Director Katsura Hashino and character designer Shigenori Soejima, both Persona 5 veterans now filling the same roles on Atlus' new game Metaphor: ReFantazio, don't mind if you call these games JRPGs. In fact, Soejima says the term is a "positive" for him.
The term JRPG, commonly used in the West as a shorthand genre descriptor for Japanese RPGs generally featuring mechanics and aesthetics and other design sensibilities common to and first incubated within Japan, has seen some re-evaluation in the past few years. Many Japanese developers, from Final Fantasy 14's Yoshi-P to Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's Tetsuya Nomura to former Platinum Games director Hideki Kamiya, have had their say, with mixed views across the board. It begs the question our own Dustin Bailey explored last year: If developers don't like the term JRPG, what do we use instead?
