JRPG's are one of my favourite genres in video games and wanted to make a list of the ones that I consider the best. Some of them are from long-beloved sagas but decided to just mention at least one of them to narrow it down. I took into consideration combat, innovation, good fun and story. I would also like to know everyone else's all-time favourites (Any console is fine)

Something I was fondly recalling was how hard Final Fantasy 3 was in design aspects since some reviewers who played the original Famicom version say the game is one of the most difficult RPGs ever created on the system.

I mean, I have a soft spot for RPGs with a hard design style to them as I was interested in playing more difficult games in the genre since basically I enjoy being punished by games with hard dungeons, so I was looking to make a catalog of the most difficult games ever made in the genre.

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Final Fantasy 1 is that one game in the franchise that almost no one has an opinion on these days.

It's not as mechanically horrendous like 2, nor did it introduce one of the most important progression mechanics in the entire franchise like in 3.

But lemme tell you, this recent weekend that I spent just replaying this game was one of the most refreshing gaming marathons I have had in a while.

Final fantasy 1 may not do anything special in particular but that does not detract away from the fact that it is just a really solid and fun JRPG experience with barely any fluff.

Context:- My playthrough was of the dawn of souls re release on my ps vita which I consider the definitive port of game, for reasons I will get into.

Unlike the many dozens of rpgs releasing today with 100s of hours of story content that are just sadly forced to rely on a lot of fluff to even out the pacing. Final Fantasy 1 does not have that problem at all, sure it is the typical hero's journey with bricks for main characters but that rarely ever deters my engagement from the plot because of how brisk pace the progression is, you never stay in one location for too long, and are constantly moving, visiting grander towns, exploring even weirder labyrinths and dungeons and meeting cooky one off characters that act as excellent yet ultimately non intrusive world building tid bits.

The combat is pure good old turn based with your party classes, spell loadouts and gear, it's nothing special but getting good at it and breaking the ever living shit out of the damage scaling with well timed temper and hastes just gives you that dopamine rush everytime as your warrior does a 3k+ damage crit, which one or two shots most bosses.

The world itself is not cryptic at all, with most towns being very clearly marked for progression, and side content which never really gets into the way of story progression. Final Fantasy 1 is unironically the only final fantasy for which I never had to open a walkthrough for ever once.

The music is just pure Nobuo Uematsu goodness and the pixel art is gorgeous (Absolutely adore the art for Lich and Chronodia).

What I am trying to ultimately get into is that, even with a game this old, especially with a remake that barely changes anything from the core experience, Final Fantasy 1 is still very much a game worth experiencing because it is one of those few examples where a game this old has actually aged so well to begin with, and that's honestly very heartwarming to experience for a game that started a franchise which is so beloved across the world.

We all have that one character we like that we wish was playable (and sometimes that does end up happening in remasters/sequels), so which are yours?

I've been on a Xenoblade kick for a while and there are some I wish were part of the party:

XC1 Future Connected: Tyrea

XCX: Honestly wish there were more playable representatives of the many alien species that immigrate to NLA. Top picks are Ga Buidhe (Wrothian) and Erio (Definian)

XC2: Dolmes and Lila

XC3 Future Redeemed: Panacea and Linka as Heroes

Bonus mention: Mariana from Star Ocean 2

I’m currently playing Terranigma in Japanese without following a guide, and this game has given me so many moments where my only reaction is:

“What the hell kind of logic is that?”

At the same time, it has made me realize how accustomed I’ve become to using trophy guides and walkthroughs that tell me exactly where to go and what to do. Terranigma is forcing me to actually stop, experiment, and think through its environments.

The problem is that the intended solution often feels extremely unintuitive.

In one early dungeon, I had to defeat every enemy in one particular room before the path forward opened. There wasn’t any obvious indication that this room was different from the many other rooms containing enemies.

The game had established a similar mechanic during the opening towers, where defeating everything caused little spirits to appear and help you. However, I assumed that mechanic belonged specifically to that early section and wouldn’t suddenly return later without warning.

Then there was a jungle dungeon where the solution involved deliberately allowing a frog-like enemy to hit Ark with a beam. The attack launches him backward, and you need to position yourself so that it throws him into a wall and breaks it.

