GameBanshee links to an article by Craig Stern at IndieRPGs, in which he doesn’t so much pose the question as explain the notable distinction between Western RPGs (WRPGs) and Japanese RPGs (JRPGs) as stylistic forms, and then argues that the distinction is a good thing.

The standard jRPG approach to character and item progression is exponential. The player begins with tens of hit points and attack damage, and rockets upwards from there, eventually ending the game with thousands of hit points and dealing several thousand damage per attack.

Items in jRPGs follow a similar curve, leading to something of a material consumption treadmill. Progression through the game involves constantly replacing old items and equipment with newer, more expensive models. That stuff you bought in the last town worked really well against wolves, but now you’re fighting giant toads, and they barely scratch them. So you buy the really expensive new models. And those work exceptionally well — until you get to the next area, which has enemies those weapons can barely scratch, and a town that sells a yet more expensive version of that same equipment. And so on. (I was pleasantly surprised to see the indie jRPG Deadly Sin 2 subverting this with its healing items, which actually remain useful throughout the whole game.)

Now, wRPGs love their leveling and loot collection too, but wRPGs tend to progress linearly in these areas. Characters begin the game doing about 5 damage per hit, and end the game doing less than 30 (up to 99 for exceptionally powerful and expensive spells). Health progresses in a similar fashion, as do magic points. This sort of linear progression is largely a consequence of wRPG systems arising more directly out of the systems of their pen-and-paper ancestors, which relied on dice and math that could easily be calculated by people sitting around a table and swilling beer. Needless to say, you aren’t going to roll 10,000-sided dice for damage in a game of Dungeons and Dragons.

Ultima fans have a bit of a horse in this race, since it’s arguably the case that JRPGs emerged as a distinct sytlistic form through an evolutionary process that can be traced back to Ultima 3. So whereas WRPGs of yesterera did indeed have their roots firmly planted in pen-and-paper RPGs, one could argue that JRPGs have their roots in early digital simulacra of those same systems; they are a layer removed therefrom.

Is the separation, the categorization, useful? It’s pretty easy to tell a JRPG from a WRPG with even a cursory glance; there is very obviously a sharp contrast between the aesthetics of each RPG type. A Western RPG and a Japanese RPG will differ, often quite sharply, in such categories as graphics, combat, general gameplay, and music, if not in many other ways as well. And to be fair, each style has its fans, and the fanbases of each style do not necessarily overlap. That’s not to say that there is no overlap, but it is to say that there is not 100% overlap.

So I’d say yes, the distinction is helpful.