The future of JRPGs means leaving the genre’s classic combat design behind

During a talk at the Korean gaming conference G-Star 2025, Katsura Hashino — director of Metaphor: ReFantazio and the last three mainline Persona games — expressed his vision for the future of JRPGs. For Hashino, the genre is heading toward a fundamental change that will lead to what he calls “JRPG 3.0.” He said that the classics belong to the 1.0 generation and that we’re currently in the 2.0 version of the genre.