JRPG's that just got everything right
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I hardly ever liked JRPG's, but I did like Nintendo's, the biggest being Mother 3. I've beaten that game more times than I can count. Words can hardly describe how much I love that game.
Final Fantasy Tactics: Advance
-Screw Final Fantasy VII remake! I want this game remade.
Tales of Vesperia
-Arguably the best Tales of game, next to Symphonia.
Dragon Quest 9
-RPG gold, one of the best DS games period.
The World Ends With You
-Great combat, interesting level design and above all else, great story and lovable characters.
Radiant Historia
-An excellent fighting system, amazing and interesting story, plus multiple endings?!
Xenoblade is on my fully paid Gamestop pre-order, but I heard it's good.
....
Why does the DS get all the good RPGs?
-Screw Final Fantasy VII remake! I want this game remade.
Tales of Vesperia
-Arguably the best Tales of game, next to Symphonia.
Dragon Quest 9
-RPG gold, one of the best DS games period.
The World Ends With You
-Great combat, interesting level design and above all else, great story and lovable characters.
Radiant Historia
-An excellent fighting system, amazing and interesting story, plus multiple endings?!
Xenoblade is on my fully paid Gamestop pre-order, but I heard it's good.
....
Why does the DS get all the good RPGs?
There are so many old games I could list, back from SNES and PS1 systems, so I'm not going to.
Instead, let me recommend a PS3 game that I adore.
Atelier Rorona; Alchemist of Arland.
It is so sweet, it will give you cavities or diabetes just from playing it. The grafics aren't top notch, but I don't care for that if the story is good. The characters are well defined. The voice acting is so spot on that it is almost unreal. It's funny. The drawn stuff is gorgeous (and also in the AWWWW category)
The downside is a very easy battle system. I enjoy strategy and have good time managment skills, so I always crafted the most potent items and upgrades and the difficulty of the battles sank to nothing.
Instead, let me recommend a PS3 game that I adore.
Atelier Rorona; Alchemist of Arland.
It is so sweet, it will give you cavities or diabetes just from playing it. The grafics aren't top notch, but I don't care for that if the story is good. The characters are well defined. The voice acting is so spot on that it is almost unreal. It's funny. The drawn stuff is gorgeous (and also in the AWWWW category)
The downside is a very easy battle system. I enjoy strategy and have good time managment skills, so I always crafted the most potent items and upgrades and the difficulty of the battles sank to nothing.
Final Fantasy IV. This is the one that pretty much set the bar for modern JRPGs. The story is dramatic and engaging, the art is gorgeous, and, perhaps most importantly, it is brutally, unforgivingly difficult. This is a game that will just maul you if you don't keep your party spry.
I recommend the Playstation port, it's considered by most to be the definitive version. You could also give the DS remake a try, if the updated graphics appeal to you. The DS remake is just a touch more difficult, too, if you feel you need the additional challenge.
I recommend the Playstation port, it's considered by most to be the definitive version. You could also give the DS remake a try, if the updated graphics appeal to you. The DS remake is just a touch more difficult, too, if you feel you need the additional challenge.
I'm with this guy, though I don't agree on the whole Trance/Limit thing. I've heard this complaint before: "the Trance system doesn't work as well as the Limit system from the previous (two) FF games." However, most of the time, what they actually mean, is this: "What? I can't shamelessly abuse the Limit system in this game to cheat my way through every battle!?"j-e-f-f-e-r-s said:
I'm not saying it's the same in your case, but it's something I've just noticed in general.
Anyway.
I think Final Fantasy IX is the only RPG I've ever played that - like this topic says - got everything right.
