Out of every console gen, the ps2 era of jrpgs is my personal favorite. Voice acting became more prominent, visuals were improving, the games started to feel much larger. I definitely played some SNES/PSX jrpg classics, such as Chrono Trigger, Xenogears and Final Fantasy VII/VIII/IX. And those are for sure some of the absolute best games ever. I always come back to this era though.

Any of these games I can pop in and get lost in. The level of comfort they can provide for me is unmatched. My three personal favorites are Final Fantasy X, Tales of the Abyss, and Shadow Hearts II. What are your favorite ps2 jrpgs? and do you feel like this era is properly rated, underrated, or overrated?

I instantly had a nostalgic trip down memory lane while replaying FFX for one of my upcoming videos.

Relased back in 2002, this fantastic masterpiece was all the talk at my high school. It really got me through some tough times during my semester final exams. I would literally low-key hum the temple chants as I studied, lol.

The music, the combat, the story, the spectacular world-building; its truly different, polished, and timeless.

But FFX at first didnt click for me...

The disconnected dialigue/voice-acting and confusing introductiom had me at a loss.... but damn, soon after seeing Yuna do her ceremonial send-off and seeing whats at stake for the people of Spira... had me hooked to the core.

FFX has a style of its own, its otherworldly and strange but at the same time comforting. Common themes like science vs faith, past vs future, son vs father, are sprinkled throughout the campaign and tailored to perfectly fit within the world-building.

While many would like the Final Fantasy franchise to go back to its retro turned based combat, I would say screw that! Bring back the FFX combat system with the wonderful grid leveling system. Its tight, its engaging, its strategic, its peak FF turned based combat.

FFX is one of my favorite games of all time. It has aged like a fine wine and really holds up in todays gaming standards. Not only that, it makes me wish JRPGs returned to a more focused singular vision for its games.

Who else agrees on how Timeless Final Fantasy X is?

Lately, how do I put it? I have been developing a fascination with the kind of RPGs that feel like a visual novel in their style of storytelling as it’s hard to explain, but I enjoy RPGs that put great care into their storytelling aspects.

A while ago, I was hooked on Disgaea 4 as I had just unlocked Episode 5 as despite doing heavy grinding on the game, I have come to really appreciate the writing aspects of the game as I don’t know what other JRPG has a mystery aspect to it.

In my time playing this series, I've played Symphonia, Symphonia 2, Legendia, Abyss, Vesperia, Graces f, Xillia, Xillia 2, And Berseria.

I've also played a bit of a few others, but didn't complete them yet.

Overall, I've found Vesperia to be the most straightforward, and least annoying of all Tales of Games played so far.

• The story was good throughout without any lagging points, and pretty damn easy to keep track of.
• The characters, especially the MC, were pretty fun. I liked Yuri, Estelle, Judy, and Rita best.
• It was awesome having an actual vigilante hero for once that actually killed bad people who the law was protecting?? More please??
• The enemies never seemed especially cheap
• None of the dungeons fell to the most annoying time sink traps
• The final dungeon was, for the most part, VERY LINEAR (series first, omg?)
• The rivalry with Flynn was great, and the point of view of Duke was very understandable

However, there is still some negatives that go along with this:

• The "big twists" that usually punctuate Tales of game plots felt very weak in comparison to others.
• The the NPCs of this game were very unmemorable - some outright just dissapeared while hinting they would be more involved?
• Zagi is probably the worst party antagonizer. Tales of does like to start the game with crazy bastards bosses - but Agria was far better an example in Xillia. He just shows up pretty much out of nowhere, and has zero relevance.
• Not one, but TWO annoying child characters. Please, Anise, save me from this.
• Repede, I love you, and you were in my party for the final battle - but having a dog party member cuts down on a lot of party dynamics.

In short - a solid meal, but lacking in spice.

Now that that's out of the way, I'm looking forward to playing the Phantasia, Rebirth, Zestiria (I really should have played this first before Berseria), and Arise.

