Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

[BEAMLORD]

Xenoblade Chronicles 3, y'all. Anyone took the plunge on that, yet? It was going to be my next purchase, but I went behind my own back and ordered a PS5 to play Elden Ring

[Blinge]

Roo I played all of Mother 1 with the Easy Ring on
on the GBA port

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Be a man like me and play it on the actual GBA cart in a language you can barely read. Ain't no Easy Rings there.

the fetch quest in the desert in Mother 2 is painful tho

[TransatlanticFoe]

Xenoblade Chronicles 3, y'all. Anyone took the plunge on that, yet? It was going to be my next purchase, but I went behind my own back and ordered a PS5 to play Elden Ring

Yep, 25 hours in - no idea what that actually means though, I've been more than a little sidetracked by exploring and am sat on enough bonus XP to go up about 15 levels... and am already overlevelled for new story areas. Barely done any sidequests beyond picking up a few heroes (optional 7th party member).

The class system is a bit weird, because in constantly switching when you max a class out it's hard to keep track of equipment, abilities and whether you can combo anything in combat anymore. Combat is probably a bit too hectic with 7 party members, plus the whole thing reminds me a bit of Astral Chain because of the sheer amount of stuff you have in your arsenal and it's easy to lose track of some of it. You have access to tutorials and training at least, unlike Xenoblade 2 which was a pain in the arse with its tutorials which were gone forever once they were done.

Disappointments (very minor stuff): no proper collectopedia, so if you're looking for an item good luck but mostly I miss the silly descriptions of items. Locations no longer show on the map, which sort of negates the point of them. Bonus XP is waaaaay overpowered - it's easy to avoid using, but even without using it it's easy to end up overlevelled so it's disappointing not to have a level down system like in Xenoblade 2. Soundtrack is understated and not as memorable as the first game.

High points: Ludicrous mini-boss names return, such delights as Househunter Carly and Sharpwitted Tracy sit nicely with rhe likes of Flabbergasted Jerome. Same joy in exploring as previous games. Hero quests are a highlight (and how unique blades should have been handled in Xenoblade 2), extended quests usually with boss fights to gain extra party members. Some excellent British dialogue - wasn't far in before someone was told to "piss off" or exclaim "bollocks". Core party is largely likeable or, if not, humorously immediately called out for being annoying/a dickhead/boring by others.

[Sima Tuna]

Picked up .hack gu last record super turbo final edition. I've heard mixed opinions on the game, from "it's a pile of shit" to the typical "hidden gem" shilling. We'll see. I like the idea of a game where you play as some turbonerd inside a video game. Going on nerd quests with other stupid nerds and checking your emails to coordinate raids or whatever the fuck. Time will tell if this one is worth anything.

[BEAMLORD]

Xenoblade Chronicles 3, y'all. Anyone took the plunge on that, yet? It was going to be my next purchase, but I went behind my own back and ordered a PS5 to play Elden Ring

Yep, 25 hours in

Thanks for the write up. Good to know that there are in-game tutorials now. There were a lot of disparate mechanics in XC2 that I didn't completely get the hang of until the mid-game.

I usually play these games subtitled with the Japanese voice acting if possible. I normally find the British voice acting too cringey and self-conscious, as though it's for another audience, like Harry Potter or something. If they ever start dropping C-bombs, then I might start using the British dub

I'll pick it up in a month or two.

[Sengoku Strider]

At the back of the instruction manual for Vermilion, there's a message from the developers explaining that they tried to design the combat so that people who aren't good at action games would still be able to do well at it. I guess having half your enemies aimlessly wander about in circles is one way to accomplish that. Still, the fact that there was at least a plan does soften me on it a little.

But holy damn that does not explain how brutal that fight with the little girl who turns into the giant two-headed demon is. The first fight was fine, I could just mash my way through, just like the previous bosses. But the second fight I just got wiped.. Then again. Then again. So I levelled up. And got wiped again. And again. So I levelled up two more levels. And got wiped. And wiped again. Finally, after grinding double the total amount of experience I had earned up to that point in the entire game I was able to eke out a win. On my second attempt.

I kept thinking there was some element I was missing - a spell the game would let me cast (nope), some way to use my shield and block (nope), some way to heal (nope), some item I needed to use beforehand (nope). You just need to hope it doesn't throw both high & low fireballs at you at the same time. And if it does, that you have the split-second timing with the clunky combat that you need to knock out both.

But I guess it does say something that I was willing to put in the effort.

Well, I stuck it through & finished the whole darn thing. That little girl was the only hard fight in the entire game, except...

