The gap between Western and Japanese RPGs is so huge that they sometimes don't even seem
like they belong in the same genre. Western RPGs usually concentrate on open-ended
gameplay, with "go anywhere, do anything" mentality Japanese RPGs concentrate on narrative
and battle systems, being more eager to tell a story than let the gamer play a role. However,
Japanese RPGs didn't just appear out of nowhere, as their roots lie heavily in early American
computer RPGs from the 80s.
Two of the most popular games back in the day were Ultima and Wizardry. Although both had
followings amongst hardcore Japanese gamers, they were a little bit too uninviting for your
average console owners, whose ages skewed a bit younger. Yuji Horii, a developer at Enix,
decided to take on an interesting experiment. By combing the overhead exploration aspects of
Ultima (the third and fourth games, specifically) and the first person, menu-based battle system of
Wizardy, a new game was born: Dragon Quest. Released for the Nintendo Famicom in 1986, the
game became a phenomenon, and went on to inspire dozens of clones. Most of these are best
left forgotten, but it did inspire two more notable franchises: Square's Final Fantasy and Sega's
Phantasy Star. Meanwhile, in America, it wasn't until 1989 that Nintendo translated the game for
English speaking audiences, redubbing it Dragon Warrior. Despite the huge amount of effort put
into the localization, the subpar graphics and stodgy interface failed to win over many gamers.
Throughout the rest of the 8 and 16-bit eras, RPGs in America - and especially Europe - were
rarities. While Square continued to translate most of their better games for America, most
publishers had left the market, with only sporadic releases from the likes of Capcom, Sega,
Working Designs, and a handful of other companies. It wasn't until Final Fantasy VII for the
Playstation, with its flashy full motion cutscenes, that Japanese RPGs obtained worldwide
popularity.
Since then, a vast majority of JRPGs have been translated into English, whether they’re
contemporary releases, remakes of old titles or even fan-translated ROMs for play on emulators.
Nowadays, the Japanese RPG has been the subject of scorn for many Western critics, deriding it
for its conventions - slow, menu based combat, random battles, over reliance on narrative - and
for its failure to evolve. In spite of this, there are still many fans of the genre, who continue to
enjoy them for their interesting plots, characters, and battle systems.
This is a list of twenty (kind of) of the best JRPGs of all time. Each of these has been selected for
excelling in some significant way, whether it’s through compelling narrative devices or intriguing
gameplay mechanics. To avoid redundancies, only the best installment of a franchise will be
chosen as a representative. The exception to this rule include the Final Fantasy games, many of
which are so vastly different from each other that they can barely be recognized as part of the
same series, outside of the name. There are also a couple of Shin Megami Tensei titles in here,
but despite using the same battle system, they're also very different games.
Additionally, there are technically a few different subgenres of the Japanese RPG. These include
action-RPGs like Ys, Kingdom Hearts, Secret of Mana, and (arguably) The Legend of Zelda.
There are also Strategy RPGs, like Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy Tactics, Disgaea, Shining Force,
and the like. There are also a handful of Japanese-developed Massive Multiplayer Online RPGs,
like Phantasy Star Online and Final Fantasy XI. For the sake of focus, these types of games will
be excluded from the list.
THE LIST
Valkyrie Profile
In most RPGs, it's your job to stop the end of the world. In Valkyrie Profile, it's your job to start it.
Ragnarok, the End of the World as defined in Norse mythology, is just around the corner, and the
Good Guys in the heavens are in desperate need of souls to fight in the resulting war against the
Bad Guys in the underworld. There's a catch to recruiting these soldiers, dubbed Einherjar - they
need to be dead. As a valkyrie named Lenneth, you fly through the world of mortals, listening to
their cries for help, and rushing to the moment of their death. With each character, you get a short
glimpse of their lives, as lives are shattered, happy couples are torn apart, and heroes become
martyrs. Amidst all of this is Lenneth, who seems to have a past in the human world that she's
only barely conscious of.
There are roughly two dozen characters to recruit - some fully fleshed out, other glazed over - but
their souls are not yet ready to fight for the gods. You need to train them by taking them into
dungeons, building both their battle skills and their spiritual fortitude. All of these dungeons are
side-scrolling stages, filled with puzzles, traps, and of course, numerous enemies. The battle
system is a strange beast, with actions for each of the four party members assigned to a face
button. Each character has a number of attacks, each with unique speed and strength - timing the
button presses to create combos and juggle enemies is the key to executing impressive special
attacks and overpowering foes. Tri-Ace, creators of the Star Ocean series, has a knack for
creating exciting, visceral battle systems that feel like action games, even though they're still
heavily rooted in role playing conventions. The soundtrack, provided by prog rock virtuoso Motoi
Sakuraba, is also one of his best works, delivering both pounding, intense battle themes and
dreamy, melancholy ballads. In other words, it packs a punch that few RPGs can counter.
Tri-Ace also has a reputation for being a little bit too obtuse, which undoubtedly attracts the
hardcore RPG fan but tends to confuse everyone else. The entire game is divided into eight
chapters. In turn, each chapter is divided into a number of segments. Every time you visit a town
or a dungeon, it eats up one time segment, therefore limiting the amount of places you can visit
and the events you can witness. It becomes important to budget your time, but the game is so
loosely designed that it's easy to miss important things if you're not paying attention. Similarly, at
the end of each chapter, you need to send off some of your warrior to the heavens, permanently
removing them from your party. You're given vague hints of the requirements, but you can never
be sure that you're doing it properly, especially when it could potentially leave you with an
underpowered squad. There are three difficulty levels to ease newcomers into the unique flow of
Valkyrie Profile, but playing on Easy mode robs the player of half of the playable characters, and
limits access to certain areas of the game. It's meant to provide replay value, but comes off as
withholding to all but the bravest of gamers.
Still, the concept alone is enough to life Valkyrie Profile to classic status. The sequel, released a
whole generation later for the Playstation 2, strangely ditches the structure in favor of a more
traditional approach. There are still 2D side scrolling areas, this time rendered with some of the
most beautiful real time polygonal graphics on the system, but the Einherjar are faceless, and
their recruitment now plays a distant fiddle to core narrative. The story itself is unlikely to interest
those who weren't invested in the main plot of the original - which was somewhat obscured to
begin with - but the battle system has been greatly expanded to allow the party to move around
the battlefield, providing a substantial amount of tactical depth that was missing from the original.
For this reason, it's still a remarkable title, but the innovative approach of the original game
makes it shine brighter.
Final Fantasy IV, VI & VII
If it seems like it's cheating to bunch a handful of games together in one entry...well, it kind of is.
There are a number of other Final Fantasy games on this list, but each of them was chosen for
some very specific aspect. Final Fantasy IV, VI, and VII are probably the least radical of the
modern entries – and therefore, the least unique - yet they're considered to be the most beloved
entries in the series.
Final Fantasy has always walked the very thin line between "casual" and "hardcore" gaming
styles. The idea is that casual gamers will be attracted to the narrative and characters, while the
hardcore will find some crazy customization or battle aspect to figure out. Some of them tilt in one
direction more than the others - Final Fantasy V, VIII and XII walk the hardcore line, while Final
Fantasy X leans more toward the casual end. These three entries - IV, VI, and VII are the most
balanced between the two aspects, which is probably why they're so widely pleasing.
