Roleplaying games that are not made in Japan. Simple.
Thanks for playing. Could you do me a favor and also define roleplaying games
Games where you
a) create a character
b) determine your character's development path by allocating stat points on level up
c) use that character (or party of characters) to interact with the gameworld
In some western RPGs, one of these is missing, like games where you get a fixed character instead of choosing your own (Planescape Torment, Gorasul, etc) but even then you get to determine your character's development yourself. Classic D&D doesn't give you much in the way of character development (fighters for example just get bonus THAC0 and HP and saving throws, no feats to select or skill points to distribute) but every D&D game out there lets you create your own party. And whenever you interact with the world, it's player-driven too. Dialogue with NPCs in western RPGs is either based on typing in keywords or choosing a response from a list. Some RPGs include adventure game style inventory puzzles, riddles where you have to type in the answer, etc etc. Some games like Ultima VII and the Elder Scrolls games even let you toy around with every single item in the game world, making it all interactive.
Meanwhile JRPGs lack all of these features most of the time. You don't create a character, you play a fixed character whose name, personality, character class and abilities are all pre-determined. Often, you don't even get to make choices during levelup: the bonuses your characters get on levelup are also pre-determined. There is no player choice in what character you want to play or how to develop him or her. It's fully pre-determined and linear. Furthermore, world interaction tends to be hands-off too. Where in western RPGs dialogues either use keywords or dialog trees, in JRPGs they're presented as cutscenes with no player input. Interacting with NPCs is wholly non-interactive. Environmental interactions are also rare, while western RPGs moved further and further into allowing the player to do things with the environment (Ultima VII and Elder Scrolls, as mentioned above; but also Fallout where you can sometimes use your skills on objects in the world, like using repair on a well), JRPGs tend to present intricately designed cities where none of the cool objects on display can be interacted with. It's completely static. You can look, but you can't touch.
That's pretty much the exact opposite of what RPGs should be. RPGs developed from pen and paper systems, where the focus has always been on player choice and player-driven gameplay. YOU create the character you want to play, YOU develop that character in the direction you want to, and YOU make the choices you want to when the DM confronts you with a situation.