Spoiler

When you fight a barely disguised boss rush in the last dungeon and have to fight it again.

I did so much grinding to beat that little girl that I hit the game's level cap (level 31) 2/3rds of the way through. That was cool because it meant I didn't have any reason to fight any more, but uncool because it just meant the most sensible thing was to run away from every fight. And in this game there are a lot of fights.

I'd read somewhere that the game wasn't very long, but by the standards of its time I definitely wouldn't say that. It felt pretty substantial to me by the end. The one downer is that once you've seen the world & dungeon tile set from the first village to the first town, you've seen literally everything in the game. There are only about 8 enemy sprites, which get recoloured throughout the game as well. They clearly weren't allotted much ROM to do this thing with.

The game was chill enough to motivate me to finish it, which puts it ahead of a lot of RPGs in my pile TBH. So it certainly wasn't a waste. But would I recommend it to anyone now? Only if you're really in the mood for a very early, very simple & straightforward 16-bit rpg, albeit with a decent amount of story for a 1980s console rpg. It does get credit for experimenting with the formula, so it is interesting in that regard. But non-archaeologists/historians will likely want to do something else with their time.

[Mortificator]

If I didn't like Xenoblade X, is there any chance I'd like 1 or 3? My biggest issue was that combat didn't feel engaging at all. Battle begins, there's a furball, you win. Now that I'm typing it, I realize it reminds me of Ultima VII, except with characters constantly yelling the names of their attacks. STARFALL BLADE! STARFALL RONDO!

Part of the reason X is the entry I picked to try the series is that you get mechs in it, part is that the character designs looked less goofy (or at least, more like Xenosaga). The opening plot hook is actually very strong, then the incomprehensible aliens that casually vaporized Earth become buffoons that a literal 13-year-old can outsmart and outfight. War of the Worlds may have kicked off the alien invasion genre, but I've noticed few subsequent works have been willing to commit to mankind being hopelessly behind.

[Air Master Burst]

War of the Worlds may have kicked off the alien invasion genre, but I've noticed few subsequent works have been willing to commit to mankind being hopelessly behind.

The only other one that immediately springs to mind is Battlefield Earth, and I wouldn't recommend anyone attempt to read that trash heap.

[Sima Tuna]

The City of Gold and Lead? The Tripods trilogy is a pretty good one if you like "hopefully human apes vs technologically superior alien scum."

I'm around level 28 in .Hack GU. Fun so far. Combat is very mashy. You pretty much just hold block when the enemy is attacking and then mash attack when they aren't. You can use skills to interrupt or get a knockdown, but knocking down is often detrimental because they get full invul. If you can ping-pong the enemy between two of your attacking party, that gets you a nice, fat chain and some big dommage.

The game is very heavily story-based. Much of the game is comprised of reading emails, forum posts (lol) and watching cutscenes. The main character of GU is a massive edgelord. Used to be a solo player, but got leveled down to 1 and now he has to learn2play the mmo like a normal pleb. One very strong point of this game is the uniqueness factor. There are other games that *play* like single-player MMOs. But how many are? At the end of the day, in .Hack, you're just some scrub playing a video game with other losers. And the strongest characters in the game are the most likely to be fucked-up, lonely, sad people, desperately trying to escape from reality. I've already seen big hints of this in the story. .Hack doesn't shy away from throwing up news articles about "game addiction" or describing people as "game junkies." If you can get behind Haseo's edgy mcedgerton attitude, .hack does have a very interesting world and tackles some issues you won't see in other video games. It's not so much referential as self-aware. I mean, you could hardly call any of these elements of the plot "references," since they form the core of the narrative, characters and world.

[TransatlanticFoe]

If I didn't like Xenoblade X, is there any chance I'd like 1 or 3? My biggest issue was that combat didn't feel engaging at all. Battle begins, there's a furball, you win. Now that I'm typing it, I realize it reminds me of Ultima VII, except with characters constantly yelling the names of their attacks. STARFALL BLADE! STARFALL RONDO!

Part of the reason X is the entry I picked to try the series is that you get mechs in it, part is that the character designs looked less goofy (or at least, more like Xenosaga). The opening plot hook is actually very strong, then the incomprehensible aliens that casually vaporized Earth become buffoons that a literal 13-year-old can outsmart and outfight. War of the Worlds may have kicked off the alien invasion genre, but I've noticed few subsequent works have been willing to commit to mankind being hopelessly behind.

