The RPG Codex has published a number of top RPG lists and even a top non-RPG list, but it appears we never got around to organizing an official top JRPG list. Earlier this year, community member Gastrick decided to do something about that and set up a poll which ran for a month over the summer. He's already published the results in our forums, but now they have the front page stamp of approval. To no one's surprise, the Codex's favorite JRPG is eroge classic Sengoku Rance. There are plenty of other details to parse out in the list, which Gastrick has also split out by subgenre and individual series.


Read the full article: RPG Codex Top 55 JRPGs

[Poll by Gastrick]

A month ago I created a poll in the JRPG sub-forum asking people to rate every JRPG on a scale of 1-5 to see which ones were the best. A total of 74 people voted and a total of 233 JRPGs were counted. The methodology used was that it's the pure averages of games that were played by at least 7 people or roughly 10% of participants. Then, I split the results into two categories, one for JRPG-like JRPGs and one that includes action games with RPG elements.

The game voted as the best JRPG was none other than Sengoku Rance.



First of all is the pure JRPG list. These are the top 55 games:

Pure list:


Full list:


Graphic with all the covers:


Sub-Genre sortings:

ARPGs:


SRPGS:


JRPGs (Blobber combat and overhead view):


Blobbers:


There weren't enough RTwP or Roguelike JRPGs on the list to satisfactorily list them.

Series sortings:

Final Fantasy Series:


Shin Megami Tensei Series:


Dragon Quest Series:


Breath of Fire Series:


Mana Series:


Fire Emblem Series:


Persona Series:


Phantasy Star Series:


Pokemon Series:


Saga Series:


Valkyrie Profile Series:


Xenoblade Chronicles Series:


Fan translated games:

Fan-translated:


Originally fan-translated:


A chart showing the frequency by console generations:

Guide
Third = NES, Master System
Fourth = Genesis/Mega Drive, SNES, GB
Fifth = PS1, Saturn, N64, GBC
Sixth = PS2, Gamecube, GBA
Seventh = PS3, Xbox 360, DS, PSP
Eighth = PS4, Wii U, Switch, 3DS
Ninth = Any games released in 2021
PC titles were grouped by time period.

Side data:

Correlation between popularity and score was a positive correlation of 16.5%.



Games that could have done well, but not enough had played them or they were added too late:


JRPGs played by the most people:

1. Seven people voted before this game was added so it could be higher than it shows. The same goes for any other games that were added partway through.

Top 5 most disliked JRPGs:


Click here for the Google Sheets link of the full data, and click here for the .ods link of the full data.