Where the JRPG scene has really been flourishing is in the hand-helds, and many of the games there have been deeply revolutionary - Atlus has done some fantastic work on their in-house games, and Level 5 is really blossoming. I'm running over my internal category of JRPGs that have been released over the past several years, and I'm definitely coming up with a far larger number of titles that are either completely revolutionary (a la Demon's Souls), or subtley and artfuly innovative (a la DQIX). Even the titles that are intentionally throwback to PSX/PS2 era titles seem to be very tastefully done.

I might be completely wrong with this, but a lot of people may view JRPG the way they would with comic book superheroes. Sure, Batman might vary greatly between Arkham Asylum to The Brave and the Bold, but we all know he would never kill with a gun or be completely ok with his past.

JRPGs, in a way, are a lot of players' comfort zones. The storylines and characters stay largely the same over the years because it's like comfort food for their key audiences. If you want some deviation from that, you can try out some oddballs like Earthbound, The World Ends With You, or even Valkyria Chronicles.

I recently spent an evening scouring Youtube for the storyline of Final Fantasy VI. I never completed it, and based on the recommendation of nearly everyone who had completed it, I felt I was sorely missing out. But something was lost in translation from game to Youtube, as I found myself unattached and disengaged from the story. Scenes like the infamous opera house debacle pictured above felt generic and cold, lifeless. You have to realize that the hours spent grinding and meandering through the world are not fluff, but a clever trick to immerse you into the fiction. 60 hours is an exorbitant amount of time, but it is constructive if one is absorbed in the game's world and mechanics. As an example, perhaps the fact that I hadn't spent several hours on the plains of the Veldt with Gau learning rages made me less attached to the character.

@Caleb: It's funny that you mention Final Fantasy 6. That was only the second Final Fantasy that my brother and I actually finished. The whole, long journey through the last dungeon is really what gets everyone emotionally involved in the final battle. If we hadn't traveled through that dark castle with the night sky and the spotlights, we probably wouldn't have played through the spectacular fight at the end.

There's also numerous game mechanics that also keep people playing through it over and over. The most nerve-wrecking section involves rescuing Shadow, the mysterious ninja, in the floating continent section. All in all, I felt a little ridiculous saving over numerous files just so that Shadow wouldn't run off or die.

It still seems like a silly game that didn't give me the same pleasure as FF4 or the Playstation Final Fantasy games. However, Square put in a whole slew of clever ways to keep people playing. I'm just glad that today's JRPGs aren't pressuring me with as many of these life-or-death scenarios with the characters.

I can't even remember the last JRPG I played. It was probably Chrono Trigger on the DS.

Nice article, and you are totally correct that JRPG conventions are tired.  I want to say, one of the reasons I believe Chrono Trigger to be one of the greatest games ever, was that it actually broke a few of these methods when it came out.  There actually were no 'random battles' as you could see the enemies on the dungeon maps and were not transported to a battle screen to fight.  Furthermore, there really wasn't too much level grinding (when compared to early Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest titles).  Even Lavos could be defeated at relatively low level.  (Chrono also didn't have amnesia, but I digress...)

Epic story-telling and multi-dimensional characters are the real legacy of that game, and what have carried the definitive titles in the genre; namely FF7, Skies of Arcadia, Earthbound, and the Persona series. 

I still wonder why JRPGs took so long to evolve past the spiky-haired heroes and heavy emo attitudes. There was a time when the genre actually had creative stories and side quests. FF9 was pretty much the last game with clever dialogue and innovative side quests. Then everything slowly went downhill.

Don't get me wrong--there are still gems such as the Persona series and Demon Souls. For the most part, though, the entire genre moved onto the handheld systems.

Honestly, I thought the developers had grown up from those emo teenagers. Instead, it sort of devolved into something disappointing. The current gen still has occasional masterpieces, such as Lost Odyssey. However, I think the previous console generation burned too many of the worst JRPG stereotypes in my head. Personally, I blame it all on Kingdom Hearts.

Stupid Kingdom Hearts. Sigh...

