What JRPGs have the most compelling or believable story, motives or characterisation?

[Häyhä]

Suikoden series, especially the first two games, although I liked 5 also back in the day quite a lot. They're mostly about war, politics, rebellions with some human drama mixed in. I certainly hope the upcoming Eiyuden Chronicle can capture that Suikoden-feeling and writing since it's made by the people behind Suikoden 1 & 2.

 

[Bigg Boss]

The answer is always Vagrant Story

The game takes place in the kingdom of Valendia and the ruined city of Leá Monde. The story centers on Ashley Riot, an elite agent known as a Riskbreaker, who must travel to Leá Monde to investigate the link between a cult leader and a senior Valendian Parliament member, Duke Bardorba. In the prologue, Ashley is blamed for murdering the duke, and the game discloses the events that happen one week before the murder.

It's the most no-nonsense jRPG that I personally played, from people behind Tactics Ogre and FF Tactics. Narrative and writing are along similar lines. Main character is a stoic, adult male with a job to do.

The protag has a girl's name and runs around with naked ass cheeks, very mature, much characterization.

Sure, if you wanna take surface level elements and reduce them to everything/nothing like a faggot.

I also find it ironic that the guy that cannot talk like a big boy is whining about girl names and ass cheeks.

 

[Cross]

Xenogears is a masterpiece

 

[Derringer]

Xenogears is a masterpiece

Crucifixions are a bad meme in giant robot anime that goes back to Mazinger, I wouldn't say the background of the game itself is close to being grounded or believable, it's certainly entertaining but there were parts that definitely bored me (sewer hunting, the early on split up mission with Bart).

Suikoden series, especially the first two games, although I liked 5 also back in the day quite a lot. They're mostly about war, politics, rebellions with some human drama mixed in. I certainly hope the upcoming Eiyuden Chronicle can capture that Suikoden-feeling and writing since it's made by the people behind Suikoden 1 & 2.

Your sister and childhood rival friend both sucked you off a lot, the first game felt more believable to me and that was basically a shorter prototype with elves that get burned to death and a dwarf chieftain that wanted to see them die anyways (both games have japanese dog kobold villages, winged unit villages, zombies with a vampire and the same copypasted skeleton dragon boss near the end of the game, the latter has a school segment where you infiltrate a boarding school as spies and one of the schoolgirls keeps on hitting on Flik even though he stands out like a sore thumb sulking around as someone that looks like either a mercenary or a cosplaying dork).

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Strongly recommend Suikoden and S2. S3 and S5 were also good but don't quite recapture the feel of the first two games.

Suikoden 1 was only 20 hours long but you get a good story. Lots of character deaths. Feels heavy. S2 was 40 hours long but only a couple people died, but it was still good. Both have those nice bittersweet endings too.

S3 is where the wheels began to fall off. That game started dabbling in a lot of JRPGisms such as multiple boss fights against the same character where you might win in the fight... and then the cutscene after immediately proceeds as if you're weak and he won and waltzes off. That might not have felt so bad had the game been finished. You have 40 hours of build up to the war going around adventuring, then you get the True Rune and your castle and your army and then there is only 10 hours of game after that. You spend 80% of the playtime on the prologue part. The actual war feels very truncated. S1 was like 75% war and S2 was 60%. Also, the story wimps out and nobody dies. The ending also introduces some sort of cosmic end of the world threat that was probably intended to be confronted in sequel games which never happened. Suikoden 3 also has gameplay issues (no world map so you spend a lot of time backtracking through corridors which becomes tedious, combat takes a long time, the new skill system to improve people's skills is nice in theory, but in practice you're still heavily incentivized to use the best character rather than your favorites, and S5 doesn't fix this either).

S5 goes back to being grounded and has a couple of character deaths, but the game is stretched out over 60 hours so it doesn;t have the heavy feeling that was concentrated in S1 or even S2. Still a fun game, though.

My biggest fear for Eiyuden is that they're going to wimp out on consequences, and there will be a lot of padding that will dilute the war feel.

 

[S.torch]

I understand where you are coming from but surely grounded has more connotations than 'profane' or 'worldly'?

You could say that Tolkien is grounded but not profane, because his world is systematic and historical. Magic is minimal, comes from divinity, has a well explained origin. Yet the world itself is filled with light, beauty, the sacred.

Rather, what you are trying to do is twist the sense of the word until it takes on a meaning it does not have. Which is why you chose such a bad example to try to prove your point, because Tolkien's world is totally filled with magic down to the smallest detail.

 

[Luka-boy]

I always found Rance's motives quite relatable.

