Yes, JRPGs Are Vibrant, Experimental, Forward-Thinking, and Ever Evolving – A Response to Polygon

Earlier this week, Polygon published an article titled, “The Future of JRPGs lies beyond traditional turn-based combat,” wherein the author, Paulo Kawanishi argues that although the JRPG combat system has remained stagnant, recent titles demonstrate an evolution that will push the genre forward. As Kawanishi suggests, “The history of JRPGs has a long tail, but little has changed in how these games have been designed until, in the last five years, a small but significant aesthetic shift began…but it feels like the transformation is beginning in one of the genre’s most polemical aspects: combat. Specifically, a move away from traditional turn-based combat.¹

Kawanishi goes on to discuss the recent titles that are part of this shift away from traditional turn-based combat, including Metaphor: ReFantazio (Studio Zero, 2024), Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak (Nihon Falcom, 2021), Dragon Quest VII Reimagined (HEXADRIVE Inc., 2026), Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection (Capcom, 2026), and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive, 2025). For Kawanishi, by allowing players to defeat weaker enemies in real-time rather than turn-based combat, these games remove the doldrum of the genre, resulting in a design that allows players to, “….dedicate our attention and time to moments that matter in the broader scope of the narrative.”²

Kawanishi is not alone in holding this opinion. Recent remasters of classic titles, such as Final Fantasy VII (Squaresoft, 1997) and SaGa Frontier (Squaresoft, 1997) now include options to completely turn off random encounters or to at least fast-forward combat, erasing potential friction within ludic design as a means to not only garner a new audience but also retain an older audience who may no longer be as patient as they were in their youth or simply not have enough time—a concern that designers such as Shōji Masuda have addressed in their own games as far back as the 1990s. The issue of time, or lack thereof, is not new. What we’re witnessing here is a shift in how players engage with combat before the actual battle. These non-diegetic design choices thereby recall their earlier diegetic counterparts: Shin Megami Tensei‘s “estoma” spell, Pokémon‘s “repel” items, and Final Fantasy VIII‘s “Enc-None” ability. However, even with these similarities, these spells and items still require the use of resources and are thus part of the broader push-and-pull of dungeoneering. The main thrust of Kawanishi’s argument lies elsewhere.

I ultimately take greater umbrage with two points of Kawanishi’s article—its historical framing and its more implicit argument that turn-based battles have no place within the narrative outside boss battles or similar major combat events. The notion that it is only in recent years the JRPG has begun to see change is a problem I forewarned in my earlier article, “”Anime RPG Trash”.” Written in the wake of Clair Obscur‘s critical acclaim, I concluded, ”The issues I bring up here are neither with the game nor Sandfall themselves, but rather in the community and the discussion surrounding JRPGs—the ways in which discourse functions as an institution to control knowledge.”³ It would only be a few months later that the remake of Sword and Fairy 4 would be dubbed a “Clair Obscur-like,”⁴ and now, once again, history threatens to be elided. Kawanishi writes, “Last year, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 shook the industry with its hybrid turn-based, real-time combat system. What we can know for sure is that the creative minds behind these games are pushing JRPGs forward – and its up to observe what could be the beginning of  a cultural shift in one of the oldest video game genres.”⁵

To proclaim that JRPGs have only recently begun to change their battle systems willfully ignores how the genre has always been too large and too experimental to have grown stale or even be contained by the expectations that pesky “J” connotes. First and foremost, those looking for experimentation must look beyond the biggest titles being produced where one will hardly find experimentation within games made for mass-market appeal. As I have previously written:

I am not naïve enough to believe that the sudden localization of Gunparade March (Alfa System, 2000) or Sakura Wars 3: Paris is Burning? (Sega, 2001) would lead the same person who sneers at Final Fantasy XIII to have a greater appreciation of the JRPG genre and the works which influenced it. One need to only look at the negative reception of titles such as Unlimited SaGa (Square 2002) and Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter (Capcom, 2002) to understand that the question is not about wanting more radical titles.⁶

It is no surprise then that recent JRPGs which have taken a more radical, experimental, or novel approach to turn-based combat without doing away with it completely are not discussed, including SaGa: Emerald Beyond (Square Enix, 2024), Path of the Abyss (Suzuki Suzuzou, 2025), the Labyrinth of Tohou trilogy, or the work of developer Thousand Games, including the Quester duology and Monochrome Echoes -white- (2025).

