The Mega JRPG thread.

[Deleted member 1816]

With my brains and your brawn we will make an excellent team!

Question:
Can I join in?
"Power In Numbers" and all that.

 

[Pandaprewmaster325]

Question:
Can I join in?
"Power In Numbers" and all that.

Since its Final Fantasy gang you need a test for entry you will need to defeat bahumut in all FF games to enter

 

[Wechseln]

Don't forget to play it with the One Vision mod.
You'll thank me later.

The temptation is huge but I need to finish a few games first, I have a lot of stuff in the To Do List.

Currently playing (Kinda stuck tho) Metal Max 3 (DS). 100% Metal Max 2 Reloaded (DS) and I just need more, that game was a goddamn masterpiece, straight up in my Top 3 of the Best RPGs of all time.

 

[Pandaprewmaster325]

View attachment 37082

We are destroying chaos with this one

 

[Deleted member 1816]

Since its Final Fantasy gang you need a test for entry you will need to defeat bahumut in all FF games to enter

Consider it done!

 

[MasterEn]

Question:
Can I join in?
"Power In Numbers" and all that.

i wanted to post some reaction pictures for this, but i can't get them to load properly, so i'll use this again.

 

[Deleted member 1816]

The temptation is huge but I need to finish a few games first, I have a lot of stuff in the To Do List.

Currently playing (Kinda stuck tho) Metal Max 3 (DS). 100% Metal Max 2 Reloaded (DS) and I just need more, that game was a goddamn masterpiece, straight up in my Top 3 of the Best RPGs of all time.

Metal Max enjoyer, I see.

 

[ATenderLad]

Seems like as good a place as any to talk about-

SUIKODEN

The first game was one of the first things I bought on the PSX! I had a Gamefan with a guide to recruiting all 108 Stars of Destiny, and I was damned curious to find out what kind of game let you draft a whole army. It's a really fun mix of fantasy and war, with a surprisingly grounded take on the political situation. Yes, you're a little bit of a Chosen One, with a cool magic stone in your hand that *literally* eats souls; that said, your insurrection can't be won with cool magic and kung-fu.

They *can* be won with bloodthirsty strategists with great hair, though.
​

The bulk of Suikoden - and the series at large - revolves around establishing alliances, winning over hearts and minds, and relying on the strategies of your staff officers to survive open war with a superior force. Yes, there's magic and Capital D Destiny afoot, but the writing tends to treat those as symbolic. The most powerful magics, the True Runes of the world, represent ephemeral forces like Life and Death, but like the abstract conceptual beings of Marvel Comics - Death, Eternity, etc. - they have no real agency. The heroes and villains of the story drive the events of the plot, there's never a higher power or existential threat.

(Which is wild, considering we still have vampires, werewolves, a literal fuckin' unicorn, and flying squirrels with capes.)

You can get a whole party of these guys, with different colored capes like Pac-Man ghosts!
​

The second game became something of a collectors item, at least in America. The name was kind of a non-starter, but it also had the temerity to release the same month as the extremely anticipated sequel to Final Fantasy VII. I still got it the moment it hit shelves though, being probably the only person in my small town who had played the first one. I've sold a lot of games over the years, but Suikoden II is still sitting pretty as a picture in my closet.

(I did actually want the hot new Final Fantasy, but Wal-Mart had them priced at $25 and $50, and my day job was getting paid under the table as a mail sorter sooooooo)

The mix of battle types, like standard squad battles, large-scale military engagements, and dramatic duels is still a great hodgepodge of ideas that I'd love more games to steal take inspiration from.​

---

Anyhow, just saw most of the conversation was about Final Fantasy, wanted to shake things up.

Oh, and I have that seen the new game announcement, my eyes lighting up looking at the screenshots just before the words "mobile game, *light* gacha elements" sucker punched the taste outta my mouth.

 

[Strategist's icon Strategist Strategist]

Seems like as good a place as any to talk about-

SUIKODENView attachment 37120​

The first game was one of the first things I bought on the PSX! I had a Gamefan with a guide to recruiting all 108 Stars of Destiny, and I was damned curious to find out what kind of game let you draft a whole army. It's a really fun mix of fantasy and war, with a surprisingly grounded take on the political situation. Yes, you're a little bit of a Chosen One, with a cool magic stone in your hand that *literally* eats souls; that said, your insurrection can't be won with cool magic and kung-fu.