 

[Gastrick]

Xenogears should be what you're looking for OP, every arc characterizes the cast quite well. In terms of actual enjoyment, the story ranks very high. It's been 6 years since I last played it, so my memories are hazy of the exact details. The story also has many bizarre reveals along the way, epic scope, beautiful writing and good worldbuilding.

 

[Kaivokz]

Rather, what you are trying to do is twist the sense of the word until it takes on a meaning it does not have. Which is why you chose such a bad example to try to prove your point, because Tolkien's world is totally filled with magic down to the smallest detail.

If you think he is using the world wrong and he has expressed what he meant by the word, even if you disagree that such a word means such a thing, why do you continue interpreting the word in the way that it wasn’t intended to be used?

He obviously did not mean a “completely realistic world with no magic”, but one with internal consistency, where things “make sense”. To point: any time a story has a traditional natural laws and effects follow their causes, they are being “realistic”—to not be realistic in this case would be, for example, to have a random events happening with no discernible causal chain. To go further, even if your world has different physical laws, as long as they are consistent that is still embodying realism to a degree; to be non-realistic would be completely random—a universe with no principle of sufficient reason. In other words, there would be no story.


Anyway, Louis_Cypher I’m curious if there are any JRPGs you yourself have enjoyed particularly as a story of metaphysical good vs evil?


To add my own recommendation, Shining Force 1 always struck out to me as this; it has very little characterization or much of a deep story, so I wouldn’t compare it to something like Suikoden or Trails in the Sky, but the themes of light vs dark and the chivalric virtues are on full display.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

Anyway, @Louis_Cypher I’m curious if there are any JRPGs you yourself have enjoyed particularly as a story of metaphysical good vs evil?

I'm not sure if I can name one that is as satisfying as Tolkien in that regard, although I've tried hard for many years to find fantasy equal to that. He was an unequalled master of describing mythic degrees of good vs. evil metaphysical contention on paper. Maybe because he had a strong grounding in metaphysics via Thomist theology, and was a scholar of Europe's ancient epics. (Or maybe he was just a once-a-milennia epochal genius).

Sauron was become now a sorcerer of dreadful power, master of shadows and of phantoms, foul in wisdom, cruel in strength, misshaping what he touched, twisting what he ruled, lord of werewolves; his dominion was torment.​

​

​

But Sauron was not of mortal flesh, and though he was robbed now of that shape in which had wrought so great an evil, so that he could never again appear fair to the eyes of Men, yet his spirit arose out of the deep and passed as a shadow and a black wind over the sea, and came back to Middle-earth and to Mordor that was his home. There he took up again his great Ring in Barad-dur, and dwelt there, dark and silent, until he wrought himself a new guise, an image of malice and hatred made visible; and the Eye of Sauron the Terrible few could endure.​

​

I love the above passage. Just the sheer beauty of his writing. It demonstrates many layers of his thought. It could equally be medieval Christian, Shinto or Hindu, because it's perennial applicability to all cultures. A Platonic notion that only 'good' can truly create in any real sense; that a maligant will misshapes what it touches, that worship directed at the wrong transcendant principle emboldens some eternal Luciferian principle.

I look for that in fantasy games, and am usually disappointed to find they echo it less well, if at all. There was a thread a while back where it became clear that Western games hadn't played a chivalric-hero straight, without 'clowning' them, or portraying them as a characature, in living memory. Yet many gamers are convinced it has been "done to death" when it has in fact barely ever been tried. Japanese RPGs tend to be earnest, display love of the world, love of genuine friendship, love of beauty, etc, which puts them ahead of the pack in terms of depictions of 'goodness' and 'right order'. The antagonistic force however seldom approaches the purely Satanic in scope and will as Sauron or say Emperor Palpatine. Entities I remember fighting in some JRPGs were scorned mortal sorcerers, who sometimes acquire an immortal capacity for power along the way, not knowing that it will banish that last of their humanity, and capacity for change. In Sauron's case he is literally in possession of Angelic degrees of will, beyond mortal competence.

In my story Sauron represents as near an approach to the wholly evil will as is possible. He had gone the way of all tyrants: beginning well, at least on the level that while desiring to order all things according to his own wisdom he still at first considered the (economic) well-being of other inhabitants of the Earth. But he went further than human tyrants in pride and the lust for domination, being in origin an immortal (angelic) spirit.​

On different track, my favorite JRPG of all time is probably "Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey", which has a really interesting three way choice between different metaphysical standpoints about the universe. The demonic, represented by chaos-worshipping Asuras, wanting to rise on a scaffold of the corpses of the weak. The lawful forces, condemning life to mechanistic submissive bondage, represented by the extremes of Angelic intent, unassailable in organised might. The transcendant human, finding some Neitzschean principle beyond order and chaos. It doesn't however try to go for what a good vs. evil story is about in my mind; habitable order vs. pure nihilistic entropy.

