arcelonious on 17 July 2013
I'm afraid I do not agree because I do not believe having a preset character is tied to whether or not a game is Japanese or western. For example, The Witcher is an example of a western-developed RPG that utilizes a preset protagonist (Geralt), while Dragon Quest IX is a Japanese example of a RPG that allows players to customize their protagonist. At the end of the day, there is just too much variety between each developer of each region to reduce the genres to western and Japanese, which is why I generally don't refer to western or Japanese RPGs as distinct genres.
