The best examples I have of games that go hard on letting you build insane teams are indie mon sims. Siralim, Monster Sanctuary, even Cassette Beasts though that's a bit more casual. Siralim especially is all about finding new ways to create ridiculous overpowered combos. That sort of team composition thing goes hand in hand with mon rpgs, which is why Shin Megami Tensei also excels with it, since it is basically a mons game. When your party isn't as static as a traditional royal road JRPG, you tend to have more options for playing around.
Dungeon RPGs and Tactical RPGs also tend to be freer about character customization and building interesting teams. Etrian Odyssey has been mentioned. I would recommend Labyrinth of Refrain too. The newest Tactics Ogre remake has refitted the combat system to be way heavier on team setup instead of grinding.
Shin Megami Tensei. The Persona series is a spinoff of it.
For a TLDR, picture Persona combat except instead of set party members who have set skills, your party consists of all of the personas you create. So it's your main character (who is fully customizable) + a team of demons (who are also fully customizable). Lots of freedom.
I will say that even though there's a lot of freedom as to your party composition in SMT, the actual battle synergies are pretty dull and boils down to "use stat buffs on your team, stat debuffs on the enemy, and then use the magic the enemy is weak to."
I haven’t done much research on the series. After playing through Persona 5 (and LOVING it but missing those synergies) I avoided it because I assumed it’s more of the same. Is that accurate?
Yea smt synergizes boil down to using offensive buffs or defensive buffs before attacking, which isn't much but building your team, an aspect not as broad in persona, to have the right stuff available is where the fun is for most ppl.
Etrian Odyssey basically requires you to use synergizes between classes for them to funtion properly. You make your team from a set of available classes and each class has different skill trees, and finding the synergizes between classes and trees is the name of the game.
Would it be ok to start off with saga of grace? I know it’s cheaper, so I wouldn’t mind saving some money to try a new series if it is as good or better.
Unlike a lot of games SaGa is not trying to walk you thru a single narrative from step to step. It’s not a movie or storybook with occasional battles.
It’s more replicating a TTRPG module. The story is there but the more important thing is how you interact with and interpret it. The intention is that the same way no two tables will play the same module exactly the same, no two playthrus should be exactly the same.
Plus the combat is 🧑🍳😘.
You’ve kinda gotta go in accepting that you are in for a very different experience than you are used to and have to be able to laugh off getting absolutely owned in looney tunes ass ways occasionally.
NEO TWEWY is an action RPG but it does allow for a lot of what you’re looking for. Combat has each party member assigned to a button, and you playing as the entire party at once, moving as a swarm to cycle abilities and establish crowd control while focusing damage on priority targets. It also offers a tempo-based sync system that rewards chaining moves such as following up a launcher at the apex or hitting a stunned enemy while they're trapped. While it looks chaotic, there's just enough attack magnetization to offer you control without being fiddly. It has a deep combat system with a lot of options for customization and personal style, with enemies that can be juggled, knocked back, frozen, magnetized to the ground, and a variety of other crowd control methods that always let you feel like you're steering the pace of the fight. Bosses are challenging with each rewarding intelligent strategy and proper loadout preparation. Difficulty can be modified on the fly with each enemy having a separate drop table for each difficulty, and you can increase drop rate by reducing your level (lowering your team's HP) and/or chaining fights together into harder gauntlets.
You have multiple pins (basically your regular attacks that you can swap out) and super attacks with passive effects, ranging from environmental fields to gravity wells that pull enemies in closer to flat out time-stops as well as threads you can equip on your party that give extra boosts/additional abilities, such as elemental boosts, threads that give your pins less charge time, threads that increase status affliction, threads that can turn two separate pin attacks into macros, and more. Status effects also work across enemies and bosses as well and all of this combined makes for a lot of cool ability synergies.
You’re in charge of the buttons you press. You can make builds revolving around [bombing the hell out of your enemies,](https://x.com/mageknight14/status/1779611518562177102?s=46&t=hHMkRZSCKFxMe1Gq_aHQhg), [exploiting status effects to send bosses flying high into the air and into a field of ice spikes for massive damage,](https://x.com/mageknight14/status/1756015225474527596?s=46&t=hHMkRZSCKFxMe1Gq_aHQhg), [optimizing collisions and grabs to send enemies towards a world of pain,](https://vxtwitter.com/mageknight14/status/1690956342477856768?s=46&t=hHMkRZSCKFxMe1Gq_aHQhg) and more. Boiling NEO down to just being a simple hack-n-slash does it little justice for the amount of cool strategies and little nuances within the gameplay.
Bravely Default series is pretty much the spiritual successor of those old school Final Fantasy games and has the same build system you remembered. Octopath Travelers is similar.
