The Evolution Of The JRPG

Capturing The Kingdom With Hearts

Following a discussion with Final Fantasy's Sakaguchi and Square's Shinji Hashimoto about creating a new type of 3D adventure, the latter just happened to share an elevator ride with a Disney executive one morning. Alright, maybe not that coincidental as both companies shared the same building, but it was still a pivotal meeting nonetheless.

The concept of the wealthiest animation studio and the biggest publisher of JRPG's combining forces seemed like an odd choice at the time, but it soon became one of those "so crazy it just might work" notions that did indeed pay off for both.

Pairing Disney's most recognisable characters and worlds with that of Squaresoft's skills in the hybrid and traditional RPG market paid off for both companies, as Kingdom Hearts has gone on to be a multi-million dollar series. The story may have gone a bit convoluted, but the simplified action/adventure hybrid with some RPG elements made it accessible for newcomers to get into this kind of game.

Which, unfortunately, also began to mark the decline of the genre, as we stepped into the next generation of consoles - namely Sony's PlayStation 3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360.

That's not say, "Kingdom Hearts killed JRPG's for the hardcore", but for many it was the writing on the wall they'd been ignoring to that point.