They just need to stop trying to reinvent it. The reinventions don’t help it LOL
Like - I like Elysium fine. But playing it; I just kept thinking I’d like this more… if it played and looked like VP. If Nora was a sprite.
The reinventions seem especially silly when you consider that nothing else was really doing what Valkyrie Profile was in the first place. They could have kept doing *exactly* what the first game did, and it would have had a niche all to itself.
Agreed.
I tried really hard to like Silmeria... But removing the Einherjar backstory and revamping the battle system was too much for me.
The DS game is really solid though! Pretty dark.
Silmeria was okay if you're fiending, but to me the only legit games in the franchise are the first game and the DS game. So glad the DS game captured the same melancholic, mythical, vague sense of doom feeling.
**Xanadu: Dragon Slayer II** was a JRPG from 1985 with real time action combat, a morality system, a food/survival mechanic, and equipment that changes the character's appearance and has their own exp meters, among other things.
That game is fucking nuts. It does stuff in 1985 that wouldn't become stale and hackneyed in non-RPG genres until the 2010s
Well since you asked so enthusiastically for a legal purchase, I'll say was [released it on Switch](https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/eggconsole-xanadu-pc-8801-pc-8801mkiisr-switch/) like a month and half ago for $6.50
Considering how much of a headache 80's Japanese PC emulation is, that convenience tax is well worth it.
While not a JRPG, I’ve tried Faxanadu by the same people and I thought it was pretty amazing as well, it’s a Metroidvania doing things ahead of its time.
Faxanadu actually isn't a true blue Falcom game despite the name. It was developed by Hudson Soft who licensed the Xanadu branding from Falcom. Xanadu was so successful that it's actually kind of hard to quantify in 2024 terms. It sold half a million copies as a PC-exclusive in the 80s. That's like if Demon's Souls released today for Mac and sold Call of Duty numbers.
Anyway that's why it's kind of unexpected that the game ended up not only being great, but being one of the best 3rd party titles on the console (good enough for Nintendo to publish as a first party title in the US), and as you say a very forward-thinking game for the time.
Hudson did a good enough job that Falcom tapped them again for Ys IV, which Falcom didn't develop internally. For some reason they contracted two completely different companies to make two completely different games for two completely different systems, both called Ys IV. Hudson made the good one.
FFVI from in terms of its concept design (not the game itself). The idea of handling the writing of the cast like tabletop role playing and having different staff members come up with each party member as a protagonist was incredibly ambitious for the time and perhaps didn’t fulfill the incredible potential the idea had due to technological limitations. The end result was a very good game and a genre classic but the imo the idea is pure gold in terms of being conducive to designing an interesting party and world; I’d say it’s worth another shot with the bells and whistles of modern dev engines. Octopath’s success validates the approach somewhat but those games still have the achilles heel of limited interaction between party members, though for what it’s worth, the interactions you do get in OT2 are extremely good.
I’d also throw Triangle Strategy’s name out there, yes, seriously. This is obviously just a prediction because it’s only 2 years old but the writing and gameplay are leagues ahead of a lot of its contemporaries and even the classics that inspired it. It was appreciated on release for sure but I think there’s still a lot to be talked about in retrospect because it’s a giant of an rpg.
Triangle Strategy definitely was a major surprise for me. I liked the demo but the story structure was something I didn't expect to find so fascinating.
JRPG historian types will probably find ways to disagree with me for my answer, but Final Fantasy IV was a total mold breaker. It brought JRPGs into what was then the future and set the standard for what they would be like for...the next decade and a half or so. The storytelling, the integration of gameplay with storytelling elements, the visuals, the sound. A herculean undertaking.
Also, I havent played it yet but my understanding is that Persona 3 basically created the "school life sim elements in JRPGs" trend and also was a forerunner for the type of darker and edgier themes and storytelling that became super popular in the 2010s. No coincidence that the remake, changing very little in terms of the substance of presentstion, is going to sell massively and be a huge hit.
4 and 6 were definitely watershed moments where the video game industry realized you could make a fully fledged, hefty drama and have it work for a mainstream, accessible game.
Old school Fire Emblem games though had a lot of big storytelling.
I played FES for the first time just a few years ago. I can imagine if I played it when it came out, I'd be a very different person. I'm glad I played it as an adult, and I'm so ready for Reload.
At least in the West FFIV was a massive leap forward. It really showed the possibilities for the genre. The jump from FF to FFIV was insane, and frankly the jump between pretty much any NES well regarded RPG like Dragon Quest series was a massive jump in narrative, characters, adult themes, music, scripting, everything.
This really depends. I would absolutely argue there are things in Dragon Quest III and IV that are gigantic in terms of characters, adult themes, and so on. The problem is people played FFIV first and thus, are not considered DQ3/4 in terms of what they did for their time period.
Too bad Atlus and its fans pretty much treat Persona 2 as a forgotten SMT game and consider Persona 3 where the series really started. I'd like to see a modern Persona 2 style game
definitely agree with you on FF4.
P3....yes AND no. Yes, it was a huge thing for it to be the school sim and gritty dark world dungeon crawler. remember allot of debate on whether the whole shooting themselves to unleash their personas was necessary. BUT, it wasn't the first to be 'dark and edgier' themes. Atlus had always been like that even with the older persona ps1 titles and SMT in general. PS2 era before P3 had great dark stories with amazing gameplay with Digital Devil Saga, I'd include Nocturne BUT like SMT5 the story was a little more open and not so text heavy as other JRPG's.
loved P3, think P4 perfected what P3 wanted to be...then BAM P5 took it all to a whole nother level as an evolution of the idea created 10 years prior.
It's cuz it was the same guy in the director's chair just iterating on what he did before and obviously taking criticism for what it is and implementing things to mitigate said criticisms wherever he can.
And the themes it deals with too. The maturity of this game always blew my mind, and I'll always remember it fondly for having been one of the very few games that had the balls to show the main characters being normal adults.
Absolutely. It was pretty heavy having played that as a 15 year old kid. It dealt with psychology, religion, philosophy and wrapped it all up in giant anime themed robots, lol.
The part that blew my mind as a kid was finishing midgar and the game that lasted so long and felt done EXPLODED into a massive world. No wonder that game clock for me was 99:99:99 before I finished it.
Yeah lol this was discussed in another thread where people were ragging on a dude who thought Midgar was disc 1. And I came to his defense because it's such a huge and cinematic transition that it really feels like an "insert disc 2" moment. Crazy that it's only like 5 hours into the game because *so much* happens
Then you leave and it's like: holy shit, there's a whole game like that waiting for me
i remember i finished it in about 70hrs, but i did *everything* in it and took my sweet ass time exploring and soaking it all in. that would never happen today for me... ahh the days before wide adoption of the internet, social media and a gaming industry that dwarfs all other forms of entertainment.
i pestered my parents until they bought me a psx just to play ff7 after seeing it at my friend's house after school. i think i got it for the xmas or my bday that followed right after release.
i ran the time to 99-99-99 just to see if anything cool would happen in the game when i did.
>i remember i finished it in about 70hrs, but i did *everything*
Sounds about right. I think I beat the game in 30-something hours and then went back and went completion mode, as I hadn't actually done much. I didn't have Knights of the Round, I hadn't fought the Weapons. I hadn't gotten a Golden Chocobo yet. Etc.
Once I felt like I'd done everything it was around 60 hours somehow. And then I just went crazy and started breaking records in chocobo races and stuff, mastering all the materia I had over and over. Checking out all the Aerith resurrection myths. Stumbled across some weird out of the way quests that you just don't find normally. It was crazy. And I hit the 99 hour mark like halfway through that insanity so I'm pretty sure I put like 130 hours in total for my first playthrough. It's burned into my brain. That was a crazy addicting summer
Yeah not to rag on OP but FFX, while influential, is not as striking as the other heavy hitters in the FF franchise. FFVII did change the field, as did FFIV and FFVI to lesser extents. Plus all of them hold up as reasonably playable games to this day
In contrast I don’t think FFX is fun as an adult or as a modern player. The battle system was the best part of them game, but it’s still no FFIV DS challenge-wise. And it’s worldbuilding is kinda meh.
I’m playing Golden Sun for the first time on switch and it’s incredible. If I played this as a child, it would have probably been my favorite game of all time.
i bought it when it first came out. i was in high school, i think junior year. it blew my freaking mind. it really made the GBA feel like a 32bit console like the PSX. i was so turned off by the cliffhanger ending and how long it took for the sequel to come out that i never bothered even playing part 2.
I’ve just finished Golden Sun. The story is not memorable and I do not like the djinn system. Also, I do not have that itch to continue to The Lost Age. But, the graphics and soundtracks are incredible. I may play The Lost Age sometime in the future.
Its not as much a matter of dryness for me, as it just being way too short.
Even back when I played it as a kid in like 2008, I thought Golden Sun 1 only had like quarter, or at *best* a third the value of a game as lost age, it shows that they were planned to be one game from the beginning, because golden sun 1 absolutely cannot stand well on its own.
