good tabletop games let you learn the systems as you play
this is the real secret sauce of why leveling up is good: you are introduced to new mechanics as you internalize the old mechanics
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YEAH thats a good point & way of putting it~!!
another thing i want to see is more short story, small numbers crpgs (can i just call them Vrpgs?? Videogame RPGs as opposed to tabletop RPGs??) however something that seems important to vRPGs is a character arc that plays out through the numbers. it needs to feel like you are playing a more involved evolved game than you were at the start
so im very into the thought of a short RPG that develops your Level, Character at the same rate a short action game would the Level, Area. each one being an immediate obvious jump in complexity. Meaningful level ups!! Gimme more of those
and quest EXP lol i meant to mention that earlier. games where you only get experience thru combat gotta not happen anymore
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things i like in jrpgs:
- cool monsters. everyone loves a cool monster
- elaborate combat systems that either encourage breaking the game in half (FF8) or are impenetrable (Unlimited Saga)
- bespoke mechanical experimentation (think: FF7’s constant use of minigames)
- coming of age / “journey” stories ; the more strange or expectation-defying, the better
- character drama; getting close to and caring about your party
- incredible artwork; pre-rendered backgrounds, enormous pixel art masterpieces, etc
- non-linear equipment progression that encourages buildmaxxing
- scenario variety
things i dislike in jrpgs (not that these are unique to jrpgs)
- too much exposition. SHOW me the world, don’t explain it to me before i have the context
- boring combat; don’t have to think about 90% of combat encounters. i want to solve some dang combat puzzles!!!
- modern anime visual style; part of why i don’t really like Tales past Vesperia, i think it’s boring and the characters look too similar and it’s just tiring
- isekai / power fantasy wish fulfillment / harem / “otaku appeal”
things i’m ambivalent about in jrpgs
- linear equipment progression; i prefer buildmaxxing but some of my favorite JRPGs have completely linear gear progress (like chrono trigger) so it’s very vibe-dependent
- “killing god”; i think it’s corny and overplayed, but it can also be a great end to a philosophically complex game (basically any SMT game) so
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starting with this and going into that made my bowtie spin
but yes, both are core components of the jrpg
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So, I know this is maybe kind of a late point in the discussion to ask this question, but what exactly is a JRPG in this context? 
I know this is probably opening a crazy can of worms to even ask, but I think they can’t necessarily be “RPGs from Japan” here, because even the OP mentioned the game Knuckle Sandwich which appears to be from Australia, then I brought up Wizardry (from the U.S.) without rousing any complaints, soon after someone mentioned Fear & Hunger which is apparently from Finland with similarly no objection, etc. To what extent are we talking about anything more specific than just “RPGs,” and what does that even mean in this thread…?
If I’m going off the OP, it seems to me like these are the significant design constraints/questions:
- Some sense of “movement in a world” where the idea of “fast travel” might make sense (whether or not the game actually has it), probably implying different scales of view on the world within the game (e.g. local vs. overworld movement). Dragon Quest is like this, as is, say, Star Control II (which has like four or five different “movement scales”). Wizardry arguably counts—it has “local” (in-dungeon) movement as well as movement “in town” (via nested menus, if you want to count that, and I don’t see a reason not to personally), as well as “fast travel” on a local/dungeon scale via Malor.
- An “encounter rate,” so probably turn-based combat, but maybe not necessarily. An “action RPG” might have enemies spawn offscreen and path towards the player periodically, and you could call the rate at which they spawn an “encounter rate” as well; it would have many of the same implications in design terms. Star Control II is actually somewhere in-between this, now that I’m thinking about it—it has enemies spawn off-screen at some (developer-configured and variable) rate and path towards you, and if they touch you the game drops you into a special combat mode.
- The possibility of having to grind, so presumably leveling and thus presumably character stats in some sense. “Leveling” doesn’t necessarily have to mean very much except “the way a character plays changes fundamentally over time.” In this sense, Deus Ex has leveling, although not a sort where you would need to grind in a traditional sense. In games like Runeworth or Brogue, you “level” by finding and using items, which pins progression to how much you’ve explored; whether or not you would consider this vulnerable to being “grindy” depends on your perspective. In Star Control II, you can gain “levels” (minerals) by fighting or exploring.
- Battle music, which implies that there’s some way to determine when the player is or isn’t in combat unambiguously. In action RPGs, especially ones with approximately continuous (as opposed to tile-based) movement and “in-world” combat, battle music may turn on when an NPC has aggro on you (Deus Ex, Oblivion, etc.).