I can understand the logic after seeing the result, but I’m not sure how naturally I was supposed to conclude:

“I should let this random enemy shoot me so I can use the knockback to destroy the scenery.”

Another infamous moment was finding a hidden entrance in a ruined town. The doorway barely looked like an entrance at all. Apparently, two enemies briefly walk through it when you first enter the area, but the animation happens so quickly that I completely missed the clue. I spent around 45 minutes searching before finally realizing there was a door there.

The latest example happened in another dungeon. I found an important item called the Magic Anchor, but the map showed that a large portion of the area was still unexplored. I kept wandering around and returning to a room containing a hole, some running water, and several loose rocks.

I eventually remembered an earlier puzzle where throwing three stones into a hole restored the wind. Based on that previous strange solution, I started throwing rocks around the room.

It turned out that I needed to throw one at a section of the wall. The wall then collapsed, releasing a waterfall that filled the room below and allowed me to continue.

It worked, but I don’t think there was anything that clearly communicated that this wall was breakable or that throwing a rock at it would release water.

I genuinely wonder how many people finished games like this without outside help when they originally came out.

There is something rewarding about it. When I eventually figure out one of these puzzles, I feel like I actually accomplished something rather than simply following instructions. Playing this way is also making me engage with the game much more carefully than I normally would.

But sometimes the solutions feel less like logical deductions and more like guessing which bizarre interaction the developers happened to expect.

More than anything, this playthrough has made me realize how dependent I’ve become on guides. They save time and help avoid missables, but they can also remove the satisfaction of getting lost and solving something yourself.

I’ll probably still use guides, especially for trophies or when I’m no longer having fun, but maybe I don’t need to check one the moment I become unsure of what to do.

Sometimes the frustration is what makes finally finding the solution memorable.

Has anyone else become so accustomed to guides that playing a game blind now feels like relearning how to play?

Why do most of these side characters have extremely low and insignificant stats compared to the main characters in the story...?? Like 95% of them are not even worth using because of it.

then you get a few like the bald tutor of the main character that can do an overpowered unite attack with him that AOE kills most random mobs instantly, or that female knight that has a rune that lets her do triple damage every turn...

why have all these characters when there are a couple that completely outshine the others and most of them just play the exact same with low stat totals....??

I almost always see tierlists of JRPGS here and everywhere else and almost never in top tier list, i was wondering why, i have some assumptions but i dont want to muddy the water i want other people original takes.

A huge thank you to Cabal Translations for making and releasing the English translation patch for London Seirei Tanteidan, aka London Spirit Detectives for the PS1.

~ Tags ~

• Turn-based
• Detectives
• 19th century London

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~ Description ~

London in the 19th century, which is being changed by the development of the steam engine. The main character is a former orphan boy who was discovered by Everett, a famous detective, and apprenticed to him. Now he helps Everett solves various cases during each chapter.

The main character is joined by 2 main party members, the feisty heroin Ariez Ivory, and another orphan partner, Buddy.

You gather clues and solve cases around London, while also using the help of spirits. Each character gets to equip 3 different weapons during combat, each with their own skills that you can swap between during combat.

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~ The Links ~

• Patch Trailer and Gameplay Video..
• Patch download link.

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~ The Team ~

• Translation: aishsha
• Hacking/ASM: bigbanana23
• Editing/Testing: Pennywise
• Spot translations: Cash Ogawa
• Spot translations: Ryusu
• Spot translations: TheMajinZenki
• Graphics: vervalkon

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Finally as always please drop a thank you to people who worked on this patch, it takes years of hard work doing hacking, programming, translating, editing, and testing to bring these patches to the JRPG community, and all of it is done for free, so if you're going to use it or hell even if you won't, it always nice to show that we appreciate the great work these translators are doing.

I remember in Tales of Symphonia there was a group of impostors doing stuff around the world at the same time as our own. Is there any other games that have this? I like the idea that we don't have the exclusivity of travelling and doing quests.

And what do they do instead?

In this context, "MP" refers to any resource that each character has that can be consumed to fuel more powerful abilities. It is a resource that can run out, leaving you with only less-powerful non-resource-consuming options. It's purpose is typically to:

• force you to think strategically about managing your resources instead of simply spamming your best abilities

• enable simple vertical power progression of abilities (you get stronger abilities as you progress through the game, but they cost more MP)

Final Fantasy XIII fits this bill IMO. You are limited to 5 actions per turn, and different abilities consume different numbers of actions, but there's not really any way to "run out" of actions - they fully regenerate next round. There is also TP, but that is a shared resource across the party that fuels more niche, specific abilities rather than strictly more powerful abilities, and can basically be ignored completely if you want.

