What Makes a JRPG?
Contributed by DJMMT
In the last year, I’ve gotten into playing retro JRPGs. I’ve gone out of my way to explore classic games considered foundational in the establishment of the JRPG, and arguably, general RPG genres. The reason for this is that I really love RPGs, of various types. However, I didn’t actually start playing them until Final Fantasy X (2001). I started playing games on the NES, but the first RPG I ever completed on the PS2. To this day, that’s still my favorite Final Fantasy, but I would not say it’s my favorite RPG, or possibly even JPRG.
In the past several months, I’ve played classics like Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light (1990) and Dragon Quest I – III. One thing I find very interesting about these older JRPGs is that in many ways they’re different from modern games in the genre, but not in the ways I would have expected. There are gameplay mechanics that work surprisingly different than what you’d see in modern JRPGs, but often it’s not an issue of technological limitations. These are intentional design choices that affect the gameplay experience in both positive and negative ways.
As more and more games today implement “RPG elements,” it has become harder and harder to actually define what an RPG is. It seems like in the last several years people are constantly debating what defines an RPG. And with companies like Square Enix constantly trying to innovate and change the traditional formula, people have been arguing about the topic even more.
Recently, I was having a discussion about the upcoming Final Fantasy XVI. Personally, I think it looks great, and I’m excited to play it. That being said, I absolutely hated Final Fantasy XV (2016), so I am reluctant. A friend of mine, who has been playing Final Fantasy games going back to at least Final Fantasy VII, said that he doesn’t even consider FF XVI a JRPG, given all the things Square Enix has announced about the game so far. Specifically, he really dislikes the fact that you no longer have a party. And that was a criticism he had about FF XV as well. Less so with FF XV, because you did technically have a party in that one. You just didn’t have party customization. FF XVI will supposedly offer even less of a party in the fact that characters will just jump in and out of your squad as you progress through the game with no choice given to the player about how to structure a team. For him, it’s the party system more than anything else that defines a JRPG.
A year ago, I might have been inclined to agree with my friend’s opinion on party customization being an integral part of the JRPG genre. But now that I’ve played some classic titles in the genre, I have to disagree with his opinion. Party customization has existed in JRPGs for decades. Dragon Quest III: The Seeds of Salvation had it in 1988. But notice that I cited the third Dragon Quest, rather than the first or second. That’s because neither of those games actually has party customization. That gameplay mechanic wasn’t added until the Dragon Quest franchise, which I consider one of the foundational IPs of the JRPG genre, was already two years old and three installments deep. The first game only has one party member and the occasional temporary companion. The second game has a fixed party of three members.
The original Final Fantasy (1987), which I have yet to play, allows you to create a party at the start of the game, but offers no customization to the members of that party once you’ve started your adventure. Final Fantasy II (1988), which I also haven’t played yet, also didn’t actually offer you party customization. In fact, it offered less customization of your party than its predecessor. You are locked to three fixed characters with the fourth party member changing throughout the game as part of the story. In Final Fantasy III (1990), you’re back to a fixed party. You can change their “jobs” which is essentially a more convoluted class system that was originally introduced in Dragon Quest III two years earlier. But you have no control over which characters are actually in your party. It’s not until you get all the way to Final Fantasy IV (1991), four years after the debut of the franchise, that players actually get full party customization options tied into the plot of the game. I make this distinction because while Dragon Quest III (1988) did offer party customization three years earlier, the characters in your party were in no way tied to the plot. Only the main character is actually plot relevant. The rest of the characters are just random people you literally hired from a temp agency.
This is just one of the examples of things people think of as essential to JRPGs not really being part of the genre for much of its early history. Like Final Fantasy IV isn’t turn-based. It uses the Active Time Battle (ATB) system. The first three Final Fantasy games are turn-based. But then we didn’t see turn-based combat again until Final Fantasy X. Think about that in terms of numbers. In the first 10 Final Fantasy games, only four of them were built to be played as fully turn-based experiences. Yet today, people constantly complain about JRPGs no longer being turn-based, as if turn-based combat has always been a key component of the genre. To be clear, I love turn-based combat. But to argue that a JRPG has to have it is historically inaccurate when looking at some of the biggest titles and franchises in the genre.
Think about grinding in JRPGs. Today, this is seen as a necessary part of the genre. I’ve seen people argue that a game literally can’t be a JRPG if it doesn’t involve grinding. Personally, I think that’s a ridiculous opinion, and I’ve written more than one blog post discussing it. What I was shocked to learn is that grinding wasn’t introduced to Dragon Quest until the third installment. Let me clarify what I mean by that. Dragon Quest I – III are all turn-based RPGs with traditional experience based leveling earned by winning battles against enemies met in random encounters and mandatory boss fights. But it is not until the third game that you actually have to go out of your way to grind in order to beat the game. Dragon Quest I and II, both of which I was able to beat in less than 20 hours, required no inorganic experience farming. You could just play through the game naturally and you were pretty much always strong enough to move forward. You did occasionally die and have to reload your save. Some boss fights required you to play a bit more strategically. But at no time did I have to deviate from my path for an extended period of time just to level up my characters in order to get strong enough to move forward. This was not the case for Dragon Quest III.
In Dragon Quest III, you have to grind. You literally cannot progress past certain bosses without actively working to level up your characters. Not only is this required to unlock certain spells, but it’s also necessary just to get strong enough to beat bosses you’ve already reached. And it inflates the playtime by a considerable amount. I’ve spent more time grinding in Dragon Quest III than I spent playing Dragon Quest I. Part of the reason for that is the game’s class system. You can change the classes of your party members but keep the abilities gained from their previous classes. The problem is that when you change a party member’s class, they go back down to level 1. You can’t even change classes until you get to level 20. So if you have a warrior and you want them to learn a certain spell, you have to level them up to at least 20 before you can change them to a class that can learn the spell you want. And the best magic class, Sage, requires you get to level 20 in a specific class before being able to change to that class. Meaning that if you have a warrior that you want to learn a specific Sage spell, you have to level them up to 20 twice before you even get to make them a Sage, and then level them up to unlock the actual spell you want. The final Sage spell is unlocked at level 41.
I loved Dragon Quest I and II. By the end of Dragon Quest III, I was so over the game. The grinding completely ruined the experience for me. The sad thing is that we know this style of design became a staple of RPGs, of all types. But especially JRPGs. Name me a JRPG of the last 10 years that doesn’t require grinding. But if we look at the full history of the genre, grinding isn’t actually a staple requirement of those games. It was added later. We’re just used to it because developers started padding the playtimes in their games early enough in the history of gaming that now people have been trained to think it has always been that way.
So, what makes a game a JRPG? It’s hard to say. But my experiences playing older games in the genre tell me that it’s basically none of the things that people like to call out newer iterations of Final Fantasy for not having. Those are just preferences. Like the one thing I can probably say has appeared in every JRPG I’ve ever played is probably dragons. They’re not always called dragons, but they’re dragons. Otherwise, the only thing all these franchises have always had seems to be Japanese developers. So I’m going to play Final Fantasy XVI, once it goes on sale, with an open mind. Rather than try to deconstruct it and complain about all the things it doesn’t have in common with Final Fantasy X, I’m going to focus on how fun it is, or isn’t. If it sucks, I’ll happily admit it. But if it’s fun, I’ll consider that enough to call it a successful JRPG.