JRPG Thread

Someone pick my world settings for me.

He said "best"

Also, latest (last month's) progress report on Destiny DC:
a0t.co/2017/09/08/stahns-side-story-translation-complete/
Should be a new progress report for October soon. I have to give Absolute Zero credit for keeping up with the people waiting for the eventual patch. Monthly updates are much, much better than the spotty updates some other groups give (for example, nothing mentioned at all since April as to Tenshi no Uta SFC's translation).

Between that and her role as Rebecca's seiyuu, she probably had an easy way of getting into Symphogear as well, given that she'd have already established connections with Agematsu, Kaneko, and Elements Garden, who went on to become involved in that series too

Catalog currently showing 11 posts while the thread only displays nine; posting again in an attempt to force it to update.

and that user provided the best.

Wizards run free to do as they please.

Going to try another post to clear the discrepancy between the catalog and the thread again. This daily shitting-of-the-site is making me remember an era of 8ch I'm not sure I really want to.

Alright done. Now someone pick the character generator restrictions.

4 and 5 are pretty good looking and run smoothly. I played 5 with the undub patch with component cables.
No need for a remake… try them and you'll see.

You know, I would've been really happy about this if the game's charm hadn't worn off after it randomly became all dark and depressing seven hours ago.

Played Final Fantasy Legend 1 & 2 (the first two games in the SaGa series). Enjoyed the second in particular.

SaGa Frontier is amazing, it's SaGa 2 on steroids

adding to what was already said, I recommend pic related. Fully translated and easily available over at Moriya Shrine.

I'm curious about the dragon quest games. Not really that big of a JRPG fan but I started to get into it and I finished TiTS trilogy, FF6-8, and Lufia 2.

Right now I am playing Oriental Blue with the fan translation(was never released in the west) for the GBA. For some reason I fell like the game is awesome, but it's hard for me to describe why, but I will still try.
The story is linear, but you are not always told where to go, it's more about exploring each city, talking to everybody, listening to hints and figuring out, where you need to go to advance the plot. While it might sound bad at first, I like, especially since you don't get to visit the entire map from the beginning, so you don't get too lost. Even if you do get lost, you can finish some dungeons and bosses much earlier, you can solo the boss from the silver lake, before recruiting the ogre or receiving the quest from Ren.
The combat is mostly on the easy side, with the exception of bosses, I like how the magic system works, in that after defeating an enemy you get a crystal which represents a spell(usually a weak one), and if you combine them you get a stronger spell, but it also costs more mana.
The music is nice, even with the limitations of the GBA.
The atmosphere and world are top-notch and even if the map isn't all that big, you have japanese cities, wewuzkang kingdoms and indian/russian kingdoms. I really like it.
Some of the characters are interesting, while other's either aren't or are assholes.

Right now I just saved the princess and I am in the desert trying to save it from the corruption. My party consists of the ogre, shadow the hedgehog and the princess, I don't care all that much about Ren or the Lizzard priest. I highly recommend trying the game, without any form of guide or walkthough, as it would spoil the fun of figuring out how to reach certain places.

On the off chance you didn't know, Oriental Blue is a spin off a Tengai Makyou, and the only game in the series in English, aside from an old fighting game spinoff titled "Far East of Eden: Kabuki Klash".

If it's that big a part, it kind of makes me think back on Tsugunai, where a fair bit of the game is trying to piece together what you have to do, as while the host character you're possessing might know exactly where to go or what they're looking for, you only have access to their body and not their actual memories. Thus you get instances of asking questions of other characters that can qualify as "you should already know this" resulting in them wondering how you could have forgotten something so basic, if you're feeling alright, etc.

Anyhow, pretty neat spritework there for a GBA game. I'll have to play it sometime myself.

I still kind of wonder why only SaGa 2 and 3 got the remake treatment for the DS, and not SaGa 1 as well.

Might help to specify what you're looking to know, exactly. Which to play, where to start, what versions are worthwhile, etc?

have you all played your essential JRPGs today?

That one

Maybe because the Wonderswan remake is already a thing and they didn't want to bother.
They should remake Frontier with finished content.

Hey, user, you wouldn't happen to know where I can find a copy of that game, would you?

I have these JRPGs in my backlog. Not sure which one should I play next

- Slapstick / Robotrek
- Baten Kaitos
- Dragon Quest VI
- Super Mario RPG

Best song, best attack, amazing boss. You are my nigga. Panzer Dragoon forever.

Literally the best JRPG coming trough!

Small world, I just did an emulator run of Robotrek, it was on my backlog from when I was a kid.

It's… okay, I guess. If you're like me and you left it half finished back in the day, it's okay for a full playthrough. But if you're coming to it fresh it's certainly not on the level of something like SMRPG.

Pic related is a really neat RPG on N64. You learn moves by getting hit and you can power bomb your enemies.

DQ6 is really bland. I couldn't manage to finish it even though I've finished DQ7.

Huh, wasn't aware of it having a Wonderswan remake already. Bit hard to keep systems that we didn't even get here in mind, I suppose.

Playing Baten Kaitos right now myself. Pretty good so far. Combat's got a lot of ins-and-outs to figure out, but seems like it can get rather deep due to the amount of factors involved. Still, I keep getting the occasional shit hand here and there, so there is some factor of luck to it, beyond just how you've built your deck, from what it seems. If you're not averse to turn-based card oriented combat (I'd think if you were, you probably wouldn't have it backlogged to begin with), maybe give it some priority?

I have that game and it's probably the most ambitious Nintendo 64 game out there. It had cinematics and graphics that rival MGS1. The combat system is a little clunky but for its time it was very spicy. The amount of wrassling grabs in the game was quite impressive as well.

My friend and I loved HH. I have very fond memories of burning away the weekends playing this game. Never played anything quite like it before or since.

I've been playing Dragon Quest Builders. It's a fantastic game. Are all Dragon Quest spinoffs this much better than the games they're ripping off? I couldn't stand Minecraft but I love this.

I find it hard to get into most JRPGs, because of the typical conventions of the genre. I've had an OK time with Dragon's Dogma and the Soulsborne games, though. This might be hard to do, but I would appreciate any recommendations for other Japanese RPGs that meet these criteria:
1) Third-person or first-person in a 3D environment. No isometric, top-down, or side-scrolling games.
2) Real-time and action-oriented. No turn-based games.
3) No animu faces.

Stopped reading right there. You might just be functionally retarded son.

Whenever people talk about what defines a JRPG, there's always a debate. Some people think it means "any RPG made in Japan." Others think it means "a game with the typical features of Japanese RPGs, such as a turn-based battle system, a linear story, a party, etc."
It seems like no matter which way I use the term, somebody says I'm wrong. So to soothe your autism, just replace the one occurrence of "JRPG" in my previous post with, "RPG made in Japan."

But by no measure are the souls games an RPG. They have RPG elements, there is a massive difference between the two. The souls games are action-adventure games with far more in common to Legend of Zelda than Dragon Quest. Also:
Nah, it's autism to think action games are RPGs.

Nier.

OK. Then ignore that one sentence from my first post where I mentioned those games. I'm still eager for any recommendations you may have that meet my 3 criteria.

Thank you~
I hear it's not that good despite its cult following, but I'll still look into it to decide for myself.

Also how do you feel about hybrid games, in which certain actions like attack, shoot, block, jump are in real time, but to use an item or a special spell, you need to pause the game?

I don't mind pausing in order to use an item like a health potion, or to change my equipment–that's fairly standard.
For a special spell, I guess it would depend on the implementation. If you're just equipping it, that's fine. If it takes effect while you're in the menu and time is stopped, that's kind of boring to me. Although I can't think of any real-time games that do this off the top of my head.

Well there are games such as SMT Devil Summoner, and Rogue Galaxy, in which you attack, parry, jump and all that in real time, but because there is party of 2-3 people they made it so you have to pause in order to give them a specific order, like use this item or spell X, on the other hand in those games the other party members have some autonomy, so they will use spells as they see fit(SMT) and I think you can tweak their autonomy, and in RG they ask you in real time if they should use item Y or spell Z.
I think Dark Cloud 1&2 and Star Ocean series could also fit your initial criterias, though I never played them, I recommend looking up some game footage, DC it also has a town building minigame. Finally there is Kingdom Hearts, but that might be a bit too close to anime style graphics.
Hope this helps.

That sounds perfectly fine to me. Seems like it's basically just real-time-with-pause.
That sounds pretty interesting, although I imagine it could easily become frustrating, if they're constantly asking you for permission to do something.
I'll look into them. I was under the impression that SMT games were pretty animu? If not, it sounds like it might be my kind of game.
I've never heard of them before, but I'll look up gameplay for them when I get home.
You did, very much. Thank you for the recommendations.

Besides Persona, the SMT games from PS2 era, looked more like porcelain dolls, than anime girls. Please note, that all the games I recommended(besides maybe Star Ocean) don't have realistic graphics like Dragon's Dogma or Dark Souls, but that they are a bit more cartoony, but that doesn't mean that they look like characters from Naruto or Bleach. I guess if by anime, you mean that they aren't photorealistic, then just stick with Nier.

And while not a JRPG or an RPG of any sorts, you might also enjoy Steambot Chronicles, vid related is the tutorial(tried to find a video that isn't a let's play).

I don't need photorealism. As long as they don't have same-face syndrome, that's OK.
That art style puts me off, unfortunately.

For what it's worth, I found Nier: Automata's character design bearable. Same goes for FFXV (though I didn't play that one). I'm not sure exactly where the line is drawn for me–I can get along with Japanese aesthetics, as long as they don't explicitly remind me of stereotypical anime characters. Polite sage for doublepost.

I am sad to hear, that the art style puts you off. Is it because it's cell-shaded, or that it's steampunk with mecha that puts you off?
Anyway, I still recommend that you at least watch 2-3 minutes of gameplay, especially combat, for the games I(or any other replies that you might get) listed.
Also I should have asked you this from the beginning, but what is it that you like in JRPGs? Is it the exploration, the story, the dungeons, the loot, why play a JRPG and not a hack and slash game like God of War(inb4 it's shit, it was the only example I had in mind), or "stylish" game like DMC or Platinum games?

I should have said dieselpunk.

