Do you consider Genshin Impact a JRPG?

[SkyOdin]

If Genshin Impact were a turn-based RPG, would you call it a JRPG?

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It would be a completely different game then. That isn't a small or insignificant change to make, and it would have a huge domino effect on other aspects of the game's design.

I don't actually see much value in talking about theoretical games. It is hard enough talking about real ones, when game criticism and analysis is in such a poor state.

The reason I'm not a big fan of the JRPG moniker is that it is so completely useless. If it doesn't refer to something clear-cut and specific, why use it? Open-world is a fairly clear piece of terminology; it is easy to pick out a collection of games that everyone will generally agree define the genre. But JRPG is a term that you can't get anyone two people to agree on a definition for. How does using such a term help discourse? It just muddles things.

 

[Einbroch]

I consider it one. But if you don't, that's fine. Every game is an RPG nowadays. Genres have no meaning.

Basically, who gives a shit.

 

[Alastor3]

no. its from china.

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exactly, it's a

CRPG

 

[Hilarious_Bearious]

I just gave an example of an originally Italian food that I wouldn't call Italian when it's made in the US. As another example, the Italian people I know would consider it a personal affront if you call shitty olive garden food "Italian food".

Most Chinese people wouldn't consider the shitty food you can get in many American-Chinese restaurants Chinese either. In fact, they wouldn't use the term "Chinese food" at all when talking about food from China. They would say Sichuan food, or Cantonese food, and so on. Only clueless westerners talk about "Chinese food".

With both food and games, there is a tradition of a culture in the country it originates. Coming as a foreigner and trying to claim a part of that tradition and culture as your own is actually pretty shitty. Cultural appropriation is not cool.

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I grew up in my city's Chinatown. Half the kids in my school were born in China and Taiwan, half my friends were Chinese and I could speak a bit of Mandarin. Chinese people definitely say Chinese food.

 

[hydrophilic attack]

I grew up in my city's Chinatown. Half the kids in my school were born in China and Taiwan, half my friends were Chinese and I could speak a bit of Mandarin. Chinese people definitely say Chinese food.

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I worded my post a bit sloppily. I'm sure they would use the phrase "Chinese food" in the sense of "all the different traditions of cuisine originating in China". Similar to how an American may be talking about "American food" in the sense of "all the different American food traditions". Someone here in Sweden may open up an restaurant that serves burgers and wings and say it's an American restaurant. But if you as an American heard about an "American restaurant" in Stockholm, you wouldn't assume it's burgers and wings. You'd wonder whether they're referring to Cajun food, or soul food, or tex-mex, or bagels, or burgers (and so on). Because the term "American food" would not be sufficiently specific to you.

 

[Green Mario]

It's an Eastern RPG.

 

[monketron]

exactly, it's a

CRPG

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The CRPG initialism is already taken, ya gonna need to come up with another 😜

For me JRPGs are 100% a genre, the fact that this genre originated in Japan and most games of this style come from Japan just happens to be why the genre has taken that name over time. I've always thought of RPGs coming in either the JRPG style or Western RPG style irrespective of where they were actually made. Although saying that, nowadays many games such as this one tend to take aspects of both JRPG and Western RPGs as game development has matured, it's often hard to pin down exactly what genre a game is sometimes and that's not just limited to RPGs.

 

[Bufbaf]

I'm having a hard time calling it anything-RPG, but that's just me. More of an action adventure with rpg mechanics and gacha style leveling system.

 

[345]

With both food and games, there is a tradition of a culture in the country it originates. Coming as a foreigner and trying to claim a part of that tradition and culture as your own is actually pretty shitty. Cultural appropriation is not cool.