Equally important are the games which are developed outside the purview of the professional industry—the free game (“furige”) scene wherein development teams can be as small as a single person: Unto the End (最果てを目指す, Huyumi, 2019), SOLDIERS DesireWing (Tokumeikibou, 2021), The Relic Saga of Sword and Sorcery Ver. 2 (剣と魔法のレリックサーガVer2, 風乃, 2024), and The Umbrella of the Wind and the Song of Flowers (風と花曲のアンブレラ, シキ, 2024), are all recent titles that play with the structure of turn-based systems. Working with various RPG Maker engines, furige developers have established an alternative canon and ecosystem that runs counter to mainstream sensibilities, games which have commonly been looked down upon in the Anglosphere for appearing amateur.

This is not to romanticize the furige scene as a land unspoiled by popularity or a development scene free of trouble. After all, throughout the years, a small modicum of games have been able to receive English fan-translations and become cult classics, including Nepheshel (Studio Til, 2002), Tobira no Densetsu: Kaze no Tsubasa (Door, 2007), Ruina (枯草章吉, 2009), and Shinsetsu Mahō Shōjo (TS, 2013). ASTLIBRA would do well enough to receive an overhaul and English translation, being released on Steam as ASTLIBRA Revision (KEIZO, 2022), Ruina is set to also receive an international remake that will be sold on Steam, and Seven Heroes of Sorrow (Kiruko, 2020) will also be ported to Steam. So while free games may begin as independent projects, there remains the possibility of shifting towards a more modest level of production or perhaps already beginning as one—Seven Heroes of Sorrow, for example, features professional voice-actors. Furthermore, despite the scrappy ethos present in some of these titles, the use of generative AI remains prevalent even amongst the winners of free game competitions. Nevertheless, if we were to follow the misguided belief that the release of Final Fantasy XIII (Square Enix, 2009) began a period of stagnation for the JRPG that only ended with Persona 5 (Atlus, 2016), then in the free game scene, we will find more than plenty to keep us busy.

One may retort that I’m being pedantic, and that I should not expect an op-ed to make affordances for the inventory of an entire genre, but one would hardly expect a comprehensive discussion of Japanese literature or cinema to solely discuss works which were fortunate enough to be localized,⁷ and while I understand the difficulty that the language barrier presents, video games should be no different. This is the exact point that Japanese games scholars Martin Picard and Jeremie Pelletier-Gagnon call for in the study of Japanese games: “Many factors explain this gap, but there is no doubt that the language barrier is the main difficulty preventing the realization of convincing research on the local market. However, another important aspect—and one that is somewhat linked to the previous issue—needs to be taken into account: the lack of knowledge of Japanese studies.”⁸ In their own recent article decrying the use of AI within fan-translation projects, Hilltop brings up a similar point, stating, “I’m seeing solo programmers with no Japanese experience try to pick up a game to hack it, and I have to ask myself “What’s the motivation?””⁹ If we are to fret about the future of the genre then we must understand its history beyond the confines of localized titles.

Of course, the danger here is the risk of insisting that the JRPG has an essentially unique Japanese quality, a particular strain of thought that I don’t hold at all. While we can and must acknowledge the influence of Japanese history, culture, and other factors that were a result of games being produced and developed in Japan, as cultural critic Kazuma Hashimoto reminds us of the term ‘JRPG,”  “It is still a term that “others” Japanese RPGs – whether the term is a source of discrimination or signals an aesthetic to be fetishized.”¹⁰ On this point, since as far back as 1982 which began to see the emergence of Japanese discourse on tabletop RPGs and shortly thereafter, domestically produced RPGs, for developers and players, the genre was simply split between its analogue and digital counterpart rather than by country of origin. Indeed, when studying the JRPG, we may follow the trajectory of film scholar Donald Richie who in A Hundred Years of Japanese Cinema writes:

In actuality, however, there are more similarities than differences among the films of Europe and America, and those of Japan. Though each country creates a national cinema (and hence a national cinematic style), it is only through the most common, pragmatic, and universal of means. A film history is a search for a way through narrative can be presented more efficiently.¹¹

Away with efficient narratives! As I have attempted to show in my writings on this blog, the genre and its history are messy and much more complicated than given credit. Wargames may have “simply” given way to RPGs but in Japan, it was less than a decade before the genre exploded and fragmented—tabletop games, replays, play-by-mail RPGs, the media mix, raising simulators, dating simulators, fantasy, science-fiction, high-school! As early as 1989, the genre was already so much more than Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy.

