JRPGs for people who only like western RPGs

[Atlet]

jrpg means jap-style rpgs, and they all suck. stay away from the genre, jf, play myb smt and saga series and thats it.

ps: dark souls is not a jrpg. its an action-adventure game with heavy western rpg elements.

 

[Barbarian]

Themes and aesthetics are something that do matter to me. It is somewhat the reason why I can't play them now even though I was enthralled with japanese rpgs when I was a child and then in my early teens...

Why? Childish animu art, the protagonist is usually either a kid or a teen, everything is cartoonish and made for kids...Even Final Fantasy VII and VIII, games that came out when I was in my early teens and were hailed as "adult" and a big thematic change for the series. Just a bottomless barrel of childishness with just a touch of teenage angst.

That said, I had a lot of fun with these games and have fond memories of playing them. Even games that were already old when I got to play them(i.e: Chrono Trigger). That they are still made this way to this day is evidence to japanese pedo creepiness. I mean most gamers these days are adults... and the ones that are gleefully playing these jrpgs with child protagonists and scripts out of a pokemon/naruto episode usually have issues.

 

[Viata]

JRPG means whatever I want it to mean so the games I like belong to another genre and so I can keep shitting on JRPGs.

 

[Disciple]

What about Lunatic Dawn: Passage of the Book?

 

[Casual Hero]

Unfollowing this thread for the sake of my sanity.
Fork said it best; this is pointless.

 

[Hyperion]

ps: dark souls is not a jrpg. its an action-adventure game with heavy western rpg elements.

Yeah, those western games like Castlevania, Metroid, and Zelda.

 

[Atlet]

ps: dark souls is not a jrpg. its an action-adventure game with heavy western rpg elements.

Yeah, those western games like Castlevania, Metroid, and Zelda.

A reminder that action oriented "rpgs" are not RPGs. That's why I used the term "action-adventure game with ((heavy)) rpgs elements". But, this is not a debate I want to participate in this specific thread.

You just gotta know for now that jrpgs are childish in it's aesthetics, shallow in it's combat mechanics, and naive in it's storytelling. After I force feed you with this truism, I can debate more interesting subjects such as what a rpg is (not).

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Supposedly the NES Megami Tensei games, I.E., the predecessors to SMT, are CRPGs, but its just something I heard.
The only real option if you don't care for any of those is Lunatic Dawn, which basically is just a CRPG made in Japan. That said, the English translations are almost all unfinished, and the only game that doesn't have an unfinished one I couldn't get working back when I tried it. Princess Maker 2 might be what you want, but its sort of completely different than any regular RPG. There might be something more interesting in the scads of untranslated computer games from the '80s and '90s, but untranslated.
I found Dungeon Encounters to be a fun title, but that might not be what you want.

 

[Eyestabber]

Is this considered JRPG by the experts? Is it an action RPG? Anyway, I played both PE games back in the day and I love them both.

 

[Thorakitai]

Seeing how you like the Fire Emblem games, I'd recommend that you play Berwick Saga, a SRPG game made by the creator of the Fire Emblem series after he left Nintendo.

Here's an excerpt from a review of that describes it better.

Kaga channeled his energy into making vast changes to his winning SRPG formula for his next game in order to prevent such an incident again – using six-sided Hexes instead of 4-sided squares, a rotating turn order system where player and enemies take their turns in proportion to their army forces, a revamp of the standard attack – counterattack combat flow of FE…

Source: https://ontlogy.wordpress.com/2019/03/01/game-spotlight-berwick-saga/

 

[dacencora]

You just gotta know for now that jrpgs are childish in it's aesthetics, shallow in it's combat mechanics, and naive in it's storytelling. After I force feed you with this truism, I can debate more interesting subjects such as what a rpg is (not).

Not that it will likely change your mind, nor that it matters, but I will contend that storytelling focusing on themes of redemption, kindness, and friendship does not necessarily culminate in naïveté. I think that many with an aversion to Japanese media in general have a distaste for such themes. Whatever that may imply, I will leave to the reader, but again, focusing on more optimistic and heartwarming story beats does not presuppose poor writing. I can’t argue that there are a great many examples of poorly written JRPGs, but this is an issue almost equally reflected in WRPGs, so I think we can conclude that it’s a product of the video game genre in general.

