Requesting some JRPG recommendations.

[Fenril]

Want a new game to kill some time here and there during the next few days, although Im not a big fan I did have some moderate fun with Jrpgs in the past, although the only ones I finished were Suikoden 2 for the PSX and chrono trigger and FF VI for the SNES. At this point I already played or tried the pc titles that interested me so...

I played Jrpgs before with emus, and I am also looking for something I can play either with a SNES or PSX emulator.

So if anyone wants to suggest something that is a must play or whatever please do so and explain why, I tried FF7 for example but it didnt hold me for a very long time.

I have a few psx isos already:

FF7
FF8
FF9
FF TACTICS
XENOGEARS
CHRONO CROSS

Im leaning towards final fantasy tactics but would welcome opinions on which one will be more enjoyable and why, and if there are other ISOs out there worth getting.

 

[Cthulhugoat]

FFT über alles, of course. Then Xenogears and Chrono Cross. Both have pretty fucked up storylines, but I like them anyway. Plus Chrono Cross has awesome music.

 

[Mojo]

If you have a resident inner child ( or if jrpgs are your thing for that matter), I will forward the Chrono Cross recomendation, and add Chrono Trigger. They are great games when you are 12-16 years old. I personally loved them when I was a kid, though I would never manage to play and enjoy them now.

 

[Hory]

Live a Live

 

[Andyman Messiah]

They are great games when you are 12-16 years old.

This.

Anyway; Dragon Warrior 7 and Chrono Cross. Silent protagonists for the win as they say. CC is incredibly annoying though what with the lack of this whole "good narrative"-thing. Still, you can do worse and Chrono Cross is actually kind of fun to play, compared to...

Xenogears, which is fucking horrible! Seriously. It has a shitty story that I'm certain read way better in japanese than it does in english. It has very annoying characters too. Emo is a word that comes to mind, and I know that's a word that gets thrown out a lot when it comes to jRPGs. But with Xenogears though, it's entirely justified. It's probably the worst game Square made.

Also play Suikoden 1 if you haven't.

Avoid Final Fantasy Tactics. Play Ogre Tactics/Tactics Ogre/TacOgreIcs/whatever instead. I never liked FF's cute fantasy world.

edit: I second Hory's post. Play Live-a-Live. Live-a-Live is great. I could play the Cowboy chapter forever.

 

[Jasede]

Don't play Chrono Cross if you already played Chrono Trigger! You'd hate it; I did.

It's not the worst, naturally. On your list, FFT isn't a JRPG; it's a tactical combat game, like Tactics Ogre, but it's very good. If you want the jRPG experience, FF9 is likely the best of these .isos.

Xenogears is supposedly very very good, but it has almost only cinematics with little to no gameplay.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I wouldn't bother with the FF's or Chrono Cross. Both will be disappointing compared to their prequels. Chrono Cross in particular is a perfect example of how to fuck up having many character compared to FFVI. FFT is great stuff though. Xenogears is a masterpiece that never got finished. It's also incredibly long.

3 others you should definitely try for the PSX:

Valkyrie Profile - Very good story, entertaining battle system, and it's one of those games where the art can't be surpassed anymore just because the graphics have improved. It's done in 2D at a high enough resolution that it's all about the talent of the artist at that point, and they did an amazing job. Don't judge the game by the first chapter, it's just training mode, and the dungeons, characters, and voice acting gets better. (Frei really needs to be strangled, along with whoever left in the door 'fmv'.

Vagrant Story - Another gorgeous looking game. This one is in 3D, but it still looks better than most PS2 games by sheer will of art direction. The combat is teeth grindingly difficult at some points, and not in a good way. On the upside: You'll never need to grind for experience or money or anything, and the story and voice acting makes up for everything wrong with the game. Generally the drive of playing a jrpg is either you wanting to see the plot progress, or wanting to see what new cool tricks you can do with your party. This has the former in spades.

