From my limited interaction with turn based RPG players, it went from "Don't use it if you don't like it" to "Part of the fun IS breaking the game" as if that's not a damning indictment of the design.

Barely even a game at that point if one strategy beats all of the 'challenge' effortlessly.

There's games that enforce hardcore nuzlocke rules and those are probably the best ones, but they're still designed to be 30 hour games. It's insane to ask someone to do a 30 hour 1cc, so I guess more dense proper games would be preferrable.

Pokemon romhacks are really the only JRPG I've seen that treat average trainers like real threats, while skipping dumb stuff like random encounters and grinding. Now if only they enforced some kind of arcade structure where a run has a lose state and it ends if you lose... Hmm...

Using items in battle also just removes the games because infinitely spamming revives & healing items becomes the optimal strat. Limiting how many pokemon you're allowed to catch + permadeath also helps to change up your teams and gives it a better structure, even if it's a long ass game

not what the game is designed around. 30 hour game 1cc is just an insane ask and you could design a shorter, more dense game around it. It's just that nobody is really trying to go for it, because turn-based games are story and casual experience first. I agree, it's a huge issue for the genre

I always recommend Etrian Odyssey to people that want better JRPGs to play, but the best part of them is just the final superboss. Until then, it's just a more difficult version of the freeform "break it if you want" gameplay every JRPG does. Hardcore nuzlockes in particular solve this, but they're-

Yeah, the main issue is always going to be a lack of balance. If you don't design a game where you're always on the backfoot and have to barely edge out a win (like the post-game final boss), the game is gonna be 30 hours of you doing the exact thing you designed your party to do over and over.

The majority of the time though, and even in those Pokémon romhacks, the game becomes a lot better as soon as you enforce some kinda rules that don't let you overlevel etc. Etrian post-game is kinda the exception here, but you still need to not google the weird comp that one shots bosses.

There's some, like Etrian Odyssey ramping up during the post-game, Pokémon romhacks being more difficult as you get to the elite four, Shiren The Wanderer's difficulty being mainly the post-game dungeons and the main campaign feeling like a tutorial. Outside of those, the genre is casual as hell.