JRPGs for people who only like western RPGs

[JarlFrank]

Are there any?

What I hate about JRPGs and why I bounced off every JRPG I tried:
- dialogues are non-interactive cutscenes, you rarely get any dialog choices (if at all) but have to click through line after line of pointless banter; to make it even more aggravating, the dialog is being typed out instead of displayed immediately, and you can't skip an entire conversation with one click; it's extremely annoying and I hate it
- your average classic JRPG has extremely simplistic combat which is basically early Wizardry or Might and Magic style, except with longer animations to waste your time; games with proper tactical combat aren't even considered JRPGs in Japan, they're SRPGs, a similar but separate genre
- JRPGs, especially older ones, tend to focus on grind a lot; tons and tons of random encounters you have to slay your way through, it's so fucking boring

I tried several JRPGs but they all suffer from these problems to some degree. A couple of Dragon Quest titles (they are all grindy as fuck), Phantasy Star (grindy as fuck), some of the Final Fantasies (7, 8 - grindy and filled with tons of lame cutscene-based storytelling), Chrono Trigger (it was ok, but again way too much non-interactive dialog spam)

I do enjoy the SRPG genre though. It still suffers from problem #1 (too many cutscene-like dialogs) and problem #3 (grind) but at least the gameplay is actually fun. Played Tactics Ogre and several Fire Emblem titles. I can deal with the annoying way of delivering the story if the gameplay is good and tactical like that.

Games like Dark Souls and Dragon's Dogma aren't really JRPGs, they're action RPGs made in Japan.

Are there any games fitting the classic "JRPG" label that are actually fun and not just boring cutscene-fests with slow but simple combat and endless grind?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Anachronox

 

[JarlFrank]

Anachronox

Suffers heavily from problems 1 and 2.

 

[Anonona]

I would recommend Breath of Fire V: Dragon Quarter. If anything, it is quite an unique game.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Anachronox

Suffers heavily from problems 1 and 2.

This is like asking "what is 2+2? And don't say 4"
They're inherit to the genre.

 

[NerevarineKing]

Shin Megami Tensei series tends to be more mature and difficult than most other JRPGs. Mainline SMT games feature role-playing options usually based on philosophy and will have multiple endings.

 

[Ismaul]

Anachronox

Suffers heavily from problems 1 and 2.

Its biggest problem IIRC is the amount of backtracking.

Combat and character building is shit, but that never did stop anyone from enjoying the setting and story. I frankly wouldn't call it an RPG at all, it's really an adventure game IMO.

 

[dacencora]

Shin Megami Tensei series tends to be more mature and difficult than most other JRPGs. Mainline SMT games feature role-playing options usually based on philosophy and will have multiple endings.

Yep as I was telling you before JarlFrank, SMT is a Wiz4 clone that has continued with great success. If you only like Western RPGs, the latest entry, V, may not be to your liking as it does have some of the JRPG trends that you have detailed.

SMT III: Nocturne is great with excellent atmosphere and pretty fun dungeons (apparently a divisive opinion).

SMT IV has great combat and generally great gameplay but it does have a decent amount of cutscenes and the characters are a bit cringey (unlike Nocturne which is pretty much just golden all around).

Strange Journey/ Strange Journey: Redux (a remake) has excellent art and traditional step-based blobber gameplay. The combat is excellent but the demon-fusion isn’t quite as fun as in IV, and definitely not as fun as in V. As far as Monster-Collecting-Team-Building-Customizer-Autism goes, V probably has the most breadth and depth of options. IV is pretty good, but V has better customizability.

The OG Nocturne has less customizable demon-fusion, but the HD remake rectifies this. HD is a bit of a misnomer, because they didn’t remaster the music.

The only other series I would have recommended is Fire Emblem, but you already mentioned it.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that Strange Journey (at least Redux) has a pretty in-depth alignment system that goes deeper than most entries. Negotiation with demons depends heavily on your PC’s alignment, which has an additional axis of Light-Neutral-Dark to complement the standard SMT Law-Neutral-Chaos

 

[Sranchammer]

Pokemon

 

[Thac0]

Are there any?

