Do you think these 3 JRPGs are forgotten cult gems or not?

[_IamHanik]

Hii gamers, good night!!!

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Video games from the country of the rising sun have always been one of the great pillars of the industry.

Because it is no mystery to anyone that Japan has left us some of the most famous role-playing games in history. For example Chrono Trigger, the Dragon Quest saga, Persona and obviously the wonderful world of Final Fantasy, but there are some forgotten classics that today can give us some very fun moments. And well, having said that, I share with you this mini review of these 3 gems that deserve a must-see. So without further explanation we begin!

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This is a title created by the legendary Hironobu Sakaguchi (Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger) this great game was published on Nintendo Wii. And this role-playing game introduces us to fantastic and fun combats in real time. While its artistic design is very beautiful and is really on par with the great JRPGs.​

It also cannot be classified as a perfect game from start to finish, but I do have to tell you that it is a game made with love in every pixel. And not only that, since another interesting and very valuable detail of The Last Story is its music, which was performed by the also legendary Nobuo Uematsu. Although this game had everything to become an incredible saga, unfortunately everything ended up being forgotten.

And as of this writing, it's safe to say that The Last Story is stuck on the Nintendo Wii.​

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And well now it's time to talk about the incredible Skies of Arcadia. Because this great game can be summed up as a very good game. But it did not manage to transcend beyond a certain number of players. This game managed to stand out for the tone of its story, inspired by pirates in the purest One Piece style, but with the slight detail that everything happens in a huge and beautiful blue sky.

And as soon as it became known in the industry, it also became a cult work, and at the same time a work forgotten by the rest of the world. To the point that one of its main developers, Kenji Hiruta, really wants to get to work on a sequel for current generations, although at the moment nothing indicates that there is the possibility of flying again through the beautiful blue skies of Skies of Arcadia.
It would be great if Skies of Arcadia arrives in the form of a sequel, prequel or at least a spin-off, since this great game belongs to the select group of video games forgotten by the passage of time, but if they give it a new opportunity it is very Skies of Arcadia is likely to make more people fall in love with it, and why not? There is a chance that Skies of Arcadia will receive the respect it so richly deserves.

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Now it's time to talk about a game that I personally had the pleasure of playing about 4 years ago on PS4, and have since become a fan of the world it offers.

And in fact it was the first attempt in which Square Enix chose to use Unreal Engine 3, and the truth is that it turned out beautiful. Obviously if you compare it to the resolutions we are used to in 2024, you will obviously see it as "ugly", but it is still a great exponent of the genre. Although on its initial release date, it was overshadowed by the release of Final Fantasy XIII, causing this beautiful JRPG to fly under the radar of many players. But hey, what half the world missed in this game was... family quest, medieval fantasy, immersive and interesting battles to watch and obviously play.

And in fact this title has all the classic motifs of the genre, but with a very original combat system that mixes elements of strategy, so if you are a fan of turn-based games, then let me tell you that this game is for you. Now, if you are interested in playing it for the first time, then let me tell you that you are in luck as The Last Remnant has a remaster for PS4, Nintendo Switch and also for PC, so there are no excuses not to play it.

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Anyway, I say goodbye and thank you for reading me ♥​

 

[RetroLaw]

Last Story is one of my favorite games, I'm biased.

As for Skies or Arcadia, I loved a LOT of things in this game, but I remember the fights being too slow, the game felt tedious. I really need to revisit it with fast forward.

I own the Last Remnant on 360, but never played it.

 

[CyberAngel573]

So I don't know enough about 2/3 of these titles. But none of them should be forgotten.

1: Last Story was part of Project Rainfall, the project that brought Pandora's Tower, The Last Story, and first game in the Xenoblade Chronicles franchise to North America.
2: Skies of Arcadia only had the original Dreamcast release and the Legends update on the Gamecube. And people were clamoring for an HD port back in 2010. No doubt there are people clamoring for it now.
3: Last Remnant did get a shot in the arm in 2019 with a Remaster being ported to the PS5, Switch, Android, and iOS. There was a Steam port of the original, but it is no longer available for sale. Glad I got my copy before that happened.

