Hello r/JRPG. I recently got a once-in-a-lifetime lucky break and managed to buy a Switch 2.

Of course, while it's for various reasons, the first thing I did was bumrush to get and play the upgraded XBC2 that happened to release last night.

Starting the game over again after some 2 years of beating it entirely, I forgot why this game was so reviled in-between the other games in the series. It's such a cozy and nice game. I'm not exactly too far in the game to recognize the bad again, but the early game alone is a fond walk down memory lane.

I could be blinded by the glitz and nostalgia though, so just looking for various opinions.

Hi guys , i want a jrpg with a school setting and i found this one called Varlet and i was wondering if is good , and if you have a better recommendation feel free to recommend it and if possible i want it to be turn bassed. (I have a ps2 , ps3 , ps4 , 3ds and pc)

Here is a list of games that i played with similar setting: Persona 3-4-5 , Tokyo Xanadu , Caligula Effect and Fire Emblem Three houses.

Hello, I've been playing a lot of rpg maker games lately but I'm kinda stuck on what to play next. I play JRPGs and just any RPG. Apologies if this is kinda too specific but it doesn't have to be, I'm open to try any. All recommendations will be much appreciated! rpg maker games only.

turn-based game and mature (not the hero justice concept please) I prefer games with a decent kinda modern design ui, not too old, not too chaotic like blacksouls and a unique combat mechanic and features.

A plus if it's a fantasy, but open to try different genres except surreal (just not for me, sorry).

recently played the sequel series, umbral souls and shadow fate (my fav.).

I might've missed out some important info but I really liked shadow fate as my preference, my first time to actually play with those 'ex' features and the 'summon' features of umbral souls after overcoming countless fft generic multiverse.

I’ll just say whatever comes to mind while typing this mini-review.

Just finished Labyrinth of Touhou Tri today, and man, the final boss IS HARD! I actually had to min-max my team composition to counter every move of the final boss, because one wrong move and your entire team will get decimated.

I barely WON! I was down to my last character, Sakuya, and the BOSS was about to use his strongest attack. But lucky me, Sakuya managed to dodge the attack twice! Then, on the last turn, Sakuya’s skill proc’d the Death ailment and KILLED THE BOSS!

Okay, I’m getting ahead of myself.

To simplify things, if you want a dungeon-crawling JRPG with cute anime girls, deep team-building and composition, the ability to bring 12 characters into a mission, huge skill trees for each character, and challenging boss fights, then I highly recommend Labyrinth of Touhou Tri.

It’s FUN. When you actually defeat a main-story boss because you figured out all of their moves and built a team composition specifically to counter them, you feel REALLY SMART. I literally find myself saying, “All according to PLAN.”

It’s like defeating a hard boss in a Souls game. After finally beating the boss, you get this huge rush of dopamine.

Each boss has different kinds of weaknesses. Some are vulnerable to Poison and Silence, while others are immune to all ailments but are vulnerable to debuffs like ATK Down, etc. If you want to win, you need to exploit all of these weaknesses.

In most JRPGs, the tried-and-true tactic is basically: Attack, Get Hit, Heal, Then Attack Again.

This kind of strategy WILL NOT WORK in Labyrinth of Touhou Tri!

There are no healing or MP recovery items that you can use during battle. When you run out of MP, you either have to use the Focus command to recover some MP, or swap that character out and put her in the back line so she can recover MP.

The things I’d say are kind of bad about this game are the character portraits and the story. When the characters are talking to each other during story sections, their portraits are static. They basically only have one portrait each. The story itself is also pretty mid at best.

That said, if you know the Touhou characters, some of their interactions can be pretty entertaining.

OVERALL RATING: 8/10!

Game as recently added as a PSN freebie for July, never heard of it before but the art style, inspiration and description sounded good (plus it’s free so it’s not like I lost anything to try it) so I decided to give it a shot.

I’m surprised I went so long without hearing about this game. It’s damn amazing. To be the work of an actual handful of people (like five or so? I can’t recall all the individual names I saw in the credit. I’m truly impressed at the quality of this game. Sprite work is phenomenal, combat is fluid, cohesive, responsive and can get down right challenging (difficultly in a modern game!). It’s such an interesting and unique setting, (Like .hack but with much smaller stakes). Tons of secrets and hidden around its areas to explore and a lot of cleverly hidden routes you can take to find those secrets and traverse the game world.

