Anime Boy's first JRPG

[flyingjohn]

Alright, Persona 5 Royal and "Trails" which I guess means Trails in the Sky or one of that series.

Persona 5 is not a good game, it's mostly VN and it's super "modern" including dating sim shit. *I* do not recommend.
If you want to play the series for actual gameplay, go with SMT, it's the same without the shit.

Agreed. 80% of the game is just reading. Even trails handles the reading-cutscene/gameplay ratio better, and that is a inherent storyfag series.

 

[Theodora]

This is why so many people don't like JRPGs, because they get recommended dumb easy shit like CT then write the genre off when they come away having played one of the most child-orientated games made outside mainline Nintendo dross.

I mean, it wasn't my first answer, and I did say it was the "traditional"/default response; but I figured at the very least Ladonna wouldn't run into the usual problem of over levelling given her stated goals. Seemed worth mentioning something time-tested and influential (and not simply popular via nostalgia), when someone isn't sure what they're looking for.

I kinda assume people read into things a bit when suggestions come from someone they don't know personally, given the subjectivity of taste.

Ladonna As you see, no matter what you say you'll check out, there will be objections. ^^; (Lord of Riva I thought of SMT too, but she wants to avoid random encounters.)

 

[Ladonna]

@Ladonna As you see, no matter what you say you'll check out, there will be objections. ^^; (@Lord of Riva I thought of SMT too, but she wants to avoid random encounters.)

Yeah...When I saw him objecting I thought "Deja Vu?"

I'm almost convinced this same shit happened last time I asked for JRPG advice. Not that I don't appreciate anyone here putting their advice out, but it can be...confusing.

Guys, I last played Final Fantasy 8, and the encounter rate seriously killed the game for me. I think I got halfway through. I could plow through some of the old stuff with massive randoms (Bard's Tale, etc) back in the day, but it just kills games for me now, as I have limited time for gaming as it is. Tough battles? No problem. Random shit getting thrown at me every few steps? Nah.

Nobody has dunked on Trails in the Sky yet, is this a good one to roll with?

Ah, I see one of my boys has CT on the DS. I can try it out on that unless it is a cut down version or something.

 

[CryptRat]

I tried a few JRPG's but the endless trash mobs killed the experience.

What are the good ones that don't have excessive random encounters?

Breath of Fire V: Dragon's Quarter is a very unique game and there are not random encounters.

You can also check Ruina : Fairy Tale of the forgotten ruins, the game is emulating a PnP campaign, most encounters are fixed and contextual, and it's an overall great game. Download the game right now either way, they're currently making a remake so the link might stop being available at some point.

For the record, encounters in Potato Flowers in Full Bloom are all fixed, combat is fun and exploration is alright but the game is still dense in encounters though' so I'm not as sure it's the game you're looking for.

 

[Axel_am]

I don't really have that much JRPG experience, but I played Battlechasers a few years ago and it played fine. Looked good too. Maybe some codexer can give his expertise about it.

 

[Theodora]

Ah, I see one of my boys has CT on the DS. I can try it out on that unless it is a cut down version or something.

I think a lot of people actually prefer it. Has a bestiary and a few other things the Steam version doesn't (which sadly shares a codebase with the iOS version, though it was improved a lot last year -- four years after its Steam release).

A cute advantage to having kids though. ^^

 

[Maxie]

To play JRPGs is to go through thousands of random encounter battles. The good ones will at least try to make them a little challenging.

it's kinda irrelevant if they are challenging or not, as they signify attrition, not challenge
you have boss fights to test yourself against, provided you manage to reach them

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Nobody has dunked on Trails in the Sky yet, is this a good one to roll with?

The Trails series is one of my favorites, but it has high highs and low lows and you have to go in with tempered expectations.

The two starting points I would recommend are Trails in the Sky FC, or Trails of Cold Steel 1. Whichever appeals to you the most.

Trails in the Sky is a 50 hour long game, but the first 20-25 hours are boring. The story begins to become interesting towards the end of chapter 2/at the start of chapter 3 when you go to Zeiss. From then I became really enthralled by the plot. Unfortunately the game doesn't have that much going for it outside of the second half of its story. You're traveling through boring forests and rocky mountain paths and samey looking towns. The combat and character building isn't very fun, and the sidequests are mediocre. Fortunately they have since patched in a turbo-mode since I played it, so you can just hold down a button and fast forward through all of that boring stuff and get to the good part quicker. The game ends on a cliffhanger which continues into Trails in the Sky SC, which I didn't find as enjoyable (gameplay is the same, setting is the same, plot is 60 hours but the first 40 hours are pretty boring as you chase villains around accomplishing nothing while the B-team is off actually progressing the plot offscreen). Not bad, though. The 3rd Sky game was pretty fun, both in the story and in the combat and character building.

