yeah java is legit for making games - either using game/rendering libraries or making your own

also it is a good beginner language as it does garbage collection for you - it also can be fairly powerful (used to make minecraft with opengl)

Java is fine as any other language to make your first game, but a RPG game isn't in my opinion.

That's a rather particular genre that this general purpose language can't seem to handle correctly. Why do you think so?

He was probably referring to the "make your first game" and not the coding language ^^ (as in a RPG might not be the best genre to try as your first language) I don't have any opinions on that though.

Edit* Maybe you were just making a joke boogyman.. Wouldn't be the first (or last) time sarcasm got the best of me over the internetz lol

If you are not planning on reaching AAA quality of your game and don't want to get the max out of your gear, Java is perfectly fine.

Wow, thank you all for the excellent responses. I'm following several different tutorials to not only learn Java, but more specifically, to learn how to use Java in OpenGL and LWJGL. As for the graphics, the tutorial I am following is basically saying the best way is to use openGL. Does this mean that I won't be drawing any myself, but making the program draw them?

OpenGL is an interface for the video card - so calling opengl functions is the way that you ask the video card to draw stuff - you aren't actually "drawing" anything yourself - you provide opengl with the data by calling functions and then you have it draw using that data by again calling functions