Top Codex JRPGs

[Rahdulan]

Front Mission 3. Gameplay, biatches~ if you are bothered by the story and/or characters, aka storyfags, you wont enjoy it. But this game is good for the PS1 period.

I'd say FM3 is extremely solid in both departments. It's not like the story is bad or anything, but you need to love your military acronyms with a dash of nationalistic politics, and dumb MC stuck smack in the middle of it all just getting carried along by events. Fact there are two 30+ hours long campaigns with different stories based on one choice just makes it all the more impressive.

 

[Andyman Messiah]

Front Mission 3 is amazing. An angry, slightly retarded young man with daddy issues and his cool slacker friend become terrorists by accident because he's worried about his very attractive not-blood-related scientist sister and embark on a journey to escape da police n' military, and also to............ do stuff. There might be a conspiracy or two in there.

* Two story routes, each with their own amazing characters!
* Amazing fun gameplay action!
* A complete internet-in-the-game with e-mail support! Catch serial killers! Hack shit! Write down stuff in your real life notepad!
* Play as the greatest protagonist ever with the best excuse ever to start a world-traveling quest to fuck evil and his very attractive adopted sister.
* Enlist a noblewoman loli and her butler as mechwarriors!

Play Front Mission 3 today, immediately, RIGHT FUCKING NOW.

 

[Archibald]

Chronos Cross. In Codex you must accept that nostalgia fags got their way, which is why CC is rated by them to be worse than Chronos Trigger. Still, even discounting the graphic, I just dont get why anyone in their right mind would think so~

Main flaw of Chrono Cross is that it is different game. Its not similar in its gameplay nor story progression at all, its at best a thematic sequel. I understand why initially it received such backlash because at the time it was pushed by media (from what I remember) as a sequel, but years later? Feels like some people are just trying to earn some kool kredits while being edgy.

That being said, I like Chrono Trigger more than Chrono Cross, but Chrono Cross easily makes my top 5 too.

 

[flyingjohn]

Can somebody explain to me the love for Chrono Cross.And before people jump on me for being a trigger fanboy i played cross years before i played trigger so no nostalgia goggles.
From what i played it had the worst grinding ever,slow and easy combat system and a lot of useless characters.
But it had the best ost of any jrpg i ever heard before and the game was nice to look at for that era.
As for my top jrpgs i would say suikoden 2 ,final fantasy tactics and chrono trigger are among the best.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Reasons why CC sucked:

Too many characters with no real background. Kind of like Suikoden except those guys at least tend to do useful shit in your castle. 90% of the characters in CC will never be of use to you, and they're hardly different from eachother, really.

Basically no reason to ever bother exploring, since there is nothing of value to find. At most you'll get some consumable spells you'll never bother using because basic attacks do a better job 9 times out of ten. This is the exact opposite of CT or FF6 or any decent jrpg, where exploring yields things like accessories that let you dual wield weapons, weapons that cast spells on attack, armour that makes you entirely immune to certain elements, etc. You know... useful shit you'd be excited to find. None of that here. Ever.

Consumable spells. Jesus fuck this is annoying. It was annoying in FF8 and it's annoying here. The only game/series I've ever seen pull off an ammo system effectively was Wild Arms, because they made it simple to restock shit; you just refill everything when you get to town and are at the shop to tune up your weapons anyways. One button, no fucking individual juggling of ammo types into slots constantly.

Battle system that encourages using particular attack patterns to make combos, while totally ignoring what the enemy is doing because reacting to it would fuck up your sequence. If that sounds like it'd be repetitive and boring, it is.

The devs were so proud of their amazing graphics, they make the camera pan around the battlefield for several seconds at the start of each encounter, and everything is generally overly animated. Fortunately they built in a frameskip feature since this is obviously annoying as fuck. Unfortunately it's unlocked after playing through a 60 hour game. Trollololol.

 

[Andyman Messiah]

Too many characters with no real background. Kind of like Suikoden except those guys at least tend to do useful shit in your castle. 90% of the characters in CC will never be of use to you, and they're hardly different from eachother, really.

You're being unfair. Some of them have HILARIOUS accents!

 

[laclongquan]

It's a 2CD game with shitload of characters, of course most of them are not getting their deserved development time. But even with that constraint. CC characters are nicely memorable. They make sure the world is populated by people you know~ There's no such thing as running through a town and seeing no one you know. It's like Fallout 2, running through the brothel and meet that whore of Vic, you can lure her to join your party for the whole game? Yeah, it's nearly like that.

But Damned Registrations make a good example of never gell with what the game offer. Art? Dismissed! 3D graphic of the 1st generation? Bad doggie! Gameplay? rage! characters? boring~ When you never gell with it, it's hopeless to explain the good points.

 

[CryptRat]

Earthbound needs to be mentioned, The Dark Spyre probably does too.

Speaking of ultra-classic J-RPGs with puzzles, Wild Arms 3 is probably my favourite (but for sure FF6, Nocture, Shadow Hearts 2 and Demon's Souls are better J-RPGs).

