The jRPG lives.

There seems to be this prevailing opinion amongst the English-speaking gaming community that the jRPG is "dead."  I assume this is because of people's disillusionment with Final Fantasy XIII and the myriad spinoffs of it, which I have never played and really don't have any interest in. (Update: I've played the first hour and a half of FFXIII, it's thoroughly joyless. It doesn't have that special something that grabs you.) Post-merger Square hasn't impressed me all that much, aside from Advent Children, which was just basically one giant cutscene.

"The jRPG and all of its conventions are dead.", they cry, "The genre always was horrible, and we only just now realized it. Woe be unto the weaboo who still plays it."

I like to imagine this speech being said with fake tears while the speechifier is holding a copy of Call of Duty and munching on Cheetos.

But here's the little problem with this doomsday diatribe: It's wrong. The jRPG lives.

My short, smartass argument would just be to post this image and leave it at that:

Shulk (Xenoblade), Yu Narukami (Persona 4), The Guy From Pokemon Black/White

All three of these protagonists and their games are fairly recent. I know they're not blazingly recent (while Xenoblade was a 2012 release in America, it's been around a while elsewhere), but all three of these games are beloved and released after FF10 (which seems to be where all of the webcomics deem the jRPG's date of death being because we know webcomics are the final authority on games)

And get this: All three of these games, despite being of the supposedly dead jRPG genre, are each reason enough to buy each of the consoles they are on. Between all three games, I've sunk about 450 hours of my life into them (and about 100 dollars). And I don't regret it.

XENOBLADE

Xenoblade is something of the odd animal in this trio, but while it certainly emulates a lot of conventions of the western RPG; it's not one. It loves numbers. It loves having abstract systems. It's plot, despite being set in a very unique setting and featuring some of the most likable characters to ever appear in a videogame, is the classic PSX era plot of twists upon twists and the occasional plothole. Don't be fooled by the MMO-ish battle engine and uses of terms like 'Aggro'.  While it's certainly a strange beast, it's still a Japanese one.

PERSONA 4

Persona 4 is much more "jRPG-y" than Xenoblade. Turn-based battles. SP. Seemingly arbitrary elemental weaknesses. People with weird hair (although not as weird as a lot of games).

But it's good. People love it. When you play it, it activates those brain cells that feel good. People are buying the PSP Vita (a thing that nobody really wants) just so they can play the remake.

POKEMON BLACK/WHITE

Pokemon would be considered the devil if it weren't already so popular. Incredibly linear. Shallow plot. Linear world. Grindy. Random Battles. Long stretches without healing, and money (early on) is hard to come by. Incredibly complex stat and growth calculations. It takes some sort of supergenius to figure it all out. Or else have a really good guide.

Pokemon Black/White, despite being one of the less punishing games in the series, is still brutal and unforgiving when compared to many other games. This game commits the sins that people wouldn't want from any other franchise.

BUT WHY?

The charm of the jRPG is peculiar and hard to explain, but for the western gamer that likes them, part of it is their inherent strangeness compared to the typical western games and their genres. It may be bias talking here, but the jRPG always tends to possess elements, either gameplay, story or setting-wise that you'd be hard pressed to find in a western game.

Let's be honest: Western RPGs are typically high fantasy (a million games) and occasionally science-fiction (Mass Effect).  Xenoblade is a science-fantasy with a setting that would fit right in a Dr. Who episode. Persona 4 is an urban fantasy where you hop into TVs, foil murders, and fight fragments of the collective unconscious; all inbetween going to school, doing part-time work, hanging with your bros, and wooing that cute tomboy who sits next to you. Pokemon is a fantastic cartoon world with what basically amounts to 400+ playable characters, each one unique, and near-endless choices when it comes to party and skill combinations.

While the western game tends to have the corner on the concept of the "customizable" main character, this can sometimes handicap them.  It's a lot harder to write a story around an amorphous blob of a character. Xenoblade wouldn't be as charming and moving without a main character who has an established personality. While Persona 4 and Pokemon both have silent protagonists, they are still written as being heroic individuals, and Yu Narukami has a concrete backstory (if a sparse one).

WHY IS TURN-BASED COMBAT OKAY, OR PERHAPS EVEN GOOD?

This applies pretty much just to two of the three example games I'm giving, but here goes:

The turn-based combat system works, when it's done right.  It can be engaging and strategic provided the developer knows how to do it.

While I liked some elements of Final Fantasy X's battle engine, sometimes it just felt like slogging through a battle. Elemental weaknesses and resistances really didn't matter in the endgame when you could just spam high-level spells and attacks and just hope that the superboss doesn't do its ubermove next turn. I literally prayed at times. No joke. (although I'm not sure even God can control the capricious nature of the RNG)

Persona 4 (and the Shin Megami Tensei games before it), however, has a brilliant solution. The game actually rewards the player for finding elemental weaknesses beyond just giving extra damage.  When you hit an enemy with the element it's weak to, the enemy will fall over, and the attacker will gain an extra turn. If all the enemies are toppled, the player can initiate an All-Out Attack which is functionally a free attack against all enemies based on the offensive power of the party. The game later adds additional elements such as characters doing special attacks after the main character knocks down an enemy, and so forth. This system is incredibly gratifying, and vital throughout the entire game to exploit. It's not just something you rely on for the first few dungeons.  Despite being turn-based, Persona's battle system feels dynamic and engaging.

And I neglected to mention that enemies can do the same exact thing against you.

Another great thing about Persona is the Guard command actually doing something.  In addition to reducing damage, it protects the character from status ailments and keeps them from being knocked over when hit by their elemental weakness. Persona 4 is one of the few games where defending during the final boss battle is necessary irregardless of level.

Additionally, stat buffs and debuffs are important. Enemies constantly buff and debuff, and you have to do exactly the same thing.

Pokemon is much the same, except it's much more of a gamble when it comes to your choices.  Elemental weaknesses and strengths are vitally important in this game, and status effects are a viable tactic, even against powerful Pokemon. Buffs and debuffs are critical as well.  Pokemon has room for all sorts of strategies, and has developed an advanced, competitive metagame from this. Really, all I can say can be summed up with this: Pokemon is fun.

To boil it down, the key to having a good, engaging, and fun turn-based (or any other battle system!) is to keep it dynamic and engaging. Punish players for just brute-forcing, but reward them for thinking and experimenting. Have stats and status effects constantly change, make elemental weaknesses actually do something, and even if you have something like Ultima, make sure to balance your game as to keep it from being the end-all be-all. And most importantly, make it fun.

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So, my last thought is this: Just because Square's stumbling does not be an entire genre is dead, the jRPG genre is more than Square. Just because there's been a swath of shitty games and a karfrillion spinoffs of FFXIII in the last few years doesn't mean there hasn't been good ones.

And most importantly: A game isn't terrible if it's fun. A genre isn't dead if it still has fun games in it. People still like a good jRPG, and good jRPGs are still being made.