- Story & characters:
The story is best described as "an epic fairytale". At a first glance, it's pretty basic: princess, evil queen, thief with the golden heart, etc. But then we get the little black mage who is the equivalent of a 9-year old boy with a terminal sickness. A skinny rat woman who has a story arc about searching for her loved one - This is quite amazing because, A, it's a woman looking for a man, not the other way around, and B, It's a rat lady, not some cut bunny/cat-eared girl, a rat lady. Then we have a princess actually becoming a queen instead of just remaining "the princess" and one of the most bad-ass female characters ever: Beatrix. And if that's not enough, we also have a world merging with another world in order to survive, while at the same time making sure the lust for war rises, so more people die, so more souls return to the planet... so more souls can be stolen. The characters are colorful, interesting and, at times, really emotionally heavy. Characters like Freya or Vivi... those are some you won't easily forget.
- Atmosphere & graphics:
J.R.R. Tolkien, eat your heart out. An entire civilization living in the top of a gargantuan tree, a realm of eternal rain and an upside-down castle, a city where the night never ends and a shrine of wisdom built within a waterfall. It's a magical world, influenced by the both the renaissance and the Victorian Age, Steampunk and high-fantasy, swarming with Chocobos and Moogles.
- Audio:
Nobuo Uematsu does what he does best, with the high quality only being surpassed by the huge quantity. The way the songs are composed is simply beautiful: he doesn't add twenty layers of instruments to one song, instead, he tries to find a catchy melody, adds to it until you can truly associate a certain emotion with it and then lets the developers place it where it belongs. I bet very few among you could manage to hum even one song from FF XIII, but you ask a guy who played FF IX, and he'll hum you have the discography.
- Gameplay:
Uses a simple ATB-system. Each character has its own moves that can be learned through certain equipment. You might complain about the lack of customization that FF VII and VIII had, but I really don't mind. You can experiment with your add-ons and auto-abilities, while character-specific professions give more depth to the characters and add an extra layer to tactical decisions. Plus, the return of the four-player battle party is more than welcome. Apart from that, the game has the best and most expansive Chocobo mini-game in a Final Fantasy ever. The only complaint I have, is that the card mini-game in this Final Fantasy doesn't have any benefits. Then again, the card mini-game in FF VIII had way too many benefits.
Others I don't deem perfect, but are definitely in my top 10 list:
Xenoblade Chronicles (Probably the best RPG of the 7th generation. It's huge, engaging, fun, has some good music and an intuitive combat system.)
Chrono Trigger (It's a classic and has already been mentioned a couple of times, but yeah, it's a great game.)
Shin Megami Tensei: Lucifer's Call (Ever wanted to know where Pokémon stole it's successful "monster catching" idea? Look no further. Granted, this is just a sequel in the long line of SMT games, but damn, it is awesome. A big cliché is that you're a hero trying to save the world, in this game, you're just ten minutes in an the world - including veryone on it - gets turned inside out. Only you and five other people survive. Everyone else are souls of the dead or wandering demons, roaming a warped and inverted Tokyo. Did someone just say "awesome?")
Shadow Hearts: Covenant (This is how you make a sequel, people. Set in an alternate WW I scenario, with monsters, magic, fusion abilities, etc.)
Legend of Legaia (Probably the most flawed in this list. But the battle system, the Seru design, the story... fantastic.)
EDIT: As for my own picks..
*Seiken Densetsu 2 (aka, Secret of Mana)*
I still like this game better than SD3. It has 3 players instead of 2, the combat is a bit less repetitive, and the action doesn't stop every time someone casts a spell or uses an item.
Now, SD3 is quite possibly the most beautiful looking game on the SNES, and it's a good game, but it feels artificially lengthened at points, and the grind is kind of obnoxious for an action RPG.
*Suikoden 1-3*
This is a cheap-production JRPG series developed by Konami, starting around the time they released Symphony of the Night. While their Castlevania series have always felt incredibly polished and complete (albeit, formulaic to a fault), Suikoden has always fallen into the realm of the relative obscure. It had to compete with Squaresoft starting at the height of their career, and I think Konami knew this.
