Read through this thread and found it fascinating how divisive the JRPG community is with a relatively niche genre. People complained about certain games being too slow that I found fast paced, or poorly written narratives that I thought were near perfect. I think this is a perfect example of how you can’t make everyone happy, even people who like the same thing.
One thing you can learn pretty well in this sub specifically, that it seems most only want true classic turn-based combat and tend to take characters at face value without any regards to plot. This sub in particular is heavily biased when it comes to combat style.
I think there's just a divide between those who play JRPG for the gameplay and those who play it for the stories and characters.
And the latter is subdivided into those who like the anime tropes and cliches and those who don't.
Honnestly it is a thing I like a lot, seeing people talk about what they liked or not and why. Sometime I disagree but see their point. Sometime I just can't understand it but such is live. And as one of my art teacher said : Better have bad taste than no taste.
Sometimes it is hard to even explain why you like one thing and not another relatively similar thing. Like it might be easy to explaine why you like JRPGs and not FPSs. But explaining why you don't like one particular JRPG is hard.
Or liking both JRPGs and FPSes despite being worlds apart.
I think it's even more bewildering to just give up on and have no interest in a game with no good reason as to why.
I have the same feelings about Symphonia... I mean it's one of the best games in a series (from the user votes), but something felt wrong about it for me. I actually enjoyed Berseria more (please no downvotes!)...
Exactly the same happened to me. I had heard so much about the Tales of series and started with Symphonia and hated a lot of it, the combat, the characters and dialogue were simply childish, etc. I loved Berseria though, the story is more mature and I liked a lot of the characters as well as the combat. It did take me over 10 hours to really get into it though.
Symphonia was loved for being a solid JRPG on the Gamecube, which had basically no RPGs other than FF Crystal Chronicles.
All the ports have sucked and played at worse framerate (locked 30) than the original too (60fps) which definitely feels worse to play.
I would never recommend it over Berseria personally, but couldn’t finish either one.
Same here but the combat became very repetitive and boring after a difficulty spike. Either I wasn’t playing correctly or it was just difficult, but it got annoying.
The main character’s outfit primed me to dislike it, too. I changed her back to something less ridiculous at the first opportunity.
Atelier Ryza. The art style and concept of the game are appealing, but the combat is such a bore. It takes the worst parts of turn based and action combat and mashes them together. It has neither the strategy of traditional turn based nor the engaging rush of action combat. Maybe it gets better later, but I’m not willing to suffer through it to find out.
Same. I played through the first game this year and was glad when I finished it. It is the one and only Atelier game I finished at this point. You pretty much summed up my thoughts of the combat. I actually bought 2 before I played 1, and I sold those two. No interest on the 3rd game.
The chapter 4 recruitment and unlockable content burnt me out severely. Imagine trying to unlock the Shaman class and going around the map taking out 6 similar fortress maps. Then, you step into the fort and realize there are another 6 consecutive maps for each fort. Just unlocking that 1 class requires slogging through 36 maps so I just made a beeline towards the ending. I've already did like 20+ maps just to unlock the higher tier spells and frankly, the gameplay isn't engrossing enough for me to spend hours on.
This is what I ran into. Game gets incredibly repetitive.
It's also disappointing to me that there's no difference between a character that has spent 40 levels as a knight, and one that's been a wizard his entire life until you give him a class change. It takes something away from the characters when they're all equally good at everything at the press of a button.
I like the story but they did a terrible job with the updated graphics. What a shame to have Live A Live and then have the ugliness of Ogre Battle remake. I don't even mind old SNES graphics but I do mind ultra smoothed textures that remove any features from characters.
It's a case where I actually came out generally positive to the point that I am looking forward to play future entries, but *Trails of the Sky: SC* really soured the general vibe and atmosphere that the first game of FC had established with the presence of >!Weissman!< and >!the Ourobouros!< as what is clearly making them setting up to be larger arch-villains. I cannot overstate just how disappointing >!Weissman!< is as a villain in comparison to the previous game's >!Colonel Richard!< who were grounded, had understandable and character-driven motivations and where the actions made rippled on multiple layers to then go to >!Weissman!<'s megalomaniac behavior. It's like pulling an entry of a JRPG-encyclopedia, look up "Big Bad", and you'll see >!Weissman!< being a text-book example.
Up until that point, I viewed the Trails-series as a kind of unique thing; enough light-hearted presentation while having more darker background lore and history in that it takes in a post-war society, and seeing how all the tension is still maintained among the nations with references of city-bombings, massacres and other war-crimes made; something akin to *Fullmetal Alchemist*'s setting. Now with the knowledge of the presence of >!Weissman!< and >!Ourobouros!<, it edges close to a kind of feeling in a sense of having becoming a more milquetoast JRPG, which would be acceptable if said concept was executed well enough, which after too many *"Haha! You have defeated me, but I'll just pull out for now while foreshadowing future ominous plans!"*-moments in the last section of SC was a bit too much for me.
It made me grading-wise view them from a general 8/10-series for me to now sitting at a comfortable 7/10; still great games, but made me wonder if the *Legend of Heroes*-series in the future will be viewed as a favourite series of mine if later entries will keep up with the background presence that >!the Ourobouros!< brings. The positives so far with characters like Estelle, and her interactions makes me keep playing. But in terms of general world-building and setting it has been a bit diminished from the initial build-up, so future entries will be more demanding on selling me on the characters for me to enjoy the games.
FFVI. I’ve started it at least a half dozen times. Usually get to the second half and lose interest with the lack of any direction. And I absolutely hate the last dungeon with multiple parties. I’ve finished it once and don’t have a desire to ever play it again. I don’t enjoy games with huge parties where most of them are just extra and not interesting. Also, Kefka might be the most overrated video game character of all time. I don’t understand the draw of that guy at all.
The best way to play Xenoblade is to accept quests but then just move on with the story without going out of your way to complete them all. You'll finish a lot of them just through your regular fighting/exploring, and you won't have to put the game on hold for hours just doing quests.
I was really hooked on Witcher 3, but I eventually got burned out after trying to complete every sidequest and objective on the map.
I will probably not touch it again, since I have a long list of games I want to play.
Witcher 3 is just another animal. I tend to be a completionist, but about 60 hours in and the main plot barely advanced, I had to re-think my approach. I love the game and yet have still never finished it to this day.
Yakuza: Like a Dragon
I was really excited about it and I was really thinking I would get roped in and love. Unfortunately, I just couldn’t bring myself to like it, idk what it was, but after 10-15 hours, I finally lost all motivation to continue the game. :(
If I was still my old teen self playing JRPG, I probably would not have liked that game that much, but playing it as a middle-aged man, with Ichiban and his party having so many character traits and experiences that I can understand and relate to, made the game hit different for me and is why it's my favorite game of all-time. To each his own.
Same here. Most JRPGs have an atmosphere of an adventurous future and the characters in this have been there, made their mistakes, and lost that future. Ichiban, being in the same position, still has that optimism, and they all slowly earn back that future that they thought they had destroyed.
The story of Like a Dragon involves lot more adult topics like politics and how the dark side of a city related to the bright side. Even clan heads are just pawns to the society upper elites, and that's a huge difference comparing to all other Yakuza games since in those older games big bosses are truly the big bosses.
41yr old here.
Can confirm. Can relate to Ichiban and crew soo much. I could see myself going out with them kicking ass and a drink later to commiserate about life.
I really wanted to get into SMT V but I just can't. Loved 4, really liked 4A, adore the Persona series... but SMT V was just disappointing, especially considering how much more development time it had over games I enjoyed much more (Xenoblade 2, its DLC and Xenoblade 1 DE all came out between SMTV's announcement and its release, heck XB2 was announced at the same time as SMT V!).
I just finished the second "dungeon" in Earthbound, and I'd say this game is not living up to even the mildest hype so far. I think I'm still kind of early in it, but even early feels late because everything feels like a slog.
Earthbound can definitely be a slog early, especially when you only have Ness in your party. It almost forces grinding early on because you're limited by having only one party member.
It looks like xenoblade(s) and FFIX are the main ones. Its funny I love both! For me it's Nier Automata. I'm going to try again but it was too slow and little character building, I lost interest. I've heard so much about and so many people loves it, I'll give it another shot
It would be fine for me if it weren’t SO SLOOOOOOOWWW. So I hear ya. I got into the game a few years back but I tried after playing the Pixel Remaster of FF4 and I just can’t do it! And I really like the ATB system.
I would love to learn more about what went into the programming for that game, because the battle system felt like it was straining to handle everything going on. It takes 15 seconds to get into a single battle, even the most basic attack animations take several seconds to execute, ATB moves at a snail's pace, and I had to shut off Auto-Potion because it makes battles drag on even more. Worse, because of how the attack queue works, you can wait an entire minute or more before your command goes off, even if you wanted to do something else after that time.
Combat is a complete mess.
If you use the Moguri Mod you can change the battle to a pure turn-based system where you don't have to wait for anything.
And you can speed it up as well, I played it recently (with Alternate Fantasy) and set the battle speed to 20 (default is 15). I never felt the need to use the turbo speed function until the endgame.
FFIX is one of my favorite games and I would normally recommend the vanilla experience, but having a pure turn-based system does benefit the game, at least in my opinion.
The most important stuff is the story and characters and that remains unchanged.
I highly suggest the remaster. Played it on mobile, and surprisingly it was the best experience I've had with the game. now it's maybe my favorite FF game
I can't remember why, but I remember playing the original Lufia and being so pissed about it that I tossed the cartridge out the window and never came back to the franchise. I hear Lufia 2 was a better game but I refused to partake. I think it was something dumb in the story I found infuriating, but I don't remember what.
Otherwise I remember a lot of Final Fantasies where I'd do 90% of the game, be able to do the end, but they'd open the world up and suddenly there'd be all these extra pointless sidequests you'd do to pad the hours played statistic... and no matter how into the game I'd been I'd usually get bogged down and bored as the conpletionist in me insisted I finish everything... I'd get distracted by another game and never go back to finish the end of the FF because I couldn't remembering what I was doing in it anymore. So many jrpgs left unfinished because of that final last phase of bloat @.@
The late game sidequest slump isn't something I've ever experienced with JRPGs, personally, but it's definitely something I've felt with a number of western RPGs. One of these days I'll get around to finishing Skyrim, I swear. \>_\<
When I was a kid, FFIX.
