And basically it boils down to how much we value different aspects of our game and choices. I as a player don't approach leveling in a JRPG as a matter of choice or roleplaying; I see it as a matter of progress or lack thereof. I never, ever go out of my way to level unless I reach a brick wall and am required to because my numbers aren't high enough. That is not fun to me, but I do see why it might be more important in your approach.

I do find it strange that you can point to character choices in games like Mass Effect and call them nothing but fluff. I genuinely play the game differently in KOTOR depending on what class I am, how I've specced out that class, etc. The same fight could be different levels of challenge depending on those choices. If you make bad ones, you're gimped - someone in the KOTOR discussion just here a couple days ago said that they made some "bad" character choices and found the last boss of KOTOR to be simply impossible. They could not beat him. I don't have personal examples that are that extreme, but I certainly wouldn't call those choices nothing but "fluff".

You are right though: the amount of exp players are given, and the amount they are allowed to grow in power, is more tightly controlled in a western RPG. It means that players are generally not going to have as wide of a level spread as you'd see in a JRPG at any given point in the game. And this means that the level progression is more treadmill-like: the game is going to increase almost inevitably at the same rate as your own numbers are. The way I see it, that makes the non-numbers choices - the qualitative instead of quantitative choices - more important, because they are the choices that actually impact how you do. Whereas in a JRPG the only thing that impacts how you do is whether you've spent too much time running from battles and are under-leveled, or spent more time wandering around fighting.

Another thing to consider is that the fewer times you level up or gain an increase in power or numbers, the more impact that leveling is going to have. That applies to both types of RPG really, but I find that a western RPG is more likely to get that pacing right - more likely, but still do a pretty bad job with it, on average.

You are right about the whole difficulty thing though: your example, where when you encounter a boss you'll be roughly the same level no matter what, and it will take the same amount of time, is fairly accurate. The experience of fighting that boss is going to be very different depending on your choices, but the difficulty of it probably won't differ too much.

You say that all you're really changing in a western RPG is the action. The roleplaying is never affected. That is strange to me, because in the western RPG you're more likely to make choices about your character history or background, make choices that effect the story (even if it's just a few obvious branching points), make choices that effect what sort of actions your character takes in combat. Vs the JRPG's sole roleplaying advantage, which is that you can choose to approach a fight as a David or a Goliath, numbers-wise. I haven't seen a JRPG that really had actual roleplaying in any form in... a very long time. Not that that's a problem, just that it has never been a priority for the genre.

The flip side of this: the JRPG structure is capable of telling a stronger story (whether they do or not is a tangential and subjective argument!), because it doesn't have to worry about taking into account all this choice rigmarole. The western RPG style is again, capable of making the player feel like they are in the middle of and effecting the story more.


And there you have it. I'm not running out of steam because I'm enjoying this little debate immensely, but I can stop... hah. And don't worry, I'm not concerned with proving myself right. It's such a subjective and personal matter of taste that there is no such thing. I'm just interested in finding out more about how the two genres tick by using you as a lens than anything else. I'm making most of this stuff up as I go along, and it's great.