While X is the one Xenoblade game I didn't play (one game was not enough to get me buying a WiiU when the thing actually had the prospect of getting new releases), in the other games you absolutely will have to suffer characters shouting the names of their attacks (and other catchphrases) - so if you don't find it a bit of silly fun then it will grate. And yeah, battles can often be won with little effort in all three main games - the fun is usually in trying stategies for when you actually need them, such as lining up combos and chain attacks... or biting off more than you can chew by taking on a higher level enemy and seeing if you can come out on top. The trouble is it takes a while for these options to open up, so the games generally rely on engaging with the characters or the environments in the opening hours.

I would definitely recommend trying out the first one if you can, but you need to be engaged by the story/characters and exploration because the combat takes a while to get going in all three mainline titles. If that doesn't sound like your cup of tea then yeah - sit them out, JRPGs are too many and too large to love all of them!

[Sengoku Strider]

I have Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive on Switch, but it hasn't really grabbed me yet. I was expecting big things from it after years of praise. I'm not that far though, I just got to the people living in a cave and rescued the little kid. Is there a big "oh snap son!" moment I haven't hit yet, or is it more a game that was notable in its original context? Or is enjoyed for its significant volume of stuff?

(Please note that almost every time I say something notable hasn't grabbed me, I eventually get in the right mood, sit down to really go at it, and it grabs me).

[TransatlanticFoe]

Yeah, the story kicks off proper once you return to the colony after the cave.

I'd say best not to muck around doing sidequests in Xenoblade 1 until you pick up more party members - because the game is heavily in tutorial mode, so if you're struggling with engagement wait for more of the game to open up before going back and doing extra bits.

[BryanM]

Dragon Quest 10 Offline has given me a severe case of the whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy's. I feel like Mike in the RLM Prometheus roundup bit.

The biggest WTF is why spend so much money making new art assets? Why? Why would you do that? Is it some bureaucratic political thing? Where a bunch of people wanted credit and a paycheck for new work done?

Absolutely baffling.

For a fraction of a fraction of the cost, they could have made a retro style nostalgia-bait gaiden game with fake 8-bitish graphics or something. Literally anything else.

[guigui]

Shmup community, I need help !

It's been a very long time since I could not get into a RPG game, feel like trying the genre again. Though life dont give much time, and the offer is so huge I dont know what to choose. Here is what I like in RPGing :

* Exploring the world. Ability to go here and there to discover side things to the story, hidden zones and stuffs. Side quests with a purpose. Linearity and a single way through all things tend to annoy me.

* Evolving my characters, weapons, spells. Also need to get somehow attached to the characters in order to see a point in leveling them up.

* Some kind of difficulty, challenge, that can be handled with either strategic planning or gameplay skills.

* Some grinding. I actually dont mind grinding a bit/lot to improve my characters. Finding a way to grind efficiently is also a part of the game for me.

* Reading an interesting story, though not for too long and not too intrusive.

I play on the Nintendo Switch only, and will gladly accept all advices that you fellow shmuppers can give me for choosing an RPG that'll suit me.

[BEAMLORD]

Guigui, you tried Octopath Traveller? It's on Switch, and seems to tick all of your boxes there - a large world to discover, plenty of secrets well worth your effort finding, sidequests which help to expand on the lore as well as reward your effort, 8 playable characters whose stories can be played in an interchangeable order of your liking, plenty of gear and skills to customise, and a satisfying combat system offering decent challenge. Has a wonderful stirring soundtrack and looks fantastic too

[Sima Tuna]

The Live A Live remake is on switch. It's a very faithful version of the original snes game, only with a plethora of upgrades to visuals, sound and even story (a true ending was added, and it's excellent.) The game is rather short by modern standards (20ish hours,) so it will fit in well with a busy person's lifestyle. You can't really get much shorter than that for jarpigs without the game feeling very skimpy on content. As an older game, it has a bit of challenge and you can grind to fight hidden superbosses as well.

The other big answer that springs to my mind, based on the criteria you gave, is not a jarpig but a carpig: Baldur's Gate 1: Enhanced Edition. The length is quite variable and the game is very open. That is one element of Live A Live: the gameplay is not very open in its structure. It's pretty linear. But BG1 takes the training wheels off after a five second (skippable) intro segment and then dumps you into the open world.

Jarpigs aren't usually the genre I go to for my open world gaming fix. IMO they tend to be rather more linear than carpigs. There are exceptions, of course. And even the linear jrpgs usually take the rails off at some point. FF6 opens up when you get the airship. Dragon Quest games tend to do the same when you get a boat. If you just mean little bits of openness like that, then most jarpigs will have it. You could go down the list of "best jrpgs for switch" from some dude whose opinion isn't total shit (if you can find one), and most of those hypothetical examples would be good fits. You'll see the same titles recommended over and over when you ask about jarpigs on switch. If you haven't exhausted the usual big names then you might as well try one. Most of the latter-era (ps1 and on) Final Fantasy games are on switch. The porting job is pretty lazy for the games, but hey, it's still FF, innit?

