5 Best PS1 Jrpg's Poll

[aweigh]

suikoden 2
fft
xenogears
persona 2
dq7

easy

 

[Sreggin Etah I]

I've been playing Vagrant Story and i didn't liked,i hate the combat system in this game ! it tries to be complex but ends up just being annoying,pretentious and slow.

Just Look at how much pretentious bullshit this game have:



I've only played for 6 hours and it already feels like a drag,is a unique game,but is just not for me.

So i give up ! i'll also take a break for a while,the combat in this game gave me brain cancer.

 

[Sigourn]

The problem with Vagrant Story's combat mechanics, which I never paid much thought when I was younger (roughly 15), was that even if you play the game as intended, switching weapons to accomodate for different weaknesses, it never feels like you are playing the game right, i.e. the weapons are as useless as ever.

Only when crafting Ultimate Weapons (one of my favorite aspects of this game, and damn if it isn't replayability done right) do your weapons feel ridiculously powerful, able to bring down the final boss in a about four chained hits.

 

[Damned Registrations]

It honestly boggles my mind how it got so many votes in the poll. Chrono Cross is utter garbage too.

 

[Sigourn]

It honestly boggles my mind how it got so many votes in the poll. Chrono Cross is utter garbage too.

Because people like it.
I can admit the game is broken at the same time I admit it still is fun and the writing and atmosphere are unparalleled.
People love to talk about the great stories of Final Fantasy VI or Final Fantasy VII, and Planescape: Torment or Fallout if you will, but to me no game will ever have a better story than Vagrant Story. That fucking ending holy shit.

 

[Sreggin Etah I]

The problem with Vagrant Story's combat mechanics, which I never paid much thought when I was younger (roughly 15), was that even if you play the game as intended, switching weapons to accomodate for different weaknesses, it never feels like you are playing the game right, i.e. the weapons are as useless as ever.

Only when crafting Ultimate Weapons (one of my favorite aspects of this game, and damn if it isn't replayability done right) do your weapons feel ridiculously powerful, able to bring down the final boss in a about four chained hits.

in the Stone Golem boss i used every weapon i have and none of them made any difference in terms of damage,so the fight lasted like 15 minutes ! that is why i give up of this game.

So far the only weapon who does any damage is the Soul Kiss

 

[Sigourn]

in the Stone Golem boss i used every weapon i have and none of them made any difference in terms of damage,so the fight lasted like 15 minutes ! that is why i give up of this game.

Exactly. I even used buffs and it didn't matter at all. So I just chained my way to victory, but that just begs the question: why even bother adding all these mechanics if the player will bypass them with chaining? Which is incidentally the most anti-RPG mechanic in the entire game, as it relies SOLELY on the player's dexterity.

 

[Rahdulan]

in the Stone Golem boss i used every weapon i have and none of them made any difference in terms of damage,so the fight lasted like 15 minutes ! that is why i give up of this game.

Because it's still early on. You need, absolutely need, to specialize weapons in order to make it manageable. What Vagrant Story really needed was a now commonplace radial interface which it was, in all honesty, already doing a precursor to with it's own shortcuts bound to face buttons except I would have a third type dedicated exclusively to equipment builds on top of items and arts so it's not a chore to go into your inventory and equip what you need for different enemy types. You're also expected to actually use items so you can go full balls to the walls aggressive and manage risk.

What really makes it even stranger is when you compare its combat system to that of Parasite Eve and how underlying complexity can impact enjoyment you get from combat.

 

[Sreggin Etah I]

So another boss fight,another bullshit...this time a dragon,i have three weapons: one for blunt,one for piercing and one for edged,one of this weapons even have 5 dragon affinity...
but guess what ? it doesn't make any fucking difference which weapon i use,they always do the same damage(0 damage in this case).

He also one shotted me from full hp with fire breath ! wtf ???

 

[Stormcrowfleet]

Where is Legend of Legaia ? It was pretty good. Played it alot as a kid even if I didn't finish it.

 

[Damned Registrations]

To be honest the entire system was in desperate need of a huge makeover. Swapping equipment was tedious, but so is grinding your weapons on specific enemies to alter them to begin with. Altering weapon properties should have been part of the crafting system, something you influenced by add reagents when making a new weapon. The locational damage system was retarded- you had to do like 50% of an enemy's HP in damage to one limb to cripple it. There were too many weapon types (none of which served any purpose except the crossbow), so unless you were grinding for one particular type of weapon/armor to drop from enemies over and over and over, the whole concept of merging them all together to get upgrades didn't work. The combat itself was way too fucking slow so they could work in variations in timing and animation for all the different attacks you can do, even though none of them matter except the chain one and I think there was one that did more damage at high risk? Adding a defensive move that made you literally fucking invincible for timing a button is retarded. Using items to boost stats when there's nobody else to use them on or any other purpose for the items made no sense. The real time aspect of being able to mash the attack button to get multiple attacks in before the enemies attacks again was retarded and should have been queued instead. Even the smithing weapons/grinding attributes system itself was dull and simplistic- every enemy has 2 attributes, match them to do more damage. That's it. There's always an optimal weapon for every enemy and there's no reason to ever do anything with a weapon except specialize it in it's attributes. There's no tradeoffs to make, no mutually exclusive special effects weapons can have like inflicting a status effect or having more critical hits vs easier attacking timing vs crippling limbs faster.

