JRPGs that Aren't Final Fantasy Catch-All 2.0

Best advise I can give you with Legend of Heroes games, is just to take your time and enjoy the world, talk to everyone, explore a bit, smell the flowers etc. They are not meant to be played by pushing through the main story.

I'd love to say this killed my interest in the Neptunia games, but we all know I'm trash and therefore am just as curious about them now as I am repulsed by them.

Fastmav347 wrote:

Best advise I can give you with Legend of Heroes games, is just to take your time and enjoy the world, talk to everyone, explore a bit, smell the flowers etc. They are not meant to be played by pushing through the main story.

Seconding this. Trails in the Sky luxuriates in the characters and worldbuilding.

ccesarano wrote:

I'd love to say this killed my interest in the Neptunia games, but we all know I'm trash and therefore am just as curious about them now as I am repulsed by them.

Yeah... I don’t think that was a vary good video about them. And why list the original Japanese voice actresses when they aren’t even heard in the trailer?

Hrm. I’m excited for this game. Feels like it’s been a while since we’ve had a new game in the franchise.

ccesarano wrote:

I'd love to say this killed my interest in the Neptunia games, but we all know I'm trash and therefore am just as curious about them now as I am repulsed by them.

YO LOOK AT THOSE BOOBS, MAN

I've been playing Disgaea 1 PC.

I forgot how bad the Item World was in the first game. They learned quickly how to make it not frustrating, or in some cases, impossible to clear a floor because they put an enemy on his own little island.

New Tales of game! I'm pretty excited, visuals look improved, for some reason getting bit of Graces and Xillia vibe from the trailer.

Looks nice. Interesting use of color, at times.

I'm getting XC2 vibes more than anything!

garion333 wrote:

Looks nice. Interesting use of color, at times.

I'm getting XC2 vibes more than anything!

Thats what I thought as well - Probably when he pulled the sword from her chest.

Razgon wrote:
garion333 wrote:

Looks nice. Interesting use of color, at times.

I'm getting XC2 vibes more than anything!

Thats what I thought as well - Probably when he pulled the sword from her chest.

I think they studied some of the cutscenes and whatnot from XC2. (Some art reminiscent of Xeno games too.)

It does look like they've finally given a bigger budget for the game. The prior games were all borderline budget titles.

That does look neat. Here's hoping they don't trot out that same combat model from the last few games, though. That aspect really needs refreshing.

Looks like Ni No Kuni is getting a remaster, which will be for PS4 and PC, and will be out in September. And, the Switch is getting a port of the original PS3 game.

I’ve really been wanting to play NNK, so this is great news!

Seiken Densetsu 3 gets its first English release EVER on the same day it gets a 3D remake!

What a weird E3, but this makes me very happy. It's a much better game than Seiken 2/Secret of Mana that we got on the SNES.

I’ve put about 8 hours into Trials of Mana, as I was very excited to finally play it. I’ve never really been able to enjoy playing games on an emulator so this is my first real attempt.

I’m... kinda disappointed? It doesn’t scratch the character develop itch that classic JRPGs should.

I can’t help but compare it to Secret of Mana so here’s why I feel like it falls short.

In Secret, you level your characters, you level your weapons, you level your elemental magics. The magic part is about 3-4 hours into the game but you can level weapons on all three characters as soon as you get them. When you get a new elemental spirit (there are 8), your two magic users get a new suite of spells.

Compare this against Trials: only two of the 6 playable characters learn any spells or moves until you can change class at level 18, which for me was about 7 hours in. This means most of the characters only attack or use items for the first 7 hours, which is pretty dull. You don’t level weapons, or magic, so character levels are the only dopamine drip during that time. Characters learn new skills at set levels, meaning unlocking the (same) elemental spirits as in Secret doesn’t do jack for you on a combat level. Combat therefore feels a lot simpler than the previous game, feels like a step backward to me.

It makes me wonder why Trials has the reputation for being the better game. I’m starting to suspect it’s due to the people who played it thinking it’s more exclusive and therefore better.

Anyone else have thoughts on it? I’m surprised that it mostly just makes me want to play Secret again.

I'll have to go back, but I think part of the issue is that Secret of Mana is one of those games that's not as great as our memories hold it up to be. I think a lot of the issues people had with the Secret of Mana remake isn't just that it feels low-budget (and really, the full treatment Trials is getting makes it clear that Square was budgeting the SoM remake with Monopoly money), but that Square largely kept it the exact same. The only real change was having more angles to attack, which contributed to the game being easier than its SNES counterpart.

But really, Secret of Mana is problematically grind-heavy. It sounds like Trials gets rid of a lot of the unnecessary grind, but perhaps takes it a bit too far.

Regardless, I'm actually more curious to dip into Trials of Mana.

Now if only Square Enix would remember that Secret of Evermore exists...

..........ha! Yeah right they don't give a damn about Evermore.

Wasn’t talking about the Secret of Mana remake, but... noted!