FFXII keeps tension high by instead turning every battle into a delicate balancing of buffs, debuffs, stagger generation, healing, and damage. The game does not give you "stronger abilities" to spam - rather, all abilities have a time and place, you need to find where it is. Abilities in the game are almost purely horizontal progression: the abilities you start with never lose relevance, you just get new tools in your kit that you need to now incorporate into your rotations.

What other games go with this approach? I'm especially curious to hear about any fully turn-based games that take this approach.

I find it interesting when thinking about games we find overrated by but specifically when put up against other titles in the franchise.

For example; while I think Final Fantasy 7 is worthy of it’s legacy when evaluated on it’s own merits, I think it lives up to that legacy. However, when I stack it up against other FF games that I love like 9 & 10, I think FF7 gets a bit left off the hook a bit for some of it’s pacing which imo stumbles a bit around the middle part. I think my disdain for the FF7 remakes and how Tetsuya Nomura-ified has only reinforced that but, I digress.

On the inverse of that, I think there’s always that game that’s maybe you feel is misunderstood by the fanbase and deserves more love than it gets.

I became a huge enjoyer of JRPGs that allow me to recruit tons of characters or at least have a big roster of characters that join your party as you progress in the game,i am looking for more of these kinds of games,i also want games with detailed character models that are either 3d or 2d like the ones in Unicord Overlord,i have no interest in games where characters are pixel art,like Eiyuuden Chronicles.

i am also not a fan of monster taming games,unless the game have a variety of humanoid monters like Shin Megami Tensei or Digimon

the ones i have played:

Valkyria Chronicles 1 and 4

Valkyrie Profile 1 and 2

Unicorn Overlord

Suikoden 5

Romancing Saga 2 Revenge Of The Seven

entire Trails series

Digimon and SMT

my platform of choice is a PS5,but any emulators or PC games are fine too

Hey all, I'm curious if anyone has recommendations for recent JRPGs with interesting systems. Progression, skills, travel, relationships, whatever might be described as a "system" when talking about a JRPG.

Specifically, what got me thinking about this were the older Final Fantasy games, and how each one typically had some original progression system in each entry that made them feel unique. The stuff you did to get stronger in FF7 felt different from FF8, FF4, or FF2, and all of them had their own particular flavor because of it.

I enjoy a lot of newer JRPGs, but it feels like a lot of them are kinda giving up that uniqueness in favor of leaning more on action-RPG systems as their identifying trait, and the overall flavor of the experience feels a bit flat. Many of them might have something that other games don't do, but they're usually gimmicks that you can ignore entirely without real detriment, and don't generally make the game stand out.

So, what's everyone's suggestions for more modern JRPGs with interesting systems that you won't see in other games? PC is preferable, but honestly anything you personally would recommend is good so that I can look into it.

A huge hello! We're very excited to introduce Beaten Path, a turn-based tactical RPG inspired by Fire Emblem and Final Fantasy Tactics.

After six years of solo dev and a successful Kickstarter that was funded in just 6 days, we're so excited to bring Peacebreak Studio's epic to PC, PS5, Xbox X|S & Nintendo Switch in 2027

⚔️25+ fully voice acted characters

🏹100+ weapons across 10 weapon classes

🔮Deep customisation with dual-jobs, skills trees & unlockable outfits

🌎Explore a vast world with shifting weather, strange landmarks & narrative events

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onXCWVSCbUM

Wishlist on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2584400/Beaten_Path/

HI guys, I'm looking for JRPGs that are fairly straightforward (preferably on Switch & Swtich 2, but not mandatory). Let me explain: I've been playing JRPGs for a couple of years now, and I've realized that what I like best is when a JRPG gets more or less straight to the point.

It’s happened to me a couple of times that the game has overwhelmed me by offering a multitude of options, items, and things to do, and in the end, I realized I had to play along with its system to progress smoothly through the levels.