Trails of Cold Steel I absolutely loved. The game is 90 hours long but it felt well paced unlike the Sky games. I was never really bored. It hooked my interest from the start. You get to visit a lot more places, and I found them to be a lot more interesting both visually and lore wise. The combat and character building is also fun. The sidequests are also okay. Great music too. The second Cold Steel game is also fantastic, and avoids the usual pitfalls that plague Trails sequels. Trails sequels are usually about frutilessly chasing murderous psychopaths around only for them to escape scott free, but CS2 has you fighting a civil war against your own countrymen, who are moral people (and the Ouroboros characters who do show up are presented as cool frenemies), so it doesn't feel bad when people aren't caught and punished. CS2 also had one of the best endings in JRPGs. The first two Cold Steel games also had a very good English voice dub.




The Crossbell games and the latter Cold Steel games (3 and 4) have pretty rage inducing writing (the gaslighting, the apologism, the heroes becoming traitors to their own countries, etc, actually these issues were present in Sky but it's pronounced here), and also have horrendous pacing issues. That being said, I did at least enjoy them enough to finish them, though I probably wouldn't ever replay Crossbell or recommend it. I did not like that it was set in a boring urban city, didn't really like the cast, and for despite having been made after Sky the 3rd (which had great combat), the combat and character building felt meh like the first two Sky games again. The latter Cold Steel games threw away the interesting plot direction set up by CS2's ending, but still had a very likeable cast, an interesting setting, great music, and really fun combat and character building which kept me thirsting for more even as I laughed at the writing.

The Trails games on PC have top quality PC ports, ports that all other PC ports should aspire to. Props to Durante.

 

[Falksi]

This is why so many people don't like JRPGs, because they get recommended dumb easy shit like CT then write the genre off when they come away having played one of the most child-orientated games made outside mainline Nintendo dross.

hey pssst, hey over here....

Spoiler

it's all easy shit

Laughs in 7th Saga

Ok there might be exceptions, what's hard about it?
edit: let me clarify beforehand, I'm in the "execution is hard, understanding and thinking is not" crowd.

It's very punishing of any bad choices you make, to the point where some standard fights feel like boss fights.

 

[Falksi]

@Ladonna As you see, no matter what you say you'll check out, there will be objections. ^^; (@Lord of Riva I thought of SMT too, but she wants to avoid random encounters.)

Yeah...When I saw him objecting I thought "Deja Vu?"

I'm almost convinced this same shit happened last time I asked for JRPG advice. Not that I don't appreciate anyone here putting their advice out, but it can be...confusing.

Guys, I last played Final Fantasy 8, and the encounter rate seriously killed the game for me. I think I got halfway through. I could plow through some of the old stuff with massive randoms (Bard's Tale, etc) back in the day, but it just kills games for me now, as I have limited time for gaming as it is. Tough battles? No problem. Random shit getting thrown at me every few steps? Nah.

Nobody has dunked on Trails in the Sky yet, is this a good one to roll with?

Ah, I see one of my boys has CT on the DS. I can try it out on that unless it is a cut down version or something.

FF8 not only has a pretty awful combat system, but the entire game (encounters and combat included) run at a sluggish pace from what I can remember.

It's a really bad example of JRPG combat all round.

 

[Lord of Riva]

It's very punishing of any bad choices you make, to the point where some standard fights feel like boss fights.

Indeed 7th saga is a bitch, grindy but also hard it's not enjoyable unless you really like combat. I played it as demon, not an enjoyable experience.

FF8 not only has a pretty awful combat system, but the entire game (encounters and combat included) run at a sluggish pace from what I can remember.

It's a really bad example of JRPG combat all round.

Worse, it uses level scaling, making fighting pointless. Most encounters should be skipped unless you need certain drops or want to draw certain spells to make your characters stronger. Both 7 and 9 are better. 10 Has good combat but It's also the start of FF stories getting bland imho, fun to play though.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

It's very punishing of any bad choices you make, to the point where some standard fights feel like boss fights.

Ok I guess that could be considered "hard"...but only with the quotation marks!!!