But I still love Suikoden 1-3 because of its cultural flavoring, some of its characters (Flik and Viktor in Suikoden 2 stole the show in places) its continuity, and its scale/scope. These games (especially 2) tell the story of two nations at war, and I rather like the way it is done: ADULTS, and not just children going to war. People die. Important people, at that, and very few of these are just shock-deaths. Well-established characters can die for good depending on your choices, and it takes balls to write a storyline with branching like that.
The combat mechanics for each game improve upon their predecessors, while doing something most JRPGs of that time completely FAILED at: "Flow".
Random encounters come and go very quickly, as long as you're prepared for them. It doesn't waste time showboating like most other jrpg titles of the time did.
Plus, Suikoden has a very clean and fair exp system that limits the degree in which you needed to grind (well, until Suikoden 3 introduced skill points...ugh) by catching up lower characters to the encounter's level after a few fights. The only thing you needed to grind for was money, and there are built-in shortcuts in each game that let you bypass that, if you know where to find them.
From what I've been able to tell, this game was based on the concept of a Mother Goose story book; wherein a collection of stories that exist within the same world but aren't directly tied to each other.
I'm still of the mind that the game needed a bit more focus than it did, not just on the story, but on a few parts of combat too. I also get the feeling that this was meant to be a jumping-on point for new RPG players, given how very very easy most of the game is (dying just restarts the room you were in), so the difficulty "curve" is very...odd.
But everything else is fantastic. The art design is incredible and hand-drawn, the effects are beautiful, even for a PS1 game, the music is great and NOT half-assed in the slightest, and the levelup system allows for a shockingly strong degree of character customization, down to naming your equipment.
*Seiken Densetsu 2 (aka, Secret of Mana)*
I still like this game better than SD3. It has 3 players instead of 2, the combat is a bit less repetitive, and the action doesn't stop every time someone casts a spell or uses an item.
Now, SD3 is quite possibly the most beautiful looking game on the SNES, and it's a good game, but it feels artificially lengthened at points, and the grind is kind of obnoxious for an action RPG.
*Suikoden 1-3*
This is a cheap-production JRPG series developed by Konami, starting around the time they released Symphony of the Night. While their Castlevania series have always felt incredibly polished and complete (albeit, formulaic to a fault), Suikoden has always fallen into the realm of the relative obscure. It had to compete with Squaresoft starting at the height of their career, and I think Konami knew this.
But I still love Suikoden 1-3 because of its cultural flavoring, some of its characters (Flik and Viktor in Suikoden 2 stole the show in places) its continuity, and its scale/scope. These games (especially 2) tell the story of two nations at war, and I rather like the way it is done: ADULTS, and not just children going to war. People die. Important people, at that, and very few of these are just shock-deaths. Well-established characters can die for good depending on your choices, and it takes balls to write a storyline with branching like that.
The combat mechanics for each game improve upon their predecessors, while doing something most JRPGs of that time completely FAILED at: "Flow".
Random encounters come and go very quickly, as long as you're prepared for them. It doesn't waste time showboating like most other jrpg titles of the time did.
Plus, Suikoden has a very clean and fair exp system that limits the degree in which you needed to grind (well, until Suikoden 3 introduced skill points...ugh) by catching up lower characters to the encounter's level after a few fights. The only thing you needed to grind for was money, and there are built-in shortcuts in each game that let you bypass that, if you know where to find them.
About time someone mentioned this game.j-e-f-f-e-r-s said:
From what I've been able to tell, this game was based on the concept of a Mother Goose story book; wherein a collection of stories that exist within the same world but aren't directly tied to each other.
I'm still of the mind that the game needed a bit more focus than it did, not just on the story, but on a few parts of combat too. I also get the feeling that this was meant to be a jumping-on point for new RPG players, given how very very easy most of the game is (dying just restarts the room you were in), so the difficulty "curve" is very...odd.
