I've never played a JRPG! Suggestions?

[exdeath]

the first JRPG i played was chrono trigger and it got me hooked; mind you this was years after its release. FF6 is also very good. Xenogears is the best of them all imo, but if you've never played a JRPG before it might be a little jarring (story can be a little convoluted). FF7 is also pretty good.

for more modern ones, FF-X, Xenoblade, Lost Oddysey are all very good

Even if you are a JRPG veteran, Xenogears is still overwhelming. It takes numerous replays, weeks of researching back story, plot and character intricacies, psychological profiles of the characters, complex relationships between the characters, timeline reconciliations, etc all outside of the game via devoted fan sites, the Perfect Works book, etc to *really* comprehend everything. Then it still hits you that the events of the game itself are but a 1% side story to the grand scheme of things. The scope of that game is phenomenal, it was really just WAY too much to cram into a 2 CD video game medium.

Then you play it again and still "get" something new that you didn't realize before. A game like that will never exist again since it can't be developed completely in 3 weeks from an existing game and appeal to 100 billion mouth breathing casual button mashing ADHD "Punch the Monkey" gamers that will pre-order it 2 years in advance.

A proper complete remake of it on less limiting modern hardware would do wonders for it, but it would take years and a lot of resources to do it properly. But since it doesn't have grenades and dog tags in it, it won't appeal to casuals and sell 100 billion copies, so it will never happen.

 

[SandEagle]

i read that Tales of Xilllia is finally coming to PS3. that games looks awesome.

 

[BD2003]

Lol, I love how you keep editing and adding more. Like your frustration is so boundless that it just can't be contained.

 

[exdeath]

Lol, I love how you keep editing and adding more. Like your frustration is so boundless that it just can't be contained.

Yup.

Being into collecting and doing garage sales and stuff makes it even worse.

I actually get to SEE the "mainstream" first hand when I see a used game system/game lot for sale and I start seeing all the sports games, harry potter, spongebob, wheel of fortune, tony hawk, spiderman, 5 versions of Call of Duty, and I just want to nuke the world for dragging my joy into the mud. It gets old wading through all the garbage looking for a gem.

 

[dpodblood]

Yup.

Being into collecting and doing garage sales and stuff makes it even worse.

I actually get to SEE the "mainstream" first hand when I see a used game system/game lot for sale and I start seeing all the sports games, harry potter, spongebob, wheel of fortune, tony hawk, spiderman, 5 versions of Call of Duty, and I just want to nuke the world for dragging my joy into the mud. It gets old wading through all the garbage looking for a gem.

To be fair there was always shovelware out there even in the NES days. The problem now is that gaming itself has become mainstream, and just like in movies and music the popular garbage rises to the top and makes all the money. There is still plenty of good stuff coming out. You just have to dig more to find it.

 

[BD2003]

Leave spongebob out of this.

 

[pwnagesarus]

Having not touched a JRPG in at least 4 years, I played two in recent months that I've never really played before, so no childhood nostalgia.

Chrono Trigger - Highly recommended. This well-rounded game would make a fine introduction to JRPGs. Solid gameplay, fantastic music, likable cast of characters. While the story can be condensed down to "save the world!", the execution of it turned out to be good. The graphics still look great. I recently looked at some PS1 JRPG videos on Youtube and shuddered at how bad some of them have held up. Difficulty isn't too high, which may or may not be a good thing.

Earthbound - Booooring, this game felt like a chore. After playing it, I am probably the only person who finds Earthbound to extremely overrated. The battle system and pop culture references were interesting, but that was about it. The item management system is horrendous. Resident Evil's item management was less frustrating than Earthbound's. Seeing as how I couldn't bring myself to finish the game, I can't completely comment on the story. At the point where I was however, there was little to be interested in. It's probably still worth trying, since it is universally liked, but I wouldn't recommend it as a first JRPG.

Exdeath's take on JRPGs are always amusing and somewhat intimidating, because his enthusiasm for it is on a whole other level.

 

[exdeath]

To be fair there was always shovelware out there even in the NES days. The problem now is that gaming itself has become mainstream, and just like in movies and music the popular garbage rises to the top and makes all the money. There is still plenty of good stuff coming out. You just have to dig more to find it.

Like what, Resident Evil? Nope, it's been turned into an arcade shooter now to "appeal to CoD fans". Final Fantasy? Nope, turned into a hack and slash fighting game to "appeal to the widest possible audience".

Popular mainstream games drowning out good games isn't the problem, it's the cash grabbing that is actually transforming those once good games themselves into mainstream games that is the problem.

