Japanese Role-Playing games aren't categorized by Anime Style Graphic or by the fact that they're from Japan, but by the cultural influence in the games. Western Role-playing games are influnced by the western culture in the same sense. So it has nothing to do with Art style or Gameplay or anything like that. And just because a Role-Playing game is Japanese doesn't make it a Japanese RPG. For example; I don't think that Dark Souls is a Jrpg. Sure it's from Japan, but it doesn't have any of the JRPG elements.
Lets look to Persona 3 as an example. Persona 3 has a rather linear plot forcing the player down a preset path with no way to escape that, whereas Dark Souls has an open world, and lacks the emphasis on story present in Persona 3, or other JRPGs in general. Though there are JRPGs with an Open World like Dark Souls. In addition, Dark Souls has a huge emphasis on gameplay not present in JRPGs. And it incorporates Action Adventure game elements into the gameplay.
There are plenty of Real Time JRPs like The last Story, Xenoblade Chronicles and the others mentioned, but not quite like Dark Souls. Games like Persona 3 and 4, Final Fantasy, and Dragon Warrior all have linear plots and lack the emphasis on exploration that is present in Western RPGs like Ultima, The Elder Scrolls, and Baldur's Gate. But Japanese and Western Role Playing games aren't the only types of games. There are Action and Strategy RPGs which are in a category all their own. What sets these apart are the gameplay, Strategy is obviously the focus in Strategy Rpgs, While combat is central in Action RPGs. But not all games fall into any one of these categories, some are totally in their own category.
Of course I could be wrong, but that's my perspective.
Well this is where I would go into games that I wouldn't introduce to a newcomer.
Etrian Odyssey is a JRPG. It's Japanese, and if you wanna get niche, it has cute anime-styled characters and is even Turn Based. But it's basically the Dark Souls of Dungeon Crawlers - practically no story. Nope, you're just plopped down in this world where you have to go through a dungeon (or dungeons). Exploration and mapmaking are key and, in fact, I'd say it's less story oriented than Dark Souls because, unlike EO, Dark Souls puts a huge emphasis on putting its lore in the world, rather than necessarily making the player follow it. It's a nice bit of world building. -But that's not why I wouldn't introduce it to a newcomer. The reason for that is because it's hard. Very hard.
Riding on that train, any one of the early
Shin Megami Tensei games. SMT's always been a unique series, generally focusing on the realistic side of both Japan and those that roam it. This counts for any of the games, SMT, Persona (depending on which one), Devil Survivor, etc. But one thing that is important to note, that makes it difficult to say, by what you've said, makes a JRPG what it is, is that the early SMT games (or heck, most of them, even the subsets. Persona 3's probably the black sheep in this (not necessarily for better or for worse), but the other Persona games, 1, 2, and 4 still qualify). Other than generally being a nonlinear game, for most of them, you could say they were somewhere else and change very little and they would work somewhere else. The people act as people would act in situations their in, and they do take place in Japan, but they don't force Japan on you. Because there's no need. It's about Japanese people doing Japanese things, but not in the sense that the more anime-centric games do. Characters pretty much only react as one would expect them to when hit with an insult that, realistically, would cut someone down. They react to fear as one would when faced with an unknown, so on and so forth. Again, not why I wouldn't recommend it. These games are even harder than EO, especially when you get to Nocturne.
I DO recommend those to you guys, though. They're both fantastic games.
There are others that I can pull out if needed- even some on the WRPG side to give some parallel, but I don't want to overload this post with text anymore than I have.
But the misconception that I see here is that you seem to think that JRPG and WRPG are genres in themselves. There is no such thing as a game that is just an RPG. It doesn't exist. It's not like Action games or First Person Shooters, where you can just slap a label on it and you have an accurate description. RPGs are different, they can
only be described by their subsets. Persona? Turn-Based RPG. Rune Factory? Action RPG. and of course there are fun ones like Project X Zone, which is a TBSARPG (Turn-Based Strategy Action Role Playing Game). But the point is, a Role-Playing Game is only a parent to many, many, MANY other genres. FPSRPG, TBRPG, RRPG...it's kinda like MMO. MMO, by itself, doesn't make sense, and MMORPG, by itself, does not make sense- well, the latter does because most MMORPGs are created in a post-Everquest/WoW mindset that makes its description accurate, but by itself, assuming they diversify, it makes no sense. Same with RPGs.
All of that is why I push for JRPGs and WRPGs to be recognized for what they are- their titles were made with that in mind. After all, if it were about cultural influence, it'd be pretty hard to qualify a lot of games as Japanese or Western RPGs. A lot of JRPGs take cues from anime (as do various WRPGs, and there's no such thing as an Anime RPG, nor do you call Mass Effect a Space RPG), and a lot of WRPGs take cues from various things (
This WRPG, for example). They can be similar, and often you see one take notes from the other and even converge (something I'm fighting for). I don't hate many things, but I do hate Japanese/Western segregation. Someone might say that they need to be separate for originality, but niche will always exist. JRPG and WRPG are just descriptive parent genres that, like RPGs, can't stand on their own. Nor do I think they should exists. They would just be considered RPGs and go from there.
