/vr/ - Retro Games

The west was influenced by board games. Creators of RPGs were also board game players, so they had a point of reference on how to make the games, which explains the scope, mechanics and systems you see.

But jrpgs didn't have that, only wrpg and manga/anime as an inspiration. From the point of view of a Japanese designer, jrpgs only serve to self insert yourself into an imaginary world and story, but wrpg developers knew what could be achieved by role playing and tried to capture that by adding complex systems (reputation, skills, factions, branched dialogues) that are usually miles ahead of jrpg but that never quite captured the real thing.

Eventually they were both leaded to transmit stories with some player agency or let the player do menial tasks that had little chance of trapping the player or had no strings attached. In that sense Japan was ahead of time.