I'm ok with "my" games being low volume and far and few, it's always been that way with JRPGs. What I'm not ok with are my games still being on the shelf by title only, but being turned into shooters and 30 minute twitch reflex action games. What used to be the 1 or 2 titles a year I could count on have joined the sea of mainstream shooters, sports, and fighting games.

 

[dpodblood]

Well I for one think there's plenty of good stuff still out there.

See here:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2278647

 

[exdeath]

Some leads for OP:

Square/Squaresoft
Working Designs
Atlus

I know there are others I'm missing, but those are staple JRPG developers.

 

[PowerYoga]

I wouldn't say FF series is being built to appease audiences. If anything, the primary audience has always been japanese players, who buys the bulk of FF games. The series has been steadily going downhill ever since FF7, and it's now dead to me with the stupid rehashed final fantasies based on the same shitty emo characters that you didn't care about.

Changing the fighting mechanics is a nice thought but its being implemented very poorly. Let's face it, I don't want to sit around waiting for a time bar to fill up to hit the A button anymore. That's a mechanic that's antiquated and rightfully done away with. I don't feel like FF13's style of combat is a bad thing, but square's implementation of it is so horrendous that that it drowned out the innovation. Not to mention the shift to "better graphics" has priority over a story and character development, apparently.

Actually, JRPGS have been losing sales steadily because they've stuck to the same formula for so long that it's become stale. I think its nice they're trying different things... but they need to do it better. It's just not done "right" lately in my opinion.

 

[exdeath]

Well I for one think there's plenty of good stuff still out there.

See here:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2278647

Heh did you notice my list for OP on my first post in this thread, I listed all the good JRPGs on multiple consoles. Did you see how the list progressively got smaller with each console generation, and basically completely ending after PS2?

 

[dpodblood]

Heh did you notice my list for OP on my first post in this thread, I listed all the good JRPGs on multiple consoles. Did you see how the list progressively got smaller with each console generation, and basically completely ending after PS2?

Maybe when it comes specifically to JRPG's, but that doesn't mean there aren't great games still coming out in other genres.

 

[cl-scott]

I guess I'd be in the minority in that Chrono Trigger and Xenogears didn't really do much for me. I've certainly played worse games, but they just didn't come anywhere near to living up to all the hype people throw at them IMO.

That said, the SNES-PS2 era was kind of the golden period for JRPGs in a lot of ways. Final Fantasy 7 really kind of ushered in a new era of a more cinematic experience, and IMO, FF8 largely improved on the few areas lacking in 7. It stumbled in its own right in a few places, but overall I considered 8 to be the better game. FF9 was probably worth at least one playthrough, but not sure about anything more than that.

The first Grandia game for the PSX (well, technically Dreamcast) was pretty good, and had kind of an interesting combat system where if you timed your attacks properly, you could delay the attacks of enemies. The second Grandia for the PS2 was serviceable, and the third has the feel of the game being maybe 75% done and then the developers had to try and stitch it together as best they could to shove it out the door. The mechanics are all fine, it's the plot that has rather large gaps in it.

Tales of Symphonia was a great gem for the GameCube. There was a PS2 port, but I don't think it ever made it out of Japan. Maybe not quite a JRPG, more of a Resident Evil kind of game, but Eternal Darkness was another little gem for the GameCube.

I know there will be plenty who disagree with this one, but I think Final Fantasy X is kind of the pinnacle of modern JRPGs. While it is certainly the case that you're on a very linear track, the story is what is driving the game, and the story is kind of the whole point of a JRPG. However the combat in FFX is great as well. Turn based, none of that stupid active time battle crap, and you can swap characters in and out on a whim depending on the situation. And then the story in FFX has a little bit of everything. Love, loss, religious intolerance, political intrigue, a bad-@ss monster, and you're even drip fed about 1,000 years worth of history for the world. I could have done without Blitzball, but you really only have to play one game, and it's not required to win.

Xenosaga was also a pretty good trilogy for the PS2. IIRC, it's intended to be kind of a prequel to Xenogears, and while it sadly got cut short from 6-8 games to 3, it still packs in an ungodly amount of content.

Tales of the Abyss was also an excellent PS2 RPG. Tales of Legendia was serviceable if a little uninspired.

You can pick up used GameCube and PS2 units on the cheap these days, so I'd suggest getting at least a PS2 so you can then also play a lot of older PSX games that may not have been released on PSN for the PS3.

