jRPG visual overview.

Looking at jRPG game series, visually:

Final Fantasy.

Final Fantasy is one of the most well known jRPG game titles and possesses a style that has evolved throughout the series. Final Fantasy 1 actually lacked the preset characters that the series has become known for, instead allowing the player to pick any combination of character classes (without names or identities) to form their party of and play as throughout the game.

A brief overview of older FF artstyles:

Final Fantasy II

Final Fantasy IV

Concept art for these games was very soft, with delicate lines and regular use of light, pastel colours.

FFVII:

FFIX:

Later games drew less from traditional manga/pastel coloured styles. Colours were more solid, but still bright and varied.

FFX:

FFX was the game that kicked off the cinematic, 'realistic' yet idealised 3D beauty of the modern series.

FFXII:

FFXIII:

Colours are a midway between those of the early games and those used in FF7/9. The clothing designs are generally inspired by real-world items of clothing with occasional exaggerations thrown in (Lulu's belts, Fran's dominatrix outfit, Vaan's boots, etc). Accessories and layers are used quite heavily. Hair has the appearance of individual strands, but can be separated into smaller clumps.

Tales series:

Another long-running jRPG series.

Phantasia:

Eternia:

Symphonia:

Legendia:

Innocence:

Abyss:

Graces:

Xilia:

Xilia 2:

Many of the more recent Tales games (Graces, Abyss, Symphonia) feature certain box art editions that use more traditional colouring/art styles with soft shading and colours. However, in-game models and 2D status pictures use a flatter, digital style with minimal shading. Hair in this style is drawn in shapes with little detail to individual strands outside of the use of shading.

Clothing is simple, drawn without excessive folds or details to indicate material. This could, however, be attributed to the regional fashion of certain games, as it's most prominent in Symphonia/Abyss and relaxed (slightly) in Xilia, with some of the female outfits giving out a lolita vibe. In Xilia 2, clothing looks more like something influenced by real-world j-pop and rock fashion and less like something entirely from fantasy.

Colours are diverse in clothing, weapons, eyes and hair, straying from conventional/natural colours for the latter two. In clothing, the colours match Final Fantasy's in that they are bright and varied.

SMT/Persona:

The Persona and SMT series, while still containing fantasy elements and a storyline that generally revolves around monsters/demons, is often set in the real world (usually Japan). The clothing of the characters reflects this in many of the games, as it is much more grounded and based on reality. Varied colours are still present but are often muted or darkened, matching the darker subject matter the games often revolve around.

SMT: Devil Survivor:

Persona 1:

Persona 2:

Persona 3:

Persona 3 art often seems to use a colour overlay on the bottom half of character portraits -- blue, black and purple colours feature heavily throughout the game. The Persona games, being based on people of a certain age, often revolve around high school and have the characters in their school uniforms.

SMT IV:

Outside of alarming hairstyle choices, SMT:IV has fairly reserved costume choices, as most of the characters remain in their uniforms in promotional art and during the game. Most of the colours and fantasy designs in the Persona/SMT series comes from the enemies, be they demons or persona. These creatures are often recruitable and playable, so serve as 'protagonists' in a sense.

Kingdom Hearts:

A relatively modern series, based on the combination of an original universe with Disney and Final Fantasy worlds and characters. Visually, the series resembles Final Fantasy, with large eyed, cherubic Disney faces influencing the appearance of the main cast. Game visuals have remained very consistent in all entries so far, as they have all cropped up within the last two generations of gaming.

Several well-known Disney characters are featured within the series, and these have been redesigned to match the look of the Kingdom Hearts world. The redesigns are more of a 'reoutfitting', giving the characters clothes that emphasize accessories and aesthetics over functionality.

Original Disney Design

KH Redesign

The base outfit remains by and large the same, but is given a pockets and zipper overhaul. The series mixes dark, hard colours with softer, gentler ones depending on the character or moment it is portraying. The colour palette remains varied, with some characters wearing outfits featuring four colours or more. Clothing shapes are distinctive and varied, sometimes unnecessarily so. Pictured below is the main protagonist's Kingdom Hearts 2 outfit; is he wearing horse riding chaps?

Suikoden:

Another long-running Japanese RPG series, based on the Chinese novel 'Shui Hu Zhuan'. Each game in the series has 108 recruitable protagonists, many of which are reoccuring. 