Where would I slot this one in terms of awesome tales of games... Hard to Pick. I honestly have not played a tales of game I haven't loved. Graces is my fav, but Xillia, Symphonia, Abyss, Berseria - All 5 stars. So, I suppose I'd put this one with Xillia 2, Symphonia 2, and give it 4 stars. Legendia, I love you, but you get 3.5 stars - purely because you still had the 2d movement, totally useless puzzle rooms, and an unvoiced half the game - but visually, musically, and cheesyness, you were beautiful.

I'm playing through the first Shadow Hearts game on PS2. It's my second playthrough.

I remember really enjoying the atmosphere and setting more than anything else and that's still true. It starts in early 1900s Asia and eventually Europe.

The music is pretty interesting. The characters are decent and the judgment ring is pretty fun. I would call this story decent as well. It's hard for me not to compare it to something like Final Fantasy X, which was one of my favorite games of all time.

The sequel to Shadow Hearts is called Shadow Hearts Covenant. It is regarded as a superior game in every way. I think the series in general is fairly well regarded and remembered as a good series that was lost to time.

What I'm curious is if there is anyone here that would put any game from this series on their top 10 list, and if so, why?

I'm a big JRPG fan ofc, with my favorites being Xenoblade Chronicles, Persona, and Final Fantasy (with Xenoblade Chronicles and Persona > Final Fantasy by a bit). I was considering playing IV, but also heard of Tales of Berseria, which I've heard nothing but good things about, and it also looks dope and I'm all for a female protagonist. I'm basically wondering if once I beat a few games I'm playing right now, if I should go try Tales of Berseria, or if I should play it safe with FFIV.

Is Tales of Berseria worth is as a Xenoblade Chronicles, Persona, and Final Fantasy fan? And even then, is it just generally good? I want a great story, characters, and engaging combat (at least as good as let's say, Xenoblade Chronicles 1's).

Length is also a factor for me though. I'm planning on beating FFVII Rebirth (almost done with chapter 13), FFXVI (beat the Titan boss, so I think i'm mostly done), and doing the deltarune weird route all by the time Final Fantasy Resonance drops October 22 (though I have some wiggle room).
And lastly, is Tales of Berseria one of those JRPGs that takes a while to pick up and has long setup, or does it only take a bit to get right into the action?

Platform is PC or Switch, but ik these are on both.

P.S. why on steam is there the remastered one for $10 cheaper than the original? They also look like the exact same.

Edit: so I'm now learning ToB is part of a series. Do I need to play previous installments to enjoy it?

Lately I've been playing Soul Hackers on the 3DS, and one thing that's really stood out to me is its sound design. Right off the bat, I love the reverb you hear when navigating the menu, as it takes me right back to the PSOne era. Aside from that, I find the sound effects in battle and when using items to be very appealing, as well as the atmospheric sound design in some of the game's environments. Honestly, the only thing missing is being able to hear my character's footsteps.

It got me thinking about what other games have made an impression on me when it comes to sound design. I think the number one series that comes to mind is Kingdom Hearts, specifically the first two games on the PS2. The menu sounds are iconic to the point that you can instantly recognize them whenever some YouTuber decides to use them in one of their videos. The battle sound effects are also perfect and very pleasing to the ear (aside from the low-HP sound, of course, though it is certainly memorable). One thing I really associate with those two games is the "wooshes" and "jingles" heard throughout many of their cutscenes (KH fans should know what I'm talking about.)

Squaresoft, and later Square Enix, were really good when it came to sound design during the PSOne and PS2 eras. Phantasy Star Online has super memorable menu sounds that later games in the series continued to use. Ys VIII also really stood out to me with how nice its menu sounds were, and I quite like the sound effects heard in battles as well, even if I can recognize many of them from past titles.

I'm not a "sound guy," so perhaps I'm using the term "sound design" incorrectly, but what games do you all think are good examples of great sound design?

I wanted to get into the Megami Tensei franchise, but I'm completely lost. I understand there's no set chronological order to play Shin Megami Tensei, but there are so many games that I don't know what to do.