What I hate about JRPGs and why I bounced off every JRPG I tried:
- dialogues are non-interactive cutscenes, you rarely get any dialog choices (if at all) but have to click through line after line of pointless banter; to make it even more aggravating, the dialog is being typed out instead of displayed immediately, and you can't skip an entire conversation with one click; it's extremely annoying and I hate it
- your average classic JRPG has extremely simplistic combat which is basically early Wizardry or Might and Magic style, except with longer animations to waste your time; games with proper tactical combat aren't even considered JRPGs in Japan, they're SRPGs, a similar but separate genre
- JRPGs, especially older ones, tend to focus on grind a lot; tons and tons of random encounters you have to slay your way through, it's so fucking boring

I tried several JRPGs but they all suffer from these problems to some degree. A couple of Dragon Quest titles (they are all grindy as fuck), Phantasy Star (grindy as fuck), some of the Final Fantasies (7, 8 - grindy and filled with tons of lame cutscene-based storytelling), Chrono Trigger (it was ok, but again way too much non-interactive dialog spam)

I do enjoy the SRPG genre though. It still suffers from problem #1 (too many cutscene-like dialogs) and problem #3 (grind) but at least the gameplay is actually fun. Played Tactics Ogre and several Fire Emblem titles. I can deal with the annoying way of delivering the story if the gameplay is good and tactical like that.

Games like Dark Souls and Dragon's Dogma aren't really JRPGs, they're action RPGs made in Japan.

Are there any games fitting the classic "JRPG" label that are actually fun and not just boring cutscene-fests with slow but simple combat and endless grind?

Crimson Shroud comes to mind.
Odd little 3DS game which is mostly excellent dice based combat and top down CYOA esque dungeon crawling inbetween, with some small cutscenes here and there.
I think it is close enough to the genre to be more classical JRPG than drpg, and it certainly hits 1-3, as it has high gameplay/story ratio, complex decision filled combat and fewer long high stakes fight instead of spamming 1 turn trash on you all the time.

 

[Thac0]

I tried several JRPGs but they all suffer from these problems to some degree. A couple of Dragon Quest titles (they are all grindy as fuck), Phantasy Star (grindy as fuck), some of the Final Fantasies (7, 8 - grindy and filled with tons of lame cutscene-based storytelling), Chrono Trigger (it was ok, but again way too much non-interactive dialog spam)

Also I would give Final Fantasy I, III and V, aswell as Dragon Quest III a chance. There was a change of tracks there where JRPGs had a very different vibe going on, they were much more about worldmap and dungeon exploration, job changing and combination and quick high lethality fights with semi punishing setbacks if you die.
FF IV and DQ IV (and Phantasy Star to a degree) are the games where the modern narrative heavy character driven experience comes from that is shared by Chrono Trigger, FFVII, IX, X, every DQ following 4 and so on, comes from.

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

Are there any?

What I hate about JRPGs and why I bounced off every JRPG I tried:
- dialogues are non-interactive cutscenes, you rarely get any dialog choices (if at all) but have to click through line after line of pointless banter; to make it even more aggravating, the dialog is being typed out instead of displayed immediately, and you can't skip an entire conversation with one click; it's extremely annoying and I hate it
- your average classic JRPG has extremely simplistic combat which is basically early Wizardry or Might and Magic style, except with longer animations to waste your time; games with proper tactical combat aren't even considered JRPGs in Japan, they're SRPGs, a similar but separate genre
- JRPGs, especially older ones, tend to focus on grind a lot; tons and tons of random encounters you have to slay your way through, it's so fucking boring

I tried several JRPGs but they all suffer from these problems to some degree. A couple of Dragon Quest titles (they are all grindy as fuck), Phantasy Star (grindy as fuck), some of the Final Fantasies (7, 8 - grindy and filled with tons of lame cutscene-based storytelling), Chrono Trigger (it was ok, but again way too much non-interactive dialog spam)

I do enjoy the SRPG genre though. It still suffers from problem #1 (too many cutscene-like dialogs) and problem #3 (grind) but at least the gameplay is actually fun. Played Tactics Ogre and several Fire Emblem titles. I can deal with the annoying way of delivering the story if the gameplay is good and tactical like that.

