Wow... I don't know why, but whenever the two big questions of "What makes an RPG?" or "What's more RPG, Western or Eastern?" I always seem to run into the "JRPGs aren't RPGs because you don't play a role!" and I always die a little inside. I'll turn to a very old post, which I will edit a little to incorporate further knowledge gained since I first posted it, but for the most part expresses why JRPGs are RPGs and are no more so than Western ones. (sorry for the typos in advance)
"The main flaw with this argument is that you're comparing two culturally different experiences (WRPGs vs. JRPGs) with one culture's back story (D&D). The fact is, the Japanese don't view role-playing in the same light as us Western folk. Where as Western RPGs revolve around choices, customization and overall free form thinking, Japanese role-playing involves more storytelling, immersion into pre-set characterizations and realizations about personalities you never may have recognized before. It's more of a learning experience that gets you out of your shell to take on another's viewpoint, where as western philosophy on the matter encourages learning about and using your own personality to overcome extraordinary circumstances. Let's get some examples up here, shall we?
First I'll delve into Dungeons and Dragons. As most of us know, D&D is a game about character creation. It lets you pick from a wide veriaty of classes, who have a robust line-up of abilities and powers to conquer a world in the way you see fit. It allows statistical customization of your characters, while throwing in chance by having you roll to determine your overall strength. The character then plays out a determined personality, chosen from the beginning, and grows as a person in both personality and statistics as he or she adventures through the world before them. It encourages out-of-the-box thinking as well as puzzling solving and good judgement. These campaigns are mainly set in western-esque settings including broadswords, heavy armour and Tolkien races as well as monsters from common mythos, but have spread out to accommodate wuxian (asian kung-fu style, think Journey to the West) adventures as well.
Now what do the Japanese have to counter this? While possibly not the first tabletop RPG to ever come out in Japan, my first taste of their style was from Tenra Bansho Zero. This particular game is steeped in a sort of cyber-punk feeling as humanity has now gone into space to find habitable planets. So who's going into space? Well, children who pilot mecha, warrior caste with shiki demons bound to jewels inside them called "Samurai", cyborg "Kijin" who obtain perfection through replacing flesh with steel and a "Shinobi" caste of spies who insert battery packs into themselves to give them super-human powers! The main differences are how the characters interact with the world through the mechanics of the game. It plays out more like a Kabuki play, where your overall goal is to form a coherent and compelling story rather than to make choices. You interact with others and reactions are never determined by solely by personality, they're rolled for. Sure, you can get modifiers for persoanltiy traits, Karma points and such to effect the outcomes if you feel you need to sway a bad roll (much like how combat modifiers work in D&D), but on the whole your reactions are not your own and are determined by the role of some dice and a chart. You then have to act, in character, that reaction to NPCs or other players, trying to immerse yourself into your newfound, developed role and then deal with the consequences of this new revelation in the story.
So we stand here at a cross-raods, where there are similarities, but also some big differences between the two cultures. If you look at their progression into video games, however, you can see huge similarities. The Japanese prefer story, where as the West perfer choice and gameplay. It's a style and both have stuck to what they do best. So take each for what it is and enjoy both!"
Where WRPGs present the opinion that a character should be an extension of the player, JRPGs believe that the player needs to become the extension of the character. I think this is a profound difference in philosophy of role-playing and both have great advantages and disadvantages. However, can one really be called better than the other, or are they simply different and appeal to different beliefs in how we role-play?
Now, to come full circle, I believe the disconnect for JRPGs within the video gaming world is that no one can make you choose a particular path without it being seen as a straight narrative. Unlike Tenra Bansho Zero, JRPGs, as with Western RPGs, are wholly personal experiences and that the singular invention of the reset button means that no one can enforce the outcome of the game without eliminating that mechanic altogether and just making it a singular narrative. This is why JRPGs are more story driven, choice lacking games and may not be as attractive to some people. It still upholds that ideal of self-discovery through experiencing another (wo)man's perspective and seeing your identity of self flow out through opinion but it's not as profound, I believe, as it is with the pen & paper style. In the end, however, both are philosophically grounded in the same thing: a journey of self-discovery. To me, that's what defines an RPG.