Perhaps you're just not looking in the right places. I've found innovation in Tales of Vesperia, The Last Remnant, Dragon Quest IX, Resonance of Fate, Enchanted Arms... and while we're discussing From Software, what about Dark Souls? It's Japanese, it's an RPG, but who calls it a JRPG? Is that fair?

And that's just Xbox 360 games (plus one DS) which I've played. I'm sure there's a wealth of others which I've missed.

I find Jill Sandwiches quite tasty, actually.

On a serious note, I agree with many of your points, and I've been wanting to write my own assessment of the JRPG, and plan to do so very soon after getting the extra push from reading this. I still enjoy the classics (400 + hours in Final Fantasy Tactics, and 100 + more in the PSP version can attest to that), and I still replay them (Chrono Trigger for DS, Xenogears and Front Mission 3 for the third time on PSN). However, I feel like the old JRPGs are forgivable because of the whole nostalgia factor. I'm less interested in JRPGs nowadays (unless it's a Megaten game), even if they're better than some of the classics. BioWare has ruined me for the better. Anyway, I hope to write about this topic soon!

Normally I'd call this a typical JRPG hate post, but I'd like to note that this is basically a result of the age difference between Japanese and Western gamers. We talk about how the average American gamer is 37 years old, but Japanese gaming is still mostly the domain of teens. The producer of Final Fantasy XIII admitted this. In terms of gameplay though, most console JRPGs today I think are advancing technically like Dark Souls and the upcoming Ni no Kuni. The problem is that JRPGs are mostly on handhelds these days. The Japanese market is just drifting away from the rest of the world. Some say it's in danger of becoming a Galapagos of sorts.

Wait. You want JRPGs to write narrative and dialogue that's not the stuff of prepubescent fantasy...and one of your recommended sources is Uncharted? I think I missed something ;-)

I can understand being sick of a particular genre if it remains stagnant or significantly deviates from what originally drew you to it, but this is a tired argument. JRPGs have some cliches, but so do genres most game journalists are currently infatuated with such as first-person shooters, Indiana Jones-style third-person action games, and WRPGs. Elements of a story, character archetypes, and gameplay mechanics are often borrowed from what came before, but what matters is the way in which they are used.

I have to agree. As someone who loved JRPGs back in the 90s. Dragon Quest, Phantasy Star I and II, early Final Fantasy games, Shadow Run, The Seventh Saga, Zelda II, Ys, Final Fantasy Tactics even more recently FFX, FFXIII, Valkyria Chronicles.

 

They just have not evolved. Western RPGs have truly passed them by. The best recent JRPG I have played is Demon's Souls, which is evocative of a western style.

 

Heck, today's shooters (Gears, Resistance) and action games (Uncharted, Batman) contain more story and customization than today's JRPGs.

 

I've grown and advanced as a gamer... why haven't JRPGs grown with me?

You need to play some Disgaea or some Persona 4.

ok have you not played ANY tales of game? like tales of the abyss or vesperia the tales games are different than most jrpgs in that they are more character oriented they show the character struggling to make moral choices thatlll effect the world they tend to also go into alot of emotional turmoil with out being felt forced i can honestly say that i would take a tales game over final fantasy and the new zelda game is going to be amazing yeah so what if ffxiii was disspointing and the mmo isnt doing to well xiii was good in its own rights as long as you didnt mind cut scnes and a linear path it wasnt too bad the combat was challenging so what it had glorified tbs i still wanna play. also tales of has a really awsome real time combat that is fresh in a atb and tb world its like star ocean but better

I used to love JRPGs back in the day too, so I agree completely. However, I can't look back at the games I played with rosey colored nostalgia. Most of the JRPGs I liked back in the day have terrible stories. Chrono Trigger is about a guy who witnessed the end of the world and had the balls to stand up and say...nothing. Xenogears was a cluster fuck of nonsensical Christian imagery, and FF7 had cool FMV for back in the day. But I still like 2 of those games (I hate FF7).

