With the year coming to an end, and it being unlikely I finish any more JRPGs before the new year, I wanted to do a list of every JRPG I played this year and give a quick thought on them.
Some of these might sound aggressive, but for me, a 5/10 is “average”, meaning “eh… mediocre/passable”
The Legend of Heroes: Hajimari no Kiseki (coming to the West next year as Trails into Reverie): The finale to the Crossbell and Cold Steel arcs as well as the beginning of the Kuro arc. The story here is presented in a way that trims huge amounts of fat that Cold Steel III and IV loved to tack on, and the new protagonists, “The Picnic Squad” are awesome additions, best story in the game. The gameplay itself is the most refined the Cold Steel gameplay system has been, and the new “Abyss” difficulty makes it really fun to find ways to break the game apart as hard as the enemies are breaking the game to beat you. 8/10 and I consider this a nice comeback after CSIV was a bit of a lull.
Sakuna of Rice and Ruin: I talked about this one here
To keep it short it’s I was thoroughly impressed and highly recommend it. Extremely memorable characters and addicting 2D action gameplay.
Mary Skelter Nightmares: After playing Mary Skelter 2 last year it was time to play the original. This was the version that was bundled in with Mary Skelter 2. I found the story here a bit more interesting, gameplay is basically the same as MS2. Which is a compliment, very fun and hardcore DRPG action with a very unique world and atmosphere, 7.5/10.
One amazing thing is [Major Spoiler]: The final chapter when the game converges with the end of Mary Skelter 2. You need to actually beat Mary Skelter 2 to access this portion of the game. Finally uniting Otsuu and Little Mermaid after the tragic ending of MS2 was a very big tear shedding moment. I love this couple so much.
Seven Pirates H: Also from Compile Heart… A pirate themed ecchi anime girl game. Full of crude humor like penis shaped enemies and breast expansion to absurdly comical levels (before you ask… It’s a Nintendo Switch game). Overall the game is only about 15 hours to 100% so it doesn’t overstay it’s welcome, and has competent enough exploration and battling, but is otherwise a junk-food JRPG where you will remember almost nothing about it after finishing it. 4.5/10.
Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book: Right off the bat, I love this game’s soundtrack. I don’t recall Ryza’s soundtrack being too memorable so it was nice to get a really nice one here. As for the story, there isn’t much to say. Not much happens until the very end. From what I’ve heard, even Atelier fans say the story here was weak. Great gameplay though, One thing I always enjoy about Atelier games is that they let me fulfill power fantasies by crafting absurdly overpowered gear. Play on Hard mode and the crafting system makes taking down tough enemies satisfying to do. 7/10
Utawarerumono: Prelude to the Fallen: The first in the trilogy. As I posted before in the thread, this series is mostly visual novel with some battles here and there. The battles play well and feel satisfying, lots of flashy finishing moves and stuff. The story is decent, my favorite character was the protagonist, Hakuowlo. I thought most of the characters were okay but not that memorable, though thankfully the sequel makes up for this with a more interesting cast IMO. Two things I’ll say are that I thought the pacing between battle → visual novel segment → battle was pretty good and balanced. You’d sometimes get these multi-hour long epic multi-battle segments before returning to your slice of life VN segments. The other thing is that there were some pretty big “holy shit!” plot twists/moments in here. Overall 7.5/10
The Legend of Heroes: Kuro no Kiseki: Now we’re talking. Anyone feeling bored by the Cold Steel saga, I recommend you stick around for this game when it’s localized (or play the fan translation on PC). The protagonist, Van Arkride, and the party have to be one of my favorite JRPG casts ever. The story is darker and isn’t afraid to pull some “holy shit!” moments that Cold Steel often pulled punches on. The gameplay is an all new system that attempts to combine real-time ARPG combat and turn based combat and works quite well IMO. Only complaints here are that there is still quite a bit of filler in the story and that this is one of the weaker soundtracks in the Trails series but otherwise it’s an easy 9/10 and it’s a damn shame it won’t come to the West officially till at least 2024.
Tokyo Xanadu: This is actually the game I opened this thread with after the initial introductory posts, my opinion has not changed.
Even as a Falcom fanboy, I must admit, this is a mediocre game. Did not care for the story or characters. The gameplay is a bit like Ys but with really bland and boring level design and just worse feeling combat all around. The positives I’d give it are that there is a good soundtrack here and it does have that “Falcom gameplay loop” that I do enjoy. but I’d otherwise give it a 5/10 and say you should probably only play it if you’ve played through all the Ys and Trails games and -need- more.
Soul Hackers 2: More mediocrity! I can echo a lot of my opinion from TX onto this. Completely unmemorable story, boring dungeons (Soul Matrix especially) but the company’s familiar gameplay loop (Atlus this time) is present and helps a bit. Thankfully unlike TX it doesn’t overstay it’s welcome, it’s over in like 30 hours. I will also give it a (very) small boost for being Atlus’s return to Xbox, but it’s still about a 5.5/10 or 6/10 for me.
Live a Live: Oh yeah, this is a major rebound from the last 2 games. I consider this my GOTY. I didn’t have much expectations, I did not play the SNES version and didn’t know too much about the game’s legacy. What I found was a mind-blowingly amazing game that shocked me that it hasn’t really been altered from the original release (besides graphics). I really enjoyed pretty well all of the stories and the 8th story + final chapter were just so damn good. Soundtrack is just downright fantastic. Only negatives I can say are that they kept some of the dated aspects too like random encounters you can’t turn off and very long battle animations you can’t skip. Other than that it’s either a 9/10 or 9.5/10.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Talked about it here
In short; Least favorite story of the trilogy, best gameplay (but wish it was less Chain Attack focused), VERY much best exploration (I compare it to Elden Ring’s level of exploration), many great side quests to do but also suffers from bloat, amazing soundtrack. And overall 8.5/10.
Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception: Thoughts here
In short; Characters and story are better and more memorable than in Prelude, but the pacing is not as good. The first 70% of the game is basically slice of life shenanigans (with some good moments sprinkled in here and there) then the plot kicks into a really insane and awesome overdrive for the rest. Battles also had new mechanics to keep things fresh and are still pretty fun to play. 8/10.
Phew, the list is actually smaller than I thought, though then again 12 JRPGs in a year certainly ain’t bad (we all know how long these can be!). There’s probably some games I played that I don’t consider JRPGs that others would though. I also did start the major time investment that is Kuro no Kiseki II back in October and am still only just barely getting close to being halfway through it due to language barrier reasons.
I also don’t know if I would call it a JRPG but I actually dropped Persona 5 Strikers on Steam because of the Xbox Persona announcement so I would rather start over on Xbox if/when it comes. I also wasn’t finding the story nearly as attaching, but I was only on the second palace.
For 2023 I still need to start Star Ocean and Persona 5 Royal (I’ve been putting it off because I’ve played the original, frankly I’m much more excited to play 3 and 4 as I’ve not played them). Also highly looking forward to Suikoden (which was the winner of that poll I posted a little while back!). I also have a pile of Atelier games in the backlog I sometimes pick at… Lots to look forward to next year for me, for both my backlog and future releases.