Honestly, I probably jumped the gun in judging the art style. Since I'm on a slow-as-fuck connection, I just searched for some screenshots. The cover of the game and some of the characters put me off, but the mechs themselves look fine. When I get home, I'll watch your video so I can see it in motion. I shouldn't have jumped to conclusions.
Well, I do like hack-and-slash games like Platinum's. I think the main thing that draws me to RPGs is exploration. I love exploring 3D environments thoroughly, and finding cool areas and secrets. I do that in any game that allows for it, and as a result I usually end up taking a long time to play even relatively short games–assuming they have any room for exploration; some games just don't. A secondary, but still big, appeal of RPGs is planning and building my character. I like working toward a certain perk, or building a matching set of armor, or trying to max out a certain stat.

Fug, didn't mean to sage.

Then you might also enjoy Zelda games such as Okami :^) though they don't offer the "building my character" part. If you want a western game, you could try Gothic 1 and 2, as it satisfies all your criterias.

Well, they did just port it, so that's an option. I've been thinking about getting it. But I was under the impression that it wasn't an RPG. Zelda games aren't, either.

Already played them. I should replay them sometime, though.

It's true that they aren't RPGs, I just recommended them for their action-orientated combat and focus on exploration, though they do lack the character building aspect. Another series you might like would be Monster Hunter(tough I am not sure if they count as JRPGs, would like to hear what others think). I only played a bit of Freedom Unite on a PSP emulator, and it wasn't my type of game, but who knows, you might like it. Tough it felt like it was the type of game/series that is better played in co-op than in single player.

So tor-user, did you get a chance to look up some gameplay?
and with this I shamelessly bump the thread

Why did the industry even continue after 6th gen?

Rogue Galaxy's combat system was great but everything else about it was pretty bad. It was a fantastic adaptation of a standard SNES era FF battle to 3D.

...

Turn-based console JRPGs are pretty much dead except for Persona and Trails.

So… what is it? Do they exist or will they never be that good?

There are more games aside from those two.

On consoles? Hardly. There's Neptunia and Atelier but they don't have the same grand scale of adventure as older console JRPGs did, and they pander to otaku way too hard.

Mien Niggers. The game is awesome. The Magnus menu gets me fucking excited since I like collect-o-thons. I feel like I am enjoying collecting new Magnus instead of the gameplay.

Is it any good?

I just played the demo of Project Octopath Traveler. Ho boy where do I begin?

The game's potential is looking to be solid all around. The gameplay is interesting. Every turn you earn boost pointe which you have to decide when to empower your moves or to invest in multiple hits to break an enemy's guard. Story is looking to be typical depressiong fantasy anime plot. Asthetics are neat with the pixel art meets 3D plain. Though the pixel art needs alot of work because with the lighting it's hard to see anything.

Yes. The games start slow, but they're really good.

Yeah, it seems pretty cool, but for the sort of person looking to "collect 'em all" it seems like you could readily fuck yourself out of various photo magnus due to getting a no camera cards in your hands. I've also heard there's one card that has to be transformed to acquire for 100% completion, but takes some insane amount of time to ripen, or ferment, or rot, or whatever.

There's still Dragon Quest (to my knowledge XI is going back to turn-based after X was an MMO) and main SMT as far as ongoing turn-based JRPGS go. Also Metal Max if you can into moon.

There's about nine or so longrunning JRPG series that are still going, for better or worse, to my knowledge:
Some of those might not seem so old due to western released having been spotty up to points (as well as after points, in the case of Metal Max, where the only one we've officially gotten here has been Metal Saga). In general though, a lot of the franchises that have been around are dormant or dead, and some companies have unfortunately jumped on the trend of digging up their corpses and reanimating them for shekels from mobileshitters.

Just because we didn't get them until the PS2 games, and the a trio of less-standard Atelier games at that (the Iris games differences likely being the whole reason anyone here opted to take the risk to bring them west), doesn't mean they haven't been around longer than that.

Heard good thing about them myself. Haven't gotten around to them yet since the game files were apparently corrupted on my Vita (game would constantly freeze), which pushed them down in my backlog some. Hopefully I might get around to them on my CFW PSP down the line, as my Vita won't let me transfer SC to it from my PS3.

Speaking of which, anyone know if there's a script-rip patch in the works to apply the English script for TC to the Japanese PSP version? Just something I've been wondering about for a while.

Don't worry about photos. Currently I'd say I have completed a 3rd of the game and I already have 4 camera magni. I just hope that there are no magnus that can't be taken after a certain time or one of these blank magni quests that get confusing sometimes.

Could depend on how the game handles the setting (being two discs and all), but I'm pretty sure I've found at least one or two of the constellation Magnus from monster drops. Might want to check if any of those are from monsters that don't show up again/during disc 2.

was thinking about picking up chrono cross myself. FFIX I really liked, it's very comfy definitely. I guess the problem with it is, if you do the side stuff autistically the chocobo stuff mainly it makes the game really easy, and there's another trick, and it sort of pulls the game to one extreme or the other I feel. Like almost gimme easy or frustratingly hard.

FF12 Zodiac Age is a really good game.

I wish every JRPG had a speed up x2 button. I was unable to finish FF12 back in the day because of the insane grind but I have finally seen the light.

on steam :^)

To be fair with Japan shifting to handhelds and mobile the future is bleak.

There's no such thing as a non-tactics turn based and/or ATB for pedantic faggots JRPG with good gameplay. Once you figure out the best course of action, that's it. You're done. It's either turn delay, spamming buffs/debuffs, spamming elemental weaknesses, spamming your most powerful attacks, or some combination of these things. None of these things are difficult in the slightest or even comparable to most simple puzzle games. The ones with the very "best" gameplay have some kind of resource management that prevents you from blowing your load on every battle, and this usually amounts to having a guessing game where for any specific enemy or group with unknown defense values, you must guess which attack just barely kills them and then just use that whenever you encounter that enemy/group again. After you "master" these things, all turn based/ATB JRPGs become glorifed walking simulators with bad stories. A small minority have decent stories.\

Does Shadow Hearts have a decent story? I started playing it and the voice acting in the opening cutscene was atrocious, though that's expected of a PSX era game.

Damn, good to see other people who appreciate Wild Arms. I loved those games, especially Wild Arms 2. Despite the bad translation in parts, the game had a nice story with interesting characters, and the setting of the games in general is perfect.

Generally, most of the fun is in the preparation, before the battle. FF5, Etrian Odyssey IV and Touhou GoS were fantastic in this regard.
Some of them become rather thrilling during a hard battle, too. Like in SaGa Frontier, when you're down to one man, decide to go on the offensive and in a pinch spark some amazing skill.

Easy as fuck. This only way to make that game difficult is to be intentionally retarded with how you set up your characters and actively avoid combat as much as possible.

Ha ha ha, good joke.
Please.

Oh man Tsugunai is a real gem. It really deserved way better reception and sales that it got…not only it was quite original in both gameplay and story, but both were well done. I really would dig into a sequel or spin-off but guess that's impossible now.

I played both of those WA and both have their own charm. To me, people who hate the remake are just blind to nostalgia. I don't think the remake is perfect, like how the remake of RE is perfect in every way making the original obsolete ( technically) since it do have its flaws, like the things you mentioned…but the way they add things from other WA and more, like full three extra characters (and they're all good) are just too nice to ignore in favor of the old version.

I would love to see a remake of 2 in the same way, especially if this means we can finally have 2 with a good translation and not that mess we got in the psx era. Still, even with the shitty translation so many people like me still like it…that shows how good the game was. Imagine with better graphics, new additions and a good translation!

It sure as heck is. Series started to become a mess after 4…besides what you said, 4 also have the worst characters and story by far, at least compared to the other WA. 5 isn't thaaaaaat bad, the plot twist in the end of the game makes the story worth alone or at least better than 4 any day of the week, but they really should have drop that battle system instead of trying to just change it. WA was supposed to be a turn based game, it was one of the things that made series be what it was. When you start to change that kind of stuff, you can end up with shit like FFXIII.

Much as I'd like to see Wild Arms 1 and 2 get retranslated by fans, that's not liable to happen. Same with Suikoden I and II. Issue being that having an English release, regardless of quality, means the game's at least playable, and thus not as worth the time from moonspeakers to work at (compared to games that aren't in English at all) unless the official script is really bad and the moonspeaker in question really devoted to them (Breath of Fire II and Ar Tonelico II, for example). And then there's also the added issues in cases like Lunar 1 and 2, where Working Designs has such a divided reputation as to whether their rewrites were good or bad, that demand for redoing them has likely been obscured by their cult following. Even years back on halfchan I'd encounter plenty of "WD's edits made the games not just tolerable, but actually enjoyable for JRPGs" types.

SH1 admittedly has worse voicing than its predecessor Koudelka, being that it was mainly 4kids voices that were brought it in for it as a replacement for the original Japanese audio (Koudelka meanwhile was English audio worldwide). Midway gave Covenant a larger localization budget out here, with the translator securing a professional voicing director, and thus the English voicing was improved a fair bit (if using a mixture of now stock VAs as well as lesser known ones). Anyhow, SH1 doesn't really have much voicing in it to begin with, mainly just in the rare FMVs and combat (where the audio admittedly gets a bit weird as to what languages characters are speaking, despite all speaking English in FMVs). I honestly didn't mind the voicing much myself, but that said I tend to be able to at least tolerate stuff as long as it's not Chaos Wars or Arc Rise Fantasia English dub tier, so maybe take it with a grain of salt.

I personally like the series a lot, and the overarching chronology, setting, and style to all the games was neat, as well as the use of Judgment Ring combat. Story is interesting enough if you ask me (and Covenant follows up on the bad end of the first game, after a six-month or so timeskip), and Yuri's a pretty enjoyable protagonist, both in personality (he's a rude, perverted asshole, but a likable one) and in combat style (being a brawler that can fuse his soul with that of demons, spirits, etc whose souls he's subjugated within his inner world).

Yeah, I'm not exactly sure as to WHY it was so poorly received, both here and in Japan from what I've heard, the latter making me wonder why Atlus even picked it up (clearly SCEA didn't feel it worth bringing overseas themselves; SCEJ being the Japanese owners). Only real complaint I had with it was that the amount of loading could get annoying, but I'm willing to attribute that more to being an early PS2 game that used a CD-Rom instead of a DVD-5. I suppose maybe people were went in expecting a grandiose, colorful world exploring JRPG and were soured upon getting something of a more personal, local region, lower-scale quest. Overall it was a very neat game in my opinion and I'm happy I played it. Sometimes wide discrepancy between "professional" review and consumer review, skewing more positive with the latter, is what it takes to notice something as possibly being worth your time, that you might have overlooked before, and this was a case of that as well.

