What I'm trying to get at is that Mario RPG's shouldn't be deemed JRPG's.  As of late, JRPG's seem to be anime with massive plot-holes, grinding and typical archtypes.  In comparsion, most Mario RPG's seem to be humorously written and don't seem to follow the pattern of "Young male; often an idiot, gender-confused, and/or seeking his identity and sense of moral fiber; with a group of friends and his love interest saves the world."  This is not to say that JRPG's are bad but Mario RPG's are too different to be considered in the same class.

So let's have this..

Western Roleplaying Games

Japanese Roleplaying Games

Mario Roleplaying Games

Thoughts?

Strategy RPG says hi.

Yeah, but a game's genre isn't defined by its writing, protaganists, and/or adherence to structural archetypes.

Earthbound; it doesn't fit your mold for JRPG's...but it is one. The notorioius "Charles Barkley Gaiden: Shut Up and Jam"--NBA basketball players in a post-apocalyptic world aren't really typical of JRPG's, but it IS a JRPG.

Also, the scant handful of Mario RPG's out there are not strictly the same type of game. Super Mario RPG, Paper Mario, and Mario and Luigi all differ at least to some degree from each other.

I think it's too silly trying to clump the games together in categories like this. If you make mario rpgs a separate category, then you could EASILY divide up western RPGS into different categories. And what about the TAles games? They're not much like FF but they're in the same category.

You're too caught up on labels :)

I'm with Blaydcor.

There are many games other than Mario RPG's that don't fit your description, if we gave each it's own category there would be too many. Besides, there is nothing that dictates that a JRPG have the kind of story you are mentioning. Earthbound doesn't, Valkyria Chronicles doesn't, arguably Persona 4 doesn't either.

JRPGs and WRPGs aren't what you would say as valid sub-genres because the only thing that seperate themselves is where they were made. They are only used to differentiate, mostly because their traditional RPGs have different features.

I've played Mario RPGs and I can tell you that they are no different than the traditional JRPGs. It's not that the story is different, but that Mario RPGs' storytelling is around the same as most JRPGs.

These are the valid sub-genres of RPGs:
- RPG
- MMORPG
- Action RPG
- Strategy RPG, or Tactical RPG

It seems obvious you didn't play many JRPG given your description of them. It's also clear you played a very selective of JRPG. So you're clearly not qualified at all to try to categorize them like that.

Hint: there's no pattern in JRPG like the one you cited. Even the flagship JRPG series prove you wrong.

There are so many different types of RPG it is not really worth it, shio's divisions are basically right

I don't agree with this statement, WRPG tend to be more open-world and free roaming, while JRPG are more story-centric incidentally the game becomes more linear.

I agree with shio's divisions more, because there are far more to JRPGs than what you say.