Final Fantasy IV is the epitome of cheesy, melodramatic 16-bit RPGs - the dialogue is brief, the
characters are likable but one dimensional, and nearly half of the game's cast nobly sacrifices
themselves, and all but one of them turns up alive and well later in the plot. The story of the
conflicted Cecil and his equally conflicted best friend Kain has all of the basic workings of a
Shakespeare drama, even if they're carried out with silly 8x8 sprites, whose only methods of
emotional expression include spinning, bouncing, and looking at the floor. Some of the 8-bit
RPGs began to emphasize narrative, like Final Fantasy II's war-torn plot or Dragon Quest IV's
party of memorable warriors, but Final Fantasy IV weaved everything together brilliantly and set
the stage for all future genre entries. As such, the advent of the SNES signified not only
enhanced graphics and stunning music - Final Fantasy IV is still one of Uematsu's best scores but the next generation of story telling as well. The fact that that the DS remake - released fifteen
years after the original - still stands up to most other portable RPGs is a testament to its lasting
power.
Final Fantasy VI was released four years later, with significantly improved graphics - characters
were now twice as big, and potentially twice as expressive. The themes are common, especially
throughout the Final Fantasy series - a rebellion against an evil empire, an outsider with
mysterious magical powers, and a sadistic villain that seems to be evil for the vaguest of reasons.
Final Fantasy VI's strengths lie in both its scenario and its characters. It has the largest group of
playable characters in a Final Fantasy game, with a total of fourteen party members, including
two hidden ones. Their abilities are static, like FFIV and unlike FFV. They're still marginally
customizable, through the use of relics and equippable summon monsters called Espers, which
modify their stat growth a bit and teach them magic.
Each character's inherent skills are important from a storytelling standpoint, as each of their
personalities are reflected in their abilities. Cyan's "SwdTech" (known as "Bushido" in the GBA
retranslation) requires waiting several seconds to charge up attacks, which reflects his persona
as patient and stoic warrior. Sabin, while not having a particularly strong personality, is
occasionally represented as a bit of a meathead. As such, his attacks are incredibly powerful, as
denoted by his muscular stature - but they're unpredictable, seeing as how you can't target
individual foes, and the success of a move is determined by command motions, the fighting game
equivalent of brute force, rather than strategy. Setzer doesn't require much of an explanation when you convince him to join your party, his response is basically "Why the hell not?" He's a
man on the edge, just like his Slot machine ability, which, if luck isn’t on your side, can potentially
harm your own party. This idea of portraying a character through gameplay has been around for
ages - strong characters use physical attacks, frail characters use magic and have low HP, etc. It
was also used in the same manner in Final Fantasy IV - Cecil's life draining attack as a Dark
Knight, which are replaced with healing powers once he becomes a Paladin; Edward's Hide
attack showing his cowardice - but they're much more expanded here, and a quite bit more
interesting.
Like Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI's other strength shows through in its remarkable powerful
scenario design. Once the game really gets into gear within the first hour or two, the game tosses
out a number of memorable events - the spooky Phantom Train, the introduction of Kefka and his
malicious poisoning of Doma Castle, the silly but ultimately impressive opera scene, the assault
on the Magitech Factory, Celes' attempted suicide. It's also one of the first RPGs where the bad
guy actually wins, enslaving the world and reducing it to a total wasteland. Some point to the
second half of the game, where the narrative steps aside and eventually lets you explore the
open world. From another standpoint, it also shines, as a huge number of subquests open up,
allowing those suffocated by the linearity of the first half to get a little more breathing room.
And then there's Final Fantasy VII, beloved for its interesting characters and cool cutscenes,
hated mostly for being a huge success and the effect it had on JRPG design. And yet, FFVII rides
heavily on the coattails of its predecessor - a group of rebels banding together to face an
oppressive evil, another young girl with ancient, mysterious powers - but goes so over-the-top
that it stands out from the crowd. The biggest difference is that FFVI was an ensemble cast, with
the viewpoint switching around between a handful of major characters. Instead, FFVII focused on
the development of Cloud, whose huge, spiky blond hair and exaggerated sword has since
became an icon of Japanese excess in the same way that hulking, bald space marine has
become stereotypical Western gaming. Cloud is neither hero nor anti-hero - as we learn, Cloud is
somewhat of a weakling with delusions of grandeur, believing himself to be a world-saving bad
guy when he's actually just a dude with some psychological issues. This is one of the first
instances of an unreliable narrator in JRPGs, adding something new to the usual "boy meets girl
then saves world" formula.
Its impressive cinematics were Final Fantasy VII's selling point, although now that the HD
consoles can output higher quality rendered in real time, it looks a bit dated. The character
development system isn't quite as cool this time around - the Materia is an altered version of the
Espers from FFVI, except it allows characters to swap skills amongst each other. By removing
most of the specialized character skills, it loses some of the appeal of its predecessor, and thus
the player tends to pick party members based off who looks the coolest, rather than what they
can do. Outside of a few famous scenes - particular Aeris' murder – the rest are muddled with a
subpar localization, another step down from FFVI. However, the game world has been fleshed
out favorably. FFVI's world drew elements from steampunk, but was really just a darker, more
detailed variation on the previous games. FFVII's overworld may just appear to be a 3D rendering
the same world map we're used to, but the locations are hugely varied, ranging from the creepy
European village of Nibelheim, the Disneyworld-esque amusement park Golden Saucer, and the
traditional Japanese town of Wutai. At the core of this is Midgar, a technological dystopia that
borrows heavily from Blade Runner and other elements of science fiction. It's easy to point fingers
at Square-Enix for abusing the Final Fantasy VII series with its multiple spin-offs, like the lousy
shooter Dirge of Cerberus or the vapid action flick Advent Children. But the world is so rich and
interesting that it actually feels like it has enough depth to explore and expand. The only truly
decent spinoff - Crisis Core for the PSP - draws heavily on the player's nostalgia for Final Fantasy
VII, so wandering through Midgar feels like revisiting an old friend. Despite its overbaked
tendencies, it still remains a compelling, even after the twists have long worn out their appeal.
Xenogears
In PR speak, the word "epic" means "really, really long." That term seems a bit misused,
especially when the "60+ hours of gameplay!" tends to be monotonous grinding and empty
wandering. Not so with Xenogears, a sci-fi story it's one of the few JRPGs that could actually
qualify as being an epic, just for the astounding amount of detail that's been written into the game
world. As a young villager named Fei Fong Wong, you try to defend your village by climbing into a
nearby abandoned mech, only to accidentally destroy the whole place, killing off practically
everyone you knew and loved. After being exiled, Fei, like many RPG heroes, learns that his
destiny is much more significant than he expected, leading to the discovery of the roles he's
played in the origin of his planet and the evolution of humanity. All of this culminates in a religious
conspiracy, beckoning the philosophical nature of fighting against God - which, in the case of
Xenogears, is pretty far from the bearded deity that most of us would expect. This topic had been
touched upon in a handful of other Japanese games, and later became a rather silly cliché
amongst Japanese RPGs. But at the time, it seemed remarkably innovative, and the many plot
twists still remain captivating.
Xenogears draws a lot of inspiration from the famous mid-90s anime Neon Genesis Evangelion.
Both involve giant mechs pulling off all kinds of crazy stunts. Both have heavy religious and
philosophical overtones, sometimes drastically mangling Christian symbolism to unintentionally
hilarious effects. Both are overly wordy, a bit pretentious and occasionally borderline nonsensical.
Both are also extraordinarily ambitious, and as a result, both suffered developmental constraints.