Aesthetics and art style are mostly a matter of personal taste. I used to hate the anime style, but I like it now.

It may depend on which games you’ve actually played, but I find that often times, JRPGs have well-defined and fun combat systems. Shin Megami Tensei, Fire Emblem, and Etrian Odyssey, and Elminage are all standouts in that regard. Fire Emblem in particular has a very fun and tactical combat system that I find myself missing in other grid-based tacticals (yes, FE is an SRPG, so maybe it shouldn’t count as a JRPG)

 

[fork]

Spoiler

Is this considered JRPG by the experts? Is it an action RPG? [...]

Those are Action Adventures.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

You literally narrows JRPG to the very niche that you would dislike of course there is no JRPG that would suits you.

That being said SMT is much more dungeon crawling with a bit of choice every once in a while that significantly change the ending. Consider it Wizardy where you change party member constantly and having much more narrative element.

FFT is pretty linear plot wise, there is no CnC, but it is an excellent tactical grid based turn based RPG gameplay wise, probably better than most DnD based shit that people seems to take as golden standard. FFT Advance writing is incredibly juvenile but is pretty entertaining from gameplay standpoint. Tactics Ogre is also excellent gameplay and narrative wise.

 

[reversependulum]

Final Fantasy V - FFT got its job system here
Metal Max - Fallout theme JRPG
Elminage - Better and newer Wizardry
Front Mission - Best Mech SRPG

 

[Shinji]

I have no idea.

With that said, I found this random video on Youtube, it has a lot of charm.

 

[Reinhardt]

The SaGa series

This. Grinding is a trap.

 

[thelegend]

Nier, Neir Automata , Lost Odyssey ,Vagrant Story

 

[Don Peste]

I'm on this same quest, JarlFrank. There is none.
Best thing you can do is pick the one with the most interesting story, or the bounciest physics.
Play on 200% speed to skip shit and use savestates to avoid wasting time.

 

[Doktor Best]

Surprised that nobody mentioned it but the Trails saga is significantly different to other jrpg entries and it makes an above average elaborate effort in world building. The first game starts slow but when the story takes off it keeps your attention.

It has visible enemy encounters and desincentivizes grinding as you get way less exp for lower level encounters. Combat takes place on a grid map.

 

[MpuMngwana]

Not really, you may well be asking for RTS games for people who only like turn-based combat. Sure you've got your Megami Tenseis and SaGas and whatnot, which may appeal more to a typical cRPG enthusiast, but at the end of the day you're still trying to fit a square peg in a round hole; the design goals and sensibilities tend to be quite different. There are some aspects of some games you might enjoy, but from the OP it seems your problem lies with the genre fundamentals and there's really no helping that.

That said, if you do insist on playing Japanese RPGs in spite of this, I'd recommend you to focus more on the dungeon crawlers (for example SMT Strange Journey, which I consider to be one of the finest blobbers in existence) and sRPGS (such as Final Fantasy Tactics and Devil Survivor, both of which feature outstanding party customization).

Surprised that nobody mentioned it but the Trails saga

As much as I enjoy those games, there's no way I'd recommend them to someone complaining about too much non-interactive dialogue.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

It overall sounds like you don't want to play JRPGs. I can't think of any JRPG that meets all 3 of the OP's requirements.

- dialogues are non-interactive cutscenes, you rarely get any dialog choices (if at all) but have to click through line after line of pointless banter; to make it even more aggravating, the dialog is being typed out instead of displayed immediately, and you can't skip an entire conversation with one click; it's extremely annoying and I hate it

There are very few JRPGs that give you meaningful choices. Tactics Ogre is the only one off of the top of my head. Otherwise, you're pretty much going to be playing through the writer's storyline. Some games have more brevity than others and don't waste your time with padding (Tactics Ogre, Final Fantasy Tactics, The Last Remnant), but others are notorious for being extremely long winded JRPGs with lots of fluff (the later Fire Emblem games, Utawarerumono, FFXIV, Trails series, etc).