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this makes zero sense. there are incredibly good japanese chefs who are not ethnically japanese. why can't the same be true for JRPGs?

genshin impact is completely in thrall to japanese tropes and JRPG design. if the devs wanted to call it a JRPG i wouldn't argue with them. (i'm assuming they don't, though)

 

[Roshin]

1. Does it matter?

2. Just to push this a step closer to the edge, if an RPG needs to be developed in Japan to be a proper JRPG, does everyone working on it need to be japanese..? If the Genshin team relocated to Japan while working on this, would that make it a JRPG?

 

[Hilarious_Bearious]

I worded my post a bit sloppily. I'm sure they would use the phrase "Chinese food" in the sense of "all the different traditions of cuisine originating in China". Similar to how an American may be talking about "American food" in the sense of "all the different American food traditions". Someone here in Sweden may open up an restaurant that serves burgers and wings and say it's an American restaurant. But if you as an American heard about an "American restaurant" in Stockholm, you wouldn't assume it's burgers and wings. You'd wonder whether they're referring to Cajun food, or soul food, or tex-mex, or bagels, or burgers (and so on). Because the term "American food" would not be sufficiently specific to you.

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I am not an American, what a filthy insult :P

What about a Japanese chef with a Michelin star for French cuisine... Is that still French food?

 

[Chasing]

You know the thread is going places when we start bringing in the food analogies.

 

[Ryutaryi]

I wish it was more like a JRPG. Over the few days I played it, the amount of experience I got was next to nothing and I was being forced to use experience boosting books in order to level my characters. As someone who was trying not to powerlevel, it was a bummer that the game had no real experience curve and was built solely for maxing your characters with items instead of through play itself.

 

[Deleted member 8166]

Where have I been that this thread is the first time I'm seeing JRPG doesn't mean Japanese made game?

I've never seen people rush to fight to call a game made by a bunch of white dudes a JRPG, is it just easy here because the devs are Chinese?

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There have been a lot of discussions about this stuff with "JRPGs" made in europe. I've never seen those discussions on era tho.

 

[Chasing]

Food for though, Mihoyo's slogan that you see every time you start the game is literally "Tech Otakus Save The World". 🤔

I wish it was more like a JRPG. Over the few days I played it, the amount of experience I got was next to nothing and I was being forced to use experience boosting books in order to level my characters. As someone who was trying not to powerlevel, it was a bummer that the game had no real experience curve and was built solely for maxing your characters with items instead of through play itself.

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Lol, depends on which JRPG you're talking about, because almost every mobile/gacha rpg uses that same system.

 

[Brodo Baggins]

The game is Chinese, and plays more like a standard open world action game with gacha mechanics bolted on top of it than a typical JRPG. BotW isn't a JRPG either.

A CRPG like Gujian 3 is much closer to a standard JRPG, and I wouldn't really consider it one either.

 

[ffvorax]

JRPG is a genre and not reliant on the country of origin. There are other games that fit the JRPG mold that weren't developed in Japan. So, yes, Genshin Impact is absolutely a JRPG.

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this

 

[Ryutaryi]

Lol, depends on which JRPG you're talking about, because almost every mobile/gacha rpg uses that same system.

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This was the first gacha game I've really tried, so I wasn't sure of how the systems worked. I haven't even made any pulls yet, trying to just enjoy the world and quests for what they were and found the rewards lacking. I'm at Adventurer Rank 9, and I'm not sure if it's for me. I just want that feeling of getting a level or two from a dungeon without it being supplied through an item reward at the end.

 

[Sanka]

Also guys, words can have multiple meanings it doesn't have to be one or the other. I know crazy. So jrpg can mean a game with place of origin in Japan and a game that looks like one or took heavy inspiration from it.

These dorky semantics discussions are so tired by now. We already went through this with anime.

 

[Mukrab]

JRPG is a genre, not a place of origin.

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This. Of you eant to use at as the place of origin then there is no point in mentioning it when talking about genres because it becomes meaningless. South park is a jrpg, dark souls is not.

 

[zeldor711]

Goddamn, this is like the inverse of the "Is Dark Souls a JRPG?" thread that popped up a few months ago.

