The Golden age of JRPGs the PS1, are they worth going back to? part 1

Over the years I have played many JRPGs, this and the PSP are probably the system that I played most with, using emulators of course, today I am going to talk about them, and tell about my personal history with those games.

So let's start with introducing myself and my relationship with, I was born in January of 2005 long after the PS1 era, but I was always found of retro gaming, in early 2020 I started playing JRPGs, coincidentally it was around the same time as the pandemic started, I hated watching online classes so I just started skipping them to play video games instead, which means I had a lot of time to play these JRPGs,that I felt in love with.

It's important to point it out that my relationship with those games are much different from most people who played them, because of the circumstance that I first played them are very different from people who played them in the 90's, specially with emulation features and the internet to help me play them.

I am going to talk about them from bottom to top and explain my reasons to rate them like I did, also if a JRPG is missing that's because I didn't play it.

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E Tier​

Goujin Senki​

If you look up this game on Google the first thing you will find is a reddit post made by me, a mini review of this game when it's fan translation just came out, and to quote myself from this review:

While I am glad it received a Fan translation, I personally think it's one of the worst PS1 RPG, with very few redeeming quality that are massively outweight by it's weakenes, do yourself a favour and stay away from this game.

I don't think I have to say any more than this, easly the worst game here, I might repost this review here if anyone is curious about it.

Hoshigami: Ruining Blue Earth​

If you look online in the list of worst PS1 JRPGs you will certainly find this game in those list, despite that I thought to myself "Nah this people are wrong, this game doesn't look that bad, I am going to play it myself" , but no these people are right you shouldn't play this game.

Firstly the battle system is painfully slow, not only because the animations are slow but also because you need to press X around 5 times for any actions, it's menus are clunky to use (but spoiler it's not the worst on this tierlist), the story is whatever and the music is simply embarrassing to listen, I remember when I was playing this game and my brother entered my room and listen to this game's music , and his reaction was like "What the hell are you playing ?" with a really weird out face.

the music in question was this one I believe

Arc the Lad 1​

All PS1 Arc the lad games came on the Arc the lad collection but I am rating this game and Arc the lad 3 separably, I really dislike this game, the story is poorly written with no character development and no reason to care about the world despite being a generic the world is dying plot, the game is really grinding despite being really short, because if the game wasn't gridy it would be only 5 hours long instead of 10.

This is why I skipped from Arc the lad 2 to Arc the lad 3 because I heard it's better than the original dualogy.

Guardian Cruseders​

This one is probaly unfair to put here because I only played it for 5 minutes, the reason why I played it for a small length of time is because the camera of this game was so terrible that gave me headache in the first 5 minutes of game, not a good first impression.

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D Tier​

Beyond the Beyond​

In the lower tiers we will find a lot of cookie cutter JRPGs that I don't remeber next to nothing about besides being mediocre, Beyond the Beyond is such the case, the only thing memorable about it is the title which is I find it funny but also stupid, what does Beyond the Beyond mean anyway? Beyond the Beyond feals more like a Si-fi thing, not fantasy medival.

Eternal Eyes​

Cookie cutter
Mediocre
Not memorable
but at least you have cute monsters

Thousand Arms​

Cookie cutter
Mediocre
Not memorable
but at least you have to date cute anime girls.

The Legend of Dragoon​

I know this one is going to be controversial, a lot of people have nostalgia for it, but I don't, Firstly I hate games that have mid battle QTE (With the exception of Shadow Hearts) , the story is very predicatable, and feels like something that I have already seen before, the english translation was also bad, and I hate the high encounter rate with inventory limit, I know there's a hack on the ripo that fix some of these issues, but if someone doesn't remove the QTEs I am not going to revit it.

Arc the Lad 3​

While it's true that this game is better than Arc the Lad 1 it's not better enough to be a good game, just slightly less bad, It feels like a poor mans Trails in the sky but in a post apocalyptic setting, the dinamic between the main characters feels a lot like the one between Stela and Joshua the difference being is that the writter didn't wrote characters, they wrote sterotypes in with a story that nothing signafic happens for 30 hours, the battle system is slow and adds nothing intersing to the RPG formula.