As for the story, I honestly can't remember much of anything about it. MC has amnesia and wants revenge, bad guy wants ULTIMATE POWAH and gets it but loses anyways to one guy with a pointy stick. Bunch of irrelevant side characters float around trying to add intrigue but none of them seemed important at all, they were just other randos that happened to be there doing their own thing. The art direction was good but they were working with shitty PS1 era 3D, so it looked much less impressive than 2D games with great spritework of the same era, or the pre rendered backgrounds and much better in combat models turn based games were working with.

FF9 is gonna be shit too btw. BoF3 and FFT probably have the best stories on that list and have good mechanics besides, and a bunch of others like SaGa Frontier, Azure Dreams, Star Ocean 2 and Valkyrie Profile have unique systems that are actually well designed instead of being quirky but utterly broken. FF9 is pretty much bog standard mechanically, and was aesthetically designed in such a way I can't tell if it's a misguided homage or a parody of SNES era games.

 

[Sreggin Etah I]

I thinking about a playing Tatics Ogre on Snes before playing FFT,i've never played any Strategy jrpg before.

I'm done with Vagrant story,i already wasted 8 hours of my life waiting if it gets better,it's just not my type of game.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I thinking about a playing Tatics Ogre on Snes before playing FFT,i've never played any Strategy jrpg before.

I'm done with Vagrant story,i already wasted 8 hours of my life waiting if it gets better,it's just not my type of game.

Those are both decent games, though I think FFT is much better. Go in blind, reading guides on them will ruin the fun. They've got in game help/tutorials if you need them.

 

[Sreggin Etah I]

Just decided to give Vagrant Story another chance because i fucking hate myself !

I spent 1 fucking hour trying to do any damage to a fire phantom boss,despite i even having a weapon with 12 phantom bonus damage i still didn't do any damage to him.I tried everything dude,fucking everything ! magic,weapons type,break Arts,buffs,debuffs...FUCKING EVERYTHING ! i eventually run out of mp,mp recovery items and Hp recovery items.

This is the most atrocius game i've ever played,i tried to enjoy,i really tried,but it's impossible.

3/10

 

[BrotherFrank]

Ain't even played half the games on this list, ps1 library was god tier. But of those I did play...

I have such rose tinted memories of vagrant story but I'm now doubting myself, it's been many years after all and maybe I won't find it as much fun now as I did when I was an easily impressionable lad who went the entire first disc of ff8 doing nothing but spamming summons because I didn't understand how the junction system worked so my characters were super underpowered and would get 2 shotted by even the random encounter monsters. I do vaguely remember Vagrant story combat being mostly chainning ridiculously long combos every fight and I saw nothing wrong with that.

In light of that might have to change my vote, though I do recall Vagrant's story atmosphere, ost and general character/monster design to be awesome at least. I also still remember the plot including the twist regarding the blonde antagonist (sydney I think his name was? or maybe was protag's name), aswell as wishing for a sequel to follow on the ending although closest we got if memory serves was references in the updated final fantasy tactics (again my memory is wonky as it's been so long, but I do recall FFT is set in the same setting as vagrant story and might have had a playable character from that series, it also had cloud from ff7)

Otherwise having a real hard time deciding between breath of fire 3 and 4. And I remember them well enough unlike Vagrant story. BoF3 had the better dragon system by far but the story... As cool looking as the final boss gets when she stops pretending to be a gentle caring goddess (if she even was that to begin with, I think implication is she is some artificial construct with major control issues/delusions of grandeur?), obviously the final boss in bof4 is more interesting since you actually play as the dude and get to see his perspective.

Pleasantly surprised that others remember Azure dreams.

 

[Terra]

Major problem with BoF4 is that

Spoiler

the guy behind it all just gets to walk away with no resolution. Pretty shit way to end given what he does to Nina's sister

.
Game lost a few points with me due to that.

 

[BrotherFrank]

Game lost a few points with me due to that.

Oof I did not remember that, yeah that would be a significant downer indeed.

 

[Damned Registrations]

BoF3's endgame is weaker, but I think the stories along the way are fantastic. The relationship between Rei and Bunyan, Garr's backstory and Peco's origin are all great moments. I think it's the best version of Ryu's backstory as well. It's got some weak spots along the way but it had some really memorable stuff too, and even the other stuff is at least charming.

 

[BrotherFrank]

Pondering this, I dunno if I'd call ryu the main character in BoF4. Feels more like it's Nina's and Fou Lou's story , Ryu is just kinda dragged along and don't recall him having any real impetus on the narrative except at the end where he argues with Fou Lou. Also have trouble remembering if Ryu had a real personality in bof4, Ryu in bof3 was definitely more interesting and benefitted from a better intro with a kick ass prologue of you butchering miners then indulging in some slice of life antics with rei and teepo for a while until disaster strikes...