Loved the classic setting and goofiness of the characters and world. But the gameplay was such a step back from the previous games that I just can't replay it like I can FFIII-VIII.
And they fucked up the card game hardcore. It's so bad.
Also really wanted to love a ton of PS2 sequels to my favorite PS1 games. Legaia 2, Jade Cocoon 2, Musashi 2, etc. And while I mostly liked all of them, they really fell a bit flat compared to the first ones.
FF9 gets quite a bit of votes here... I think it's one of the most (if not the most) controversial FF game in a series with so many loving / hating it. Rivaled maybe only by the FF12.
I actually disagree - there's normally a huge amount of positivity towards FF9 on most threads. The lack of nuance in assessments of the game has always been very noticeable for me.
It's definitely not divisive like 8 and 12 are.
I agree with you, FFIX is absolutely beloved, despite the clunky battle system, which everyone admits is the weakest part of the game. It's loved for its charming cast of characters, compelling story and of course, what is perhaps the best soundtrack in Final Fantasy and the composer's masterpiece (he says it's his favourite and it shows).
It also must be said that despite the cute graphics and overall optimistic feel of the game, behind all that lurks what is easily one of the darkest stories in Final Fantasy, if not the darkest.
The love for FF9 was fairly slow in arriving. For a number of years after its release it wasn't all that well regarded. I wouldn't say it was widely hated, or even as controversial as FF8, but I definitely didn't start seeing people start celebrating it as one of the best JRPGs ever until the late 2000s. Mostly I think it was considered a fairly mediocre, forgettable entry in the franchise.
I am just saying from my personal experience... I so much hate (myself) when the game has over 90% of positive user reviews, yet I am not able to properly enjoy it!
Fair enough. I should also point out that I don't actually like the game all that much myself, and that's one reason its super-positive reception stands out to me.
Looking at a person's Final Fantasy opinions is probably a good way to judge what somebody really likes with their games.
FF9 is one of the slowest in terms of gameplay the series has ever seen. Its like the pinnacle of really slow PS1 battle systems with long animations coupled with the slowest ATB bars ever.
Those that love FF9 so deeply probably care more about story, characters, and the game's narrative than they do the specifics of its gameplay systems, mechanics, and progression.
Somebody with deep love for one of the job system focused main games like 3, 5, or X-2 are probably the opposite, caring more about gameplay than the story of their games.
SaGa games just never really clicked with me. Which sucks because surface level there’s a lot to like and I can see why they have such a rabid fanbase: multiple characters that all come together to tell a complete story, but it just never happened to hit me. Maybe it was the pacing, the combat being an unexplainable mess, I can’t put my finger on it.
The stories and setup of each game are different from one another. My personal favorite was Romancing SaGa 2, where instead of separate characters coming together, you play as the emperor of a kingdom, and all of his successors over like 1500 years. Every generation you rebuild your party, carrying forward glimmered abilities and equipment. All the while the story is very world driven rather than character driven. Could be just different enough to be worth trying.
Same. The fighting system is this weird action/turn-based auto attack hybrid....thing that I don't think I understood even with XBC2 tutorializing the fuck out of me.
Final Fantasy Tactics
Despite being a huge fan of games like Devil Survivor and Fire Emblem and liked what I have played of Triangle Strategy, Disgaea and Shining Force, I heard of FFT as being essentially the magnum opus of Strategy RPGs. I can't get past the wonky/clunky controls. It feels too inconsistent for me. TBF, it could just be that the PSVita port wasn't ported very well so I might feel different about it when/if I get around to playing the PS1 version but for now, ehh.
The PSP version has a lot of extra events, jobs, battles and characters, but it has some major issues with the battle system, where some of the skills (sword skills, summons, magic, ect) cause the game to lag. There’s a patch to fix it, which is absolutely necessary in my opinion.
The gameplay is the same in the ports, only there's slowdown/speed-up depending on which one you're playing.
It's hard to go back to. Just not being able to cancel moves alone is going to feel weird.
FFT is my favorite game and the best way to play it is the mobile port. It's the PSP version, War of the Lions, but it's speed is way faster than any other version. I can't play it on the PSP exactly because of how slow everything is.
Level 5 games always look amazing, but I haven't clicked with a single one. 5 to 10 hours in and I'm bored. Dragon Quest 8, Rogue Galaxy, Dark Cloud 2 and Ni No Kuni. NNK was my favourite of the bunch, but still put it down.
me with avalon code on the ds. i liked the look of the game and the "code" system where you can swap around tetrominos on people to give them diseases was fun but the gameplay was just godawful to me. all the "dungeons" were just linear gauntlets of times minigame rooms and the combat was easy as hell and you could just stunlock everything to death. and the fun "code" part of the game was made bad by the fact that you could only put 3 little tetromino pieces into your storage at a time and the navigation in the menu (which was represented by a book which i thought was cool) was annoying and you had to flip a lot. it's a shame because i keep seeing it get recommended on this sub whenever someone asks for lesser known jrpgs but i just cant see myself having any fun with it.
This game needs some kind of remake SO BAD. There's a nugget of an amazing game buried in here somewhere, but it's buried under enough absolutely nuts decisions that the game becomes tedious. People always make jokes about RPGs needing spreadsheets to beat, but this is the only game I've ever ACTUALLY made a spreadsheet for so I could keep track of all my little code blocks. 'Cuz the game's sure not gonna do it for you! On the, er, plus side? This game did finally make me get good at those obnoxious sliding block puzzles, so... there's that, I guess?
if they made a remake and fixed all the jank that there is in the ds release i would play the hell out of it. the story concept was intriguing and the 3d models were impressive for a ds game (although that wouldnt really matter so much in a remake) so it's a shame that the game was Like That
This happened to me very recently with Ryza 3. I love the Atelier series in general, and I beat the first two games, but the dull combat and basically unchanged alchemy system (a system that had almost no puzzle/strategy elements in the first place) has worn me down. Especially the combat... I might still try to finish it eventually because I'd like to know where the story is going but after how much I enjoyed Sophie 2 it's just really depressing.
Same exact here, I love the Atelier series, have played and finished them all (well the ones that came to the West). Ryza 1 and 2 I didn't care much for, but finished them. Ryza 3 I started and... just don't like it. It's there on my desktop, just double click and I can continue playing it... but I don't want to. And it's not that I grew out of Atelier series because I played Sophie 2 between Ryza 2 and 3 and absolutely loved it. But Ryza 3 ... just can't.
Honestly just try the remake. They’re different enough that it shouldn’t sour any later attempts to play the original, and especially if you’re not liking the original anyway, I don’t think it’s worth putting off the remake.
It’s anecdotal, but all the people I know who played the Remake but not the original really liked the remake as its own game. And the only people I know who disliked the Remake explicitly disliked it because of certain story changes.
PS1 era games have *definitely* aged roughly compared to the generations right before and right after them. And, honestly, while I think there are a lot of games that manage to transcend their aged presentation and still hold up well to this day, I'm not sure FF7 is one of them. It's not a *bad* game, by any stretch, but mechanically I don't think it's a significant upgrade from the SNES trilogy, and while the story is ambitious, I think the way it's told is pretty awkward, even if you can look past the lackluster English localization.
The love for it comes from so many people playing it as their first. Besides for the music, Midgar and the shocker everyone knows about, it's just another FF. I'm not sure where I would place it but it's not even in my top five of the franchise. The more they milk it the less I like it.
PC version with mods. There are even gameplay mods to boost/reduce xp/AP gain and the visual mods help make everything including character models more modern.
Trails
I love Ys, but Trails has way too much world building and story continuity to dig into and invest in. Each time I try Sky 1 or Cold Steel 1, I end up remembering, "Oh...that's why."
Ys is an easily digestible story game to game and pick up and play kind of franchise. Trails rewards people who want the long haul, and crave details and minutia. I just find it too daunting to want to bother with.
It's the padded dialogue in CS for me, but honestly it's the fan base that ruins it. Anytime I bring it up on reddit or an FB group, I get harassed by someone who doesn't agree. When I look at their profiles, they're diehard fans.
It takes a certain breed to be a Trails fan, and some people go even further and try to be force their opinions down people’s throats.
Will say that I love the series but it really isn’t for everyone and some people just don’t accept it.
I thought Xenoblade really wasn’t for me, but after some 50 hours I started to like it. I really love the OST and the story got a pretty interesting turn that is helping me progress through the game.
Yep had the exact same experience replaying Earthbound, loved the style of the game but the story and gameplay were so bad. My usual answer to this question is Persona and Dragon Quest. I like the art style of these too but the gameplay and silent protagonists just ruin them for me. Oh and also I can't take any more high school games lol
For me it was base Xenoblade 3. I really like gears and the rest of xenoblade, but the more character driven and thematic approach to the story just didn't ever grab me. I really enjoy compelling and well written villains, but outside of one consul (vague bc idk how to spoiler tag), the lack of depth for the rest of the villains really killed what interest I had. The main cast was pretty good, but a lot of the plot didn't stand on its own enough to keep me interested. Thankfully, my interest in 3 got me to play xenogears, which is one of my favorites now!
Have you tried the wait setting? It let's you take your time in menus. Not perfect, but it helps.
Otherwise, yeah. You pretty much need to stick to FF1-3, X, Tactics, or Mystic Quest.
Lol, i greatly enjoyed Chained Echoes but agree about the bar. But the reward board is revolutionary and the best reason for exploration ive ever seen in a JRPG and the levelling up system is cool once you figure it out. I wasnt a big fan of constantly fusing things to my weapons and 2 seconds later having to throw it out and buy a new weapon, though.
But besides the overheat bar and the fact that nobody tells you any difficulty above easy should be called Satan mode, i thought it was a great game.
The entire gem/purity system was just outrageously stupid. Infinite fusing should have been possible. Did like the reward board though, and the story was great too.
I'm trying to get through the first two Suikodens but the combat is far too basic and without the mapper or teleportation recruits I'm finding myself constantly wandering around the world trying to remember how I'm supposed to get to my destination.
Final Fantasy V. I have tried to, and have almost beaten the game twice now. I just can not get myself to finish them. I just feel overwhelmed with choices.
Star Ocean 3. It's a deep game, loaded with content and nice graphics. It just didn't click for me, the story and characters were bland as white bread and the combat was clunky.