On the 360 and PS3 front there's Tales of Vesparia which was a fairly solid, if somewhat unremarkable, title. Tales of Graces f is another solid, if kind of ho-hum kind of game (IMO). Final Fantasy XIII was a great game IMO... Also very linear like X, but again the story is driving things. XIII-2 tried to be less linear and seemed to lose the cohesion of the story you had with XIII. You could be wandering around for hours before hitting on the next segment of the story arc, whereas XIII had a pretty steady dolling out of story the entire game.

Eternal Sonata was probably a solid B level game. If you're a Chopin fan, you'll probably love all the little references in Eternal Sonata. Star Ocean 4 was serviceable if rather forgettable.

 

[dpodblood]

I have heard really good things about Tales of Symphonia. Should have mentioned I have a Gamecube controller for my Wii, so picking up used Gamecube games is of course an option.

I think I also heard that they are making an HD remake of FFX, which would be nice, because I really don't want to pick up a PS2 just to play one specific game.

 

[exdeath]

Xenosaga was also a pretty good trilogy for the PS2. IIRC, it's intended to be kind of a prequel to Xenogears, and while it sadly got cut short from 6-8 games to 3, it still packs in an ungodly amount of content.

Because it wasn't mainstream enough and wasn't "a guaranteed multi million seller" so it was canned by the suits.

Is it any wonder why I loathe mainstream games more and more every day?

 

[dpodblood]

Because it wasn't mainstream enough and wasn't "a guaranteed multi million seller" so it was canned by the suits.

Is it any wonder why I loathe mainstream games more and more every day?

It's more a symptom of budgets for AAA games ballooning in size these days. Publishers aren't willing to take risks because if they don't sell millions of copies of the game their profits go into the toilet. The cost of buying a game for $60 has been the same forever, while the cost of creating one has increased tenfold.

This is why we're now seeing a huge boom in indy game and mobile development. The only way to create a good new IP and still make a profit is to work with smaller development teams.

 

[BD2003]

Because it wasn't mainstream enough and wasn't "a guaranteed multi million seller" so it was canned by the suits.

Is it any wonder why I loathe mainstream games more and more every day?

You can't expect them to make it if its not going to be profitable. Not even your most cherished JRPGs in the 90s were made for charity.

JRPGs just eventually made a mockery of themselves. They just got longer and longer, more convoluted, more complicated, more foreign. It ceased to be acceptable to have a simple story driven game....it had to have the most story, the most mechanics. It took FF13 damn near 20 hours to get through the tutorial, and the story was so dense that they dumped you straight into the middle of it with zero explanation. Except for the in game encyclopedia. Which is crazy.

The old JRPGs could be enjoyed by anyone, the more recent ones only by fanatics. There will come a time when the essence of the JRPG will return....it's just not ready yet.

 

[exdeath]

You can't expect them to make it if its not going to be profitable. Not even your most cherished JRPGs in the 90s were made for charity.

JRPGs just eventually made a mockery of themselves. They just got longer and longer, more convoluted, more complicated, more foreign. It ceased to be acceptable to have a simple story driven game....it had to have the most story, the most mechanics. It took FF13 damn near 20 hours to get through the tutorial, and the story was so dense that they dumped you straight into the middle of it with zero explanation. Except for the in game encyclopedia. Which is crazy.

The old JRPGs could be enjoyed by anyone, the more recent ones only by fanatics. There will come a time when the essence of the JRPG will return....it's just not ready yet.

They are profitable, just a few million instead of hundreds of billions, thats all. Big bloated companies now with too much overhead and too many publisher execs and investors with too many fingers in the pie worried about their next Ferrari and quarterly statements.

Yeah Final Fantasy XIII is terrible. I've never said it wasn't. FFXIII itself is the very byproduct of everything I've been going off about. It's the result of mainstream taking over and trying to please everybody.

FFXIII is the *result* of the decline of niche genres and the rise of mainstream gaming, not the *cause*; it's a poster child for my cause really. It's what happens when you make a JRPG try to grab a slice of the shooter market, the sports market, the mini game market, blah blah blah, while still pretending to be devoted to your niche fans that have long forsaken you.

 

[exdeath]

This is why we're now seeing a huge boom in indy game and mobile development. The only way to create a good new IP and still make a profit is to work with smaller development teams.

Exactly. 95% of the ballooning budgets and people overhead are suits with all their fingers in the pie while having nothing to do with the production of the actual game. What plagues the game industry right now is the same thing that plagues the movie and music industries: bureaucratic overhead and middlemen. Why does Activision or EA need to spend billions of dollars on production of a single game when a indy company can make an equal or superior game with .01% of their budgets or when small developers with few games can afford to make these sorts of niche games and still remain profitable? It was the niche games that Square hit it big on, my how they have forgotten that now with $ in their eyes catering to the mainstream.

