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JRPGs give you a list of stats that increased when you level up. Non-JRPGs give you a perk point(s) to spend when you level up.

RPG as a genre isn't all that real either. Give me any criteria to call something an RPG and I bet you I can find games people will swear aren't RPGs that have them. People get so hung up on terminology that the things become chains to prevent you from fun rather than crutches to help you find it.

The genre is TBRPG (turn-based) or ARPG. Japanese people consider JRPG pejorative.

its mainly useful for as a tag for spotting annoying people discourse online

To be fair dismissing data or material in academia because it does not fit your vision or complicates it massively has a long and fine tradition

I liked the term "Character RPG"

LOL, it is such nonsense that people insist Dark Souls isn't a JRPG. If a Polish game dev made an RPG and a bunch of people outside of Poland started claiming it's 'not Polish' because it's not similar enough to the Witcher, those people would be told to fuck off, and rightfully so.

But yeah "Wizardry is foundational to JRPGs but only entries made after Sir-tech stopped making em count as JRPGS" both shows how arbitrary and vibes-based it is but also somehow isn't the most bizarre thing I can say about the term

this one is extremely farcical to me lol

Yeah, but most genre discussions (in ALL mediums) devolve into the stupid idea that they are rigid and prescriptive. SO much discourse is poisoned by that mindset.

absolutely i agree but it just gets weird and loaded when people start making broad claims about how ah this genre is stagnant or shallow etc etc

How dare you be sensible and knowledgeable about the topic.

its really funny to me that arpg as an acronym can also mean like 50 different things depending on who you talk to despite it encompassing all of it

Or you could argue that JRPG has become a genre, distinct from ARPG and TacticalRPG, but that the J isn’t strictly geographical but clearly orientalist since it relies on hard to define « Japanese looking » (to us) features. +some gameplay elements are JRPG, i.e battle/exploration transitions

SMT style turn based Mass Effect basically just sounds like operator Might and Magic (or just Dragon Age: Origins)

Final Fantasy RETVRN

Why haven't we gotten an FF Diablo clone?

"I'll know when I see one"

I don't use it that way and it's not largely understand that way, as any vague adventure game made by Japanese folks. Genres come about from copying something good/or popular. When I say jrpg I refer to dragon quest, final fantasy and everything in that mold.