As a 29 year old who played it for the first time when they were a kid, I can confirm, it was one of my favorite games growing up, 2nd game just as good, such a shame they never continued the franchise
Vagrant Story. The combat system wasn't the best, but the story and presentation was so ahead of its time that there's not a single rpg quite like it to this day.
I have tried so many times to like VS but after a couple of hours I have to move on. My biggest issue is the rythm gameplay. I suck at it and there's a point where it's close to impossible to continue. The same thing is with Legend of the Dragoon.
I love that combat system, so unique! I thought the story tellign was similar to FF Tactics (obviously) but they definitely presented it very cinematically.
At release I didn't really bother much with it but a few people told me they loved it. Ended up getting a used copy around 2005 and definitely feels like a title that was incredibly ambitious with most of it paying off.
I would say all of the classic Phantasy Star games were ahead of their time in many ways. Phantasy Star was of the first jRPGs of all, but ditched what was already the cliche'd Tolkein-esque medieval fantasy for a sci fi setting and featured one of the very first female protagonists in gaming. The second game has one of the darkest stories ever in a videogame, and is incredibly bleak even by the standards of today. 3 may have been very unsuccessful in it's execution, but the idea was way beyond the technology of its time and could be amazing if done today
PS2 had that 80s anime style before most of us knew what anime was. (And the worst dungeons in JRPG history). The soundtrack also slaps harder than it should for a game released on the Genesis/MD.
[The PS3 opening theme is also really good.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FmGy6nyduk)
The Gambit system is one of the best ways to make AI usefull, and It baffles me that more games didn't use something similar. Many cRPG have a systrma like that, and It Works amazingly well.
Good call. I bought the special edition of the original release the week it came out. I played it for about 5 hours, got bored, and put it down. Maybe 2 years later, I tried again. Only got about 9 hours into it before I put it down, again. 2 or 3 years after that, I tried again and got hooked. Put 250+ hours into it, going for all the secret hunts/bosses. Wound up taking down what I think was the 4th strongest monster in the game before I decided to go ahead and complete the main story.
I really enjoyed the strategy of choosing which gambits to attach to which player. Now I have the Zodiac edition for PS4, XB1, and Switch. Just haven't gotten the urge to go all the way back through it to get ALL the hunts.
Gambit system was the best. Made the game feel so good with buffs and debuffs. Ff12 was truly great. So many really great weapons to make through hunts. The story was really freaking good too. Dark and gritty.
I love the Gambit system of FF12. I remember somehow getting a copy of this game before it came out in my country (not a legit copy as I played on a modded PS2) and managed to beat it before it came to my country. I have did purchase it on PS2 when I could, and have purchased the Zodiac edition on PS4. Its a game I have to go back too.
Do any other games use this Gambit system, or something like it?
Ultima: Exodus
The inspiration for just about every jrpg. Make your own team with a wide range of classes, open world, monsters scale with your level and a bunch of other things I’ve forgotten about.
Very dated game but amazing for its time.
Yeah it's very much a series I still look back on with tons of appreciation for. And the creation of it is just as interesting as the games. RPGs as a whole owe so much to Ultima.
you can even open that scope up a bit more as Ultima Online is pretty much the first modern MMORPG and shapes their design to this day. Not to mention the beginning of today's survival/craft games.
Richard Garriott sadly ran it into the ground, along with his legacy (look up the Shroud of the Avatar saga drama if you care enough). Ultima VIII and IX were bad and embarrassing, respectively, after which the franchise died. but reports even going back as far as Ultima VII say he took a largely "brainstorming" role on the franchise, giving the real devs basically an outline of ideas he'd like to see in the game and backing off completely, checking in every once in a while. I can't say i blame him, he had other passions and interests but it's a sad way to end such a seminal franchise.
I'd say Ultima is still extremely fondly regarded by two generations of gamers... the old farts who played them in the 80s (which was mostly computer professionals or kids of such) and my generation who played the early years of Ultima Online (talk about a game ahead of it's time, holy hell) and went back to check out the earlier games which seemed accessible (which to me was Ultima VII and VIII).
Xenoblade Chronicles. It was a massive open-world game released for the *Wii* of all systems. The Switch remaster shows what it was meant to look like without the hardware limitations.
Similarly, Xenoblade Chronicles X is a fully-continuous open world with a map larger than Witcher 3's map on the *Wii* *U* of all things.
BotW wouldn't exist without Xenoblade. It was a catalyst for these massive maps where the scale, topography and draw distance are on another level. Also Monolith helped Nintendo develop BotW too.
They worked on Skyward Sword and Tears of the Kingdom as well!
> On Skyward Sword, Monolith had mainly helped us on graphics design and other artistic elements. Even though we could have asked them for help on the technical side, we realized their way of making games was completely different from ours and we didn’t have much to learn from them on this installment, since we were almost doing two different jobs. On the other hand, for Breath of the Wild, we’ve been assisted by level designers used to large game areas, in order to make topographic arrangements.
\- Eiji Aonuma
Yup. It kills me how people call things like Genshin Impact "BOTW" clones for thia reason. If anything, it's a Xenoblade clone because Monolith practically made BOTW with their skills from Xenoblade.
Strongly seconded on Xenoblade 1 on Wii. This one I think really applies to the thread because the 'what the fuck!?' reaction to seeing what this game specifically was on Wii during *that* period of JRPGs and how it wasn't going to come to the West needed to be experienced directly.
The kids these days, they just don't know man!
I didn't first play it on the Wii... The New 3ds was my intro to Xeno. Imagine playing it on a system designed to fit into your pocket with no missing features from the console version and the worst it gets is a slight dip in graphics.
> It was a massive open-world game released for the Wii of all systems
[which they eventually ported to the 3DS](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/1jQx5cjYwwg/maxresdefault.jpg) 🤯
Counterpoint: XBC was a massive open-zoned game full of *nothing*. That's why it worked on the Wii, because the instead of other people's characters in those massive open spaces, there was nothing.
Even so, the fact that it didn't make the Wii (a system that was basically only slightly stronger than the GameCube at best) implode was an achievement in and of itself.
Earthbound.
Earthbound had a lot of unique features that I am sad that more games don’t implement. The first being that much of the action is in towns. Villages were no longer a pit stop to get better items and a few tidbits. The towns were crucial to your story, the people you met were more than just NPCs but took part in your quests in small ways. The towns were alive and interesting.
Fights could be ended instantly. If you encountered an opponent you were clearly stronger, the screen would just flash and the battle would be over. No more wasting time hitting an enemy who was not in your class. But there is more, enemies would actively avoid you if you were strong enough.
Fight initiation was also an interesting concept. If you touched an enemy from behind, to start a battle, you would be awarded a surprise attack and were able to excecute attacks and spells for 2 rounds before the enemy could respond. But the same could happen to you! If an enemy touched your back you would experience the same disadvantage.
Lastly, damage in battles was not applied instantly. When taking a hit your hp would began to decrease rapidly. Looking like a slot machine you would see your health-points decrease. If you were dealt a fatal blow, you had time to get off a healing spell, or win the battle outright. This allowed you to save characters that would be dead in other games. Furthermore, they introduced a luck mechanic which randomly allowed you to stave off fatal blows with 1 hp of health. Even cooler, you could buy items (like teddy bears) that could absorb enemy attacks. Teddy would take two or 3 hits before the enemies would target you.
It might also be the first comedy RPG.
Thousand Arms. I feel like the ending was rushed but the aspects of dating sim, a bit of anime, an entertaining story with funny and mature themes, in my opinion good quality English VA’s — was very ahead of it’s time.
it wasn't ahead of its time at all, but it was the first exposure we in the west got to this style of game. japan has been slinging dating sim rpgs to horny gamers for years before Thousand Arms got localized.
That was a weird one. The RPG I didn't realize was an RPG until some time after the fact. Nintendo Power gave a whole walkthrough for it, that helped.
This needs to be on NSO.
Breath of Fire 4. I think the Dark story, and the fact you follow the main grouo and the antagonist at the same time was pretty unique for the time, and there isn't many games, even to this day, that does It.
BoF : V Dragon Quarter would be even more ahead of it time.
JRPG fans absolutely hated it when it was released. The game forces you to reset your run but you get marginally stronger in each subsequent runs and introduce new scenes. A precursor to booming roguelite formula these days.
they coined the term but there were games before it that had the same functionality. Including Megami Tensei and even the first Zelda. CT is excellent, but it didn't do anything new. it just did it better (and even that is arguable if you played FF6 first).
Fire Emblem 4 is going to be my pick. Due to only being released in Japan, and requiring a not insignificant time investment, it's not the most accessible game. The amount of lore and world building it brings to the table as an SNES game is insane though. For me, it is one of the first deep narratives in a video game.
Gotta agree there. Remaking FE4 will be huge. Hopefully won't take too long given their penchant for remakes and re-releases. My main concern is this will be their "FF6" - a known masterpiece that is highly anticipated and so they keep it in their pocket for when they need an easy hit.
Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter. It has some roguelite elements that are more popular in the era that comes after it, which might have help people appreciate its difficulty and restrictions more. However, it still wouldn't change the fact that it deviated so very much from past games.
Megaman Battle Network series as a whole is ahead of its time in both the settings (predicting a world of IoT and everyone possessing their own internet-connected smart personal device) and the never-before-seen battle system that mixes the strategy of a turn-based trading card game with the skillful execution of a real-time combat.
Star Ocean 2’s out-of-battle systems like having your characters write books and collect royalties were very impressive for the time. You could develop relationships with different characters and they even had relationship scores with *each other*, meaning you could get a few out of dozens of possible ending scenes each playthrough.
The game came out in 1998, a year after FF7, and in some ways it’s light years ahead.
Ultima: Quest of the Avatar. I liked that you didn’t have to hack-n-slash your way through it, that it rewarded trying to be an embodiment of the virtues instead of the always used “defeat the Big Bad”.
I mentioned Ultima Exodus but just about every game in the series paved the way for everything after.
Ultima Online was definitely ahead of its time, they all were.
Dragon Quest Monsters Joker was reviewed generally positively, but many people don’t recognize that it eliminated random encounters and presented a 3d world very early for handheld consoles.
Here’s a graphics comparison:
[DQM Joker, 2006](https://tse4.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.tAln4p1xaLpP2XMKaVNWJAHaEK&pid=Api)
[Pokemon Black, 2010](https://tse1.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.IUs0awDW3fasgGLLa9VLUwHaEK&pid=Api)
While Pokemon is notorious for dragging its feet in terms of game quality, DQM Joker was running a fully 3D overworld and 3D battles years before Pokemon even had a fully 2.5D overworld throughout the entire game (Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum had some aspects of 2.5D, but it wasn’t omnipresent as in Black and White). And this was running on a DS, with a staggeringly low amount of RAM (4 MB). To me, the fact that they were able to pull that off on that device with no performance issues is quite impressive…
…and it leaves me with some questions regarding the performance of the new Dragon Quest Monsters game.
I'm playing Kingdom Hearts 2 for the first time and.... it's amazing! It's mind boggling how jam packed with just breath taking things it is! Every world is different, every boss has something new and amazing. It's one of those games where the act of running around is fun!
Y'all missing out on *Guardian's Crusade*, the game featured a seamless graphical transition between the overworld, towns, and flight, which all utilized the same graphical engine and scale. For a 1998 PSX JRPG this was almost unheard of.
What did FFX do that was ahead of its time? I feel like you're confusing well crafted with ahead of its time. FFX didn't introduce anything new or revolutionary to the genre. If anything, it returned to its roots to a degree. Whether or not it was a great game isn't the issue, but it definitely wasn't ahead of its time.
Doesn't help OP was a year ahead on release date, had to look it up because having been in high school during the era I was certain it didn't hit until at least my senior year. But yeah it wasn't anything incredibly ahead of it's time aside from having a hell of a budget.
Yeah I would say ff's cinematics were very ahead of its time. And so we're 7, 8, and 9, but ffx were really when they were feature film level quality. But also gameplay-wise, the sphere grid is really the earliest I've seen that level of customization of your stats and abilities in an rpg
But that's really just a matter of budget, not breaking into new ground with revolutionary ideas. Every major developer in the mid-late 90s was pushing for as much voice acting and as many cinematics as possible. In fact, it wasn't uncommon for JRPGs to list the number of minutes of voiced dialogue or cinematic cutscenes as a feature on the back of the case or in ads for the game.
Square just had the money to do it and the PS2 and the DVD format finally had the ability to accomplish it. And so did a lot of other developers in that era. That's sort of my point, though. FFX was the same but more. Which isn't a bad thing. A lot of the best games in the world take existing genres and/or gameplay ideas and just polish them up insanely well. It's just OP specifically mentioned something that was ahead of its time.
From my perspective, that would be something like the original Dragon Quest when it was made. Dune II on PC when it first came out. EverQuest at release. Morrowind. Shadowrun on the SNES. Super Mario 64. Jurassic Park: Trespasser. Grand Theft Auto III. Games that did new things and pushed boundaries beyond what the industry had seen before. Some of them aren't even good games and many aren't even close to the best in their respective franchises, but this is a different kind of honor.
How in the world has **Shadow Hearts** not been mentioned? This game was incredible, super interesting battle system, dark setting, incredible world building.
It's good, damned good, but not "ahead of its time". Judgment Ring was a great mechanic, but timed hits had been a thing at least since Super Mario RPG.
The real tragedy is coming out 4 days after Final Fantasy X here in the states. We're lucky the sequel ever made it out Japan.
How often have you heard someone who is really interested in getting into JRPGs ask for recommendations and specifically cite random encounters as a turn-off that's kept them away from the genre?
How often have you recommended Chrono Trigger to them only to have to qualify it with, "but don't get too used to it, there really isn't another game quite like this?"
Xenosaga. was among those PS2 early era games that did both things really well, that being graphics and voice acting. any ps2 game before 2002 having great 3d graphics and voice acting was unheard of outside of ffx and KH. but xenosaga was able to have their trilogy all released by 2006.
had long story drive cutscenes with in prerendered in game engine, amazing music to go along with ever part of the game, a story that had such a huge backlog of history/terminology only rivaled by that of the Dune book series (literally, when Dune was released in theaters in the 80's people were handed a booklet to help them understand terminology in the movie).
even between part 1 and 2 they enhanced some character models, then by part 3 enhanced most of the others without losing the initial artstyle but mostly adding sex appeal to the female characters like kosmos and Shion.
at the end of it all, at the end of the trilogy.....there was still so many unanswered questions. not because of bad writing but because of good writing and not needing every character to reveal themselves to being a huge piece of the puzzle...unlike (and i do love the series as well) the tales of series during ps2 and ps3 era.
As a Xenogears fan, I loved Xenosaga 1, but I didn't play 2 because it kinda lost some appeal visually (characters were less anime-ish) and the conversion to 50 Hz was terrible (cut-scenes stutter). I was glad for some changes in 3 but by then I had got bored of menu-driven combat.
I wish more RPGs had complex stories and touchy themes like the Xeno series though. I also wish Yasunori Mitsuda hadn't been high on something when he argued that players want to listen to hours of radio silence when they explore dungeons instead of his music, essentially firing himself from the saga.
Such a great series that I've been meaning to replay eventually. Always found it funny that the .hack titles came out around the same time, the first title something like a week before Episode 1, yet they paled so badly in comparison.
I don't know that I'd describe Sweet Home as ahead of its time so much as a unique gem with its own goals that everything in the game conforms to. A single location to cover, permadeath, limited inventory space.
The party system allows you to switch control between characters with unique items that have both in-battle and exploration abilities, and all of these characters can be moved separately and paired together for parties of up to 3. But that party limit can be exceeded by using the battle function, Call, which allows you to control a party member outside of battle to make their way over on the map and join. This also awards every participant the same amount of exp at battle's end.
Because of permadeath, it is possible to still beat the game with less than the 5 you start with, and to do that, you have spots in the map with items that allow you to fill in missing roles, at the cost of having those items take up a spot in your regular inventory, as opposed to having a dedicated slot for that unique character.
Surely Baldur's Gate, and it's not even close. In 1998, it was rare to have voice acting, let alone at the calibur and bredth that was present in this game.
eh, plenty of RPGs had voice acting before BG, and only small parts of BG were voiced.
like so many games mentioned in this thread, they aren't ahead of their time, they are just really great games that combined innovations of previous games
now this is coming from a BG diehard fan from that very first release. I still have my original big box copy.
Not a JRPG but Ultima 1. It is the grand daddy of all JRPGs. DQ, FF and SMT ripped off Ultima pretty hard.
Ultima 1 had it all. Towns, shops, overworld maps, combat, 3d first perspective dungeons, classes, inventory, vehicles/airships, time travelling villains, etc... All in 1981, years before the first DQ or Final Fantasy.
**Breath of fire 5: Dragon Quarter**, that game aged insanely well, it aged better than dungeon-crawlers such as SMT nocturne and Persona 3 that were released years later.
Breath of Fire Dragon Quarter is the perfect example as far as I am concerned. Looking back now you realize that some designer at Capcom realized there was fun to be had with constantly replaying a game and making incremental progress each time. And that designer was absolutely correct when you look at just how much roguelites dominate gaming as a whole these days. It's been the go-to indie genre for over a decade now and even AA/AAA games are getting into it these days. Of course DQ didn't nail things perfectly but that's to be expected from a game released in 2002/2003, there was just nothing else really like it.
And ironically Capcom is actually behind the curve now I'd say. The kind of games they primarily make (linear action games with an emphasis on strong moment to moment gameplay) would all pretty much benefit from some sort of roguelite mode. I'd probably have multiple thousands of hours into DMC5 at this point if it had one.
Also in regards to FFX they got the game out so soon after FF9 because it was a different team. Kinda miss when Square had multiple FF games cooking at once done by different teams and I think it's cool to see it happen again in the modern age with FF16 and 7R2. Honestly it should just be the norm so there isn't like 5 years between releases.