Games like Dark Souls and Dragon's Dogma aren't really JRPGs, they're action RPGs made in Japan.

Are there any games fitting the classic "JRPG" label that are actually fun and not just boring cutscene-fests with slow but simple combat and endless grind?

Sorry buddy, trannies and fags are 98% included as a joke in JRPGs.

That out of the way Akitawa Kawazu games are clearly inspired bt D&D sense of liberty, try to play the games from him where he worked as director but The Last Remnant is still a good game even if he was only listed a producer.

Throughout his career, regardless of the reception, Kawazu has striven for originality in his game design, drawing from unconventional sources compared to other video games.[7][31] He played with Western tabletop games in his youth, and also manually translated them as they were frequently in English rather than Japanese.[5] His favourite video game is Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar.[2] For the visual and narrative style of his games, he drew influence from the sword and sorcery subgenre of fantasy, which he greatly enjoyed in his youth.[34] The SaGa series has consciously moved away from the typical storylines of other series such as Final Fantasy.[2] When working on games, Kawazu often has duties and input beyond his credited role; an instance of this was SaGa Frontier II, where he was credited as producer and co-writer but ended up writing almost all the scenarios himself, but he ensures staff were given proper credit.[35]

I don't recommend to play JRPG looking for a CRPG feel, that would be like looking for an orange that tastes like a banana, just eat a fucking banana at that point. Also you are a faggot for calling Dragon's Dogma and Dark Sould a western RPG, that's the typical excuse of the fags on RPG general everytime they are caught liking a JRPG "Wait wait they are really not JRPG please don't take away my steet cred ahhhhhhh" even if a game doesn't have moe aesthethic it doesn't automatically make it a western game. The day will come when i hear someone call Tactics Ogre a western game, only a matter of time.

Shin Megami Tensei series will always be Wizardry IV done right to me.

 

[dacencora]

That out of the way Akitawa Kawazu games are clearly inspired bt D&D sense of liberty, try to play the games from him where he worked as director but The Last Remnant is still a good game even if he was only listed a producer.

+1. Forgot that SaGa games are probably pretty decent for people that only like Western games. The combat is fantastic (I really liked Scarlet Grace’s combat, it was a very different kind of combat system) and the exploration is pretty sweet too. It probably depends on the entry in question but none of the SaGa games I’ve tried seemed overly cutscene heavy, but I may be biased.

 

[JarlFrank]

Also you are a faggot for calling Dragon's Dogma and Dark Sould a western RPG, that's the typical excuse of the fags on RPG general everytime they are caught liking a JRPG "Wait wait they are really not JRPG please don't take away my steet cred ahhhhhhh" even if a game doesn't have moe aesthethic it doesn't automatically make it a western game. The day will come when i hear someone call Tactics Ogre a western game, only a matter of time.

They're not western games, but they're not JRPGs either.

Just like how Wizardry and Might and Magic are a different subgenre from Fallout and Arcanum are a different subgenre from Morrowind and Gothic. They're all RPGs, but different subgenres.

JRPG is a subgenre. From Software's games do not belong to that subgenre.
Just like how Tactics Ogre is not a JRPG, but an SRPG. Even the Japanese themselves make that distinction.

 

[dacencora]

Also I should add that despite the dubious nature of the characters in SMT IV (ok they’re not THAT bad, just a little cringey), the combat is very fast. Encounters are rarely long affairs unless you’re fighting a boss, and even then, it’s probably not going to drag for a long time. I am a huge fan of SMTIV’s combat. It’s probably my favorite Wizardry-inspired combat of all time.

