What JRPG are you currently playing?

ahnowbrowncow · 12-12-2012 2:21pm

Bought dragon quest viii for my ps2 but it was honestly so slow with loading battles and running about it was becoming tedious so I copied the game onto my pc and played it on an emulator at 2x times the speed, haven't given it too much time but I'm still not that bothered about playing it.

I thought I'd get back into playing a jrpg seeing as the last one I played was probably ff xii but I'm just not feeling it, not sure if it's because the combat isn't that interesting or I just don't care about the story or characters.

When I was younger I'd get lost in the rpg world and really care about the characters but I don't know if I am capable of doing that anymore? I read and love a good story so don't know if it's that. Maybe I've just gotten more impatient with games? Because it's not just dragon quest that this has happened with, got deus ex hr recently and got bored of it and haven't finished it, same with mass effect 3.

Retr0gamer · 12-12-2012 2:44pm

Dragon Quest VIII is a slow burner, it takes a while to get into and it's not until later when you start unlocking abilities for your weapons that the battle system really shines. Also I hope you are focusing your skill points on one weapon type because there's only enough skill points to max one weapon and have another secondary.

If you want something more modern then check out Persona 3 or 4. Far better than any western RPG released in the last 10 years.

Cunning Alias · 14-12-2012 1:42pm

Im thinking of trying to grab Rogue Galaxy to play while I am off work over the holidays. Anyone know of somewhere I can get a copy online? I can see a few on ebay but seem a bit pricey.

Also, anyone have any experience with it?

Sephiroth_dude · 14-12-2012 2:42pm

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_9?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=rogue+galaxy+ps2&sprefix=rogue+gal%2Caps%2C258

17.50 sterling here

Its a great game,I really enjoyed until I got stuck on a certain boss that kills me in a couple of go's definitely get it

megaten · 14-12-2012 8:27pm

Rouge Galaxy is depressingly average. I'm not saying you won't have fun but just know that going in. Dark Chronicle is a much better Level-5 game.

Sephiroth_dude · 17-12-2012 8:05am

Playing persona 4 on vita atm

Retr0gamer · 19-12-2012 3:41am

Gotten to the 5th Stratum of Etrian Odyssey and the story has taken quite an excellent little twist.

manicmonoliths · 19-12-2012 8:58pm

I recently finished playing Persona 4 in the last week and I was very impressed. I'd initially tried to launch straight into it after playing Persona 3 FES earlier in the year and I guess I was burned out on the series a bit. Playing 2 60 hour games back to back was never a good idea in retrospect. In general I find RPGs suffer when played back to back, I guess the slow burning, plot heavy nature of most of them doesn't lend itself well to this kind of play. It's why I've never been able to play through a number Final Fantasy games at once.

I'm really glad I returned to Persona 4 though, for those who have played 3, it makes a number of slight adjustments that really improve the experience (notably complete control over your party as opposed to the AI controlled characters in 3 and 3 FES). The battle system is solid, if not particularly interesting. P4 has a number of addictive elements such as fusing Personas and building social links with a number of interesting characters. The music is great, in particularly the battle themes (a big improvement on 3's main battle theme which I found very annoying!) and the tunes which play when you're wandering around the town.

The story is pretty unique for an RPG in my opinion, quite different from 3's in that it's a lot more character focused as opposed to typical 'save the world' type stuff. The main party of characters are great and by the end you really care for them, more so than the main cast of P3. I'd rank P4 as one of my favourite games now. I wouldn't put it at Xenoblade levels but it's certainly up there in terms of JRPGs of recent years.

I'd highly recommend Persona 4 to anyone. I'll admit I'm tempted by the Vita remake, but I'm not willing to buy a new handheld just for one game!

Glad to have cleared another meaty JRPG from my backlog and to have had such a great experience doing it. Not quite sure what I'll tackle next, I've a few DS RPGs to get through, The World Ends With You has been staring at me from my shelf for a while, as has Etrian Oddessy which I tried once and was turned off by the first person perspective. Also have Infinite Space which I've heard is worth a look.

penev10 · 19-12-2012 10:59pm

manicmonoliths wrote: »

The World Ends With You has been staring at me from my shelf for a while, as has Etrian Oddessy which I tried once and was turned off by the first person perspective. Also have Infinite Space which I've heard is worth a look.

TWEWI is very different and a real must play game. Combat system is mental!

Infinite Space is interesting but I found it required a lot of grinding and the battle system gets annoying on the harder bosses. I got to a stage where I needed to update my whole fleet and was facing another massive grind so gave up. Worth a try though.

Retr0gamer · 20-12-2012 12:52am

Etrian Odyssey is so god damn good, you should try it. It basically totally modernises first person dungeon crawlers.