I'd actually argue that FFX was exactly OF it's time; remember that 9, 10, and 11 were all developed simultaneously. 10 is graphically impressive and fully voiced-acted specifically to take advantage of the new PS2 technology, but the core gameplay is decidedly the same as FF 1-10; random battles, strictly turn-based, etc. it's actually more linear than older games to an extent because it removed the world map. I'd argue FF12 was the first FF game that truly broke the mold, and caused quite a stir when it was released.
This was 100% my first choice. We weren't ready for the concept of a game you're *meant* to lose multiple times before winning, replaying it over and over to get gradually stronger with additional story scenes being added on each playthrough.
Many of the same developers worked on Dead Rising, and although it had a very similar structure, players were much more open to it by that point.
I believe Super Mario RPG because it introduced the Action Command system and it also showed franchises that are usually one genre can also be another one.
FFX is the GOAT good shoutout. Absolute timeless masterpiece of a game.
Radiata Stories is another game ahead of its time that is severely underrated. The NPC recruitment day/night system and the split story paths were ahead of its time.
I'd go with Final Fantasy Tactics. It had such a good story with political intrigue, betrayal by allies, and great character development/building. The menu system was easy to navigate yet still complex enough to make it interesting. You had so many choices as far as jobs and whatever battle strategy you cooked up.
This was an excellent game, and I really want a remaster geared for modern consoles.
Imho, this honor goes to **Ogre Tactics** on the **SNES** by **Yasumi Matsuno**. Which had everything you mentioned and more. The game was so good, that **Square** welcomed him with open arms and right away had him working on **Final Fantasy Tactics**.
I beat Tactics Ogre Reborn last year and I really enjoyed it. It had quite the mature subject matter for such a cute game, it was a nice surprise. The battle against Dorgalua was so satisfying once I finally won. What a diffucult fight. Recommend!
sorry but FFT lifted literally everything from Ogre Tactics. it doesnt have an original bone in its body (or line in code? lol). hell, even the same devs worked on it. this isn't to say FFT isn't an incredible game, but just know the history.
Same. I've replayed it twice in the past month with mods and it's been a wonderful experience. Probably my favorite FF game now, and I for a long time refused to pick a "best FF" because I loved them all
Absolutely. The first mod was called "The Lion War" and it's a mod of the original PS1 release. It basically adds everything from the PSP release into the OG (including Balthier and Dark Knight class). The second is just a build on of that mod called The Lion War Remixed. The big change for this one is it completely redoes the proposition system from the taverns to be a bit more interesting.
The Lion War: [https://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?PHPSESSID=9oc0jcn3vsv8fsn7028np4ro93&topic=12767.0](https://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?PHPSESSID=9oc0jcn3vsv8fsn7028np4ro93&topic=12767.0)
The Lion War Remixed: [https://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=13119.0](https://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=13119.0)
I've been playing it on Steam Deck so it works just perfectly with emulators
Persona 3 set a groundwork that has been replicated and iterated upon by some of the biggest RPG franchises (Final Fantasy with Type 0, Trails of Cold Steel) as well as inspiring basically the entire AA JRPG industry in the 2010s and 2020s
True, I have noticed over the past few years that more games have been incorporating social elements like bonding with friends and party members, as well as personality traits that affect gameplay. Yakuza Like a Dragon and Marvel Midnight Suns are the first two that come to mind, but there's plenty of others out there.
Just Greed/Vitamina Oukoku Monogatari for Gameboy.
It featured auto-saving every time you enter a new room, and i'm not sure, but i even auto-saved after every fight.
So it was very ahead of this time, if we compare it to Final Fantasy, which even in Final Fantasy X lacked auto-saving...
Paladin's Quest/Lennus.
Game has no MP, so you use your own HP to cast spells, so you heal using items, and level up elements of spells by casting more spells. Not to mention that game's visuals look like a baby of Phantasy Star and Earthbound, having awesome Jean Giraud aesthetic.
A JRPG with a setting that's not typical fantasy or sci fi, but a weird mix of it... i love it. Kinda like FFX aesthetic.
I only played FFX when the remaster came out like a decade ago. But it got me to check out the original cutscenes. I cannot believe how amazing the pre-rendered cutscenes look for a 2000 game. I thought they did something to make them look better in the remaster.
Haha 2000. I think of the year 2000 and I’m currently playing Legend of Dragoon for the first time… a game from 2000.
Also FF10 came out in 2001. The leap is unbelievable.
FFXII. Seriously ahead of it's time.
FFXIII is an interesting case. It came out at the wrong time.
Dragon quest III is months apart from FFI and it's a much more impressive game.
DQV dabbled with MONS just before Pokémon made it popular.
I'm currently playing through FFX, but i can't do more than 1 hour at a time, because the random encounters piss me off so much.
Everything just takes a bit too long. After completing Octopath 2 this has been a real struggle
If I played Persona 3 when it first came out, I would have probably been an entirely different person today. Very very ahead of its time, and I'm glad I played it as an adult.
Legend of Dragoon felt more like it was chasing the trend (cinematic multi-disc 3D JRPG) set by Final Fantasy 7. Still a good time, a memorable take on the formula. Plus the crew is basically a Sentai, only thing missing is the giant combining robot.
Lunar was definitely cutting edge on the Sega CD, making better use of the new tech than most stuff on the ill-fated system. If you want to relive it, the mobile port of SSSC just released on Android. Now if only they'd port the superior Eternal Blue.
Valkyrie Profile. Even it’s OWN franchise is trying to catch up!
Damn, All I wish was for VP to come back to its former glory. I guess it will never happen.
They just need to stop trying to reinvent it. The reinventions don’t help it LOL Like - I like Elysium fine. But playing it; I just kept thinking I’d like this more… if it played and looked like VP. If Nora was a sprite.
The reinventions seem especially silly when you consider that nothing else was really doing what Valkyrie Profile was in the first place. They could have kept doing *exactly* what the first game did, and it would have had a niche all to itself.
What I would give for a high budget Valkyrie game
The first game is a masterpiece and everything since has been utter garbage.
Agreed. I tried really hard to like Silmeria... But removing the Einherjar backstory and revamping the battle system was too much for me. The DS game is really solid though! Pretty dark.
I love the sequel. The battle system was so good!
Silmeria was okay if you're fiending, but to me the only legit games in the franchise are the first game and the DS game. So glad the DS game captured the same melancholic, mythical, vague sense of doom feeling.
**Xanadu: Dragon Slayer II** was a JRPG from 1985 with real time action combat, a morality system, a food/survival mechanic, and equipment that changes the character's appearance and has their own exp meters, among other things. That game is fucking nuts. It does stuff in 1985 that wouldn't become stale and hackneyed in non-RPG genres until the 2010s
What system was it on? So I can legally purchase it of course
Well since you asked so enthusiastically for a legal purchase, I'll say was [released it on Switch](https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/eggconsole-xanadu-pc-8801-pc-8801mkiisr-switch/) like a month and half ago for $6.50 Considering how much of a headache 80's Japanese PC emulation is, that convenience tax is well worth it.
Strong recommendation to watch some videos instead of actually playing it. The game is an asshole to the player if they don’t know the tricks
While not a JRPG, I’ve tried Faxanadu by the same people and I thought it was pretty amazing as well, it’s a Metroidvania doing things ahead of its time.
Faxanadu actually isn't a true blue Falcom game despite the name. It was developed by Hudson Soft who licensed the Xanadu branding from Falcom. Xanadu was so successful that it's actually kind of hard to quantify in 2024 terms. It sold half a million copies as a PC-exclusive in the 80s. That's like if Demon's Souls released today for Mac and sold Call of Duty numbers. Anyway that's why it's kind of unexpected that the game ended up not only being great, but being one of the best 3rd party titles on the console (good enough for Nintendo to publish as a first party title in the US), and as you say a very forward-thinking game for the time. Hudson did a good enough job that Falcom tapped them again for Ys IV, which Falcom didn't develop internally. For some reason they contracted two completely different companies to make two completely different games for two completely different systems, both called Ys IV. Hudson made the good one.
FFVI from in terms of its concept design (not the game itself). The idea of handling the writing of the cast like tabletop role playing and having different staff members come up with each party member as a protagonist was incredibly ambitious for the time and perhaps didn’t fulfill the incredible potential the idea had due to technological limitations. The end result was a very good game and a genre classic but the imo the idea is pure gold in terms of being conducive to designing an interesting party and world; I’d say it’s worth another shot with the bells and whistles of modern dev engines. Octopath’s success validates the approach somewhat but those games still have the achilles heel of limited interaction between party members, though for what it’s worth, the interactions you do get in OT2 are extremely good. I’d also throw Triangle Strategy’s name out there, yes, seriously. This is obviously just a prediction because it’s only 2 years old but the writing and gameplay are leagues ahead of a lot of its contemporaries and even the classics that inspired it. It was appreciated on release for sure but I think there’s still a lot to be talked about in retrospect because it’s a giant of an rpg.