On the other hand, Heavy Rain had a good narrative? Really? The game where hypothermia and starvation don't exist? The game where the killer's inner dialogue revealed that he was trying to find the killer (thus searching for himself) and befriends the mother (and has develops feelings for) of one of his victims? The game where the killer kidnapped little boys and put their fathers through trials that would be more at home with a Saw movie than a murder mystery, because his own daddy didn't love him, and so since all fathers don't love their child enough (or aren't crazy enough) to crawl through a vent filled with glass, or cut off their own finger because a crazy guy wanted them too, the child shoud die (and not the father)? The game where they nuked the fridge? The game that takes place in a city with a spectacular water drainage system in a world where it frequently rains heavily for days on end, facilitating the murderer's MO, while never actually flooding the city? Really? That game had a better narrative than any JRPG? I would rather play through Final Fantasy XIII ten more times than play Heavy Rain one more time. They both have terrible stories, but at least FFXIII made me laugh.

I still enjoy the idea of JRPGs, and wish they had evolved properly. As this generation matured, it seemed like JRPGs could have went two ways, and they went the wrong way (which was more stagnant than anything). As for the right way, I'm not sure exactly what it is, but no one has nailed it yet.

has anyone forgotten the epicness that is YAKUZA its technically a jrpg and it is the most grown up jrpg youll ever play 

I've recently become privy to another smart observation about the genre and why it doesn't "evolve": Japanese developers by and large don't borrow from each other as much as western developers do.

If a shooter introduces a cool new feature like cover systems or multiplayer experience points, you can be sure that not just the sequel, but practically every shooter henceforth will incorpiorate that feature. You even have guys like Infinity Ward admitting that some of Modern Warfare 2's features were borrowed from Street Fighter. It makes shooters feel very samey, but it's also caused the genre as a whole to leap forward through the years. JRPGs don't traditionally do this, at least not in the sense of pure mechanics.

If JRPGs operated in the same way, Chrono Trigger would have molded JRPGs for years to come, and things like random turn-based battles would likely be long gone on consoles. Sometimes I do wish that the whole genre had learned from Final Fantasy XII.

From what I've seen when Japaense games borrow from each other it's more in terms of concepts than gameplay mechanics. Final Fantasy 7 kickstarted the genre's emphasis on pretty cut scenes and epic storylines. Nearly every major Japanese game these days tries to imitate Monster Hunter in one way or another, but not as closely as so many western games ape Call of Duty. I don't think any Japaense developer sees innovative new features as something that EVERY game needs to have.

in my opinion the new batman games took a lot of pointers from yakuza in terms of combat mechanics they did incorperae some new ideas into it but it is more or less the same

als o another reason might be that those turn based battles and rendom encounters the stories and character design and achytypes are something that the demographic wants granted those developers ARE NOT looking at what WE think as WESTERNERS as much as they tend to focus on what the demographic want in JAPAN they cater to what they want not us all that said i like those because of the battle systems and pretty cenimatics i would refuse to play games if they were still like the 8 bit and 16 bit era i like shooters to an extent and i need a change in gameplay i play something else like god of war then i get back to it my only problem with dragon quest 8 was that the plot moved too slowly the main character never talked and there wasnt a romance subplot sprry its just i need a story to follow that doesnt go at a snails pace just to give you a few extra hours of gameplay i think they are fine though that doesnt mean that the genre shouldnt evolve just the current genre i guess from what all of you say is trying to rekindle the passion people had with the 8 bit era by recycling old ideas and story elements part of te problem i think is that turn based and active time cant really evolve a whole lot the only thing they can do to keep fans happy espeicially final fantasy fans and to keep to its rot is forced to have it in the main series if you want a more actiony final fantasy but still keep to its roots then xii or xiii is the final fantasy for you but instead you guys bash it because it DOESNT play like the original i wish this demographic would make up its mind in what they want all i really care about is enjoying the game and the story and what  not and stop complaining over every detail the only thing i will bash is that in the new zelda game link isnt left handed nore is therea left handed option to play left handed (which my mom needs to play) and have link laft handed the only reason im a stinker about this is because link is like the only left handed video game character