Most likely not going to happen. Even though Cattle Call survived that rocky start and are still around today, Sony owns the series, and Sony being Sony, they have an issue of abandoning potential franchises before their due. And with a reputation like Tsugunai has unfortunately gained on both sides of the Pacific, they're not liable to give it another chance, let alone put it on the PSN.

Have what little official art for Tsugunai I've managed to find. I know there has to be more out there, especially environmental art given the background for the manual my copy has, but it's like the game is such a source of shame to those involved either no one's uploaded more or what was out there has been purged. Hell, even with the music, Mitsuda seems to have opted to distance himself from it, calling the actual release of the OST "an cinniùint", without anything on the soundtrack cover to denote it being the soundtrack to Tsuguani.

Was writing more and will continue in next post as it was getting verbose. Polite sage for chain for multiple posts in a row.

I think you mean “blinded by nostalgia”. “Blind to nostalgia” would be more someone that doesn’t see any nostalgic traits in an older version compared to a new one. But that’s getting pedantic on my part, since I get what your saying. The way I see it, ACF is a pretty good taken on its own merits as a game, and I certainly liked seeing the content of the original game both translated to a system with better output qualities, as well as utilizing elements introduced with in the two entries between them (with a caveat that the “Search” system is really love it or hate it). I also really liked how it allowed for Ooba, who had joined as the artist for Flower Thieves and then worked on WA3, to give his own take on the cast’s designs, and for Naruke to be able to revisit her classic tracks and arrange them for a medium with better storage capacity (compare the memory differences between CD-ROM and DVD-9). As a remake though, it doesn't quite fulfill it's purpose on completely outdoing the original, and while a full on, competent translation could have helped it to stand above the PS1 original here, a better translation didn't exactly happen despite delays from Agetec. It’s really a matter of who you ask, and ‘’where’’ you ask, as to what one considers the more favorable version. Now, can a remake not understand the charm of the original? Absolutely, see the Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga one. I don’t feel Alter Code F was that way though, unlike I used to see anons on half/vr/ spout years back.

So would I, albeit with two caveats: 1) Leave the original Force system (no MP whatsoever, resource generated through combat) and mid-combat party swapping in, and 2) The content itself would have to be left the same, despite higher end graphics and a better translation with better editing for flow. That means no removing of the scenes of Marina going to fuck Ashley, Irving going to fuck his sister, or changing the final boss fight to NOT be an abortion. Fading to black leaving only text is one thing, as the games did that for the former two in the original, but I suspect the lack of the PS1 graphics being able to show anything in too much detail, and the English script/editing quality being what it was, were what enabled both to remain intact. Having a properly handled, clearly translated English script, that’s the sort of thing that probably wouldn’t slip by as readily here as it did in the original especially the cripple incest, and I suspect that with better graphical quality, such things might not slide even in Japan anymore, at least under the same rating the game originally saw there. As far as western releases these days, XSEED might be the only option for all of those to get by intact in a remake (and I’d like to think they still hold the rights or at least first dibs on future entries, given they published 4, 5, and XF), but even then that strikes me as a big “if”. Between the nature of such content having what would be happening made more clear, and XSEED’s apparent mindset without Tom attempting to keep them on track, it might prove too much even for them.

Personally, I’d just settle for a fan retranslated script of the PS1 version, accurate to the original Japanese script and content, and without censorship (perhaps with two variants to allow for choice in whether the game uses the Japanese lyrical songs or the English instrumental ones). But as mentioned here , that’s probably not all that liable to happen. I’m also honestly not sure if there’s any proper way to translate both what Liz is saying it and ‘’how’’ he’s saying it, as to my knowledge he uses some very Japanese specific sort of double speak which might not lend itself well to English. Considering asking Mato about that sometime.

I do wish Desert Moon would make good on rescanning their copy of Chronicle F. Strikes me that that book could contain good information to better understand the world of WA1/ACF, but while the scans are good for the images, the moonrunes, especially kanji, seem like they’d be a pain to make out at the current size.

(Cont')

Forgot I had it set to not retain sage between posts.

I didn't mind the HEX system, and it didn't change Wild Arms from being turn-based, just that positioning became a factor, and that each turn is played out character to character, rather than deciding actions all at once (compare with Shadow Hearts, which did similar after SH1, moving to a character turn basis with Covenant, with the upcoming turn order and how a potential action will affect it visible). I’d speculate that SCEJ, who own the series and thus call the shots, told Media.Vision to make the combat more nuanced and interesting, and that rather than some drastic switch from turn-based to real-time (if you ask me, NEVER make that initial move with a main series game), simply added positioning and switched the turn system from choosing the entire party’s actions at once to each member’s as they come. Perhaps the reasoning on Sony’s end being to keep the media from deriding the series as archaic? Again, speculation, but by the time WA5 came out in Japan, IGN’s importers were calling the series “filler”, like it had no value to being played for its own sake as opposed to just killing time between bigger name JRPGs, probably from the likes of Square.

I fully agree though that changing things up too much is a big risk. Handled well, and left to an intentional spinoff, you can get something like Vagrant Story as a neat standalone game, or something that forks into it’s own subseries, like Final Fantasy Tactics, without impacting the main series because they weren’t meant as main series entries to begin with. Having other actual main series games being developed alongside them also provides a safety net: if something goes wrong, it can be written off as an experiment without impacting the rest of the series much. Handled poorly though, and you can get at least a few bad situations with it. Dragon Quarter, for example: Without calling the game good or bad myself, there was too much change involved, it was being considered main series in Japan (“Breath of Fire V”; the numeral more wisely dropped for the western release), with no other “proper” games in the works alongside it for the series to fall back on, and reception skewed so negative, it got the entire series killed until Capcom dug it’s frostbitten corpse out of the freezer thirteen years later to make into mobileshit with Breath of Fire 6. And as mentioned above, changing combat from turn-based to real-time, or vice versa, in a main series entry is a VERY big risk. Especially if the developers haven’t tried it before and thus aren’t experienced in it themselves yet (something I recall hearing being an issue with Ar Tonelico, with I and II being turn-based while the III was real-time).

Anyhow, I don't think WA4 and 5 were that drastic of a difference from the prior style myself. Could have been a lot worse off as far as shaking things up. I will say though that I wish MP hadn't made a full comeback, with Force once again a secondary resource. I was alright with it to some degree with it having comeback for ACF, given that was a hybrid of elements of the original game, WA 2's party switching (once you get enough members), and an evolution of of WA3's personal skill system (ACF actually giving you back the equipped item when not using it), but even there is still had some slight problems, namely Jack blowing through all of his small MP pool fast as fuck and the player having no means to restore it outside of inns. An while you can eventually reduce the MP cost through skill usage (instead of those "Secret Signs" from WA1), it was still an annoyance, forcing you the conserve again most enemies save for bosses, unless you were trying to grind skill ups near a town you could rest at periodically).

Blood of Bahamut works on my R4 Gold 3DS RTS. Anything else you'd like tested?

You know every game becomes easy/boring once you know the mechanics? That's hardly a JRPG exclusive thing.

The only thing I've seen people praise Witcher 3 which is held up as the pinnacle of videogames for was the story. Which makes sense, a single player (J)RPG lives by the story and characters.

October report from A0t:
a0t.co/2017/10/03/october-2017/

At risk of you wasting space downloading what tends to be considered kusoge (there are MUCH better games in the series), I'd been using Tales of the Tempest as a main test rom with my flash cart, and with Tales usually being rather voicing heavy, its felt weird that Tempest doesn't seem to have ANY outside of combat and perhaps FMVs. Especially since its not like the DS didn't have some audio-verbose JRPGs here and there (Sands of Destruction, for example, had a lot more than I was anticipating), so it shouldn't have been a case that "the system couldn't handle it, so the game didn't have much". Could you test it out on your flash cart and tell me if the game has regular voicing or not? Would help me to better determine if this flash cart I have is just shit or not, and between that possibility, and Blood of Bahamut not working at 100% on it, it's making me worried about not getting a proper experience other games I'm looking to play with it in the future.

English patch can be found at Absolute Zero's website if you can't find it pre-patched; they did a full translation as an April Fools Joke, the joke being that it was for a game no one particularly wanted in English anyhow.

AFAIK Tales of the Tempest just doesn't have that much VA.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_of_the_Tempest

This is corroborated by the article on Innocence:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_of_Innocence#Audio

I've got no clue, the only reason I bought it was because I couldn't find it anywhere. There is the original CD version out there but the fan translation only works for the Steam release.
Just wait for it to go on sale again, it almost always goes on sale for 50% off during the seasonal sales.

rpgamer.com/games/tales/tods/reviews/todsstrev1.html

gamefaqs.com/ds/931115-tales-of-the-tempest/reviews/117578

gamefaqs.com/ds/931115-tales-of-the-tempest/reviews/116268

gamefaqs.com/ds/931115-tales-of-the-tempest/reviews/154016

Huh. I suppose maybe I ought to have just looked more into it myself, but given how voicing heavy Tales has generally been, it seemed more likely to me to be an audio issue with the flash cart, the way Blood of Bahamut was doing for me. Good to know that Innocence avoided that, though it sounds like having to make scrap the old engine, build a new one specifically to better store/call audio, and having to restart the actual game development would have to have been a pain. Thanks for the information.

Out of curiosity, if you were to put Okamiden on your cart, would do you get slapped with a progress lockout shortly after the first dungeon as a form of antipiracy, or is that cart smart enough to workaround it/feign legitimacy? That's assuming you've played the original Okami though; wouldn't want you spoiling yourself with the sequel's description of the prior game's events if you haven't.

Thinking I might just look into another make of flash card, since I'm losing faith with this one I have.

Unfortunately, I haven't played Okami. I'll check gbatemp and get back to you.

I played a bit of Innocence and liked it. My autism tells me to wait for the R version on vita. I don't speak moon though. Wandering around town was annoying due to the way camera zooms in when your character stops moving.

