I must admit, I was an avid JRPG player in my teens and early twenties, because of being raised on Nintendo consoles and not knowing better. In spite of now being hungry for deeper gameplay and cringing at anime tropes exhibited in JRPGs, every now and then I will crave for one. Most of the times though when trying to play one I will end up giving up on it without hours.
But there's this game called Xenoblade that has the weaboo community ablaze, with most people saying that it's among the best JRPGs of all time, best Japanese game of the generation and stuff like that. It's on Wii, but it can be emulated on Dolphin if your PC is powerful enough, and you can use a PC gamepad to control the action.
I've played it for about three hours and I must say that it shows promise. Sure, in the end it's still a JRPG, and it's still meant for teens, but I am impressed at how polished the whole experience is.
The combat system is basically a beefed up Final Fantasy XII, which is to say, MMO lite, with you only having direct control over one character at a time. You have various skills that you can level up, and you must learn how to time them correctly. It actually works surprisingly well. You can also boost your equipment with gems, which kinda works like Final Fantasy VII's materia, except you can craft the gems more.
The environments are vast, with sprawling plains and the like. Music is superb as well. The game seems to be shockful of content, many players talking about a 100+ hours experience. There are tons of MMO-like sidequests along the way that you can pick up or not. They're all very simple and fast to do, so they don't distract from the main story objectives. You can save anywhere you want. When you die, you restart at the last checkpoint, but only like one time.
As far as the story goes, it's not that far from the typical fantasy steampunk Japanese story, but so far it's not really obnoxious. It's by the creator of Xenogears, but it's nowhere nearly as anime-ish as either Xenogears or Xenosaga.
Looks like this one is definitely worth a look if you're in the JRPG mood.
But there's this game called Xenoblade that has the weaboo community ablaze, with most people saying that it's among the best JRPGs of all time, best Japanese game of the generation and stuff like that. It's on Wii, but it can be emulated on Dolphin if your PC is powerful enough, and you can use a PC gamepad to control the action.
I've played it for about three hours and I must say that it shows promise. Sure, in the end it's still a JRPG, and it's still meant for teens, but I am impressed at how polished the whole experience is.
The combat system is basically a beefed up Final Fantasy XII, which is to say, MMO lite, with you only having direct control over one character at a time. You have various skills that you can level up, and you must learn how to time them correctly. It actually works surprisingly well. You can also boost your equipment with gems, which kinda works like Final Fantasy VII's materia, except you can craft the gems more.
The environments are vast, with sprawling plains and the like. Music is superb as well. The game seems to be shockful of content, many players talking about a 100+ hours experience. There are tons of MMO-like sidequests along the way that you can pick up or not. They're all very simple and fast to do, so they don't distract from the main story objectives. You can save anywhere you want. When you die, you restart at the last checkpoint, but only like one time.
As far as the story goes, it's not that far from the typical fantasy steampunk Japanese story, but so far it's not really obnoxious. It's by the creator of Xenogears, but it's nowhere nearly as anime-ish as either Xenogears or Xenosaga.
Looks like this one is definitely worth a look if you're in the JRPG mood.
