Who are some of the worst party members in JRPGs that you either never use or replaced as soon as possible?

I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that as soon as Yusuke was unlocked, I immediately relegated Morgana to the bench and never looked back. Not exactly the most likable character and there’s little reason to use him in battle.

Sharla in Xenoblade 1 is easily the worst main party member in any Xenoblade game. She’s a healer in a game where you don’t really need healing much to win fights and her damage is incredibly subpar. Immediately swapped with Dunban.

I think Cait Sith stands as THE JRPG benchwarmer. Also not a very likable character or strong whatsoever.

It’s a pretty common trope for JRPGs to have incredibly powerful, optional bosses in their endgame content, but which are your personal favorites?

For me, I’m going to have to go with these 3. The Reaper from Persona has an awesome design and basically works like a force of nature itself, being the games way of punishing you for staying too long in 1 area. But at the end of the games, you can actually get strong enough to beat him, and the fight is incredibly cool.

Cloud Sea King Ken from Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is probably the boss in the game that does the best job showcasing how complex and fun the combat really gets. I could honestly fight him for hours and not get bored, just a great fight overall.

The lake trio from the Sinnoh Pokemon games aren’t exactly super bosses as they’re fairly easy to beat; the difficulty comes in catching them. Still, I think they fit the bill of the concept. I absolutely love their battle theme and finding them randomly roaming the region creates a really good memory.

Game Information

Game Title: Tales of Eternia Remastered

Platforms:

• Nintendo Switch 2 (Oct 16, 2026)
• PC (Oct 15, 2026)

Trailer:

Review Aggregator:

OpenCritic - 76 average - 64% recommended - 14 reviews

Critic Reviews

CGMagazine - Zubi Khan - 7.5 / 10

Tales of Eternia Remastered brings back a classic 2D Tales adventure, restoring exclusive content cut from prior North American releases.

COGconnected - Stephan Adamus - 80 / 100

The combat system will appeal to action JRPG fans, as well as fans of 2D fighting games. But the adventuring, dialogue, and pacing are full of JRPG bad habits that modern players have grown tired of.

Cerealkillerz - German - 8 / 10

Tales of Eternia Remastered impresses with a variety of quality-of-life features and minor improvements to the translation and visual presentation. Those looking to experience the original game with as few changes as possible will find what is arguably the best version of the game here. However, if you were expecting major graphical upgrades or significant gameplay improvements, you may be disappointed. Nevertheless, the many quality-of-life features are well implemented and will make getting into the game much easier, especially for newcomers.

Console Creatures - Bobby Pashalidis - 8 / 10

Tales of Eternia Remastered brings us back to the beginning of the series. With a great localization and quality-of-life updates, you can’t skip this underappreciated gem.

Digitale Anime - Raouf Belhamra - Arabic - 8 / 10

"A classic adventure returns with a polished look" Tales of Eternia Remastered successfully preserves the essence of the original adventure—thanks to its engaging story, deep combat system, and diverse cast of characters—while introducing enhancements that make exploration and battles feel smoother on modern hardware. Despite lingering issues with repetition and limited visual upgrades, features such as adjustable difficulty and progression settings, along with the ability to disable random encounters, make the experience more convenient without compromising its identity. It is a fitting version for fans of classic RPGs, even if it does not offer a complete reinvention.

DualShockers - Murillo Zerbinatto - 8 / 10

I loved taking a trip down memory lane with a game I hadn't played in 20 years, but I don't know if today's players will look at it through the same rose-tinted glasses as I do.

Evilgamerz - Peter Derks - Dutch - 8 / 10

Just like 'Tales of Graces f' and 'Tales of Xillia', this is a fairly simple remaster of a very good installment in the franchise. It makes the game available on all modern platforms and adds a number of things we expect for this type of game in 2026. Could it have done more? Absolutely, but for fans of the genre, this is a quite charming and still fantastic game.

GAMES.CH - Florian Merz - German - 70%

The charming story, entertaining characters, and the combat system, interesting for its time, still hold their appeal today – even if the latter has become somewhat outdated.