Wild Arms 1 and 2.​

I know this is also going to be controversial but I don't like these games , I tried to enjoy them I really did but they aren't for me, I found runnig and exploring in these games to be really annoying but worse is that I didn't like any of the characters or stories either, the Western setting feals like it was put there to make it different from other JRPG of the era because it doesn't add anything interesting to those games.

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C tier​

This one is going to be controversial.

Lunar Silver star​

Lunar is not a bad game, but I couldn't enjoy it like many other JRPG fans I am sorry, I just can't enjoy it, it doesn't do anything extreamly wrong, C tier is for games that I don't dislike but I don't enjoy them enought to I like them, Lunar represent that perfectly, it didn't anything for me to continue playing.

Tho it's important to meantion I first play it with the unworking desing patch because someone recomended me to play this game with it, so I had a very different first impression than most people.

Vagrant Story​

As I said I don't games with QTE in mid combat and this game has that, not only that but as you will se soon I am not a fan of Ivalice games, or Yasumi Matsuno style of writting too, and this game has a lot of things that I generally don't like, but I can see a lot of love was put into it, and I can see why some love it.

Final Fantasy Tatics and Tatics Ogree​

I am going to put them tougher because they share a lot, including my issues with them, The story has a lot of interisting stuff going on but I don't like how they present themself and how they are paced, they just throw a bunch of complex in world terminoly and expect you to undertand them, Final Fantasy Tatics in special, it's hard to undertand the story when the game doesn't explain the world to you and just throw you in the middle of the plot what is worst is that the game devolves into a fantasy slop in the final chapters instead of staying in it's political drama plot.

but what kills it for me is the gameplay, I dislike SRPG that are based around level grind and class, it doesn't fit the SRPG Genre, because it's battles are slower than regular RPG, and having to fight a lot of non important fights in SRPG is just tiresome, at this point is not a game about strategy but a game of power grind and numbers, which at this point why not just make it a regular JRPG ?

This is the reason why all SRPG on the higher tier either have limted to no grind or are just easy games where the gameplay is secondary.

Langrisser 4​

This is a Japan only game that got a fan translation, I don't remeber much about it, besides thinking it's alright but not enjoying it enough to play more than a few chapter and disliking how many units were on screen.

Front Mission 3​

I just don't like mech games, I know there's a mech SRPG higher in the list but when we get there I will explain why, in the case of Front mission 3 and the Front mission series in general, there's a lot of good stuff about them, I love the music and stories of the series, but gameplay is king for me and in the case of Front mission I just don't like their battle system, it's just a game of equiping your mech with the right equipament for the mission and slowly shooting everything on your path, I get the plea but this kind of SRPG is just not for me, I just wish I like this game more because outside of the gameplay I really like them, Hell I even like that wierd Left Alive spin-off and no one else does.

Kartia​

I know it might seem like I have a thing against SRPG, and honestly depeading on how you look at it, this might be true, but I just belive that many SRPG made in the 90's and early 00's are mediocre, specially because of slow animations, with that said I also think SRPG should be desing around not being able to grind, which exclude game that are inspired by FFT or Disgea like games, this includes many SRPG but I still like the Genre because of Fire Embleam and games like it.

Long tangent aside, Kartia has a lot of good things going for it, an interesting story, Great art style , intersting gaming mechanics, and it doesn't allow for Grind like I rant about above but there's one single thing that ruins the game for me, that being it's menues , it's just painfull to use, it feals more backward to use than NES games somehow, what's worst is that it could be easily a Great game otherwise.

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B Tier​

I know there was a lot of negativity in the other tier but from now on, only good games will appear, they might not be for everyone but games from B and above I can recomend to anyone interested into playing these games.

Final Fantasy Viii​

The game is a mess (So much for being positve only 2 lines above) but I like it, outside of the OST, which is amezing, everything about it is something that I simultaneously like but also dislike.

What I mean about that is that while I do the story of the first disk having a lot of interesting world building, and political drama, while the other disk having batshit insane story that I love for how insane it's, like the love scene in space, I dislike how the story goes from interesting and somewhat belivable into a bunch of nonsense, that while fun to watch makes no sense and feals like a wasted potencial.

Same applyes to the gameplay I love that it tried something different, but I hate how unpolished and unbalanced it is, at the very least it's fun to see how people break the game on disk one.