[Sumez]

Shmup community, I need help !

Outside the part about getting attached to your party (you're literally expected to replace your entire party every time you make any progress), Romancing SaGa 2 sounds like a game for you.
It's a very wonky game with some elements to it that arguably aren't good, but man is it great at establishing a big world that you can explore completely at your own leisure, and which feels like it has its own life whether you interact with it or not. In fact, the game is literally designed around letting you interfer with events and change the evolution of various areas depending on which sidequests you focus on doing. There is no way to experience every outcome in the game, because generations will pass whether you want them to or not, and I really enjoyed that aspect.

It's probably the computer RPG I've played to truly feel the most like an "RPG" in my book.

[Blinge]

Waiting for one of you cowards to play Romancing SaGa 1 on the SFC and tell me how it goes..

[Sima Tuna]

Why bother when Minstrel Song will be re-released eventually?

[guigui]

Thank you for the great input ladies, keep'em coming if you have more.

I'll definitely check those ones. Live A Live demo downloaded, Octopath sounds nice but I could never get into a Square game, will give this one a chance if price drops substantially.
I also remember playing Baldur on computer in the early 2000's, but my setup was too poor to have it run properly and I keep a bad memory of it, will give it another chance.
Romancing Saga 2 is appealing too. The RS3 is also available, considering I'll certainly not play both which one is best ?

Also I started of Dex, unheard of RPG on the Switch gotten on sale for less than $2. If you can get past the Sewer part, that plays like an 1 hour long awfully designed tutorial, you actually discover your nice typical sci-fi RPG.
World does not seem that huge and I guess the game wont last 50 hours, which is good for me. Characters look good, interesting dialogs and side quest. Dialogs ala Fallout where choices matter and you can actually miss stuff or angry people if you dont select dialog options wisely. You can save and reload like in the good old times to try things. Charisma, lockpick, hacking system all allow to avoid fights if you like. For now I quite like it.

[Blinge]

Why bother when Minstrel Song will be re-released eventually?

Because play the original?
*thonk*

[Sima Tuna]

Romancing Saga 2 is appealing too. The RS3 is also available, considering I'll certainly not play both which one is best ?

I always recommend Romancing Saga 3 to people new to Saga. Romancing Saga 2 is an extremely punishing game. I think it's completely fair, if you're new to RS2, to play using a guide for missables, bosses and general "where the hell do I go" questions. Because the game gives no guidance. It's hard as hell and fucking up can lead to a snowball effect of fuckups. I personally think it's the hardest SaGa game of the ones I've played. Saga Scarlet Grace Ambitions and Romancing Saga 3 are probably the easiest introductions. The thing about SaGa games is they're very much a story you create for yourself by your actions.

Romancing Saga 3 has a gentler difficulty curve compared to RS2 and it won't punish you as harshly for making mistakes. I don't think it's actually possible to rank enemies above the point where you can defeat them. Whereas I think that's quite achievable in Romancing Saga 2.

Romancing Saga 3 is to Super Metroid as Romancing Saga 2 is to La-Mulana. Romancing Saga 3 is to DOOM II as Romancing Saga 2 is to Plutonia Experiment.

All the Saga games are worth playing, it's more a question of when in the order you should play them.

[ZacharyB]

Funny this should be mentioned, I'm finishing up a game of Romancing SaGa (Minstrel Song US) on the PS2. Started umpteen years ago with my first character, finally on my last character.

They play the best and are the most fun when you set specific goals for yourself, like, "I'll only use magic this time," or "All of my characters won't have a class this time," or "I'll only use the mercenary characters as companions this time," etc. Then the game becomes maneuvering around that challenge using all of the tools that you can find.

[Sumez]

I always recommend Romancing Saga 3 to people new to Saga. Romancing Saga 2 is an extremely punishing game. I think it's completely fair, if you're new to RS2, to play using a guide for missables, bosses and general "where the hell do I go" questions. Because the game gives no guidance. It's hard as hell and fucking up can lead to a snowball effect of fuckups.