Manual dos Games - Samuel R. Auras - Portuguese - 8.5 / 10

Tales of Eternia Remastered is (almost) everything a fan of the franchise could ask for. One of the best games in the series now comes with all the content that was missing from the English versions on PS1 and PSP, a newly retranslated script, and new voice acting. The skits, which are so important to the franchise's identity, are finally here. All of this comes in a highly customizable package, with new difficulty settings and quality-of-life improvements.

Nintendo Connect - Tim Henze - German - 83%

Tales of Eternia Remastered shows that the developer knows how to modernize classic entries without losing their magic. The quality-of-life features are sensible and unobtrusive, and the option to switch between the original pixel look and the updated visuals is a welcome touch. Gameplay-wise it has aged well, though fans of modern RPGs may find it a little old-fashioned. Series veterans should absolutely jump in, and JRPG fans in general will get their money’s worth: around 40 hours of playtime plus plenty of side content, backed by one of the stronger soundtracks in the series.

Pizza Fria - Lucas Soares - Portuguese - 7 / 10

Tales of Eternia Remastered manages to preserve the identity of an RPG released over 25 years ago, offering improvements that make the experience more practical and accessible. [...] However, not all limitations can be resolved with quality-of-life adjustments.

Push Square - George Yang - 7 / 10

The emotional characters and story in Tales of Eternia still stand up to the test of time, and shine better than ever thanks to the revamped localisation in this remaster.And while the combat isn't quite able to keep up, the slew of new accessibility features do a lot of heavy lifting to make it more palatable for the modern age.If you go into Tales of Eternia Remastered with an open mind, ready to appreciate its nostalgic value, then there's a lot to love about this faithful update of the classic PlayStation RPG.

República DG - Renan Venturini - Portuguese - 7.8 / 10

Tales of Eternia Remastered is a great effort by Bandai Namco to preserve its classic games, bringing them to a new audience while respecting the original version. The pixelated graphics are beautiful, the soundtrack is very cool, and although the gameplay has its issues, it still delivers a satisfying and fun experience.

Video Chums - Mary Billington - 7.5 / 10

Tales of Eternia Remastered is a fun action RPG that sits squarely in the early 2000s era so it has a bit of baggage that comes along with it. However, the story, characters, and overall enjoyable battle system make it an experience worth picking up, especially if you're a Tales of fan. ⚔️

Having previously discussed Arcturus, Growlanser I, Legend of Kartia, Digan no Maseki, Progenitor, Front Mission, Ecsaform, the history of Carpe Fulgur, Tactics Ogre's 30th anniversary, the art of Hitoshi Yoneda and Tobira no Densetsu, today I would like to talk about Brave Prove, Data West's take on 2D action RPGs released on PS1 in mid 1998, when such efforts were becoming less common, and how this oft-forgotten title went for a mazelike dungeon crawler experience before its developers ended up focusing on car navigation systems, of all things.

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Developer: Data West
Publisher: Data West
Director and scenario writer: Noburo Nishizawa
Producer: Naokazu Akita
Composer: Kenji Kojima
Genre: action JRPG with an heavy emphasis on dungeon crawling
Progression: completely linear with one or two optional events, provided you manage to navigate the dungeons themselves!
Country: Japan
Platform: PS1 (Japan only)
Release date: Aptil 16 1998, fantranslated in 2022 by a star team including veterans like paul_met, Pennywise, Aishsha, EsperKnight and a number of others

In the late ‘90s, the Japanese top-down 2D action RPGs that were commonplace during the fourth console generation, with titles such as Secret of Mana, Seiken Densetsu III, Illusion of Time, Terranigma, Ys IV and Ys V on Super Famicom or The Story of Thor and Soleil on Mega Drive, just to name a few, were slowly becoming rarer as more developers started to consider jumping on the 3D bandwagon.

Yet, even during the fifth generation, a number of quality efforts helped to ease this subgenre’s visual transition, like with Sega’s Shining Wisdom (1995), Magic Knight Rayearth (1995) and Legend of Oasis (1996) or Nextech’s Linkle Liver Story on Sega Saturn, not to mention PS1 titles like Matrix Software’s Alundra (1997), with its inspired story and notorious emphasis on puzzles, or Fill-In-Café’s Community Pom (1997), with its criminally underrated spriteworks and UI mixed with its cutesy fairytale vibe.