Retr0gamer · 24-12-2012 5:32am

Just finished Etrian Odyssey tonight. Absolutely wonderful game, one of the best I've played in a long time. I'll see about exploring the extra secret stratum but if it becomes too much I might retire my guild for Etrian Odyssey 2

ancapailldorcha · 26-12-2012 11:07pm

Finally, finally got round to wrapping up FF6. Started FF5 and then it's onto FF9 I think. Job system is really good, save for the fact most of the spell's effects aren't explained.

Retr0gamer · 27-12-2012 3:04am

Wait until you start breaking the game with crazy job combinations. That's when FFV becomes awesome.

ChubbyHubby · 16-01-2013 12:33pm

Playing Vagrant Story on the PSP. It's a fantastic game but I wish there's a remake that gives me:
- faster saving and storage chest access
- better weapon swap system since this is quite important
- higher resolution

Other than that, it's one of the best jrpg ever made.

penev10 · 16-01-2013 8:27pm

ChubbyHubby wrote: »

Playing Vagrant Story on the PSP. It's a fantastic game but I wish there's a remake that gives me:
- faster saving and storage chest access
- better weapon swap system since this is quite important
- higher resolution

Other than that, it's one of the best jrpg ever made.

Definitely on my list for a HD makeover. Great graphical style regardless but a few niggles like you say that could do with ironing out.

Retr0gamer · 16-01-2013 8:45pm

The battle system needed to be refined an awful lot and creating weapons while good is very complicated. There's other weird things as well wrong with the game. I still love it though and like everything Mitsuno the story is fantastic. It also has far and away Hitoshi Sakimoto's best soundtrack. I still think the game looks gorgeous, the art style translated very well to game graphics.

Myself, I'm still plugging away at Chrono Trigger and Phantasy Star 4. Phantasy Star 4 just keeps getting better and better. It's gotten quite emotional and very interesting. I read that Reiko Kodama took a lot from Final Fantasy IV and it shows, the game is brilliantly paced and doesn't have the high difficulty and maze like dungeon problems of PS2 and PS3 to a much lesser extent.

ride-the-spiral · 21-02-2013 3:18pm

Currently playing Crisis Core. I played on hard mode and I was enjoying it, but i'm at what I think is the final area now, and the difficulty has caught up with me. It's quite a flawed game with many of its mechanics but they never really annoyed me until now so I don't know if i'll have the will to actually finish it.

So instead of finishing it I started Final Fantasy Tactics which seems promising.

Retr0gamer · 21-02-2013 3:24pm

The last boss is a big difficulty spike. Do some side missions, they are short and will level you up fast. Found the game kind of poor and confusing myself.

ride-the-spiral · 21-02-2013 5:05pm

I've noticed a good few spikes for the last few bosses, so I expected the last boss to be even more difficult but I'm having trouble in the area anyway. I was trying to play the game without looking at walkthroughs or anything but now glancing at the amount of things that there is to get from the side missions, it seems I probably should do them to break hp limit etc. But they are terribly tedious...

I'd probably like it more if I had played on normal, it's a game I don't find anything other than the main story part enjoyable so now having to catch up with the missions is pretty damn annoying.

Retr0gamer · 22-02-2013 1:29pm

Getting near the end of Chrono Trigger on the DS. I wanted to play it again because I remember very little of it. Turns out it was only because I thought it was much longer, it's only about 20-25 hours long. I didn't think that it would live to my memories but it more than has. It's still a gorgeous looking game, the soundtrack is one of the best from Uematsu and the story is surprisingly clever. Without a doubt the best RPG on the SNES that isn't called Earthbound.

megaten · 23-02-2013 12:52am

I can't get into Chrono Trigger. I think I just don't like the sprite style. I should probably give it a second chance sometime though. Uematsu only did like 2-3 tracks btw.

jaxdasher · 25-02-2013 5:52pm

Got back into Wild Arms 2 on my phone. Was watching Trigun and got me into the mood. The official translation is bad. But I like my western themed jrpg.

Retr0gamer · 25-02-2013 6:42pm

Everyone with a 3DS needs to get Crimson Shroud, especially Matsuno fans.

Corcs001 · 25-02-2013 7:11pm

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Everyone with a 3DS needs to get Crimson Shroud, especially Matsuno fans.

Is it that good? Was considering downloading it tonight.

Retr0gamer · 25-02-2013 8:16pm

Other than a poorly thought out section where you have to get a random drop it's superb. It's a great little 8 hour RPG with no filler.