Evangelion ended its 26-episode run with two avant-garde episodes that barely provided a
closure to the plot, and the two movies that followed devolved into more craziness that posed
more questions than it answered. Xenogears, in the meantime, had the infamous Disc 2. After the
first CD is completed, the second CD puts the concept of "player control" out to pasture. Instead,
the main characters narrate the story, with dreary, slow moving text, only occasionally allowing
the player to explore a dungeon or fight a battle.
If nothing else, Disc 2 shows how much background story was written into the world of
Xenogears, even it couldn't be squeezed into a single game. All one has to do is look at
"Xenogears Perfect Works", a 300 page behemoth of a guide released in Japan. Practically every
major Square RPG gets at least one "Ultimania" book, which contains statistics, scripts, artwork,
screenshots and so forth, but a huge chunk of Perfect Works details the history of the game
world, its politics, religion, geography, and science. It's fascinating to see how the entire species
evolved into the time frame where the main story takes place, which is a major theme of
Xenogears. The rest of the game is pretty good too, if not particularly innovative. The battles which are either fought on foot or inside the mechs - are generally enjoyable, even if their depth
doesn't hold a candle to the story. It's a bit strange that so few RPGs feature mechs (outside of a
few strategy games like Front Mission and Super Robot Wars), considering their popularity in
Japanese popular culture, so any opportunity to climb into a giant robot and dish out damage in
reason enough to check out Xenogears. The exploration is a bit clumsy, especially in the
dungeons that involve platforming, but the architecture feels more three dimensional than most
RPGs of the era. The soundtrack, too, is one of the high points, consisting of both entrancing
world music and powerful orchestrations, provided by Yasunori Mituda.
After the Xenogears team went to work on Chrono Cross, a number of members left to form
Monolithsoft. Their vision was to create a fully fleshed out version of the Xenogears plot,
remaking the series to avoid stepping on Square's copyrights. It has just as much, if not more,
detail than Xenogears, and being spread across multiple games, would practically redefine the
concept of "epic" once again. Still, once again, the plot was simply far too ambitious for its own
good, and the number of planned installments was cut down from six to three, compressing the
plot even more. It didn't help that the first two games were saddled with terrible pacing issues,
plodding cutscenes, and boring battle systems. It wasn't until the third and final game that
Monolithsoft found a happy medium, with snappy fight scenes and less frequent cinematics, but
by that point, the plot had already been somewhat compromised, and many potential fans had
already written it off. Xenogears, even with its long winded text sessions, is still the better game,
but for all of its flaws, Xenosaga is still a respectable companion piece.
Chrono Trigger
Nearly fifteen years after its release, longtime JRPG fans still point to Square's SNES title Chrono
Trigger as one of the best of the best. Although it was hardly a point of contention at its American
release, Chrono Trigger resulted from the combined efforts of Hironobu Sakaguchi and Yuji Horii
- in other words, the masters behind Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, the two most popular
JRPG series in the world. By combining Square's talents at storytelling and aesthetic designs,
along with Enix's skillful scenario design and straightforward simplicity, they almost created the
perfect game.
One of Dragon Quest's greatest strength is its reliance on tradition. It's also its greatest failing,
forcing the development team to keep at variations of the same theme, simply because that's
what Dragon Quest is. In essence, Chrono Trigger is essentially a Dragon Quest game that's
allowed itself to step outside of the confining limitations of the series and do something a bit more
daring. For the longest time, Akira Toriyama's character artwork was confined into tiny, little,
barely distinguishable sprites, only growing some semblance of features in Dragon Quest VI. With
Square's talented artists, the trio of heroes - spiky-haired country boy Crono, feisty would-be
princess Marle, and bookish scientst Lucca - came to life in ways that Dragon Quest never had.
Koichi Sugiyama is an extremely talented composer, but his music stylings rarely go beyond
Western-style symphonic orchestrations. Here, Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu is free
to rock out with a few contributed tracks, but a bulk of the soundtrack composed by the equally
talented Yasunori Mitsuda, who had yet to make a name for himself. Whereas Dragon Quest
always felt a bit low budget, Chrono Trigger is one of the most gorgeous looking, gorgeous
sounding games on the Super Nintendo.
Certain other elements from Dragon Quest have been carried forward, most notably the existence
of a silent protagonist. It also, unfortunately, affects the battle system - the only method of
character customization come in the form of stat enhancing seeds, another carryover from
Dragon Quest. For some reason, the number of playable characters has been cut down to three.
At least it implements a battle function called Double and Triple Techs, where two or three party
members can combine their magic spells for extra special attacks. In some ways, it's a step down
from both Final Fantasy's and Dragon Quest's respective systems, but it's not enough to really
matter in the long run.
Horii's series is also known for its snappy scenario design, full of memorable events and NPCs.
Chrono Trigger is a nonstop ride through numerous setpieces - Crono's accidental trip to the
past, his subsequent trial and resulting escape, the discovery of Lavos in the post apocalyptic
future, the drunken celebrations in the prehistoric era, the raid on Magus' castle and the lead-up
to the fateful battle. Pretty much the entire game is series of climaxes, one after another after
another. It's also quite compelling to see how the relatively small game world changes in all of
the different time periods. Near the game's end, a handful of subquests really show off how cool it
is to amend the mistakes of the past to change the future. Time travel is such a fertile ground for
interesting storytelling that it's a shame few games explore it. Even Horii himself tried it later in
Dragon Quest VII, with far less interesting results. The only real downside of cutting down all the
treacle is that the overall quest is pretty short - one can probably beat it in maybe fifteen hours.
To counteract this, Chrono Trigger introduced the New Game+, which allows you to restart the
game from scratch but carrying over the stats from when you beat the game. After a certain point
in the plot, you can time travel directly to fight Lavos, and depending where you are in the story,
defeating him will reveal over a dozen different endings. All of this helps expand one of the most
intriguing stories found in Japanese RPGs.
Shadow Hearts Covenant
Shadow Hearts is a game of contrasts. On one hand, you have an immensely violent and
brooding hero, fighting in a world filled with hellish demons. On the other hand, you have
flamboyantly gay shopkeepers, even stranger cast of supporting characters and a real world
setting that grossly misinterprets historical figures and events to its whims. The games consist of
moments of tragedy intermingled with moments of total ludicrousness.
The first Shadow Hearts - which was released in American within a week of Final Fantasy X and
got totally demolished at retail as a result - errs a bit too much on the serious side. The third
Shadow Hearts, subtitled "From the New World", takes place a warped version of 1920s America
and conversely errs a bit too much on the wacky side. Sitting beautifully in the middle is Shadow
Hearts Covenant, which balances the act perfectly. The game initially focuses on a young
German soldier named Karin, who encounters a malicious demon during the occupation of
France in World War I. This demon is actually Yuri, the shape-shifting hero of the previous title,
who seems to have made an enemy of the Vatican. Yuri and Karin eventually team up and run
off, accompanied by a puppeteer who uses his dancing marionette to attack monsters. Later,
you'll be joined a giant wrestler/vampire who will occasionally switch into an alternate ego,
dubbing himself the "Grand Papillion" in the process, who wears a butterfly mask. As you traipse
war-torn Europe - and, eventually, Japan - you'll run into such historic personalities as Rasputin one of the big bad guys, obviously - all while fighting demons, and occasionally running
subquests to find gay porn so you can upgrade your weapons. This completely twisted world view
is half of what makes Shadow Hearts so instantly memorable. The other half is Yuri, one of the
most amusing protagonists seen in an RPG. He's part brooding anti-hero, the kind popularized by
Final Fantasy's Cloud and Squall, but he's also part sarcastic jackass, able to make light of his
situations, wherein his predecessors would just go into the corner and sulk. It's also amusing that
a guy who can transform into dozens of different demons is the straight man amongst a cast of
total weirdoes.