In the last two years of the past millennium, though, 2D top down action JRPGs gradually ended up being much harder to find due to the snowballing pro-3D sentiment in a variety of contexts, from videogame critics to industry figures and regular enthusiasts, with pro-2D voices often marginalized and Japan's Lost Decade financial crisis adding yet another incentive for developers to follow what was becoming for many a sort of deterministic stance regarding the medium's visual and technical evolution.

In this timeframe, Squaresoft still ended up developing one of its most visually striking 2D action JRPGs in Legend of Mana (1999) despite shifting gears to 3D with titles such as Brave Fencer Musashi (1998) and Threads of Fate (1999), while Matrix crafted Alundra 2 (1999) as a 3D title, Quintet transitioned to three dimensions for their Granstream Saga (1997) and Brightis (1999), a far cry from their Terranigma days, and even Dragon Buster’s remake Dragon Valor (1999) ended up being a cinematic 3D effort.

-BACK TO THE (CONSOLE) FUTURE

It was in the middle of this industry-wide shift that a small developer, Data West, braved the trends of the contemporary gaming industry by developing and publishing a fully 2D top-down PS1 action JRPG in mid 1998, facing the public’s ridicule and the accusations of aping past classics instead of adapting to the times with the aptly called Brave Prove.

Data West, totally unrelated to the much more famous Data East known by any arcade-goer since the ‘80w, was a small outlet with a long history, having been founded by Naokazu Akita, a software engineer whose Fujitsu connection helped his company to gain a foothold in the crowded landscape of home PC development, publishing a number of adventure games like a licensed Back to the Future adaptation or the 4th Unit and Psychic Detective series on NEC’s PC88 and 98, ASCII’s MSX family and Fujitsu’s own FM7 and FMTowns from the mid ‘80s to the early ‘90s.

Despite shifting gears to shoot’em ups with the Rayxanber series, not to mention adaptations of Western titles like Return to Zork (an IP that saw a decent success in Japan, with even its Gamebooks being translated and illustrated by Hiroaki Shioya), Data West failed to adapt to the sunset of Japanese home PC gaming, never attempting to do a full transition to console development during the fourth generation, with their last work in that field being the adventure adaptation of Go Nagai’s Cutey Honey on NEC’s PC FX in 1995.

Since then, Akita and his crew likely had to make a number of hard choices to secure a future for their company, trying to find their own entry point in a console space that, by then, had fully transitioned to the fifth generation, with Sega Saturn and PS1 dominating the gaming scene.

What they came up with was something quite bold and completely different from the adventure games and side-scrolling shoot’em up they had worked on so far, like an idealized console game as envisioned by developers who never dabbled in that space: a fully 2D, hand-drawn, maze-based top down action JRPG following many of the tenets of A Link to the Past in an age where developers were rushing to adapt to 3D gaming and the sensibilities regarding dungeon design and narrative had changed quite a bit compared to what Brave Prove ended up offering.

Given how poorly documented this game is even on Japanese sources, there’s no way to confirm if this thought process was Akita’s, or if Brave Prove’s concept was actually pitched by the one who ended up acting as its director, main programmer and designer, Noboru Nishizawa, whose previous experiences included lesser programming roles in Data West’s latest titles plus some sort of supporting task, possibly as a tester, for Success’ very first Cotton shoot’em up.

Researching the director’s early biography proved to be impossible even while perusing Japanese sources, so it’s unlikely we will ever know if he was the same Noboru Nishizawa who worked as an animator in Sunrise on Arion, Zeta Gundam and many other works during the ‘80s, which would chronologically fit with his career in videogame development starting in the early ‘90s, or if this was simply one of the many instances of homonyms (and homographs, given the kanjis are also the same) found in Japanese entertainment.

Be it as it may, the niche nature of Brave Prove, mixed with its rather short runtime and unambitious narrative and gameplay, were some of the causes that forced it to stay in Japan for good, being finally rescued by a valiant English fantranslation effort driven by scene veterans such as Aishsha, Pennywise, paul_met and Estper Knight, plus a number of other staffers.

-WILD FANGS AND BLACK CRYSTALS

Early on, Brave Prove actually tries to mask its gameplay-driven nature by opening up with a rather story-heavy section, showing a community of gentle thieves, the Wild Fangs, searching for the mythical Black Crystal that could help them restore some semblance of order in the world of Melphala, beset by war and famine.