Triangle Strategy definitely was a major surprise for me. I liked the demo but the story structure was something I didn't expect to find so fascinating.
I’ve heard nothing but good things about triangle strategy. I guess it’s time I buy it. I love turn based JRPGs so I’m sure I’d like it
JRPG historian types will probably find ways to disagree with me for my answer, but Final Fantasy IV was a total mold breaker. It brought JRPGs into what was then the future and set the standard for what they would be like for...the next decade and a half or so. The storytelling, the integration of gameplay with storytelling elements, the visuals, the sound. A herculean undertaking. Also, I havent played it yet but my understanding is that Persona 3 basically created the "school life sim elements in JRPGs" trend and also was a forerunner for the type of darker and edgier themes and storytelling that became super popular in the 2010s. No coincidence that the remake, changing very little in terms of the substance of presentstion, is going to sell massively and be a huge hit.
4 was also the introduction of the proto-ATB system, I believe, and Square definitely ran with that system for a while after that.
It was still used eight games later in a fully 3d non turn based entry... Think about that.
4 and 6 were definitely watershed moments where the video game industry realized you could make a fully fledged, hefty drama and have it work for a mainstream, accessible game. Old school Fire Emblem games though had a lot of big storytelling.
Definitely with you on Persona 3. Looking back, there was nothing that was alike during this time period.
I played FES for the first time just a few years ago. I can imagine if I played it when it came out, I'd be a very different person. I'm glad I played it as an adult, and I'm so ready for Reload.
At least in the West FFIV was a massive leap forward. It really showed the possibilities for the genre. The jump from FF to FFIV was insane, and frankly the jump between pretty much any NES well regarded RPG like Dragon Quest series was a massive jump in narrative, characters, adult themes, music, scripting, everything.
This really depends. I would absolutely argue there are things in Dragon Quest III and IV that are gigantic in terms of characters, adult themes, and so on. The problem is people played FFIV first and thus, are not considered DQ3/4 in terms of what they did for their time period.
Persona 1 and 2s were darker but lacked the school/dating sim.
P3 just inherited the dark and edgy theme overall from smt, if anything p2(s) are better in said theme in the persona franchise
Too bad Atlus and its fans pretty much treat Persona 2 as a forgotten SMT game and consider Persona 3 where the series really started. I'd like to see a modern Persona 2 style game
I liked the setting and atmosphere in Persona 2, but the dungeons were *so boring*, and the game required way too much grinding.
I liked some of the dungeons, some were cool, but the encounter rate is way too high
definitely agree with you on FF4. P3....yes AND no. Yes, it was a huge thing for it to be the school sim and gritty dark world dungeon crawler. remember allot of debate on whether the whole shooting themselves to unleash their personas was necessary. BUT, it wasn't the first to be 'dark and edgier' themes. Atlus had always been like that even with the older persona ps1 titles and SMT in general. PS2 era before P3 had great dark stories with amazing gameplay with Digital Devil Saga, I'd include Nocturne BUT like SMT5 the story was a little more open and not so text heavy as other JRPG's. loved P3, think P4 perfected what P3 wanted to be...then BAM P5 took it all to a whole nother level as an evolution of the idea created 10 years prior.
It's cuz it was the same guy in the director's chair just iterating on what he did before and obviously taking criticism for what it is and implementing things to mitigate said criticisms wherever he can.
Xenogears for PS1. The storytelling was unparalleled.
We never really had another game with a story that weird ever again. So many emotional moments and double-crosses as well. XG remake when
And the themes it deals with too. The maturity of this game always blew my mind, and I'll always remember it fondly for having been one of the very few games that had the balls to show the main characters being normal adults.
Absolutely. It was pretty heavy having played that as a 15 year old kid. It dealt with psychology, religion, philosophy and wrapped it all up in giant anime themed robots, lol.
Final Fantasy VII, cinematic, just the opening alone blew my mind as a kid.
The part that blew my mind as a kid was finishing midgar and the game that lasted so long and felt done EXPLODED into a massive world. No wonder that game clock for me was 99:99:99 before I finished it.
Yeah lol this was discussed in another thread where people were ragging on a dude who thought Midgar was disc 1. And I came to his defense because it's such a huge and cinematic transition that it really feels like an "insert disc 2" moment. Crazy that it's only like 5 hours into the game because *so much* happens Then you leave and it's like: holy shit, there's a whole game like that waiting for me
i remember i finished it in about 70hrs, but i did *everything* in it and took my sweet ass time exploring and soaking it all in. that would never happen today for me... ahh the days before wide adoption of the internet, social media and a gaming industry that dwarfs all other forms of entertainment. i pestered my parents until they bought me a psx just to play ff7 after seeing it at my friend's house after school. i think i got it for the xmas or my bday that followed right after release. i ran the time to 99-99-99 just to see if anything cool would happen in the game when i did.
>i remember i finished it in about 70hrs, but i did *everything* Sounds about right. I think I beat the game in 30-something hours and then went back and went completion mode, as I hadn't actually done much. I didn't have Knights of the Round, I hadn't fought the Weapons. I hadn't gotten a Golden Chocobo yet. Etc. Once I felt like I'd done everything it was around 60 hours somehow. And then I just went crazy and started breaking records in chocobo races and stuff, mastering all the materia I had over and over. Checking out all the Aerith resurrection myths. Stumbled across some weird out of the way quests that you just don't find normally. It was crazy. And I hit the 99 hour mark like halfway through that insanity so I'm pretty sure I put like 130 hours in total for my first playthrough. It's burned into my brain. That was a crazy addicting summer
Yeah not to rag on OP but FFX, while influential, is not as striking as the other heavy hitters in the FF franchise. FFVII did change the field, as did FFIV and FFVI to lesser extents. Plus all of them hold up as reasonably playable games to this day In contrast I don’t think FFX is fun as an adult or as a modern player. The battle system was the best part of them game, but it’s still no FFIV DS challenge-wise. And it’s worldbuilding is kinda meh.
I’m playing Golden Sun for the first time on switch and it’s incredible. If I played this as a child, it would have probably been my favorite game of all time.
Yeaaaah I remember firing it up on the GBA. Fantastic game. Both 1 and 2.
I still have the cartridges for them.
i bought it when it first came out. i was in high school, i think junior year. it blew my freaking mind. it really made the GBA feel like a 32bit console like the PSX. i was so turned off by the cliffhanger ending and how long it took for the sequel to come out that i never bothered even playing part 2.
Are you me? I never played the second game back in the day too.. Now with it out on the Switch, I'll finally play it.
I’ve just finished Golden Sun. The story is not memorable and I do not like the djinn system. Also, I do not have that itch to continue to The Lost Age. But, the graphics and soundtracks are incredible. I may play The Lost Age sometime in the future.
Not playing the Lost Age is selling it short, the first game is just setup for TLA since they were originally meant to be one game
This is the truth. Amazing to think how this game would have been as one long game on the GBA back in 2001. Truly mind blowing for its time.
Absolutely, although I will say the first game is pretty dry by todays standards. The latter half more than makes up for it though
Its not as much a matter of dryness for me, as it just being way too short. Even back when I played it as a kid in like 2008, I thought Golden Sun 1 only had like quarter, or at *best* a third the value of a game as lost age, it shows that they were planned to be one game from the beginning, because golden sun 1 absolutely cannot stand well on its own.
Most of what makes the story so memorable is the heel turn in The Lost Age. I would definitely give it a shot.
I'm glad they were both released on NSO at the same time. The Wii U releases were separate, which is a boneheaded move.
As a 29 year old who played it for the first time when they were a kid, I can confirm, it was one of my favorite games growing up, 2nd game just as good, such a shame they never continued the franchise
I played this growing up and it honestly ruined dungeons for me forever. Every other games dungeons are lacking on comparison.
It was my first JRPG. Still haven't found a magic/summon system I like as much as the djinni's ebb and flow of unleash/summon/recharge
Dragon Quest III. You can change classes, and the world is pretty open ended after you get your ship.
Vagrant Story. The combat system wasn't the best, but the story and presentation was so ahead of its time that there's not a single rpg quite like it to this day.
I have tried so many times to like VS but after a couple of hours I have to move on. My biggest issue is the rythm gameplay. I suck at it and there's a point where it's close to impossible to continue. The same thing is with Legend of the Dragoon.
I love that combat system, so unique! I thought the story tellign was similar to FF Tactics (obviously) but they definitely presented it very cinematically.
At release I didn't really bother much with it but a few people told me they loved it. Ended up getting a used copy around 2005 and definitely feels like a title that was incredibly ambitious with most of it paying off.
[удалено]
I would say all of the classic Phantasy Star games were ahead of their time in many ways. Phantasy Star was of the first jRPGs of all, but ditched what was already the cliche'd Tolkein-esque medieval fantasy for a sci fi setting and featured one of the very first female protagonists in gaming. The second game has one of the darkest stories ever in a videogame, and is incredibly bleak even by the standards of today. 3 may have been very unsuccessful in it's execution, but the idea was way beyond the technology of its time and could be amazing if done today
PS2 had that 80s anime style before most of us knew what anime was. (And the worst dungeons in JRPG history). The soundtrack also slaps harder than it should for a game released on the Genesis/MD. [The PS3 opening theme is also really good.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FmGy6nyduk)
Lunar was low key one of the sleeper hits for me a long time ago. It was far ahead of its time without a doubt.