The scenario is pretty cool, but Shadow Hearts also deserves commendation for the Judgment
Ring system. For years, developers have been trying to answer the question - how do we make
battle scenes more involving than just picking selections from menus? In Shadow Hearts, the
Judgment Ring is a dial with portions of the circle marked in green. When you begin an attack,
the dial begins to move, and you need to hit the action button as it crosses over the green
segments. If you miss, you lose an attack, requiring quick reactions to successfully strike your
foe. This in itself isn't particular innovative - Square's Super Mario RPG featured something
vaguely similar, which has since been reused in Paper Mario, Mario & Luigi, and the whole line of
Mario-inspired RPGs. But these implementations are fairly shallow compared to Shadow Hearts,
which features an extra element of risk. There are extremely narrow red slivers on the Judgment
Ring, just on the edges of the green areas. If your timing - and luck - is good, then you can stop
the dial on these segments to get some extra damage. This idea is greatly expanded upon in
Shadow Hearts Covenant, as you can customize the size and type of Judgment Rings, allowing
you to balance how greatly you want to play the game of risks versus rewards. As such, the fights
are like slot machines that you can kind of control. You can also turn them off completely, if you
prefer the traditional way of fighting. But once you get used to it, you realize that major battles
become all the more compelling when they rely on your reflexes - and your willingness to take
risks - as much as your strategy.
Persona 3
Potentially, Persona 3 could have been a train wreck. A spinoff of the Shin Megami Tensei series,
it features randomly generated stages, with a huge focus on dungeon crawling. One only need to
look at the Western reviews (and sales) of such conceptually similar titles like Azure Dreams
(PSOne), or The Nightmare of Druaga (PS2) to see that Western JRPG fans traditionally haven't
cared for these types of games. Furthermore, it takes place in a high school, allowing the main
character to interact with their classmates, join clubs, and socialize - all elements of dating/life
sims that are popular in Japan, but barely heard of in the West. Of course, from Japan's point of
view, it wasn't the first time that someone tried to combine life-sim elements with an RPG - Sega's
immensely popular (again, in Japan) Sakura Taisen series popularized the mechanics through its
many installments. One of the only similar games released in America was Atlus' PSOne RPG
Thousand Arms, which tried the same thing on a more limited scale, with disappointing results.
Taken separately, neither aspect of Persona 3 would've stood on its own. The dungeon crawling
is repetitive, and while the battle system draws heavily on the same strategically brilliant system
found in most the other PS2 Shin Megami Tensei titles (Nocturne, Digital Devil Saga), the player
can only control a single character, drastically limiting the strategy that traditionally made the
series so appealing. The life sim part, too, is scaled down - this style of gameplay pretty much
began with Konami's Tokimeki Memorial, which offered over a dozen statistics to monitor in order
to shape your avatar's personality, while Persona 3 only offers three. Yet, both portions come
together so brilliantly that add up to more than the sum of their parts. There are plenty of clubs to
join, and numerous NPCs to befriend or even date. Socializing will enhance the strength of your
Personas, the mythical creatures that dwell in your mind and provide your special attacks. The life
sim segment of the game is essentially than a character creation system - usually, these are
reduced to impersonal menus, but these have been removed in favor of something more
involving, and ultimately, more rewarding.
The extremely innovative scenario also goes a long way towards giving Persona 3 its charm. As a
transfer student in a new school, you and some of your fellow classmates have the ability to
sense the "Dark Hour", a mysterious period of time that occurs at midnight, where the rest of the
world lies asleep and unaware. During this time, a huge tower called Tartarus warps and mangles
the interior of your school, which is somehow tied in with a mysterious apocalyptic prophecy. A
lot of the enjoyment comes from trying to balance your school/social life with your demon hunting
life, not exactly a typical dilemma faced in most RPGs. It also provides an interesting glimpse into
the fantasy life of a modern Japanese teenager, as the game is filled with stylish artwork and a JHiphop soundtrack that's alternatively catchy and grating. Persona 3's big pseudo controversy
stems from the method where the characters summon their Persona - they bring a gun to their
head and pull the trigger, forcing their spirit companion out to attack. It's cool, in a punk kind of
way, but the relative obscurity of the title allowed it to fly under the radar of the self appointed
culture warriors. This off-the-wall originality helped it earn rare accolades from the Western press.
Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne
The Megami Tensei series has come a long way since its inception back in the Famicom days.
Based off a campy horror novel from the 80s, Megami Tensei put you in the role of a young
programmer who had used his computer to summon demons into the real world. It was a first
person dungeon crawler, keeping closer to games like Wizardry than Dragon Quest, and featured
an innovative mechanics where you could convince any enemy to join your party by chatting with
them. The second game deviated from the novel and allowed gamers to explore a postapocalyptic Tokyo. This concept was revisited in its two Super Famicom sequels, this time
dubbed "Shin Megami Tensei".
Much like Capcom and Street Fighter, Atlus had a hard time counting to three for Shin Megami
Tensei sequels. Although it had strong cult popularity, it never got nearly the same exposure as
Square or Enix's big guns, so Atlus attempted to bring in other audiences with a series of spinoffs, including the Persona and Demikids series. It wasn't until 2003 that they finally released a
true third game, known as Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne. It was also the first true entry in the
series released in America, although it dropped the Roman numeral.
Much like its earlier Famicom and Super Famicom brethren, Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne
begins with the end of the world - and with it, a new beginning. Whereas the previous game put
you in the role of one of the last humans alive, trying to eek out an existence in a world full of
angels and demons, Nocturne transforms your characters into a demon. The biggest difference
from the previous Shin Megami Tensei is the change from a first person viewpoint to third person.
The first person dungeon crawler sequences were perhaps intimidating to those more familiar
with Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest, so their removal may have helped to draw in a wider
audience. It's also much more impressive when you can see your compatriots - armies of angels
and demons ranging from a wide number of religions and mythologies - whereas they were
previously reduced to little more than names and stats in the previous games.
Make no mistake though - these changes were not meant to castrate the appeal for the sake for
higher sales. Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne is still quite difficult, almost maddeningly so. Like
most of the best RPGs, grinding through the quest will get you absolutely nowhere. Your goal is
to recruit as many monsters as possible, but even that won't do any good if you don't know how
to use them. In most modern RPGs, paying attention to elemental affinities makes the game
easier, but it's hardly required. In Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne, it's an absolute necessity. If you
hit the enemy with an attack they're weak to, they'll lose a turn - but, of course, the same is true
for your team. In order to succeed, you need to become familiar with the attacks of each and
every monster in the game, especially since most foes can just as easily become your friends.
Enjoying the game requires an intense amount of devotion, which can potentially be too
exhausting for those who don't like to memorize demon fusion charts. But it's also extraordinarily
rewarding, especially given the absolutely enthralling vision of post-apocalyptic Tokyo. The ruins
of humanity are encased in a fuzzy red haze, the standard office buildings replaced by stylish
fortresses crafted by Hell's finest architects. The story mostly revolves around the few surviving
humans - some of whom were your friends in your previous life - and how they've dealt with the
end of the world, which in turn contrasts with your actions. Past the opening sections of the game,
the narrative is a bit on the sparse, but the vision of the world and how it unfolds is reason
enough to stick with it to the end, no matter how many times those monstrous Fiend bosses kick
your tail.
