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The votes are tabulated, the rankings sorted, the mana sword pulled forth, magitek march across snowfields, and Mario knows about Timed Hits. All the pieces are in place for our 40th anniversary celebration of the JRPG!
In addition to counting down our favorite 108 games in this most storied of genres, I hope you won’t mind if I wax philosophic from time to time. You see, I’m fascinated by this genre, and the question 'what is a JRPG?' deserves better than the taxonomic arguments it usually gets. It is a question of some importance. There’s more being asked here than by which label these games should be categorized when organizing the shelf.
As story-objects, JRPGs operate in fundamentally different ways than other media such as novels, films, or live performance. By examining how they work as we would these other media, and especially in the ways they convey story through novel techniques, we find something magnificent: a language for conveying story in the same way that ordering words conveys story in print, cutting between framed shots conveys story in film, or pantomime and speech conveys story in performance. That is to say, the language of JRPGs is a craft, convention, and art unique unto itself; and worthy of study on those terms.
Story is at the core of JRPG identity. When a developer sets forth to create one they must satisfy two requirements simultaneously: to produce an interactive game experience and to tell a story. With other genres like puzzle, fighting, or platformer only the first goal must be met. There is no imperative to tell a story, though much of the time developers in those genres choose to do so. However, you can strip the story out and the game will still largely operate undamaged. But to take the story out of a JRPG would make it no longer a JRPG and there’s a question if the game could even operate in a sensical way without narrative structure.
Here I need to make an important distinction between ‘story’ and ‘premise.’ Games have always offered premises—narrative justification for why a mustachioed man hops and bops across 32 stages or why diversely skilled martial artists square off in 1v1 matches. But premises exist tertiary to gameplay, invoked through visual design or backstory then set aside. When I speak of ‘story,’ I’m referring to games that depict a full narrative, one that develops through dramatic action from beginning to end, both contiguous with and often via the interactive elements.
Most games tell stories now. Not only do classic genres like platformers and fighters incorporate narrative far further than what could be considered premise, but entire story-focused genres have emerged as technology developed. Yet JRPGs do it with a set of unique conventions distinct from even primarily story-focused genres, which oftentimes tell their tales via techniques borrowed from other mediums like prose or film; or indeed with techniques developed in JRPGs first.
To understand JRPGs' distinctiveness we have to look back at the early days of gaming. When programmers first explored interactive narrative, only a few genres even attempted anything resembling story: parser-based text adventures (which would later evolve into the graphic adventure genre), some flavors of simulation game, and RPGs. RPGs were naturally inclined to be story-games because so much of their structure, format, and mechanics were taken from tabletop roleplaying. Not only are D&D mechanics like statblocks, experience levels, and quest-structures naturally story-potent, but tabletop roleplaying in general implies a degree of interaction that’s more akin to imaginative storytelling than limited mechanical operation. A tabletop hero might attempt anything whereas, for example, a platformer character is constrained to a limited verb set. Mario can only and is expected to only run, jump, crouch, and spit. To accommodate the implied possibility-space of a RPG hero’s potential verbs developers built systems suggesting narrative experience rather than pure mechanical navigation.
The trend of tabletop-style roleplaying in RPGs would grow into a fruitful and worthy genre of its own, the ‘Computer’ or ‘Western’ RPG; and the trademark of Western RPGs became accommodating player choice and agency, evoking the improvisational possibility of tabletop sessions. But when Yuji Hori and company translated the computer RPG to console with Dragon Quest, they didn't just simplify and refine RPG techniques for a console interface. They proposed something new: a template for interactive storytelling that was constrained enough to be reproducible yet open enough to generate infinite variation.
Dragon Quest established techniques where gameplay itself generates narrative meaning. Limited on-screen representation invites players to imagine a fuller story-space. Mechanical actions become performances of an authored role rather than expressions of player agency. Predetermined narrative materializes only through inhabiting a character whose story is fixed but whose journey you make real.
Over the past forty years, this template—which we call the JRPG—has inspired thousands of such stories. These stories in turn have entertained and delighted many more millions of fans. They touch our emotions, engender our affection, and inspire our imaginations. And here’s the truly miraculous thing: every single one of them is different. Even superficially similar JRPGs evidence unique approaches, singular answers to the design question Dragon Quest posed. Each JRPG answers the question: how do you tell a story through this specific form? Each JRPG’s answer is different.
Here are your one hundred and eight favorite of them.