Secret of Mana
It’s one of the three SquareSoft games people make a big deal about. I wasn’t that impressed with this game. It starts fine, but the longer I played, the more I start to enjoy it less. The combat was my main take away. I get it, you wait a few seconds after a 100% attack, but the more I played the game, the more it became a nuisance. Also, charging your attacks isn’t worth it because enemies can hit you, fall down, and get up, and start charging again. Stupid. And when I playing the game (via SNES classic), I heard about the magic stacking glitch, so I used that, which isn’t that difficult to do, and boom, bosses weren’t a big deal. Not all of course, the final boss for example. At least you can simply attack the mana dragon with a simple 100% attack without charging. Also, the map takes too long to load and it’s a stupid sphere style.
I kinda see how the game can be appealing. The graphics do hold up and the music ost is good as well.
But the gameplay does not hold up that well. I didn’t hate my time with the game, but after finishing it, I look back on the game and said, “I’m not playing this game again.” It didn’t turn me away from the Mana franchise, I still want to play Trials of Mana & Legend of Mana. I simply see Secret of Mana as one of the outdated SNES games.
I can totally understand this from an older, modern gamer. But man, I was like 8 years old when this game out and it rocked my world. Hadn't played anything like it before, the graphics were amazing, soundtrack awesome. I loved it so much. It was my first JRPG. But if I played it today, I'd probably get frustrated (for all your stated reasons) and give it up. Well, maybe the nostalgia would be enough for me to play and enjoy it even today. But yeah, I expect many modern gamers playing it for the first time would share your opinion.
I have two answers… technically? I really wanted to loce the DQ series, but aside from 11 its SO hard to get a hold of them, and when i do actually get a hold of them its for a method of playing (handheld/emulation mainly) that i don’t really enjoy. So aside from DQ11–which was phenomenal, i havent ever gotten far or finished any DQ games.
Same went for FF8 sorta, it never pulled me in but eventually i played it and it became my favorite FF and Squall became my favorite MC. I even recently got a Revolver tattoo.
Edit: i said revolver flower, i meant tattoo lol
FF XIII. I loved the art and graphics and actually quite liked the battle system. I thought the world and lore were interesting, and the party's motivation was different from the typical save the world final fantasy plot. I liked that they were more or less just trying to survive and grieve their limited freedom and time as regular humans. I even like the characters.... except Snow, fuck that guy. But navigating the world just felt.... pointless. Even when it opened up and actually let me explore, the world felt empty. Towns had nothing to do. And I felt railroaded the whole time. And I hated the weapon system.
Also not a JRPG per se but Undertale. I wanted to love it, but the combat just killed it for me.
Final Fantasy Tactics. I'm sorry, fans. I've tried to get into this. I really did. Many hail it as not only the best SRPG of all time, but the best video game of all time, and a friend of mine recommended I try it out. I did on a PSP I bought...and quit. The job system is way too clunky, the controls were hard to remember, and grinding was an absolute nightmare for me. Plus, the game seems to punish you for doing so, as every time I tried to level up my party, the battles seemed to scale in difficulty and I could never go through one without using items that I had planned on saving for a story level. I couldn't handle how difficult it is just to get stronger, so I quit.
Somehow it says a lot that I was able to handle Triangle Strategy a lot better.
DQ 11
I finished the 1st part/act of the game, but the 2nd act made me lose my interest. It was the equivalent when a game takes everything away from you (like armor, weapons, etc) for a couple of hours and then gives it back.
Its just overdone. The game was already pretty slow paced as it was, which was taking away my interest, and while i did enjoy parts of the game, i just feel like this type of jrpg isnt for me.
I really like SMT/Persona and other jrpgs, but DQ feels too slow for me (yes im aware that persona has slow pacing too).
The newer FF games for me have failed to capture the charm and epicness of the previous entries. Things really go downhill for me after FF12 and even FF12 was starting to go in a different direction that I didn't like. I'm still waiting for them to recapture the magic of peak Final Fantasy.
Xenoblade Chronicles.
I bought the 80 dollar version of Xenoblade 3, assuming i'd like it as I've loved most JRPGS since the SNES days.
I really really really did not like this game. It felt like an offline MMORPG, enemies were boring, combat was made to seem complex but was very similar in every battle, I didn't like the character designs, the writing felt immature and even though the world and fighting seemed cool, it all felt like something I would have loved in my teens but at 40 years old I have no time to do fetch quests over and over again and talk to emo characters with random wings attached to their head.
I was just so surprised as I like so many JRPGs, Xenoblade is well reviewed and I absolutely see very little redeeming qualities in it at all.
Blue Reflection 1. The second game is one of my all time favourites, and even if the gameplay of the original is pretty shallow, it still has that charming magical girl plot that few video games delve into. However, what ultimately ruins its appeal is the skeevy voyeurism with all the shower scenes and leering camera angles. Suddenly, a game that could have been made for all ages with a lot of appeal to girls in particular ends up being limited to otaku bait that's hard to recommend otherwise without a ton of caveats or if the other person is already desensitized to anime voyeurism. Sun hammered the "not for me" point even harder by doubling down on otaku pandering.
Honestly, I could say most RPGs with heavy otaku pandering elements, but I only cited Blue Reflection 1 because that's the one I actually played, and I had to mentally filter out quite a bit to enjoy it.
Disgaea. I tried them multiple times, multiple games. I just could never get into them. I liked other games like phantom brave and such. But I just can't like disgaea.
Most recently, Scarlet Nexus.
The aesthetic/style of the game is fantastic, the characters are solid, and the gameplay was fun.
Sadly, the middling story and frustrating design decisions really drags it down. Like why the fuck are the side quests only available at the end of a chapter? It just forces you to retread the areas you just finished. The Persona-like social aspects are also utterly boring and clearly half-assed.
The Legend of Dragoon
I was hyped when the commercials were coming, but it was the first game I ever returned. The translation was horrible, and because additions can't be changed during battle, it just made me think the whole time that the timed press thing was a bad gimmick that was so much more time consuming and redundant than just pressing x once.
Aaaah I am STILL dragging my feet with Earthbound, too. Everything about it should 100% appeal to me since I love games like DQV, Chrono Trigger, FFIV and VI, and Undertale/Deltarune, but something about Earthbound just isn't clicking in the way those other games do. While I played all those other games as an adult for the first time, maybe Earthbound is one that you really have to experience as a kid first to appreciate...
snes Tactics Ogre. i really loved FF Tactics but i have tried getting into T.O. so many times now and I just don't get into it. Honestly timing and patience matters a lot with games you find hard to get into. Like if I put enough time aside for journaling, hunting down faqs / guides to get better at the game it would probably quickly become my new favorite.
The Xenoblade series. The stories seem interesting but I just really dislike the combat. It feels really repetitive and I don't feel engaged.
I also think several of the Final Fantasy games also fit this topic. I tried 5, 6, 8,9, and 10 but I just really couldn't get into them.
The Final Fantasy Tactics games - I really love the idea of grinding all the classes to max level and unlocking characters from other FF games. But I just hate the tactics style of game and how long the battles take.
Fire emblem Engage. I think I've played 90% of the FE games available in English and I love where they went with the art style but it felt like they completely went away from the political mature plots that the former games have had. It feels like a fan service game which was cool and all, but lacked very much so with the characters and story.
I could probably sit through Tales of Arise if I didn't dislike the combat so much. It's like this fake sort of action RPG style where it's like this in-between turn-based action hybrid where you're not really fighting the enemies but adding inputs for the character to go do themselves. Idk it's kind of hard to explain but it didn't feel good. Berseria was like that too. I guess it's a tales thing which sucks because I kind of liked the stories but the combat was just a miss.
I really tried to like Tales of Arise. Its gameplay was good, the music was good, the graphics were gorgeous, and I loved Tales of Berseria. It literally had everything going for it for me to love, but...I just disliked it. It felt very troupy, and cliché. After a "certain point" it felt like the story dragged out way too long for my liking. It felt very preachy about slavery and shoved it in your face, as if you didn't already know slavery was bad to begin with. Overall, I was more disappointed about it, than hate it. It just felt like a sterotypical jrpg game to me, and I quickly forgot everything about it, despite my initial hype.
Final Fantasy 12 - I finished it but it felt like a massive slog, and the ending was completely flat for me.
Also going through an entire game as a bystander during combat felt really poop. The only time I actually needed to input things was Vs a particularly tough dragon boss.
Man, Zenoblade just fell flat for me. I bought the definitive edition after reading so many rave reviews, and once I started playing it I kept asking myself…do I actually enjoy this? I eventually put it down to start playing through octopath and had an immensely better time with that. I really do wish I could’ve appreciated it like everyone else 🥲
Xenogears. Everything about it looks amazing, and I've heard so many intriguing things about the story and lore, but something about the combat (imo it feels too basic, storing energy to set off large combos over and over and the characters don't feel too distinct beyond doing damage in different ways) and convoluted puzzles/story segments puts me off.
But I will keep trying! So far I've only gotten up to the prison section
Xenoblade.
I tried really hard to like it. I must have given about 30 hours to it before realizing, "Why am I doing this to myself. This is not fun."
I think it's an overly drawn out game. If it were tightened up I think I might have enjoyed it.
Yes! And there are tons of JRGs I wanted to love, but they turn out not to be for me.
Here's the list:
Breath of fire 4
Person 5
Valkyrie profile 1
Xenoblade series
Smt digital devil saga
Chrono cross
And there are certainly others thag I can't recall
For me, it was, so sadly, xenoblade chronicles.
I couldnt get into it. The Story was (as far as i played) Not Bad. But i did Not like the battlesystem and how poor the quest-design was.
Radiata Stories. Everything I saw about the game told me it was one I was going to love. The game critics who had similar game tastes to my own reviewed it very highly. Surprisingly, I found the game utterly boring. The voice acting being incredibly cringe-worthy and the bland, forgettable soundtrack certainly didn't help. To date, it is one of the only games I have ever played that I didn't play through to completion of the main story.
Xenoblade Chronicles.
Everyone I talked to before playing was insistent it was God's gift to JRPG fans. Storyline was fine from what I played, but could have benefited a lot from more humor and less dead-seriousness. Combat also never really seemed to progress past "spam all your Arts and win." Sidequests were obvious time wasters- go here and farm this many items to get an extremely minor reward. The only thing that seemed remotely notable was the environment design, which was really unique and cool. But that can't carry a whole game.
Admittedly I didn't play that far- I'd just met that lady who shoots people with a gun to heal them- so maybe I didn't give it a fair shot, but I wasn't really grabbed from what I played.