Retr0gamer · 28-02-2013 12:07am

So I started playing two PSP games because they are the only two I have left on my European account and want to switch over to my american account on my Vita. First is Riviera, a Sting RPG which means it's a bit weird and experimental. Riviera isn't too bad in this regard. Seems like a fun mix of visual novel and RPG with an interesting story even if the voice acting sucks.

Next is Final Fantasy 2. This is by far and away the worst mainline FF game and is barely playable on the NES. Not Legend of Dragoon bad but close. However Square managed the impossible and actually made this game work for the PSP release. In fact I'm enjoying it quite a bit other than some parts I had to look up a faq to progress the story because I over looked a small detail. Definitely worth picking up and playing. The levelling system is still messed up and nonsense but at least it doesn't require lots of grinding and you can't level down stats anymore.

Ash885 · 01-03-2013 2:34am

Currently playing Arc the Lad: Twilight of Spirits on PS2, after couple of years of hankering to finish it. I set the PS2 back up and I must say as RPGs go, the dual sotrylines and plot in general is just 10/10. Some of the characters are just exceptional. Voice acting as it goes is getting a little bit annoying, but nothing the mute button and a pair of glasses won't solve. Battle system is a little gem as well; after being use to he ATB stuff from FF it's nice to get a bit more inventive and actually plan most of the fights.

So yeah pretty happy with returning to the JRPGs. After that it'll probably be FFVIII (the one from the series I absolutely hated strangely enough)

Retr0gamer · 01-03-2013 9:29am

Ash885 wrote: »

So yeah pretty happy with returning to the JRPGs. After that it'll probably be FFVIII (the one from the series I absolutely hated strangely enough)

If you want to enjoy that game you have to know how it works. If you are constantly using summons you will get bored and it's the wrong way to play it. If you draw enough magic and junction it to your stats you will become an absolute beast and will hardly ever use summon attacks. Also GF abilities can really increase your stats. Don't let the game automatically learn GF abilities for you. Concentrate on nothing but the stat% bonuses because after they are learned you get stat +1 abilities meaning every time you level up you get a permanent +1 to that stat.

FFVIII has an extremely broken battle system and breaking it wide open is the fun part.

Ash885 · 02-03-2013 3:10am

From memory I didn't rely too much on GFs, but solely on attacks and drawing magic to cast on the monsters. Tbh the drawing system was something I detested as any good magic such as Ultima etc. I got my hands on, if ever I used it (and stupidly on some battles I did), HP etc. would just plummit! So I guess you're right, just test and try different things and see if I can make a good go of it.

There wasn't any quirky characters either, it just seemed to be very angsty. Not much light humour. However the concept of the plot was good; I just thought it landed heavy on some of the characters.

I liked the GF lvling system. I can't really remember the specifics of it though sadly. The only thing tbh I remember fondly of the game is TT; which I may add could have been a game in itself and I'd have been happy! :P I suppose the game defeated me. But alas, I will get onto it soon enough!

Retr0gamer · 02-03-2013 11:12am

Don't expect to get too involved in the story, it's absolutely terrible with some hilariously bad moments. The fun in the game is breaking it wide open.

Retr0gamer · 05-03-2013 10:31am

Beat Chrono Trigger on the DS last night. It's still one of the greatest games ever made.

Ash885 · 07-03-2013 2:04am

I've heard a lot about Chrono Trigger but never played it. I must do a little googling now!

penev10 · 07-03-2013 9:33am

Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones is a harsh mistress but it's all of my own doing. Trying to create a perfect team which means recruiting certain weak characters who later become stat monsters. The only problem is keeping them alive!

Some of the levels make it very hard for a perfectionist run seeing me struggle to visit all the optional villages, recruit the certain character by getting another specific character to talk to them AND keeping everyone alive!

ancapailldorcha · 07-04-2013 2:48pm

Over halfway through Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together. It's similar to Final Fantasy Tactics though a lot easier. Story's not as good but it's a good game.

Sephiroth_dude · 07-04-2013 3:10pm

Playing trails in the sky on vita,great game.I've a back catalogue of rpg games as long as my arm too get through :-|.

Gunmonkey · 09-04-2013 5:01pm

Sephiroth_dude wrote: »

Playing trails in the sky on vita,great game.I've a back catalogue of rpg games as long as my arm too get through :-|.

Really tempted by that, have it and Persona 3 Portable sitting in my PSN cart waiting for me to crack and purchase before the sale ends tomorrow :rolleyes:

EDIT: Just saw that Jeanne D'Arc is now reduced on the US PSN to 15, and Yggdra Union is down to 5......but I likes having money. Sony....stop!