 

[R0b1n]

I'm sure someone has already mentioned the optics of calling a China-based devs' game a JRPG given the histories of the two countries...

 

[Zen Hero]

This thread is reminding me for the longest time I really did believe that CRPG stood for Chinese RPG lol

 

[Love Machine]

It has elements of JRPG, like party members and anime style.

But genre/gameplay-wise I'd say it's an Action RPG.

 

[EarthPainting]

This sounds as ridiculous as saying "Of course it can't be Japanese food if it's made in the United States." Being Japanese is not a requirement to make Japanese food.

I've been playing JRPGs extensively for about 3 decades. I've been making games as an indie developer for about a decade. As a teen, I imported games like Soul Hackers and Grandia on the Saturn because I felt like we weren't getting enough JRPGs in English. I do not feel I am any less qualified to make a JRPG just because I'm not Japanese.

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Yup, this is how I feel about it too. Similarly, Final Fantasy IX was made in Hawaii, but we aren't calling that a WRPG either. I don't wanna do the futile exercise of trying to define what a JRPG is, but I know one when I see one, and the knowledge of where it was made has no bearing on that assessment.

 

[SilverArrow20XX]

It's kinda become a weird term.
Originally it just meant Japanese Style RPG.
IE, turn based RPGS in the style of Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy.
But then other countries started making games of these styles.
And the original JRPG franchises started having games in different genres, but got grandfathered into being called JRPGs because previous entries were.
Like, Final Fantasy XV and XVI are called JRPGs even though they're Action RPGs.
ARPGs like Kingdom Hearts are called JRPGs because they share art and story telling style that JRPGs are known for.

As a gameplay genre descriptor, it's lost its purpose.
It's just a style descriptor now. Any RPG that is stylistically similar to classic JRPGs.

 

[MrDoctor]

Dark Souls has a lot more in common with Ultima Underworld than it does with Dragon Quest.

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find me a wrpg that plays more like dark souls than the souls games do castlevania lol. and i find any argument that souls isn't anime because it doesn't have a weeb/otaku aesthetic like the tales series quite dubious. are you all going to tell me the new final fantasy isn't "anime" either, and thus a wrpg too?

 

[Deleted member 4090]

find me a wrpg that plays more like dark souls than the souls games do castlevania lol. and i find any argument that souls isn't anime because it doesn't have a weeb/otaku aesthetic like the tales series quite dubious. are you all going to tell me the new final fantasy isn't "anime" either, and thus a wrpg too?

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I don't really know what you're arguing here. The Ultima Underworld -> King's Field -> Souls lineage is both tremendously obvious and explicitly stated by the developers. At which point in the King's Field series do you think they added in Castlevania gameplay aspects? Because I'm not seeing that as a major influence, at all. Or are you arguing that the Souls series has Castlevania aspects that King's Field didn't? Because I don't really see that, either.

 

[Conkerkid11]

I don't even know what a JRPG is at this point.

Seems like it's just another term for games with turn-based combat.

 

[Dolce]

This. Of you eant to use at as the place of origin then there is no point in mentioning it when talking about genres because it becomes meaningless. South park is a jrpg, dark souls is not.

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What makes Souls not a "JRPG" if we're going with that? The writing, the combat system, the progression, and even the art design is like as Japanese as you can get. It's absolutely nothing like any "WRPG" or "CRPG" so you can't really compare it to those.

 

[werezompire]

Souls is not a JRPG, because

1) Souls is clearly an evolution of the King's Field games which in turn were heavily inspired by the Ultima Underworld series. So it's closer to an immersive sim game (albeit with much more emphasis on combat & exploration than is the norm) than it is to a JRPG.
2) You could argue that Souls is like a 3D Castlevania, but Castlevania was never a JRPG (it's either an action/platformer or a Metroidvania depending on the game). On a side note, I'd love a turn-based Castlevania JRPG.
3) Souls has a number of similarities to WRPGs including a single playable character who the player customizes themselves, an absence of non-ambient music for the vast majority of the game, a progression system that focuses on tiny, incremental improvements, more realistic visuals, and a lack of a strong, linear narrative.