Spoiler

 

[Ash]

You've all got shit taste. The only JRPGs to be recommended are:

a) not typical anime-laden. As little anime infestation as possible. Typical anime = simple ugly art style, childishness, simping & creepiness, "anime grunting" , style over substance etc. So we want "westaboo" jap games, of which there were many in the 90s.
b) also has a respectable degree of meaningful gameplay depth.

Final Fantasy 5-9
Parasite Eve 1 & 2
Koudelka & Shadow Hearts 1
Golden Sun 1 & 2
Pokemon Gen 1 & 2
Vagrant Story
Final Fantasy Tactics

As well as Jap ARPGs like:

Dark Souls 1 & 2
Castlevania SotN & the DS CV games
Onimusha Dawn of Dreams

I keep trying to broaden my JRPG horizons beyond this but am constantly assaulted with obscene faggotry and/or braindead gameplay. Neither is acceptable.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

I played about half of Chrono Trigger on a DS emulator a few years ago and remember it had an unusual puzzle maze that was interesting, but not interesting enough to want to continue playing. I should have played it on the SNES with full screen instead of the much smaller Nintendo DS emulated display but I think it had certain enhancements on DS that made me decide on that platform.

 

[Modron]

You want good and unusual puzzles? Play Lufia 2.

 

[Ash]

@Ladonna As you see, no matter what you say you'll check out, there will be objections. ^^; (@Lord of Riva I thought of SMT too, but she wants to avoid random encounters.)

Yeah...When I saw him objecting I thought "Deja Vu?"

I'm almost convinced this same shit happened last time I asked for JRPG advice. Not that I don't appreciate anyone here putting their advice out, but it can be...confusing.

Guys, I last played Final Fantasy 8, and the encounter rate seriously killed the game for me. I think I got halfway through. I could plow through some of the old stuff with massive randoms (Bard's Tale, etc) back in the day, but it just kills games for me now, as I have limited time for gaming as it is. Tough battles? No problem. Random shit getting thrown at me every few steps? Nah.

Nobody has dunked on Trails in the Sky yet, is this a good one to roll with?

Ah, I see one of my boys has CT on the DS. I can try it out on that unless it is a cut down version or something.

Final Fantasy 8 you can get encounter none & encounter half abilities 20% into the game. Get Magic Lamp, kill Diablo, immediately start learning ENC-HALF & NONE. You suck!

Anyways, if you find FF8 encounter rate too high, just give up on Japanese turn-based RPGs. There are many more with not only much higher encounter rates but also less interesting combat. FF8 for all of its many flaws, as well as being the worst PS1 FF, is by far one of the better JRPGs out there.

I played about half of Chrono Trigger on a DS emulator a few years ago and remember it had an unusual puzzle maze that was interesting, but not interesting enough to want to continue playing. I should have played it on the SNES with full screen instead of the much smaller Nintendo DS emulated display but I think it had certain enhancements on DS that made me decide on that platform.

CT had puzzles and maze-like level design? That wasn't my experience. Largely on rails in its entirety from start to finish.

FF8 not only has a pretty awful combat system, but the entire game (encounters and combat included) run at a sluggish pace from what I can remember.

It's a really bad example of JRPG combat all round.

The combat is not notably slow, actually. Go in the settings and change a few things (battle speed, turn off battle intro cinematics). The slow FF is, very unfortunately, FF9.
It is only slow if you factor in drawing (there are ways to minimize this) and GF use (can largely be ignored vanilla, outside of bosses at least).

Still, I will agree that the combat is definitely far from perfect - too easy outside of some optional encounters, drawing & junctioning magic is kinda dumb at least without a certain mod installed, level scaling, limit break spam is super dumb, could be faster etc... but I don't think it is a terrible example all-round because there is a lot of complexity. If you're not gonna make your combat consistently challenging then it better damn well be notably complex, is how I see it. Complexity is a challenge in itself in some form, or at least is interesting to learn and understand.

 

[flyingjohn]

Final Fantasy 8 you can get encounter none & encounter half abilities

There is also renting a car that avoids encounters. In fact, that is a pretty unique way to dodge encounters, i wonder if any other jrpg's used something similar.

 

[Ash]

If FF8's base encounter rate is too high, turn-based JRPGs are not for him. It's on the lower side of JRPGs and provides numerous means to avoid random battles AND has aggressive level scaling to cater to people not interested in the gameplay that run away from battles/use encounter none/rent cars. So there isn't really any helping this guy.

Sure, go ahead and play CT. There are still TONS of battles but they're not random as if that makes any significant difference in this regard (hardly), and the gameplay is completely braindead, as well as non-existent outside of combat so you can breeze through it and just focus on the cute story. Knock yourself out.