- your average classic JRPG has extremely simplistic combat which is basically early Wizardry or Might and Magic style, except with longer animations to waste your time; games with proper tactical combat aren't even considered JRPGs in Japan, they're SRPGs, a similar but separate genre

There are some JRPGs with indepth combat. I recently finished Vantage Master and found the battle system to be very well designed and you cannot level grind or unfair bullshit. If you're not smart enough to beat a fight... that's entirely on you. Probably the most well designed fights I've seen in a game. The Trails of Cold Steel games also had fun, indepth combat, and you can skip the animations if you want.

- JRPGs, especially older ones, tend to focus on grind a lot

Some JRPGs are designed to minimize or discourage grinding. The Trails games have a level curve so that your underlevelled characters level up faster, while overlevelled characters don't gain much exp, so you're never really going to need to grind. The Last Remnant actually punishes you for grinding because the enemies out scale your stat growth, so if you level up too much the game can actually become mathematically unbeatable.

the protagonist is usually either a kid or a teen

I do find it refreshing that JRPGs often feature a younger, more bright eyed protagonist than your typical Western game protagonist (usually a grumpy middle aged man), though I do wish that there were more older protagonists as well.

Surprised that nobody mentioned it but the Trails saga is significantly different to other jrpg entries and it makes an above average elaborate effort in world building. The first game starts slow but when the story takes off it keeps your attention.

I'd imagine that the OP would utterly hate the Trails series, as it is pretty much the epitome of light novel anime power of friendship fluff. He might be intrigued by the promise of a bloody world war in FC and the first two Cold Steel games, but the series simply never delivers on it.

 

[JarlFrank]

Not really, you may well be asking for RTS games for people who only like turn-based combat. Sure you've got your Megami Tenseis and SaGas and whatnot, which may appeal more to a typical cRPG enthusiast, but at the end of the day you're still trying to fit a square peg in a round hole; the design goals and sensibilities tend to be quite different. There are some aspects of some games you might enjoy, but from the OP it seems your problem lies with the genre fundamentals and there's really no helping that.

I'm asking because when I recently complained about JRPG fundamentals in shoutbox, AdvancedHero hopped in and said "you claim all JRPGs are like that, but they're not all like that".
If that is true, I want to find the JRPGs that are not like that, because I'm not opposed to games made in Japan, just to the regular JRPG tropes.

But other than SMT, there doesn't seem to be anything that looks enjoyable to me when it comes to traditional RPGs from Japan. There's some good action RPGs like anything by From Software and Dragon's Dogma, all of which I enjoyed, and the SRPG genre is cool for its tactical gameplay - I enjoyed Fire Emblem and Tactics Ogre so much that I was able to put up with the slog of clicking through line after line of dialog banter.

But other than:
- straight-up Wizardry clones (SMT, Elminage)
- action RPGs with minimalist story (soulslikes)
- tactical SRPGs

I guess there are no JRPGs I'm able to enjoy, if the problems I mentioned in my OP are genre conventions that appear in most of them.
Looking for a Japanese Fallout or Baldur's Gate seems to be a dead end, since such a thing doesn't exist.

But then I keep wondering what people like AdvancedHero mean when they say "Not all JRPGs are like that" when even the subgenres of Japanese RPG I like (SRPGs) suffer from some of those problems (like Tactics Ogre and Fire Emblem, while having fun and tactical combat systems, also having a barrage of non-interactive dialog banter you are forced to click through line by line). Where are those JRPGs that are not like that?

Whenever I ask that question, I always get the same answer: Shin Megami Tensei... and that's pretty much it.

 

[Viata]

Even SMT is limited in that, btw. Don't expect something at the level of most crpgs on SMT. Many JRPGs are still based in Wizardry(directly or indirectly via DQ and FF) and this is not a game known for having interactive dialogue. It's about great dungeons and numbers go up. Sadly, most JRPGs are unable to have good dungeons, so they abuse the "numbers go up" to the point where having an attack doing 1000000000000000000000000 of damage is a selling point.

 

[Anonona]

I will repeat myself, and recommend that you take a look at Breath Of Fire V Dragon Quarter. I think you may find it interesting.