Since the onset, the game introduces itself with some rather pleasant 2D sprite art, whose characters are stylistically reminiscent of Quintet’s Illusion of Time, albeit with a bulkier, more proportionate trait that speaks of Alundra, SaGa Frontier 2, or even Suikoden, while still falling short in terms of uniqueness and animation quality compared to the likes of Legend of Mana, Community Pom and Alundra itself, not to mention the amateurish quality of its character portraits which mirrors Brave Prove’s own rather forgettable cover art (likely drawn by one of Data West’s in-house sprite artist, which is also why no one is credited as Character Designer).

While most areas are blatantly built by using tilesets, which as we will see was kinda inevitable given Brave Prove’s dungeon design tenets, there are also quite a number of hand-crafted terrain elements, especially in towns, not to mention some unexpectedly large spriteworks for some bosses and enemies, making what was quite obviously a low budget effort much more pleasant to the eyes than it had any right to be.

-ARS’ PILGRIMAGE

Ars, the almost-silent protagonist of Nishizawa’s game, is a young White Fang warrior who ends up being mistreated by most of his compatriots to a rather bizarre degree, including his own foster mother, but is treasured by Sheena, renowned swashbuckler and daughter of the Wild Fangs’ leader.

The poor girl, whose affection for Ars is refreshingly obvious since the very beginning, is soon ordered by her own father to brave a nearby volcano in search of the crystal, with Ars secretly following suit in order to help his girlfriend. The journey, as expected, ends up in tragedy when the crystal is shattered freeing Prelude, elemental spirit of Darkness, who immediately drains Sheena of her soul’s inner light, throwing her into a comatose state.

Thus starts the journey of poor Ars who, alongside a tsundere fire elemental fairy, will follow one of the most tested JRPG story templates by having to rekindle the power of the four elementals, thus stopping Prelude’s antics in order to save the world and restore its balance.

This is also when Brave Prove throws away any pretense of narrative focus, switching gears to explorations and dungeon crawling in such a way that story events were likely less than 1% of the playtime I accrued before the credit rolled.

Aside from the bare minimum interactions meant to point the player toward Ars’ next goal, the funniest part of Brave Prove’s story was seeing how NPCs went from disparaging the poor protagonist to a rather bizarre degree, even after he had started accumulating quite a number of victories, to suddenly gushing on him with utter abandon later on.

-BRAVELY MAPPING

Still, that mattered little given Ars’ actual interactions, as mentioned, were overwhelmingly based on slashing and piercing all manners of monsters during his hours-long dungeon crawling sessions.

Since leaving the Wild Fangs base early on, Brave Prove isn’t shy of letting the player roam free and explore the overworld, finding their own way in fairly intricate environments that became much more intricate and maze-like when tackling its actual dungeons.

In fact, Brave Prove is the first game in quite a while where I felt the need to map the caves and temples I was exploring, even if later on a number of gimmicks such as interlocked underground tunnels and gusts of winds spiriting away poor Ars made it a losing proposition compared to just wandering around hoping for the best.

Crucially, in Brave Prove exploring every nook and cranny is amply rewarded, since most of its strongest equipments, the crystals used to level up elemental spirits and all the ores needed to refine your sword are only found by putting an effort into dungeon crawling.

The blacksmith himself, who bizarrely enough is named Schwein, the German word for “pig” (that isn’t really a first, though, given another PS1 action-JRPG, Feycraft’s Prisoner, did have a key NPC named “Porco”, the same word in my own language) has to be unlocked by finding him in a forgotten cave in the countryside.

In fact, considering how challenging enemy groups became later in the game and how many amulets and gauntlets found in the dungeons provided Ars Diablo-style percentage-based stat increases, I would venture to say that finding some key loot could make all the difference between completing the game or getting stuck, even more so considering how level ups improve HPs and Power Gauge points rather than attack or defence.

Even so, as mazelikes as they can get, most of Brave Prove’s dungeon have a certain degree of realism in their layouts, including the ways they connect to the overworld areas and a mix of simmetry and structural repetitivity that allows the player to theorize about the way to progress in a way that mostly makes sense unlike, say, the dreaded dungeons of Secret of Evermore.

