The gaming press had a pretty strong dislike for Japanese games all together for a bit bar Nintendo titles. Thats why we ended up with that rough era where companies like Capcom were trying to make more western styled titles.

There was a strong dislike of JRPGs and Japanese games in the 2000s.

Development struggles

From what I heard is, during the shift to HD development in early PS3 360 era, many western devs switched to use Unreal engine, while Japanese devs were sticking to their in house engines. But, in house engines were not cheap nor easy to build / maintain, so they struggled to recoup their expenses.

One of their strategies is to make their games more appealing to the west, but they were kinda doing it from the lens of what they think American games are appealing, so we get games that weren’t universally loved, like

• Quantum Theory: Koei’s Gears of War-kinda clone
• DmC: kinda split the fanbase
• PS3 era Silent Hill games
• Neverdead: WTF
• Yakuza games: they were marketed as if they were GTAs

Inafune was partially right, although hyperbolic, saying that Japanese games are dead. They were definitely struggling to find an identity.

Squeenix’s outputs

Then there’s Square Enix during PS3 era that published these games, many were received poorly

• FF13: convoluted story, L’cie, Fa’lcie
• NieR: reviewers stuck at fishing minigame, and the whole gameplay was just boring
• Star Ocean Last Hope International: Lymle, kay
• Front Mission Evolved

It didn’t help when we got bangers like Mass Effect trilogy, Skyrim, Fallout 3. So Square definitely disliked the JRPG term. However if you were to ask smaller Japanese devs at the time, e.g. ATLUS or Nihon Falcom, they’d probably prefer the term, because their ‘niche’ games (at the time), sold quite well while Square struggled.

Not a really descriptive term anymore

But you’re right, JRPG is non-descriptive when it comes to reviews. I’d prefer that reviewers have a small box that lists out the mechanics of the game, e.g. turn-based, random loot drops, predesignated character, linear dungeons, etc. But even nowadays reviewers are recommending games like Jedi Survivor, while the game is still a broken mess, which made me wonder what’s the point of reviews anymore?

It’s great when the devs like the term, but it barely helps anyone when reviewers use it. Not to mention the political tension when they use the term JRPG for games developed by Chinese or Korean devs.

Of course I haven’t mentioned that some reviewers were just racists fucks. Also it’s the period when Famitsu will just give any games 40/40 if the publishers bought enough advertisements from them, FF13 got 39/40, and Square was probably wondering why the games were not well received outside Japan

I think it doesn’t truly mean “Japanese RPG’s”, even today. There are lots of Japanese games that don’t get called JRPG’s even though they are RPG’s or have those elements (there is ambiguitiy in what an RPG is too, admittedly), like Resident Evil games and Dark Souls games and Zelda games and Pokemon. Dark Souls especially, since they have the character building and stats as well as the roleplaying.

People don’t call Elden Ring a JRPG because JRPG is supposed to mean one thing but really it carries a lot connotations about mechanics, graphics, and the derogatory connotations about quality.

And Pokemon! Pokemon is very clearly a JRPG in the mechnical and graphics sense, but it doesn’t typically get called a JRPG. I think this is because of the negative connotations of JRPG, personally.

And on the other hand we have things like Chained Echoes, which is in all mechanical and graphical ways is a textbook JRPG, except it’s not made in Japan at all, but rather inspired by Japanese games.

I agree this is complicated, but I found Jimquisition’s video on the topic really persuasive. I recommend that one even for people normally don’t jive with Jimquisition’s style.

Within any group, there will always be some who don’t find a term offensive even while others do, but I think probably the best outcome in this case is for the general populace to move away from the term, while leaving space for Japanese video game devs to reclaim it and use it themselves if they wish to.

Maybe it will truly lose the negative connotations with time, but I don’t think we’re there yet, when people are only just starting to sometimes acknowledge it ever had those connotations in the first place.

Granted, most genre words are vague and confusing as hell - JRPG isn’t special in that sense - but most don’t have the racist history/implications or negative connotations. And when I try to think of another genre label that is used as an insult, the first that comes to mind is Visual Novel, which is another one that is heavily associated with Japan.