Checked Nicoblog out of boredom earlier. Saw a number of new prepatched undubbed JRPG uploads there, including Tales of Symphonia GC, so maybe whatever was the issue holding that back from utilizing the JP audio got worked past recently? Anyhow, just thought it might be news someone might be waiting to hear (assuming it's legit; I've got a toaster and don't yet have a drive set up to load from with my Wii, so I can't say for sure myself).

From what I recall here, it borrowed some elements of Abyss and Destiny PS2 and tried to get them to work with the DS.
Yeah, I wouldn't be assuming Bamco is going to suddenly announce it. With luck down the line it might get fan-translated, assuming the DS original having been fan-translatable and more readily accessible (flash carts, emulation) hasn't kept interest in the remake lower than it might otherwise be, despite it, to my knowledge, overriding reason to play the DS original in Japan (whereas the Hearts games handle differently enough I've heard there's still reason for the native audience to play and enjoy both). I'd also be hoping for Hearts R to get a retranslation. Someone ought to enough Kajitani to harness his rage at 8-4 and Bamco and do so, given the history there.

You really ought to give Okami a go sometime. It's got a slow start, and depending on who you ask might be longer than it ought to be, but it's a really good game with a lot of content.

I've heard breath of fire series is good. should i try it? i figure i'd start with 3 and continue from there. should i play 1 and 2 first? from what i understand, the stories are self contained.

Oh nice A JRPG thread

Hm well let's see I just finished Trails in the sky the 3rd recently. That was nice. Just waiting some fan translations of older JRPGs now. Although I guess I could play some newer ones in the meanwhile.

I used to love Wild Arms so I'll probably go back and play the JP version now that I can read Japanese. Still a classic and great JRPG. I've been going back and forth between a few different games, mostly Lunatic Dawn III, which is probably closer to Ultima than anything, Vampire Kyuuketsuki Densetsu, which is a third person RPG but a bit different compared to most JRPGs but is a really really cool game, and I just started playing Bealpareth so I don't have much to say about it but it looks interesting.

Which ones you waiting on in particular, out of curiosity? If it's any AG's had on their backlog, I'd say to give it up, Zhi doesn't seem inclined to doing much with his actual site anymore; been over two years since any official updates on anything.

If you're serious about playing Wild Arms in Japanese, can you do me a favor and take note of if the Japanese version consistently refers to the demons in terms of an outright race/coalition of races, the way the English version of WA1 did (IE: "Metal Demons" as a proper race/organization name, with both parts found together often), or if it mentions the metallic factor more sparingly as a descriptor for the demons (thus leaving the proper term for them just "demons" who so happen to have mercurial blood)? Always kind of wondered if it was meant as an actual name, or a description, given how WA1 and WA3's English script handled it kind of differently, despite being a recurring element in both.

I'm still waiting for Tenshi no Uta and Tengai Makyou Zero

Okay I'll probably take a crack at it tonight so I'll let you know when I get up to that part

Waiting on that first one myself. Nightcrawler at the very least does more frequent progress reports than various other groups do with their own works, but it seems a bit odd that he claimed it was almost done way back in April and hasn't spoken of it since (at least as far as actual updates on his site go). Wasn't real aware that TMZ had one in the works though. Is that just using a GBA-temp thread for updates or something, or does the translator have their own site to keep tabs on things with?

Thanks.

It's actually been almost done for a while. The translators just need to have some last double checks and such. you can check the progress via romhacking net forums.

Ah, thanks for the heads up then.

I'll be patient with Tales of Innocence. Like you, I heard that the vita R obsoletes the original.

So is that the DS Tales I should be playing? I assumed that the vita R obsoleted it, but would be happy to hear otherwise.

i really wanted to like wild arms but i played about 10 hours and there was less challenge than pokemon and i was killing bosses in one turn and i'm sorry but i'm just not able to turn my brain off and enjoy long periods of no stimulation like this.
i feel this way about a lot of jrpg's. i can count on both hands the games that have been intellectually challenging. the genre is influenced by board games and pen and paper RPG's, so i have no idea how they go from boundless depth and numbers games like that to this predictable children's diarrhea where you can auto-battle any enemy. it makes me sad. and i waste a lot of money on jrpg's thinking they'll be different but they never are.

From what I'm aware (and take this with a grain of salt, as it's what I remember hearing years back from moonspeakers on half/vg/), the difference lies with how the originals handled in comparison. Innocence already had a 3D combat system and graphics, for better or worse (the DS screen isn't the best for 3D games, and thus well detailed models used can look a lot lower quality in output), leaving the big perks of the remake being a system/engine with better screen to show visuals with, new characters (Kongwai and QQ), and additional content, leaving the Vita remake an outright upgraded version (though I think I've heard the dungeon layouts are still kind of poor regardless). I don't think the combat itself was changed up too much from the prior style, though it's hard to say exactly as neither Wikipedia or Aselia wiki specifically mention changes on that front. With Hearts though, Namco opted for 2D sprites and 2D combat with the DS original (which I would think works better than Innocence, what with both the screen limits and not having analog movement). Thus, in addition to Hearts R having access to an all around better screen and the usual additional content (including making Chalcedony playable and adding a new original character, Galando, similar to how Vesperia PS3 handled Flynn and Patty), the Vita version also has 3D modeling and 3D combat. Since the original offers different visuals and combat (the remake also doesn't include the cameo supports) while still being considered good, I've heard that both versions have their merits and neither exactly trumps the other (barring R having more content/characters). Hence why it's a shame that neither have a good English version. Kajitani-Eizen dropped the DS version's translation out of respect for Namco's decision to bring Hearts R over, but then R wound up with an English script that was more "rewrite" than "translation". Kajitani has expressed a good amount of anger over what happened with the Vita version out here, so it makes me want to hope that maybe he'll someday return to working on fan-translating either version so the west can finally enjoy it with a proper English script. Again though, this is just going from what I've heard of the versions. I don't know moon, so I can't speak personally as to what the differences are. Maybe someone that speaks moon and has played both versions of each can elaborate with more accuracy from personal experience.

Also worth noting the DS had TWO variants of Tale of Hearts: "Anime Movie Edition" (which has standard anime FMVs and character designs), and "CG Movie Edition" (which has Final Fantasy-esque 3D CG FMVs and 3D character renders). I've heard rumor that the latter was made with the idea that it might appeal more to the western audience, but Namco never brought either over, and I think the fact that CG Edition never happened with any other game in the series, and that Hearts R went back to the series usual anime stylings, says a lot of what the local audience thought about it. Anyhow, if you're wanting to download the game for the DS, or import it, that's the version you're probably going to want.

IMO one of the best turn based JRPGs purely based on gameplay is the FF4 remake. The reason for that is that unlike a lot of turnbased JRPGs, FF4 fights needed tactics against a lot of the fights and bosses. It is not just spam attack, heal and strongest dmg spell and you beat the enemy and that is why i like it so much. What other turn based JRPGs have fights that are hard? (and not just hard because you need to grind for more numbers or hard because the enemies have a lot of hp, but real hard)

Genius of Sappheiros

levels don't matter all that much whether you're 5 levels above or below the boss, there will be still crushing defeat when your strategy sucks.

I have a ton of JRPGs I should play soon
Tell me which is the best and which platform I should play it on

Or if anons have any other recommendations I'd happily listen to them
The last one I played was Chrono Trigger, which I felt was a goddamn masterpiece.

Oh, and I forgot
Tales of the Abyss
Bravely Default
Radiant Historia

All worth a look, you should play Suikoden 1 as well though

Much of CT's staff went on to make Xenogears, which elaborates on a lot of its themes and aesthetics.

Nice, I'll give it a look.

This too, thanks anons
though this still hasn't helped me decide which would be best to play first

Thanks for the explanation. It sounds like Hearts DS would still be worth playing. I hope Kajitani finishes the translation.

The wikipedia article agrees.

Glad to see that the PS4 remaster is getting a physical, hopefully that's worldwide and not JP only like the PS3 release was.

what are some good jrpgs for the PS2?

For the time being he's no longer working on it, but I'm not sure if he deleted everything, or just buried it. I mean, in a way, I can understand why he did: the series had generally had alright English versions for a while, so ideally Hearts R shouldn't have been different on that front. But instead, it seems like because Bamco didn't give a shit about bringing it west to begin with, and only did-so when SCEA twisted their arm to (after a poll of what Vita fans here wanted), they couldn't be fucked to keep 8-4 on as short a leash as they had in the past, and as such let them run amuck with the script. Thus he's been angry at Bamco, angry at 8-4, and probably in at least some part angry at himself if he did indeed trash all his work on the DS version out of respect so the western Vita version could sell well (which in the end he couldn't advocate people buying or playing). His site specifically says "ON HOLD" in regards to project status, so maybe he's still kept everything around. Since then though he's been aiding Absolute Zero with ToD DC (A0t having been helping him with Hearts prior), so he might be busy for a while until that's done.

Given how Capcom ignored that there's clearly a worthwhile base to have done a PS3 physical release for here, but didn't, I don't know what to think. And I'd wager that, once again, "Reset" will get cut from the game here, just as it has for every other English release aside from the PS2 original. I imported it for the PS3 some years back since the Asia/Pacific physical had the official English script on it and the system was region free. But even then there were still some issues:
It's like Capcom knew people would be willing to import it, and deliberately did their best to reduce the benefits of having a physical English copy compared to just buying the PSN version that they did give us.

The PS2 has plenty to pick from. Might want to be more specific as to what you're looking for though (turn-based, real time, traditional, strategy/tactics, etc) as far as narrowing stuff down.

My experience with rpgs is shit like Pokemon, the mario RPGs, and Final Fantasy I and II. So pretty casual.

Well, I suppose everyone has to start somewhere. With me, aside from Pokemon, mine was a copy of Golden Sun a former friend gave me years back. Anyhow, given what you've said, would more general suggestions of things to look into regardless of system be of more help than PS2 specific ones? Just asking, as some PS2 JRPGs I've liked I fell you might benefit from playing their prior non-PS2 entries first, or are solid-yet-divisive entries in their own series.

The only "casual" JRPG from the PS2 era that I have played is SMT Persona 4 :^). It's half dungeon crawler and half anime high-school simulator. By exploring the dungeons you can find all sorts of monsters shadows, and you can combine them to create more powerful shadows. Oh and if you talk to a lot of people and form friendships, the shadows you create will become more powerful.