And no. Secret of Mana doesn’t require much if any grinding. It enables it, doesn’t require it. Trials of Mana (the SNES game, not the upcoming remake) is dull by comparison because there isn’t much meat on the combat bone.

ccesarano wrote:

I'll have to go back, but I think part of the issue is that Secret of Mana is one of those games that's not as great as our memories hold it up to be.

Great for its time. But, I imagine if you tried to show Secret of Mana (the original SNES game) to any person who hadn't play it before, they'd have no patience for going through multiple layers of a radial menu every time they wanted someone to cast a spell. That has to be one of the worst-aging features of the game.

Two things happened last week: a remastered version of The Last Remnant abruptly released on Switch, and Infinite Undiscovery was added to the last batch of backward compatible Xbox 360 games and was made available to purchase digitally for the first time.

These two things got me thinking about that era of JRPGs. Those two games along with a cluster of others that released around the same time (Ni No Kuni, Valkyria Chronicles, Final Fantasy XIII, Tales of Vesperia, Resonance of Fate, Lost Odyssey, and others) represent a sort of final graduating class of releases before the genre largely moved on to handheld releases and obviously low budget console titles. Inexpensive, low tech releases like Compile Heart's games, the Atelier series, the Persona games, and the recent Tales of releases have moved from the second tier of JRPGs to be the face of the genre.

There have been some notable exceptions, like Final Fantasy XV and Dragon Quest XI, but JRPGs aren't at the forefront of big budget, high gloss games like they used to be. It's wild to play The Last Remnant and see so many conversations motion-captured and voiced when that's largely fallen by the wayside, or to look at clips of Resonance of Fate and see a level of detail in the characters and animations that's since become uncommon.

I got into JRPGs around the time these games were releasing and have watched the genre's biggest releases move from showstoppers to niche titles. Ironically, I only got into JRPGs at all because I made this catch-all thread, and I only made it because people kept complaining that we didn't have one. I got on just as so many were getting off. It happened for a whole variety of reasons—an intersection of technology, differing cultures, changing tastes, and floundering businesses—but it's certainly been an interesting journey.

It's curious to see that last class of games start popping up again as quiet remasters and backward compatibility titles. There's not really any point to all this except to have been reminded of how things have changed. So cheers for that.

It's sad to think that JRPGs went into decline just as digital distribution was coming into its own. Those remasters remind me of the variety of settings and mechanics we used to get, in what is considered a pretty staid genre. And they're just the ones that were released in the West! Imagine what the PS2 era could have been like, with a digital store and without region locking.

My first JRPGs were Enchanted Arms and Eternal Sonata, from that era. I’ve slowly been sampling other franchises since then, and it’s been interesting learning what I do and don’t like in the genre. I do wish there were more big triple-A titles, especially considering I don’t generally enjoy playing handhelds.

One of the RPG news sites I follow did an interview with the series producer of the Mana franchise. They talked about both the Collection of Mana that just released on Switch as well as the announced remake of Trials of Mana. It's a fairly short read.

On Clock's point, I played a ton of JRPGs back in the SNES/PS1 era, but a healthy WoW addiction pulled me out for most of the PS2 era. I was just coming back to the genre at that point as well, picking up Valkyria Chronicles on my PS3. I remember seeing The Last Remnant and thinking it was a strange successor to the Final Fantasy franchise since the aesthetics were in a similar vein and the last main line Final Fantasy had been a few years prior. It seemed like a logical extension of the combat system they established in 12 but going back to a turn based system rather than the full action system they attempted in 13.

Until Dragon Quest XI, there hadn't really been any entries in the series that were big when I was a kid. Breath of Fire stopped at a woefully poor 5, way back on the PS2 and still does not have a new game on a major system, and Dragon Quest last released 8 on the PS2, then jumped ship to the DS for 9 making it more of a budget title.

Is The Last Remnant actually worth looking into now? It was reputedly an awful 360 game, but IIRC that was more related to performance, and nobody talked much about the actual plot or mechanics.

I'm curious as well. It looks mechanically unique and very meaty for a portable RPG! My concerns were always over the level scaling. From experience, I've hated almost every game that does that, amd this one was known to be particularly punishing...until it was updated, then it was punishing in another way?! I'm out of the loop.

Edit: Actually, could I open the conversation up to the topic of level scaling? It's something I've been thinking about a lot.

To me level scaling can often feel like I'm being punished for doing the main thing that makes RPGs fun: leveling up. It also tends to have a side-effect of neutralizing the feeling of progression. I.e., if everything stays the same power-level as you, you'll never feel stronger. In the worst cases, it may make the player completely avoid engaging with combat as to avoid gaining experience, thus making opponents stronger.

On the other hand, progression and power can come from the careful selection of gear and abilities. I can see how a case could be made for maintaining the difficulty and really forcing the player to think hard about their builds.

I feel like scaling is less of a problem in strategy RPGs because there is often a set of external factors outside of stats and gear that influence the combat such as team positioning and composition. While I'd still prefer it not to be implemented, I've still had a lot of fun in games like Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre, where it felt like an extra level of strategy trying to metagame the system.

Nine times out of ten I'll strictly avoid games with level scaling, but I'm slowly starting to re-evaluate. I'm curious to hear what folks around here think.