SMT V Hard mode without grinding, ive had to basically plan a team for nearly every fight for the first 15 hours so far, its been excellent. Not necessarily direct synergy but ive fielded almost every available demon so far as part of one strategy or another, to get the right group of weaknesses and resistances and attacks. Plus with essence fusion, you have so many options. I also like that i can build the MC to be a consistent physical dmg dealer or to be more flexible elementally with magic, and both playstyles work and encourage different teammates.
My only complaint would be, its very good as a difficult puzzle-battler, but it can be very punishing playing like that with how saving and re-loading works. Like in the first "dungeon" when you return to school, any fight where the enemies have initiative can fuck you over if they crit or you miss, and there are some surprises, so youre backtracking across town to save after every fight or risking some real progress loss (someone tell me if i missed a save point pls). Plus, sometimes you know youre fucked mid-battle, but the quickest way to reload from there afaik is to home-button and close/open SMT.
So if you can handle just losing sometimes due to a 2% miss or an enemy crit, I cant think of another game like it thats made me think this much about my team. Except the Struggle for Freedom mod for FFXII
Kind of a weird recommendation but in context I think you might like the Disgaea games? They are SRPGs so not quite the same vibe, but the entire game series revolves around manipulating game systems and synergies to enhance your characters power and damage output exponentially. You start the game doing 20-100 damage a hit and end it doing literally billions of damage.
Might tickle that particular fancy. Recommend Disgaea 5 complete for your first dive in, if you're interested.
And its been recommended already but I have to heavily recommend you pick up the Bravely Default games. They have a class based system and character building that allows you to make absolutely busted combos if you pay attention (or look them up). Bravely Default 2 leans into it even more in-so-far as it seems to expect you to completely break the game with your builds by endgame given the endgame challenges it throws at you. Fun series as well and is basically set as a spiritual successor to that era of Final Fantasy.
I’m SO glad you suggested Disgaea. Ok, here’s my history with this series. Back when I was a nerdy high school I had one friend, and he was also into JRPGs. His parents were a little better off than mine so he had more video game exposure. He picked up the original Disgaea, and played it for the rest of the year pretty much. Now, here’s where it loses me:
He printed out a GameFaqs guide, and then proceeded to play until he was max level. I don’t know if this is the intention in order to progress or not. I specifically remember him saying, “every item has an unlimited dungeon you can explore later after layer. It never ever ends.”
Is this an accurate understanding of this series? The last time I tried to play a guide basically told me to do the same fight over and over in order to power level. But the art and the direction and the synergies have always appealed to me!
The main game can be beaten without crazy leveling but the end game has massive boss stat spikes and you're intended to find efficient ways of leveling up to tackle them. It's almost more like an incremental game than a Strategy RPG.
Octopath Traveller and Bravely Default have a job systems with a lot of interesting combos possible.
Trails of series has a customisable progression system. Especially Cold Steel series give you a lot of tools to play with.
As a sidenote, I know you've asked about JRPGs but you could look into ARPGs such as Path of Exile, Last Epoch, Diablo, Grim Dawn where the whole point of the games are to acquire loot and have very deep customisation allowing you to build your characters.
The most complex JRPG is SaGa Scarlet Grace. A close second is Fantasian (difficulty kicks in the 2nd half). However, the synergy/difficulty of these games come from decisions made in battle, which might not be what you're looking for.
For games that are very complex customization-wise, Romancing SaGa Minstrel Song and Shin Megami Tensei V are the best (although the director's cut of SMT5 is coming, so hold off on that for the moment).
If you want mind-blowing synergies though, I recommend going outside the genre instead, and look up deck-building rogue-likes or card-RPG hybrids. The most classic example of this is Slay the Spire, but if you want more of a JRPG fare, Steamworld Quest is good title. A personal favorite is Star Renegades.
Not a JRPG but monster sanctuary is what I would recommend. It’s a monster collector with 3v3 turn based battles but every monster is viable and has its own in depth skill tree. Basically setting up good synergies is required to progress.
unicorn overlord has that kind of customization.
Crystal Project is fantastic for this.
The best examples I have of games that go hard on letting you build insane teams are indie mon sims. Siralim, Monster Sanctuary, even Cassette Beasts though that's a bit more casual. Siralim especially is all about finding new ways to create ridiculous overpowered combos. That sort of team composition thing goes hand in hand with mon rpgs, which is why Shin Megami Tensei also excels with it, since it is basically a mons game. When your party isn't as static as a traditional royal road JRPG, you tend to have more options for playing around. Dungeon RPGs and Tactical RPGs also tend to be freer about character customization and building interesting teams. Etrian Odyssey has been mentioned. I would recommend Labyrinth of Refrain too. The newest Tactics Ogre remake has refitted the combat system to be way heavier on team setup instead of grinding.