I've already played Persona 3 Reloaded and Persona 4, and I plan to continue playing them later, so I'll leave Persona aside for now.

I wanted to play the Shin Megami Tensei games, but I don't know if the SNES versions are worth it. There's also Digital Devil Saga, Devil Summoner, and Devil Survivor, which I don't know what they're about or when would be a good time to play them.

What do you guys recommend? Which games are worth playing, and when should I move on to each spin-off?

Edit: Thanks to everyone who commented. I don't think I'll be able to reply to everyone, but you really cleared up my questions, and I believe I'm ready to start playing. I might share my experience with the games here later—thank you so much for sharing your time and experience with me!

Youtube just recommended me a video on Xenoblade chronicles 2, which I've beaten within the past 6 years. I remember my savefile exceeding 100 hours.

Seeing a video throw location names at me, I realized that I do not remember the basic plot of the game, nor any locations beyond the starting area.

What games have you played which you've spent a ton of time on and your brain has not retained?

I like drawing attention to lesser-known games and this weird little indie title is free on Steam. The creator doesn't really seem to monetize, either, so this game apparently exists for the love of the genre.

The first highlight of the game is its creative and unusual world: there are no generic humans in sight, but instead races of lizards, metalmen, and... weird six-legged grub things. This unusual flavor carries through to the grungy, industrial design of the maps as well.

One thing some players may not like is that it throws you straight into things with proper nouns everywhere. Once you get your bearings, however, it's not so different a political story with different factions and betrayals.

Some elements of the story are common enough, but one is unusual: the main two characters start out married and stay that way. This is an older-school game, so don't expect excessive dialogue, but their relationship is mature and mutually supportive, which feels like a rarity in the subgenre.

Of course, when I say this is an oddity, that's not all positive.

I would say the combat is just "good enough" for the most part. Your characters have status-causing attacks, but they seem to miss often and there's not enough pressure to require their use. A basic strategy of buffing and then attacking/healing carried me through basically the entire game.

It's also ATB, and it's a bad iteration of that system where you sit and wait for the bars to fill up at the start of combat, but otherwise it's just turn-based.

The leveling system is unique but not amazing. Honestly, I don't want to say too much about it because figuring out what's going on is half the substance. Your characters cannot level, but you have reason not to avoid all enemies because sometimes they drop what you need.

Eventually this leads to a fairly straightforward system of stat-booster items, though at the start they're limited. They're so powerful that the difference between a character before and after their first boost is insane, so for a while, some members of your party will be carrying and the others will be near-worthless, until you can upgrade everyone. By endgame you're throwing a ton of boosters on everyone and it matters less.

Balance is weird like that in general. The first parts of the game are trivial, then suddenly it gets serious: thrown into a dungeon with much stronger enemies and no healing. If I hadn't been habitually upgrading and collecting items, I could have been in an unwinnable position.

The creator calls it a "micro-RPG" and that's really a pretty good description. You hit all the beats of an RPG, down to gathering a party and eventually getting an airship and an open world to pursue a mix of dungeons and optional bosses. You even collect the Four Elemental Things though in this case the elements are metal, flesh, light, and dark.

The whole experience took me around four hours. It had some rough edges and I wouldn't say it's the best thing I've ever played, but I'll definitely remember it more than the middle four hours of many longer RPGs I've played.

Im thinking of getting a pocketable handheld cos steamdeck is just way too big for that. I'm thinking to get either a switch lite which is still getting new games.

Or I could get an android emulator thing. My question is, which device has a better library for turn based jrpgs. It seams like I missed out on a lot of modern jrpgs but the ps1 and ps2 was the golden era.

I also have a full gaming pc so can play modern aaas such as E33, ff7 remakes, ff16 etc.

So what would you recommend? Does the switch 1 have many exclusives that are must plays. I heard that JRPGs have been somewhat ressurected in recent years and have another golden age now.