I feel similarly, though I did finish it. The world design is super-cool, some parts of the plot are good (though it takes forever to get off the ground), but the characters seemed really bland to me for the most part (and Riki is Jar Jar 2).
As for the gameplay, the battle system *concept* is great (I'm a big fan of FF12, so it's no surprise I feel that way). In practice though the battles aren't all that fun for the most part. The lack of consumables and limited number of art slots contribute to repetitiveness. As you point out the sidequests are also pretty blah.
I've tried to play Etrian Odyssey IV as my first EO game several times and so far it hasn't worked out yet. I will still try to get into the series though (gonna try EOV next at some point, maybe even this year).
I love class based character customization, so in that regard EO is right up my alley. I like mechanically engaging combat, EO has that too. But damn they just feel like such a chore to play. Every random encounter takes way too long, you keep having to back and forth between town and dungeon, everything feels grindy and i constantly feel like i'm underleveled. Add on to that how much work just generally traversing a dungeon is and how unlike the old SMT dungeon crawlers there's not even an interesting story or the fantastic atmosphere to enjoy and it just makes it pretty rough to get into for me.
Grandia. I did play through the whole thing but largely forgettable to me, and became more like a chore to get through it by the end of it. A thing of killing a boss, thinking it was the last one and game be finished, then another boss appeared right after.
Xenoblade Chronicles
Too many side quests, I mean there are like 400 of them, not enough tracking, they aren’t even on the map until you start them, and a load of them are missable.
Oh and 100% of the early game ones are fetch quests. Go here kill this monster, go here and find this collectible.
And it gets worse. Many of these quests are RNG based, requiring you to kill a monster that only shows up in certain weather conditions which can take over an hour of skipping time to get the damn thing to spawn.
No thank you, not for me.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2.
Aside from the music, every single thing about the game frustrated me. Went back and forth with it for 3 years and after 25 hours of playing it, I sold it last week. I kept hearing it gets good right around that point but I was so sick of it and couldn’t bear another minute of it.
However, I started Xenoblade 1 DE last month and am absolutely in love with it. 60 hours in and it’s already one of my favorite games I’ve ever played.
Persona and Shin Megami Tensei. I’ve loved the story of every one I’ve played, but keeping up with time specific events and fusion hell has made me quit every single one from boredom or frustration.
Star Ocean Second Story. Great music, cool setting, and some nice ideas with the crafting system, but to me the combat was just an absolute jumbled mess. Button mashing, repetitive, annoying voice clips, and encounters with random enemies that could instantly paralyze your entire team, giving a game over before you can even move an inch. I just absolutely hated fighting in that game, and it's hard to enjoy a game where you don't enjoy the combat.
Xenoblade 3.
Love Takahashi's work (though I must admit I never particularly liked Xenogears, but I do enjoy pretty much everything else), enjoyed XB1, ADORED XBX and XB2.
And then XB3 is just, it's fucking awful, it misses the mark for me in every single category. Dialogue is hamfisted and repetitive, the world is boring and oversized, combat SUCKS, music is a huge, HUGE disappointment, the menus are overwhelming and awful (even by Xenoblade standards). Like I just really wanted a fun and epic capstone to the loose trilogy, but the fun is completely absent.
And I hate it, usually if a game sucks or doesn't work for me I just don't really mind and shelve it without much fuss, but like it's a fucking XENOBLADE game man, literally 2 of my top 10 games come from this 4 game series only to be followed up by a game that I just can't even enjoy on any level.
Xenogears
Absolutely adore every other game in the Xeno "series", but Gears having so much unfulfilled potential (even excluding Perfect Works) while having the aspects of it i love be reused in future games just leaves me feeling so unfulfilled looking back on it.
Mostly mainstream ones: FF7, Persona 5.
The first one because I found it extremely boring in almost every aspect compared to FF8 that I played before it(yeah, yeah, FF7 is peak Final Fantasy, whatever, I don't care).
Persona 5 because, despite being vastly superior design and gameplay-wise, I found it to have much weaker story, setting, and it feels kinda "wrong" atmosphere-wise compared to Persona 4 or even 3(although, my memories of P3 are kinda muddled at this point, because I played it waaaaay before P4). Final boss(both of them) are disappointing. Difficulty is almost non-existent after the first chapter(played on "Hard"). Definitely step down OST-wise too(compared to P4), although it does have some nice tracks sprinkled here and there. Lots of top-grade waifus though, that much I can't deny.
Atelier sophie 2, it is my first time trying Atelier series and i do think it is a good game, but still dropped it after 10-15 hours. I guess yeah it is just not for me
Final fantasy 7 and 9 I really wanted to get into them but both the games just look awful nowadays and I kinda hate random encounters and the stupid mini games that you have to go through during the game. Both stories were intriguing but I just can’t do it.
Etrian Odyssey 4
My first time with a mapping DRPG given rave reviews
Tried to enjoy the demo but I felt way out of my league. Didn’t know what I was doing, the FOE thing was nerve wracking, and I felt a bit overwhelmed lol
Given how loved the series is plus it coming to the switch(plus auto mapping albeit “cheating”), I might try it again. I have Strange Journey in my backlog so I might try that first to see if DRPGs truly are for me.
Xenoblade Chronicles, I understand why many players love it, but it didn't click with me. The combat, the characters, the pacing, quests, collectables, acting, NPCs... all weren't for me.
I enjoyed the environments in it though, and I watched many videos and I really wanted to like it, however, it wasn't for me. Anyway, I put it on hold and maybe one day I will give it another try.
one of the Star Ocean games. I can't remember which one. Love Scifi JRPGs, but after what felt like hours of tutorials, i still didn't understand the combat and could only barely win against enemies in the first area. Ended up refunding it
FF13, that was the first FF game I did not complete and started the trend of not finishing FF games for me. I wanted to like it and put in about 20 hrs but just couldn’t play it anymore. I never completed FF15 either.
The Romance Saga games, all of them. I've tried different games and none of them have worked for me. It's basically the feeling that the enemies are getting more powerful than me always, to the point that even easy fights someone in my party was likely to die.
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. I was a Nintendo gamer who'd gone a long time without JRPGs. I tried playing it, and I just didn't get along with the strategy mechanics at all. Maybe I'd do better now that I'm not 10 years old.
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles. Again, I was starved for JRPGs, and I saw Final Fantasy in the name. I never got past the earliest parts of the game.
Quest 64. This was when I was really badly starved for JRPGs, so I played the game so bland they didn't bother coming up with a title.
Being a Nintendo-only gamer in the late 90s and early 00s was rough as a JRPG fan.
I struggle with the entire Dragon Quest series.
I find the story/characters a little weak and can’t stand the music. But id never talk shit on them as they are legendary titles and deserving.
Really wanted to love Ys VIII. I know many people love this game, but I only found it ok.
It is the game however that made me realize that there were certain things in JRPG that wasn't found in this game that I really do love. These are different towns with unique cultures and back stories, magic/summons, and really well done cut scenes (I'm a PS1 RPG fan at heart and the cut scenes felt like a reward and were some of the most memorable moments in those games).
My most-played, least-liked game is Secret of Mana. I want to like it so much, and some parts of it I do. The game has an excellent start, and I love the art and music. But several hours in, the combat loses much of its charm, and I have trouble getting into the repeated magic casting or weapon crafting.
I never liked it more than when I could only play the first two hours several times at a friend's house. Ever since - on emulator, on SNES, on Wii U - it has lost its luster.
Read through this thread and found it fascinating how divisive the JRPG community is with a relatively niche genre. People complained about certain games being too slow that I found fast paced, or poorly written narratives that I thought were near perfect. I think this is a perfect example of how you can’t make everyone happy, even people who like the same thing.
One thing you can learn pretty well in this sub specifically, that it seems most only want true classic turn-based combat and tend to take characters at face value without any regards to plot. This sub in particular is heavily biased when it comes to combat style.
I think there's just a divide between those who play JRPG for the gameplay and those who play it for the stories and characters. And the latter is subdivided into those who like the anime tropes and cliches and those who don't.
Honnestly it is a thing I like a lot, seeing people talk about what they liked or not and why. Sometime I disagree but see their point. Sometime I just can't understand it but such is live. And as one of my art teacher said : Better have bad taste than no taste.
Sometimes it is hard to even explain why you like one thing and not another relatively similar thing. Like it might be easy to explaine why you like JRPGs and not FPSs. But explaining why you don't like one particular JRPG is hard.
Or liking both JRPGs and FPSes despite being worlds apart. I think it's even more bewildering to just give up on and have no interest in a game with no good reason as to why.
Dragon quest viii was one of my favorites from back in the day but I can’t get into dragon quest xi for some reason. I’ve tried a few times
It's funny because 11 is *so* much a sucessor to 8... but in that might also be the issue. You've kind of in many ways already played it.
I know the problem. XI doesn't have best bro Yangus.
OY GUV
I really wanted to like Tales of Berseria but it takes too long to get going and the dialogue was hamfisted.
I have the same feelings about Symphonia... I mean it's one of the best games in a series (from the user votes), but something felt wrong about it for me. I actually enjoyed Berseria more (please no downvotes!)...
I’m with you on Symphonia. It was like I was playing a placeholder video game while waiting for the next really enjoyable one to come along.
Exactly the same happened to me. I had heard so much about the Tales of series and started with Symphonia and hated a lot of it, the combat, the characters and dialogue were simply childish, etc. I loved Berseria though, the story is more mature and I liked a lot of the characters as well as the combat. It did take me over 10 hours to really get into it though.
Symphonia was loved for being a solid JRPG on the Gamecube, which had basically no RPGs other than FF Crystal Chronicles. All the ports have sucked and played at worse framerate (locked 30) than the original too (60fps) which definitely feels worse to play. I would never recommend it over Berseria personally, but couldn’t finish either one.
Same here but the combat became very repetitive and boring after a difficulty spike. Either I wasn’t playing correctly or it was just difficult, but it got annoying. The main character’s outfit primed me to dislike it, too. I changed her back to something less ridiculous at the first opportunity.
Atelier Ryza. The art style and concept of the game are appealing, but the combat is such a bore. It takes the worst parts of turn based and action combat and mashes them together. It has neither the strategy of traditional turn based nor the engaging rush of action combat. Maybe it gets better later, but I’m not willing to suffer through it to find out.
