Why Categorize JRPGs and WRPGs?

IndieRPGs’ Craig Stern poses that very question in a new editorial that starts out by comparing and contrasting the two region-inspired (not region-specific – I’m looking at you, Anachronox) design types before arguing that such a categorization is actually a good thing.

The standard jRPG approach to character and item progression is exponential. The player begins with tens of hit points and attack damage, and rockets upwards from there, eventually ending the game with thousands of hit points and dealing several thousand damage per attack.

Items in jRPGs follow a similar curve, leading to something of a material consumption treadmill. Progression through the game involves constantly replacing old items and equipment with newer, more expensive models. That stuff you bought in the last town worked really well against wolves, but now you’re fighting giant toads, and they barely scratch them. So you buy the really expensive new models. And those work exceptionally well until you get to the next area, which has enemies those weapons can barely scratch, and a town that sells a yet more expensive version of that same equipment. And so on. (I was pleasantly surprised to see the indie jRPG Deadly Sin 2 subverting this with its healing items, which actually remain useful throughout the whole game.)

Now, wRPGs love their leveling and loot collection too, but wRPGs tend to progress linearly in these areas. Characters begin the game doing about 5 damage per hit, and end the game doing less than 30 (up to 99 for exceptionally powerful and expensive spells). Health progresses in a similar fashion, as do magic points. This sort of linear progression is largely a consequence of wRPG systems arising more directly out of the systems of their pen-and-paper ancestors, which relied on dice and math that could easily be calculated by people sitting around a table and swilling beer. Needless to say, you aren’t going to roll 10,000-sided dice for damage in a game of Dungeons and Dragons.

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Even when games do subvert their subgenre conventions, it’s still easiest to start from a baseline of what is traditionally done, then move on to talk about those specific areas where the game confounds expectations. For instance, it is much faster for me to tell you that Deadly Sin 2 is a jRPG which innovates in a few areas than it would be for me to describe the whole game in minute detail, system by system. It’s in the tradition of Dragon Warrior and its progeny: it’s a jRPG. That provides valuable context and allows me to move on to discussing the particulars that set it apart. That, friends, is why we have subgenres. For my part, I’m going to keep using them.