 

[Kent]

There's kind of two different categories of "genre." Things like sci-fi, horror, fantasy, etc., and things like action, strategy and RPG.

All of these have in common the fact that they have subgenres though. There are both turn-based strategy games and real-time strategy games, for example, but both of them revolve around strategy more so than action elements that may be present.

We all know that RPGs ultimately stem from tabletop RPGs, but within the context of video games, RPGs are not defined by "role-playing," they are defined by being focused on statistic or capability progression-centric mechanics for whatever the player is controlling. Due to the nature of this, "RPG" can blend in with other genres quite easily, and it's something that players typically enjoy, which makes adding RPG elements to other genres something that's very attractive and popular.

When it comes to blended genres, we have a sliding scale for communicating how those genres are defined, because there's a lot of room for specifics in here, and a lot of room for a variety of interpretations of how much a given genre element means within a game's design.

JRPGs are kind of defined by how much they abstract out interactions like combat into other systems, because this is the part of tabletop RPGs that were emulated by the genre progenitors. WRPGs center more around the player-choice aspect of determining how events - including the player character themselves - unfold instead (though they're also much more likely to have a wider-spread, but less-focused, set of abstracted systems to them as well). It's honestly just silly at this point to try and say that JRPGs can only come from Japan or that WRPGs can only come from an arbitrary "the west" just because of how well-established these are as styles of RPGs rather than points of origin.

Regarding Genshin Impact, it appears to be an Action-RPG. I haven't played it myself, but the action-game-style elements appears to be quite heavily-present in the overall gameplay, to the point where simply calling it "an RPG" (JRPG or otherwise) doesn't seem like it'd be appropriate for properly describing it.

 

[RedSwirl]

The issue here is video games don't really have cultural/linguistically-defined genres the way other media do.

Music has a lot of genres defined by language and country of origin, even within broader genres (Kpop vs western pop for instance). Comics have genres and styles defined by country of origin, even when they're all inspired by each other (American cape comics, Franco-Belgian comics, manga, manhua, manwa, OEL Manga). Movies from different countries tend to have different styles. You don't see this distinction as strongly for video games.

Japan probably has the biggest and most recognizable distinct way of making games. If you've played games long enough you can kinda tell if a game is Japanese whether it's an action game, RPG, adventure game, or whatever. Most other games worldwide are more globalized in their inspirations and appeal, but they're also increasingly becoming inspired by Japanese games.

Despite that, I still think there are subtle differences. When I browse through Steam I can still kinda tell if a game is Japanese or if it's a Chinese or Western game inspired by Japanese games. Maybe it's like telling the difference between Avatar and MHA.

It's just a style descriptor now. Any RPG that is stylistically similar to classic JRPGs.

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This is why I'm starting to find the descriptor "shounen game" more accurate.

find me a wrpg that plays more like dark souls than the souls games do castlevania lol. and i find any argument that souls isn't anime because it doesn't have a weeb/otaku aesthetic like the tales series quite dubious. are you all going to tell me the new final fantasy isn't "anime" either, and thus a wrpg too?

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Souls is not a JRPG, because

1) Souls is clearly an evolution of the King's Field games which in turn were heavily inspired by the Ultima Underworld series. So it's closer to an immersive sim game (albeit with much more emphasis on combat & exploration than is the norm) than it is to a JRPG.
2) You could argue that Souls is like a 3D Castlevania, but Castlevania was never a JRPG (it's either an action/platformer or a Metroidvania depending on the game). On a side note, I'd love a turn-based Castlevania JRPG.
3) Souls has a number of similarities to WRPGs including a single playable character who the player customizes themselves, an absence of non-ambient music for the vast majority of the game, a progression system that focuses on tiny, incremental improvements, more realistic visuals, and a lack of a strong, linear narrative.

