I haven't genuinely enjoyed any JRPG game since I finished the holy trinity of Tales games (Tales of Symphonia...

then play in the agility form

try the legend of dragoon

Give Radiata Stories a try. It's combat may not be as deep as in the Tales games, but it's quite possibly the comfiest game in the genre if you don't consider Steambot Chronicles a JRPG, that is.

You poor thing

Graces has great gameplay if you can get past everything else being shit. Xillia 2 was really solid all around and I'd highly recommend it. Hoping Berseria turns out to be a return to form.

I fucking hate "comfy" games

suikoden 1-3

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What you tremendous casuals consider "comfy" is always some brain-dead engaging repetitive pile of horseshit, typically not much more than a fancy screensaver.

I want an actual interactive video game, not a virtual fireplace.

Do you literally want to be made uncomfortable when you play games?

Better than being bored to death.

so op has austism, good to know, also inb4 no u

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checked

Have you ever played SaGa series?

Any comfy jrpgs where you can build a comfy town?

Actually there's some good recs already in the thread: >>11619020
Breath of Fire 2, also. And I'm sure I'm forgetting a few others, I'll try and think of them. Dark Cloud is more of an adventure game.

Then why do you play JRPGs? Comfiness is the whole appeal of the genre.

They're alright, but certainly not the best. Symphonia was rather brain-dead in terms of gameplay.
Graces F is the way to go, though the plot isn't the best. Destiny Remake, and Eternia as well. I would recommend the original Destiny, but I don't think you would adjust well with that since you played the later games, but it was a nice game even if it was very old.

Try Final Fantasy 5 or Final Fantasy 9. FF 5 has good gameplay with a okay story. 9 has a better story is a bit basic, but still pretty challenging at times and comfy at other times. Emulate or play the remake of 9 cause the original is slow as molasses with loading times.

There were some challenging fights like Sylph. Everything else was way too easy though. If the other bosses were a few notches less difficult the game would have been great.

That sounds absolutely incredible.

Lol no. Xillia is one of the worst tales ever, right up there with Zestiria and Tempest.

OP how about something like Persona 2? The duology is in my top 5 best JRPGs ever, maybe you will like it, if you like great story and amazing cast.

Please explain why Xillia is bad. Zestiria is bad at a higher level thanks to fusion-ha fuckery, but Xillia is still alright.

I think he means shit like Atelier. I've put some hours into Atelier Sophie and I just don't see the point of it. It's not a wacky adventure, I don't really have goals other than do random thing to get an idea for a recipe, repeat ad nauseum. At least with other games, the repitition isn't as bad since you explore different places, talk to new villagers, get new party members from foreign lands and usually get an overarching story. Like Skies of Arcadia. I don't know if I can say that it's deep combat, but the entire setting and all the characters are cool as fuck. And Vyse is actually supposed to be a smart hero, not a shonen "I'm going to run my face into his fist until his fist breaks".

it really is, you can basically kick one of the high ranking cardinals at the start of the game and he'll send a literal army of guards after you. You can fight storyline bosses early through this method (though you will STILL fight them later with no changes win or lose), and duel pretty much anyone that you can recruit.

See that poofter in the beginning that you can't recruit ever? Kick him for a unique boss battle. See the badass guild leader? Kick her and get wrecked. Want to beat up the actual pope? GOOD LUCK, he has a fixed damage attack and fixed health heals, so you have to either get higher HP then his attack or beat him quick while he's weak, and while you're doing that you have to taunt and interrupt him so he doesn't start healing 40 percent of his health back.

Also, you basically have to stalk people to figure out their daily schedule in order to talk to them at the correct times in order to recruit them. Armor changes your appearance as well. It's an action RPG, you can learn new combo moves and customize them as much as you want, and you'll need to. Your character has 4 weapon types, Sword, 2-handed sword, spear and axe, all do different shit and are balanced well. Sword, for example, has the quickest attacks, Axe has the most powerful but is slow, spear has the most reach and AOE capability, and 2-Handed Sword is suprisingly an all rounder.