Suikoden I:

Suikoden II:

Suikoden III:

Suikoden IV:

The art style and character/clothing design remains relatively consistent throughout the series. This is primarily based on the fact that Suikoden games are all set in the same world, often featuring the same characters when the time period permitted. While the game features plenty of colour, the colours are not nearly as bright/saturated as the ones seen in KH2/FF. Character hairstyles are varied, ranging from fairly realistic styles to spikey, anime-typical styles.

Clothing designs are relatively simple and frill-free (outside of one or two exceptions), with many characters wearing tunics or suits of armor. One character consistently portrayed in her armor uniform is Chris Lightfellow. Chris is a main character and skilled fighter, and her design is not particularly sexualized. While fan-service does exist in the Suikoden games, Chris' character is not subject to it.

Suikoden V:

Suikoden V, the last main-series entry, changes the clothing design of the series slightly. Flowing, gravity defying cloth makes an appearance on a number of characters, some of which are redesigns. More revealling outfits are used on certain characters, and colour/outfits reminiscent of nobility are more commonplace (top row).

A character's outfit progression throughout the series. More skin is revealled as time goes on, and floaty cloth is placed to accessorize.

Nier:

Released on the 360 and PS3, Nier is an interesting game. The character designs are distinctly Japanese, though are very macabre (to match the subject matter and tone of the game). Colours are much more toned down than in other jRPGs, and clothing often favours browns, blacks, and whites over anything bright. Most interesting is the Nier Gestalt/Nier Replicant split. Nier Gestalt was released overseas in the West and on the Xbox 360 in Japan. Replicant was released in Japan only on the PS3. The two games were entirely identical outside of the main character.

This image represents the jRPG/wRPG character design split stereotype very, very accurately. The directors wanted to create a character for the West and for 'adult' gamers that would appeal. They made him older, more muscular, and more masculine. The Japanese character was a young boy (his role in the story was a brother, as opposed to a father) and much more androgynous than his Western counterpart. The reaction Western gamers had to their specially tailored protagonist, however, was less than positive. There was also some confusion over which version came first. Originally, Square Enix claimed that the older protagonist came first. However, the Producer of the game later clarified that the younger version of Nier was indeed the orginal.

The promotional art draws lots of attention to this East/West stereotyping as well.

http://www.siliconera.com/2010/05/20/barbarian-nier-was-born-in-los-angeles/

Xenoblade Chronicles:

Xenoblade (titled as a tribute to the Xeno series) is a game based on 18 year old protagonist, Shulk, and his friends. It affords the player a fair amount of freedom to roam and features colourful characters, environments, and creatures.

The game features colourful outfits and a whole range of different hair colours and styles -- from Sephiroth-esque flowing locks to military buzz cuts. Clothing designs range from form fitting to loose and flowing, though the latter is often toned down or not as apparent when rendered in-game (it was a Wii title). Thigh-high boots and socks feature on all three of the main females. Art style and lines look similar to that used in Suikoden and older Persona titles, while clothing designs seem more Final Fantasy esque. Blue/silver outfits are very distinctive looking and a little angelic/religious in their design. The character below is a mage.

Ni no Kuni:

A collaboration between Level-5 and Studio Ghibli -- visually it's a playable Ghibli movie. Pre-rendered cutscenes are of movie quality, and in-game models mimic this style. Character designs and clothing are very simple, and shading on clothing and characters is very minimalistic.

In-game models

Pre-rendered video

There's very little sexualization (if any) of characters. Like in Pokemon, the protagonist relies on the help of small, collectable creatures in order to fight.

In Anime Creativity, however, Ian Condry touches on sekaikan and its role in the creation of anime, which sheds some light on its importance in video games.

He describes what it was like to sit in on discussions among the production team of an anime series called Zenmai Zamurai. What he noticed was that, rather than thinking about the anime in terms of the story -- which is the focus for many fans and reviewers -- the developers used a "premise + worldview + characters" model. As Condry explains:
More central than the story itself in organizing the collaborative production of anime was... the design of characters, the establishment of dramatic premises that link the characters, and the properties that define the world in which the characters interact. This combination of characters (kyarakutaa), premises (settei), and world-settings (sekaikan) generally came prior to the writing of the story.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/193315/characters_and_worldbuilding_.php?page=4