Old/obscure/underrated JRPGs

[Ayreos]

Eternal Eyes
It's an absolutely no-pretense tactical RPG in which you control an army of surprisingly cute monsters, which you can evolve through the usage of magical stones obtained from battles. Great for kids because of the balanced difficulty curve.

Spoiler

In the same theme:
Digimon World

This one is actually one of my all-time favorite jRPGs. It does open world exploration right in a jRPG long before Xenoblade (and dare i say, better), which is coupled together with good old school resource scarcity. You get to train a monster in various stats, which determines its evolution. Your character never gets to fight, but only to encourage your monster in different ways, according to its intelligence stat. Also, your monster can learn new attacks by being hit by them. The game is surprisingly hard, mostly because keeping your monster fed and disciplined is an involving process. Notable are the nightmarish consequences of letting digimon poop away from a toilet.

Spoiler

 

[Abu Antar]

Eternal Eyes
It's an absolutely no-pretense tactical RPG in which you control an army of surprisingly cute monsters, which you can evolve through the usage of magical stones obtained from battles. Great for kids because of the balanced difficulty curve.

Spoiler

In the same theme:
Digimon World

This one is actually one of my all-time favorite jRPGs. It does open world exploration right in a jRPG long before Xenoblade (and dare i say, better), which is coupled together with good old school resource scarcity. You get to train a monster in various stats, which determines its evolution. Your character never gets to fight, but only to encourage your monster in different ways, according to its intelligence stat. Also, your monster can learn new attacks by being hit by them. The game is surprisingly hard, mostly because keeping your monster fed and disciplined is an involving process. Notable are the nightmarish consequences of letting digimon poop away from a toilet.

Spoiler

I play Digimon World at work. We have a copy of that and a PS1. Don't ask why, but we do.

 

[Ayreos]

Nice! I think it really fits the bill of "underrated game".

 

[Dreaad]

Damn don't remind me of Digimon. I've been waiting for that Digimon World translation patch for ages, and as always the creator was like yeah "release real soon". Next update "...real life... difficulties... work will continue after march..."

 

[CryptRat]

Energy breaker.



It was fan-translated recently. It's a bit interesting in that its a sjrpg and that its later story approaches romancing saga 3 levels of clusterfuck (for different reasons, RS3 is a somewhat open world with dozens of minigames and no perceptible plot with a ensemble cast, this game has a crazy timetravel plot and a obligatory ensemble cast).

It's a bit tedious later on because to advance the story you need to shuffle around time and do the same dungeons again, but it's interesting in that the combat system has many mobility abilities and is objective based. It's not hard, but interesting (if you don't use the obvious exploit). Also girly protagonist and much hidden stuff on each and every map. It's also very... japan. 2 boss fights are in wombs. One of them in a underage girls organ. Game also feels incomplete.


Speaking of romancing saga, here is a review

I just completed Energy Breaker. Considering that many JRPG choose between exploration and tactical combat and don't offer both, that the story is pleasant (some dialogs and situations are funny and the main character is cool), that the game is not 100% linear and that the fights are good (the item system is retarded but no matter), it is a game that i will now recommend (the music is good too). As you say one of the only bad points is that you travel several times through the same dungeons.

The translator explains in the game (when you speak to a character) that the game is indeed incomplete but I have not felt this.

 

[SCO]

CryptRat you can skip battles you already did (i only realized later on). Just pause during a battle in a place you already did and there is a option to skip it completely.

 

[CryptRat]

Lol, thanks, I totally missed that, so the game is even better than what i thought.

 

[victim]

7th Dragon. I played through 2/3s of the game before it got a fan translation. It is Etrian Odyssey-fied Dragon Quest (granted, a large number of this type of game reduce to "basically Dragon Quest").

I may revisit and try to complete the game. I liked this one better than all EOs except II.

 

[Raghar]

Was this posted?

https://youtu.be/RWi4J-xrepM?t=155

 

[abnaxus]

Skies of Arcadia was the first console game I played since the Super NES. I had taken a long console break and had bought a cheap used Dreamcast with that game to play on a 14 inch CRT TV. I absolutely loved it. I remember it has some pretty long-ass battles. I think I remember one against that Ramirez that took me near 30 minutes of cranking up the same commands at each turn for him to go down.

I didn't know the director of the game also worked on Phantasy Star series.

It's gud but unskippable ridiculously long combat animations and frequency of random encounters on DC is maddening at times. Apparently GC remake is different.

 

[Androv]

There's a game based on the Tenchi Muyo Anime that's very close to my heart. And there's no wonder it's underrated: it was never released outside of Japan.

To be fair the writing is pretty bad but that could be due to the romhack that translated everything from Japanese to English.

Other than that it's a very simple turnbased RPG, perfect for those times when you don't wanna use your brain for anything and yet not braindead enough to play Fallout 4.

Also;

Spoiler

JAPANESE BUTTHOLES!

 

[abnaxus]

Last jrpg I finished was Vay.

Interesting story with same premise as Phantasy Star III, fun party members but insane level of grinding (even compared to Phantasy Star).

Spoiler

 

[abnaxus]

Started playing Metal Eye

Spoiler

Only Elf translated rpg was Knights of Xentar

Level of grinding in these old jrpgs is always insane, to leave first town buying metal gear, new armour and weapons, potions costs 5,000 - 10,000 shekels in total. But you get 60 shekels at most from random encounters around first city.

I don't know how these 90s salarymen who worked 14 hours a day managed to play and finish these games. Then again, Yayoi gnna yayoi

 

[Rahdulan]

Man, that totally reminds me of Cobra Mission: Panic in Cobra City. Except, you know, it looks way better and probably plays nothing alike.

