Is there a trade industry term to refer to games with feel and gameplay like "Final Fantasy IV" etc…?
I would like to search for similar games (especially if, ideally, a good open source ones exist), but having trouble with proper genre for search terms. Wiki simply dubs them "role playing games" which is very vague as far as searching.
Best Answer
For the most part, RPG is the main classification. Some might also opt to say JRPG, or "Japanese RPG", meaning to distinguish this narrative-style from the more open-ended style of western RPGs such as Fallout.
Past that, it's pretty rough and there probably isn't a specific terminology. Genres are kinda broad by nature and it's by tagging a ton of extra labels on top of it that specificity is found. For example, the descriptors for the early Final Fantasy games will generally be "turn based" and "menu driven" party combat in an "overworld exploration" RPG.
If you want to narrow it down to the essence specifically of the full combination brought by Final Fantasy, I think there isn't really any general term so much as a "likening". That is, you'd call a game of similar substance as "a turn-based menu-driven RPG like the Final Fantasy series". This is kinda like how Etrian Odyssey had been marketed as an "old-fashioned first-person dungeon RPG like the Wizardry games". First-person dungeon RPG isn't the most descriptive, but it kinda fits those games to a T and "Wizardry-like" never really took off quite like "roguelike" did.
Past this, there really isn't a unique terminology for these games. Early SaGa games, early Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest... RPG has pretty much been the identifying term for them since very early on, and little has changed in that department.