Addressing the second point, are random battles and exploration not also their own narrative elements? I am neither defending poorly balanced encounter rates or the notion of fighting lower level enemies as narrative masterworks. Kawanishi ultimately calls for developers to create “more meaningful experiences,”¹² but has this not long been the ethos of dungeon-crawlers? Creating one’s own maps in Wizardry, sparking skills in SaGa, racing the clock in Oreshika, or any RPG in which monsters are present on the field and can be avoided thereby emphasizing the player’s ability to move through a labyrinth’s chokepoints, a design choice that would later be part of the foundation for Resident Evil (Capcom, 1996) and survival horror at large.

Of course, anyone who has been around long enough will tell you these debates are far from new. Turn-based combat and the JRPG have been dying for nearly the past twenty years. In 2009, providing an extensive overview of the JRPG’s reception abroad, Jeffrey Fleming proclaimed, “There are a variety of reasons why the JRPG has been diminishing in recent years and Japanese RPG developers will find themselves increasingly sidelined unless they begin to acknowledge the pressing need for change.”¹³ In 2012, IGN would publish, “Top 10 Ways to Fix JRPGs,” whose number one point calls for a change in battle systems: “Unfortunately, a number of JRPGs have relied heavily on the now dry tradition of the simple “Attack, Magic, Item, Defend” dynamic that we’ve seen for decades. This just doesn’t cut it.”¹⁴

Earlier that same year, writing for Kotaku, Jason Schreier would present a dissenting opinion, praising the experimentation of games such as The World Ends With You (Jupiter, 2007), Half-Minute Hero (Opus, 2009), and Nier (Cavia, 2010) from which he draws forth, “Today’s Japanese role-playing games take more risks than any other genre.”¹⁵ Later, Schreier cuts to the heart of the matter:

So why is the JRPG the victim of so many sweeping generalizations and belittling insults here in the U.S.? Maybe it’s just an easy target in an industry where we love to shoot things down. But I think the real issue is that there’s this idea entrenched in many peoples’ heads of what a JRPG looks like—this idea of a spiky-haired protagonist with a huge sword fighting a 60-hour, grind-filled journey that ends with a fight against several gods and a sanctimonious lesson about the power of friendship. And yes, there are JRPGs made today that paint that exact picture. But not all of them. Not even a lot of them.¹⁶

Schreier then ends, “Just look at all the people who claim the recently-released Xenoblade “revitalized” the genre. Xenoblade didn’t revitalize the genre. It never needed to be revitalized. JRPGs are as alive and wonderful as ever.”¹⁷ Fourteen years later, the perception and the discussions of the genre have hardly changed—just replace “Xenoblade” with “Metaphor” or “Clair Obscur.”

There might have been a point in time where I would have viewed the localization of older titles as the answer to unifying the disparate history of the JRPG. As games scholars Rebecca Carlson and Jonathan Colriss argue, translators function as gatekeepers who influence the global circulation and understanding of games.¹⁸ But it would be wrong to assume that it’s the fault of translators that certain games haven’t yet been translated. Just like the games they work on, translators are beholden to market forces. In contrast, fan-translators wield a different labor power that circumvents the official market— Linda Cube (Alfa System, Mars Corporation, 1995), Sakura Wars (Red Company, Sega CS2 R&D 1996), and Mother 3 (Brownie Brown, HAL Laboratory, 2006) are just a few examples of games which have received unofficial fan translations. But this too has come under siege with Hilltop suggesting that the recent fan-translation of Segagaga (Hitmaker, 2001)—revealed to have been done by A.I.—is less interested in the art of translation than it is in generating buzz.

