Katsura Hashino wants to usher in the age of “JRPG 3.0.” The director of Metaphor: ReFantazio and Persona 5 spoke at G-Star 2025, a gaming conference in South Korea. Hashino was at a talk with art director Shigenori Soejima, and the talk was called “When Experience Becomes Memory – Designing Lasting Impressions through Art and Structure.”
Hashino sees the JRPG genre as three distinct eras – the past (JRPG 1.0); the present (JRPG 2.0) and the future (JRPG 3.0). This is according to 4gamer’s report which was translated by GamesRadar+ and reported by GamesRadar+’s George Young.
Also, according to 4gamer, Hashino sees JRPG 1.0 as the “classics,” which includes the original Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Shin Megami Tensei and Persona. JRPG 2.0 is the genre as it is currently, with “its current style, which feels higher quality due to how much more responsive they are to the player.”
What to Expect in JRPG 3.0
“JRPG 3.0,” Hashino said, will result in a “greater dimension to these games and they’ll change the genre’s structure and presentation at a fundamental level.” PushSquare’s Robert Ramsey writes, “While Hashino appears to be talking about evolution on a more general level, increasingly popular trends like action-based gameplay will contribute to how future JRPGs present themselves.”
One cannot ignore the success of French studio Sandfall Interactive’s Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and its impact on the RPG genre. People at Square Enix have noticed the game’s success, as the game sold over five million copies in five months. Several members of Clair Obscur’s staff visited Square Enix’s offices and met with some of the development leads.
Clair Obscur’s Impact on JRPGs
Due to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s status as an homage to the legacy of JRPGs, Kotaku’s Ethan Gach writes that the game “recontextualized the past more than it points to some revolutionary future, but maybe, as with Metaphor and other turn-based games experimenting around the fringes, it can be a bridge to something new.”
Metaphor: ReFantazio came out on October 10, 2024 for PC and consoles. The game is Steam Deck verified and has Very Positive reviews on Steam. Director Katsura Hashino is not ruling out a possible sequel.
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