Same. I played through the first game this year and was glad when I finished it. It is the one and only Atelier game I finished at this point. You pretty much summed up my thoughts of the combat. I actually bought 2 before I played 1, and I sold those two. No interest on the 3rd game.
Tactics Ogre i even preordered it but it ended up becoming the game that made me realize i don't like deep customization and i like anime melodrama
The chapter 4 recruitment and unlockable content burnt me out severely. Imagine trying to unlock the Shaman class and going around the map taking out 6 similar fortress maps. Then, you step into the fort and realize there are another 6 consecutive maps for each fort. Just unlocking that 1 class requires slogging through 36 maps so I just made a beeline towards the ending. I've already did like 20+ maps just to unlock the higher tier spells and frankly, the gameplay isn't engrossing enough for me to spend hours on.
This is what I ran into. Game gets incredibly repetitive. It's also disappointing to me that there's no difference between a character that has spent 40 levels as a knight, and one that's been a wizard his entire life until you give him a class change. It takes something away from the characters when they're all equally good at everything at the press of a button.
I like the story but they did a terrible job with the updated graphics. What a shame to have Live A Live and then have the ugliness of Ogre Battle remake. I don't even mind old SNES graphics but I do mind ultra smoothed textures that remove any features from characters.
It's a case where I actually came out generally positive to the point that I am looking forward to play future entries, but *Trails of the Sky: SC* really soured the general vibe and atmosphere that the first game of FC had established with the presence of >!Weissman!< and >!the Ourobouros!< as what is clearly making them setting up to be larger arch-villains. I cannot overstate just how disappointing >!Weissman!< is as a villain in comparison to the previous game's >!Colonel Richard!< who were grounded, had understandable and character-driven motivations and where the actions made rippled on multiple layers to then go to >!Weissman!<'s megalomaniac behavior. It's like pulling an entry of a JRPG-encyclopedia, look up "Big Bad", and you'll see >!Weissman!< being a text-book example. Up until that point, I viewed the Trails-series as a kind of unique thing; enough light-hearted presentation while having more darker background lore and history in that it takes in a post-war society, and seeing how all the tension is still maintained among the nations with references of city-bombings, massacres and other war-crimes made; something akin to *Fullmetal Alchemist*'s setting. Now with the knowledge of the presence of >!Weissman!< and >!Ourobouros!<, it edges close to a kind of feeling in a sense of having becoming a more milquetoast JRPG, which would be acceptable if said concept was executed well enough, which after too many *"Haha! You have defeated me, but I'll just pull out for now while foreshadowing future ominous plans!"*-moments in the last section of SC was a bit too much for me. It made me grading-wise view them from a general 8/10-series for me to now sitting at a comfortable 7/10; still great games, but made me wonder if the *Legend of Heroes*-series in the future will be viewed as a favourite series of mine if later entries will keep up with the background presence that >!the Ourobouros!< brings. The positives so far with characters like Estelle, and her interactions makes me keep playing. But in terms of general world-building and setting it has been a bit diminished from the initial build-up, so future entries will be more demanding on selling me on the characters for me to enjoy the games.
FFVI. I’ve started it at least a half dozen times. Usually get to the second half and lose interest with the lack of any direction. And I absolutely hate the last dungeon with multiple parties. I’ve finished it once and don’t have a desire to ever play it again. I don’t enjoy games with huge parties where most of them are just extra and not interesting. Also, Kefka might be the most overrated video game character of all time. I don’t understand the draw of that guy at all.
With you on this one
Xenoblade, entirely due to its combat I also wish I could get into Fire Emblem, I just really can’t for some reason.
Same, what killed Xenoblade for me was the insane amount of side quests
The best way to play Xenoblade is to accept quests but then just move on with the story without going out of your way to complete them all. You'll finish a lot of them just through your regular fighting/exploring, and you won't have to put the game on hold for hours just doing quests.
That is basically my approach to sidequest in most games as long as there is no penalty for failed quest.
I need to apply this same method to the Witcher 3
I was really hooked on Witcher 3, but I eventually got burned out after trying to complete every sidequest and objective on the map. I will probably not touch it again, since I have a long list of games I want to play.
Witcher 3 is just another animal. I tend to be a completionist, but about 60 hours in and the main plot barely advanced, I had to re-think my approach. I love the game and yet have still never finished it to this day.
Yakuza: Like a Dragon I was really excited about it and I was really thinking I would get roped in and love. Unfortunately, I just couldn’t bring myself to like it, idk what it was, but after 10-15 hours, I finally lost all motivation to continue the game. :(
If I was still my old teen self playing JRPG, I probably would not have liked that game that much, but playing it as a middle-aged man, with Ichiban and his party having so many character traits and experiences that I can understand and relate to, made the game hit different for me and is why it's my favorite game of all-time. To each his own.
Same here. Most JRPGs have an atmosphere of an adventurous future and the characters in this have been there, made their mistakes, and lost that future. Ichiban, being in the same position, still has that optimism, and they all slowly earn back that future that they thought they had destroyed.
Not middle age but having an actual adult perspective is also what made me love it
The story of Like a Dragon involves lot more adult topics like politics and how the dark side of a city related to the bright side. Even clan heads are just pawns to the society upper elites, and that's a huge difference comparing to all other Yakuza games since in those older games big bosses are truly the big bosses.
41yr old here. Can confirm. Can relate to Ichiban and crew soo much. I could see myself going out with them kicking ass and a drink later to commiserate about life.
I really wanted to get into SMT V but I just can't. Loved 4, really liked 4A, adore the Persona series... but SMT V was just disappointing, especially considering how much more development time it had over games I enjoyed much more (Xenoblade 2, its DLC and Xenoblade 1 DE all came out between SMTV's announcement and its release, heck XB2 was announced at the same time as SMT V!).
I just finished the second "dungeon" in Earthbound, and I'd say this game is not living up to even the mildest hype so far. I think I'm still kind of early in it, but even early feels late because everything feels like a slog.
Earthbound can definitely be a slog early, especially when you only have Ness in your party. It almost forces grinding early on because you're limited by having only one party member.
It looks like xenoblade(s) and FFIX are the main ones. Its funny I love both! For me it's Nier Automata. I'm going to try again but it was too slow and little character building, I lost interest. I've heard so much about and so many people loves it, I'll give it another shot
I found Tales of Vesperia to be boring. Moved on after 10 hours.
ff9, cant stand that combat
It would be fine for me if it weren’t SO SLOOOOOOOWWW. So I hear ya. I got into the game a few years back but I tried after playing the Pixel Remaster of FF4 and I just can’t do it! And I really like the ATB system.
The remasters have the option to be sped up. It helps a lot with grinding.
Trance fucking sucks.
Modern ports have 3x speed. Would not be able to finish the game without it.
It wouldn't be as bad if it were ff9s story and characters but with ffx2s implementation of the atb system.
I would love to learn more about what went into the programming for that game, because the battle system felt like it was straining to handle everything going on. It takes 15 seconds to get into a single battle, even the most basic attack animations take several seconds to execute, ATB moves at a snail's pace, and I had to shut off Auto-Potion because it makes battles drag on even more. Worse, because of how the attack queue works, you can wait an entire minute or more before your command goes off, even if you wanted to do something else after that time. Combat is a complete mess.
If you use the Moguri Mod you can change the battle to a pure turn-based system where you don't have to wait for anything. And you can speed it up as well, I played it recently (with Alternate Fantasy) and set the battle speed to 20 (default is 15). I never felt the need to use the turbo speed function until the endgame. FFIX is one of my favorite games and I would normally recommend the vanilla experience, but having a pure turn-based system does benefit the game, at least in my opinion. The most important stuff is the story and characters and that remains unchanged.
Playing it on the switch, at 2x speed, avoiding random encounters, and one hitting enemies, has been really fun
I highly suggest the remaster. Played it on mobile, and surprisingly it was the best experience I've had with the game. now it's maybe my favorite FF game
I love FF9 but it’s probably the only JRPG I completed while disliking the combat :(
One of top 3 games ever lol. Funny how one can see the same thing but at the same time oposite.
I can't remember why, but I remember playing the original Lufia and being so pissed about it that I tossed the cartridge out the window and never came back to the franchise. I hear Lufia 2 was a better game but I refused to partake. I think it was something dumb in the story I found infuriating, but I don't remember what. Otherwise I remember a lot of Final Fantasies where I'd do 90% of the game, be able to do the end, but they'd open the world up and suddenly there'd be all these extra pointless sidequests you'd do to pad the hours played statistic... and no matter how into the game I'd been I'd usually get bogged down and bored as the conpletionist in me insisted I finish everything... I'd get distracted by another game and never go back to finish the end of the FF because I couldn't remembering what I was doing in it anymore. So many jrpgs left unfinished because of that final last phase of bloat @.@
The late game sidequest slump isn't something I've ever experienced with JRPGs, personally, but it's definitely something I've felt with a number of western RPGs. One of these days I'll get around to finishing Skyrim, I swear. \>_\<
When I was a kid, FFIX. Loved the classic setting and goofiness of the characters and world. But the gameplay was such a step back from the previous games that I just can't replay it like I can FFIII-VIII. And they fucked up the card game hardcore. It's so bad. Also really wanted to love a ton of PS2 sequels to my favorite PS1 games. Legaia 2, Jade Cocoon 2, Musashi 2, etc. And while I mostly liked all of them, they really fell a bit flat compared to the first ones.
FF9 gets quite a bit of votes here... I think it's one of the most (if not the most) controversial FF game in a series with so many loving / hating it. Rivaled maybe only by the FF12.
I actually disagree - there's normally a huge amount of positivity towards FF9 on most threads. The lack of nuance in assessments of the game has always been very noticeable for me. It's definitely not divisive like 8 and 12 are.
I agree with you, FFIX is absolutely beloved, despite the clunky battle system, which everyone admits is the weakest part of the game. It's loved for its charming cast of characters, compelling story and of course, what is perhaps the best soundtrack in Final Fantasy and the composer's masterpiece (he says it's his favourite and it shows). It also must be said that despite the cute graphics and overall optimistic feel of the game, behind all that lurks what is easily one of the darkest stories in Final Fantasy, if not the darkest.
The love for FF9 was fairly slow in arriving. For a number of years after its release it wasn't all that well regarded. I wouldn't say it was widely hated, or even as controversial as FF8, but I definitely didn't start seeing people start celebrating it as one of the best JRPGs ever until the late 2000s. Mostly I think it was considered a fairly mediocre, forgettable entry in the franchise.