Wild ARMS 3 is a good starter JRPG. It's got a great soundtrack and extremely good dungeons, pretty much more complex Zelda puzzles.

You should probably play Chrono Trigger -> Xenogears -> Chrono Cross. I don't know what order the rest of it goes, but you play Xenosaga and Baiten Kaitos in their release orders, then SRW: OG, as that follows the continuity.

Playan The Dark Spire.
It's a grindfest, but it surely is fun.

Cool artstyle

I'd still say it's worth playing the PS1 entries first, being that all three are good games (though WA3 makes some mechanical advancements on both), while WA3 has a lot of shoutouts/recurring elements from WA1 that are neat for returning fans to come across. But yes, it's a damn good game.

that's one of my favorite games of all time, definitely superior to any of the little kid stuff posted in this thread. wild arms/chrono trigger/final fantasy "kill the boss in one hit" cinematic anime game everyone thinks is 10/10.

What are anons opinions on Nino kuni?

I'm really like Shadow Hearts. Timed hits are a nice way for JRPGs to put skill back into the equation, even if it's not much.

That depends on whether it's a game of planning or a game of dextery. You can know and have memorized all the moves for every character in a fighting game. That's not going to put you on the level of someone who has skill in playing the game itself. JRPGs are games of planning for most part, usually with the planning being laughably simple and having no pressure.

I would like to know as well. I'd been considering trying it, but it seemed a little too light hearted for my taste.

It wasn't made in Japan, but it looks like it follows the standard JRPG battle formula, so I'll ask here if anyone's played Battle Chasers: Nightwar, and if so if it's worth buying in the inevitable sale. Or pirating. Whichever.

There are some items here and there that can make it easier/harder on the player to hit the indicated areas (the con of making it easier being that the item eats up an accessory slot that could be better used for stats/effects). Covenant and From the New World also have a number of different in-built modes to make the Judgment Ring both easier and harder, with the harder modes rewarding more damage dealt and the easier ones reducing output to balance it, while still having a number of items to affect the Ring as well. You also get the ability to modify the Judgment Ring with more hits (balanced with smaller zones to hit) and inbuilt negative status effects that attacks can have a chance, varying on the rank of the equipped effect, to induce in the target upon being hit (should the foe not be immune).

I played FFXII for the qts

Does my scores and rank on the stats menu effect anything?

I don't think so, but it's a way to try to better yourself. Might be careful though. If memory serves some of the higher ranks have names from enemies (possibly including bosses), some of which you might not have faced yet if you reach them.

Wanting to get into Breath of Fire. Should I start with 3, or play any of the games before that?

3 and 4 are the best

It's been a while since I last played and finished it, but I'll say it's not satisfying to me. There's something awkward about the combat in it, it feels slow and weak to fight with familiars but things get better when you unlock strongest spells in late game, it's sometimes worth using MC over using his familiars. Maybe I just need to git gud though. Everything else, it's an average game with plenty of side-quests.

It sucks.

I find timed hits are generally there to compensate for a lack of deep/complex combat mechanics. Doing a basic attack via command and doing a basic attack via command and timed button press aren't much different, and forced QTEs to get through a fight aren't exactly compelling

I've heard the fan translation of 2 is good, and 2's only real issues are the translation and the encounter rate. Play 3 for sure
If you're extremely patient, you might be able to get through the start of one and into the good shit, but the beginning is some boring autoattack cancer
4 is massively overrated by its fans. It's alright, but has poor pacing and overlong animations for both breath attacks and certain boss moves (to the point where there is a skip button, and even that takes too long to reach)

That said, I started with 3. It ties into 1 (and, less directly, 2), but it's not a direct continuation. 4 is effectively a separate thing unless you're a timeline autist. 5 is even further removed and has a different system entirely

How's Koudelka? I heard it was mediocre, but I'd rather get anons opinions.

Not worth it because of the load times. Youtube it and start at SH1.

I just played through Tales of Berseria, easily the worst Tales game. I don't know why message boards like to shit on Zestiria and Xillia when this is so much worse

I'm playing it right now and it's pretty fun, but like said, the gameplay is final fantasy 9 tier slow.
The story is pretty enjoyable so far, the music is nice, the monsters/bosses have neat designs and the setting is good too.

The characters aren't constantly praising each other like most modern rpgs and instead often insult each other. For example, Koudelka calls the priest a carpenter worshiper, the priest calls the other 2 a bunch of thieves and says they deserve to die, Edward nearly dies and Koudelka just ignores him for a while and keeps talking, etc. etc..

The puzzles are simple enough and the game even helps you with simple "Hey! remember that one thing in that one room?" messages and images.
Weapons break, guns need ammo and need to be reloaded, spells need some time to cast (at first anyway) and you can only save in specific spots holy water fountains that also restore HP and MP. You also start the game with a couple of buff spells.

Also, do you know those moments in a lot of stories where the bad guy attacks the heroes, and after they beat him the bad guy begs for mercy and the good guys let him go? Well, here the bad guy gets shot right after begging for mercy and swearing he is not going to try to kill you again. So the game seems to avoid some annoying clichés.

Give it a try if you are a fan of the works of H.P. Lovecraft and don't mind the slow gameplay. The game seems to be pretty short anyway.

I liked it, but it's not for everyone, and as says it has some rather noticeable loading (especially so during combat). That said, I have compared playing with my own discs of the game to an eboot on my PSP, and the eboot was noticeably faster. I would wager that playing digitally alleviates a fair amount of loading, and wouldn't necessarily advocate just watching it on jewtube.

That said, Shadow Hearts was made in a way that while still connected in terms of recurring characters and elements, you could play it without needing to play its predecessor. This was probably due in part to reviewers on both sides of the Pacific being rather critical of it and it selling badly to the point that the guy behind it, Hiroki Kikuta, left the company he'd founded and the vidya industry itself for a number of years in response.

From what I remember, Xillia was getting shat on before it came west. Years back on halfchan, I'd see importing moonspeakers making claims as to how bad it was due to being rushed for the series 20th anniversary, and that similar reception from western fans when/if it came over could keep Xillia 2 from coming over in response, as it seemed they (or at least the some in the threads I was in) considered the sequel better. Then Xillia 1 got enough preorder figures here due to actual marketing for once for Bamco to clear Xillia 2 to be brought overseas before the first was even on the shelves. Cue some angry moonspeakers (who may or may not have been the same ones that had been shitting on Xillia 1) starting spoiler campaigns in various threads under the justification of "EoPs don't deserve a game as good as this", which makes the mixture of reception both have seen since kind of funny. That isn't to say that Xillia 1 doesn't have its faults, or that Xillia 2 was perfect (both have their ups and downs), but still. I personally enjoyed both Xillias even if they're not my favorites.

Really though, I've seen various opinion on where the cutoff for where Tales ceases to be enjoyable from people over the years, at least amongst English speaking fans, be it opinion that everything post Vesperia ranges from mediocre to bad, everything past Symphonia, or even a few cases that anything past either Phantasia or Destiny is that way.

It is. I think my first playthrough was maybe 12-18 hours. I'd have to dig out my PSP and double check what the file there reads.

I believe that was probably intentional on Kikuta's part. Read something before about him, in having worked as a composer at Square for a number of years prior, growing an opinion that JRPGs of the time were juvenile and stagnant, and wanted to try his hand at making something that went in another direction. Unfortunately, some of his choices got overruled by the rest of the team, and the game wasn't too well received anyhow, so barring having inspired the subsequent games in the Shadow Hearts series (which he wasn't involved with), and a manga sequel (non-canon as of Shadow Hearts 2001 debut), his efforts didn't have much effect for better or worse, and the series remains rather underplayed, especially Koudelka (doesn't help that last I checked Koudelka and Shadow Hearts, as far as physical copies go, were like $45 each minimum, and none of the series has a PSN rerelease).

Thanks, I'll give it a shot. The main girl is pretty cute

what are some good non-turn-based jrpg's?

Rings of Fate for the PSX. It's totally the beta for Kingdom Hearts.

Heard good things about Breath of Fire II as well, but the official SNES translation is notoriously garbage, and Capcom was so lazy/cheap that they reused it with the GBA port regardless. As mentions though, there is a fan retranslation for the SNES version. Look into Watercrown's patch if you plan to play it.

BoF IV also suffers from censorship in any version that isn't the original Japanese PS1 release from what I remember.

It does, but only in like 4 scenes and you'd never know if you weren't told
Cut shit includes
Ursula dropping her pants in front of pirates
Ryu accidentally grabbing Ursula's boob and then getting stared down
Without spoiling anything, someone gets decapitated instead of the cutaway that occurs in the Western release
There's also apparently a lewd or innuendo filled conversation between Ursula and Nina or something to that effect

It sucks, but at least it doesn't ruin the overall experience

Tales games have never really been that good, even Phantasia had sluggish moments. But they've certainly been going downhill, with this latest iteration being awful.

People seem to shit on it, but Zestiria was one of the best Tales games in a long time. If anything for the wonderful OST it has.

Have you tried Shadow Hearts? Nearly everything you do is timed hits. They determine whether items/attacks/spells succeed, how strong the effects of the items/attacks/spells are, and for attacks, how many you do out of up to 3 per turn. There are various status effects and buffs for the ring for the timed hits. It's the best implentation of it I've seen so far and it's certainly well above "doing a basic attack via command and timed button press".

Not to mention the items that remove parts of the ring in exchange for massive damage buffs. Being able to pull off a full 7th key with the ring invisible is fun as shit.

I do hope that you're not trying to excuse the removal. To be fair, that sort of thing did happen a fair bit back in older generations (and sadly current gen as well, depending on the company), but in retrospect I got more than a bit tired of seeing anons on halfchan years back not just excusing removal of perverted scenes, but some even advocating that it made the games more palatable to them. Though, that was still just in regard to those specific scenes. I don't recall seeing anyone back then trying to say the decapitation removal was good.

Shame that there's been no restoration effort, be it hacking all the scenes back in or ripping the English script into the Japanese version, and fan-translating the content that was cut.

