Everything you say makes sense, but I think we're approaching concepts like character customization, meaningful choice from completely different angles.

I have never played a JRPG where I felt like I had one iota of control over how my character turned out. And I want to preface this by saying that this is not necessarily a bad thing. Hell, in most JRPGs since they moved away from silent heroes, the concept "my character" isn't even relevant. You're not creating an avatar of yourself or some character you're roleplaying, you're controlling existing and pre-defined characters as they progress down paths defined by the developer. The only control you have is how far down the linear character path you have progressed.

In most Western Style RPGs, you DO have a lot of control over how your character turns out. You have actual choices to make about what abilities you will progress, what skills you'll pick up, etc. In a good RPG, these choices will have a significant impact on how you approach - and generally, how you're capable of approaching - challenges. Examples: Kotor, Mass Effect, Vampire: The Masquerade, Deus Ex.

An important part of creating this balance, where players must make choices that actually define their character differently, is to limit resources. The general idea is that limiting player resources to the point that they can't learn every move, or progress down every path, is the very thing that makes your choices matter. If you can choose everything, or every available option, then the choice no longer matters. If you can only choose from a subset of the total available choices, then by definition choosing one precludes choosing others - and the choice will actually have an impact and, if the options are varied enough, allow for different play-styles and different approaches.

The long and short of it is, Japanese RPGs tend to have no horizontal progression - you never make choices that develop your character in different directions. But they do have vertical progression, where you can level your on-rails character up - aka further along the rails.

Western RPGs have some horizontal progression, but it must be limited to force the choices that players make to have any value. They also have vertical progression (usually in the form of simple leveling up or gaining items with increased stats, just like a JRPG), but that vertical progression is also limited. Sometimes that limit is necessary, like when the reward for vertical progression is points to spend on horizontal progression. Sometimes it is not necessary, and that's potentially an area where western RPGs could improve.

I'm curious as to what you define as "meaningful character customization." The example you give seem to define it as the simple ability to level up... which I don't see as customization. Outside of the rare JRPG that uses the Job System (usually something you find in tactical RPGs like Final Fantasy Tactics), I can't think of a single one that has any customization at all. I guess FFX had it's sphere grid? But it wasn't really very customizable, because you had clear, optimal solutions to it, and it didn't create choices between play-styles, it created choices between a good party that followed the rails and a bad party that didn't.


I will say, I've never put much thought into how constricting the Western RPG style could feel. I'll keep that in mind if I ever design one.