Don't know if they are TOP J-RPGs (I think they are), but Baten Kaitos, Breath of fire : Dragon quarter and Resonance of fate are some must-play because of the unusal systems.

I finally consider that such a list would need some SNES mana game, but I'm unable to decide between Secret of Mana, Seiken Densetsu 3 and Secret of Evermore, they are 3 not-so-similar good games.

 

[Hirato]

Etrian Odyssey 4 is by far my favourite JRPG from the last few years.

The music and atmosphere is excellent, the mapping gimmick is a lot of fun, and while the story is quite simplistic, it's non-intrusive and very well told.

 

[Archibald]

This is the exact opposite of CT or FF6 or any decent jrpg, where exploring yields things like accessories that let you dual wield weapons, weapons that cast spells on attack, armour that makes you entirely immune to certain elements, etc. You know... useful shit you'd be excited to find. None of that here. Ever.

Number of characters are completely optional and you get them by exploring. Some characters do not get their final unique attack with stars, again you have to explore for that. Spriggs entire play style is basically about exploring stuff. I mean shit like this: http://www.shadesofsilence.net/chronocross/ccsummons.html is totally not worth looking for.

Battle system that encourages using particular attack patterns to make combos, while totally ignoring what the enemy is doing because reacting to it would fuck up your sequence. If that sounds like it'd be repetitive and boring, it is.

You are not going to get field effects unless you follow patterns of enemies.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

I forgot to mention Saga Frontier.
It attempts to keep you from a typical linear corridor design by letting you explore the world and look for various kinds of shit. Plus it has 7 characters with different stories and "slightly" different mechanics.
For some reason I enjoy the fuck out of it, even if the game offers little more than that.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Number of characters are completely optional and you get them by exploring. Some characters do not get their final unique attack with stars, again you have to explore for that. Spriggs entire play style is basically about exploring stuff. I mean shit like this: http://www.shadesofsilence.net/chronocross/ccsummons.html is totally not worth looking for.



You are not going to get field effects unless you follow patterns of enemies.

The summons were pointless shit. Pulling them off required way too much dicking around for it to be worthwhile. You spend like 10 fucking turns setting up an attack that does like twice the damage of something that takes 1 turn to set up. Fucking genius. And who gives a shit about the special attack on some random ass character you don't want to use anyways? You only have a party of 3, the main character is OP as fuck (I don't think you could remove him from the party anyways) so you really only want 2 other decent characters. Maybe a third if you really feel the need to change playstyles for some reason.

Field effects did sweet fuck all and were mostly beyond your control anyways.

The whole game feels like some devs jerking themselves off about how complex and beautiful their game is, meanwhile anyone with half a fucking brain realizes the most effective way to play is boring as fuck. If I wanted to do arbitrary shit just because it looks cool I'd rather just watch a fucking movie or something. If I'm playing a game I expect some gameplay that isn't trivial wankery. "Wow I summoned a monster to attack for me, it took 10 minutes and the fight could have been over already but I'm sooooo talented for pulling it off!" "Look at me I spent 30 minutes optimally junctioning all my character stats and now they have 7% more resistance to fire and I'll need to do this all over again 20 minutes from now. FF8 is soooo deep."

Meanwhile, in actual decent games: "Oh wow I found a ring that makes my magic cost half as much. I can put this on that mage character that seemed slightly sub-par before and he'll be the strongest part of my team now, fuck yeah."

 

[Rahdulan]

I forgot to mention Saga Frontier.
It attempts to keep you from a typical linear corridor design by letting you explore the world and look for various kinds of shit. Plus it has 7 characters with different stories and "slightly" different mechanics.
For some reason I enjoy the fuck out of it, even if the game offers little more than that.

My only problem with the first SaGa Frontier is that it's essentially a very janky mess, which kinda comes along with a more open approach. I prefer the sequel which at first glance seems to be a more traditional JRPG, but then it reveals its true face when generations come into play. You didn't have your daughter inherit a specific move? Well tough shit.

 

[Damned Registrations]

SaGa Frontier does very blatantly have the marks of an unfinished/unpolished game. One of the characters has basically no plot whatsoever, there are several really abusable bugs/exploits in the game, and you often encounter things that are clearly missing content, like doors you inexplicably can't interact with, or references to things that aren't really in the game, like Coon's backstory (Hell, the whole Biolab is mostly a mystery) or that petrified guy in that weird place in the magic kingdom.

That said, it really is an incredibly detailed and interesting world with tons of cool shit to do, between finding powerful equipment, recruiting characters, or raising those same characters through their various mechanics. Humans have a sort of traditional stat growth after combat scheme, but monsters evolves into other monsters by absorbing the right combination of skills, and mechs are pretty much entirely dependent on their equipment. Melee techniques can only be learned by humans and are done so spontaneously during combat, which can make for some very memorable boss fights where you're on the edge of death but improvise a brilliant technique that turns the tide.

I never really got into SaGa Frontier 2 because it felt too linear and the characters/story didn't interest me, but perhaps I just didn't play long enough? I dunno.