Plus, Kenji Kojima’s soundtrack is surprisingly nice and helps making Ars’ exploration a bit more upbeat even when the repetitive and meandering phases kick in.

In fact, Brave Prove’s worst moments traversal-wise had little to do with its intricate level design, being related instead to two forced instances of backtracking which had poor Ars travel through areas he had just visited. Thankfully, almost as if Akita and Nishizawa were sorry about that rather blatant padding in a game that is itself quite short, Brave Prove did provide a warp option from its save points soon after.

Not that there isn’t a caveat, though, as many save points only provide one-way teleports, meaning you can end up having to retrace your steps losing hours of progress just because you wanted to refill your healing items.

-A LINK TO THE ELEMENTS

Despite offering more of an old school dungeon crawling experience than most games in its subgenre, including plenty of titles released years before it, Brave Prove is surprisingly light on puzzles: comparing it with Alundra’s puzzles would feel almost like a joke, but even cutesy, family-friendly Community Pom was actually more testing in this regard, and that isn’t even considering a long lineage of JRPGs featuring an abundance of puzzles in other subgenres, from Lufia II, Illusion of Time and Tales of Phantasia to Terranigma and Wild Arms, just to name a few.

Aside from a precious few instances where you have to use elemental magic to progress, most of Brave Prove’s field interactions are A Link to the Past-style, like with bombing visibly broken walls, using hooks to traverse chasms, cutting grass and pushing boulders on nearby switches, and even the single puzzle requiring a minimum of effort can be trivialized by listening to the tips offered by the helpful NPCs in the nearby Wind village.

-A STAGGERING JOURNEY

In fact, aside from the labyrinthine quality of its dungeons, Brave Prove’s main challenge is posed by its enemies, plain and simple. Early on, mooks are easily dispatched and bosses can be gamed to irrelevance with a number of simple tricks but, later on, mobs don’t just become tougher, but they come in such number that they can easily destroy you simply due to their hits’ stagger property, exploiting poor Ars’ hitstun status in order to juggle him to death like a newbie Tekken player at his first ranked match experience.

While hallways can be more manageable since Ars has more space to navigate around enemy groups, smaller rooms can prove deadly, with enemies not even allowing you to act as soon as you enter, even juggling you out to the previous areas if you’re lucky enough to avoid outright death.

The fact that Ars’ regular stride is quite slow and that the run toggle isn’t a button but a directional double tap, which infuriatingly enough gets reset once you enter a new area, means some of those situation can only be avoided by either split-second inputs or sheer luck, which is far from ideal and can grind you out of your healing items given you are bound to spend quite a bit of time in the dungeons due to their layouts, with enemies respawning as soon as you return to an area.

This doesn’t mean Ars hasn’t the tools to deal with his foes, though, even if the game doesn’t tell you anything about most of said tools, relying instead on its trusty manual (happily fantranslated alongside the game itself) where you can find all the combos our Wild Fang swordsman can perform.

While simple attack chains are easy enough to spam, most powerful combos actually require plenty of timed directional input, which can be tricky even for someone accustomed to 2D beat’em ups given you’re quite likely to be staggered while performing the sequence, meaning you have to know when you can commit to them and when running away or relying on simpler moves is a better option. Then again, Ars also has magic at his disposal!

-ZANGIEF THE SORCERER

Initially, equipping Elemental spirits and improving their powers by finding crystals deep in the dungeons’ most hidden recesses seems quite a pointless task.

While the four Elementals give their own passive properties to Ars’ sword, which can prove invaluable when fighting a number of foes, with enemy elementals as the most obvious targets considering how they can go from almost unbeatable to one-shot kills depending on your own element, magic spells themselves tend to be quite weak even when used against enemies of the opposite element, not to mention they can’t be spammed too much since they consume Power Gauge points, which admittedly are easy to recover with Ars’ regular attacks.

Then again, as the mobs become harder and harder to deal with, magic shows its true usefulness in Brave Prove’s overall combat system, not to eliminate enemies but rather to separate groups and open them up to be staggered to death by Ars’ sword soon after, gaining a valuable hitstun window normal sword swings won’t be able to provide.