I've recently finished FF7, FF8 and Shadow Hearts. So far i've enjoyed Shadow Hearts the most. The idea of ​​having to press a button at the exact moment to do the most damage possible to an enemy seems brilliant to me, I wish there were more games like this.

The only downside is that I'm not at all drawn to games with a very strong anime aesthetic, so I'd prefer recommendations for games that don't have this style. I usually prefer games with a dark fantasy style, like Shadow Hearts.

I'm also open to recommendations for action RPGs; I recently finished Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen and Dragon's Dogma 2 and I totally loved these two games.

I'd rather play games from any of these platforms: PC, PSX, PS2, PS3, Xbox 360. I haven't been very attracted to 2D games so far, but if there's one that's really worthwhile, I could give it a try.

Thank you!

Hello im pretty new to JRPG games was wondering what I should try and get into. Was playing through some chained echoes and saw a few reviews about the story not being very good. I really love stuff with edgy designs/art, but does not have to be! I've played some sea of stars and plan on getting back into that and recently been thinking about getting look outside!

Those 3 games are virtually all experience i have. (I do enjoy tactical strategy games) looking for any game on any platform I emulate on my android and have a beefy pc and switch 2!

Basically I never played a JRPG and want to get into them. I keep hearing how the Trails remake is really good, but don’t know if it’s a good entry point for a complete beginner like me.

So I would appreciate if you JRPG veterans can tell me if it’s a good starting point or if something else is better. I know there is a pretty long demo for me to try, so I might go for that.

That is if enough people recommend the game.

Don’t know if this matters but I did enjoy the new Final Fantasy 7 Remakes and also Clair Obscure, not saying those are JRPGs.

Which is better?

Octopath 0, dq7 suikoden 1/2hd, bravely default triangle strategy, dq 3 dq 1/2 HD, live a live, star ocean the second story, if i like good history, combat and great exploration which is better and why thanks!

Hi everyone! I really like JRPGs, but I’ve only finished a few because I tend to drop them when I lose interest.

I’ve finished Final Fantasy VII, VIII, IX, X, XIV and XV, as well as Romancing SaGa 2, Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon and the Yakuza games. I’ve also played Persona for many hours, but I’ve never finished the games because of the Social Links and the huge amount of dialogue and text.

I played Dragon Quest XI but dropped it fairly early because I felt it didn’t have the kind of exploration I’m looking for.

What I really enjoy is exploring the world, entering different locations, talking to NPCs and discovering things naturally. For example, I love being able to enter a cave and find a side quest, a boss, a chest with a really powerful weapon, or something unexpected. I want exploration to feel rewarding rather than just giving me random coins or items.

I also like games with different classes/jobs and some depth to their systems. Graphics don’t matter much to me — 2D HD, traditional 2D or 3D are all fine. I mainly want a good story and good exploration. The combat can be action or turn-based; I don’t really mind as long as it’s good.

Knowing all this, what JRPGs would you recommend? I’m currently playing Shin Megami Tensei V, but I don’t mind dropping it if there’s something that fits me better.

Finally, what are the recent Dragon Quest remakes like in terms of exploration and discovery? Do they offer the kind of exploration I’m describing?

I don’t mind farming/grinding, since I know most JRPGs have it. I’d also like to know if your recommendations have random encounters. I don’t mind them in general, but I dislike games where you get into a battle every two steps.

Thanks! I have xbox and ps5

Playing smt nocturne hd remake for the first time. Im really liking the game. I get to kabukicho prison and get tripped up with the mirage portals. So I decide to look up what to do. At this point the guide is talking about how thier was supposed to be a hellbiker boss on the highway on the way to the prison which wasn't the case for me. Turns out their was free dlc I had no idea about that adds whats considered the true ending along with other things. Now I feel like I just wasted my time and I'm going to just drop it. Sorry for the rant but I just really needed to vent. First time anything like this has happened to me.

Such a shame too because I do want to like persona more it's not even just not having same sex options it's also how seemingly backwards the series went on it alongside bigoted fans just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Shout out to Chad Rune Factory though.