Old/obscure/underrated JRPGs

[WholesaleGenocide]

Not anywhere near good at Japanese but this thread definitely got me interested in learning (been studying under a year, though, so I'm shit). I just finished Filsnown the other day and from Abnaxus's sacrifices I dodged the shitty ending and got the good(?) one since I knew to look out for it where don't stab your boyfriend to death. I was pretty surprised that there is virtually 0 information on the game whatsoever as far as I could tell. No item descriptions or anything like that; some of the items I had no damn clue what they did if it wasn't just a simple stat increase. I also managed to somehow find the dev room accidentally -- they happened to give you the best armor in the game (a bourbon vest?) and a baseball hat with the highest def, as well. The boxes in the top left are stated as being full of "Night Janki" which is Leaf's Mahjong game they released just before this game. Spoiler in case you're going to play the game:

Spoiler

Not that anyone will ever play this game or give a flying fuck but to get the good (or at least not bad) ending, after you get the blessing from the fire shrine and rescue your ally in jail, if you return to the castle a knight near the stairs will tell you about a secret entrance into the king's room. If you run your face into the left wall in the king's room (the room that's blocked by the guard) you will find a hidden wall where you can go up and get the ファーム鍵 (farm key). You can use that to open a tower I think directly south there, go to the top, and get a ファームストーン (farm stone). Then, when you go back in time you can trade that stone with the first NPC that talks to you for some gem, I forget what it was called. If you equip that + the Filsnown sword then the gem absorbs the demon's soul from Duke but doesn't kill him when the time comes. Area or whatever her name is still dies so I'm not sure if there's a better ending or what. Also, the dev room is accessed in the pyramid if you go on the last teleporter from the right side (which normally would warp you out of the pyramid instead of do anything).

And screenshots:

Spoiler

If you are interested in playing PC-98 games without any knowledge of Japanese Textractor just copies all the games text to a clipboard which you can use deepl or something to translate the text. I used textractor + yomichan to manually look up things (I only know ~2000 words or so total) but deepl is an okay solution if you don't care to learn the language.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

Played Shinseiki Odysselya 2

man, looks cool

 

[WholesaleGenocide]

Just finished Farland Story (1993) for the PC-98. This particular one came out on the SFC and PC-FX (with later games even hitting the Saturn, PS1, and PC) but I haven't played any other games in the series. Strangely enough a vast majority of the PC-98 ones are translated (and even the PC-FX one) which is pretty damn rare for the system(s) but as far as I understand the authors are not very proficient with Japanese so it's not going to be the most accurate thing in the world. An excerpt from the PC-FX translation readme:

"This is my first release of an English translation to Farland Story FX for the PC-FX.
My Japanese is very limited, I've studied it only for the past two months so I've tried
to translate as best as I could. "

The game is not too dissimilar from Langrisser or Shining Force -- as a matter of fact, it plays like a shittier more low budget version -- but it does have some benefits like the ability to use the mouse. The story follows some punk kid named Arc who successfully checks off every 90's SRPG box when his love interest is kidnapped by the black knight and then he has to go rescue his girl. This later evolves into discovering you're the lost heir to the royal kingdom, you get a holy sword, you need to prevent seals from being broken lest the demon king from hell is released, the royal queen is trying to converge the world of the living and hell upon one another, etc.

The game is notoriously easy and it unfortunately completely breaks down mid game because you can just buy stat up items for very little that give +5 to a stat and your stat cap for every single class is 45. You can level to 20, use a promotion item, and each class can generally choose between two different promotions which give different growths and allow you to equip different items. Unfortunately, that mostly does not matter because everyone has the same stat caps and you could easily max out everyone's stats if you cared to do so. The AI is so awful and the game is so easy, though, that you definitely won't have to do that. Some of the maps are insanely long and very easy -- a bad combo -- but the game is okay-ish. It does not help that units are fairly slow and you cannot be through your own units so some treks get insanely long when a map is forcing you by a 1-wide hallway which it loves to do on a few especially annoying missions. There are a fair amount of hidden places on the map that hold items -- they're usually obvious (a flower garden) but not always so you can't totally turn your brain off. Thankfully, there's only 14 maps so it doesn't overstay too much. You do get a little animation when you attack people (like Fire Emblem) but I didn't screenshot it.