The Last Remnant is fairly unique in terms of level scaling because it actively punishes you for grinding. Or perhaps it's the converse in that you're meant to be rewarded for defeating enemies that are tougher than you. Or both. Not sure.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Two things happened last week: a remastered version of The Last Remnant abruptly released on Switch, and Infinite Undiscovery was added to the last batch of backward compatible Xbox 360 games and was made available to purchase digitally for the first time.

Not completely related, but somewhat: I don't have an Xbox One, but backward compatibility is starting to make me think I'm going to get one (or its successor) eventually. The fact that Lost Odyssey is not available anywhere else (a PC port would be great) is disappointing. (I liked Infinite Undiscovery as well, but I don't think it's as good overall.)

As for The Last Remnant, I keep meaning to play it (I have the Steam release), but then I get dragged into playing other games thanks to the JRPG Club.

I got into portable gaming for the first time since the original Game Boy with the 3DS and Vita because I found out the genres I liked had mostly retreated there.

bobbywatson wrote:

Not completely related, but somewhat: I don't have an Xbox One, but backward compatibility is starting to make me think I'm going to get one (or its successor) eventually. The fact that Lost Odyssey is not available anywhere else (a PC port would be great) is disappointing. (I liked Infinite Undiscovery as well, but I don't think it's as good overall.)

I’m with you here. I’ve always wanted to play Lost Odyssey, ever since I saw a roommate playing it, but I’ve never owned any Xbox hardware.

I actually had a similar experience of playing a game that sent a thought train outta the cranium station last night. Different types of thoughts, but not without their similarities.

Playing Caligula Effect: Overdose, I've reached a point where I'm really enjoying the story, but am largely kind of skipping combat as much as possible in order to make it to the next story-beat. While I'm afraid of being a bit under-powered, I've thus far been able to manage well enough with smart strategies during boss fights that have seen me successful. In the end, though, the dungeons are reminiscent of Akiba's Beat to me: long corridors with out-of-the-way branching hallways that lead to treasures, padding the length of the dungeon to an hour minimum, several hours if you're combating everything.

In the past I'd largely just reminisce about how Wild Arms mixed enough Zelda-style tools use to make dungeon design more engaging, but in replaying Final Fantasy VI and IX I found 90% of the dungeons in both games took anywhere between 30-45 minutes and each had some simple gimmick. If I were to go back and replay Xenogears, Breath of Fire 3, and other PlayStation era JRPGs, what would the dungeons be like? It's been a long time since I experienced those games, after all.

It was the PS2 where I started to fall off of JRPG's, taking more to action-oriented games and applying my critical observation to those games (it was often easier to determine why I was or wasn't enjoying those games, which contributed to my conceit of becoming a game designer one day). While Wild Arms 3 still had well designed dungeons, the franchise was also experiencing its last gasp of "relevance", assuming it ever had any. Instead, I recall Final Fantasy X abandoning the overworld as we knew it and every environment effectively being a bunch of linear paths. This is also when Persona 3 exploded onto the scene, a spin-off of Shin Megami Tensei, a franchise that was all about dungeon crawling.

I'd have to go back and replay Bravely Default, but even in recently replaying Octopath Traveler I feel like the goal is for dungeons to take, at minimum, one hour to get through (though Octopath also has a noticeably higher encounter rate than Final Fantasy IX did, and despite a more retro aesthetic, it takes more steps to cross through any one dungeon in Octopath than it did in FFVI. Same with the Bravely games, though you can modify the encounter rate in those. So I'm wondering if encounter rates and experience rewards aren't being managed as smartly as they were in FFIX).

I guess, from my perspective, I'm trying to figure out when dungeon design went from smaller, briefer experiences to lengthy slogs. Even World of Final Fantasy most of the dungeons feel like really long slogs through hallways. At the same time, art asset generation was different in both FFVI and FFIX.

I dunno. I'm just getting kind of sick of role-playing games relying on wandering enemies that are tough (or impossible) to avoid/dodge in five-to-ten floors of narrow, winding corridors that intentionally zig-zag and spiral so you take as long as possible to complete it. It's the one area where I feel the genre as a whole has suffered, and I can only wonder if it's really a budgetary issue or a tech issue.

It's an intersection of things, but one of the bigger culprits is that "dollars per hour of gameplay" metric players and critics like to throw around.

I've heard from a few sources that marketing really likes to at least hit a $1/hour ratio on the launch price for RPGs, so a $40 game should be 40+ hours, a $60 game should be 60+ hours, and so forth. You can hit that gameplay threshold in a lot of different ways, but one of the easiest and most budget-friendly is to add more combat. (See also: monster bounties; quests for rare drops; kill X quests; the 99-floor tower of encounters; and so forth.)

There's a kind of parallel in indie games where everything is a roguelike grind because buyers want the promise of a game they can play "endlessly".

I'm about 15 hours into Tales of Berseria. And I'm getting close to ditching it. I'm getting tired of the boring characters and the story which reads like a young teen's first foray into edgy fantasy. I don't want to ditch the game, but I ditched Tales of Symphonia for similar reasons. Is the game going to get better or am I right for reading it the way I do?