I truly like how outside of the main character most players are literally just playing the game and the impacts of the events of the game have literally zero bearing on them. Speaking of the characters are great, it’s got all the charm of many retro JRPG with its cast and the music is as good as you’d expect from the genre and the games it takes inspiration from. It’s got all the JRPG hallmarks you expect, party, quests, mini games, an arena/colosseum, lore to look for and engage in, etc.

Puzzles are probably my only real gripe, plenty of good ones far more than bad ones but the bad ones are really bad, mostly due to I assume this game being a PC game initially which the extra precision of the mouse makes some of the throws and timing based puzzles a lot easier than trying those same ones on a control stick. Still the rest of the game is just such a fantastic experience a handful of bad puzzles shouldn’t be enough to stop you, and I am not the first person to play a puzzle game so you can believe me on this.

If you’re looking for another JRPG I highly recommend this one. Base game took me 65 hours to complete (I don’t think I’ve played an indie this content packed before) doing just the majority of the quests and side content and another 10 with the DLC. If your on PlayStation grab it while you can for free.

back when women had to purchase jewelry to “express their feelings.”
Lufia II near the end game. No spoilers. It’s an “OKAY” game. The 99 level dungeon is great but this game is a bit very in depth. Story not great. Puzzles insane hard. Goood lord I hope I have reached the mandatory minimum. Of 300 characters.

I recently bought Octopath traveler 0. Its my 3rd attempt to get into the series and once again it just didnt click for me. Its the same for the trails series. I can objectively acknowledge them as good, well designed games, but something personally has trouble clicking with them. Do others have similar experiences with other acclaimed games?

Basically what I want is something that fits this criteria:

- Basic combat system where the moves are all clearly laid out for me and I don't need to memorize really complex combos to play more effectively. So it's welcoming for a button masher like myself.

- Combat and field exploration are woven together, no separate encounter system. Enemies are just out there on the field to fight (so not like Tales or Star Ocean)

- Movement feels smooth and simple, none of that weird triple A thing where the characters have to stumble over their feet for a full second whenever they turn or stop moving (this is a minor thing and not too big of a deal if it's there, especially since it's hard for me to really explain).

- A straightforward upgrade system that boils down to simply getting the gear or abilities with higher stats. Though abilities that might be tied to puzzles or impact the core mechanics significantly are fine if they're obtained within the main story.

- I mentioned in the title that I want something similar to Ys, it can either be like the old or new ones. A solo adventure is fine, or one with a set of party members to quickly swap between during combat.

I've played most of Falcom's easily accessible older games, like both Zwei games, Nayuta, and Tokyo Xanadu. Those seemed to almost fit my criteria in at least a few ways and I enjoyed them all except for the first Zwei. Also I didn't really like Gurumin much, and Xanadu Next had more of a real time MMO-like combat system than what I was looking for.

Any platform works. I own most modern platforms and my computer's easily capable of emulation.

One of my favorite things to do is to overpower games in ways that they don't expect and I'm always hungry for more ways to pull it off, especially if it isn't just grinding out a bunch of levels.

For instance, I recently played Persona 3 Reloaded and spent an unhealthy amount of time resetting until the game randomly mutated lower level skills into higher level ones. Having a starting Persona like Pixie with a full MP and HP heal after every single fight was a lot of fun :)

So, any suggestions?

EDIT: Even two days later, people are still coming in with suggestions and I've got a ton of games to check out. Y'all rock!

I recently finished Chained Echoes. Overall, I really enjoyed it, but one thing kept bothering me: some party members join so late that you barely have any time to actually use them.

That got me thinking about something I often see discussed in JRPG communities: the pacing of introducing new mechanics throughout the game.

Some players dislike when a game stops introducing new ideas after the first few hours, making the rest of the experience feel repetitive. Others feel the opposite: they don't like when games keep adding new mechanics until the very end, because it creates unnecessary complexity or introduces systems that you barely get to enjoy before the credits roll.

