The big differences are that JRPGs have interesting characters and try to tell interesting stories while most Western RPGs from Wizardry and Might and Magic ( and other than Bioware's which have their own problems stemming from the use of the dialogue trees and pick your own path storylines, but do feature actual characters or the Ultima and SSI D & D games from the Golden Age of PC gaming which were true classics) to games like Morrowind, etc, trap you in first-person, maze crawling dungeons that usually have no point and no real stories and you create your own character. They are like FPS games slowed down so that you use stats instead of shooting, and they are much more tedious and headache inducing than FPS games.
Heavens to Murgatoids.