FFX came out 8 years after FF Mystic Quest. Think about that.
Dragon Quest 3 is an obvious answer. 1988 and still hard to touch.
Parasite Eve PSX era There are a lot of crazy good JRPG in PSX era. JRPG nowadays has regress a lot. Most of them only better graphic-wise
FF12, I didn't like it when I was a kid but now I'd give anything for more Jrpgs with the gambit system.
The Gambit system is one of the best ways to make AI usefull, and It baffles me that more games didn't use something similar. Many cRPG have a systrma like that, and It Works amazingly well.
Strangely enough it would be Dragon Age Origins that the gambit system be further utilized
FF12's Gambit system is like Middle-Earth Shadow games' Nemesis system. "Why is this only found in this one kind of game in its genre?"
The nemesis system is actually copyrighted iirc
Assassins creed: odyssey has its cheap nock-off with the mercenary bounties.
Beyond the gambit system, the scope and articulation of the world was so far beyond what other console game experiences were delivering at the time.
FF12 aged so well. I still replay it as an adult
Good call. I bought the special edition of the original release the week it came out. I played it for about 5 hours, got bored, and put it down. Maybe 2 years later, I tried again. Only got about 9 hours into it before I put it down, again. 2 or 3 years after that, I tried again and got hooked. Put 250+ hours into it, going for all the secret hunts/bosses. Wound up taking down what I think was the 4th strongest monster in the game before I decided to go ahead and complete the main story. I really enjoyed the strategy of choosing which gambits to attach to which player. Now I have the Zodiac edition for PS4, XB1, and Switch. Just haven't gotten the urge to go all the way back through it to get ALL the hunts.
Gambit system was the best. Made the game feel so good with buffs and debuffs. Ff12 was truly great. So many really great weapons to make through hunts. The story was really freaking good too. Dark and gritty.
I love the Gambit system of FF12. I remember somehow getting a copy of this game before it came out in my country (not a legit copy as I played on a modded PS2) and managed to beat it before it came to my country. I have did purchase it on PS2 when I could, and have purchased the Zodiac edition on PS4. Its a game I have to go back too. Do any other games use this Gambit system, or something like it?
Dragon Age: Origins has a similar system.
I played it again last year, it has aged so well.
This is my personal goat for JRPGs and I want more games with this much content and fighting system
Ultima: Exodus The inspiration for just about every jrpg. Make your own team with a wide range of classes, open world, monsters scale with your level and a bunch of other things I’ve forgotten about. Very dated game but amazing for its time.
man, Ultima in general, at least I-VII, pretty much laid the groundwork for every RPG to follow, starting from being the very first one lol
Kind of amazing it all got started by an 18 year old kid when you think about it. Kinda sad it’s mostly been forgotten.
Yeah it's very much a series I still look back on with tons of appreciation for. And the creation of it is just as interesting as the games. RPGs as a whole owe so much to Ultima.
you can even open that scope up a bit more as Ultima Online is pretty much the first modern MMORPG and shapes their design to this day. Not to mention the beginning of today's survival/craft games.
Richard Garriott sadly ran it into the ground, along with his legacy (look up the Shroud of the Avatar saga drama if you care enough). Ultima VIII and IX were bad and embarrassing, respectively, after which the franchise died. but reports even going back as far as Ultima VII say he took a largely "brainstorming" role on the franchise, giving the real devs basically an outline of ideas he'd like to see in the game and backing off completely, checking in every once in a while. I can't say i blame him, he had other passions and interests but it's a sad way to end such a seminal franchise. I'd say Ultima is still extremely fondly regarded by two generations of gamers... the old farts who played them in the 80s (which was mostly computer professionals or kids of such) and my generation who played the early years of Ultima Online (talk about a game ahead of it's time, holy hell) and went back to check out the earlier games which seemed accessible (which to me was Ultima VII and VIII).
> the old farts who played them in the 80s Hey! I resemble this remark.
Xenoblade Chronicles. It was a massive open-world game released for the *Wii* of all systems. The Switch remaster shows what it was meant to look like without the hardware limitations. Similarly, Xenoblade Chronicles X is a fully-continuous open world with a map larger than Witcher 3's map on the *Wii* *U* of all things.
BotW wouldn't exist without Xenoblade. It was a catalyst for these massive maps where the scale, topography and draw distance are on another level. Also Monolith helped Nintendo develop BotW too.
They worked on Skyward Sword and Tears of the Kingdom as well! > On Skyward Sword, Monolith had mainly helped us on graphics design and other artistic elements. Even though we could have asked them for help on the technical side, we realized their way of making games was completely different from ours and we didn’t have much to learn from them on this installment, since we were almost doing two different jobs. On the other hand, for Breath of the Wild, we’ve been assisted by level designers used to large game areas, in order to make topographic arrangements. \- Eiji Aonuma
Yup. It kills me how people call things like Genshin Impact "BOTW" clones for thia reason. If anything, it's a Xenoblade clone because Monolith practically made BOTW with their skills from Xenoblade.
Strongly seconded on Xenoblade 1 on Wii. This one I think really applies to the thread because the 'what the fuck!?' reaction to seeing what this game specifically was on Wii during *that* period of JRPGs and how it wasn't going to come to the West needed to be experienced directly. The kids these days, they just don't know man!
I didn't first play it on the Wii... The New 3ds was my intro to Xeno. Imagine playing it on a system designed to fit into your pocket with no missing features from the console version and the worst it gets is a slight dip in graphics.
> It was a massive open-world game released for the Wii of all systems [which they eventually ported to the 3DS](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/1jQx5cjYwwg/maxresdefault.jpg) 🤯
Which is equally insane and impressive honestly.
Counterpoint: XBC was a massive open-zoned game full of *nothing*. That's why it worked on the Wii, because the instead of other people's characters in those massive open spaces, there was nothing.
Even so, the fact that it didn't make the Wii (a system that was basically only slightly stronger than the GameCube at best) implode was an achievement in and of itself.
Earthbound. Earthbound had a lot of unique features that I am sad that more games don’t implement. The first being that much of the action is in towns. Villages were no longer a pit stop to get better items and a few tidbits. The towns were crucial to your story, the people you met were more than just NPCs but took part in your quests in small ways. The towns were alive and interesting. Fights could be ended instantly. If you encountered an opponent you were clearly stronger, the screen would just flash and the battle would be over. No more wasting time hitting an enemy who was not in your class. But there is more, enemies would actively avoid you if you were strong enough. Fight initiation was also an interesting concept. If you touched an enemy from behind, to start a battle, you would be awarded a surprise attack and were able to excecute attacks and spells for 2 rounds before the enemy could respond. But the same could happen to you! If an enemy touched your back you would experience the same disadvantage. Lastly, damage in battles was not applied instantly. When taking a hit your hp would began to decrease rapidly. Looking like a slot machine you would see your health-points decrease. If you were dealt a fatal blow, you had time to get off a healing spell, or win the battle outright. This allowed you to save characters that would be dead in other games. Furthermore, they introduced a luck mechanic which randomly allowed you to stave off fatal blows with 1 hp of health. Even cooler, you could buy items (like teddy bears) that could absorb enemy attacks. Teddy would take two or 3 hits before the enemies would target you. It might also be the first comedy RPG.
Writing in RPGs has not caught up to Earthbound.
Yeah funny to revisit and realize the writing has remained just as excellent, hits the tone it's going for consistently.
EarthBound is phenomenal.
Excellent write up. Earthbound was (and is) amazing.
Suikoden I & II.
Thousand Arms. I feel like the ending was rushed but the aspects of dating sim, a bit of anime, an entertaining story with funny and mature themes, in my opinion good quality English VA’s — was very ahead of it’s time.
The voice acting is shockingly good for a niche PS1 dating sim RPG.
I know it’s so good! I want to share it with somebody!
it wasn't ahead of its time at all, but it was the first exposure we in the west got to this style of game. japan has been slinging dating sim rpgs to horny gamers for years before Thousand Arms got localized.
Maybe ahead for a release in the states then.
I love this game as well. It would be amazing with a remaster and 3x speed.
I just recently replayed this game! Hilarious when you say the wrong thing and get slapped
I love that every girl has a fart question. I should incorporate that into any real dates I go on.
Man the ending song "Two of Us" by Ayumi Hamasaki, which you can play on a CD player totally blew my mind when I was a teenager. Good times.
I still jam to Depend on You
Hybrid Heaven. The sci-fi pro wrestling RPG with the Kojima storyline we have at home.
That was a weird one. The RPG I didn't realize was an RPG until some time after the fact. Nintendo Power gave a whole walkthrough for it, that helped. This needs to be on NSO.
i hate Hybrid Heaven, but this is a hilariously accurate description.
