So, I was looking over at the boards for a certain pisshole of the interwebs that may possibly have something to do with Games and FAQS, when i stumbled onto yet another topic on their ps3 board self-congratulating themselves on Last Remnant not coming to the pstriple.

Along with the usual reactions of indifference up to people berating the game as horrible and people who loved the game arguing. As usual it somehow devolved into an argument over sales figures of various rpgs. And I had at least one thought at that point, Just what DOES the average JRPG fan have against the strategy jrpg? Time and time again where I myself or someone else has pointed to Valkyria Chronicles as a shining example of a good rpg for the ps3, it gets beat down for "yeah, but its a strategy rpg" as the reason why it sold poorly.

I seriously don't get that reasoning, really. Now don't get me wrong, I fully understand there is a league of difference in battle systems between an japanese SRPG like valkyria, Disgaea, Sakura Taisen, or my favorite series on earth, Super Robot Wars, and something like FF7 or Lost Odyssey. But once you get past that, a lot of the things that attract people to one are present in the other a lot.

Both have a large tendency to rely on linear, dramatic stories with more than a few anime tropes and genre conventions sprinkled everywhere. (as examples, I point to my avatar icon , Seolla Schweizer and her on again, off again "boyfriend" Arado Balanga, who pretty much exemplify the "bumbling lech + crazy cute tsundere" archetype. They just also happen to pilot crazy mecha capable of destroying large swaths of enemy mecha without breaking a sweat.), not to mention the same sort of "only this small group of plucky rules defiers can save us all"

Both tend to have largely orchestrated sountracks with lots of epic songs thrown in (such as my aforementioned love of Chrono cross' music, FF7's Music, etc, or on the other end of the spectrum in SRPGs, Jam project comes across as the big example, but almost all the major original characters in SRW have their own theme songs with a tendency to be hilariously over the top))

Both also tend to be exremely flashy, though i admit jrpgs settle more for over the top cutscenes while SRPGs tend to be more motivated to have all the flash be in the upper tier attacks of characters. And lets face it, there isn't a whole lot of difference in the over the top-ness of Sephiroth to a bunch of japanese girls in steam powered mecha using mystic powers and love to smash demons.

In summary, I'm just not really sure if its simply the way a battle flows in an srpg that turns people off to them, or what..because despite how much the average jrpg fan seems to insist they're two different genres..I really dont see a huge difference other than the length of battles. Maybe someone else who does see a difference could explain it to me? o.o