I can't comment personally yet as my $6 copy is still backlogged (friend I co-op with has no room on his PS3 for a 10gb forced install for quite a while). But Zestiria really hasn't had very good reception amongst anons from what I've seen, even before it came west. I think you're probably the second person around here I've seen that seems to have considered it particularly enjoyable. Anyhow, I'll probably still get my $6 worth from it when I do get around to it, whenever that might be. And cost invested can certainly color enjoyment of something if you ask me

Haven't heard it myself (I try to avoid listening to too much of soundtracks from games I haven't played yet, which makes for nice surprises), but given that I know it was dual composition with Shiina's involvement, I can certainly see how that would be the case. He did a damn good job on Legendia's soundtrack prior.

I seem to recall hearing someone liken it in the past to an evolution of Legend of Dragoon's combat, though I can't personally say as I haven't given LoD a go.

Anyhow, if you're liking the combat there, it evolves further in both sequels. Sacnoth (renamed "Nautilus" by that point) knew they had something good as a base and worth developing further. Sad that Aruze dissolved the dev team and continues to sit on the series rights with complete disinterest in continuing it, though that might be what's saved it from the trend towards giving generations dead series a mobile reboot.

LOD has three rhythm minigames for combat. The first is just basic button timing of pressing the X button in time with a prompt targetting the enemy, with accuracy giving more damage, a button mash game to build up % FF8 summon style, and a quick ring that is pretty much just the judgement ring skinned as a dragon eye. Game's not that great but does some cool stuff, like the valley of shattered gravity or whatever it's called. Lloyd did nothing wrong.

I've seen such dissonance on opinion amongst anons about it over the years, with plenty being adamant about it being great while others are adamant that it's pretty mediocre that it's hard to really feel other than "divisive", and as such it's not been really high priority to me. Though, to be fair there's a number of games I've really enjoyed that I'd also consider "love it or hate it" as far as general opinion goes, so maybe it's just a game I need to do more research on my own to see if it sounds like something I'd find worth my time.

I'll admit at least seeing it brought up brings back memories of "Gust of Wind Dance" being posted every fucking JRPG General years back on half/vg/, like it was a damn tradition.

Finished DQV on SFC today. It was a great adventure; growing up, marrying, being a king, having children, having your children and wife fight among you…
The monster catching concept is cool, but I didn't specifically catch a monster. I caught a Slime Knight when I got my freedom back and gave him a King Metal Sword. Hero, Son and Slime Knight ripped shit apart through the game. Overall it was really easy. Gonna try DQVI a month later I think.

I walked into a pawn shop yesterday and noticed Wild Arms 4 there for five bucks. I always hear about 3 and 5, but never 5. Is it worth playing?

Shit, I meant 4.

How does "it sucks that it got removed, but it doesn't ruin the game" excusing anything? It is what it is. I'd rather have it in, but if you were considering not playing it and holding out for some fan translation for the "True Experience" I'd say there's not much point. I also think people should play SaGa Frontier, and praise the shit out of that game, but that doesn't excuse it being unfinished as fuck (and if it had been, it probably would have been censored to hell and back as well, come to think of it)

I just started playing it the other day. I don't feel like the ring is really adding much to the experience so far (since the game right now is "use basic attack, an item, or your one spell and then press X at the right time(s)") vs other games that give me either more to work with or expand outwards quickly (like Romancing SaGa, where I can quickly learn some abilities and get some combos rolling, and where I have to worry about durability and limited healing, or Nocturne where turn press can really make or break a fight)

Buffing and nerfing your QTE still isn't really changing the core actual JRPG portion of the combat either, so I'm hoping the game doesn't stay like this for much longer. It's a JRPG, and I actually own a copy, so I'm definitely going to dump more time into it either way to let things really get rolling

It's the worst game in the series, but 5's story is slightly worse. The final boss of 5 is the abstract concept of racism. It's extremely linear, unlike the previous three games and uses a lot of side scroller platforming instead of zelda puzzles for dungeons. Combat is okay but one of your party members is so ridiculously OP that she trivializes the entire game.

Fucking how? It's a Nip game. Was it translation bullshittery?

Welp, that explains why it was five bucks. I guess I'll give it a pass.

Out of curiosity, what are some western-made games that aped the JRPG style not including RPG Maker games? Not necessarily good ones, just ones that exist. I can't seem to think of any made before the 2000s, which is weird considering how big JRPGs were over here back in the SNES/PS1 era.

I know I'm doubleposting without saging but this thread needs a bump.

Nope, just a really stupid and forced story about racial harmony.

Septerra Core was apparently '99, not that we're undercutting 2000 by a whole ton there

It's the weakest in the series, but I still had my enjoyment with it even if it's by no means a favorite. I'd say it's a matter of going in knowing what to expect from it though, and I can certainly see how it would anger people that had been expecting more along the lines of Wild Arms 3 when it had releases. For $5 that's not bad, but it's by no means a must-buy or must-play entry in the series.

It goes for about $25 these days where I live even with it having rather negative reception amongst series fans (at least amongst ones on imageboards). I had actually planned to just skip it before I found a cheapish copy myself.

The game's been noted before as having an English script very accurate to the Japanese one.

Kind of surprised Secret of Evermore didn't immediately come to your mind.

Would have appreciated that more if the encounter rate wasn't so fucking high. I can understand a game that's intentionally a throwback looking to the classics for inspiration, but that's something it could have done without (IE: appreciate the past, but learn from its errors as well).

Wild Arms 5 is an odd case in that I think it still has a redpill buried in it, namely in regards to racemixed mongrels not being able to really share in the cultures of their muddied genetic ancestry, and thus having no real loyalty to any race involved. Also that trusting them to actually be on your side in your race's struggles (even if they partially share your race) any deeper than what is of temporary benefit to them as an individual is a mistake in the making (which the Veruni find out the hard way).

It actually did, I was just thinking more about turn-based games.

It has the gameplay of Final Fantasy X, while the graphics are in the style of the Peter Jackson films.

Does anyone have those Shadow Hearts images some user made months ago? The ones with a big WIP watermark.

...

Regarding FFX and FFXII, are the PS2 versions of the games superior, or are there better versions?

I see. Well, I recall hearing that the western made Shadow Madness on the PS1 was rather JRPG-like. Not sure if it's considered good or bad though, at least as far as anons go, as I haven't seen it make its way into discussion that much.

While "months ago" is still accurate, it's actually been over a year now (going off of file-saved dates in my own folder).

that's a niche thing can't even call it a genre if i ever saw one and i figure that's a niche thing because back then it was mostly Japan copying shit from the west rather than the other way around and by the time 00's came around most western devs that did something with turn based combat figured it was best implemented in squad based tactical combat games,be they RPGs or not,or just strategy games with precious few exceptions to them.The closest that one can find linking the two is maybe the various dungeon crawlers that share a similar combat system, but those were it's own thing in japan too

Thanks, user.

Should have known. Unfortunately barely anyone talks about this series and I only started playing Koudelka recently, so I never actually saved any of these images.

It's a shame that we can't get stuff like this anymore. Modern Final Fantasy is terrible, SMT went down the drain the minute Kaneko stopped working on it, Nyarlathotep will never make the cast of Persona miserable again, and most people/writers in general seem to think that Lovecraftian horror is all about that scary octopus under the sea.

What JRPGs avoid padding out the length with monotonous experience point farming? Final Fantasy VI and Paper Mario did a good job of keeping it to a minimum, but the level spikes that are so common in other games stopped me from going any deeper into the genre.
You should see the levels of the team I used to clear Pokemon Yellow.

Most of the story heavy ones I think. Try Phantasy Star 4 or Breath of Fire 3.

Kind of happens when a game/series has been dead for so long. Shadow Hearts, and plenty of other games/series, don't really have much warrant for their own threads at this point, so most directly related discussion you are going to find are in ones for their (sub)genre or the system they were on, as those are more broad and liable to at least get more lurkers. Also while Shadow Hearts is certainly better known with imageboard communities than with general masses, it's still pretty niche even amongst anons (and the bulk of what approval there is tends to go more towards SH1 and Covenant, than to the entire series).

Depends on whether you mean more Shadow Hearts specifically, or just more games that have that sort of setting/vibe. If the former, sometime after FtNW's release, it seems that Aruze decided they were sick of Nautilus not bringing them much profit (cheekily in-game nipping at the hand that fed them might not have helped either), and being that they owned both the studio and the series, they disbanded Nautilus while keeping the series, and have done nothing with it since then aside from whore characters to Idea Factory for a single crossover game on the PS2 (Chaos Wars). I'm not entirely sure of why a pachislot-loving company like Aruze opted to publish Shadow Hearts in the first place, nor why they let it carry on as long as they did (though I am grateful they did).

If the latter though, it's probably because Shadow Hearts, despite getting four games, didn't prove a hit with the masses, so no one's really felt like trying to pick up the niche it left. Similar with Wild Arms and how no one's really bothered to fill its shoes since Sony let it bite the bullet about a decade back. People tend to gravitate more readily towards what's familiar to them already, rather than take a risk dropping money on something different they may or may not enjoy, and thus it tends to be more standard medieval fantasy/sci-fi mixes that get bought and made as far as JRPGs tend to go. Even with Shadow Hearts, a few of the devs have stated that after SH1 came out, they got chewed out by Aruze over it not competing properly with other "big fish" titles of the time (most likely FFX, which it came out a month prior to in Japan, and less than a week prior to here in North America), with their owner asking what they were thinking in making a game like that; one that the Japanese audience apparently found "too dark, too scary, the monsters too freakish" for what they expected of a JRPG (something the devs took as compliments).

The thing that I think works well with Shadow Hearts is that while there's clear Lovecraft inspiration (hell, Lovecraft himself is a character in FtNW), it wasn't merely an attempt to ape Lovecraft, and had a number of other influences beyond that that gave it it's own style of dark supernatural/historical fiction/cosmic horror setting and vibe. Namely carrying over some of the existing lore/vibe from Koudelka (without SH1 feeling like you absolutely have to play Koudelka first to understand it; Koudelka being rather poorly received worldwide, it was intentionally disconnected), but apparently also influence from bedtime stories about myths, the supernatural, youkai, horror, etc that Machida's mother had told him as a kid, as well as the works of Keisuke Fujikawa and Go Nagai. Combine with Machida's interest in history, and the result was Nautilus (still going by Sacnoth then) utilizing Koudelka as groundwork for chronological sequels expanding on that world Kikuta had introduced, with the early 1900s setting being recognizable, but at the same time, not modernized enough that there weren't dark places unnatural creatures or beings might still be lurking. If you're wondering about the source, some Italian group did an interview with Machida and Kato (the former director/writer and character designer respectively) and translated it into both Italian and English, which covers this and more. I'd recommend watching it after playing the series, as it does contain spoilers.