Another series I enjoy, more for it's simple good nature, is Ys, which in real life was the name of a lost island in ancient Breton Celtic mythology. The protagonist is an adventurer, on an unapologetic quest to travel the world for no-nonsence curiosity, and defeat evil because it is right. No regrets about his life, he loves the world, loves travel, loves to vanquish anything that corrodes it. It's full of joy, and beauty/joy is the mark of life-giving spirituality.

 

[Maxie]

Anyway, @Louis_Cypher I’m curious if there are any JRPGs you yourself have enjoyed particularly as a story of metaphysical good vs evil?

I'm not sure if I can name one that is as satisfying as Tolkien in that regard, although I've tried hard for many years to find fantasy equal to that. He was an unequalled master of describing mythic degrees of good vs. evil metaphysical contention on paper. Maybe because he had a strong grounding in metaphysics via Thomist theology, and was a scholar of Europe's ancient epics. (Or maybe he was just a once-a-milennia epochal genius).

Sauron was become now a sorcerer of dreadful power, master of shadows and of phantoms, foul in wisdom, cruel in strength, misshaping what he touched, twisting what he ruled, lord of werewolves; his dominion was torment.​

​

​

But Sauron was not of mortal flesh, and though he was robbed now of that shape in which had wrought so great an evil, so that he could never again appear fair to the eyes of Men, yet his spirit arose out of the deep and passed as a shadow and a black wind over the sea, and came back to Middle-earth and to Mordor that was his home. There he took up again his great Ring in Barad-dur, and dwelt there, dark and silent, until he wrought himself a new guise, an image of malice and hatred made visible; and the Eye of Sauron the Terrible few could endure.​

​

I love the above passage. Just the sheer beauty of his writing. It demonstrates many layers of his thought. It could equally be medieval Christian, Shinto or Hindu, because it's perennial applicability to all cultures. A Platonic notion that only 'good' can truly create in any real sense; that a maligant will misshapes what it touches, that worship directed at the wrong transcendant principle emboldens some eternal Luciferian principle.

I look for that in fantasy games, and am usually disappointed to find they echo it less well, if at all. There was a thread a while back where it became clear that Western games hadn't played a chivalric-hero straight, without 'clowning' them, or portraying them as a characature, in living memory. Yet many gamers are convinced it has been "done to death" when it has in fact barely ever been tried. Japanese RPGs tend to be earnest, display love of the world, love of genuine friendship, love of beauty, etc, which puts them ahead of the pack in terms of depictions of 'goodness' and 'right order'. The antagonistic force however seldom approaches the purely Satanic in scope and will as Sauron or say Emperor Palpatine. Entities I remember fighting in some JRPGs were scorned mortal sorcerers, who sometimes acquire an immortal capacity for power along the way, not knowing that it will banish that last of their humanity, and capacity for change. In Sauron's case he is literally in possession of Angelic degrees of will, beyond mortal competence.

In my story Sauron represents as near an approach to the wholly evil will as is possible. He had gone the way of all tyrants: beginning well, at least on the level that while desiring to order all things according to his own wisdom he still at first considered the (economic) well-being of other inhabitants of the Earth. But he went further than human tyrants in pride and the lust for domination, being in origin an immortal (angelic) spirit.​

On different track, my favorite JRPG of all time is probably "Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey", which has a really interesting three way choice between different metaphysical standpoints about the universe. The demonic, represented by chaos-worshipping Asuras, wanting to rise on a scaffold of the corpses of the weak. The lawful forces, condemning life to mechanistic submissive bondage, represented by the extremes of Angelic intent, unassailable in organised might. The transcendant human, finding some Neitzschean principle beyond order and chaos. It doesn't however try to go for what a good vs. evil story is about in my mind; habitable order vs. pure nihilistic entropy.

Another series I enjoy, more for it's simple good nature, is Ys, which in real life was the name of a lost island in ancient Breton Celtic mythology. The protagonist is an adventurer, on an unapologetic quest to travel the world for no-nonsence curiosity, and defeat evil because it is right. No regrets about his life, he loves the world, loves travel, loves to vanquish anything that corrodes it. It's full of joy, and beauty/joy is the mark of life-giving spirituality.

then you play ys origin and its angsty as fuck

 

[quixotic]

Lufia II.