"devs AND fans of the genre have ceded that JRPG combat isn't really interesting"
Seriously, what is it about Japanese media that just brings out a specific kind of self assured dipshittery from (mostly) white voices in the industry? I see this shit all the time, both from the press side of things as well as within the industry itself. I won't name names, but I've met animators who hate anime, game designers who hate Japanese games, hell I once met a graphic designer who had a weird fixation on the "structural failings" of Japanese graphic design (whatever the hell that means).
Where does it come from? It happens too often to just be the occasional bad take.
To be clear, this isn't to imply Japanese media is exempt from criticism, but it's weird how much is in bizarrely racialized bad faith. I wouldn't go as far as call it racist, but definitely bordering on xenophobic.
Also god imagine criticizing JRPG combat (which is an insanely broad genre with so many different interpretations and styles) and then presenting deckbuilding as your solution.
Fuck it, tell me about some cool and interesting JRPG battle systems that you've enjoyed.
I'll start. Resonance of Fate is one of the messiest games I've ever played, but goddamn if I wish they had made like 2 more of them and refined the "Tri-Attack Battle system." It's a mix of real time and turn based where you decide your character's movement and shooting targets independently of each other. The key is to optimize your movement paths to synergize with your other party members to build up resources that you then cash in to do sick Equilibrium style gun-fu maneuvers. The tl;dr is the more sick jumps you do, the more resources and healing you get back in the process. Quite frankly it's an easy system to break after a certain point but it never gets boring watching your JRPG heroes decked out in primo mid 00s Japanese fashion do jumping 360 spins in the air while blasting hot lead in every direction.
What the fuck nonsense is this anyway. This brain genious clearly has Something In Mind for "JRPG combat" and I'm pretty sure it's just Dragon Warrior. Lightning Returns is my favorite RPG combat system of all time, it's unbelievably technical and like... you don't get much more middle of the road JRPG than "full-budget mainline Final Fantasy". I would defy this person to justify literally anything in those tweets.
i dont even care for actually playing dragon quest/warrior games bc they're not engaging in the way i want to be engaged with an rpg's battle system but I'll go to bat for them bc you cannot distill an RPG into JUST its combat system while ignoring everything else surrounding it; like DQ is overly simplistic and imo overreliant on rolls but part of the entire knowledge check for those games is KNOWING when to press your luck and knowing where to do what and get stuff and etc etc etc etc.
I always go back to Etrian Odyssey as "example of a relatively simple RPG battle system tuned extremely well" and its not ALWAYS perfect but when it hits it Fucking Hits. You can't really take it by itself either bc its a combination of how the game's progression works, class and skill design, and the Level Design (encounters + maze).
Deckbuilding itself CAN be an interesting way to present a battle system too, because the focus becomes knowing HOW to build your deck to get what you need when you need it. All about RNG/Risk Management, in a similar way to rolling for Ailment Procs.
(also im sure most everyone who sees this will already know that this sort of attitude towards japanese games has been a real stinker of a undercurrent in the indie game dev scene for as long as I can remember (12+ years now) and im STILL not sure where the fuck it came from; wild considering how influential Cave Story and La-Mulana were on early indie dev websites)