Also warning, if you side with the monsters at the turning point in the game, the game is a bit more linear and it's more casual, while the human route has much better party members and freedom.

I played the absolute shit out of Radiata Stories and non-human end had far better writing than human which sucked. Try fighting the end-game dungeon fairy solo, Jack is more a fucking healer in that fight than any other. Axe is great if you learn how to combo like any other weapon I found out combo's how to be quick, ground covering and consecutive and it's great with ALL weapons I think I liked 2h the most. I never got the portrait but I got most of them and I've completed it too many times. I wish it overall got more polish.

So I was supposed to make a giant wall of text or something to explain why I think a game is bad, when OP didn't asked to anyone to justify their choices? I will just bother because you weren't disrespectful to me and asked politely with please, very rare in Holla Forums.

Overall, I gotta say Xillia's combat system is, at least, ok. Heck, Zestiria is worse than Xillia in every sense like the gameplay, except only the cast and story; and Zestiria is only better than Tempest, because you know…Tempest. But those three really suck, can't say one is just so much better than the other, it's like saying this turd is better than this other turd. We are only focusing in Xillia here though.

I would have to say that while Zestiria cast is far from being the best cast I ever seen in a Tales, at least they don't suck like Xillia's. And that's the problem; personally, I go into jprg looking for good story and characters and Xillia suck in both of those things. Everything else comes after that.

Let's talk about one of the main leads of Xillia, Jude. Jude is on the run after becoming an enemy of the state, which wasn't his fault per si, but not even once does he think about what could have happened to his own parents or friends. After all, after witnessing inhumane experiments being done and people being kidnapped to have the mana sucked out of them, the people he loved could possibly be in danger. And still, he never ever once show concern about his own family, or even friends on his school, as he didn't even bothered to tell anyone about the things he saw to his schoolmates before going into run. Jude's only reason to go back home is… to help Milla and NEVER bring that up to anyone in there.He is perfectly willing to wait over two weeks and would have gone longer if his father hadn't seen the freaking wanted posters of Jude and confronted him about it. And Jude still acts all butthurt and annoyed at his dad about it…his dad is also a bit of an ass, but we're talking about Jude here.

There are other examples…oh my god, if I just mention to you "that" scene with Alvin and Leia you will know what I'm talking about right? Yeah, so my point is, Jude is a horrible, pathetic excuse of a character. He's that much of an asshole and a nasty human being, who seem to only think about himself and Milla, when you think about those things you realize that. But that's not all. No, our protagonist have this not healthy obsession with that woman with giant boobs…called Milla. A woman he just met and already risked everything he had to help, without ever stopping to think about the consequences. Really, it kinda feels he got an obsession with her ever since he lay eyes on her, weird as fuck. And it's worse when you consider he pales as a protagonist compared to Milla herself - fuck story is really about her, Jude is a main like Alvin and the others, but not a protagonist, why you play as him anyway? - for both gameplay and plot reasons. I'm not saying Milla is a good character, as all characters sucks. I'm saying that she, at least, is a better protagonist than Jude, making him obsolete in that sense.

I really could go on and on about him alone, also explain the problem with pretty much all the entire cast and not to mention the game's terrible story - and yes I know game was rushed to meet that deadline of the anniversary, but that's not an excuse, they should have either postponed it or worked on the game sooner - but just by explaining the problems with one of the main characters you should have seen my point of why I say Xillia is easily one of the worst tales, right there with Zestiria and Tempest.

Well holy shit. I wasn't expecting this wall of text.

So I don't know if you even care to read my response especially since a lot of it can be summed up in "I'm not bothered by it therefore it's not as negatively weighted", but Jude as a character has a lot to think about for day-to-day shit and feeling pity/divine inspiration by looking at the woman he met doing amazing magic. He then learns he could help her, which is in his nature as he helps everyone, and because of their travels together and her plight, he's obsessed with helping her. She's the biggest headcase around, an intrusive fuck like Jude is of course going to stick to her like glue. Beyond that, his family wasn't anywhere in the area to have been done experiments on and he didn't get along with his dad, the entire reason he wanted to study away from home. Not to mention from a plot standpoint, we as the player haven't seen his family to be worried about them. Jude eventually grows up at the end of the game which is why he accepts what happens and later goes on to develop the Spirite tech to help people based on his interactions with spirits.