SaGa Frontier- If Vagrant Story inspired through the story, this inspires through the gameplay. 5 different races, all of which gain power in radically different ways from eachother. No levels. Combat can be very tense, and is likely to give you a lot of memorable fights due to the sparking system. The world is fairly large and free for you to roam in most cases, and is one of the few games out there that is fun to simply explore. 7 different storylines. I was doing a Let's Play of it but got basically nowhere because of what a pain in the ass doing the dialogue for a console game is, since everything is delivered a few lines at a time.

 

[Andyman Messiah]

It takes a while to get used to how different Chrono Cross is compared to Chrono Trigger, yes.

Chrono Trigger has a very strong narrative and incentive to actually do stuff. Chrono Cross, on the other hand, doesn't have any of those things and as a result you'll just run along and do stuff because you enabled said stuff to be done.

edit: I'll be sure to make Xenogears my second LP.

 

[Mojo]

Chrono Trigger is deffinately better, but Chrono Cross is probably stilll one of the best jrpgs you can find.

Some people speak very highly of the Suikoden series. I never played it but I guess you should put it on your list. There are also several famous not so good jrpg series as Breath of Fire.

EDIT : And Vagrant Story is on that list indeed. Interesting game.

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

Charles Barkley Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden

Only "jRPG" truly worth playing.

Other than that, you could try "real" jRPGs that don't totally suck a big, hairy, wart-covered one in the fun department like Paper Mario or uhhh maybe the SNES Mario "RPG" and uhhh....thats about it. "Serious" jRPGs are too grindy and too much about spreadsheet spergin' and checking FAQs for completely counter-intuitive strategies against bosses as opposed to a western dungeon crawler where things are intuitive and reward thinking.....well.....sometimes. Sometimes the spergin' goes on there too.

Maybe the more "tactical" jRPGs are different. I'd hope so.

If you don't mind kind of shit gameplay, have a PS2, and want an absolutely demented story, you could pick up the first Drakengard.

 

[pkt-zer0]

FF Tactics, Tactics Ogre, Vagrant Story. The former two are tactical combat games, as mentioned before, the latter one being a dungeon crawler.
I liked FF1 (PS1 remake) as a dungeon crawler lite, too.

If you like action-RPGs ("RPG" being of the "JRPG" variety here), the PS2 remake of Tales of Destiny is a must play. Here's a combo vid showing off some pretty neat stuff, including insane 4P co-op combos. Try to ignore the "lol emo" parts cut straight from Evangelion. Only the first half of the footage is from this game, the rest is from one of its forerunners. You might wish to check out the other 2D games of the series if you happen to like it - the 3D ones have been pretty much rubbish so far. Japanese only though, so you'll need a modded PS2.

Seconding Valkyrie Profile 1, it's quite nice.

Almost forgot about Dragon Quarter.

 

[Fenril]

Thanks for the replies. I think Ill give FF tactics a shot first, since I tried it before and liked it, if I get into it and finish it Ill be sure to try tactics ogre too, I think tactics will be ok because its supposed to have a pretty good story and of course combat is more deep, and even though there are random encounters I believe it does not require alot of grinding.

Of course FFT has the "cute" graphics which ive learned to hate since the SNES rpgs with the characters with the huge heads and childish emotes, not to mention speech here and there, but I guess you cant take the "good" of these jrpgs without having to tolerate a bit of the ...japanese sensibility for their rpg games and characters.

I do have fond memories of chrono trigger, because I remember it gripped me till the end, and from what I remember it was also a game where the whole japanese childish or emo nonsense popped up alot, from the art to the characters to well everything, but this one was actually very fun and gripping and thats what mattered.

 

[Fat Dragon]

I never understood all the love for Chrono Trigger. The game had a decent combat system but that's about all it had going for it. Everything else was utter shit, especially those massive fags Robo and Magus.

Fuck these PS1 games, get a SNES emulator and go play Earthbound and Super Mario RPG.

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

I'd also throw out Persona and Persona 2. They're definitely atypical jRPGs with a really fucked up story. I'll second the Tactics Ogre recommendation, too. If you have access to a PS2 I'd suggest SMT: Nocturne.

 

[Jasede]

I never understood all the love for Chrono Trigger. The game had a decent combat system but that's about all it had going for it. Everything else was utter shit, especially those massive fags Robo and Magus.