Having followed this discourse online, one common refrain I’ve encountered from those who did not mind the use of A.I. was that the game was finally playable in English and so what mattered was that one could now experience the story even if the translation was subpar. Segagaga was thus reduced to the script of its story. Never mind that the script failed to capture the nuance of its parody or that the experience of playing the game reflects the difficulty of managing a video game company. Ultimately, this rhetoric not only limits our understanding of narrative but also ignores the experimental approach of many JRPGs. There lies an irony here given that figures of the Japanese games industry ranging from Hitoshi Yasuda to Hidetaka Miyazaki have long fondly expressed the joy which resulted from engaging with English games and literature with a more limited command of the language. There is an equal amount of joy in convincing yourself you have finally learned enough kanji only to encounter a character written in the densest 8-bit font that it has become nearly unrecognizable.

In any case, my larger point here is that the future of the JRPG does not lie beyond turn-based combat. We should not be so quick to determine what the future should entail when we don’t even understand the genre’s past.

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FURTHER READING – RENEGOTIATING THE JAPANESE ROLE-PLAYING GAME CANON
Gunparade March and the JRPG at the Turn of the New Millennium
“Anime RPG Trash” or Clair Obscur and Genre Trouble
Ore no Shikabane o Koete Yuke and the Limits of Mortality
Unlimited SaGa and the Perils of Akitoshi Kawazu

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ENDNOTES

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1. Paulo Kawanishi, “The future of JRPGs lies beyond turn-based combat,” Polygon, March 15, 2026, https://www.polygon.com/jrpgs-turn-based-combat-analysis/ ↩︎
2. Paulo Kawanishi, “The future of JRPGs lies beyond turn-based combat.” ↩︎
3. Ogre Run, “”Anime RPG Trash” or Clair Obscur and Genre Trouble,” Ogre Run, December 14, 2025, https://ogrerun.com/2025/12/14/anime-rpg-trash-or-clair-obscur-and-genre-trouble/ ↩︎
4. Wesley Yin-Poole, “’We Got Expedition-Like Genre Now’ Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Fans Say Sword and Fairy 4 Remake Is a Little Too Close for Comfort,” IGN, December 29, 2025, https://www.ign.com/articles/we-got-expedition-like-genre-now-clair-obscur-expedition-33-fans-say-sword-and-fairy-4-remake-is-a-little-too-close-for-comfort ↩︎
5. Paulo Kawanishi, “The future of JRPGs lies beyond turn-based combat.” ↩︎
6. Ogre Run, “”Anime RPG Trash” or Clair Obscur and Genre Trouble.” ↩︎
7. Although this has not stopped popular knowledge of Japanese literature ending at Osamu Dazai, Kenzaburo Ōe, Yukio Mishima, Haruki Murakami, and perhaps more recently, Sayaka Murata. In the case of Japanese cinema, the usual suspects include Yasujirō Ozu and Akira Kurosawa although certainly directors such as Hirokazu Koreeda and Kiyoshi Kurosawa have also broken into the mainstream. ↩︎
8. Martin Picard and Jeremie Pelletier-Gagnon, “Geemu and media mix: Theoretical approaches to Japanese video games,” Kinephanos, December 2015, 1 – 19, https://www.kinephanos.ca/Revue_files/2015_Picard_Pelletier-Gagnon_En.pdf ↩︎
9. Hilltopmailer, “The very serious part-time unofficial hobby of videogame fan-translation,” Medium, March 15, 2026, https://medium.com/@hilltopmailer/the-deadly-serious-part-time-unofficial-hobby-of-videogame-fan-translation-05850fb24e45. ↩︎
10. Kazuma Hashimoto, “The ‘JRPG’ label has always been othering,” Polygon, June 20, 2023, https://www.polygon.com/23677598/jrpg-label-history-othering-discrimination-japanese-role-playing-game/ ↩︎
11. Donald Richie, A Hundred Years of Japanese Film: A Concise History, with a Selective Guide to DVDs and Videos, rev. ed. (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 2005), 11. ↩︎
12. Paulo Kawanishi, “The future of JRPGs lies beyond turn-based combat.” ↩︎
13. Jeffrey Fleming, “Opinion: 2009 – The Last Days of the Japanese RPG?”, Game Developer, https://www.gamedeveloper.com/game-platforms/opinion-2009—the-last-days-of-the-japanese-rpg- ↩︎
14. Erik Brudvig and Ryan Clements, “Top 10 Ways to Fix JRPGs,” IGN, June 14, 2012, https://www.ign.com/articles/2010/01/12/top-10-ways-to-fix-jrpgs ↩︎
15. Jason Schreier, “No, JRPGs Are Not Stale, Old-Fashioned, Archaic, Obsolete, Out of Touch Rehashes,” Kotaku, April 13, 2022, https://kotaku.com/no-jrpgs-are-not-stale-old-fashioned-archaic-obsole-5899489 ↩︎
16. Jason Schreier, “No, JRPGs Are Not Stale, Old-Fashioned, Archaic, Obsolete, Out of Touch Rehashes.” ↩︎
17. Jason Schreier, “No, JRPGs Are Not Stale, Old-Fashioned, Archaic, Obsolete, Out of Touch Rehashes.” ↩︎
18. Rebecca Carlson and Jonathan Corliss, “Imagined Commodities: Video Game Localization and Mythologies of Cultural Difference,” Games and Culture 6, no. 1 (2011): 64, https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412010377322. ↩︎