 

[abnaxus]

finished Branmarker

Spoiler

without ability to play at 400% speed the frequency of random encounters would've driven me mad

also funny it's from same developer as Kana Imouto~

 

[Phinx]

Terranigma (not really underrated, just that more people need to play this classic), the characters are truly unforgettable.

 

[abnaxus]

Currently playing D'ark

interesting game where one plays as bad guy(s). Good plot.

Spoiler

 

[v1rus]

Did anyone play that Record of Lodoss War snes game? I remember it sounded kinda fun - as far as i can remember, there were multiple characters, and one of the main characters could change bodies, or some other fun thingy like that. Played for only a short time tho, and my memory is really bad, so god knows if any of this is true.

@thread

For some reason, I quite liked Arc The Lad Twilight something. I mean, I was quite young, and it was the first game I got for ps2, so yeah, emotions, emotions, but something about that game just worked. Don't know what tho, since lots of things didn't. Also, while hardly obscure, I dont see Shining Force III mentioned enough, and in my humble opinion, that game bloody rocked. Then again, I was quite young when I played it. Now that i think about it, it's been moar than 6 years since i've played a jrpg. Does that mean I'm a grown up?

 

[Hobo Elf]

Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits was a p. ok game. I liked the way they split the plot between Darc and Kharg and the music was p. good as well.

 

[Xeon]

Yea, I loved Twilight of the Spirit. It was the first Arc game I played so was pretty fun. I think I did multiple replays since you unlock NG+ and get rings or something to double exp and money depending on the character you playing.

 

[v1rus]

I made it to the final dungeon, which is the place where i stop playing 90% of jrpgs. Dunno why tho. Ya, Arc The Lad had some quite fun content, i remember i really liked the deimos design and all. I always hated the ~this guy hits wit teh sword, this chick shootz lezers from gunz~ shit tho. Liked bunch of other stuff, some of those deimos were fuckin' creepy, and the part where that witch flower regains her form was awesum. Never obtained optional chars tho, i remember that arena was way phucking hard back then. Also, for some reason, the scene where Darc (thats the human guy, right?) rips his wings was really left a mark on me. Gewd stuff. Bwah, I should prolly sit down and play through the whole serial. Which game is teh best?

Oh, and Rogue Galaxy. That game was phacking huge. So much optional content I actually burned out.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Kharg was the more human-like protagonist who ripped his wings off. Darc was the cooler dood.

I did a quick search on the thread and no one mentioned this hidden gem, so I'll go ahead and talk about Koudelka.

This is pretty much as hidden as a gem can get. Features Resident Evil-esque pre-rendered backgrounds with similar adventuring, puzzle and riddle solving and turn based combat. Tells the tale of the eponymous Koudelka, a medium, who ventures into a cursed Abbey in Wales known for being a prison for heretics who were tortured and killed there. But things aren't as straightforward as that and there are twists in the plot that reveal the true satanic nature of the place. The things that stuck out the most to me was how great the writing and plot was in this game, how good the voice acting is and how well animated the characters were, far more advanced than what you'd expect from a PS1 game. At times it felt like they had used mo cap. Maybe they did? Music is also great, which is no surprise since it was composed by the guy who composed Secret of Mana's soundtrack. Monster design was also top notch. The enemies you fight in this game so grotesque and bizarre. This game is really good, men. I'm not the kind of person who considers plot to be all that important in vidya, but it really elevates this game. It's complex as there are multiple different plot lines that overlap each other and the character motivations and interactions feel adult, for a lack of better term. And I mean complex in the sense that the plots are like individual onions that you keep peeling to find new interesting depths until they all come together to form a satisfying whole, not the Hideo Kojima brand of complex.

This game is also a prequel to the Shadow Hearts series.

 

[Wayward Son]

Dark Cloud from Level 5. I'm not sure if this qualifies as an action game or a action jrpg, but it's Wikipedia page say ARPG and Level 5 is Japanese, so I'm gonna say it is. Advancement is mostly in the form of leveling, evolving and finding new weapons. Story is standard save the world plot, but with the twist of that the (civilized) world has already been mostly destroyed. You must find the Atla and unlock them with the magic stone a magic being gave you to repair the world. You then go on to face the dark creature that destroyed the world.
It was my first game I ever played, but it's a ps2 exclusive from early 2000s, so I understand why it's a relative unknown in the genre. It did spawn a sequel and rumors of a third game persist to this day. It also follows few jrpg tropes, so there's a plus. Your character is not an emo fag and there's only one character who could possibly classify as such, but he even has good reasons (that I won't spoil here). I kept my ps2 for several years just for this game. For the most part it's in a non-traditional setting, with objects and places that you may not find in most other fantasy jrpgs.
All in all, great game 7/10 (non-journalist rating system, so that's pretty good.)
Some of this may be nostalgia, so be forewarned if you download a ROM and emulate it.

 

[mck]

I love Dark Cloud. I was just playing it for the first time in like 10 years the other day. Always preferred the graphics of the original to the cel-shaded sequel. The graphics in the latter looked nice, but I felt like the original graffix had their own unique charm.

 

[Wayward Son]

I love Dark Cloud. I was just playing it for the first time in like 10 years the other day. Always preferred the graphics of the original to the cel-shaded sequel. The graphics in the latter looked nice, but I felt like the original graffix had their own unique charm.

I agree 100%, also felt that the new way the Atlamillia worked was kinda annoying, especially considering they still included world (re)building mechanics. The idea was alright, just that it changed the way the established piece of lore worked. Also, the fact that all they share are the Atlamillia, name and Dark Genie in the bonus dungeon always confused me (like I said, these were my first games at age 5, my earlier childhood consisted of watching my mom and brother play it). Still liked 2 though, just thought the deviation was strange.