 

[Archibald]

The summons were pointless shit. Pulling them off required way too much dicking around for it to be worthwhile. You spend like 10 fucking turns setting up an attack that does like twice the damage of something that takes 1 turn to set up. Fucking genius. And who gives a shit about the special attack on some random ass character you don't want to use anyways? You only have a party of 3, the main character is OP as fuck (I don't think you could remove him from the party anyways) so you really only want 2 other decent characters. Maybe a third if you really feel the need to change playstyles for some reason.

Look, if someone wants to use Karsh he is going to do a Dario sidequest to get final special attack of Karsh. Similarly if someone likes messing around with field he is going to want to find those summons. If you don't, thats fine, but don't claim that game lacks exploration just because you are more interested in stuff like someone getting 50% refund on his mana costs.

Field effects did sweet fuck all and were mostly beyond your control anyways.

There were spells to turn entire field into specific colour (asides of white/black, probably due to Serge/Lynx) or some spell that you allowed to triple-cast same turn, besides you didn't need field to be of one colour to get buffs/debuffs and pushing in/out one colour was very simple thing to do.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Ok, here's another obscure jRPG (made by Americans) that none of you probably ever played or heard about.

3D models and pre-rendered backgrounds aren't owned by FF7 but let's be honest, this game is trying to go for that FF7 look. Kinda.

Fortunately the pre-rendered backgrounds in this game could get to be very good and very strange. The plot is about the mystery of the shadow madness turning the world crazy. Monsters in childrens nursery rhymes suddenly coming alive and other impossible monsters popping up here and there. It reads like a Lovecraftian story where the normal world and a more hostile and alien world begin to bleed together. It's been years since I played the game, but I remember the plot being pretty good. Combat is turn based with some element of timing a button press before you attack to deal double damage. There's something about engagement as well. Melee characters have to engage the enemy and you want to avoid melee from engaging your ranged characters. Nothing exceptionally new here (but not bad either). The game was suitably challenging.
It's a good jRPG that no one played. Worth a look. I'd vote it as one of my top PS1 era jRPGs.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Look, if someone wants to use Karsh he is going to do a Dario sidequest to get final special attack of Karsh. Similarly if someone likes messing around with field he is going to want to find those summons. If you don't, thats fine, but don't claim that game lacks exploration just because you are more interested in stuff like someone getting 50% refund on his mana costs.

The thing is, I did that shit, and was sorely disappointed every fucking time. Unless you're following a guidebook, you're not even going to know what the fuck you're going to find when you do some little sidequest or whatever anyways. You're just going to dick around for 15-20 minutes and then go "Oh look, a teammate that looks like a fucking vegetable. HILARIOUS. Time well spent."

Saying this game has exploration because it has worthless shit to find is akin to saying Oblivion has great exploration because of all those raggedy clothes and potatoes you can find. If you're satisfied by finding absolutely anything at all, no matter how trivial or useless, why should anybody give a fuck if you liked a game? You'll enjoy fucking anything. By your standard Super Smash Bros. has great exploration because there are hundreds of figurines to collect. Sane people don't give a fuck about shit like that.

 

[Gentle Player]

King's Field

 

[laclongquan]

Damned Registrations with Chronos Cross is like me with Final Fantasy Tactics. The difference is that I know my bad compatibility with it and I wont badmouth it just because I dont gell with it.

 

[Siveon]

King's Field

Represent.

Alright, might as well put up some of my favorites, at least to those that I beat and I remember.

Legend of Dragoon
Wild Arms 1
Chrono Trigger (duh)
Etrian Odyssey: Untold

Most of the better games had a real bad case of stopping in the middle and not going through the rest syndrome.

EDIT: Took out Ys and Fire Emblem. Not really JRPGs.

 

[CrimsonAngel]

Breath of fire 3
Suikoden 1-2 and 5
The Disgaea series.
Persona 3-4 (never really tried 1 and 2)
Shadow Hearts 2 and New World (never got around to try 1)

Now a game you have to play is Final Fantasy X-2.
For some reason i love that game. It's got a solid combat system that has a solid job class system that makes most fights fun
Now the story is all kinds of retarded and the entire game is so many kinds of stupid that i boggles the MIND! that if you go into this game with right mind set it is AMAZING!!!.

Last series i will Mention is the Yakuza series.

 

[pakoito]

Labyrinth of Waifus 2?

 

[Ash_Firelord]

Suikoden 1-2
Shining Force 2-3 and CD
Phantasy Star 4
Final Fantasy 6-9 (+ X-2 and XII)
Ys VI
Panzer Dragoon Saga
Shining the Holy Ark
Story of Thor 1-2
Chrono Trigger

...

Can I get away with calling "Guardian Heroes" an jRPG?

 

[Damned Registrations]

Can I get away with calling "Guardian Heroes" an jRPG?

No but you're awesome for bringing it up anyways.

 

[Archibald]

Now I love Ys series, but should it really be mentioned in this topic? Even Diablo is more of an RPG than Ys.