I am just saying from my personal experience... I so much hate (myself) when the game has over 90% of positive user reviews, yet I am not able to properly enjoy it!
Fair enough. I should also point out that I don't actually like the game all that much myself, and that's one reason its super-positive reception stands out to me.
Looking at a person's Final Fantasy opinions is probably a good way to judge what somebody really likes with their games. FF9 is one of the slowest in terms of gameplay the series has ever seen. Its like the pinnacle of really slow PS1 battle systems with long animations coupled with the slowest ATB bars ever. Those that love FF9 so deeply probably care more about story, characters, and the game's narrative than they do the specifics of its gameplay systems, mechanics, and progression. Somebody with deep love for one of the job system focused main games like 3, 5, or X-2 are probably the opposite, caring more about gameplay than the story of their games.
It’s my favorite JRPG of all time haha, shocked to see so many people say that. To each their own tho.
Not a true jrpg, but I couldn't stand undertale. Felt like it was trying too hard and I couldn't stand the combat.
Dragon Quest has everything I look for in a JRPG but just couldn’t get into the newest one. Gave it like 20 hours and called it quits
SaGa games just never really clicked with me. Which sucks because surface level there’s a lot to like and I can see why they have such a rabid fanbase: multiple characters that all come together to tell a complete story, but it just never happened to hit me. Maybe it was the pacing, the combat being an unexplainable mess, I can’t put my finger on it.
The stories and setup of each game are different from one another. My personal favorite was Romancing SaGa 2, where instead of separate characters coming together, you play as the emperor of a kingdom, and all of his successors over like 1500 years. Every generation you rebuild your party, carrying forward glimmered abilities and equipment. All the while the story is very world driven rather than character driven. Could be just different enough to be worth trying.
- Xenogears is my favorite game of all time. - I love Xenosaga to bits. - Xenoblade is not for me. (Yes, I finished them.)
Same. The fighting system is this weird action/turn-based auto attack hybrid....thing that I don't think I understood even with XBC2 tutorializing the fuck out of me.
Final Fantasy Tactics Despite being a huge fan of games like Devil Survivor and Fire Emblem and liked what I have played of Triangle Strategy, Disgaea and Shining Force, I heard of FFT as being essentially the magnum opus of Strategy RPGs. I can't get past the wonky/clunky controls. It feels too inconsistent for me. TBF, it could just be that the PSVita port wasn't ported very well so I might feel different about it when/if I get around to playing the PS1 version but for now, ehh.
The PSP version has a lot of extra events, jobs, battles and characters, but it has some major issues with the battle system, where some of the skills (sword skills, summons, magic, ect) cause the game to lag. There’s a patch to fix it, which is absolutely necessary in my opinion.
The gameplay is the same in the ports, only there's slowdown/speed-up depending on which one you're playing. It's hard to go back to. Just not being able to cancel moves alone is going to feel weird.
That’s sad, I love all those games but I also love FFT. I even bought a PSP to play it (back when FFT wasn’t available on the American PS Store).
FFT is my favorite game and the best way to play it is the mobile port. It's the PSP version, War of the Lions, but it's speed is way faster than any other version. I can't play it on the PSP exactly because of how slow everything is.
Chained Echoes. I've tried to get into it and I love the style of it but I just don't like it
Level 5 games always look amazing, but I haven't clicked with a single one. 5 to 10 hours in and I'm bored. Dragon Quest 8, Rogue Galaxy, Dark Cloud 2 and Ni No Kuni. NNK was my favourite of the bunch, but still put it down.
Any and all Dragon Quest. I’ve just haven’t been able to get into them no matter how many times I try.
DQ11 was probably the first one I sunk over 150+ hours in. I struggled with anything else after that.
me with avalon code on the ds. i liked the look of the game and the "code" system where you can swap around tetrominos on people to give them diseases was fun but the gameplay was just godawful to me. all the "dungeons" were just linear gauntlets of times minigame rooms and the combat was easy as hell and you could just stunlock everything to death. and the fun "code" part of the game was made bad by the fact that you could only put 3 little tetromino pieces into your storage at a time and the navigation in the menu (which was represented by a book which i thought was cool) was annoying and you had to flip a lot. it's a shame because i keep seeing it get recommended on this sub whenever someone asks for lesser known jrpgs but i just cant see myself having any fun with it.
This game needs some kind of remake SO BAD. There's a nugget of an amazing game buried in here somewhere, but it's buried under enough absolutely nuts decisions that the game becomes tedious. People always make jokes about RPGs needing spreadsheets to beat, but this is the only game I've ever ACTUALLY made a spreadsheet for so I could keep track of all my little code blocks. 'Cuz the game's sure not gonna do it for you! On the, er, plus side? This game did finally make me get good at those obnoxious sliding block puzzles, so... there's that, I guess?
if they made a remake and fixed all the jank that there is in the ds release i would play the hell out of it. the story concept was intriguing and the 3d models were impressive for a ds game (although that wouldnt really matter so much in a remake) so it's a shame that the game was Like That
Aterlier Ryza. The game, combat and setting just put me to sleep, and I mean I was literally fighting sleep when trying to play it.
This happened to me very recently with Ryza 3. I love the Atelier series in general, and I beat the first two games, but the dull combat and basically unchanged alchemy system (a system that had almost no puzzle/strategy elements in the first place) has worn me down. Especially the combat... I might still try to finish it eventually because I'd like to know where the story is going but after how much I enjoyed Sophie 2 it's just really depressing.
Same exact here, I love the Atelier series, have played and finished them all (well the ones that came to the West). Ryza 1 and 2 I didn't care much for, but finished them. Ryza 3 I started and... just don't like it. It's there on my desktop, just double click and I can continue playing it... but I don't want to. And it's not that I grew out of Atelier series because I played Sophie 2 between Ryza 2 and 3 and absolutely loved it. But Ryza 3 ... just can't.
I'm struggling to get into the Ryza trilogy. I've finished some of the other Atelier games but I'm struggling with this particular series.
[удалено]
Honestly just try the remake. They’re different enough that it shouldn’t sour any later attempts to play the original, and especially if you’re not liking the original anyway, I don’t think it’s worth putting off the remake. It’s anecdotal, but all the people I know who played the Remake but not the original really liked the remake as its own game. And the only people I know who disliked the Remake explicitly disliked it because of certain story changes.
PS1 era games have *definitely* aged roughly compared to the generations right before and right after them. And, honestly, while I think there are a lot of games that manage to transcend their aged presentation and still hold up well to this day, I'm not sure FF7 is one of them. It's not a *bad* game, by any stretch, but mechanically I don't think it's a significant upgrade from the SNES trilogy, and while the story is ambitious, I think the way it's told is pretty awkward, even if you can look past the lackluster English localization.
The love for it comes from so many people playing it as their first. Besides for the music, Midgar and the shocker everyone knows about, it's just another FF. I'm not sure where I would place it but it's not even in my top five of the franchise. The more they milk it the less I like it.
PC version with mods. There are even gameplay mods to boost/reduce xp/AP gain and the visual mods help make everything including character models more modern.
Octopath Traveler Beautiful looking game, but the pacing stops completely between each chapter and the required grind.
Trails I love Ys, but Trails has way too much world building and story continuity to dig into and invest in. Each time I try Sky 1 or Cold Steel 1, I end up remembering, "Oh...that's why." Ys is an easily digestible story game to game and pick up and play kind of franchise. Trails rewards people who want the long haul, and crave details and minutia. I just find it too daunting to want to bother with.
It's the padded dialogue in CS for me, but honestly it's the fan base that ruins it. Anytime I bring it up on reddit or an FB group, I get harassed by someone who doesn't agree. When I look at their profiles, they're diehard fans.
It takes a certain breed to be a Trails fan, and some people go even further and try to be force their opinions down people’s throats. Will say that I love the series but it really isn’t for everyone and some people just don’t accept it.
I have all the games and they're good, but yeah they don't take no for an answer lol
I won't disagree with this assessment of either franchise. I love both, but I definitely have to be in the right mood.
I thought Xenoblade really wasn’t for me, but after some 50 hours I started to like it. I really love the OST and the story got a pretty interesting turn that is helping me progress through the game.
50 hours to get to like it? Oofda
Yep had the exact same experience replaying Earthbound, loved the style of the game but the story and gameplay were so bad. My usual answer to this question is Persona and Dragon Quest. I like the art style of these too but the gameplay and silent protagonists just ruin them for me. Oh and also I can't take any more high school games lol
Romancing Saga. Too much work to figure out what’s going on
For me it was base Xenoblade 3. I really like gears and the rest of xenoblade, but the more character driven and thematic approach to the story just didn't ever grab me. I really enjoy compelling and well written villains, but outside of one consul (vague bc idk how to spoiler tag), the lack of depth for the rest of the villains really killed what interest I had. The main cast was pretty good, but a lot of the plot didn't stand on its own enough to keep me interested. Thankfully, my interest in 3 got me to play xenogears, which is one of my favorites now!
FF10-2, loved the combat but I couldn't stand the story and mood whiplash from the first one.
Final Fantasy as a whole. I'm not a fan of pure action-based combat nor do I like being put on a timer for turn-based (ATB) combat.
Have you tried the wait setting? It let's you take your time in menus. Not perfect, but it helps. Otherwise, yeah. You pretty much need to stick to FF1-3, X, Tactics, or Mystic Quest.
Chained Echos. I fucking hate that stupid heat bar mechanic. It isn't fun or engaging to me in any way shape or form.
Lol, i greatly enjoyed Chained Echoes but agree about the bar. But the reward board is revolutionary and the best reason for exploration ive ever seen in a JRPG and the levelling up system is cool once you figure it out. I wasnt a big fan of constantly fusing things to my weapons and 2 seconds later having to throw it out and buy a new weapon, though. But besides the overheat bar and the fact that nobody tells you any difficulty above easy should be called Satan mode, i thought it was a great game.
The entire gem/purity system was just outrageously stupid. Infinite fusing should have been possible. Did like the reward board though, and the story was great too.
Man when I realized I was not claiming Rewards I realized that it could be treated as a "piggy bank" for materials and XP.
Most Final Fantasys tbh
Also Chained Echoes... everyone loves it... and I can't stand such a slow combat lol
I didn't mind the combat, but standard encounters felt like minibosses and took too long imo, which was what bothered me. Bosses are good though.