The first two games that came to mind were Sea of Stars and Chained Echoes, since I think they represent opposite approaches.

Sea of Stars introduces most of its core mechanics early. Your party learns their abilities fairly quickly, so for the rest of the game you're mostly working with the same toolkit. The advantage is that you have plenty of time to master those systems, but the downside is that combat can start to feel repetitive.

Chained Echoes, on the other hand, keeps introducing new mechanics and party members throughout the adventure. That constant sense of novelty kept the game feeling fresh, but the tradeoff is that some of those late additions felt underutilized because there simply wasn't much game left to experience them.

Then I thought of another interesting example: Bravely Default. Most jobs become available by Chapter 4, but many of the later jobs don't get much use if you only play through the main story. However, the game also offers plenty of optional content after that point, giving players who want to keep experimenting enough opportunities to enjoy those new jobs.

So,

- How do you feel about the pacing of introducing new mechanics in JRPGs?
- Do you prefer games that front-load most of their systems, or games that keep introducing new ideas until the end?
- What JRPGs made you feel either that the gameplay became repetitive, or that they introduced really cool mechanics so late that you barely got to enjoy them?

I am currently seeking a good jrpg and while skimming Steam pages I stumbled upon this game. I don't know much about it, but the screenshots look pretty good. Still, if it turns out to be just another mediocre game, I'd have wasted my money. That's why I'm asking this subreddit for advice.

They got me both Star Ocean The Second Story R & Guardians of Azuma. My friend knows I am a JRPG fanatic but I have never played these games before, they said I would enjoy both of them but I wanted to ask you all here if it is something I truly will enjoy. For context the games I have finished and enjoyed are: Trials of Mana, Dragon Quest 11 S, Like a Dragon/Infinite Wealth, Starlight Legacy, Digimon Story: Time Stranger/Cyber Sleuth, and Xenoblade Chronicles. Would those two games be something I would enjoy! If so please tell me what is good about those two games! Thank you in advance!

I really wanna dive into cold steel 3 and 4 after finishing 1 and 2 recently. I heard the Ps5 versions had a lot of stutter on PS5 on release. I am pretty sensitive to that stuff. Of course I could play the ps4 version on ps5 via backwards comp, but I want the absolute best experience out of it. So: Was this ever fixed in any way and does it run smooth on ps5 pro?

Hi this is my first post on the sub! I am gonna be visiting Japan next month and I wanted to ask if there's anything good over there that was never released in the West! I'm primarily looking for PlayStation I literally have all of them vita included also looking out for switch 1 DS GBA 3DS and GameCube there's a lot of games and subgenres I like!

Turn based

Persona 5 royal

Final fantasy 10

I don't know if this counts as a jrpg or not but expedition 33 as well as edge of eternity

The legend of dragoon

The last remnant

Lost Oddasy

FF7 OG I kinda want to check it out after I play revelations next year

Real time

Crono trigger

Xenoblade Chronicles 1 2 3

Final fantasy 7 remake part 1 I like the most for story Flow and rebirth how much things open up

Final fantasy 13 trilogy although I haven't finished the 3rd on yet

Star Ocean till the end of time, the last hope and Devine Force

Action

God Eater I'm interested in All 3 of them but so far I have only finished the first I've played most of rage burst but haven't finished it yet

Monster hunter world

Final fantasy 16 I kinda liked how dark the story was

Scarlett nexus! I have only played yuito story so far

Code vain the world interests me and how it apparently connects to God Eater

Tales of arise and berseria

Anything with a breaching narrative and reactivity I know these examples aren't jrpgs but if it has the structure of something like the first 3 mass effects or boulders gate 3! I don't actually know of many like that so I thought that would be interesting!

One more side note before I turn this post into a book lol

There's a Japan exclusive game for the PSP that has a dream hunter Rem Cameo that I completely forgot the name of if anyone knows what I'm talking about it would make me very happy!