Spoiler

 

[RoksCQ]

Emerald Dragon

Man, that game really reminds me a lot of an obscure (but terrible*) Genesis RPG I played as a kid called Traysia.

The two are apparently unrelated, though. The only things I can remember about the game are a twist where some dude in armor turns out to be some chick in armor and that, in the combat system, if you selected "move" but then didn't move your character, that character was invulnerable for the turn (though he/she couldn't attack). So if you formed a Tetris .:. pattern at the bottom of the screen with a ranged attacker in the middle, you could win any fight without anyone getting hurt. As a consequence, I raced through the game without leveling, until I reached a point where enemies moved so fast that I couldn't get into formation in time, and then I couldn't win any fights, so I couldn't level, so I couldn't advance at all, at which point I returned it to Blockbuster. Good times, youth.

Floyd commits some cold blooded shit in the game story, despite the games failings traysia was great, felt a bit like ultima's early system of projectiles and having to be in range or on target. took getting used to but i think it had a good payoff

 

[somerandomdude]

Just a couple I remember playing, and enjoying on Sega Genesis:

Spoiler

 

[abnaxus]

Played Eldorado Gate volume I-VII, a DC rpg game (2000) from Crapcom of all people (don’t these people have enough money to pay for translation anyway). Guess it explains the episodic format which must’ve royally stank at the time (but I suppose the idea was to play through the scenarios multiple times before the next volume came out).

NullDC that managed to run Shenmoe I & II, Skies of Arcadia, Sword of the Berserk had to be forced into retirement to run this.

Character and enemy design was by Yoshitaka Amano, it’s prolly worth playing for that alone. Injecting his art into the game was a good idea.



Other than that it reminded me of London Seirei Tanteidan, the game actually has some steampunk elements as well.

There’s no leveling up, battles are only useful to gain magic crystals.

This game series follows the formula of the much older (obscure) Burai rpg games: (extremely) flamboyant party members who complete individual storylines before meeting up, forming a party and beating teh ebulz (or rather teh gudz, since you’re supposed to resurrect an archdemon). Burai did get ported to 16bit consoles, so it’s not inconceivable for it to have served as an inspiration.

Overall

+ art, music, characters, humour

+ some replayability

+ cool base similar to Suikoden games

+ killing God

- annoying crafting, being forced to carry three copies of equipment for each element lest you are roflstomped by boss

- pixel hunting

- still feels a tad rushed near the end, little opportunity to use Gigi (but she’s OP)

Volume I

Spoiler

Volume II

Spoiler

Volume III

Spoiler

Volume IV

Spoiler

Volume V

Spoiler

Volume VI

Spoiler

Volume VII

Spoiler

 

[flyingjohn]

Played Eldorado Gate volume I-VII

Was always interested in the games.
How is the difficulty and combat system? Basically if somebody values combat and rpg elements and doesn't care for the story/graphics,are these games worth it?

 

[abnaxus]

Played Legends of Lune (1992)

It’s a hack ‘n slash rpg game that clicked with me while many others didn’t (I also tried Xak, Fall and others). Maybe it’s the lack of animu aesthetics.

Main character loots a wizard’s tower to garner money for her little sister’s dowry and a face in a mirror tells her to save the world by killing the dragon White Fang. She has no interest but is forced to when her little sister is turned to crystal by White Fang.

You need to garner three divine artifacts and at one point travel 800 years back in time which is p. neat. There are both mandatory and optional party members that make the game much too easy. As you can jump in the game there’s quite some platforming as well.

Spoiler

 

[abnaxus]

Played Harlem Blade~The Greatest of All Time.~ (1996), it's both on PC98 and win95.