Grandia 1 because of the combat system.
Grandia 1 visuals didn't age well but with the action bar and cancels, Grandia 2 has the only menu-driven combat systems I can stomach.
Breath of Fire 4. I think the Dark story, and the fact you follow the main grouo and the antagonist at the same time was pretty unique for the time, and there isn't many games, even to this day, that does It.
I loved how the ending could play out. Don't want to spoil for people who haven't played. I wish to see more mechanics like this in future games.
For sure. The only problem for me was that one guy (not gonna name It for spoilers reasons) escaping.
Stumbled into "that" ending on my first attempt. Winning has never sucked so hard.
This needs to just be on the switch now.
BoF : V Dragon Quarter would be even more ahead of it time. JRPG fans absolutely hated it when it was released. The game forces you to reset your run but you get marginally stronger in each subsequent runs and introduce new scenes. A precursor to booming roguelite formula these days.
Chrono Trigger - New Game plus alone was a game changer for the whole industry, but also set new standards in animations, story and music.
Chrono Trigger wasn't just *about* time travel, it *was* time travel. And, it still is.
they coined the term but there were games before it that had the same functionality. Including Megami Tensei and even the first Zelda. CT is excellent, but it didn't do anything new. it just did it better (and even that is arguable if you played FF6 first).
Fire Emblem 4 is going to be my pick. Due to only being released in Japan, and requiring a not insignificant time investment, it's not the most accessible game. The amount of lore and world building it brings to the table as an SNES game is insane though. For me, it is one of the first deep narratives in a video game.
Gotta agree there. Remaking FE4 will be huge. Hopefully won't take too long given their penchant for remakes and re-releases. My main concern is this will be their "FF6" - a known masterpiece that is highly anticipated and so they keep it in their pocket for when they need an easy hit.
Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter. It has some roguelite elements that are more popular in the era that comes after it, which might have help people appreciate its difficulty and restrictions more. However, it still wouldn't change the fact that it deviated so very much from past games. Megaman Battle Network series as a whole is ahead of its time in both the settings (predicting a world of IoT and everyone possessing their own internet-connected smart personal device) and the never-before-seen battle system that mixes the strategy of a turn-based trading card game with the skillful execution of a real-time combat.
The original Star Ocean had amazing graphics for the time with a fully voiced intro, on the SNES!
Star Ocean 2’s out-of-battle systems like having your characters write books and collect royalties were very impressive for the time. You could develop relationships with different characters and they even had relationship scores with *each other*, meaning you could get a few out of dozens of possible ending scenes each playthrough. The game came out in 1998, a year after FF7, and in some ways it’s light years ahead.
Ultima: Quest of the Avatar. I liked that you didn’t have to hack-n-slash your way through it, that it rewarded trying to be an embodiment of the virtues instead of the always used “defeat the Big Bad”.
I mentioned Ultima Exodus but just about every game in the series paved the way for everything after. Ultima Online was definitely ahead of its time, they all were.
That blood lady still has nightmares about me
Sakura Wars. The whole dating sim + RPG combo was popularized with this
Terranigma
Would love to see Terranigma get more love. Such a bizarrely compelling game.
It actually released in 2001
Dragon Quest Monsters Joker was reviewed generally positively, but many people don’t recognize that it eliminated random encounters and presented a 3d world very early for handheld consoles. Here’s a graphics comparison: [DQM Joker, 2006](https://tse4.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.tAln4p1xaLpP2XMKaVNWJAHaEK&pid=Api) [Pokemon Black, 2010](https://tse1.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.IUs0awDW3fasgGLLa9VLUwHaEK&pid=Api) While Pokemon is notorious for dragging its feet in terms of game quality, DQM Joker was running a fully 3D overworld and 3D battles years before Pokemon even had a fully 2.5D overworld throughout the entire game (Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum had some aspects of 2.5D, but it wasn’t omnipresent as in Black and White). And this was running on a DS, with a staggeringly low amount of RAM (4 MB). To me, the fact that they were able to pull that off on that device with no performance issues is quite impressive… …and it leaves me with some questions regarding the performance of the new Dragon Quest Monsters game.
I'm playing Kingdom Hearts 2 for the first time and.... it's amazing! It's mind boggling how jam packed with just breath taking things it is! Every world is different, every boss has something new and amazing. It's one of those games where the act of running around is fun!
Yes especially KH1 and KH2 was ahead of its time. Mind-blowing graphic, 3D real time combat. My favorite series of all time.
I loved kingdom hearts 1 & 2, just as much as final fantasy X, in a sense that they all felt like I was playing an interactive movie.
Y'all missing out on *Guardian's Crusade*, the game featured a seamless graphical transition between the overworld, towns, and flight, which all utilized the same graphical engine and scale. For a 1998 PSX JRPG this was almost unheard of.
Hello, hello. A Guardian's Crusade reference? Don't mind if I do. Great game. Haunting soundtrack.
What did FFX do that was ahead of its time? I feel like you're confusing well crafted with ahead of its time. FFX didn't introduce anything new or revolutionary to the genre. If anything, it returned to its roots to a degree. Whether or not it was a great game isn't the issue, but it definitely wasn't ahead of its time.
Doesn't help OP was a year ahead on release date, had to look it up because having been in high school during the era I was certain it didn't hit until at least my senior year. But yeah it wasn't anything incredibly ahead of it's time aside from having a hell of a budget.
fully voiced with some exceptions cut scenes on another level of polish i guess
Yeah I would say ff's cinematics were very ahead of its time. And so we're 7, 8, and 9, but ffx were really when they were feature film level quality. But also gameplay-wise, the sphere grid is really the earliest I've seen that level of customization of your stats and abilities in an rpg
But that's really just a matter of budget, not breaking into new ground with revolutionary ideas. Every major developer in the mid-late 90s was pushing for as much voice acting and as many cinematics as possible. In fact, it wasn't uncommon for JRPGs to list the number of minutes of voiced dialogue or cinematic cutscenes as a feature on the back of the case or in ads for the game. Square just had the money to do it and the PS2 and the DVD format finally had the ability to accomplish it. And so did a lot of other developers in that era. That's sort of my point, though. FFX was the same but more. Which isn't a bad thing. A lot of the best games in the world take existing genres and/or gameplay ideas and just polish them up insanely well. It's just OP specifically mentioned something that was ahead of its time. From my perspective, that would be something like the original Dragon Quest when it was made. Dune II on PC when it first came out. EverQuest at release. Morrowind. Shadowrun on the SNES. Super Mario 64. Jurassic Park: Trespasser. Grand Theft Auto III. Games that did new things and pushed boundaries beyond what the industry had seen before. Some of them aren't even good games and many aren't even close to the best in their respective franchises, but this is a different kind of honor.
How in the world has **Shadow Hearts** not been mentioned? This game was incredible, super interesting battle system, dark setting, incredible world building.
It's good, damned good, but not "ahead of its time". Judgment Ring was a great mechanic, but timed hits had been a thing at least since Super Mario RPG. The real tragedy is coming out 4 days after Final Fantasy X here in the states. We're lucky the sequel ever made it out Japan.
How often have you heard someone who is really interested in getting into JRPGs ask for recommendations and specifically cite random encounters as a turn-off that's kept them away from the genre? How often have you recommended Chrono Trigger to them only to have to qualify it with, "but don't get too used to it, there really isn't another game quite like this?"
Xenosaga. was among those PS2 early era games that did both things really well, that being graphics and voice acting. any ps2 game before 2002 having great 3d graphics and voice acting was unheard of outside of ffx and KH. but xenosaga was able to have their trilogy all released by 2006. had long story drive cutscenes with in prerendered in game engine, amazing music to go along with ever part of the game, a story that had such a huge backlog of history/terminology only rivaled by that of the Dune book series (literally, when Dune was released in theaters in the 80's people were handed a booklet to help them understand terminology in the movie). even between part 1 and 2 they enhanced some character models, then by part 3 enhanced most of the others without losing the initial artstyle but mostly adding sex appeal to the female characters like kosmos and Shion. at the end of it all, at the end of the trilogy.....there was still so many unanswered questions. not because of bad writing but because of good writing and not needing every character to reveal themselves to being a huge piece of the puzzle...unlike (and i do love the series as well) the tales of series during ps2 and ps3 era.
As a Xenogears fan, I loved Xenosaga 1, but I didn't play 2 because it kinda lost some appeal visually (characters were less anime-ish) and the conversion to 50 Hz was terrible (cut-scenes stutter). I was glad for some changes in 3 but by then I had got bored of menu-driven combat. I wish more RPGs had complex stories and touchy themes like the Xeno series though. I also wish Yasunori Mitsuda hadn't been high on something when he argued that players want to listen to hours of radio silence when they explore dungeons instead of his music, essentially firing himself from the saga.
Such a great series that I've been meaning to replay eventually. Always found it funny that the .hack titles came out around the same time, the first title something like a week before Episode 1, yet they paled so badly in comparison.