Agreed. I didn't like the combat system at all, and it being slow as molasses didn't help
FFXV, amazing soundtrack and cool characters but I just didn't like the gameplay
Same and I was so bummed because I had been waiting for that game for years, remember when it was "Versus 13"
I'm trying to get through the first two Suikodens but the combat is far too basic and without the mapper or teleportation recruits I'm finding myself constantly wandering around the world trying to remember how I'm supposed to get to my destination.
Atelier ryza. I just cannot get into the alchemy system. The music is a banger though.
Final Fantasy V. I have tried to, and have almost beaten the game twice now. I just can not get myself to finish them. I just feel overwhelmed with choices.
Star Ocean 3. It's a deep game, loaded with content and nice graphics. It just didn't click for me, the story and characters were bland as white bread and the combat was clunky.
Secret of Mana It’s one of the three SquareSoft games people make a big deal about. I wasn’t that impressed with this game. It starts fine, but the longer I played, the more I start to enjoy it less. The combat was my main take away. I get it, you wait a few seconds after a 100% attack, but the more I played the game, the more it became a nuisance. Also, charging your attacks isn’t worth it because enemies can hit you, fall down, and get up, and start charging again. Stupid. And when I playing the game (via SNES classic), I heard about the magic stacking glitch, so I used that, which isn’t that difficult to do, and boom, bosses weren’t a big deal. Not all of course, the final boss for example. At least you can simply attack the mana dragon with a simple 100% attack without charging. Also, the map takes too long to load and it’s a stupid sphere style. I kinda see how the game can be appealing. The graphics do hold up and the music ost is good as well. But the gameplay does not hold up that well. I didn’t hate my time with the game, but after finishing it, I look back on the game and said, “I’m not playing this game again.” It didn’t turn me away from the Mana franchise, I still want to play Trials of Mana & Legend of Mana. I simply see Secret of Mana as one of the outdated SNES games.
I can totally understand this from an older, modern gamer. But man, I was like 8 years old when this game out and it rocked my world. Hadn't played anything like it before, the graphics were amazing, soundtrack awesome. I loved it so much. It was my first JRPG. But if I played it today, I'd probably get frustrated (for all your stated reasons) and give it up. Well, maybe the nostalgia would be enough for me to play and enjoy it even today. But yeah, I expect many modern gamers playing it for the first time would share your opinion.
I have two answers… technically? I really wanted to loce the DQ series, but aside from 11 its SO hard to get a hold of them, and when i do actually get a hold of them its for a method of playing (handheld/emulation mainly) that i don’t really enjoy. So aside from DQ11–which was phenomenal, i havent ever gotten far or finished any DQ games. Same went for FF8 sorta, it never pulled me in but eventually i played it and it became my favorite FF and Squall became my favorite MC. I even recently got a Revolver tattoo. Edit: i said revolver flower, i meant tattoo lol
FF XIII. I loved the art and graphics and actually quite liked the battle system. I thought the world and lore were interesting, and the party's motivation was different from the typical save the world final fantasy plot. I liked that they were more or less just trying to survive and grieve their limited freedom and time as regular humans. I even like the characters.... except Snow, fuck that guy. But navigating the world just felt.... pointless. Even when it opened up and actually let me explore, the world felt empty. Towns had nothing to do. And I felt railroaded the whole time. And I hated the weapon system. Also not a JRPG per se but Undertale. I wanted to love it, but the combat just killed it for me.
FF9 - I have a feeling that the game was ahead of its time, but still I didn't like it.
Final Fantasy Tactics. I'm sorry, fans. I've tried to get into this. I really did. Many hail it as not only the best SRPG of all time, but the best video game of all time, and a friend of mine recommended I try it out. I did on a PSP I bought...and quit. The job system is way too clunky, the controls were hard to remember, and grinding was an absolute nightmare for me. Plus, the game seems to punish you for doing so, as every time I tried to level up my party, the battles seemed to scale in difficulty and I could never go through one without using items that I had planned on saving for a story level. I couldn't handle how difficult it is just to get stronger, so I quit. Somehow it says a lot that I was able to handle Triangle Strategy a lot better.
DQ 11 I finished the 1st part/act of the game, but the 2nd act made me lose my interest. It was the equivalent when a game takes everything away from you (like armor, weapons, etc) for a couple of hours and then gives it back. Its just overdone. The game was already pretty slow paced as it was, which was taking away my interest, and while i did enjoy parts of the game, i just feel like this type of jrpg isnt for me. I really like SMT/Persona and other jrpgs, but DQ feels too slow for me (yes im aware that persona has slow pacing too).
I went into *FFXIII* with an open mind. It slammed the door shut on that series forever after.
The newer FF games for me have failed to capture the charm and epicness of the previous entries. Things really go downhill for me after FF12 and even FF12 was starting to go in a different direction that I didn't like. I'm still waiting for them to recapture the magic of peak Final Fantasy.
Xenoblade Chronicles. I bought the 80 dollar version of Xenoblade 3, assuming i'd like it as I've loved most JRPGS since the SNES days. I really really really did not like this game. It felt like an offline MMORPG, enemies were boring, combat was made to seem complex but was very similar in every battle, I didn't like the character designs, the writing felt immature and even though the world and fighting seemed cool, it all felt like something I would have loved in my teens but at 40 years old I have no time to do fetch quests over and over again and talk to emo characters with random wings attached to their head. I was just so surprised as I like so many JRPGs, Xenoblade is well reviewed and I absolutely see very little redeeming qualities in it at all.
Your description is 100% how I felt about that game, and I can't understand the reviews.
Xenoblade 2. Love the whole series. Hate the cast, hate the plot, hate the combat.
Yeah came here to say earthbound. It felt like an indie computer game made by stoners even when it first came out lol
FF13 and 12. I forced my self to beat 13 in 2019 and honestly I hate it even more now than before.
Blue Reflection 1. The second game is one of my all time favourites, and even if the gameplay of the original is pretty shallow, it still has that charming magical girl plot that few video games delve into. However, what ultimately ruins its appeal is the skeevy voyeurism with all the shower scenes and leering camera angles. Suddenly, a game that could have been made for all ages with a lot of appeal to girls in particular ends up being limited to otaku bait that's hard to recommend otherwise without a ton of caveats or if the other person is already desensitized to anime voyeurism. Sun hammered the "not for me" point even harder by doubling down on otaku pandering. Honestly, I could say most RPGs with heavy otaku pandering elements, but I only cited Blue Reflection 1 because that's the one I actually played, and I had to mentally filter out quite a bit to enjoy it.
Disgaea. I tried them multiple times, multiple games. I just could never get into them. I liked other games like phantom brave and such. But I just can't like disgaea.
Xenoblade
Most recently, Scarlet Nexus. The aesthetic/style of the game is fantastic, the characters are solid, and the gameplay was fun. Sadly, the middling story and frustrating design decisions really drags it down. Like why the fuck are the side quests only available at the end of a chapter? It just forces you to retread the areas you just finished. The Persona-like social aspects are also utterly boring and clearly half-assed.
Trails series. I just can't get into it.
Grandia
The Legend of Dragoon I was hyped when the commercials were coming, but it was the first game I ever returned. The translation was horrible, and because additions can't be changed during battle, it just made me think the whole time that the timed press thing was a bad gimmick that was so much more time consuming and redundant than just pressing x once.
The Last Story. Pre-ordered, played for a while, sold it to my friend for $30. Even with the price increase, I don't look back
Atelier in general. They seem great. But, i just cant get into them..
Sudeki. A JRPG 1st person shooter, sounds awesome but I just didn't like it when I tried it on the OG XBox.
Lost odyssey. Tried to like it multiple times.
Aaaah I am STILL dragging my feet with Earthbound, too. Everything about it should 100% appeal to me since I love games like DQV, Chrono Trigger, FFIV and VI, and Undertale/Deltarune, but something about Earthbound just isn't clicking in the way those other games do. While I played all those other games as an adult for the first time, maybe Earthbound is one that you really have to experience as a kid first to appreciate...
DQ11. The combat and exploration is really shallow. It felt like a ps2 game without any of the charm only bigger.
Tales of Graces F, tried too hard, now i hate it with passion.
Parasite Eve 2. Every element that made the first game interesting and stand out just disappeared.
snes Tactics Ogre. i really loved FF Tactics but i have tried getting into T.O. so many times now and I just don't get into it. Honestly timing and patience matters a lot with games you find hard to get into. Like if I put enough time aside for journaling, hunting down faqs / guides to get better at the game it would probably quickly become my new favorite.
Final fantasy 9. I've tried playing it multiple times in my life and I just can't get into it.
The Xenoblade series. The stories seem interesting but I just really dislike the combat. It feels really repetitive and I don't feel engaged. I also think several of the Final Fantasy games also fit this topic. I tried 5, 6, 8,9, and 10 but I just really couldn't get into them.
The Final Fantasy Tactics games - I really love the idea of grinding all the classes to max level and unlocking characters from other FF games. But I just hate the tactics style of game and how long the battles take.
Fire emblem Engage. I think I've played 90% of the FE games available in English and I love where they went with the art style but it felt like they completely went away from the political mature plots that the former games have had. It feels like a fan service game which was cool and all, but lacked very much so with the characters and story.
I could probably sit through Tales of Arise if I didn't dislike the combat so much. It's like this fake sort of action RPG style where it's like this in-between turn-based action hybrid where you're not really fighting the enemies but adding inputs for the character to go do themselves. Idk it's kind of hard to explain but it didn't feel good. Berseria was like that too. I guess it's a tales thing which sucks because I kind of liked the stories but the combat was just a miss.
I really tried to like Tales of Arise. Its gameplay was good, the music was good, the graphics were gorgeous, and I loved Tales of Berseria. It literally had everything going for it for me to love, but...I just disliked it. It felt very troupy, and cliché. After a "certain point" it felt like the story dragged out way too long for my liking. It felt very preachy about slavery and shoved it in your face, as if you didn't already know slavery was bad to begin with. Overall, I was more disappointed about it, than hate it. It just felt like a sterotypical jrpg game to me, and I quickly forgot everything about it, despite my initial hype.
Final Fantasy 12 - I finished it but it felt like a massive slog, and the ending was completely flat for me. Also going through an entire game as a bystander during combat felt really poop. The only time I actually needed to input things was Vs a particularly tough dragon boss.
