Quote Originally Posted by Bolivar View Post

I've been wanting to ask this for a while and I guess this is the thread to do it: why do people say the Souls games are Western-style RPGs?

I honestly can't think of a single WRPG like them, except for Lord of the Fallen, a 2014 game specifically designed to be a Souls-like. To me their closest analogue was the Quest mode in games like Ehrgeiz and Tobal. And FROM has stated many times it's the spiritual successor to King's Field, which didn't have any Western games like it at the time. Most people also seem to recognize Ghosts & Goblins as oldest analogue - a Japanese medieval fantasy game centered around map memorization and attack timing.

I guess it's the macabre sword & sorcery setting but I really don't know when that was ever the exclusive domain of WRPGs.
Stylistically, King's Field (Souls and Bloodbourne's predecessor series) has far more in common with old school WRPG PC titles like Dungeon Master, Lands of Lore, and Ultima Underworld than it does with the Action-RPGs commonly associated with Japan's market. I think that is where many people get the impression. The only JRPG series it has anything in common with that I'm aware or (barring some obscure game I'm obviously ignorant of that someone like ShinGundam would know) is actually old school MegaTen which was light on plot, heavy on dungeon explorations and both series have an obsession with dark and foreboding world's where things like "happiness" and "hope" are lies parents tell their children at night so they don't give completely into despair.

So yeah, gameplay and style-wise, From Software's RPG franchise really traces it's roots back to old Western PC RPGs than Japanese ones. The fact the series lacks the narrative and gameplay functions of your typical JRPG doesn't help it to shake off that distinction. Frankly, I don't understand why people even bother with the semantics of it all. It's a fun series, so does it matter if we should define it by it's root's or it's heritage?

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In terms of the question, I'm not sure if it can really be done because I feel the biggest distinction from the two styles is a narrative one and simply choosing one over the other would kind of invalidate the whole... hybrid thing. Games like FFXII, Xenoblade Chronicles, and even the Elder Scrolls series, to me at least, are borrowing heavily from MMORPG's which tend to be games that focus on exploring large places and doing inane fetch quests to pass the time between monthly payments. I'm not really sure how I would go about making a "hybrid" as I just don't think it's possible.