Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and fellow GOTY trophy glutton Baldur's Gate 3 before it were held up by some as a return to form for turn-based RPGs. But while they did respectively bring or reintroduce a lot of people and attention to JRPGs and CRPGs, and serve as exemplars of their genres, turn-based games never really went away or needed saving. Kazuhisa Wada, head of Persona team P-Studio at Atlus, says "what we're calling a 'resurgence' may simply be the rediscovery of things that had fallen outside our field of view."
In a conversation with Game Informer, Wada admits "this might sound a bit contrarian" and highlights how some discussions shifted following "the recent wave of high‑quality turn‑based RPGs released in the West." He doesn't single any games out by name, but we don't need to put on our thinking caps to read between the lines here.