View attachment 37143

They *can* be won with bloodthirsty strategists with great hair, though.
​

The bulk of Suikoden - and the series at large - revolves around establishing alliances, winning over hearts and minds, and relying on the strategies of your staff officers to survive open war with a superior force. Yes, there's magic and Capital D Destiny afoot, but the writing tends to treat those as symbolic. The most powerful magics, the True Runes of the world, represent ephemeral forces like Life and Death, but like the abstract conceptual beings of Marvel Comics - Death, Eternity, etc. - they have no real agency. The heroes and villains of the story drive the events of the plot, there's never a higher power or existential threat.

(Which is wild, considering we still have vampires, werewolves, a literal fuckin' unicorn, and flying squirrels with capes.)

View attachment 37144
You can get a whole party of these guys, with different colored capes like Pac-Man ghosts!
​

The second game became something of a collectors item, at least in America. The name was kind of a non-starter, but it also had the temerity to release the same month as the extremely anticipated sequel to Final Fantasy VII. I still got it the moment it hit shelves though, being probably the only person in my small town who had played the first one. I've sold a lot of games over the years, but Suikoden II is still sitting pretty as a picture in my closet.

(I did actually want the hot new Final Fantasy, but Wal-Mart had them priced at $25 and $50, and my day job was getting paid under the table as a mail sorter sooooooo)

View attachment 37141

The mix of battle types, like standard squad battles, large-scale military engagements, and dramatic duels is still a great hodgepodge of ideas that I'd love more games to steal take inspiration from.​

---

Anyhow, just saw most of the conversation was about Final Fantasy, wanted to shake things up.

Oh, and I have that seen the new game announcement, my eyes lighting up looking at the screenshots just before the words "mobile game, *light* gacha elements" sucker punched the taste outta my mouth.

Still have to finish Suikoden 2, it has some really cool elements.

 

[ATenderLad]

Still have to finish Suikoden 2, it has some really cool elements.

Ugh, it's so great. The different combat types, all the hidden characters to find, the Iron *fucking* Chef mini-game with a wild-ass narrative of it's own that the game doesn't even tell you about...I stumbled on it the second time around, I never even noticed it beating the game the first time!

I think the castle mechanic especially - the way it keeps expanding and all the characters you recruit add something to the base - is such an untapped idea for JRPG's and games like it.

 

[Strategist's icon Strategist Strategist]

Ugh, it's so great. The different combat types, all the hidden characters to find, the Iron *fucking* Chef mini-game with a wild-ass narrative of it's own that the game doesn't even tell you about...I stumbled on it the second time around, I never even noticed it beating the game the first time!

I think the castle mechanic especially - the way it keeps expanding and all the characters you recruit add something to the base - is such an untapped idea for JRPG's and games like it.

Yeah that was the coolest part of the game, the base mechanic.

 

[UnDubious]

I just want to say that all you SMT fans should give 7th Dragon 2020 a shot. The setting is basically classic SMT, except instead of demons taking over Tokyo, it's dragons. You have to reclaim Tokyo from humanity's base in the City Hall building. Gameplay is dungeon crawling with a very reasonable encounter rate (and multiple ways to suspend or reduce them for a while), fast combat, a fair number of useful battle skills, some depth to the turn-based fighting, great difficulty balancing, and tons of bosses and midbosses (there are 200 dragons). The game's creator worked at Atlus before and created Etrian Odyssey and Trauma Center as well as doing a bit of work on PS2 SMT games. IMO it's the best original turn-based RPG on the PSP.

 

[Deleted member 884]

I just want to say that all you SMT fans should give 7th Dragon 2020 a shot. The setting is basically classic SMT, except instead of demons taking over Tokyo, it's dragons. You have to reclaim Tokyo from humanity's base in the City Hall building. Gameplay is dungeon crawling with a very reasonable encounter rate (and multiple ways to suspend or reduce them for a while), fast combat, a fair number of useful battle skills, some depth to the turn-based fighting, great difficulty balancing, and tons of bosses and midbosses (there are 200 dragons). The game's creator worked at Atlus before and created Etrian Odyssey and Trauma Center as well as doing a bit of work on PS2 SMT games. IMO it's the best original turn-based RPG on the PSP.

Less complex, but at some point it starts to become a bit boring because you have to do the same things over and over and over. Explore a new dungeon, level up until you're stong enough, fight the boss.
It's fun, though. The biggest problem is the final boss, too fucking strong even at level 80.

 

[Wechseln]

7th Dragon (DS) Is also insanely good, I 100% last year. It's a lot more generic than 2020 and the plot isn't that great but it's packed to the brim with content and stuff to do, the damn game seems to never end. Sadly it suffers from the Etrian Odyssey curse and the game is a grindfest and an extremely hard and tedious one at that even with optimal class builds.

 

[UnDubious]

I skipped the DS game because I heard it was grindy. I may try it one day, but 2020 basically restarted the series, and the two other games are sequels to 2020. So I'll play 2020-II and Code VFD before I ever touch the DS game.