Spoiler

- No grinding. Enemies do not respawn and there are not random encounters. You are rewarded for luring monsters together and fighting them at the same time, taking more risk but gaining more rewards.
- Limited Resources. There is a maximum amount of money and consumables you can find, and a limited inventory space. Cannot farm for money.
- You can use traps and bait before combat to gain advantages. Of course that means you can see the enemy on the field before you fight them.
- Combat is turn-based, you have AP which you use both to move your character around the battlefield and do actions like attacks or using objects. Quite a lot of unique mechanics like combos which can lead to new skills among others.
- The battlefield isn't different from the field, in other words, in contrast to other jrpgs, combat doesn't take place in its own separate space from the game's world. Related to the third point, all traps and lures not activated before combat remain in combat and can be used or picked.
- 3 pre-defined characters: A fighter, a mage and a gunner, but very different between each other (and to other games), and making them work in tandem is essential to win the game.
- Good customization. Numerous weapons, armors and accessories. Weapons have different skills slots to customize what your character can do. Things like the length of your sword can be vital when it comes to combat.
- The game is practically a long dungeon crawler where resources management is essential to survive. There are limited saves too, so you have to know when to takes risk or avoid them.
- Heavy punishment for dying. Often times if you die you will have to start the game from the beginning in a sort of NG+ called the Sol system. Depending on how far you got, you will receive a score, which unlocks new cutscenes and hidden paths which lead to special items. and if you have saved some EXP without using it you can level you characters in the new play through with that.
- Despite this, you can beat the game without dying and a single playthough, as I and others have done it, and it isn't a case of using very specifics strategies or exploiting the game, just being tactical in combat. You can beat enemies at level 80-90 while being level 30+ (though you will probably need to stock up in consumables and find a way to avoid getting kill in one hit each turn)
- Good replayability. As I said, dying or beating the game takes you to a NG+ with new content depending on how well you did in the last run.
- Whole game is in a timer, which moves foward even in combat. To win you have to beat the game before the time runs out, but it is quite generous while still encouraging the player to keep moving foward and choose between wasting time but taking no risk, or playing dangerous but going fast.
- Related to this is the "D-Dive" system, a powerful transformation that is pretty much a "I win" button, but that will consume part of your remaining time. Knowing when to use it can be the difference between a game over and a successful run.
- Not meaningful choices, a linear story, but the story is as minimalist as it gets. Once the game proper starts (when the timer kicks in) there are almost no cutscenes, and the ones that are there are very short and to the point. Is gameplay for 95% of the game.
- Dark and gritty story about a distopic society living under the earth for so long they believe the surface is just some kind of legend. Of course the objective of the game is to reach said surface.
- Protagonists are teenagers, but the writing is not juvenile at all and the situations of the protagonists are used to showcase how shitty is the world they live in.

As side recommendations of unique jrpgs that depart from the classic formula, I'll recommend Vagrant Story and Parasite Eve 1 and 2, which are single character RPG with adult main characters, and in the case of Parasite Eve a mix between an RPG and Survival Horror.

PS: For BoF Dragon Quarter you want to play the NTCS/US version of the game, they fucked up the balance in the PAL/Eu version by changing things related to the save system. US is closer to the original JP.

 

[spekkio]

There are very few JRPGs that give you meaningful choices. Tactics Ogre is the only one off of the top of my head.

Der Langrisser (aka Langrisser 2 remake) is IMO one of the best japtactical games (great tactical combat), while also having strong strategic elements when it comes to character evolution (which units your generals can use) and multiple "paths" you can embark on. Mission tree (CYOA at its best):

Other recommendations:

a) RPGs with j (tactical or "blobber" combat):

- Breath of Fire 5,
- Shin Megami Tensei 3,
- Vagrant Story,
- SMT Strange Journey Redux,

b) japtacticals:

- Fire Emblem has been mentioned, IMO the old ones (Snes & GBA) are the best,
- Front Mission 3,
- entire Ogre Battle series (OB & Tactics Ogre for Snes, Final Fantasy Tactics for Playstation 1, OB 64 for Nintendo 64, TO - Knight of Lodis for GBA),
- SMT Devil Survivor Overclocked (Remake of 1) & Record Breaker (Remake of 2) - IMO the best tactical combat in the entire genre, beating Fire Emblems.
- Vandal Hearts 1 & 2,
- Ring of Red.