Some things that might or might not be there:
- Elemental types, which usually implies that certain attacks do more damage against certain enemies or characters, or that certain kinds of armor protects somewhat against certain attacks, etc., although it can also have more “sim” aspects (like fire spells lighting things in the environment on fire) or imply that it does a different “kind” of damage etc. To some extent, I think anything that sorts attacks into categories somehow can be thought of this way (like the difference between tranquilizing and lethal damage in Metal Gear Solid or Deus Ex).
- Status effects—usually time-limited or indefinite (must be “cured”) effects that apply per-character and change…something. Having no legs in Deus Ex could count. So could, um, power-ups in Arkanoid.
- Crafting, usually a system where you can combine “found items” into other items. Path of Exile has a perspective on these kinds of mechanics that seems kind of outrageous and obsessive to me as far as I know about it. Of course, most SCUMM games have some amount of “combining found items” too—is there a sense where that doesn’t count? Maybe “crafting” implies that some of the “crafting materials” occur endlessly in the world somehow? Also, many RPGs have at least a minimal crafting system, in that they often let you sell items and buy other items with the money.
It seems worth it to me to make things a little more precise like this just so as not to subconsciously exclude games that might be relevant. When the question is, “What makes a game of this sort fun/interesting/compelling/etc.?”, I think cool answers often turn up in unexpected places.
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Traditionally JRPGs have a larger focus on stats and encounters in the form of an rpg monster/inventory manual made into a videogame.
They largely forego traditional character roleplaying as an activity and provide a more crafted sense of adventure instead. But like all genre hallmarks we’re likely to make broad generalisations very quickly which are probably thwarted by some edge case or that are true of other subtypes of RPG.
We all know it when we see it but I think the discussion is very useful
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I don’t really care to define it in terms of features per se, because i feel like that would be exhausting and ultimately flawed. The important thing for me is the lineage. Knuckle Sandwich is a game clearly inspired by Mario and Luigi and Pokémon among others, and borrows a lot from them in mechanics, tone, pacing, character writing, level design and so on. There’s a critical mass of influences and borrowed ideas and shared priorities that allow you to know it when you see it, with no one thing being mandatory.
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(accidentally made this a reply to a different post at first)
I don’t feel that way at all…but okay, I don’t want to derail the thread. I’m not trying to insist on any mandatory set of features or anything, I just find that, at least in my own personal interactions with games, if I characterize a set of mechanics or design gestures I’m interested in relatively precisely, I realize afterwards that there are all sorts of games that evince them that I wasn’t thinking of before as relevant, and that can give me fresh ideas. It’s more about a process of discovery…I don’t want to turn the discussion in a direction you’re not into though.
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my roommate was so charmed by my recommendation for smt nocturne that she started playing fft… i might be playing it again now… it’s an exciting game to watch it makes me want to play
i am however doing what i call the Level 1 Challenge it’s where you write a bunch of cheat codes on your emulator that make it so your guys never gain exp and stay at level 01, exp 00 for the entire game
(there are also some other fun parts of the challenge, such as no calculators or sword skill spam characters like agrias)
it’s not as hard as it sounds bc like, equipment
matters a more for characters than base stats do… but it is still hard
(one reason for this difficulty is that enemies almost always have higher speed than you so you start every battle with their entire team moving)
the end of chapter 1 is a lot of fun—if you position your units just like this, and break the crossbow argus uses (i love using archers with concentrate and knight skills to do this), and also kill the mages, there’s nothing left that can hurt you on the map unless one of the knights rolls in with throw stone
(i would really love to see / make an fft mod where every enemy character in the main story is like, more put together and synergizes more with their whole team, also, and even in the late game you virtually never see enemies with some fucking skill like autopotion or hamedo that can make your own guys extremely difficult to kill)
here are my guys… time mage / black mage (had her learn frog which remains one of the excellent skills in the game), white mage / chemist she is obvs really good at healing (and also knows holy which can function as a bit of a Delete Enemy button), my thief uses steal heart a lot (another really good skill, anything that stops the enemies from using their turn to damage you is extremely good), my samurai also has knight skills and concentrate (she’s one of the archers in the snow pic) and ramza is a samurai with his special guts / mettle skills (theyre both wearing + magic power equipment bc samurai skills are based on magic power rather than physical power)
things i like about the challenge: it’s harder (but in an interesting way that i think requires you to actually use a variety of skills and character builds including a lot of non-obvious stuff that might feel pretty ineffectual compared to simply hurting your enemies like debuffs and status ailments)
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Redundant status effects annoy me. If “burn” and “poison” are only differentiated by what consumables cure them, you’re being boring.
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you’re free to discuss them in whatever terms you like! don’t let me stop you. I just think that, for quite a few genres (i.e. JRPG, Metroidvania, Adventure game etc) it’s more interesting and fulfilling to me to look at the history and lineage between them, what’s picked up and dropped at various points, etc to inform what “counts” then by trying to come up with a proper definition for it. Many things can’t be defined in that kind of way, that’s why we like to argue over whether cereal is a soup or a salad or if a hotdog is a sandwich etc. I think your approach is super valid! especially if it illuminates interesting things. I just don’t find it useful personally.
