In the west it was never a negative term. It also dates back to the early 90’s. It was a category of games, and if you liked RPGs it was the best category of the genre.
That said, in the late PS3 days it did become somewhat synonymous with cheap anime crap game on the PSN marketplace. But broadly speaking it was still a positive term.
FiddlerForest t1_jaezner wrote
Reply to According to Skill-Up's interview of Naoki Yoshida (Final Fantasy 14 and 16), the term "JRPG" was actually viewed as a derision in the Japanese game development space: by Gorotheninja
In the west it was never a negative term. It also dates back to the early 90’s. It was a category of games, and if you liked RPGs it was the best category of the genre.
That said, in the late PS3 days it did become somewhat synonymous with cheap anime crap game on the PSN marketplace. But broadly speaking it was still a positive term.