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brudvig, Erik, and Ryan Clements. “Top 10 Ways to Fix JRPGs.” IGN. June 14, 2012. https://www.ign.com/articles/2010/01/12/top-10-ways-to-fix-jrpgs.

Carlson, Rebecca, and Jonathan Corliss. “Imagined Commodities: Video Game Localization and Mythologies of Cultural Difference.” Games and Culture 6, no. 1 (2011): 61–82. https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412010377322.

Fleming, Jeffrey. “Opinion: 2009 – The Last Days of the Japanese RPG?” Game Developer. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/game-platforms/opinion-2009—the-last-days-of-the-japanese-rpg-.

Hashimoto, Kazuma. “The ‘JRPG’ Label Has Always Been Othering.” Polygon. June 20, 2023. https://www.polygon.com/23677598/jrpg-label-history-othering-discrimination-japanese-role-playing-game/.

Hilltopmailer. “The Very Serious Part-Time Unofficial Hobby of Videogame Fan-Translation.” Medium. March 15, 2026. https://medium.com/@hilltopmailer/the-deadly-serious-part-time-unofficial-hobby-of-videogame-fan-translation-05850fb24e45.

Kawanishi, Paulo. “The Future of JRPGs Lies Beyond Turn-Based Combat.” Polygon. March 15, 2026. https://www.polygon.com/jrpgs-turn-based-combat-analysis/.

Ogre Run. “‘Anime RPG Trash’ or Clair Obscur and Genre Trouble.” Ogre Run. December 14, 2025. https://ogrerun.com/2025/12/14/anime-rpg-trash-or-clair-obscur-and-genre-trouble/.

Picard, Martin, and Jérémie Pelletier-Gagnon. “Geemu and Media Mix: Theoretical Approaches to Japanese Video Games.” Kinephanos, December 2015, 1–19. https://www.kinephanos.ca/Revue_files/2015_Picard_Pelletier-Gagnon_En.pdf.

Richie, Donald. A Hundred Years of Japanese Film: A Concise History, with a Selective Guide to DVDs and Videos. Rev. ed. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 2005.

Schreier, Jason. “No, JRPGs Are Not Stale, Old-Fashioned, Archaic, Obsolete, Out of Touch Rehashes.” Kotaku. April 13, 2022. https://kotaku.com/no-jrpgs-are-not-stale-old-fashioned-archaic-obsole-5899489.

Yin-Poole, Wesley. “‘We Got Expedition-Like Genre Now’: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Fans Say Sword and Fairy 4 Remake Is a Little Too Close for Comfort.” IGN. December 29, 2025. https://www.ign.com/articles/we-got-expedition-like-genre-now-clair-obscur-expedition-33-fans-say-sword-and-fairy-4-remake-is-a-little-too-close-for-comfort.