I make indie JRPGs (Cosmic Star Heroine was the most recent one & we're about to release Cthulhu Saves Christmas this month) and we haven't decided on our next project so tell us what your dream classic JRPG would be? What kind of premise/setting do you want? What features?
You guys do an excellent job already with what you already do, so I have full confidence in whatever you come up with!
If I was to give a suggestion, if we are sticking with turn based JRPG ideas, something a developer named Psudolonewolf from FigHunter came up with that was really rad was a sequel to a game where the best ending was the main character falling in love with and going steady with the love of their life, despite being a less then stellar example of a man.
The sequel would change from a goofy platformer to a turn based rpg where the main character, his Now soon to be wife, and potentially other aquaitences would "do battle" with others, by expressing emotions in an battle style exaggeration of regular conversation. There would be an elemental system based on positive and negative expressions of different emotions, that would have varied effects in combat, and it would all be cloaked in the everpresent irony that the main character envisions interacting with other people as a constant fighting struggle, mainly jokingly but subtly realistic and depressing.
The main concept of the story itself revolves around the main character feeling increasingly worried about the possibility that a new, more personable and good looking man entering his and his girlfriend's lives would splinter their relationship before he could propose to her, and instead of having a serious conversation about it, vows to Defeat Him by being the Most Personable Person Possible, being a rediculous misstep that sets up the gameplay and goofy narrative fantastically.
I'm not saying you guys should take this idea wholesale, that's incredibly inappropriate for me to suggest. But I wanted to share this concept as a way to get the ball rolling on something I have always been immensely interested in, that being an RPG that's based on abstracting actual human interaction in the form of turn-based fights.
Undertake got the ball rolling for games where you don't have to actually fight to win battles, where pacifistic practices can yield the best results for everyone, but the idea of constraining the design into completely contextual action never sat right with me. There are stories to tell about mental illness, relationships and difficulties with both being too insular and too willing to put others above yourself that can be told in a interesting way through a battle system abstracting these ideas into a palatable format, and I want to encourage more developers to consider that as a possibility!
Heck, the same developer actually put this kind of idea into real practice with a game called Taming Dreams, currently on hiatus and only avalible as a free title on Android, where the world literally has monsters based on people's emotions materialize in the world, that you have to take by making them increasingly friendly to you in "combat," where you don't hurt them, but instead channel power from ones you've tamed before, and objects important to you, to change you and their dispositions and endear yourself with emotional "attacks." In practice it's very much the kind of thing I'm talking about, and I highly suggest you check it out if you have an android phone or Bluestacks.
https://m.apkpure.com/taming-dreams-rpg/air.com.alorafane.tamingdreams
(Let me know if this link isn't allowed, this is the first thing that came up)
So that's my JRPG suggestion, a lot less wordy suggestion outside the box on that would be a side-scrolling platformer action rpg about living in a modern society and trying to make enough money to live on your own, a story about living young on your own and needing to pay the bills, only in a city where fantasy style exploration of it's uninhabited depths and fighting the dangers inside is just another job the underprivileged rely on to survive, main character included.
Or perhaps a theatre operating RPG sim game where you hire various actors, each with personal abilities and stats, to play the part of various characters in plays, acting as play-specific classes with stat bonuses and unique abilities themselves, and do fights in front of an audience while attempting to clear various challenges in order to gain equipment and money needed to hire more actors and put on more plays.
You can even put different actors in the role of the villains of the plays too, and deal with their various abilities used against you! That's an idea I've had knocking away at my knoggin for a while.
At the end of the day, you guys rock, and you can do whatever, all I'm hoping this rambling does is help open up interesting concepts for the team to get excited and passionate about. Hope you have an awesome day, I'm looking forward to Christmas Cthulhu!