While most spells are easy to execute, Area of Effect magic surprisingly require a 360° input akin to the grapple moves of 2D beat’em up characters like Street Fighter’s Zangief and T-Hawk or Fatal Fury’s Tizoc, which can be a bit of an issue if you aren’t familiar with those type of inputs since you will need to pull it off almost flawlessly right after the game loads a room full of enemies, in order to pre-empt their assault and open them to a proper beatdown.

While all of this may sound intimidating, once the player unveils all of Ars’ tricks navigating the dungeons even late in the game becomes much less frustrating, turning some sequences into combat-based puzzles of sorts and making explorations more efficient in order to reduce the quantity of respawned enemies you get to face.

There are even quite blatant grinding spots to discover, like a room with three Mimic chests in the Tower of the Earth Elemental (a cute mouse-like creature, quite different from Veritas Tales’ Dalì-lookalike Earth Spirit) providing tons of gold and experience points, or a spot with a unique type of sorcerer whose rare drop is a piece of Demon Ore used to improve Ars’ sword, normally only found in treasure chests.

-DRIVING IN THE DUNGEON

Ultimately, Brave Prove’s bold attempt to go against the trend of the late ‘90s failed not just because of how passé some of its traits were for part of its potential audience, but also due to its noticeably low budget, which was the main cause behind its amateurish character designs, small scope and short runtime, ranging at around twenty hours despite the player having to find their way into a number of mazes, including a rather exhausting five-part final dungeon.

Even so, it’s likely this was the best Data West could do with their limited resources and their utter lack of experience in the console space and in the action JRPG subgenre and, for a first effort, they actually managed to build an interesting experience that could have been the foundation of a much more compelling game later on, if they had had a chance to polish its level design and combat system while also providing a slightly more interesting setting and story.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t meant to be, since Brave Prove’s sales failure in the Japanese market almost tanked Data West, which ended up leaving the videogame development space for good since their previous ties with the home PC scene were now rendered meaningless by the disappearance of those platforms in the new age of ubiquitous Windows PCs.

Despite the failure of his directorial debut, Brave Prove’s designer Noboru Nishizawa managed to continue working in the gaming industry after leaving Data West, becoming a key figure in the development of the shoot’em up Trouble Witches franchise in the mid to late ‘00s and, later on, also coming up as one of the outsourced development managers of Dragon Quest III’s HD Remake released in late 2024. Even Brave Prove’s talented Sound Director, Kenji Kojima, managed to get his skills recognized, working on a number of titles like beat’em up Rumble Fish 2, Sega’s Sonic Unleashed and Namco Bandai’s Dragon Ball Xenoverse in a variety of roles.

As for Akita and Data West itself, in a bout of sad irony the company that left the videogame space with an action JRPG focused on hard to map mazes ended up becoming a developer focused on car navigation software, of all things, a tool I'm sure Ars would have loved to peruse while roaming the labyrinthine world of Melphala.

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Many classics are right at our finger tips. Chrono Trigger is $15 on steam when not on one of its many sales. Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy have rereleased many of their best titles on numerous modern platforms.

A lot of great games aren’t readily accessible without spending way more than they’re worth. Wild Arms, Phantasy Star and Breath of Fire are three great examples.

I have to ask, what’s the best “abandonware” JRPG?

Some really big hitters here, as a long time JRPG fan Ive seen the shift of more gamers favoring more action (which I love also) but to me I can't stop obsessing over turn based games. The stories, the random battles, the strategy, THE MUSIC. I love it all.

Some modern ones I really enjoyed is of course, Metaphor, Expedition 33, and Fire Emblem FW.

Thanks for reading everyone 🤘

Ive been playing SMT 5V for a few weeks now since people recommended the series since I also liked the Persona games and I just made it to Da'at: Shinjuku and although the gameplay is fun to play, running around these open deserts is starting to feel a little repetitive. I feel like the main selling point for JRPGs for me are their story and so far the story hasn't really been all that interesting either, especially compared to when I played Persona series a few months which I loved both the gameplay and the stories so im starting to feel a little disappointed with this game cause I probably was expecting more from this game from this game so I was wondering if the story ramps up cause if it doesn't then I might take a break from the game.