Of course it should be HAREM Blade. There's also a game called Harlem Fantasy for that matter.

This is an rpg game where the bulk of the gameplay is managing an extremely tight schedule. You have a month to gather waifus/party members and make everyone stronk enough to beat teh ebulz. Since random encounters and entering buildings can push the clock forward, this can get more complicated than Tale of Wuxia.

To see every ending you prolly need to play it more than ten times. To see the “true end” you need to focus on worst gurl, in other words cucking the main character’s rival little brother (an insufferable, generic jrpg hero).

I think the best game of this type is still Brave Soul. I had no qualms playing that one seven times.

Spoiler

 

[FriendlyMerchant]

Not an rpg. But True Love ~Jun'ai Monogatari~ is an excellent visual novel.

 

[abnaxus]

Played Sword Master (1993) for PC Engine by Right Stuff, who also developed titles like Alshark, Libros de Chilam Balam, Alnam no Kiba and the Emerald Dragon console versions.

It’s a typical strategy rpg game where every action you take gives experience and you level up on the battlefield, like Nana eiyuu monogatari and Days in duel. The gameplay gets extremely ponderous once you have many party members and need to fight big battles.

Not a very gud game but I liked the anti-heroic main character, the music, art style and the overall p. dark atmosphere. Not to mention, the grorious Engrish. Nowadays you miss out on that charm since devs can google transrate.

Spoiler

 

[arekks]

Wild Arms 4 is very underrated. It's an aggressively stupid game that is fun because of how insane it is.

 

[abnaxus]

Played Different Realm for PC98 by Glodia (1993)

In-game the game calls itself DIFFELENT Realm which is p. silly if not embarrassing. It is the last rpg game developed by Glodia before they moved on to (real time) strategy games, all great looking games but excruciating to play.

This game has a very detailed setting, neatly described in the almost 30 page manual. In the beginning two characters are (accidentally) sent into the future. One of them is quickly disposed of however.

The character design of the game is by Fujimura Fumihiko aka MIN-NARAKEN of Alice Soft, which becomes apparent from one look at the waifus.

The main setting is is a planet much larger than Earth with 4 main races and many different countries, cultures with different technology level. There was a technological revolution 200 years before the game begins, so there are guns, energy weapons, airships, etc. Magic is replaced by psionics.

The game itself takes place in only one country and is overall very short. It ends on a cliffhanger and overall feels like a prologue to a bigger story. But at least there are some optional areas/sidequests. Combat is no longer automated like in other Glodia and Glodia offshoot games. It’s p. fun now since you’re no longer reduced to shuffling around some boring meleetard while your waifu is shooting lazors from her eyes like previous games.

Spoiler

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

WOW that game is gorgeous!

 

[abnaxus]

Played Boundary Gate: Daughter of Kingdom (1997)

The PSX version is a PC-FX port.

The setting of the game is a kingdom known as the “healing kingdom”, whose healers and mages can even replace lost limbs with protheses. A “science fantasy” setting.

The “daughter of kingdom” refers to a woman bestowed with ancient knowledge who is the de facto leader of the kingdom. It’s the gurl on the game cover who went cuckoo in the game. The white hair gurl who becomes party member is her elder sister and must save her (the twist is that they were born as conjoined twins, when they were separated white hair gurl received the entire body while her sister had her head installed on an artificial body).

The “boundary gate” is the source of all magic and also a portal to different worlds. The daughter of kingdom can manipulate it and summon forth monsters.

The game has a mystifying setting, nice art and exploration is first person which is always incline. There are some nice spell and combat animations.

The main ‘problem’ of the game is that it is lacking in challenge. Primarily because every combat encounter consists of one and only one monster vs an eventual party of four. Sure certain monsters have instakill abilities but it is merely an annoyance.

Overall interesting game. But Bastard!!, of which I was reminded quite a few times playing this game, is much superior.

Spoiler

 

[d1r]

abnaxus
this game looks like absolute KINO.

