r/JRPG • u/Marinebiologist_0 • Apr 27 '25

News Clair Obscur has achieved the highest concurrent player rate ever for a JRPG on Steam.

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Incredible numbers, this doesn't even include the Xbox Gamepass player count. The last time I remember a JRPG getting this level of attention was Persona 5 and NieR Automata in 2017. It'll be interesting to see how massive Persona 6 will be, if it launches day 1 on all major platforms.

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u/keyblademasternadroj Apr 27 '25

I have to know where all these people denying Expedition 33 is a JRPG are coming from all of a sudden. People post on this sub about Chained Echoes, Crystal Project, and Sea of Stars all the time, and none of those were made in Japan by Japanese people but everyone understands that they are JRPGs. 

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u/an-actual-communism Apr 28 '25 edited Apr 28 '25

I don't consider Chained Echoes, Crystal Project or Sea of Stars to be JRPGs, either. My definition of JRPG is a role playing game that is part of the Japanese literary tradition and, accordingly, originally written in the Japanese language. Mechanically, "non-JRPGs" have all the bits and bobs that people often try to use to define "JRPG," like turn-based combat, linear storytelling, party-based adventuring, etc., so to me this is the only real point of distinction. I actually wouldn't even consider it a "genre," as there are clearly many genres contained within this tradition. I just don't usually push this point because most people on this subreddit hate it.

Anyone who wants to downvote this comment, I give you the challenge of defining "JRPG" purely in terms of game mechanics in a way that reproduces the set of games people commonly call "JRPGs" and excludes any games outside of that set. You will find that this exercise is impossible, which means "JRPG" is not a genre label.