[sotix]

> Many people are perfectly happy to enjoy a story in a video game which isn't driven by the technical, interactive bits. The entire JRPG genre is like this, for example, as are visual novels.

This wasn’t always the case for JRPGs[0]. There was quite a long period where JRPGs were pushing technical limits. Especially around the time of Final Fantasy VII.

[0]: https://youtu.be/EhQamvbfDxc?si=rWRJmHeo_69OI99e&t=5145

[astrange]

There was a JRPG "tech winter" in the PS3-PS4 era because Japanese developers seemed to have a lot of difficulty developing for HD consoles, but I think there was a lot of innovation in handheld games that hasn't been acknowledged. (Though, uh, I can't think of an example.)

Even on consoles there was NieR, which has all the kinds of gameplay you could want.

Square-Enix is trying to bring this back, each Final Fantasy game has had a different combat system and largely been an action game for some time now. I think they largely failed at this, except for FFXIV and FF7 Remake/Rebirth which are great, but they definitely try.