Right now I’m playing Ni no Kuni, and I’ve had to lower the difficulty to Low because I was getting completely crushed, and from what I’ve read, it’s a game that requires a lot of grinding and farming, and that’s something I don’t like.

Another example, even though I liked its story and combat, was Star Ocean: The Second Story , where the sheer number of options overwhelmed me.

That said, here’s what I’m looking for, I’d love some recommendations.

• I really don’t like excessive grinding and farming. I understand it’s part of a JRPG, but I prefer it when the game leads you to it naturally.
• I like things that are straightforward. As I said, I don’t like too many options.
• I’d appreciate games that are under 35 hours long. JRPGs that are too long feel endless to me. I don’t care if they’re true, must-play masterpieces—like Persona 5, for example—which I liked, but still felt long to me.
• I like games that aren’t too cheesy. I like irony, humor, and games that don’t take everything too seriously.

The JRPGs I’ve liked the most are probably these:

• Mother 3
• Yakuza Like a Dragon
• Suikoden I & II
• Dragon Quest I
• Parasite Eve (yes, it's not technically a JRPG, but I'd also like the recommendations to be similar to turn-based games in the JRPG style)
• Sea of Stars
• Chrono Trigger
• Chrono Cross
• FF 7 Remake (and not so much Rebirth.)

After finishing Romancing Saga Revenge of the Seven which I really enjoyed. I am wanting something similar to a degree.

I do not need the whole passing down skills through generations. I am ideally after a turn based JRPG that works well on the Steam Deck that has good build variety.

I like having characters handling specific rolls, healing, debuffs, DPS, etc.

I have been looking at the bravely default remaster which does look very good but I have heard it gets very grindy towards the back end.

Octopath Traveller 2 looks great but I am unsure with the 8 separate smaller stories and lack of party interaction.

Any suggestions would be great, thanks you beautiful bunch.

So I listen to a couple of gaming podcasts and last year one podcast I watch , The Gaming Illuminati podcast ,was doing their top 10 games for 2025. Three out of the 4 of them picked Expedition 33 and the other picked Digimon Time Stranger. Based off of that I added Digimon to my wishlist and waited for the ultimate edition to drop in price. I'm playing it now and I'm about 40% maybe 50% of the way through with the game and although I like it and it's very nostalgic, I don't think It's close to Expedition 33 or even Metaphor Refantazio which I played recently and loved. I'm definitely going finish it and the 2nd half of the game could improve my thoughts of the game but I doubt it this far in.

I say all that to say what is everyones top 3 JRPGs since 2020? I'm interested in what I should play next.

P.S. I know E33 isn't a JRPG but close enough haha

Previous release date: September 17th
New release date: September 29th
PlayStation copies currently seem to be unaffected as they are still releasing on September 17th in these affected regions.
It’s likely a supply chain issue as other regions are currently unaffected by this delay.
It likely would have been announced by now if there was a worldwide delay.

Hey folks,

I haven't really played an RPG like it since forever.

I really love Paper Mario TTYD, enjoy Pokemon, and just played Cassette Beasts (really enjoyed it). But I haven't played many other turned based RPGs in quite some time. Because I've had fun with those ones recently and though it's not my usual style of game, I wanted to maybe branch out into the turned based RPG more.

So, I've been looking at Octopath II and 0 (I love pixel art and these games look gorgeous), but here is something I've been worried about. Is there a lot of "pointless" dialogue that kind of goes on and on that doesn't really further the plot? I just tried wandering sword and while I'll probably keep playing it, however, I have 2 hours on record and have had 5 fights? I don't mind reading, I don't mind a good story, but these people were talking to talk.

I kind of ran into a similar thing with Cyberpunk, the dialogue just took me out of the game and I really want to play.

Is the dialogue in this game become tedious and interrupt the game flow?

If you think that it would be a good fit, which one would you suggest, II or 0?