Fuck these PS1 games, get a SNES emulator and go play Earthbound and Super Mario RPG.

woah

 

[Keldryn]

If you have access to a Gamecube, Wii, or Dreamcast, I'd recommend Skies of Arcadia. I played the "Legends" re-issue on the Gamecube, and it was one of my favourite JRPGs. It's still fairly linear and there are a lot of random battles (though less than on the Dreamcast version), but it really encourages exploration, the characters are refreshingly upbeat and not navel-gazing angsty twists, and you eventually get your own airship and fight a number of strategic ship-to-ship battles.

Not sure how available it is on the emulation scene, but it's definitely worth playing if you can get your hands on it.

 

[Zomg]

Front Mission 3 is a nice PSX SRPG (or TRPG, whatever they're calling ti now), at least on an emulator with a fast-forward button set.

Ogre Battle is a weird SNES game that's worth playing a bit, and there is a PSX port also.

Tactics Ogre is a SNES SRPG in the same universe (I think?), again with a PSX port.

You already played Suik 2.

Don't listen to weeaboo love for Shin Megami Tensei and spinoffs, they're terrible. - at least the pre-PS2 incarnations.

Edit - Also, check out the list of translations at the fan group "Aeon Genesis". They do a much, much better job of localization than early '90s Japs did, so you can play a game you've never heard of with much better translation than something you'd get from a game that saw an English release back in the day. I played "Metal Max Returns" with their patch and it was about as good as any SNES JRPG I can recall.

 

[Fat Dragon]

If you have access to a Gamecube, Wii, or Dreamcast, I'd recommend Skies of Arcadia. I played the "Legends" re-issue on the Gamecube, and it was one of my favourite JRPGs. It's still fairly linear and there are a lot of random battles (though less than on the Dreamcast version), but it really encourages exploration, the characters are refreshingly upbeat and not navel-gazing angsty twists, and you eventually get your own airship and fight a number of strategic ship-to-ship battles.

Not sure how available it is on the emulation scene, but it's definitely worth playing if you can get your hands on it.

It was an alright game, but the character voices can easily drive a man insane. It's one of those games a person needs to play in complete privacy because it's just too embarrassing to be caught playing the game when that red haired female character screams out the word "Yaaaay!"

 

[theverybigslayer]

Shining Force 1-2
Best tactical rpg ever.

 

[Jasede]

Shin Megami Tensei 1 and 2 aren't that bad; but I hate all other Shin Megami / Digital Devil games.

1 and 2, however, play like Wizardry. Yay!

 

[Zomg]

They're like Wizardry except with no puzzles and combat that is so bad and prevalent that it makes you feel like you're drowning in kerosene.

 

[Jasede]

Oh, well, I only played 2, and only 3 minutes, so I wouldn't know.

No puzzles?

 

[Cthulhugoat]

Front Mission 3 is a nice PSX SRPG (or TRPG, whatever they're calling ti now), at least on an emulator with a fast-forward button set.

Good game, horribly long though. How many missions does it have in total? 60? 120, with the alternate path? I gave up on mission 35 or so.

chaos dunk

Fucking A.

 

[Murk]

good reccomendations in here

for ps1

suikoden 1 and 2, final fantasy tactics, tactics ogre, saga frontier, and try star ocean 2

 

[Carrie Underwood]

Only 1 recomendation for Earthbound? D'oh!

Crono Cross is great. But play it as if it's a psuedo-sequel to CT set in an alternate universe... or something. If you look at it as a direct sequel, and since you said you have fond memories of CT, you will get REALLY pissed off towards the end.

Ignore the haters. Play FFT.

Radical Dreamers (SNES) is a text based JRPG and a psuedo-prequel to Chrono Cross. Play after Chrono Cross.

Skip FF8. It's worse than FFX.

Super Mario RPG is good for an hour or so just to see what a Mario RPG looks like. After that, it's really a hit or miss. Not bad, but not that great.

To make FF7 a whole lot better, don't use Tifa, Aeris, or Cait Sith, and up the challenge by using the Buster Sword for the entire game.

Tales of Phantasia (SNES)... pretty fun, but suffers from too cute anime syndrome.