Quite the opposite, I'd absolutely warn against using a guide for Romancing SaGa 2, since it's bound to spoil everything that makes the game appealing.
As I already mention, the game especially relies on you not caring about "missables", which IMO is an essential part of the open-world style exploration. Yes there will be events you might not witness, there will be characters you won't ever be able to recruit, but that's a completely natural consequence of the exploration-centric design. While you might have missed the quest in one end of the world that helps progress someone's story, you were busy doing that for someone else in the other end of the world.
Even the story bosses (the story revolves around taking out a number of demi-god villains across generations) move around as the story progresses for various sub-areas, and where you end up fighting them depends entirely on which route you take through the game.

The fact that your decisions actually feels like interacting with a real (albeit small) simulated world, rather than a mechanical video game where everything is deterministic, is exactly what makes the game appealing to me, and the reason why I recommended it in this context. Maybe the game is going a bit too far for guigui's tastes, so maybe it was a poor recommendation, but I think it's a game worth checking out regardless if only to see the extent this context can be taken to. For a genre with an unfair reputation for being linear and restricted, JRPGs really do non-linear open worlds well (Dragon Quest 2 and 3 are other favourites of mine).

That said, there are definitely a few things you should know up-front!
For example, try not to escape from battles too often, since enemy strength is determined by the number of encounters you have been in, regardless of whether you won. And how skills get trained throughout generations is pretty obscure, and something I'd recommend reading up on once you're a bit into the game, just to understand what you are doing. Don't worry about min-maxing everything though.

Spoiler

Essentially, you want to keep a varied party, trying out different classes, focusing on their primary weapons and skills, and leaving room in their abilities to spark new ones

Similarly, I think the requirements for developing fusion magic are so obtuse that it's worth looking into too, since it's too late to do that once you've reached the final generation. On the other hand though, trying to grind out every one of them can be really tedious, and it's not really necessary since the one spell that can cheese every single boss fight isn't fusion magic anyway.

[BulletMagnet]

So some of the folks behind Wild Arms and Shadow Hearts are launching a joint Kickstarter campaign in hopes of releasing spiritual sequels to both. As a fan of the latter series in particular I'm honestly not sure if I want to chip in, but either way it would be really nice if this managed to not turn into a debacle.

There's also an interview with the project leads.

[BulletMagnet]

The aforementioned "Double Kickstarter" went live yesterday, and I sent in a question asking which digital platforms they were aiming for, and whether any of them would be DRM-free. I actually received two slightly different responses within a few hours of each other, as follows:

Thank you for your interest! We plan to target multiple PC storefronts and that includes GOG, which means DRM-free!

Steam and GOG for sure. Ideally we’ll release on as many PC platforms as possible.

Decided to cover my eyes and step over the threshold; here's hoping this turns out closer to Bloodstained than Mighty No. 9. In any event, the minimum funding goal has already been surpassed, so it's time for the stretch goal shuffle.

[Steamflogger Boss]

I'm not backing it, but I look forward to trying the Wild Arms game in 5 years.

[Blinge]

So I've finally finished DQ11, final act w/ tough monsters on. yay, I guess.
Absolutely fantastic game but the added difficulty made it feel like a slog too often. I have no idea how the balancing works on normal mode, the first 20 or so hours I played in normal before felt like an absolute sleepwalk.

Oh yeah I also got the Platinum/ all trophies
Compared to just beating the game and doing all sidequests it wasnt much longer at all.

As I already mention, the game especially relies on you not caring about "missables", which IMO is an essential part of the open-world style exploration.

That will ALWAYS be a hard sell to gamers lmao. Most people I know simply won't play a game if they know they won't be able to experience all the content in one shot, by design.

[Sengoku Strider]

The Nintendo Direct today was bananas:

Fire Emblem Engage
Octopath Traveler II
Romancing SaGa Minstrel Song Remastered
Final Fantasy Crisis Core full-on remake
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Expansion Pass
Front Mission 1 & 2 remake footage
Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope
New Final Fantasy Theatrythm, with SaGa, NieR, Octopath & Live A Live dlc.
Rune Factory 3 Special
New Rune Factory series announced
Atelier Ryza 3
Raincode (new game from Danganronpa team)
Endless Dungeon from Sega
Tales of Symphonia Remastered
Like 57 rpgs with farming & other Animal Crossing trappings, roughly 8 of them from Square. One of those Square titles, Various Daylife, launches today.
Name of the new Zelda is Tears of the Kingdom, launch date announced as May 12 2023.

To call all of that an rpg overload is an understatement. Non-rpg, but also cool:

Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse
Fitness Boxing Fist of the North Star Boxing

There was a ton of other stuff - new Kirby, Bayonetta 3 footage, cloud versions of RE Village, VII, 2 & 3 remasters, etc. etc. Unless I missed it, no Metroid stuff.