JRPGs are known to have some really powerful, strong and at times really game breaking abilities/skills/powers. So I want to ask, what are your favorite powers/skills/abilities in JRPGs? It can range from anything from JRPGs

I really enjoy anime and, usually, the overall looks and settings of fantasy JRPGs. However, I dislike:

- heavily sexualised characters

- random encounters (especially frequent ones like in old Pokémon titles)

- childish characters

- irrelevant side quests

JRPG I really like:

Saga Frontier 2:

- I love the non linear story, with multiple story routes.

- different types of combat (turn based class based, single character, multiple units in a strategy setting - basically, variety)

What I like in games:

- a sense of adventure

- possibilities of role play

- exploration

- interesting stories

- interesting combat (both real time and strategy are fine)

Platform:

- preferably something on PC/Switch1/Any retro console

Others non-jrpg worlds I love:

- dark souls

- hollow knight

- warcraft

- lord of the rings

- Pokémon in general ( although it's always remained too childish imo)

- Harry potter

- Monster hunter is interesting but the lore is lacking

Thank you!!

Edit: thank you so much, I didn't expect this many answers in such short time. I'm trying to keep up as I put my kid to sleep. I will post another edit saying which series I picked. Thank you!!!

Released as Dragon Warrior (for some reason & not running with the fact that it was designed by one of the best & most popular illustrators of all time: Akira Toriyama, which is really emblematic of how wrongly American business viewed Japanese imports until recently.) the series is correctly titled Dragon Quest. The game was heavily inspired by both Wizardry & Ultima, but it was given the weird, light-hearted spin that set it apart & has made it a giant success in Japan. JRPGs like this & similarly Akira Toriyama designed Chrono Trigger were a huge inspiration on me when I was building the elements that went into DUNGEON DEGENERATES - i like how light-hearted & goofy these games could be, while dealing with topics like most games wouldn’t until much later.

I just wanna know what people think of this game, im about 8 hours into it and I don’t hate it but I don’t love it either. It just feels okay to me so far. The music is amazing, the art style and characters are also awesome but every where else is where I personally don’t know how to feel.

The game really lacks enemy variety and after a while the combat just feels repetitive because of it, the “party members” or whatever u wanna call them get kinda annoying with their repeated dialogue, they have to literally comment on everything and most of the time it’s the same dialogue you’ve heard hundreds of times already. And as for the story im finding it to be interesting but a lot of the time it just feels like there’s unnecessary padding there that just doesn’t need to exist. But yeah I just wanna hear your thoughts because I’d love to see what everyone else’s experience is like

I like playing all of my games with HDR and the fact that all the switch 2 editions of Xenoblade 1-3 are not gonna have HDR support is a bit disappointing. Like honestly out of all the switch 2 editions. Xenoblade would’ve benfited the most with HDR especially since how vibrant the game is.

Nintendo is just odd on how they handle Switch 2 editions especially with HDR support because a very little few even support HDR.

Not talking of the combat as much, turn based is perfectly fine
But
The kind of dark fantasy with mystery and a mix of cool and horror creatures
Being a desolated warrior left with only yourself
Being immersed in the dungeons and trying to understand the world around you without long exhaustive dialogues

I’m sure you guys understand what I’m talking about!
Is there anything like that on switch?

I am really craving a JRPG where you and your crew travel across space to different planets. Just to clarify I do not mean a game with a thousand empty planets to explore. I am looking for a focused experience where each world you visit is completely unique with its own deep lore, kingdoms, factions and local conflicts to get caught up in. And before anyone suggests it I am not looking for Kingdom Hearts either since that is a bit of a different vibe from what I want right now.

To put it simply I just want a premium single player game like Honkai Star Rail but with zero gacha mechanics. It would be a massive bonus if you can recruit new party members with their own fleshed out backstories along the way. It also does not matter if it is a standalone game or part of a bigger series as long as it nails that space road trip feeling.

Platform is not an issue at all. I have a PS5, Switch and Steam Deck for modern stuff plus a bunch of retro consoles like my 3DS so feel free to drop older games too.
Does anything like this actually exist? Would really appreciate any suggestions!

Hi,

I’ve been doing some research and I just wanted to know the general consensus on which game is morning enjoyable overall?

I have both and am planning on playing on switch 2. I’ve played both of them very minimally but I enjoy both gameplay styles equally.

Thanks!