But everything else is fantastic. The art design is incredible and hand-drawn, the effects are beautiful, even for a PS1 game, the music is great and NOT half-assed in the slightest, and the levelup system allows for a shockingly strong degree of character customization, down to naming your equipment.
Well my first thought when I read the thread title was "Chrono Trigger, duh". This would be because it still to this day has some of the most memorable characters and locations, a fun, balanced character skill system (and woo for combo attacks), an amazing soundtrack and of course, all the different endings.
Others I would include in my personal list:
Lufia 2: Rise of the Sinistrals (SNES) - Great characters, some fiendish dungeon puzzles and the piece de resistance, the Ancient Cave dungeon crawl (plus capsule monsters, pre-pokemon =P). Also, for a game that came out 16 years ago, the ending is still one of the most moving scenes in any game I've played to this day.
Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (GameCube)- Oh golly yes, so much quirky fun, plenty of side-quests, fun battle mechanics, amazing character and area design (luff the train stage so much)
SMT: Devil Survivor (DS) - I know it's an SRPG, but it's a Japanese SRPG, and I love it to bits, so there =P But seriously, this game has an incredible story that manages to combine references to numerous different mythologies without coming across in anyway as pretentious or disrespectful, characters with genuine personal motivations, multiple endings that are serious choices to work toward... I can't wait for number 2 to come out!
Others I would include in my personal list:
Lufia 2: Rise of the Sinistrals (SNES) - Great characters, some fiendish dungeon puzzles and the piece de resistance, the Ancient Cave dungeon crawl (plus capsule monsters, pre-pokemon =P). Also, for a game that came out 16 years ago, the ending is still one of the most moving scenes in any game I've played to this day.
Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (GameCube)- Oh golly yes, so much quirky fun, plenty of side-quests, fun battle mechanics, amazing character and area design (luff the train stage so much)
SMT: Devil Survivor (DS) - I know it's an SRPG, but it's a Japanese SRPG, and I love it to bits, so there =P But seriously, this game has an incredible story that manages to combine references to numerous different mythologies without coming across in anyway as pretentious or disrespectful, characters with genuine personal motivations, multiple endings that are serious choices to work toward... I can't wait for number 2 to come out!
The five JRPGs that at no point ever disappointed me:
Chrono Trigger
Earthbound
Lufia 2: Rise of the Sinistrals (highly underrated game)
Breath of Fire 3
Shadow Hearts 2
With Vagrant Story also not having any downsides, but it's more actiony than JRPGs are.
Chrono Trigger
Earthbound
Lufia 2: Rise of the Sinistrals (highly underrated game)
Breath of Fire 3
Shadow Hearts 2
With Vagrant Story also not having any downsides, but it's more actiony than JRPGs are.
Dark Souls 
Also I really liked Enchanted Arms. I heard some people complain about its chess-like combat but I loved it.
Also I really liked Enchanted Arms. I heard some people complain about its chess-like combat but I loved it.
I'm a HUGE fan of anything MegaTen, so if you get bored with Persona 4 or 3, I suggest trying out the other Personas.
Maybe try your hand at the Raidou/Devil Summoner games, or Digital Devil Saga if you're able to find a copy.
Of course, you can always find some fun with the "Tales of..." series.
Suikoden is fun if you don't mind the occasional Rock/Paper/Scissors RTS every once in a while (that may have been only in 5 but idk).
And, of course, you can't go wrong with the "Tales of..." series.
If all else fails, go back to old school Pokemon or something and start fresh!
Maybe try your hand at the Raidou/Devil Summoner games, or Digital Devil Saga if you're able to find a copy.
Of course, you can always find some fun with the "Tales of..." series.
Suikoden is fun if you don't mind the occasional Rock/Paper/Scissors RTS every once in a while (that may have been only in 5 but idk).
And, of course, you can't go wrong with the "Tales of..." series.
If all else fails, go back to old school Pokemon or something and start fresh!
My deepest condolences.SebbyGVS said:
Seriously.