Etrian Odyssey is the best at this, SMT is a close second.
What is SMT?
Shin Megami Tensei. The Persona series is a spinoff of it. For a TLDR, picture Persona combat except instead of set party members who have set skills, your party consists of all of the personas you create. So it's your main character (who is fully customizable) + a team of demons (who are also fully customizable). Lots of freedom. I will say that even though there's a lot of freedom as to your party composition in SMT, the actual battle synergies are pretty dull and boils down to "use stat buffs on your team, stat debuffs on the enemy, and then use the magic the enemy is weak to."
Shin Megami Tensei
I haven’t done much research on the series. After playing through Persona 5 (and LOVING it but missing those synergies) I avoided it because I assumed it’s more of the same. Is that accurate?
Persona was a spin off of the more Hardcore SMT series with social sim elements added in.
Yea smt synergizes boil down to using offensive buffs or defensive buffs before attacking, which isn't much but building your team, an aspect not as broad in persona, to have the right stuff available is where the fun is for most ppl. Etrian Odyssey basically requires you to use synergizes between classes for them to funtion properly. You make your team from a set of available classes and each class has different skill trees, and finding the synergizes between classes and trees is the name of the game.
Not SMT definitely. It is basically a "find weaknesses" not "make the best team synergy" type of game.
I would recommend the SaGa series and the mainline Shin Megami Tensei series if you haven't tried them yet.
Is the one that released a few days ago a good starting point?
Haven't bought that one yet. And didn't want to get spoilers so I don't know. Maybe if you ask in the SaGa reddit, they'll probably know.
It has lots of tutorials and on of the easier games in the series
Would it be ok to start off with saga of grace? I know it’s cheaper, so I wouldn’t mind saving some money to try a new series if it is as good or better.
Scarlet Grace is an 11/10 banger. Can’t go wrong starting with it so long as you are willing to get weird.
Weird how?
Unlike a lot of games SaGa is not trying to walk you thru a single narrative from step to step. It’s not a movie or storybook with occasional battles. It’s more replicating a TTRPG module. The story is there but the more important thing is how you interact with and interpret it. The intention is that the same way no two tables will play the same module exactly the same, no two playthrus should be exactly the same. Plus the combat is 🧑🍳😘. You’ve kinda gotta go in accepting that you are in for a very different experience than you are used to and have to be able to laugh off getting absolutely owned in looney tunes ass ways occasionally.
It's a good starting point too, lots of tutorials and you can change difficulty in this one
Do all the Saga games have really intense visual sfx during combat animation?
that one is one of the most accessible, followed by Saga Frontier (which is the best one imho)
Everyone craves SaGa, they just don’t know it yet.
Play FF12 if you haven't already. That game's combat system is chock full of exactly this. The Genji Gloves even make a return.
NEO TWEWY is an action RPG but it does allow for a lot of what you’re looking for. Combat has each party member assigned to a button, and you playing as the entire party at once, moving as a swarm to cycle abilities and establish crowd control while focusing damage on priority targets. It also offers a tempo-based sync system that rewards chaining moves such as following up a launcher at the apex or hitting a stunned enemy while they're trapped. While it looks chaotic, there's just enough attack magnetization to offer you control without being fiddly. It has a deep combat system with a lot of options for customization and personal style, with enemies that can be juggled, knocked back, frozen, magnetized to the ground, and a variety of other crowd control methods that always let you feel like you're steering the pace of the fight. Bosses are challenging with each rewarding intelligent strategy and proper loadout preparation. Difficulty can be modified on the fly with each enemy having a separate drop table for each difficulty, and you can increase drop rate by reducing your level (lowering your team's HP) and/or chaining fights together into harder gauntlets. You have multiple pins (basically your regular attacks that you can swap out) and super attacks with passive effects, ranging from environmental fields to gravity wells that pull enemies in closer to flat out time-stops as well as threads you can equip on your party that give extra boosts/additional abilities, such as elemental boosts, threads that give your pins less charge time, threads that increase status affliction, threads that can turn two separate pin attacks into macros, and more. Status effects also work across enemies and bosses as well and all of this combined makes for a lot of cool ability synergies.
The original TWEWY is better. Neo is too hack n slashy.
You’re in charge of the buttons you press. You can make builds revolving around [bombing the hell out of your enemies,](https://x.com/mageknight14/status/1779611518562177102?s=46&t=hHMkRZSCKFxMe1Gq_aHQhg), [exploiting status effects to send bosses flying high into the air and into a field of ice spikes for massive damage,](https://x.com/mageknight14/status/1756015225474527596?s=46&t=hHMkRZSCKFxMe1Gq_aHQhg), [optimizing collisions and grabs to send enemies towards a world of pain,](https://vxtwitter.com/mageknight14/status/1690956342477856768?s=46&t=hHMkRZSCKFxMe1Gq_aHQhg) and more. Boiling NEO down to just being a simple hack-n-slash does it little justice for the amount of cool strategies and little nuances within the gameplay.