 

[Maxie]

nothing cute about Crono getting vaporized by queen Zeal

 

[Lord of Riva]

You've all got shit taste. The only JRPGs to be recommended are:

a) not typical anime-laden. As little anime infestation as possible. Typical anime = simple ugly art style, childishness, simping & creepiness, "anime grunting" , style over substance etc. So we want "westaboo" jap games, of which there were many in the 90s.
b) also has a respectable degree of meaningful gameplay depth.

Final Fantasy 5-9
Parasite Eve 1 & 2
Koudelka & Shadow Hearts 1
Golden Sun 1 & 2
Pokemon Gen 1 & 2
Vagrant Story
Final Fantasy Tactics

As well as Jap ARPGs like:

Dark Souls 1 & 2
Castlevania SotN & the DS CV games
Onimusha Dawn of Dreams

I keep trying to broaden my JRPG horizons beyond this but am constantly assaulted with obscene faggotry and/or braindead gameplay. Neither is acceptable.

Most of these games are either kiddie games, like pokemon or golden sun, completely inaccesible for newbs like Vagrant story and FF tactics (how that is a JRPG is anyones gues, she could play Der langrisser or fire emblem then as well) or well Shadow hearts 1 which I found quite strange (not bad mind you)

The rest is adequate, apart of what has been elaborated on FF already. I Like that you included 5, most people don't like it but it's great.

 

[Theodora]

Poor Ladonna. You think it'd be a simpler question than this.

I doubt we're going to get anywhere with a recommendation if we endlessly go around in circles focused on what's too childish or 'too anime' over and over. An entry point to the genre doesn't need to be the video game equivalent of the Mona Lisa, she just wants something that doesn't feel like it's wasting her time with generic, random encounters, because she's short on that.

 

[Maxie]

You've all got shit taste. The only JRPGs to be recommended are:

a) not typical anime-laden. As little anime infestation as possible. Typical anime = simple ugly art style, childishness, simping & creepiness, "anime grunting" , style over substance etc. So we want "westaboo" jap games, of which there were many in the 90s.
b) also has a respectable degree of meaningful gameplay depth.

Final Fantasy 5-9
Parasite Eve 1 & 2
Koudelka & Shadow Hearts 1
Golden Sun 1 & 2
Pokemon Gen 1 & 2
Vagrant Story
Final Fantasy Tactics

As well as Jap ARPGs like:

Dark Souls 1 & 2
Castlevania SotN & the DS CV games
Onimusha Dawn of Dreams

I keep trying to broaden my JRPG horizons beyond this but am constantly assaulted with obscene faggotry and/or braindead gameplay. Neither is acceptable.

Most of these games are either kiddie games, like pokemon or golden sun, completely inaccesible for newbs like Vagrant story and FF tactics (how that is a JRPG is anyones gues, she could play Der langrisser or fire emblem then as well) or well Shadow hearts 1 which I found quite strange (not bad mind you)

The rest is adequate, apart of what has been elaborated on FF already. I Like that you included 5, most people don't like it but it's great.

jRPGs may be games for kids, but they ain't games for babies. Don't be ridiculous claiming playing Pokemon is some inborn knowledge. First two gens were tough games, and only ever became easier starting gen3. Fuck, Pokemon B&W returns to the original level of difficulty, and is a good game for it. The rest of this franchise? Shieeet, that's gay bullshit for homos

 

[Skinwalker]

Is Dragon's Dogma still shit? I was going to give it a chance, but then I remembered that I already did that a while ago, and it was atrocious.

 

[Lord of Riva]

jRPGs may be games for kids, but they ain't games for babies. Don't be ridiculous claiming playing Pokemon is some inborn knowledge. First two gens were tough games, and only ever became easier starting gen3. Fuck, Pokemon B&W returns to the original level of difficulty, and is a good game for it. The rest of this franchise? Shieeet, that's gay bullshit for homos

I clearly remember beating red with a sole Rattata, which was my favorite pokemon back then, yes, rattata not raticate.
It can learn Hyperfang and superfang and get over it's normal type with thunderbolt and Ice beam. It's a kids game in all circumstances, especially difficulty.

 

[flyingjohn]

I clearly remember beating red with a sole Rattata

You can solo any Pokémon game because there isn't any real difficulty. There isn't a single game that you can't beat with a starter only.
Gen 1 is piss easy because there is so much bugs and broken mechanics.

Gen 2 is completely borked thanks to being one of the worst scaled Pokémon games in existence.