple and, dare I say, kind of elegant by this point.

2. They exist primarily as a story-delivery device.

This has, more often than not, been the downfall of any JRPG. The general mechanics involved are so ingrained by this point that, yes, you could lose points for unoriginality from game review websites or what have you, but if the story's no good, the game isn't even worth playing. Besides my girlfriend and people who love to customize their character's weapons and armor and such, I don't think there's anyone who really loves doing battle in a turn-based JRPG (strategy RPGs like Final Fantasy Tactics and Fire Emblem, or the real-time battles of the Tales series, are obviously excluded here). It's the characters and the storyline that pushes you forward, and that's actually something that doesn't happen that often in gaming, even in some of the Western RPGs – I'm looking at you, Oblivion.

3. They're the videogame equivalent of comfort food.

For as much as I respected and admired Fragile Dreams, I didn't actually really enjoy playing it. Sometimes, I just don't care about "high art" (even though I'd argue that games in the Shin Megami Tensei series, or even a few of the Final Fantasies, could fall in this category) and I want a game that I know exactly how it's going to go before I pick it up. I have this crazy compulsion with series of games, like the Zelda series or the Metroid series, to play through the entire thing and see its evolution. When I started doing exactly that with the Final Fantasy series (I'm on IV now), I knew that things weren't going to change that much, and that's OK with me. Basically, it's like getting a whole bunch of sometimes well-told stories. Because while I can love a game like Bioshock that kind of asks you to step outside your comfort zone, sometimes I really just want to enjoy a game once and awhile – we absolutely should commend games that strive to be art, but for our own enjoyment, we should play whatever we want to.

4. They feel like the underdog.

Especially now. They're such a dying breed that to love a JRPG is to go against the grain, and even though they're still hugely popular (especially in Japan), they can still feel like private obsessions rather than something that everyone else is playing. I'm not advocating for this snobbish attitude where you won't play a popular game just because it's popular, but I think there's still quite a bit of merit to be found in something that's still so resolutely traditional. Besides, isn't it just easier to make something feel like your own when there's a lot of problems with it than when they're absolutely perfect? Even Chrono Trigger has issues – battles are largely disconnected from the actual narrative, for instance, and yet, that makes it all the more endearing.

Of course, all of this is to say that if a truly original and mindblowing RPG came out of Japan, it could change the way that Western players see the genre. This whole argument of "WRPGs vs. JRPGs" does kind of smack of ethnocentrism – to what degree are JRPG conventions a reflection of Japanese culture? Is criticizing them akin to criticizing the conventions of, say, Kabuki theatre? It's tough to say. I think there's this view that videogames are supposed to be "international" at this point, and that what that generally means is an appeal to North American audiences. Perhaps there's even an element of hegemony present in this argument – but I'll save all that for another post, and go back to Cecil's adventures for now. (For further reading, check out this IGN article that basically says "the only way that JRPGs can be saved is to make them exactly like WRPGs." Even if you're frustrated with the lack of progress in the genre, you know, you could just not PLAY them instead of trying to subsume them!)