Sephiroth_dude · 10-04-2013 11:46am

Gunmonkey wrote: »

Really tempted by that, have it and Persona 3 Portable sitting in my PSN cart waiting for me to crack and purchase before the sale ends tomorrow :rolleyes:

EDIT: Just saw that Jeanne D'Arc is now reduced on the US PSN to 15, and Yggdra Union is down to 5......but I likes having money. Sony....stop!

NOOOOOOOOOOO *HIDES O2 CARD*

penev10 · 11-04-2013 4:24pm

Have started Persona 3 Portable on the Vita. Has some nice ideas which didn't make it into P4 for some reason. The greater ease at which you can slip in and out of the dungeon makes things easier for a start. Then the 3 types of physical attacks makes combat much more varied. Also splitting up in the dungeon is another nice touch.

The story, characters and setting aren't anywhere near the heights reached by P4 but it might have the edge in the dungeon(s) (Even if there is only 1!). Time will tell.

Retr0gamer · 19-04-2013 7:54pm

I started SMT Strange Journey last night. SMT in the Etrian Odyssey engine, what is there not ot like! So far it's absolutely fantastic!

Retr0gamer · 22-04-2013 1:04pm

I got past the first boss in Strange Journey. It wasn't the usual SMT baptism of fire thank god. I'm really enjoying the game it seems a lot more accessible than the Etrian Odyssey series.

megaten · 22-04-2013 7:07pm

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I got past the first boss in Strange Journey. It wasn't the usual SMT baptism of fire thank god. I'm really enjoying the game it seems a lot more accessible than the Etrian Odyssey series.

I played the first two areas and it definitely less roadblocks than Nocturne. I never bothered beating it though because I heard the final area is a nightmare with teleporters. I enjoyed what I played though.

penev10 · 22-04-2013 8:04pm

Didn't enjoy what I played of Strange Journey. Got about 30% through. I remember some of the areas being an absolute chore (one place with acid floors!:mad:) and there being a need for some major grinding which was slow-going. Too old-skool for me (at least you don't have to make your own maps though:P).

imitation · 23-04-2013 11:34am

I'm nearly done with my 100% of FF XIII , if I never see another adamantoise it will be too soon ! Just need to farm a bit more gil and 1 trap and I'm there. Have to say the last mark fights and the guis are actually pretty fun and forced me to use the Paradaigm system much more effectively than I have been. Then on to xiii 2 !

penev10 · 24-04-2013 3:57pm

P3P's structure is a bit strange. I'm in the 3rd dungeon but its really still only the second (but technically there is only one!) and the mini boss midway points are not midway points and the main bosses aren't in the dungeon anyway!

The story doesn't tie up with the dungeon crawling as well as P4 at all. I often wonder why I'm bothering bar to level up and await the full moon event.

Otherwise its great (in a poor-man's P4 sense). Still wish they'd make more SMTs with the combat from the Devil Survivor games.

Retr0gamer · 24-04-2013 5:53pm

Oh don't worry, the dungeon ends up rying nicely in with the overall story.

lovesfatgirls · 07-05-2013 5:48pm

found a copy of crono cross and converted it over to psp cause id heard alot of good things
am not disapoint wasnt expecting it to be so polished for such an old game

also started up a new ff8 put it down though cause i killed diablos on first attempt 4 demi's and two duels rest of the game will be really easy

ancapailldorcha · 07-05-2013 11:08pm

Don't give up on it just yet. Most of the later enemies will be immune to Demi. Also, FF8 is worth it for the broken battle system and the even more broken story.

Ash885 · 08-05-2013 1:59am

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Don't give up on it just yet. Most of the later enemies will be immune to Demi. Also, FF8 is worth it for the broken battle system and the even more broken story.

but it's the fact everything is so broken that annoys me. I remember playing it when it first came out and not having a clue what was happening post the space mission. Even now I'm not too certain what was going on. I will try and replay it, given it's the only one that's bested me yet. (And i'm a sucker for Carbuncle)...

lovesfatgirls · 08-05-2013 5:50am

ill probably finish it off for the cards, never realized how easy it was though and short when you think about it
the only optional boss is omega if memory serves?
still though crono cross will keep me entertained i think and am eyeing up the lunar remake

Retr0gamer · 08-05-2013 11:26am

For FF8 all you really need to do is draw 100 of the best spells and junction them to your characters and also concentrate on learning the GF abilities that give % stat increases, they eventually turn into abilities that give you +1 to that stat with each level up. Then you've got the game broken

Chrono Cross kind of annoyed me. It completely pisses on Chrono Triggers story and I never got the battle system. I must go back to it. I remember you got an awful lot of characters in your party, the majority of which were useless (a piece of wood as a character?).

What JRPG are you currently playing?

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