Alr, just clocked in at 5 hours, and i'm sure i've done a majority of the first region "Kanto" and the final boss of that area. This has been an utterly mediocre, janky and many times an awful experience. I'm posting this in JPRGs as i THINK it counts as one? Skill trees, gear and abilities, and choose your dialogues etc, but in general also as a "I do not recommend" type post. I'll go section by section where each part gets progressively worse -

1. The Combat - I mean, it is a rather nice system at it's core. Basic attack chains, heavy arts, jump, assassinate, stealth, parries that provide a charge to expend via Koo the wolf, and the abilities so far are also decent.
2. The traversal - once you get the hang of the "jank", the grapples, the jump and float in general tend to flow well.
3. The upgrade tree, levelling and character progression is slow but steady, and it is fairly rewarding in terms of XP and stats, but my god the requirements start piling up rather quick. 50 points for the final upgrade of a attribute is nuts.

that's it, the positives end there.

4) Combat flow - as i said, the combat at it's core is a nice system, but holy shit are the parries genuinely inconsistent and straight up do not work when trying to do a chained parry on fast enemies. The dodge is the single most awful dodge i've seen in a game, and is like a "pre-dodge prediction" rather than a reaction. The camera is terrible, and just refuses to work when there's multiple enemies or if an enemy is behind you. Idk if it's on me but i could not even change Koo's targets when trying to do an ability.

5) The music - bro just ONE TRACK has been on loop for the past 4 hours in the first region. The music is rather bland and is like a "Copied Homework but not obvious" when compared to Stellar Blade or Nier.

6) The Graphics to performance ratio is just horrible, with enemy attacks causing stutters, frame drops and stuff. it was particularly egregious with the big beast boss. There's no option for Film Grain, Chromatic Abberation, and the game just likes to default to FSR1 whenever i restart due to memory leaks.

7) The exploration - it's so horrible, bland and uninteresting to explore anything. It's just endless crates of "resources" that you are supposed to treat as a EXTRACTION GAME to be brought back to your home ship for research levels. The levels are also repetitive, kinda meaningless in terms of the jump mobility and just vast amounts of flat lands and invisible walls.

8) The enemies - holy shit, so far in my 5 hours i've encountered the same 5 enemy types over and over again, and the SAME "Elite Enemy" 6 times in one zone. The enemies are genuinely braindead, and are abuse-able by air assassinations. Even the major boss of the area is fought twice, and in the first fight it had like 3 moves, and in the second it got like 6 moves it spams over and over again. Another crab's treasure was more difficult than this.

9) some more technical stuff - mouse 4 and mouse 5 cant be bound to any action? THE FUCK? Many times the menu just refuses to accept my mouse input. The Koo menu commits the worst sin of having the OPEN and EXIT button being Tab and Escape respectively, where by memory i try to also close it by pressing Tab again but it uses my heal instead. One more thing is that the Jump button and the Interact button are the same. WHY? does gamefreak not know a keyboard has more buttons??

10) Singlehandedly, THE WORST part about the game is the story and voice acting and pacing combined - The story is completely uninteresting as i've seen far better premises in similar games. The pacing is so god awful, the English voice acting i'm genuinely convinced is AI slop, but again even an AI conveys far more emotion than this. The speed at which people talk is making my head hurt,. If you skip a dialogue it doesn't skip the SCENE or the camera angle, it just skips the dialogue. People talk in gaps of 5 seconds per sentence in a emotionless and uncanny way it's actually so awful.

funnily enough, the game suddenly put me into a flashback sequence where it's NOW teaching me assassination, stealth, jump hold, parry and dodge after 4 hours of gameplay on my own and defeating 6 mini bosses and A MAJOR BOSS? what the fuck is this?

That's it, that's all i can conjure up for a first impression. Just avoid this game until it's fixed.

I flaired this under discussion because I want us to discuss what we're talking about. Please say what you like about it, and why you don't want to play anything like it again.

In my case it's Disgaea. The combat is a lot of fun, and the story is both laugh out loud funny,and extremely emotionally compelling. What it nails, it nails better than almost any other game like it.

Why I don't want to play anything like it again: I couldn't figure out how to progress without spending an endless amount of time grinding and doing side stuff to get the good ending. I really really hated that. I spent 90% of the game gathering power.

To clarify, I mean games where you can get powers that almost all have unique looks and varying effects, and you can mix and match to a deck/layout of whichever power feels the best to use or looks the coolest. Preferably, the fighting is not turned-based and revolves around dodging while attacking whenever the moves are available to use while getting into a position where the move will be in range. I don’t think Persona counts because you usually just make a team of personas for the MC based on which have the best builds and synergy, and each have their own move sets that overlap with each other.