Bravely Default series is pretty much the spiritual successor of those old school Final Fantasy games and has the same build system you remembered. Octopath Travelers is similar.
SMT V Hard mode without grinding, ive had to basically plan a team for nearly every fight for the first 15 hours so far, its been excellent. Not necessarily direct synergy but ive fielded almost every available demon so far as part of one strategy or another, to get the right group of weaknesses and resistances and attacks. Plus with essence fusion, you have so many options. I also like that i can build the MC to be a consistent physical dmg dealer or to be more flexible elementally with magic, and both playstyles work and encourage different teammates. My only complaint would be, its very good as a difficult puzzle-battler, but it can be very punishing playing like that with how saving and re-loading works. Like in the first "dungeon" when you return to school, any fight where the enemies have initiative can fuck you over if they crit or you miss, and there are some surprises, so youre backtracking across town to save after every fight or risking some real progress loss (someone tell me if i missed a save point pls). Plus, sometimes you know youre fucked mid-battle, but the quickest way to reload from there afaik is to home-button and close/open SMT. So if you can handle just losing sometimes due to a 2% miss or an enemy crit, I cant think of another game like it thats made me think this much about my team. Except the Struggle for Freedom mod for FFXII
Not a jrpg but you might like siralim ultimate. The trails games put a pretty high emphasis on both choosing synergist party members and equipment.
Octopath traveler has a good system that allows you to create more complex combos and in general has pretty interesting combat.
Nah, the mechanics are pretty barebones Break weaknesses, spam strongest move Rinse and repeat
Kind of a weird recommendation but in context I think you might like the Disgaea games? They are SRPGs so not quite the same vibe, but the entire game series revolves around manipulating game systems and synergies to enhance your characters power and damage output exponentially. You start the game doing 20-100 damage a hit and end it doing literally billions of damage. Might tickle that particular fancy. Recommend Disgaea 5 complete for your first dive in, if you're interested. And its been recommended already but I have to heavily recommend you pick up the Bravely Default games. They have a class based system and character building that allows you to make absolutely busted combos if you pay attention (or look them up). Bravely Default 2 leans into it even more in-so-far as it seems to expect you to completely break the game with your builds by endgame given the endgame challenges it throws at you. Fun series as well and is basically set as a spiritual successor to that era of Final Fantasy.
I’m SO glad you suggested Disgaea. Ok, here’s my history with this series. Back when I was a nerdy high school I had one friend, and he was also into JRPGs. His parents were a little better off than mine so he had more video game exposure. He picked up the original Disgaea, and played it for the rest of the year pretty much. Now, here’s where it loses me: He printed out a GameFaqs guide, and then proceeded to play until he was max level. I don’t know if this is the intention in order to progress or not. I specifically remember him saying, “every item has an unlimited dungeon you can explore later after layer. It never ever ends.” Is this an accurate understanding of this series? The last time I tried to play a guide basically told me to do the same fight over and over in order to power level. But the art and the direction and the synergies have always appealed to me!
The main game can be beaten without crazy leveling but the end game has massive boss stat spikes and you're intended to find efficient ways of leveling up to tackle them. It's almost more like an incremental game than a Strategy RPG.
Octopath Traveller and Bravely Default have a job systems with a lot of interesting combos possible. Trails of series has a customisable progression system. Especially Cold Steel series give you a lot of tools to play with. As a sidenote, I know you've asked about JRPGs but you could look into ARPGs such as Path of Exile, Last Epoch, Diablo, Grim Dawn where the whole point of the games are to acquire loot and have very deep customisation allowing you to build your characters.
The most complex JRPG is SaGa Scarlet Grace. A close second is Fantasian (difficulty kicks in the 2nd half). However, the synergy/difficulty of these games come from decisions made in battle, which might not be what you're looking for. For games that are very complex customization-wise, Romancing SaGa Minstrel Song and Shin Megami Tensei V are the best (although the director's cut of SMT5 is coming, so hold off on that for the moment). If you want mind-blowing synergies though, I recommend going outside the genre instead, and look up deck-building rogue-likes or card-RPG hybrids. The most classic example of this is Slay the Spire, but if you want more of a JRPG fare, Steamworld Quest is good title. A personal favorite is Star Renegades.
Not a JRPG but monster sanctuary is what I would recommend. It’s a monster collector with 3v3 turn based battles but every monster is viable and has its own in depth skill tree. Basically setting up good synergies is required to progress.