Also, poll is invalid since Kingdom of Loathing wasn't considered a jrpg.
KoL was made by Zack "Jick" Johnson, by a company based in Cleveland.
It is such very unclear how it can be described by the j in jrpg.
Must be some type of inside joke.
I've never known
Alex to joke about weird random hills he's willing to die on. It is an admirable quality in may ways, if a bit frustrating.
I am mostly joking. I mean, I think my point is valid, but I know well enough people won't agree with me either way. Whenever I come to the JRPG forums, I get in a bit of weird mood. One of the reasons why I want the ability to ignore forums back, I am always afraid I will end up annoying people more than entertaining them.
It has the usual jrpg game play, with turn based combat based on simple attributes, special attacks and items, but without spatial positioning mattering (well, the last challenge run introduced flying pterodactyl that can't be hit without ranged attacks, but that is still a yes/no affair, rather than actual distance).
So the difference between a turn based crpg and jrpg is that positioning doesn't matter?
Actually, I consider "CRPG" to be a "pseudo-genre". That is, I believe that games should have their classification based on the kind of gameplay they offer, since this is the most important thing about them. Following this thought, JRPGs would be a particular kind of strategy game, with few or even just one unit, without space mattering mostly and being based mostly in gearing up and building your units (with jobs, or materia, or just choosing the ones that get abilities that don't suck at level up and sticking to them). It is a rather artificial genre, but one with plenty of examples, so I think the label isn't useless.
CRPGs aren't classified based on any gameplay though, but rather a more abstract quality of trying (and managing) to emulate table-top games in some way. In this way, I consider Zork, which is an adventure game, a CRPG since the exploration in it is very similar (and I believe, inspired by) how you might go about exploring a dungeon in an old RPG like D&D. In particular, some JRPGs are CRPGs as well (or, if you want to be precise, have a certain merit as CRPGs).
I am pretty sure KoL doesn't have advanced special attacks, positioning, etc is because it's an early browser game, and early browsers don't lend themselves to display or inputing complex gameplay.
Sure, but that doesn't change what it is.