Persona and Metaphor ReFantazio director, Katsura Hashino, said in a recent interview that he wants to take the JRPG genre to the next level, which he has tentatively named JRPG 3.0. Mr Hashino has says that Atlus will accomplish this by ultimately changing the genre’s structure and presentation and will presumably accomplish this mission with the next Persona game and next Metaphor ReFantazio games which are no doubt being worked on at Atlus.
Hashino says JRPG 1.0 includes the “true classics.” He doesn’t name specific examples, but JRPGs are one of the longest enduring genres, with games like Dragon Quest existing since 1986, and Final Fantasy seeing new entries since 1987. He says that the genre split into its second iteration with “its current style, which feels higher quality due to how much more responsive they are to the player.”
However, the most interesting part of Hashino’s speech was his description of the next generation of JRPGs. He isn’t sure what “JRPG 3.0”, as he calls it, will look like, but he hopes his next game will be part of this new iteration on the genre. According to the article, he believes, “there will be a greater dimension to these games and they’ll change the genre’s structure and presentation at a fundamental level.”
Funny he says that when, as much as they’re excellent, Atlus’ games are extremely formulaic in tone and presentation. Persona, for example, follows such a rigid structure that it actually gets in the way of evolution in narrative and gameplay.
“Atlus’ games are extremely formulaic in tone and presentation” Except they aren’t if you have played their other games that aren’t Persona 3-5 and Metaphor…
Then get started it takes about 6 to 8 years to make. And i dont want to pay for a Switch 3 to play it.
What SigmaZX said. I also can’t think of any current modern JRPG title that brings us closer to what Hashino sees as “JRPG 3.0.”
Hell in terms of combat alone, I argue that some old school titles like Vagrant Story, Valkyrie Profile and Resonance of Fate (to name a few) were already far ahead of their time and leave most JRPGs of today in the dust.