Of this generation, theclosest thing to a jrpg that I've actually wanted to own was Valkyria Chronicles.
My all time favorite would have to be Phantasy Star 4. I played it recently again in the Genesis collection and it actually holds up pretty well visually and considering that a lot of contemporary combat systems were built off that one, that has managed to stay pretty interesting too. It doesn't hold your hand like games now-a-days but it's fun and will keep you occupied for a long while.
Yeah for OP recommendations I'd point him towards the Suikoden series, 5 games (+2 side games) in total with only #4 being an abomination.
As for the best example of getting everything right though? I'd have throw my hat in with a few other people in giving that to Dragon Quest VIII. Now it's not my top JRPG of all time, but what it does best is pay tribute to all the classic elements of a JRPG while utilizing modern technology to add to the overall experience.
Consider it from this perspective, take any modern JRPG, and picture them as a demake in 16 or 8 bit versions. FFX for example as much as I love it would be weird in comparison to FFVI and below, there's no overworld map and you're basically walking up a straight path most of the time fighting random encounters. Dragon Quest VIII on the other hand would be considered a classic game on every console generation prior to its release.
As for the best example of getting everything right though? I'd have throw my hat in with a few other people in giving that to Dragon Quest VIII. Now it's not my top JRPG of all time, but what it does best is pay tribute to all the classic elements of a JRPG while utilizing modern technology to add to the overall experience.
Consider it from this perspective, take any modern JRPG, and picture them as a demake in 16 or 8 bit versions. FFX for example as much as I love it would be weird in comparison to FFVI and below, there's no overworld map and you're basically walking up a straight path most of the time fighting random encounters. Dragon Quest VIII on the other hand would be considered a classic game on every console generation prior to its release.
Indeed it seems that this generation isn't really interested in JRPG's, last good proper JRPG* I played was on the PSone (FFIX). It rare that you even find one these days never mind whether or not they are good. I guess Lost Odyssey was okayish just a little too linear (given the genre that's especially troubling).GonzoGamer said:
There's a few thrown out every now and again however nothing to the scale or beauty of the older games which perplexes me. Surely its not that hard to build a JRPG, the basic structure for one hasn't needed changing, the older games like the FF series still work well today as they did back then. Maybe the market just isn't there anymore.
Either way, your right, its not an easy task to find a decent RPG these days, though thankfully the gameplay in a JRPG age well so its not too hard stick one on from the PS days and enjoy if you can get over the graphics.
*This depends on whether or not you can class Kingdom Hearts as a JRPG.
I don't know if anyone has mentioned this yet, but Knights in a Nightmare is another one of my favorites. Its a DS game that's a blend of Fire Emblem type game play and bullet hell. I rank it up there next to The World Ends With You.
I got 500 hours in Tales of Symphonia. One of my all time favorites. The sequel is quite lackluster though.Mark Ince said:Haven't played any persona games but I did really like Shin Megami Tensei: Lucifer's Call (Europe name of nocturne), had Xenoblade Chronicles for a while but didn't play longer that an hour due to playing it on an old tv (couldn't read anything! text too small).
Gotta say I'm dissapointed no one mentioned Tales of Symphonia, may favourite JRPG, think I spend over 400 hours on that game
I just finished replaying Chrono Trigger after 5+ years of it sitting on my shelf. It still has a great story, but I couldn't help but notice all the plot holes that I had missed when I was younger. I was more amused than annoyed. After all, the gameplay was still great. One of my favorite things was how little grinding was necessary. I didn't try to avoid battles throughout the game, but I also didn't stop at any point to grind for exp or Tech points. It's good for a solid playthrough without any grinding detours.
Of course, some games have shown that grinding can be made fun if there's more to it than just grinding (complex character customization, or fun battles for instance).
Of course, some games have shown that grinding can be made fun if there's more to it than just grinding (complex character customization, or fun battles for instance).