Final Fantasy VIII
We're all familiar with Final Fantasy VIII's many quirks and failings. The game world is strangely
inconsistent, trying to shovel modern elements into an overworld that otherwise feels too
medieval. Everything from its story to its battle system is slow, bloated, and unnecessarily
confusing. And yes, Squall is an unlikable jerk, and his romance with Rinoa is hardly believable,
considering it's meant to be the crux of the game.
There's a lot that Final Fantasy VIII does wrong, but there's even more than its does right. There
are so many JRPG conventions that Square deliciously twists that it's almost like relearning how
to approach the genre. At the core of this is the Junction system, which allows you to use magic
spells to increase your stats or modify your elemental abilities. This completely shatters the
concept of RPG equipment, which has only occasionally veered beyond the "go to new town, buy
new stuff, sell old stuff" pattern. Since there is no armor in Final Fantasy VIII, the spells you draw
from enemies, you make your own. Similarly, weapons are primarily upgraded in the same
manner - there's some new equipment that can be assembled if you run some enemy hunting
quests, but they're presented as subquests rather than necessary requirements.
Magic use has also been completely reimagined. Since the original Final Fantasy, we've been
taught to conserve magic as a precious resource, dwindling to the point where our MP would
reach zero and we'd need to retreat to an inn to recharge. Yet magic is everywhere in Final
Fantasy VIII - all you need to do it is draw from any enemy creature. Of course, the dynamics of
this system completely depend on the enemies on the area - if they possess Fire magic, you can
go crazy setting enemies ablaze, but if none of them have healing magic, you'd better conserve
your Cure spells.
Similarly, RPGs have always been trying to seek a balance between magic and power. Fighters
have always been more powerful than magicians, a point made explicitly clear in Final Fantasy
VII, where magic Materia would weaken your strength and HP stats. Using magic in Final Fantasy
VIII will weaken whatever statistics that spell is Junctioned too, again forcing you to be aware of
how to formulate your strategy. It's the same concept as before, just done in a completely
different manner. This is one area that Final Fantasy has always specialized in - keeping
mechanics familiar yet overturning them in new and crazy ways, just to keep you on your toes. It
can be a bit overwhelming, which is why a lot of gamers initially ignored the system in favor of
spamming the summon beasts, each of which were accompanied by overly long, drawn out
cinemas. As such, there’s a strange divide – if you fully understand the ins and outs of the
system, you can totally break the game; but if you don’t, it becomes obnoxiously difficult. Still,
those who like to micromanage stats and completely beef up the characters - potentially the same
kind that would find Final Fantasy V to be paradise - can feel right at home with Junctioning. So
ignore the sloppy romance and the trashy love ballad that goes along with it - this is what Final
Fantasy VIII should be known for.
Earthbound
Few games have such a rabid cult fanbase as Earthbound, known as Mother in Japan. The first
game in the series, released for the Famicom, almost left Japan, but never did. Its sequel - known
in the States as Earthbound - is regarded as one of the greatest RPGs on the SNES.
From a gameplay standpoint, there is very little new or interesting about Earthbound. It is an
unashamed Dragon Quest clone, right down to the squat mini-characters and first person
viewpoint on the battlefield. The elimination of random battles is a nice touch, but other than the
HP counter (which slowly drains when take damage, potentially allowing for an extra hit before
you fall), it could easily qualify as one of the many Dragon Quest ripoffs that flooded the
Famicom. Yet Earthbound succeeds almost entirely because it's something so rare in Japanese
gaming - a parody. With all of its tragically melodramatic plot devices and absurd coming-of-age
stories, it's a genre ripe for hilarity, yet few games (outside of some fan-made games, like the
near-brilliant Barkley Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden) ever seemed to try it. Earthbound begins with a
young boy named Ness, whose journey is spelled out by a small alien the size of a house fly.
Mistaking it for an insect, your neighbor's mom ends up swatting it, as the tragic music plays and
the poor creature lays out the rest of your destiny in its dying breath. From there, Ness
adventures around the globe, gathering up party members and fighting against both nasty
invaders from outer space and the equally kooky townspeople. The final stages culminate in a
weirdly absurd plot twist, and yet it almost completely makes sense in the bizarre, backwards
world of Earthbound.
Pretty much every aspect of the game is taken outside of the bounds of absurdity. Ness and his
friends look like they were ripped out of a Peanuts cartoon, except they can wield psychic
powers. One of the NPC sprites looks just like Mr. T. At one point, you run into a band that's a
pretty obvious homage/ripoff of The Blues Brothers. Mant of them have bizarre, frightening,
permanent grins on their faces. The prologue seems ripped out of a 50s sci-fi TV serial. Some of
the first enemies you fight are hippies, whose primary method of attack includes mocking you and
calling you names. The whole game is a warped, confused tribute to American culture, designed
by people who've only read about the country through books or movies. Yet it's never offensive or
misguided, but rather it's a lovingly crafted universe with a sly sense of humor that can't be found
anywhere else. Between all of the wackiness, there are some oddly poignantmoments. As a
young child wandering far away from home, you're constantly calling your father - who only
shows up as a voice over the phone - in order to save your game and replenish your funds. It's
strange that Earthbound can take something as impersonal as save points and turn them into one
of the few reassuring voices in a world gone mad.
With its schizophrenic music, which bounces between "quaintly touching" and "hypnotically
grating", and drugged-out psychedelic battle backgrounds, Earthbound occasionally feels a bit
too weird-for-the-sake-of-weird. But let's face it - with originality in short supply, it's hard to argue
against that any of these are bad things.
Grandia
Game Arts' Lunar series has a pretty decent following, especially amongst English speakers. This
was mostly because it was one of the few JRPGs of the 16-bit era that received competent
translations thanks to Working Designs. After the original two releases (for the Sega CD), their
remakes (for the Saturn and Playstation), and a completely negligible side story (Magical School
for the Saturn and Game Gear), fans kept clamoring for a new Lunar installments. In the end, this
turned out to be a bad idea, because it wrought the havoc of Lunar: Dragon Song on the
Nintendo DS, one of the worst JRPGs in recent memory. What Lunar fans perhaps may not have
realized is that the series' spirit lived in Grandia, another series by the same company. It may be
missing the interesting mythology behind the Lunar world, and they definitely falter from the lack
of Yoshiyuki Sadamoto's distinctive character artwork, but they practically perfect one area where
JRPG developers still can't get it right - the battle system.
Considering you spend a huge portion of any JRPG in battle, it's a wonder that so many games
are dull or plodding or just plain irritating. Grandia introduced a pseudo-real time battle system
that not only forces strategy on to the player, but also manages to be enthralling, quite an
achievement considering that you're still just picking selections from menus. During battle, each
character's turn order is depicted on a gauge at the bottom of the screen. The action unfolds in
real time - similar to Final Fantasy's Active Time Battle system - except you're made explicitly
aware of your foes' places in the turn queue, allowing you to plot accordingly. The action pauses
whenever one of your character's turns comes up, allowing you to make a move. In addition to
the usual magic spells, each character has two primary attacks - a "Combo", which consists of
multiple powerful attacks, and a "Critical", a single, quick attack. There's a short delay between
the time when an action is decided and when it's actually executed, indicated on the action gauge
as a line of red. If you manage to hit an enemy with a Critical attack during this small window,
you'll stun the enemy and cause them to lose their turn. On the slip side, if you're not paying
attention, the enemy can do the same thing to you. As a result, each time you pick a command,
you have to weigh your decisions, be mindful of the speed and distance of your attacks, and take
some risks at every turn. If you play it smart, it's possible to emerge from battle completely
unscathed, which rewards you with additional experience and a special victory theme. The shaky
camera in the first game adds to the chaos, zooming around the battlefield and focusing on the
most brutal attacks. Crushing sound effects accompany every blow, and slain enemies that
explode in a mess of coins and shattered polygons. These effects were toned down once the
series went 3D in Grandia II, which is a bit of a shame
The first Grandia is most like the original Lunar games, featuring the story of a young boy named
Justin, adventuring out into the world and eventually taking down an evil empire. It's clichéd, but
it's eminently likable and the strongest of the series. The second features an interesting
protagonist by the name of Ryudo, and while it starts off strong, it tragically devolves into a silly
plot wherein you must destroy the world's pseudo-Pope. Grandia 3, while gorgeous, collapses
even further into banal story telling, with only a few side characters holding up a plot that's
weighed down by the moronic starring cast. Yet, again, it's the battle system that keeps all of the
Grandia games afloat, and makes them all worth checking out.