 

[abnaxus]

Played Noble Mind, X68000 exclusive RPG game (1991)

It is p. generic and super grindy (well, a Dragon Quest clone) but kinda gets better as it progresses. Enemy design and music is p. rad.

The main villain looks like some kind of proto-Irenicus.

Maybe an emulation bug, but during conversations character portraits tend to get screwed up by the environment.

The game comes with three disks and the entirety of disk 3 is used for the ending movie.

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

[abnaxus]

Played Sword World SFC 2 (1994)

It seems character design was apparently by Suemi Jun (who worked on many games including Libros de Chilam Balam)

While the first game was free form with a main story stealthily interspersed throughout the different scenarios, this time there is a clear main quest during which you travel to the westernmost point of the continent with side quests that occur organically along the way, some of which are quite excellent. It’s also possible to level a class to 10 now (there are more spells this time around).

You can assemble a party of four at the beginning but there’s not much point as fixed party members related to the main story are added.

It’s better rpg wise than the first game: like in Sword World PC character classes matter a lot more and may give certain options during scenarios. There are more exotic enemies and you can actually find gud stuff in dungeons this time around (even a sword in a stone).

Spoiler

 

[Abu Antar]

Battle screens give me Arc the Lad vibes.

 

[abnaxus]

Played War torn Versnag (1993)

It’s an X68000 exclusive rpg game with a setting similar to Lodoss/Sword World. It would be unfair to call it a clone; the developers at least made an effort to flesh out the setting a bit.

Combat is highly automated. You can set certain character behaviours but characters will never behave like you want them to when it matters. It’s still possible to override the input behaviour and give individual commands however it isn’t the most responsive in the middle of combat and in the end, rarely necessary.

The dungeons in the game are extensive enough (they’re always comprised of at least two 20x20 grids). The music is quite gud (Ryu Umemoto!). Characters are likable and story is very Lodoss like with reincarnating gods and such.

As usual the ending sequence is impressive

Spoiler

https://i.imgur.com/kZT4qfl.mp4

Spoiler

 

[abnaxus]

Played Zeta (1991)

It’s a hard sci-fi mostly adventure game with dungeon crawling elements, Story is psychological horror.

I had expected something like Alien Legacy

plus this artwork is a red herring

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

[Great Deceiver]

PC-88 aesthetic is just so great.

 

[Shinji]

Man, I wish I knew japanese. So many games...

 

[Sigourn]

PC-88 is the embodiment of the word comfy.

 

[abnaxus]

Played Nemu Lu Mayu for PSX (2000)

It’s a surrealistic dungeon crawler.

You are sucked into a magic book (which has the form of a cocoon, with wandering enemies taking the form of bee maggots) at the beginning and are destroyed by someone who stepped out of E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy. However your soul is saved by four spirits of medieval Tuscany knights (though two of them are women and one is a child) and attached to a “doll”, your in-game avatar.

You then connect to one of the four spirits and pass to a nineteen floor dungeon during which you gradually restore the spirit’s memory. Once you gain access to the final dungeon, you are then told that in order to continue you must also go through the three other nineteen floor dungeons of the other three spirits. Really nice when you were not set on playing a long game.

The problem is that the other three nineteen floor dungeons are near copy pastes of the first dungeon. Since even the way to progress through the other dungeons remains the same, it becomes extremely repetitive. Not to mention there’s an awful amount of backtracking that turns the game several times as long as it needs to be. I could understand for a less patient soul to drop the game after finishing the first dungeon. But you will really want to know the backstory of the other knights and henceforth grudgingly bear with it.

At any rate when you reach the final dungeon you’ll be worn down completely but at least then the game once again becomes interesting.

The game is neither very combat heavy nor very challenging.

During combat most of the time you cast spells which comes down to a rhythm game. It is absolutely awful in the beginning but you do git gud at it eventually. Various mechanics in the game are tied to other (annoying) minigames. There is melee combat but weapons are rare: in the beginning you mostly end up literally punching suckers in the face.

It’s an interesting experience despite all the repetitiveness.

Spoiler