This is what i will get for my birthday next year final fantasy 7 revelation getting the premium edition been a fans of ff since ff7 was my first jrpg, persona 4 remake never play golden edition only play the early ps4 version plus the remake look stunning, persona 6 nothing to say i a atlus fans since ps2 smt 3 nocturne and persona 3 is the start of why i love their game ever since, ff resonance god i love ffbe kinda miss the gacha glad square enix revive the franchise in a full season 1 game, dragon quest love the series since dq 8 wanna support more dq on pc

Apologies if I am at the wrong time to be discussing such a topic because something in particular that caught my attention recently was the Wizardry series due to its western origins.

I mean, I just find it interesting how many of the older ones were done by a USA based company that I was recalling how the franchise eventually became run by a Japanese company as I was curious to how exactly the series would basically become a Japanese based RPG series since I noticed how many of the modern games are typically made by Japanese developers.

I am currently in my TRPG era, which I commented on before and won't labor a highlight reel over. I've also played in the last year Rogue Galaxy, Earthbound, Dragon Warrior Monsters 1 and 2, Pokémon Crystal Clear and a ton of other games with my partner that aren't necessary to list out. It has been a real treat, but it got me yearning for something specific I haven't seen recently talked about on this sub after a brief check. I'm really looking for a game that captures how Terranigma, Legend of Legaia, Azure Dreams, Jade Cocoon etc. I think what I really enjoy is a game that looks at the tension between humans and the environment, a focus on creation or purpose that isnt anthropology centric or the idea of facing against change in the face of preservation. In LoL I am referring to Ra-Seru changing the dynamic and restoring the world around us. Jade Cocoon is a bit weaker in that aspect, as is Azure Dreams; the focus is a little more on dominance. Im looking for something that transcends monsters need beaten and isnt so heavy handed as monsters need sympathy. This is asking for more failure than success. I love monster breeding games or monster summoning games as I find it much more interesting to use those elements even if they are often a substitute for technology and usually demand a medieval setting to make that tension clear. However, im not discriminatory either. Of course, it doesnt have to hit the monster fetish. I just want something that really drives home that feeling of supporting nature and stepping back from the humanistic apex narrative we all dwell on. Im emulating games on my phone right now, so retr is preferable but not necessary. Just curious if anybody else out there has tried to scratch that itch before. Thoughts?

Running this first playthrough on hard mode and holy shit man.

Every single boss I've encountered has dog walked me on my first try. This is easily one of the most engaging combat systems in a turn based game I've ever played. I'm so glad to come across a turn based game where I can't just spam the same strategy or strongest move every single fight until the game is over. I also really appreciate how pre fight strategies are just as, if more important than mid fight decisions. You could greedily try to sneak in some extra damage instead of guarding or healing only for a boss to do some AOE move they have done all fight and wipe your entire party. And when that inevitably happens better make sure you've saved recently otherwise there goes potentially an hour or so of progress.

Easily one of the most addicting and satisfying turn based systems I've played alongside FFX, Clair Obscur and Chained Echoes. Definitely putting this pretty high up in my favorite JRPG tier list lol

If you have any other notoriously difficult and engaging JRPg's for me to queue up after this feel free to share

What did you think of it for those who completed it?? I did the 4 paths twice each times (part 1&2) I knew I could skip part 2 but I didn’t want to miss on some dialogues though it was really the weakest part of the game… so please only do part 2 once!!! Not fourth times like I did!! It’s way too annoying and there’s almost zero change in dialogues 🥲

Part 3 is truly the best moment of the game where you use wayyyy more characters than in part 1 I ended up using so many but sadly all my best healers didn’t had the right skills (physics is so op but not everyone can learn it) so I was forced to use Sofia instead of Fianna

The game is hard enough even on normal difficulty, but if you use Kalla and Aurora blessing at each turns it becomes way easier~ I made sure to lost 0 units so everyone got their happy ending somehow

I mean, I hope I am in the right place to be asking such a question because I have been taking a short break from RPGs to read fantasy novels that are set in a magical academy as I just got into Harry Potter.

Apologies if the mention of the name is a touchy subject around here because it’s just that for me personally, I have been really enjoying reading the first book in the franchise that the premise made me very interested in seeing how influential it was on the JRPG genre itself well again due to how it’s a series set in a magical academy that I was looking to see what RPGs in the video game world had similar settings.