Final Fantasy XII
Final Fantasy XII does so much to reinvent the JRPG template that it hardly belongs in the same
genre, much less part of the Final Fantasy series. Concepts like the "overworld" and "battle
scenes" have all been blended together into a more cohesive whole. At the crux of this are the
guild Hunts - featuring a huge slew of subquests that can keep obsessive gamers busy for scores
of hours - and the Gambit system, which administers the real-time fighting segments, which have
graduated beyond the random battles of RPGs past.
The Gambit system essentially allows you to program all of your character's AI, so you don't need
to issue each and every command to your party. While many other action-oriented RPGs have
similar features (like the Star Ocean and the Tales of... series), Final Fantasy XII offers a lot more
freedom in customizing your actions. The most basic Gambits can simply tell all of your
characters to attack the same monster as the party leader, or simply target the enemy with the
lowest HP. If one of your allies HP dips below a certain percentage, it will trigger one of your
members to cast a healing spell. And so forth. The idea is that you're creating a machine which
constantly needs tweaking and adjusting, until you've found a combination of commands that
works for the party you've built and the enemies you're facing. And, really, this is what all combat
is in any JRPG anyway - looking for the most efficient ways to kill bad guys while managing your
resources, all without the crazy flashing screen changes that have marked every JRPG since
their inception.
If not the Gambit system, Final Fantasy XII also has a story and game world so vastly different
from its brethren. It's undoubtedly the classiest and most mature entry in the series, and the only
game it remotely channels is the spinoff Final Fantasy Tactics. Both of these games were helmed
by brilliant game designer Yasumi Matsuo, who rather infamously quit the FFXII project halfway
through. Matsuno seems to have had an admiration of tales of tragic war and Shakespearean
drama, all triumphantly backed by the musical words of Hitoshi Sakimoto and Masuhara Iwata,
whose orchestrations feel more significant than Uematsu's synth-heavy new age/prog rock found
in the prior Final Fantasy games.
However, there's a bit of duality as a result of Matsuno working on a more "popular" title - his
games always felt a little bit more legitimate since he never appeared to be selling out, but Final
Fantasy is a series that creates characters based on (A) how many girls (and occasionally guys)
want to cosplay as them, or (B) how much yen can be wracked up after the torrent of doujinshi
pops up at latest Comiket. Not to say some of his games have been completely devoid of such
fanservicey qualities - did anyone in Vagrant Story actually wear pants? - but when you're used to
his kind of authenticity, it's a bit disconcerting to find yourself wondering how long it takes Vaan to
get his hair so perfect, or wondering how anyone can take a princess seriously when wearing the
kind of hot pants that Ashe tries to pull off. In FF Tactics Advance, the Viera were cutesy in the
same way that Beatrix Potter's Peter the Rabbit would be cutesy, if he were wielding a bow and
arrow. Here, the dark skinned, light haired Fran wears a metallic thong, and the camera takes
great delight in panning up her backside. As such, it's the highlights - if not necessarily the best
parts - of both worlds.
The Final Fantasy series has always divided fans in a way no series has, but Final Fantasy XII is
bound to infuriate more than most - and, as one can be probably guess, most of it was probably
Matsuno's fault. It's so drastically different from not only its predecessors, but practically any
modern role playing game out there, and its expansiveness attract as many as it offends. The plot
and characterizations start off strong, but soon dwindle and lose focus amongst the numerous
dungeon crawls at the game's end. Plot threads get resolved as soon as they begin, if they go
anywhere at all. And yet, the de-emphasis on storytelling is a fine alternative to the plot heavy
Final Fantasy X, or even to any of the cinematically linear PSOne titles. As one of the biggest
concessions between old school and new school, when you defeat a major boss, your characters
will all stand around in circle and do a winning pose to the tune of the classic victory theme. This
throwback serves as a reminder to how silly all of the past RPG conventions have been, at the
same time perhaps making the player realize that they don’t miss them.
Dragon Quest V
As of this writing, there are eight installments in Enix's Dragon Quest series, all of which are
notable to some extent. While most long time Final Fantasy fans can probably agree that FFVI
(maybe FFVII, depending on who you talk to) was the standout of the series, the line grows much
blurrier with the Dragon Quest games. This may seem a bit strange to those outside the DQ fan
circle. The series has prided itself on its consistency in every aspect from its game world to its
character designs to its soundtrack to its battle system, yet each of them remains distinctive to
those that know and love them.
Dragon Quest III is heralded by Japanese gamers as one of the best titles on the Famicom for its
then-epic plot and customizable characters, while others prefer Dragon Quest IV for its chapterbased storytelling and memorable cast of characters. Most English fans may more fondly
remember 2005's Dragon Quest VIII, which finally gave into modern influence by featuring
luscious cel-shaded graphics, a cinematic battle system, and, for the American release, high
quality writing and splendidly charming voice acting.
Yet amongst the entire series, one of the most significant is the Japan-only Dragon Quest V. The
coming of age is an overtly common theme in JRPGs, yet never has it been executed so
magnificently as Dragon Quest V. Your hero starts as a young child, barely unable to fight a pack
of slimes on his own without his father's help, and goes on crazy adventures before even learning
to read. By the end of the game, he's lived through a slave labor camp, explored the world, fallen
in love, raised a family, and entered into another evil dimension, for the sake of not only saving
the world, but growing up. Effectively, it's the RPG equivalent of an epic, detailing the story the
story of three generations of heroes. Sega's Phantasy Star III for the Genesis tried something
similar around the same time, but Dragon Quest V is a much more personal story, and also
happens to be a far stronger game overall.
Although the game ditches the class system introduced in DQIII (and later reused for both DQVI
and DQVII), it allows you to build a party consisting of defeated monsters. Although it's a bit
haphazard trying to draft foes on to your team, it's a lot more customizable than most RPGs when
you have dozens of playable party members at your disposal. It's essentially the same mechanic
used in the Megami Tensei series, although it doesn't require that you memorize huge charts of
enemy abilities to succeed.
Far too many games (including Dragon Quest's own spinoff, the Monsters line, as well as
Nintendo's Pokemon series) focus on the monster collection as the primary game mechanic. On
the other hand, all subsequent Dragon Quest games have utilized some similar method of
drafting enemy monsters, but they're largely afterthoughts to other character customization
systems. In Dragon Quest V, it's so seamlessly integrated into the main system, without
becoming overwhelming, that it's a textbook example of how to do the monster collection thing
right.
