JRPGs

Is it just me, or is the genre having a bit of a moment these days? Not just modern headliners like Clair Obscur, but it feels like there's a remaster or remake of some dusty classic appearing every other month. (Except, y'know, the best one…)

I don't think we have a thread for those most turn of base games, though, and since I've got a few on the go right now I don't want to choke up the PWB threads forever. And I'm sure Alastor has a few novellas to post about the nine Trails games he completes every week.

Skies of Arcadia

Sometimes I think it's the nostalgia talking when I think about how good Skies of Arcadia is, but then I fire it up again and it's every bit as good as I remember. The music! The characters! The world! I adore everything about it, yes, even the random battles.

I've spent more money than I should admit in the last couple months turning my launch-day Dreamcast into a more modern machine; a wireless controller, a new power supply, a HDMI adaptor and a replacement for the GD-ROM drive that lets me boot games from an SD card. Not everything on the system polishes up equally, but the texture work on Skies' character models and environments goes a long, long way towards making it look timeless. Unlike…

Lost Odyssey

I want to like this more than I do, I think. The characters are broadly likeable and the core story is intriguing, but a lot of the vibe is just a little bit off. It's from that awkward 360/PS3 era uncanny valley where the character models look better standing still than in motion; that very Japanese over-acted motion capture doesn't help. The menu system is clunky and complicated and every interaction is accompanied by a harsh metallic click, so managing your party just feels unpleasant. The environments are muted and brown, even when there's greenery or a blue sky. And the less said about the character designs, the better. (I'm pretty sure Jensen is wearing all the fabric that should have been distributed between the female party members.)

I played this on 360 when it first came out—part of a big push by Microsoft to capture a Japanese audience, paired with Dragon Quest wannabe Blue Dragon—but never finished it after a tactical error with my save games left the party stranded in an area which they were too low-level to progress and to get back to a more hospitable region. I'm almost back at that same point on the Series X, but it's been put on hold while I dig into…

Dragon Quest VII Reimagined

The structure of this is very episodic, which means that even after a dozen hours I feel like I'm barely scratching the surface of the plot. That said, it does make for a more relaxed pace—I can hop through a portal to an island and complete that chunk in an evening, which then gives a natural break point to avoid late nights. I do wish it had a more flexible save system, but the Switch 2's resume function is a reasonable compromise (so long as nobody else wants to play anything on the machine).

I have no idea how far through I am, though; unlike Skies (which I know inside and out) or Lost Odyssey (which has "change discs" screens, even on the download version), I don't have a way to judge my overall progress. Yes, there are the pedestals that grant access to the different islands, but I have a feeling that finishing all of those won't be the end of the plot.

But I do want to see it through—it's the third Dragon Quest game I've played (after VIII on PS2 and XI on Series X) and I would like to actually finish one of them.

Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age

Another one I've started and never finished, but a decent discount on the eStore pushed this into impulse purchase territory. I'm determined not to start it until Dragon Quest rolls credits, though.

JRPGs are the best genre by far, used to be action games for me but as much as I like Devil May Cry and all that, the RPG genre is absolutely glutted with quality AND quantity, for that matter I think pound for pound Final Fantasy is probably the best series of all time honestly.

Final Fantasy VII
The original, not that the remakes aren't good but I can't replay them as much as I do the PS1 version because they're at least three times longer for the single disc they represent. I'm actually playing a modded version of it on Steam Deck right now, that changes the combat and the events (Tifa joins the opening Reactor raid, for example). If you have a handheld emulator/Vita/PSP it's a good game to play on the go.

Dragon Quest VI
I wouldn't recommend this for a new DQ player really, but this is my last try to convince people that Dragon Quest on Android is pretty damn good. Also, it's really interesting how playing DQ and FF close together reminds you how different they are but both pretty much nail what they want to do, even in FF7 I don't think simply grinding for gold and slowly gearing up my party has near enough of that old school almost DnD vibe to it, which is why grinding on the phone by sliding your thumb around to run in the overworld is so good. Can't speak for 1-3 but 4 and 5 are real good, though LIKE 1-3 who knows when they'll be remade so maybe just wait, I dunno play Dragon Quest 11 it's one of the best RPGs ever anyway.

Seeing as it's been mentioned, Trail in the Sky 1st is the remake of the first Trails game to kick of a long running continuous RPG story only really matched in ambition by Kingdom Hearts, I just think it's a lovely game regardless though, they found a graphical style that captures the heart and soul of the first Sky arc in my opinion, and I bet my life that the sequel will be the best game, not RPG, game, in 2026.

Also branching out into games I've always wanted to play, like Dark Chronicle but I keep going back and forth on what to actually playi t on.

I recently bought both Octopath Traveller games on Steam, even further back I bought the 3D FFIV/FFIII games on Steam too, and I'll be playing the two Yakuza RPG games sooner rather than later on that platform too, I think if you want to play a lot of RPGs a Steam Deck is a good grab!

I can't believe I've played a JRPG that Alastor hasn't. I spent about 100 hours on Dark Chronicle back in the day.

The vibes in the opening town are superb. And I spent so long building my forest village.

This is the inventing game isn't it? Wanted to play it for ages, low key Dark Cloud as well

I really wanted to like Trail in the Sky 1st, but found the opening hours of the demo glacially slow. Far too many stilted flashback cutscenes, too much running back and forth between expository conversations, and oh God, the tutorials. I felt like it was doing everything it could to stop me actually playing the thing and exploring the world.

I can't believe I've played a JRPG that Alastor hasn't. I spent about 100 hours on Dark Chronicle back in the day.

The vibes in the opening town are superb. And I spent so long building my forest village.

I love Dark Chronicle. Looked gorgeous at the time - shame it never got remastered/remade.

I was trying to remember a JRPG I really enjoyed the other day. I think it was on PSP (or Vita), fast paced, third person, real time combat…. the first level is set on a beach perhaps. Not enough for even AI to guess what I was talking about.

Ys Seven, maybe?

Very high odds on being Ys, Adol regularly ends up drifting ashore.

Edit - Ys 8, all in 😤

JRPGs do seem to be having a bit of a moment in the spotlight, it feels like for years everyone kept trying to turn them into action games but Clair Obscur has reminded everyone that actually we all liked the old turn-based stuff all along.

I'm currently playing FF7 Rebirth which seems so huge that I expect to be playing it for a very long time (and no matter how much it tries to pretend otherwise, its combat system is far more turn-based than action-based, so it definitely counts). But I've got a few others I'd like to get into, chief among them Metaphor: ReFantazio (which I've put about an hour into and then never went back to, for some reason) and Dragon Quest XI (where I played the whole first act, about six years ago, but is ripe for a revisit). But of course as a genre every game is about 100 hours long so it's hard to find the time to play too many of these things.

Metaphor is definitely worth the time. I don't remember it being all that long either, as these things go; the Persona-style countdown timer keeps things ticking along at a reasonable rate. There's one real slog of a dungeon in the middle, but my advice would be to stick it on the easiest difficulty and tan the main storyline.