I never level grinded in 7th Dragon 2020, not once. It's perfectly balanced so you don't have to, as long as you play it smartly. It's easy enough to form a balanced team, then you just put some thought into the skills you level up and how to use them in battle. There's a bit more strategy and mechanics than your typical mindless RPG, but it opens up very gradually. The Trickster class for example can do some wild things. Then just do all the quests and explore the dungeons thoroughly, and no grinding will ever be need. I didn't find the normal final boss all that hard either, I was ready. The post-game dungeon was tough, though.

 

[Noon]

The temptation is huge but I need to finish a few games first, I have a lot of stuff in the To Do List.

Currently playing (Kinda stuck tho) Metal Max 3 (DS). 100% Metal Max 2 Reloaded (DS) and I just need more, that game was a goddamn masterpiece, straight up in my Top 3 of the Best RPGs of all time.

It sounds like cygames is working on a new metal max game, they haven’t announced anything yet. I haven’t played any Granblue fantasy games but demo for Relink, the production values look really great, so it’d be pretty cool if a new metal max had something close to that!

 

[Yousef Yousef]

I think this is a good opportunity for me to mention as a big turn based buff, I’m quite pessimistic about the future. I’ve tried a couple of indie rpgs and they weren’t anything to write home about. I like indie gaming but it’s becoming harder to feel impressed by recycled ideas with little originality. Anyone got good rpgs in mind?

 

[Pandaprewmaster325]

Indie was never good anyway.

 

[J.F.C]

I'm not sure why most indie RPGS are as shitty as they are. Just copy Chrono Trigger's pacing and make an half-way decent combat system and your game will sell like hotcakes.

 

[DanCalibur]

I hear tell that FF9 basically requires you to have played at least 7 and 8 before it to get the full experience. Is that true? I shouldn’t start with that one then, right?

The references to older games are so arcane that not even fans of the series can pick up. Just go for it, it's probably the most enjoyable overall FF on the psx

 

[Noon]

I think this is a good opportunity for me to mention as a big turn based buff, I’m quite pessimistic about the future. I’ve tried a couple of indie rpgs and they weren’t anything to write home about. I like indie gaming but it’s becoming harder to feel impressed by recycled ideas with little originality. Anyone got good rpgs in mind?

Do you mean recent ones? Depends on if you mean exclusively turn based, or just “stop time” in general, but I really like Relayer so far, and SaGa Emerald Beyond, Dungeon Encounter, Monochrome Mobieus had good actions and uses of the time wheel. I actually like some of Kemco’s budget JRPGs for something smaller, the hit-point ones in particular like Raging Bytes and Armed Emeth, Legend of the Tertachs is really cool.

In JRPGs I really just love experimental mechanics and and some sense of being “all measured” even if just loosely. action games are more about rewarding reflexes and timing with totally refusing the enemies actions (like parrying or dodging) which just screws the balance.

But a recent game like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth has all the experimenting JRPG mechanics in it, it’s just put into a generic action base, which is a bummer but it’s still in there.

 

[SpectreOverflow]

Obligatory shoutout to Dark Cloud and Okage: Shadow King, two of my favorite PlayStation 2 JRPGs that I don't feel like enough people talk about. You can still get them on PS4 too!

 

[Kamako]

FFX is still my fave FF, though I feel that Versus XIII had potential.

Digital Devil Saga 1&2 are absolutely incredible. The mood, the religious and philosophical themes it draws from, the music, the difficulty. They're great. DDS2 may contain the most crapsack-y of all crapsack worlds to live in. DDS2 also has the hardest superboss I've ever fought in a JRPG.

Persona rules, though I feel 3 is slightly overhyped. 4 is my fave. 5's great too, but I find some of its story beats're really really odd.

Always wanted to try Suikoden, even more excited to play Eiyuden Chronicle, which looks beautiful, but was somewhat put-off by the middling reviews. That'll probably be next though.

 

[UnDubious]

I like the first Suikoden a lot, it's so fast-paced for a turn-based RPG and it's quality all around.

 

[Deleted member 288390]

Obligatory shoutout to Dark Cloud and Okage: Shadow King, two of my favorite PlayStation 2 JRPGs that I don't feel like enough people talk about. You can still get them on PS4 too!

I recently got Okage on the PSN store and finished it! Great game! Had a ton of fun playing it. I wish I could play Dark Cloud, but I'm completely broke. One day.

Anyone tried World of Final Fantasy? Finished it last year, and even though I wasn't a fan of the chibi characters, I still really enjoyed the story, music, and turn-based battles. Plus Enna Kros is funny.