Cut out the bloat and lets make fun games again that don't have to cater to everyone at the same time.

 

[BD2003]

That's already happening. Many of the best games this year were low budget downloadables. They just released a new XCOM game. Point and click adventure games are all the rage again.

I dunno if a low budget JRPG can work though. If it was that easy someone would already be doing it.

 

[Sulaco]

THE VERY BEST JRPGs are still found on the 16-bit consoles, and to a slightly lesser degree, the 32-bit (PSX).

Best stories, best characters, best music.

However, if you didn't come from that era, have no memories or appreciation for it, I can see how it might be hard to really get past some of their more...dated...qualities.

While there are always emulators, I'd try and play remakes on, say, the DS. Specifically, Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy IV. While I still prefer the original 16-bit FF2 over the DS remake (it was my first JRPG afterall), IV on the DS will be instantly palatable to anyone. Graphics, sound, etc are all top-notch, and maintain the great story and characters.

Beyond that, other gems like:

Illusion of Gaia
Terranigma
Final Fantasy III (6!)
Lufia
Secret of Mana

...are 16-bit must-plays.

Some people also really love the Dragon Quest / Dragon Warrior games. I found them a little too cliche, but many folks find charm in that, so it might be worth trying out.

 

[Schfifty Five]

Tales Series for sure.

Must play the following:
Tales of Symphonia - GC
Tales of Vesperia - Xbox 360
Tales of Graces F - PS3

I heard Tales of the Abyss - PS2 was pretty awesome too.

Haven't played the others.

 

[cl-scott]

I have heard really good things about Tales of Symphonia. Should have mentioned I have a Gamecube controller for my Wii, so picking up used Gamecube games is of course an option.

I think I also heard that they are making an HD remake of FFX, which would be nice, because I really don't want to pick up a PS2 just to play one specific game.

You do have to be willing to kind of overlook the graphics on Tales of Symphonia a little. It's not that they're bad, but even by GameCube standards they were a bit sub-par. Still, the game is really pretty good. So if you've got a Wii that still has the backwards compatibility in it, definitely worth a look.

There is a planned FFX HD for the PS3 and Vita, but who knows when it'll actually show up, or if it'll even make it out of Japan. Plus there's Tales of the Abyss for the PS2, and all PS2s have backwards compatibility with the PSX.

You may also want to pick up the first two Disgaea's if you get a PS2. Not JPRGs so much as SRPGs (Strategic RPGs, sometimes also called Tactical RPGs), but great games. At least I assume the second one is as good as the first. Graphics look like SNES level, and the dialog is given with static images of the characters, but the first Disgaea is absolutely hilarious! It's a level grinder to be sure, so not sure many people would fault you for finding some kind of cheat disc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWW9D_kFezE (one of the funnier parts of the game -- you only need to watch about the first 3 minutes)

I'd say there's ample reason to get a PS2 on the cheap. Xenosaga is 3 games, Final Fantasy X, Disgaea 1 and 2, Tales of the Abyss, plus you can go back and play PSX games like FF7/8/9, Grandia, Xenogears (I may not consider it as great a game as others, but it's still a good game)... I also forgot about FFXII, which has an interesting combat system even if after 2 playthroughs I'm still at a loss to understand the plot of the game. I'm sure there's plenty of others I'm forgetting.

 

[cl-scott]

Because it wasn't mainstream enough and wasn't "a guaranteed multi million seller" so it was canned by the suits.

Is it any wonder why I loathe mainstream games more and more every day?

While I wouldn't call it a bad game, Xenosaga 2 was a bit of a misstep for the series. It was heavily focused on Jr and Albedo, and if you didn't know that it was supposed to be game 2/6 or 2/8, then I could see getting a little upset with it. Plus there was the Albedo fight in the Summer Domain level which you're never going to beat unless you know the trick or just spend a few dozen hours level grinding.

The combat was a lot better than the first game, and the puzzles were even quite a bit more interesting. I also still crack up at the line, "I thought you said you were a man! ... Then shut up and shoot something!" But the second one just lacked the production value the first one oozed at virtually every point. If they'd done a better job explaining that the game was just the second in a long line of games, it might have been a bit better received.

What I would love to see is for Namco-Bandai to revisit Xenosaga now in the twilight years of the PS3, and maybe let them develop the "missing chapters" along with an HD remake of the PS2 games. At the very least, add in something covering the Gnosis Terrorism they reference at length in game 3, and short of an entry in the database, they never explain. Don't expect it'll ever happen, but it'd be nice. Just like it'd be nice to have a FFX-3 given what an unmitigated disaster X-2 was.