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I would argue Souls has drifted just as far away from its Ultima roots as Dragon Quest. You definitely can't call Souls an immersive sim either. The biggest modern descendant of Ultima Underworld is probably Skyrim. Souls is just a new kind of action RPG at this point. It's just as different from its CRPG roots as a lot of different kinds of JRPGs are.

 

[Dolce]

Souls is not a JRPG, because

1) Souls is clearly an evolution of the King's Field games which in turn were heavily inspired by the Ultima Underworld series. So it's closer to an immersive sim game (albeit with much more emphasis on combat & exploration than is the norm) than it is to a JRPG.
2) You could argue that Souls is like a 3D Castlevania, but Castlevania was never a JRPG (it's either an action/platformer or a Metroidvania depending on the game). On a side note, I'd love a turn-based Castlevania JRPG.
3) Souls has a number of similarities to WRPGs including a single playable character who the player customizes themselves, an absence of non-ambient music for the vast majority of the game, a progression system that focuses on tiny, incremental improvements, more realistic visuals, and a lack of a strong, linear narrative.

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What do you consider Legend of Mana, then? It's real time, your main character is mute and has no interaction with the game, the story is non-linear and episodic. You only get guest party members who are not permanent, closer to a lot of Western RPGs or faceless, storyless NPC monsters.

Again, I think JRPG is a stupid term, especially because it's used as a sleight nowadays. As if Souls is not a Japanese game, even though all of its elements individually are as about as Japanese as you can get.

 

[the magical kitsune]

Perhaps JRPG, WRPG and similar region-based descriptors were always bad and shouldn't be used anymore

 

[Tpallidum]

I think it's great that all regions are now so genre-diversified that the terms jrpg and wrpg are now basically meaningless.

To me it literally just means rpg made in Japan. There was a time when that meant a specific type of rpg game. Not so much anymore.

We should retire to term. There are better descriptors now and none of them have to do with where it's made

 

[Aztorian]

plays more like an mmorpg than a jrpg. Voted no.

 

[RedSwirl]

Since Genshin Impact is Chinese, I think it should be noted how there's an acronym used in China -- ACG, that pretty much conflates anime, comic, and video game culture into one thing, particularly in regards to Japanese media.

The one commonality I see between all the games some like to call "JRPGs" regardless of national origin, is that they all have visual styles and story structures similar to shounen anime and manga. The affection for that style of storytelling and that visual style has crossed boundaries of both countries and media, to where people are putting it into everything, including their video games. ACG seems like a term that almost acts as a replacement for "JRPG."

 

[rrost]

After completing the 2nd region. This seems like every other mobile gacha grindfest with mashy and flashy combat but with actual production value. Useful characters and mechanics locked behind gambling. If this is a jrpg then every other gacha that came out in last 5 years is a jrpg.

 

[King Kingo]

No. The acronym literally has the word Japanese in it. Genshin Impact is a Chinese game that's anime-inspired hencd the confusion.

Souls is not a JRPG, because

1) Souls is clearly an evolution of the King's Field games which in turn were heavily inspired by the Ultima Underworld series. So it's closer to an immersive sim game (albeit with much more emphasis on combat & exploration than is the norm) than it is to a JRPG.
2) You could argue that Souls is like a 3D Castlevania, but Castlevania was never a JRPG (it's either an action/platformer or a Metroidvania depending on the game). On a side note, I'd love a turn-based Castlevania JRPG.
3) Souls has a number of similarities to WRPGs including a single playable character who the player customizes themselves, an absence of non-ambient music for the vast majority of the game, a progression system that focuses on tiny, incremental improvements, more realistic visuals, and a lack of a strong, linear narrative.

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Souls is an Action Role Playing game made in Japan from Japanese creatives, therefore it's a JRPG. It doesn't matter if all of their creative inspirations were western, the creative team were Japanese and developed the product in Japan.