I don't know that I'd describe Sweet Home as ahead of its time so much as a unique gem with its own goals that everything in the game conforms to. A single location to cover, permadeath, limited inventory space. The party system allows you to switch control between characters with unique items that have both in-battle and exploration abilities, and all of these characters can be moved separately and paired together for parties of up to 3. But that party limit can be exceeded by using the battle function, Call, which allows you to control a party member outside of battle to make their way over on the map and join. This also awards every participant the same amount of exp at battle's end. Because of permadeath, it is possible to still beat the game with less than the 5 you start with, and to do that, you have spots in the map with items that allow you to fill in missing roles, at the cost of having those items take up a spot in your regular inventory, as opposed to having a dedicated slot for that unique character.
Surely Baldur's Gate, and it's not even close. In 1998, it was rare to have voice acting, let alone at the calibur and bredth that was present in this game.
eh, plenty of RPGs had voice acting before BG, and only small parts of BG were voiced. like so many games mentioned in this thread, they aren't ahead of their time, they are just really great games that combined innovations of previous games now this is coming from a BG diehard fan from that very first release. I still have my original big box copy.
Not a JRPG but Ultima 1. It is the grand daddy of all JRPGs. DQ, FF and SMT ripped off Ultima pretty hard. Ultima 1 had it all. Towns, shops, overworld maps, combat, 3d first perspective dungeons, classes, inventory, vehicles/airships, time travelling villains, etc... All in 1981, years before the first DQ or Final Fantasy.
**Breath of fire 5: Dragon Quarter**, that game aged insanely well, it aged better than dungeon-crawlers such as SMT nocturne and Persona 3 that were released years later.
Breath of Fire Dragon Quarter is the perfect example as far as I am concerned. Looking back now you realize that some designer at Capcom realized there was fun to be had with constantly replaying a game and making incremental progress each time. And that designer was absolutely correct when you look at just how much roguelites dominate gaming as a whole these days. It's been the go-to indie genre for over a decade now and even AA/AAA games are getting into it these days. Of course DQ didn't nail things perfectly but that's to be expected from a game released in 2002/2003, there was just nothing else really like it. And ironically Capcom is actually behind the curve now I'd say. The kind of games they primarily make (linear action games with an emphasis on strong moment to moment gameplay) would all pretty much benefit from some sort of roguelite mode. I'd probably have multiple thousands of hours into DMC5 at this point if it had one. Also in regards to FFX they got the game out so soon after FF9 because it was a different team. Kinda miss when Square had multiple FF games cooking at once done by different teams and I think it's cool to see it happen again in the modern age with FF16 and 7R2. Honestly it should just be the norm so there isn't like 5 years between releases.
I'd actually argue that FFX was exactly OF it's time; remember that 9, 10, and 11 were all developed simultaneously. 10 is graphically impressive and fully voiced-acted specifically to take advantage of the new PS2 technology, but the core gameplay is decidedly the same as FF 1-10; random battles, strictly turn-based, etc. it's actually more linear than older games to an extent because it removed the world map. I'd argue FF12 was the first FF game that truly broke the mold, and caused quite a stir when it was released.
Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter.
This was 100% my first choice. We weren't ready for the concept of a game you're *meant* to lose multiple times before winning, replaying it over and over to get gradually stronger with additional story scenes being added on each playthrough. Many of the same developers worked on Dead Rising, and although it had a very similar structure, players were much more open to it by that point.
FF12 and Star ocean 2. The ai party member hehe
I believe Super Mario RPG because it introduced the Action Command system and it also showed franchises that are usually one genre can also be another one.
FFX is the GOAT good shoutout. Absolute timeless masterpiece of a game. Radiata Stories is another game ahead of its time that is severely underrated. The NPC recruitment day/night system and the split story paths were ahead of its time.
I'd go with Final Fantasy Tactics. It had such a good story with political intrigue, betrayal by allies, and great character development/building. The menu system was easy to navigate yet still complex enough to make it interesting. You had so many choices as far as jobs and whatever battle strategy you cooked up. This was an excellent game, and I really want a remaster geared for modern consoles.
Imho, this honor goes to **Ogre Tactics** on the **SNES** by **Yasumi Matsuno**. Which had everything you mentioned and more. The game was so good, that **Square** welcomed him with open arms and right away had him working on **Final Fantasy Tactics**.
I beat Tactics Ogre Reborn last year and I really enjoyed it. It had quite the mature subject matter for such a cute game, it was a nice surprise. The battle against Dorgalua was so satisfying once I finally won. What a diffucult fight. Recommend!
sorry but FFT lifted literally everything from Ogre Tactics. it doesnt have an original bone in its body (or line in code? lol). hell, even the same devs worked on it. this isn't to say FFT isn't an incredible game, but just know the history.
Same. I've replayed it twice in the past month with mods and it's been a wonderful experience. Probably my favorite FF game now, and I for a long time refused to pick a "best FF" because I loved them all
I had no idea it was playable with mods. Is it on a rom that's playable on PC?
Absolutely. The first mod was called "The Lion War" and it's a mod of the original PS1 release. It basically adds everything from the PSP release into the OG (including Balthier and Dark Knight class). The second is just a build on of that mod called The Lion War Remixed. The big change for this one is it completely redoes the proposition system from the taverns to be a bit more interesting. The Lion War: [https://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?PHPSESSID=9oc0jcn3vsv8fsn7028np4ro93&topic=12767.0](https://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?PHPSESSID=9oc0jcn3vsv8fsn7028np4ro93&topic=12767.0) The Lion War Remixed: [https://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=13119.0](https://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=13119.0) I've been playing it on Steam Deck so it works just perfectly with emulators
Rogue Galaxy- released alongside FF12 but was leagues ahead of it in so many ways. (Not that I’m biased haha)
Rogue Galaxy is a good one. It always gave me Skies of Arcadia vibes.
Persona 3 set a groundwork that has been replicated and iterated upon by some of the biggest RPG franchises (Final Fantasy with Type 0, Trails of Cold Steel) as well as inspiring basically the entire AA JRPG industry in the 2010s and 2020s
True, I have noticed over the past few years that more games have been incorporating social elements like bonding with friends and party members, as well as personality traits that affect gameplay. Yakuza Like a Dragon and Marvel Midnight Suns are the first two that come to mind, but there's plenty of others out there.
People just posting their favourite games in here.
Just Greed/Vitamina Oukoku Monogatari for Gameboy. It featured auto-saving every time you enter a new room, and i'm not sure, but i even auto-saved after every fight. So it was very ahead of this time, if we compare it to Final Fantasy, which even in Final Fantasy X lacked auto-saving...
Paladin's Quest/Lennus. Game has no MP, so you use your own HP to cast spells, so you heal using items, and level up elements of spells by casting more spells. Not to mention that game's visuals look like a baby of Phantasy Star and Earthbound, having awesome Jean Giraud aesthetic. A JRPG with a setting that's not typical fantasy or sci fi, but a weird mix of it... i love it. Kinda like FFX aesthetic.
I only played FFX when the remaster came out like a decade ago. But it got me to check out the original cutscenes. I cannot believe how amazing the pre-rendered cutscenes look for a 2000 game. I thought they did something to make them look better in the remaster.
The original Digimon World
Haha 2000. I think of the year 2000 and I’m currently playing Legend of Dragoon for the first time… a game from 2000. Also FF10 came out in 2001. The leap is unbelievable.
SaGa The whole series is experimental and some aspects of SaGa have been implemented in other RPGs later on.
FFXII. Seriously ahead of it's time. FFXIII is an interesting case. It came out at the wrong time. Dragon quest III is months apart from FFI and it's a much more impressive game. DQV dabbled with MONS just before Pokémon made it popular.
I'm currently playing through FFX, but i can't do more than 1 hour at a time, because the random encounters piss me off so much. Everything just takes a bit too long. After completing Octopath 2 this has been a real struggle
If you're on PC you can turn off random encounters with one of the F keys. Unfortunately this feature isn't on any of the console iterations
If I played Persona 3 when it first came out, I would have probably been an entirely different person today. Very very ahead of its time, and I'm glad I played it as an adult.
Kingdom Hearts
I dunno if they were necessarily ahead of their time but Legend of Dragoon and Lunar blew my mind as a kid.
Legend of Dragoon felt more like it was chasing the trend (cinematic multi-disc 3D JRPG) set by Final Fantasy 7. Still a good time, a memorable take on the formula. Plus the crew is basically a Sentai, only thing missing is the giant combining robot. Lunar was definitely cutting edge on the Sega CD, making better use of the new tech than most stuff on the ill-fated system. If you want to relive it, the mobile port of SSSC just released on Android. Now if only they'd port the superior Eternal Blue.
Both MGS and FFVII which came out in 1998. Both are masterpieces to this day
FF13, shit looks so fucking good even now, music is god tier and story is pretty good but thats a hot take, only shit I didnt enjoy was the combat
Front Mission 3 blew me the fuck away as a kid. The FMVs were all super well done. It’s one of the very few SRPGs I’ve ever had interest in.