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

Also you are a faggot for calling Dragon's Dogma and Dark Sould a western RPG, that's the typical excuse of the fags on RPG general everytime they are caught liking a JRPG "Wait wait they are really not JRPG please don't take away my steet cred ahhhhhhh" even if a game doesn't have moe aesthethic it doesn't automatically make it a western game. The day will come when i hear someone call Tactics Ogre a western game, only a matter of time.

They're not western games, but they're not JRPGs either.

Just like how Wizardry and Might and Magic are a different subgenre from Fallout and Arcanum are a different subgenre from Morrowind and Gothic. They're all RPGs, but different subgenres.

JRPG is a subgenre. From Software's games do not belong to that subgenre.
Just like how Tactics Ogre is not a JRPG, but an SRPG. Even the Japanese themselves make that distinction.

Oh you are just retarded or baiting, shouldn't have put that much effort in my post.

 

[NerevarineKing]

Honestly the worst part about SMT4 for me was the new demon art done by several different people. There's some truly awful demon designs in SMT4. I also didn't really like the way smirking was implemented, but it wasn't too much of an issue overall.

 

[JarlFrank]

Also you are a faggot for calling Dragon's Dogma and Dark Sould a western RPG, that's the typical excuse of the fags on RPG general everytime they are caught liking a JRPG "Wait wait they are really not JRPG please don't take away my steet cred ahhhhhhh" even if a game doesn't have moe aesthethic it doesn't automatically make it a western game. The day will come when i hear someone call Tactics Ogre a western game, only a matter of time.

They're not western games, but they're not JRPGs either.

Just like how Wizardry and Might and Magic are a different subgenre from Fallout and Arcanum are a different subgenre from Morrowind and Gothic. They're all RPGs, but different subgenres.

JRPG is a subgenre. From Software's games do not belong to that subgenre.
Just like how Tactics Ogre is not a JRPG, but an SRPG. Even the Japanese themselves make that distinction.

Oh you are just retarded or baiting, shouldn't have put that much effort in my post.

No, I'm applying proper categorization of subgenres. "JRPG" doesn't mean "RPG made in Japan", it's a specific genre to which even some western-made games belong, like Anachronox.

 

[Casual Hero]

Japanese Role-Playing Game.
It means exactly what it says. I'm not sure why your opinion is correct.

 

[JarlFrank]

Japanese Role-Playing Game.
It means exactly what it says. I'm not sure why your opinion is correct.

Then explain JRPGs made in countries that aren't Japan.

What JRPG actually means is Japanese-style RPG.

 

[fork]

No use discussing this on the Codex.

 

[Abu Antar]

Final Fantasy Tactics is cool. There's the Ogre Battle series. Basically anything from Yasumi Matsuno's team is worth playing.

The SaGa series can be confusing for newcomers, but it is probably one of the series that I think would best suit people that like wrpgs.

If you don't mind action combat, I would recommend the Ys series, up to Ys 6.

Radiant Historia, could maybe, possibly be a game you could enjoy for a bit. The main cast are mostly adults that actually make sense.

Gungnir is a pretty cool game. Doesn't need much grinding, and the game isn't super long.

I don't know if you have tried the Shin Megami Tensei series. You could try the third one. If you don't like that one, avoid the series like the plague.

 

[The Decline]

Metal Max series?

 

[Thac0]

Japanese Role-Playing Game.
It means exactly what it says. I'm not sure why your opinion is correct.

Then explain JRPGs made in countries that aren't Japan.

What JRPG actually means is Japanese-style RPG.

I have solved this through advanced terminology.
When I say JRPG I talk about all rpgs made in Japan.
When I say classical JRPG I talk about JRPGs as a genre.
When I say weeabo garbage I talk about JRPGs made in the west.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

I second the SMT games.