Please read entirely, it will answer your questions:
JRPGs took conventions from WRPGs and games like Dungeons and Dragons. It's not a "slam" really but in general after World War II Japan formed a sort of love/hate relationship with the US and pretty much started to ape the US badly for a long time, although they got better at doing their own stuff with time. Pretty much everything you see for fantasy in their RPGs, Anime, etc... has origins in American works. This includes the various Samurai and Ninja characters who aren't remotely "historical" (even in mock-historical settings) but rather versions of these things created by Westerners based on Japanese histories, and then slightly re-stylized. There has been some stuff over the years about how America taught Japan to have pride in it's hisotry and such (indirectly) given that before Americans turned them into dark heroes in like 1980s Ninjas were kind of hated, and the Japanese overthrew the Samurai themselves.
Early RPGs like Wizardry (Proving Grounds Of The Mad Overlord, Knight Of Diamonds, etc..) formed the foundations of JRPGs, and oddly enough a lot of Anime directly includes referances to WRPGs, Lodoss Wars, Princess Minerva, and others comes to mind, not to mention of the existance of Hentai series like "Dragon Pink" (dated now) which was basically a giant farce on old school "Wizardry" type RPGs where you would create your own party of characters, even including inserted monochrome wire framework menus once or twice as a joke.
In general if you like JRPGs, your going to like WRPGs simply because in the final equasion they wind up being the same thing. The Japanese however have gotten into a sort of linear "shovelware" approach where they focus on cinematics and such, and try and do things like a sort of "interactive movie" (as some joke). You also find that the actual game elements oftentimes have absolutly nothing to do with the cinematics, the storyline and gameplay being seperated by an impenetrable wall made of tigers (as Yahtzee put it).
WRPGs tend to be a little less focused on the cinematics, and try and create a sort of experience where YOU are the hero, rather than guiding a pre-determined protaganist. A lot of modern WRPGs wind up being accused of having weak stories, because typically the storyline is secondary to the gameplay, and designed as a backdrop and something you can advance when you want to. Oblivion for example gets a lot of it's depth from letting you pretty much run around the world and do whatever you want (oftentimes quite involved... like advancing in differant guilds) and get around to the story when you feel like it.
Of course there is some back and forth in the generes, because Japan has produced some games that allow a relatively large degree of freedom (at least at a certain point), and Western (albeit European) developers have developed a few games with a more cinematic experience like "The Witcher".
In general there is a lot of nasty back and forth between JRPG and WRPG fans but there are more similarities than differances. Speaking from opinion I feel WRPGs are better, but take longer to develop, and cost more money to make, so they are comparitively rarer.
Difficulty is also a matter of discussion, a lot of JRPGs rely on "Grinding" to advance the story by forcing people to spend a lot of time fighting in order to get strong enough to hit the next cinematic. WRPGs in many cases REQUIRE less of a grind, or at least let you get powerful enough to do something without massive amounts of repitition (though they can, depending on the game. Nothing her eis universal).
Truthfully I find both "generes" fun, though admittedly I tend to get more annoyed by JRPGs which have a tendency to be giant strategy guide advertisements (to me at least) because they will say put the "ultimate" loot in these really obscure and obtuse places, and then only have it be availible at a certain time during a linear game, so if you don't get it then you can't backtrack to correct the issue. That's annoying more than "challenging". I think this tendency sort of peaked with the "Zodiac Spear" in the last Final Fantasy game... something that you could never, ever find out about unless you either bought a guide or a designer told you about it. As a general rule WRPGs are not designed by as big a group of jerks.
Really the only JRPGs I've ever felt were "hard" (as opposed to merely being very long, or very grindy) were the Shin Megami Tensei games (speaking for Nocturne, Digital Devil Saga, etc... here) otherwise I find them fun, but not especially hard. Some WRPGs... well let's just say I've probably had to reload "Risen" (european) more times than any other game in recent memory.
>>>----Therumancer--->
BTW> Oh yes, I will amend the above statement. The Zodiac Spear is not where it peaked. That's arguably #2. #1 for "obtuse JRPG stupidity" is the Cross Edge "Truthend", if you haven't tried that game and have no idea what I'm talking about, look it up sometime and then tell me how anyone could possibly figure that out without either a strategy guide or someone else telling them.