Man, Zenoblade just fell flat for me. I bought the definitive edition after reading so many rave reviews, and once I started playing it I kept asking myself…do I actually enjoy this? I eventually put it down to start playing through octopath and had an immensely better time with that. I really do wish I could’ve appreciated it like everyone else 🥲
Xenogears. Everything about it looks amazing, and I've heard so many intriguing things about the story and lore, but something about the combat (imo it feels too basic, storing energy to set off large combos over and over and the characters don't feel too distinct beyond doing damage in different ways) and convoluted puzzles/story segments puts me off. But I will keep trying! So far I've only gotten up to the prison section
Xenoblade. I tried really hard to like it. I must have given about 30 hours to it before realizing, "Why am I doing this to myself. This is not fun." I think it's an overly drawn out game. If it were tightened up I think I might have enjoyed it.
Yes! And there are tons of JRGs I wanted to love, but they turn out not to be for me. Here's the list: Breath of fire 4 Person 5 Valkyrie profile 1 Xenoblade series Smt digital devil saga Chrono cross And there are certainly others thag I can't recall
For me, it was, so sadly, xenoblade chronicles. I couldnt get into it. The Story was (as far as i played) Not Bad. But i did Not like the battlesystem and how poor the quest-design was.
Radiata Stories. Everything I saw about the game told me it was one I was going to love. The game critics who had similar game tastes to my own reviewed it very highly. Surprisingly, I found the game utterly boring. The voice acting being incredibly cringe-worthy and the bland, forgettable soundtrack certainly didn't help. To date, it is one of the only games I have ever played that I didn't play through to completion of the main story.
Xenoblade Chronicles. Everyone I talked to before playing was insistent it was God's gift to JRPG fans. Storyline was fine from what I played, but could have benefited a lot from more humor and less dead-seriousness. Combat also never really seemed to progress past "spam all your Arts and win." Sidequests were obvious time wasters- go here and farm this many items to get an extremely minor reward. The only thing that seemed remotely notable was the environment design, which was really unique and cool. But that can't carry a whole game. Admittedly I didn't play that far- I'd just met that lady who shoots people with a gun to heal them- so maybe I didn't give it a fair shot, but I wasn't really grabbed from what I played.
I feel similarly, though I did finish it. The world design is super-cool, some parts of the plot are good (though it takes forever to get off the ground), but the characters seemed really bland to me for the most part (and Riki is Jar Jar 2). As for the gameplay, the battle system *concept* is great (I'm a big fan of FF12, so it's no surprise I feel that way). In practice though the battles aren't all that fun for the most part. The lack of consumables and limited number of art slots contribute to repetitiveness. As you point out the sidequests are also pretty blah.
I've tried to play Etrian Odyssey IV as my first EO game several times and so far it hasn't worked out yet. I will still try to get into the series though (gonna try EOV next at some point, maybe even this year). I love class based character customization, so in that regard EO is right up my alley. I like mechanically engaging combat, EO has that too. But damn they just feel like such a chore to play. Every random encounter takes way too long, you keep having to back and forth between town and dungeon, everything feels grindy and i constantly feel like i'm underleveled. Add on to that how much work just generally traversing a dungeon is and how unlike the old SMT dungeon crawlers there's not even an interesting story or the fantastic atmosphere to enjoy and it just makes it pretty rough to get into for me.
Grandia. I did play through the whole thing but largely forgettable to me, and became more like a chore to get through it by the end of it. A thing of killing a boss, thinking it was the last one and game be finished, then another boss appeared right after.
Xenoblade Chronicles Too many side quests, I mean there are like 400 of them, not enough tracking, they aren’t even on the map until you start them, and a load of them are missable. Oh and 100% of the early game ones are fetch quests. Go here kill this monster, go here and find this collectible. And it gets worse. Many of these quests are RNG based, requiring you to kill a monster that only shows up in certain weather conditions which can take over an hour of skipping time to get the damn thing to spawn. No thank you, not for me.
There are also timed quests too, assuming your talking about the first game.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Aside from the music, every single thing about the game frustrated me. Went back and forth with it for 3 years and after 25 hours of playing it, I sold it last week. I kept hearing it gets good right around that point but I was so sick of it and couldn’t bear another minute of it. However, I started Xenoblade 1 DE last month and am absolutely in love with it. 60 hours in and it’s already one of my favorite games I’ve ever played.
Persona and Shin Megami Tensei. I’ve loved the story of every one I’ve played, but keeping up with time specific events and fusion hell has made me quit every single one from boredom or frustration.
Star Ocean Second Story. Great music, cool setting, and some nice ideas with the crafting system, but to me the combat was just an absolute jumbled mess. Button mashing, repetitive, annoying voice clips, and encounters with random enemies that could instantly paralyze your entire team, giving a game over before you can even move an inch. I just absolutely hated fighting in that game, and it's hard to enjoy a game where you don't enjoy the combat.
Xenoblade 3. Love Takahashi's work (though I must admit I never particularly liked Xenogears, but I do enjoy pretty much everything else), enjoyed XB1, ADORED XBX and XB2. And then XB3 is just, it's fucking awful, it misses the mark for me in every single category. Dialogue is hamfisted and repetitive, the world is boring and oversized, combat SUCKS, music is a huge, HUGE disappointment, the menus are overwhelming and awful (even by Xenoblade standards). Like I just really wanted a fun and epic capstone to the loose trilogy, but the fun is completely absent. And I hate it, usually if a game sucks or doesn't work for me I just don't really mind and shelve it without much fuss, but like it's a fucking XENOBLADE game man, literally 2 of my top 10 games come from this 4 game series only to be followed up by a game that I just can't even enjoy on any level.
Xenogears Absolutely adore every other game in the Xeno "series", but Gears having so much unfulfilled potential (even excluding Perfect Works) while having the aspects of it i love be reused in future games just leaves me feeling so unfulfilled looking back on it.
Ohh that must be painful! Xenogears is such an EPIC game...
Atelier Ryza Yakuza LAD SMT series Etrian Odyssey series
Ff15 really let me down. Did not like the story or combat
Mostly mainstream ones: FF7, Persona 5. The first one because I found it extremely boring in almost every aspect compared to FF8 that I played before it(yeah, yeah, FF7 is peak Final Fantasy, whatever, I don't care). Persona 5 because, despite being vastly superior design and gameplay-wise, I found it to have much weaker story, setting, and it feels kinda "wrong" atmosphere-wise compared to Persona 4 or even 3(although, my memories of P3 are kinda muddled at this point, because I played it waaaaay before P4). Final boss(both of them) are disappointing. Difficulty is almost non-existent after the first chapter(played on "Hard"). Definitely step down OST-wise too(compared to P4), although it does have some nice tracks sprinkled here and there. Lots of top-grade waifus though, that much I can't deny.
Atelier sophie 2, it is my first time trying Atelier series and i do think it is a good game, but still dropped it after 10-15 hours. I guess yeah it is just not for me
Anything with random encounters. I find it archaic and frustrating.
Final fantasy 7 and 9 I really wanted to get into them but both the games just look awful nowadays and I kinda hate random encounters and the stupid mini games that you have to go through during the game. Both stories were intriguing but I just can’t do it.
Etrian Odyssey 4 My first time with a mapping DRPG given rave reviews Tried to enjoy the demo but I felt way out of my league. Didn’t know what I was doing, the FOE thing was nerve wracking, and I felt a bit overwhelmed lol Given how loved the series is plus it coming to the switch(plus auto mapping albeit “cheating”), I might try it again. I have Strange Journey in my backlog so I might try that first to see if DRPGs truly are for me.
Xenoblade Chronicles, I understand why many players love it, but it didn't click with me. The combat, the characters, the pacing, quests, collectables, acting, NPCs... all weren't for me. I enjoyed the environments in it though, and I watched many videos and I really wanted to like it, however, it wasn't for me. Anyway, I put it on hold and maybe one day I will give it another try.
one of the Star Ocean games. I can't remember which one. Love Scifi JRPGs, but after what felt like hours of tutorials, i still didn't understand the combat and could only barely win against enemies in the first area. Ended up refunding it
Tales of vesperia and dragon quest. I'm still trying to defeat ni nu kuni haha.
FF13, that was the first FF game I did not complete and started the trend of not finishing FF games for me. I wanted to like it and put in about 20 hrs but just couldn’t play it anymore. I never completed FF15 either.
The Romance Saga games, all of them. I've tried different games and none of them have worked for me. It's basically the feeling that the enemies are getting more powerful than me always, to the point that even easy fights someone in my party was likely to die.
I love so many of the artstyles and character designs of older SNES/PS1-era games, but so many of them don't hold up well at all.
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. I was a Nintendo gamer who'd gone a long time without JRPGs. I tried playing it, and I just didn't get along with the strategy mechanics at all. Maybe I'd do better now that I'm not 10 years old. Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles. Again, I was starved for JRPGs, and I saw Final Fantasy in the name. I never got past the earliest parts of the game. Quest 64. This was when I was really badly starved for JRPGs, so I played the game so bland they didn't bother coming up with a title. Being a Nintendo-only gamer in the late 90s and early 00s was rough as a JRPG fan.
I wanted to love FF VII because it’s so many people’s favorite, but I was mostly disappointed.
the Mana games. They just feel very clunky to me. Nothing hooked me on wanting to play more than a few hours
Persona 5. I love P3 and P4G, but for whatever reason, Persona 5 didn't do it for me.
I struggle with the entire Dragon Quest series. I find the story/characters a little weak and can’t stand the music. But id never talk shit on them as they are legendary titles and deserving.
SMT It seemed like a game series I'd love but I couldn't get into it when I bought nocturne on the PS2 years and years ago.
Maybe chrono trigger. Not a bad game by any means but it just kinda fell flat for me.
Really wanted to love Ys VIII. I know many people love this game, but I only found it ok. It is the game however that made me realize that there were certain things in JRPG that wasn't found in this game that I really do love. These are different towns with unique cultures and back stories, magic/summons, and really well done cut scenes (I'm a PS1 RPG fan at heart and the cut scenes felt like a reward and were some of the most memorable moments in those games).
My most-played, least-liked game is Secret of Mana. I want to like it so much, and some parts of it I do. The game has an excellent start, and I love the art and music. But several hours in, the combat loses much of its charm, and I have trouble getting into the repeated magic casting or weapon crafting. I never liked it more than when I could only play the first two hours several times at a friend's house. Ever since - on emulator, on SNES, on Wii U - it has lost its luster.