Panzer Dragoon Saga
Modern gamers - those brought up on fancy, high tech polygonal magic - continue to scoff at
Final Fantasy VII's texture-less character models and low-res prerendered backgrounds, claiming
that these are grounds for a remake. Yet the ravages of age have been harsher on Sega's
Panzer Dragoon series. While the first two titles were simple arcade-style shooters, they amazed
gamers of the mid-90s with a gorgeous game world, drawing equally from the likes of Hayao
Miyazaki's Nausicaa and the works of French artist Moebius. It's a strange mixture of fantastic
organic creations and high tech wizardry, the likes of which haven't been duplicated in any other
medium. Unfortunately, the Saturn was hardly a 3D powerhouse, and what used to be daring and
gorgeous is now pixellated, choppy, and in some areas, downright offensive.
The same visual issues plague the third Panzer Dragoon title, Panzer Dragoon Saga. In some
ways, they're even worse - the first two titles were shooters which took place on the back of a
dragon, flying high above the smeary textures and low polygon landscapes. PD Saga is an RPG,
where you'll spend a much time walking around on foot, where the technical issues are even
more apparent.
And yet, once you get into it, none of this really matters. In the old titles, the story was simply told
through CG cutscenes, and the world existed only as a background to fly over. When you're
interacting with the environments, walking through them or talking to their inhabitants, it shows
how much effort was put into creating a completely unique setting and culture. Panzer Dragoon
Saga feels like you're walking through a museum detailing a lost culture that never was, from a
forgotten period of humanity's history that has never existed. The only concession is that the
world's unique, made-up language (dubbed "Panzerese" by fans) was ditched in favor of
Japanese. But since the game was localized without English dubbing, it still feels foreign to
Western gamers, even if it's not in the same manner.
The battle system also takes a radical departure from the norm. All battles are fought in mid-air,
as you're playing on your dragon. The action takes place in real time, with three power bars that
charge over the period of a few seconds. At any point, you can pause the battle and choose to
attack - if you've built enough power, you can attack multiple times, or unleash a single, more
powerful attack. Positioning is also extremely important - your dragon flies in one of four
quadrants surrounding your enemies, and can move between them at will. A radar at the bottom
of the screen will mark which zones are safe and which are dangerous. If you're flying in a green
zone, the enemy can't attack; if you're in a neutral zone, the enemy can use a weak attack; and
naturally, the red zone indicates that the enemy can use a fierce attack. Obviously, you'll want to
spend as much time as possible charging in the green zones to avoid damage. However,
enemies often have weak points in other positions, encouraging you to fly in the face of danger to
finish battles efficiently. The enemy's attack patterns often change multiple times during battle,
forcing you to adapt and figure out the optimal positioning, timing, and type of attacks to use.
Furthermore, you have precise control over the development of your dragon, determining how
fast it is, how powerful its attacks are, and other statistics.
Panzer Dragoon Saga is, however, remarkably short. Despite utilizing four discs - mostly for
pixellated, heavily compressed video, which looked frighteningly bad compared to Square's
efforts - the quest clocks in at roughly fifteen hours. Considering that the English game often
fetches triple digit prices in the aftermarket, it's somewhat of a rough investment. But it's a totally
unique game, with a world and combat system completely unlike anything else.
Final Fantasy X
Ever since the early days of interactive fiction, game developers have been wondering - how
does one tell a story using video games as a medium? The advent of the laserdisc - and later, the
CD-ROM - gave developers the wrong idea, by churning out full motion video titles that, while
cinematic, had limited user inputs. For a long time, Western developers favored the graphic
adventure as a means of storytelling, while the Japanese preferred role playing games, which
replaced the mind-bending puzzles with battles and character building. At the forefront of this
movement has been Final Fantasy, which have been consistently impressive, partially because of
the huge budget and manpower put behind them.
At the pinnacle of JRPG storytelling is Final Fantasy X, was voted in 2006 as the best video game
of all time by the readers of Famitsu, the premiere Japanese video game magazine. At the core
of the story is Tidus, a young athlete whisked away to another world. This land, dubbed Spira, is
a gorgeous tropical paradise, yet is under the constant threat of a giant monster named Sin.
Tidus eventually join a pilgrimage to stop it, joining along with a young summoner named Yuna.
Final Fantasy VIII tried to tell a love story, but they didn't exactly succeed, primarily because the
main character was an unlikable jerk through a good portion of the game. Tidus is much brighter
and friendlier, even if he is a bit whiny. He joins the pilgrimage mostly because Yuna has
something of a crush on him. It actually tells a compelling story this time around, and the romantic
climax - featured on the cover of the American manual - is far more involving than the similar
scene in FFVIII.
Spira is one of the most gorgeously realized worlds yet rendered into a video game. While
Square's mediocre beat-em-up The Bouncer was meant to show off what kind of graphical tricks
the PS2 could pull off, Final Fantasy X was Square's first real RPG on the system, and they didn't
spare any expense. The world is loosely inspired by the Okinawa region, which is why this game
feels more Japanese than any of its culturally neutral predecessors. One of the reasons Final
Fantasy stands out from its peers is the way its game worlds refuse to be pigeonholed into genre
classifications - none can be defined strictly as "medieval" or "sci-fi". Although some inhabit the
nebulous zone in between those descriptions, Spira defies pretty much everything and is by far
the most unique of all. It's a strange world, filled with its own culture, religion, and even
metaphysics, and the whole game is about how these clash with not only Tidus' feelings, but the
player's as well. At the very least, Final Fantasy X's world gives some context to Tetsuya
Nomura's occasionally outlandish character designs, even if some, like the goth girl Lulu, still
seem to exist more as a fetish object than a true inhabitant of the land.
Most of this involvement comes from the narrative, which is far more involving than any game
before - or, arguably - after it. Before Final Fantasy X, major plot points were handled by squat
little sprites or awkwardly constructed polygonal models, both with very limited ranges of emotion.
Almost everything here is represented with a fully animated, fully voiced cutscene. Even the
dialogue boxes of the non-voiced sections are gone, replaced with subtitles. Whereas many of
the previous Final Fantasies were games with story elements, this is a story with gaming
elements
However, sometimes the narrative pushes just a little too hard. It's hard to say there are any real
dungeons in Final Fantasy X - most of the adventuring requires walking in a straight line, with an
occasional branch that leads to treasure. It takes a few hours before the game loosens its reigns
and stops giving tutorials. This ensures a well-paced story, but it also drastically limits the sense
of freedom, an element which is already pretty rare in most JRPGs. There are also tons upon
tons of cutscenes, all of which are unskippable. It also highlights another problem - if the player
doesn't like the story, there's very little of worth here. The battle system, which ditches the Active
Time Battle system of the previous Final Fantasy games, is fast and fun, but the character
development system - the Sphere Grid - is pretty lacking. Even if you didn't care of Squall or
Rinoa's antics in FFVIII, at least you had the Junction system to play around with. In Final
Fantasy X, the most interesting parts of the Sphere Grid don't open up until the later portions of
the game, far too late for those who aren't immediately drawn in by the tensions between Tidus
and Yuna. It doesn't help that, like many of the Final Fantasy games, it tends to devolve into
ludicrousness - the monster that terrorizes Spira is actually Tidus' drunken father, the kind of
wholly absurd metaphor for filial tension that would potentially get one laughed out of their high
school creative writing class.
But again, like most JRPGs, once you accept it on its own terms - silly melodrama and all - it
remains a completely original, fascinating, even emotional tale. As a piece of video game
storytelling, Final Fantasy X doesn't quite reaches the heights of, say, Metal Gear Solid 2 or
Bioshock, both of which use the medium in ways that other kinds of fiction can't. But as an
cinematic experience, featuring interesting characters and a beautifully realized alternate world, it
walks an agreeable line between narrative and gameplay, even if it tends to err too far from the
gameplay side.