Sounds about right. Koudelka is pretty rough around the edges and FTNW seems to be a lot less darker than the rest of the series.

You'd think more companies would cash in on the HD remake/remaster craze this gen, but I guess not. Although I'd rather get no HD triple pack than to get another Silent Hill HD Collection.

Kek, they are not exactly wrong though, Kouldeka has some pretty weird monsters, like that slow walking headless corpse with its left arm attached to its right one and glass shards carved on its chest. Or those weird babies you find in the library. or that huge boss you fight right before the thief who tries to kill you. not that I'm complaining, the mosters are pretty cool

A pretty underrated setting sadly. The only rpgs that come to mind are the 2 Raidou games and those are more action games than rpgs. Even modern settings don't seem to get used much compared to the typical medieval fantasy.

Embed related? I'll be sure to watch it once I've finished playing the series probably months from now, thanks user.

That's the one.

Koudelka is indeed kind of rough, both due to technical quirks and compromises on design. With the former, there is most definitely an issue with loading (which again, playing digitally seems to alleviate somewhat), and on the latter, Kikuta had apparently wanted the game to be more along the lines of a real time RPG, but got overruled by the rest of the team wanting lite-tactical turn-based (the PS2 games' Judgment Ring feels like an actually good compromise, retaining the turn-based nature but giving the player much more input via timing and hand/eye coordination on how combat turns out). I honestly didn't find the game bad myself, which leaves me wondering how many of the people that have made claims of it being a clusterfuck of bad ideas have actually played it and how many have just parroted what others have said. Then again though, cost invested can color one's experiences, and I'd wager that at the price I found my copy at ($12), or if emulated/burned for free, it's a lot easier to like than for someone that's dropped the current $45-50 I see it priced at (or even whatever the game went for new at release).

With From the New World, it is lighter, but it's worth keeping in mind that it was never meant to be "Shadow Hearts III" (even in Japan; Covenant simply being "Shadow Hearts II" there), but a side-game. It does have occasional moments where the darkness of the prior games shines through, but is the most quirky entry in the series; combat's the most refined the series saw though. I kind of think the idea was more to let fans see what SH-verse North and South America were like, as all the prior games had been focused on Europe and Asia and future ones would likely remain focused there. The actual Shadow Hearts III they had wanted to make apparently never went beyond the conceptual stage, probably since Aruze shitcanned them before it could go further.

Machida and Kato have said that they do hope to one day make the games (the PS2 ones, anyhow) more available, but all they can really do is prod Aruze about it since the devs never owned the series. And Aruze seems to be content doing nothing at all. So for the time being, the only official means to play are the original PS1 and PS2 versions (along with the Director's Cut of SHII in Japan), with not even digital PSN rereleases.

Even with From the New World having a generally lighter tone, the monster designs were still quite good, and fit with the style of the ones in the prior games. I might say though that while some of Koudelka's mystique is not knowing what the fuck it is that you're fighting, or even what exactly they're going to do as attacks (given no nameplates), the PS2 games opt to actually name enemies, but also give them actual bestiary pages with descriptions, which can be rather fun to read about as you progress the games.

Yeah, there's definitely more apparent interest in outright fantasy worlds in JRPGs than historical fiction/alternate Earths. SMT, Persona, and Shadow Hearts being stand-out series that actually do delve into real-world settings, but there's also a few other ones here and there that do. Nostalgia, for example, takes place in a nineteenth-century alternate Earth with airships and magic. You're right that that era of Japan doesn't seem to have many games set in it, with Raidou 1 and 2 and the second half of SH:C being the major ones I know of.

Chrono Trigger manages to almost completely abolish the grind. If you liked FF6, you should be right at home with CT. Of course this is assuming you haven't already played it. But then why wouldn't you have played CT, it's one of the best games ever made.

I like this game already

Rom downloaded

I'm thinking about getting into valkyrie profile. Should I play the psx original or the psp remake, guys?

Probably plenty, since the game has a lot of unconventional things/mechanics for the genre that would annoy a lot of people, such as:
>weapons break with no previous warnings other than "weapon broke" as far as I'm aware
Other than that, the game has:
The loadings are pretty bad though, and the gameplay is overall pretty slow.

I'm playing on an emulator so I didn't pay a cent for it, but I'm actually enjoying it enough that I'd like to own a physical copy. The price doesn't seem to be too reasonable though. The game is only about 10+hours long, so I'm not willing to spend more than 30€ for it, and even that is probably too much.

That's interesting. I don't remember any RPG that takes place in South America, and the FTNW cast looks cool.

Guess the series really is dead and buried, unless the devs manage to acquire it back from Aruze.

That's always fun to read. Shame Koudelka doesn't have one, because most of these monsters could really use some sort of explanation, I mean, there's a monster that carries a revolver and is basically a normal guy who walks on the ceiling and has 2 heads attached to his own. Things like this could really use some kind of description. Same goes for the bosses, of course.

Too bad Kaneko doesn't seem to care anymore just look at those new Strange Journey character designs and modern Persona is a highschool simulator full of poorly written characters.

Maybe. I'm just saying that it doesn't seem like a game the sold well or that many people have even played (and unlike SH1, I don't think it was due to a bad release frame against direct competitors). True though, it does have some areas that could potentially be considered annoyance. Knowing what one's getting into probably also helps with enjoyment too, compared to going in blind but having existing, perhaps "off" expectations. I could see the survival elements (scavenging, breakable weapons, ammo management, etc) turning off people that were expecting a standard JRPG, and the RPG elements (stat dumps, turn-and-grid based combat) turning off survival horror fans. That's not to say it doesn't have out-and-out flaws like the loading (I'd also argue that a second inventory for key items would have been better, especially when you're at the point with five or six different glass shards eating up your already limited space), just that the mixture of elements, being a horror/RPG mix, seem the sort to leave those coming from either end of the mix turned off by the parts that the other group actually enjoy. Also seen a fair bit of complain about the music, or rather, the lack thereof (Kikuta having opted for silence with SFX and leaving music to combat and particular scenes); given his background of working on the OSTs for Secret of Mana and SD3, I could also see how maybe his prior fans expected more from him in that department.

Good luck with finding a cheap one. I mean, I managed it myself a few years back, but I chalk my copy of it up to the store that had it not knowing what they had (they fuck up on prices in both directions a good bit) and having had the luck to find it when I did. Also, given the rather poor reception of the game, it does seem a bit odd that it has been managing $45-50 or so (actually just checked, seems now it's up to $70 complete; what the fuck) despite a real of lack of demand, so I'm just not real sure what's driven it there. Also not as if the PS2 games have seen a rerelease that might have prompted increased curiosity in their predecessor.

Depends on who you ask. I didn't mind them too much myself, and the protagonist Johnny works pretty well as a "how do none of you find this shit weird?" character, but he's no Yuri Volte Hyuga, and the cast is more eccentric than the prior two games (though it's not like Covenant was without weirdness of its own). I will give some fault with the villains though; compared with SH1 and Covenant, they're not that well developed, though they do seem to act as a foil of sorts to a certain other pair of characters in the series. I still found it to be a solid game even if a bit weak in comparison, but I've seen a fair bit of hatred for it not being more like SH1 or Covenant in either cast or vibe.

It's pretty much the only series of note Aruze has beyond "Pachi-Slot Aruze Oukoka", and it doesn't even seem like they put out games for actual systems at this point. I honestly worry though that if it were to come back, the climate might have changed too much for any new entries to come west intact, if picked up for it at all. Supposedly, Machida and Kato have a new project in the works that they can't say much about yet, other than that they are NOT looking to use Kikestarter to fund it, and would like it to have a worldwide release; could be a spiritual successor or something.

The Prima guide for the game lists off some monster names and descriptions, but most of them are rather vague sounding. Meanwhile, the Shadow Hearts wiki has its own bestiary for Koudelka, and some of the monsters listed there have more intricate names (compare "Left Hand" with "Hand of Glory") as well as etymology and description not matching what Prima put out there. I'm not sure where they got them from though as, again, there's no nameplates ingame.

That would be an Inverse. They show up in SH1 at a few points, so at least with that there's some confirmation as to at least what they're really called.

The international release of FFX is best, and the recent Zodiac Age version adds a fast forward button because it is a SLOW GAME.

Do not play the originals, they have less content and the re-releases are actually better and improved.

Not sure how the English scripts compare between the two, but if memory serves the western PS1 release had some technical improvements compared to the JP PS1 original, and that the PSP versions failed to carry the improvements over. Someone else might be able to explain better; I'm admittedly just stating what I remember hearing before.

The game really feels like a mish-mash between a survival horror game and a turn-based JRPG. I'm sure the devs would have ironed out and improved a lot of things in a potential sequel (not counting SH).

>a second inventory for key items would have been better, especially when you're at the point with five or six different glass shards eating up your already limited space
I completely forgot about that, I was starting to wonder if the game really had a limited inventory, since after about 5-6 hours I could still pick everything up. Time to eat 30 breads, I guess. I already have 2-3 glass shards and about 3 statues/figures

It has 4 cds so that means you have to pay 4 times as much. A lot of people demand absurd prices for old games. The other day I saw a guy asking 45€ for a copy of Spyro 1, one of the most sold games on the PS1 and not rare at all. I also saw a guy a couple of years ago selling a copy of Tomba/Tombi 1 for 200€ in terrible condition but it was okay because the price was "negotiable" I think the "negotiable" part offended me more than the retarded price
It would be great if publishers still reprinted some old games from time to time, I mean, I'm sure a lot of people would love to own a copy of Castlevania SOTN, but fuck paying 200€ for it. Plus, it's always nice to see scalpers get fucked.

