It's a lop-sided comparison, pitting a small island nation against several entire continents...
Nevertheless, one thing that stands out is the way in which they approach the gameplay-story balance:
- Western games often try to find a balance between story and gameplay, without swinging too much in either direction.
- Japanese games often tend to fall into two camps: heavily gameplay-driven games (with story an afterthought) or entirely story-driven visual novels (with barely any gameplay).
The gameplay-centric Japanese games tend to have the best gameplay, while Japanese visual novels tend to have the best storytelling. But you don't see many Japanese games striking a balance between these two extremes. Whereas more Western games tend to be jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none. Western games don't have the best gameplay (compared to Japanese action games) or the best storytelling (compared to Japanese visual novels), but they attempt to strike a balance between story and gameplay in one package.
On the gameplay-story spectrum, Japanese games tend to fall more on the extreme ends of both, and can either have great gameplay (e.g. J-action games) or great storytelling (i.e. visual novels), but not much in-between these two extremes. Whereas Western games tend to be more around the middle of the spectrum.
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