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well unfortunately your roommate is now fucked, it’s pretty much all downhill from those two
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some things i love about fft:
i think it presents a bold message even for its industry: that the catholic church is a world-historical force of violent oppression and persecution
also love the scale / scope of the story with characters chasing each others tails over the course of years / across basically the european continent on blood vengeance quests or just the kind of yaoi vibes where 2 guys stare into the ps1 -dithered distance / horizon thinking each others names, over the course of the game androgynous boy child ramza (he gets the male and female bonuses for physical and magic respectively 
) becomes more of a young teen and learns some of more exciting skills in the game (try casting yell like 5 times on ramza sometime) just by getting older (and investing a small quantity of job points)
ok i also really love that the entire game is designed to look like it takes place on a tabletop basically
it’s not just the gameplay but also the (unskippable) cutscenes and the character menus and the shops all take place from the same isometric perspective… there’s the suggestion that what you’re playing is not events as they happen but a story within a story, a recreation of the life of a heretic who is just a shadow in history (your characters are always changing costumes between scenes like a travelling theater cast)
i think the cutscenes have a particular fascination with complex blocking
and the roleplaying game gameplay (the grid-based, turn-based representation of fantasy warfare combat abstracted into character stats, numbers, equations) feels like directing a bunch of actors on polygonal soundstages floating in the sky
it’s even called A YASUMI MATSUNO FILM in one of the opening fmvs… (worth noting i think that almost the entire plot of smt nocturne unfolds in center-framed first person-perspective text boxes reminiscient of for example… the first shin megami tensei game, and also that every hideo kojima and fumito ueda game uses entirely real-time cutscenes)
i think this is possibly the only time the series had a home console release that used the style of 2d characters / 3d world which to me has aged basically immaculately (i obvs think that like the like the fluidly animated dollfaced sprites based on akihiko yoshida designs are a lot cuter than squall “leon” leonheart as rendered in approximately 15 triangles) and a lot better in general than a lot of games from this generation
and every one of the maps is gorgeous to behold in its own right, i think its basically one of the most appealing low-poly games (alongside games such as metal gear solid, front mission 3, ridge racer type 4, etc.) and they would look beautiful as irl tabletop dioramas or photographs as well
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this and xenogears are the peak videogame graphical style as far as I’m concerned. every game I imagine in my head looks like them, every existing game I imagine a version that looks like them instead. I should figure out how to use crocotile
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i think wiegraf at the end of chap 3 might end my Level 1 Challenge at least for now (he always moves first and can 1 shot you with his 100% hit chance skills…) i could probably do it by making ramza a chemist with a gun and speed break and the time mage skill mp switch (it makes you take damage to mp instead of hp as long as you have even 1 mp) however this would involve me rolling back a few saves to rebuild…
shoutout to the orator class and its skill mimic davaron… ~50% sleep chance with no mp cost or charge time its really good (also amazing for stealing everything off your enemies and selling it so you can afford a lot of expensive handbags and katanas which is extremely fun)
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I think Wiegraf’s skills are all holy and you can null them with some equipment
For that fight I’d go with Auto-Potion (selling all the low tier potions beforehand, which would require restarting two battles ago) + Yelling 40 times
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Positives in order of importance.
So If a high up thing is present it can cover for multiple things ranked lower than it weighted by relative distance to each other. If a game only had the bottom half or maybe third it would still be a good one.
Good music.
Good fonts. (yes its that important)
A feeling of place.
Tunable or customizable battle elements.
Something very silly taken very seriously.
Genuine peril in the battles over come by thinking about it.
Status ailments that are fun to use and work.
A sane encounter rate.
A sudden shift in direction.
UI that is fun.
Nice sprites.
An abuseable system or at least one “holy shit that worked” moment.
A haunted castle.
A skill mini game or like sudden quiz show.
A conflict with more than 2 “sides”.
Music I can whistle while doing dishes.
Allowing me to figure out something important myself.
An entirely optional element (fishing, raising etc)
Chill moments / places to relax in.
Genuine emotion.
2D sprites in a 3D world I can rotate.
Enemies on the map.
Tactics style systems.
Multiple in battle things/systems that refill / use each other and create a meta strategy of some kind.
World exploration that feels arduous and rewarding.
A reason to use and use up all consumables.
UI that is efficient.
Cute beasts.
Funny little somethings that have their own funny little something towns.
Weird items that do multiple things I have to weigh against each other.
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underrated imo i feel like videogames in general have iconic fonts or should anyways
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