 

[ZeromusVX4]

In my opinion i wouldn't say they are exactly forgotten, maybe by their publishers, but a lot of jrpgs folks i have met have played and are quite fond of skies of arcadia, me included, and the last story was part of operation rainfall so it was somewhat relevant to the public, as for the last remnant I'm really not sure, i have the game and played a bit but never finished, but hey there's a gear set in ffxiv that's based on a character from it so there's that

 

[tenkai star]

I would say The Last Remnant is about as forgotten as a Square Enix release with a budget and a stacked voice actor cast (Johnny Yong Bosch, Christopher Sabat + many other funimation actors) could be.

The remaster fixed it's biggest issues of poor performance and grinding too much made the game way harder. I think it's really good. One of the few JRPGs that nailed large scale battles

 

[Johnadams1811]

The Last Story deserve a remaster just like Xenoblade Chronicles DE (and Pandora's Tower too)

 

[ATenderLad]

Well, I searched "Best JRPG's of all time", first result was a Gamespot article that included The Last Story.

Sorted the dreamcast section of the repo by downloads, Skies of Arcadia is 23rd out of almost 600. (Though, I do think of Skies of Arcadia as a game that everyone thinks is good but almost no one actually played, at least in my circles.)

The Last Remnant is an odd duck, coming out in such a bleak period for the genre. I watched a buddy play it for about half an hour after work, then had me drive him to Gamestop to turn it in and buy Disgaea 3 like I'd told him to in the first place. It was regarded as a safe enough bet to get a remaster though, and SteamSpy puts the PC owner count at 920k as of now.

 

[Gorse]

Great opening post, IamHanik! I’ve actually never heard anyone give their firsthand opinion on The Last Story, and yours is certainly welcome. Unfortunately, I ain’t never done played any of these fancy city-folk JRPGs, so instead, I just wanted to ruminate on something that involves the first one you mentioned:

I was just joining my first forum when Operation Rainfall was going on, and I remember what a big deal it seemed like at the time. There were a lot of naysayers, because internet petitions always failed, but there were just as many people who really, really wanted to play these games. At that time, there was a lot of pushback against JRPGs in general (I think because everyone was disappointed by FFXIII), so there was zero guarantee that Rainfall would succeed, but then… it did! The people — Nintendo’s audience — convinced them to put time and money into translating three separate games just by asking hard enough. Isn’t that crazy!?

The Last Story and Pandora’s Friendship Parade have indeed become obscure, I think (though “forgotten” is a strong word, especially for the former), but I find it nuts that the third game in Rainfall was Xenoblade Chronicles. That’s a huge Nintendo franchise these days, with instalments on all major consoles and remakes out the wazoo, plus the lead characters in Smash Bros.! Would that have happened if it weren’t for an internet petition from 13 years ago!? How would Nintendo’s current game lineup have changed if Operation Rainfall hadn’t happened? That’s crazy, to me — some JRPG geeks on the Internet directly led to the creation of a major, international game franchise. Bless!

 

[RageBurner]

I haven't played any of these, though I've heard very glowing things about all three. Time to add them to my ever growing, rarely shrinking, list of RPGs to try.

 

[Cu-Neo]

I played all of three but never finished them thanks to time . I heard people speaking about The last story but only to mention operation rainfall. But I would love to see a remaster in modern consoles (including one of Pandora Tower). And sadly the majority of the games that square released on the 360 that wasn' FF XIII (and even people mostly skip that trilogy) are very underrated (Infinite undiscovery, Project sylpheed)

 

[RetroLaw]

Speaking of Xbox hidden games

I don't think this one is really hidden but :

And of course

 

[ATenderLad]

Speaking of Xbox hidden games

I don't think this one is really hidden but :

And of course

Good lord, but that artist depicted those things glistening like they were covered in baby oil for a Swimsuit Edition, and centered in the picture no less, next to the brightest point to draw the eye. If the game *isn't* about mystical cleavage I'd want my money back.

 

[Karnik]

Hm... ... as for me.... maybe... on second thought... .... all in all... ... Nah!!!

 

[spectresfrommercury]

last story and skies of arcadia are far from forgotten just look at the amount of people still to this day shilling for it so no