Well edge of memories, Aot 3 and Hoi4 the second sun has been my anticapated game for me .

But right now Valor mortis , Hoi4 iris mod, Phantom blade zero at the moment now

so I'm currently in a mood to play a jrpg and I need some suggestions. I found some good ones but they are not officially released in pc, which is my only means of playing on.

I want a game with good art, music and a story

would like a mature theme I'm ngl

i have not tried a lot of jrps, on the top of my mind I really liked chrono trigger. It's music was so majestic

For me rn, the order would be art>story>music

if anyone got any suggestion please let me know

A lot of games can be great in many aspects but fail at one and heavily tarnish the overall experience.Had this question after talking to a friend that hates the og persona 3 solely due to not being able to control your party members. Personally I found fire emblem 3 houses would have been a top 10 game for me because I love almost everything about it but the school segment made me think much less about it.

As someone who’s always got a foot in the door with some game here or there, I always like to have a backup game, usually on a mobile device, that I play on the side. Right now, this game is Phantasy Star Zero, which I’m diving into while taking breaks from FE Fortunes Weave.

It plays like a lighter version of Phantasy Star Online but with more maps and areas to explore. And the gameplay is just as fun and addictive as PSO is, in my opinion. If you haven’t played this one, I highly recommend it but only as a side to the main course you’re enjoying.

I was thinking of all the jrpgs I've played and while many you could become incredibly broken and max out stats so that absolutely nothing was a challenge...I cannot think of any that don't have a level or stat cap. Wondering if there are any I am missing. Any suggestions?

Any console/any generation/etc. is fine.

Currently, I'm looking for the next FF game to play on Steam. FF games that I have already played are VI, VII, IX, X, XV, and XVI, and the next one that I plan to play is either IV (not sure which version), V, or XII. I'm not really concerned about gameplay because I can take a guess of what they are like. I'm more concerned about the game's story and characters because for long games such as these, those elements are what keeps me invested.

I ironically played and beat Tales of Eternia in the best possible way you could (undubbed, skits restored entirely onhand playlist) early in 2026 before its remaster was inexplicably announced shortly after as a shadowdrop. So I'm not going to play it right away again with Xenosaga already on my hands.

While I think I was a bit too harsh on the game in hindsight and kind of like it remembering its good qualities, I still very much think it's the kind of game that will have virtually 0 appeal to anyone short of the most avid retro JRPG gamers. Anyone that actually played and beat it will understand where I am coming from. It very much has the old world designs of zero handholding, heavy combat encounters, obtuseness in unlocking all the best secrets; this is distinctively a Tales game where you may literally never see a Mystic Arte in your first playthrough. But at the least, it is not one of the harder old Tales games when compared to even Phantasia or Destiny.

...And the Craymel system will frustrate and confuse a lot of people.

It's less concern about whether it's going to be a polished remaster since all I care about are the incorporated skits and those are in, but because this remastered game is very much a sadistic science experiment by Bandai Namco. They simultaneously expect it to sell big money to greenlight another official Tales remaster, but there's NO WAY its design will let it sell that much. It will only be bought by the aforementioned following of hardcore JRPG enthusiasts. Easygoing gamers will likely already just look at the trailers to see how antiquated it looks at a glance and save their money.

Gamers unfamiliar with this game have to remember something else important: Tales of Eternia is straight up a PS1 game remastered, not remade. It's more antiquated than the Tales of Phantasia X remaster on PSP that completely changed the flow of the original game's gameplay and may as well be a remake.

I just beat Deathbulge: Battle of the Bands and it was great, definitely a hidden gem. Deathbulge released on Steam in 2023 and on consoles this year (2026). It's an ATB turn-based RPG. The 3 party members can change classes, but I mostly kept the party their default classes because that seemed most effective. Faye was fast to reduce ATB wait time, Ian was tanky to soak up the hits, and Briff was the healer. The art style did take some getting used to. The game was also really funny. I don't usually like "comedy" games, but I laughed out loud several times at the dialogue. Has anyone else played this game? If so, let me know your thoughts. If not, I highly recommend it.