Star ocean 2​

I like it's story and characters even if they are somewhat tipical for a JRPG, I also really like how the game looks, but the reason why it's not higher is because I hate it's battle system, I hate the semi-automatic system in early Tales of and Star ocean games, It just feal horrible to play and I can't discribe why, maybe the remake fixed that but I never tried it.

Ecsaform​

This is another Japan only games that got fan translation around 2 years ago, similary to Goujin Senki, I also made a review of it on Reddit when the translation came out and here is the important parts from it, tho I might repost it here if there's any interest.

"The Gameplay is definitively the best thing about it"
"Everything is extemly undercooked, scenes that should have being at least 5 minuts long are just 2 text boxes, which makes for a very poor plot"
"While I enjoy my time, I wouldn't recommend it to most people, it flaws make this a very unmemorable game, that was forgotten for a reason, but if you feel like playing a short(only 17 hours long) and easy SRPG or feel like playing a new PS1 JRPG that you hadn't played before, you might enjoy it."

Grandia 1​

It was a game that I played in early 2020 for the first time, I played it in the begin of the pandemic, while I enjoyed my time with it, the game has terrible pace and it feals like it takes forever to beat, the gameplay is really fun to mess around with specially the magic system which is really fun to grind for, and the story is cute, but after playing so many better games I can't place it higher.

Xenosaga​

This was actually the first game that I played in 2020, when the pandemic was an thing only affecting Asia, It's undeniable that it does a lot of things right, but why isn't it an S tier game ?

First, while the story is well writen disk 1 feals too slow for me, while I am ok with Human battle besides having to memorise late game elemental attacks, I hate Mech battles and I hate how they become so much important in the late game, not to meantion that platform tower on disc 1 and the entirity of Disc 2.

Vandal Hearts 2​

I also don't remeber much about it besides it's interesting story about nobility and war, and the battle system haivng the simultaneous moviment thing, which while a good idea I don't think it works on pratice, but I also don't felt compaled to play this game to the end, like the first game.

Breath of Fire 3​

The minigames, like the desert one and the one trying to get a thing in a watering hole kill this game for me, the story is good and the battle system is alright buy BOF 4 does it better, I know a lot of people love this game but I just like it.

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This post got too big LOL, and I have to divide it into 2 parts, see you again soon.​

Next post will be Tiers A to S and the conclusion.

 

[NobodyHere]

It’s weird but I kinda like grinding (completely understand why people don’t like it, I like when it’s fully optional); I really like when’s there’s a wide range of classes(skills and equipment, etc too), my favourite part of rpgs especially srpgs’ is seeing how far I can push it; see what (probably garbage) builds I can get away with, the satisfaction of executing my random self appointed goals. Of course I completely understand why people would not enjoy playing like this(I feel silly for playing like this tbh), I often burn myself out spending hours for sometimes only a couple minutes of satisfaction.

 

[Strategist's iconStrategist]

It’s weird but I kinda like grinding (completely understand why people don’t like it, I like when it’s fully optional); I really like when’s there’s a wide range of classes(skills and equipment, etc too), my favourite part of rpgs especially srpgs’ is seeing how far I can push it; see what (probably garbage) builds I can get away with, the satisfaction of executing my random self appointed goals. Of course I completely understand why people would not enjoy playing like this(I feel silly for playing like this tbh), I often burn myself out spending hours for sometimes only a couple minutes of satisfaction.

Yeah, Grinding is fun when you have an interesting progression tree and can gain new abilities regularly. Trying out the different jobs and ability combinations are the best aspects of Final Fantasy Tactics, that's why grinding in that game isn't as much of a downside as in other games. Plus there are abilities like JP gain plus and Exp gain plus that make grinding much more bearable.

 

[CG4R12I4N]

Let's be honest tho, some of the classes are pretty one note and boring overall, especially the physical ones like Archer and Dragon Knight/Lancer where you basically just pick the most expensive Aim/Jump and be done with it because they literally have no other skill anyway. Like IMHO the only second physical skillset worth a damn using is Squire's Fundamentals and Monk's Martial Arts due to how versatile they are and cost no CT whatsoever.
On the other hand, you can totally beat FFT without much grinding for levels and jobs storywise tho some battles would be hard as sin and also need some luck to complete. Heck, you can even beat Ultima with average party level under 30 overall.