Given some of the dialog in Koudelka and how dark things get sometimes, I'd bet a new entry would get content changed and cut, with some epic memes added to the mix, because why not.
Sounds great. If they aren't thinking of using Kickstarter then they are already off to a better start than most old devs, like Inafune - the sole creator of Mega man, or Iga - the sole creator of Castlevania, among others. The end result of these spiritual successor kickstarters is mostly the same, some dev who hasn't been relevant in decades comes back to cash in on nostalgia give fans what they've been asking for for years. but in the end the game is nothing like the original, looks like a chinese bootleg or worse, and usually comes with an unhealthy those of community drama attached. everyone loves a good trainwreck though

Cool, I'll be sure to check it out, once I'm done with the game.

PSX original, the PSP version is scaled really poorly and looks awful, in addition to not having the US versions' quality of life changes.

you are doing yourself a huge disservice.

Just finished the game with 100 hours and WHAT THE ACTUALY FUCK. I never missed a shot via the camera, what really made me quit is the freaking 2nd or so blank essence that you get. You have to hold it for 100 hours until it changes. Not only that, there is a shampoo magnus that changes after FUCKING 300 HOURS. And believe it or not, there is actually a guy who is so autistic he made a 100% speed run that took about 340 hours or so. Man, fuck that shit, I'll play Origins next and just finish it without caring…

What's your favorite JRPG for PS1? Mine would be Star Ocean. I had a handful of saves with over 150 hours, and I started playing it again now.

Not sure how the Euro compares with USD right now, but where I live the Spyro games are maybe $20 each at most, is not less. Pretty sure my favorite game store still has all three priced as $12, $18, and $14 respectively (and for complete copies too). And with Tomba 1, that's like $60 here in good shape (going off local prices); still pricy, but nowhere close to two hundred yuropbucks. Most expensive PS1 games I've known out here have been Suikoden II, Tales of Eternia, and Misadventures of Tron Bonne. Valkyrie Profile, Lunar 1 and 2 (complete boxed sets anyhow) and MML2 are also pretty high these days too, but still not quite at the tier those others are at just yet.

Some do, though it depends on perceived demand of the game, age of system, region, and company. Atlus has been a decent example on that front, giving every SMT and Persona on the PS2 (barring base P3) a reprint here in NA to help against previously low availability and high prices, some even occurring many years after the PS2 ceased being current or stocked for. And then there’s the occasion third party distributors that securing reprints, like VGP (or whatever that Canuck online vendor is) handling reprints of Infinite Space and Front Mission DS. But some games just don't seem to warrant that treatment, even from companies prone to reprinting (looking at Atlus, they've seemed disinterested in doing so for the likes of Steambot Chronicles, Endless Frontier, etc; could be some favoritism towards/lack of permissions issues games they've developed themselves compared to merely published for), and with most modern systems having a digital store of some sort, I suspect it's much cheaper for companies to make the games they handle have a digital version from the get-go, or add them digitally as a classic rerelease and ignore physical production costs of increasing availability.

Speaking of reprints, here's something funny: SH1 sits at about $45 preowned these days, even after having been reprinted. From what I’ve read, Midway even gave away free copies of it as a preorder bonus with Covenant, but with not many people preordering its sequel, that particular reprint didn't get very big. I think it got reprinted a second time (along with Covenant being reprinted at least once as well), and it’s still that much on the aftermarket. Makes me a bit curious as to just what sort of prices it used to see prior to initially being reprinted.

I still find it odd and stupid that, despite the game selling quite well in NA (though perhaps not at first, but given time), and even eventually getting a Greatest Hits run, that PAL apparently never got shipped more. Here it's like $20-30 at a half-decent shop. Maybe cheaper with some luck (found a $12 copy a few years back and informed a friend that was looking for one).

(Cont')

I would hope that, if a new one came out and was to be brought west, that XSEED would still have dibs on it (given they picked up FtNW after Midway apparently dropped the series after Covenant). But again, the localization climate's somewhat different now than in 2006, and for a series that reveled in being a mixture of dark and weird (with a fair amount of elements that the (((western media))) would likely kick up a stink over if it had initially come out these days instead of the early/mid 2000s), there's the risk that what might have flown back then, even with XSEED, might not now. Definitely a series that got by on it's relative obscurity as far as what it could get away with at the time out here, for all three PS2 games.

Yeah, the comment was something along the lines of "we respect what kickstarter is capable of, but do not think that our existing fans would want us going that route." As such, it’s likely an issue of trying to find a publisher that will let them be eccentric, make what they want, and/or not expect mainstream popularity.

Hard to pick between Wild Arms 2 and Tales of Eternia; really like both a lot. But it might be worth mentioning that there's still a lot I haven't gotten around to yet, even "must play" ones.

Polite sage for double post.

That's pretty expensive. I just ordered the Japanese version for $12 recently.

what is that?

SaGa Frontier by a mile

Yeah, compared to most PS2 games anyhow (compare with how quickly/badly the Gamecube got hit by scalpers). Still far from the most expensive thing on the system, but it says a fair bit when the aftermarket price winds staying close to/exceeding the original price. Admittedly though I mainly use local prices as a gauge for what things are at. Looking online it seems SH1 might have gotten cheaper recently, so maybe stores here have been slower to catch up (which is both good and bad, depending on the circumstances).

I would assume most JRPGs would be cheaper/sell better in their native environment than here, so that doesn't exactly shock me. Heard something in the past that Japan doesn't have quite the issue with resellers as well, though I'm not sure how true that really is myself.

Would be cheaper if I actually lived there and didn't have to import. It's only about 5 bucks on amazon.co.jp.

It's up to preference, but FFX's international release and remaster have the Dark Aeons(which are a PITA, honestly) and Penance as additional bosses. FFXII doesn't have much extra, but there are some functionality changes. Jobs, controlling Espers(which is alright, I guess), bazaar recipes being changed(YMMV), and I think some enemies drop different items. There is that fast forward option as well in IZJS and the remaster.

I've played through it numerous times. It's really not.
Again, it's up to preference which one you should play. FFX does actually have some extra content. If you want to play FFX-2, you should definitely play the international version or the remaster. It's the same game plus more. I'm still disappointed that only FFX/X-2 came to the Vita. I'd have bought a FFXII remaster day zero.

Yes, Atlus and Square do reprints every now and then. I got both Digital Devil Saga games for about 20€.

They did a very recent reprint of 7th Dragon III and a couple months ago got Yakuza 1 and 2 reprinted as well. I'd definitely recommend them. they also mark down the price on the package so you don't have to pay import fees in Europe
They got a bunch of old DS games reprinted last year, like Infinite Space, Trauma Center, some Dragon Quest games, etc. Some people asked them to for Pokemon HG/SS reprints, but Nintendo told them no. Funny how Square, Sega and Atlus have no problems reprinting games that may have sold like shit, but getting a reprint of a Pokemon game for a dead console is asking too much of fucking NOA.

It's definitely cheaper to just slap the game on your digital store than to call a bunch of different companies to deal with printing, shipping and retail. It's also not worth the effort to do reprints of 20 year old games just because a couple of collector's don't want to pay an exorbitant price for it. The only way this would work is if the whole old game reprinting thing was handled by one of the big 3, like Sony or something. But it would still be way too much hassle for very little profit.

It's about the same around here. Same goes for Covenant. Assuming you can even find them

That's a pretty nice find. As far as old games go, the only luck I had was with Resident Evil 2. Managed to buy a second hand copy in pristine condition for 5€.

I have no doubt that if a company like NISA or Treehouse got a hold of any of these games, they would get completely butchered. Change Koudelka's outfit, remove all Christian references, introduce a couple of game breaking bugs too. Oh, and don't forget the funny meemees and Trump jokes.
Also, something like these 2 images would probably cause a shitstorm these days. I just checked the beginning of SH1 on youtube out of curiosity Kek, no wonder people like the main character so much

It's like the devs came from an alterante reality or something. Best of luck to them.

A US copy of Persona 2: EP, costs about 50-100$. For that price you could probably get the Japanese version of P1, and the P2 duology, plus the cards (SMT TCG) that came with each game. There really is a huge price difference.

Also, since there's some FFXII discussion going on, how is the remake/remastered version? I don't know much about the game, other than the fact that the original MC wasn't supposed to be that fujoshi bait fag, and that the bunny girl is cute. How's the story? The steelbook is pretty nice, so I was wondering if it's worth buying or not.

I never played that, but I will download the iso and will around to trying it sometime

It does seem a bit odd that Nintendo would decline reprinting HGSS given how many fans liked Gen II back in the day, and how nostalgia-fueled demand has shot them to some of the most expensive preowned Pokemon games. And it's not like the DS games are incompatible with the 3DS. But maybe part of it has been that they felt like the Pokewalker would need to be reprinted as well and don't feel like going that far.

I've got an all around decent store I know of out where I am, as well as there being a small chain of multimedia places, so I've gotten some pretty good finds over the years, albeit more so in the past than now (not sure if it's stores getting smarter as prices rise or if it's a factor of me slowly getting less and less that I want to buy because I already have a copy).

It's kind of funny. While I wouldn't say that the Shadow Hearts series is anti-Christian (or rather "anti-Catholic"), it doesn't always paint the church in the best light, and being set on Earth itself, it's doesn't have the excuse of "oh it's an original ingame religion that just so happens to resemble Catholicism. In a way, the fact that the main translator of all three games (same guy each time) actually developed a personal liking for the games just from doing an initial read-through of the first game's script, and that Midway and XSEED didn't force censorship with them. Meanwhile, you had Mastiff claiming (in the same year that Shadow Hearts: Covenant came west), that La Pucelle: Tactics required censorship on the following grounds:
Not sure how much truth there is towards large companies being able to deal with such punishment (these days they sure don't seem to want to), but it just makes me think that if SH1 and Covenant later was able to get away with possible religious offenses, La Pucelle should have been able to as well. Also the fact that the guy responsible for the quote up there, an exec at Mastiff, is named "Bill Swartz", is pinging my J-dar.

Makes me wonder a bit how many moon Tales one could get at the equivalent of the current price for Tales of Eternia out here in the US. That game's like $130 complete last I actively checked

Lunatic Dawn: Passage of the Book

Looks like TMZ's out now.
romhacking.net/translations/3243/

SMT 1-2, snes or gba?
The second game might not be a problem but smt1 is somewhat hard to handle

bump

PS1

Could at least bump with content.

I actually had to double check that it actually made its way there. Anyhow, if you only know English, I think you're limited to the SFC originals as far as fan-translated versions go.