The entire cast is pretty much the same style of super wacko people, of course things are weird around them but that's part of how they get along. And it makes for a relatively comfy experience with a battle system that doesn't suck and characters that actually play differently with even more abilities.

Comparatively, Milla is a shit protagonist who's thoughts at almost every turn were "Gee, I wish I had help", removing the mystery that we had from Jude's side when he was debating if he should help her. Again, she grows up by the end too, but at least with Jude's side we see relatively normal human thoughts with a little mystery about Milla's character instead of Milla fucking around and Jude busting in. Did you play Milla's story first or something?

That's a new one.

The problem with Symphonia's combat is that it's Eternia, but 3D and even slower. In Eternia your role as melee was to be a human wall and stop enemies from pushing everyone into the corner and raping them. In Symphonia enemies just walk where ever they please and the player has no options but to just throw out techs, defend, and then throw out more attacks. You are just there to distract instead of being a human wall.

Later 3D games gave you many more mechanics so you're doing much more than just attacking and defending. Abyss has FoF and introduces the modern Overlimit system you see in later games. Vesperia gives you guard cancels, juggling, aerial combos, finishing strikes, off the ground attacks that pick enemies up after hard knockdowns, and multi layered OL. In Symphonia you just get Unison attack and it's a pretty boring mechanic because there's barely any reason to use most of the attacks. There's no timing to it and you can immediately mash out every tech to get what you want. Besides that there's Ex skils but many of them just aren't that interesting until late game. Most of which won't change your gameplay style.

I heard 8-4 changed character personalities in Xillia so that's why they're so grating?

It's functionally the same but allows you to have multiple front row characters since casters don't wander off. I actually never had much of a problem with this outside of Collette rushing enemies and getting herself killed early game. I prefer it to Eternia actually since it allows more flexibility with your party. I never used EXs on my first playthrough and found the game to be much more fun without them. You're right that the sequels improved greatly upon it.
I'd argue that they do, but you'd be picking the obviously good ones anyway so there's not really much of a choice.

Pretty sure that's Vesperia, not Xillia, that got a bad treatment that we know of. I'm sure Xillia also suffered in some areas though.

Xillia's translation was well done, all things considered. Agria's flip-the-bird gesture was stupidly changed, but the general script was well handled.
Previous points of discussion in old Tales threads centered around the X1 skit where Alvin writes a letter (embed related) and X2's skit about the 'Alvin meme'. In the former, the translation is spot on, the 'sexism' mentioned by Jude is in the japanese original. As for the latter, Leia talks about yuru-kyara (those cutesy mascots Japan use for companies, prefectures and whatnots), which tend to have a lot of emoticons and stickers in services such as LINE - so changing to a 'meme' is easily understood as in the west anything gets called a meme, whether it be an image macro, a character's icon (such as the twitch kappa) or an audio clip.

Another point for 8-4 in this case goes to the world-building terms. Whereas the original JP used 'Jin' and 'Origin', the western versions changed it to Spyrix and Spyrite, which provide a connection to the term 'spirit' and also doesn't bizarrely call back to a summon spirit from other Tales games (or a drink), causing confusion.

Mechanics wise, Symphonia does have its cheap boss moments, mainly because while they can move freely, you can't - this was rectified with Free Run from Abyss onwards (although it is broken as hell in Abyss itself…)

And I forgot the embed, duh…

lufia
vagrant story

I thought I was the only one.

Jude was also kinda being facetious there - he probably had to hear shit about how Leia could be "as strong as any boy" when they were being trained as kids, and it was a good opportunity to take the jab at her.