Also to my eternal regret, never played bof1/2 but salivated over them in gaming magazines. Do they hold up well enough to be worth seeking out on emulators?

 

[Sreggin Etah I]

Pondering this, I dunno if I'd call ryu the main character in BoF4. Feels more like it's Nina's and Fou Lou's story , Ryu is just kinda dragged along and don't recall him having any real impetus on the narrative except at the end where he argues with Fou Lou. Also have trouble remembering if Ryu had a real personality in bof4, Ryu in bof3 was definitely more interesting and benefitted from a better intro with a kick ass prologue of you butchering miners then indulging in some slice of life antics with rei and teepo for a while until disaster strikes...

Also to my eternal regret, never played bof1/2 but salivated over them in gaming magazines. Do they hold up well enough to be worth seeking out on emulators?

I've played both BOF 1&2 and i don't recommend either of them,there's better JRPGs to play out there.

BOF 1 was average to good,overall a 7.7/10

-good soundtrack
-good graphics

-meh gameplay
-meh story.

BOF 2 is a flawed gem,overal a 8.0/10

+good soundtrack
+good story and characters

-annoying gameplay(high encounter rate,grindy,stupid final dungeon,lack of spells early game,debuffs useless against bosses,bad ending for the most pointless shit,scripted boss fights)

If you still want to play BOF2,play with the fan retranslation patch.

 

[Sreggin Etah I]

I like the breath of fire series,they are like final fantasy with less faggotry,i should play BOF 3 and BOF 4 too one day.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Pondering this, I dunno if I'd call ryu the main character in BoF4. Feels more like it's Nina's and Fou Lou's story , Ryu is just kinda dragged along and don't recall him having any real impetus on the narrative except at the end where he argues with Fou Lou. Also have trouble remembering if Ryu had a real personality in bof4, Ryu in bof3 was definitely more interesting and benefitted from a better intro with a kick ass prologue of you butchering miners then indulging in some slice of life antics with rei and teepo for a while until disaster strikes...

Also to my eternal regret, never played bof1/2 but salivated over them in gaming magazines. Do they hold up well enough to be worth seeking out on emulators?

I'd say BoF1 doesn't hold up too well, it's got some cool parts but feels like capcom was still fumbling with the genre at the time. BoF2 is decent, worth a look anyways if you're interested. I think it drags on too long but it has a pretty original cast of characters and stuff like the town and shamans and such are fun to play around with. It's also, arguably, the prettiest rpg on the system, with nice sprites and animations in battle for both characters and enemies. It does have a high encounter rate; part of the challenge in the BoF series has always been attrition as you progress through the dungeon or between towns, so it throws a lot of enemies at you to wear you down. Ryu is still a powerhouse though so the game generally isn't too hard as long as you don't blow all his MP before the boss fight.

 

[RegionalHobo]

getting something like xenogears as a console title is even more unlikely than something like torment for the pc

as for my favorites:

-xenogears
-legend of mana
-Valykrie Profile
-ff 7
- Suikoden 2

SOTN is my favorite ps1 game, dunno if it counts as a rpg, even if it s more rpg than many modern titles

 

[pidstuff]

As advice for Vagrant Story, weapon affinities don't matter as much as weapon types and enhancements/buffs so there really is no reason to grind your weapons against certain enemy types. The fire phantom for example can easily be killed if you enhanced/buffed your weapon with ice/water. If you're great at the QTE parts of the game, you could also keep chaining any enemy because each hit increases the damage by 1, thus the damage sequence would look like this: Miss, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8... IIRC, by the time you reach the fire phantom, you should already be able to use Break Arts, which is another alternative if you can't chain nor enhance/buff, and Break Arts are pretty powerful and deal good damage in exchange for HP.

As for the variety of weapon types, there are the 3 types that deal the damage: Blunt, Blade and Pierce. You should carry one of each and use them for whichever is most effective against an enemy's weakness. The reason there are a lot of them is for players to find which works best for their playstyles. Not all Blunt weapons have the same reach, Break Arts and QTE timing. I don't think it really should be an issue as to why we are given a plethora of weapon choices seeing as the Souls games does have lots of choices as well. I also found that being able to target different appendages great: Is the enemy a spellcaster? You can use a spell to silence the enemy OR keep attacking the enemy's head to achieve a similar effect. If there are multiple enemies and you'd like to deal with them one by one, you could attack the legs of the others to half their movement speed.

Plotwise, it's typical Matsuno political-intrigue and power struggle. Not surprising as he was a student in foreign policy. IMO, games could use more of these kinds of stories. By the way, here's a video of some guy defeating the fire phantom just to show how easy one can beat the fire phantom:
https://youtu.be/E9UqsDXb1Dw?t=382

 

[Exhuminator]

I'm a huge fan of the King's Field and Shadow Tower games. That said, Vagrant Story is the apex PS1 JRPG.