Skies of Arcadia
In Sega's Skies of Arcadia, you're the leader of a group of air pirates - made explicitly clear to be
"good guy pirates" - traveling the world over, fighting all kinds of "bad guy pirates", and helping
anyone in need. The world is largely unknown, comprised of dozens of islands floating in the
skies, miles above the poison that lies on the surface of the earth. The explorer's map that shows
your ship's position slowly expands from a tiny circle to a gigantic view of the entire world,
keeping note of the myriad artifacts you discover. The hero Vyse is surrounded by two lovely
ladies - his fiery childhood friend Aika and the mysterious demure newcomer Fina. By the end,
everyone flies into the metaphorical sunset, dreaming of all of the adventures yet to come. It feels
like the end of the best Saturday morning cartoons never made.
Around the same time, the holiday season of 2000, Square released Final Fantasy IX. If Final
Fantasy VII's theme was "life" and Final Fantasy VIII's was "love", then Final Fantasy IX was
"history". It was meant be a concession to old school fans of the series, one that would adapt
some of the themes of the older games and put them into modern trappings. It was well
intentioned, and a very solid title - black mage Vivi remains one of the most noteworthy
characters in the Final Fantasy canon - but all that resulted was a fairly simplistic game with all of
the bloat of the other PSOne Final Fantasy titles, without the impressive storytelling - in short, it
tried to be the best of both worlds without reaching either. What Square didn't realize is that you
can't elicit nostalgia just by simplifying the customization systems or name checking events from
older games.
And this is the reason why Sega's Skies of Arcadia manages to touch so many gamers' hearts quite simply, it feels like childhood. As if springing from the imagination of a five year old, it elicits
the feeling of wonder and imagination, that behind everything lies something daring and new. It
harkens back to the time when your backyard was full of dangerous creatures, and the local
swamp was inhabited by dinosaurs, and the sewers were an intricate series of mazes that ended
up treasure. It's the exact same sentiment of the Legend of Zelda series, before it fell prey to the
crushing throes of tradition. And it never feels like its pandering like Mistwalker's Blue Dragon,
which just seemed to be trying too hard. It's a breezy, natural, and altogether remarkable game.
Of course, none of this would've worked if there wasn't anything interesting beneath the shadows
of the world map, but Skies of Arcadia suceeds because there is no generic dungeon, no faceless
town. Everthing from the secretive underground pirate's base, to the tree clubhouse feeling of the
jungle city of Hortec, to the gorgeous waterfalls and Asian-inspired shrines in Yafutoma, to the
Middle Eastern desert lands of Nasrad. You don't even need to talk to the inhabitants to
understand the culture behind the game's nations - all you need to do is walk through their
country. Dungeons don't just seem like some landscape you're walking over - each and all of
them have depth and texture, the kind that you'd usually see in platform or action games. In fact,
this devotion to architecture is what gives Skies of Arcadia its unique identity.
The rest of the game is not exactly perfect, and does fall a bit to dull game design. The combat
system is a bit plodding, with its gimmick lying in a super energy bar shared amongst party
members, allowing for special attacks. The constant random battles, especially in the original
Dreamcast release, don't do it any favors either. Ultimately, though, Skies of Arcadia has all of
the straightforward charm of a 16-bit games wrapped up modern trappings, an unfortunate rarity
in the field.
Chrono Cross
Chrono Cross is only barely the sequel to Chrono Trigger. Trigger's call to fame was its
assemblage of Square and Enix, Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, Sakaguchi and Horii. With the
Enix folk unavailable to participate in a follow-up, it left Square with their own devices to take up
the task. Even then, the key players had either moved on or evolved - writer Masato Kato had
since been in charge of penning Xenogears and his scripting tended to waft into metaphysical
territories; musician Yasunori Mitsuda had been bitten with the Celtic bug, giving his music a
distinct sound that, while becoming exemplary in the field of video game music, lacked the variety
that kept Trigger so much of its energy; and Hironobu Sakaguchi was too busy sinking Square
from the inside with his work on the Final Fantasy: Spirits Within movie. Akira Toriyama's
distinctive designs are out - his spot is taken by Noboteru Yuuki, who tries to maintain the same
goofiness of Trigger’s designs but ends up overcompensating by drawing some of the most
bizarre cast members seen in an RPG, including a talking radish and a video game rendition of
Aunt Jemima.
So Chrono Cross barely looks, nor sounds, nor plays like its predecessor, and yet it's one of the
most sterling examples of an RPG sequel. Final Fantasy, outside of FFX-2, as well as most
JRPGs, rarely have any real plot continuity, while a few others like Phantasy Star and Dragon
Quest tie its stories together loosely into overarching legends or events. Cross does not intend to
retell the adventures of Crono, Lucca or Marle - their adventures, as far as the players were
concerned, had finished. Rather, Cross expands significantly on both the mythos of the series
and concept of time travel. For better or worse, it’s The Odyssey to Trigger's The Ilyiad, in the
way that it takes a relatively minor aspect of its predecessor and makes it the focus.
The time travel in Trigger was very light-hearted and straightforward - if something was wrong in
the present, you simply went back in the past and corrected it. Cross asks the question - what
happens to that original timeline, before it's corrected? It doesn't simply disappear - rather, a
parallel universe is formed, and this is where we find the hero, a young fisher boy Serge. Serge
ends up getting sucked into an alternate world. It's the largely the same as his own, with one
huge difference - he learns that his otherworld self drowned when he was young. Although
seemingly insignificant, and unknown at first, this event has completely reshaped the history and
events of the otherworld. Even though Trigger was a largely gloomy game, what with the
incoming threat of the apocalypse looming over the heroes for a majority of the game, Cross is
even more somber. Part of this is because Lavos, the big bad guy from Trigger, isn't actually
dead. We learn that it exists somewhere outside of time, virtually invincible. It casts an even more
depressing glow on the events of Trigger, especially since we learn that nearly all of the primary
characters have been brutally massacred. It takes guts to kill off such beloved characters - and to
do it in such a throwaway manner that the narrative never elucidates on it - but it makes you
reflect on the apparently happy ending on Chrono Trigger, with its Mode 7 and upbeat theme
music, unaware of the tragedies yet to unfold.
Of course, it's just as easy to brand Cross as mere fan fiction, twisting the events and characters
of a previous work into something that was never originally intended. Cross' link to Trigger
revolves around the unexplained fate of a minor character, and then proceeds to make a whole
game out of it. Cross tightly walks the line between brilliance and amateurism - if nothing else, its
bizarre daring shakes up conventions enough to be interesting, even if tends to offend Trigger's
many, many fans.
Cross' battle system also threw fans of the original for a loop. Trigger's only potential failing is that
the fights were little more than a gimped variation of Final Fantasy's Active Time Battle system.
This may have been fine with the Dragon Quest folks involved, but the new team undoubtedly
required that they overhaul it. In practice, outside of a few Double and Triple Techs, there is little
resemblance to the original game. Each of the party members and enemies are assigned a color
- there are six total, and two of each are diametrically opposed to each other. In addition to the
character affinities, each spell or ability has their own color, which can be again used to attack
opposing elements. The most important aspect is the Field Element, which is changed to different
colors depending on the attacks being used, by either friend or foe. While you can play the battles
like any other RPGs - pick powerful attacks, execute, heal when necessary - it's more important
to play a strategic game of tug of war by gathering particular party members, equipping them with
particular spells, and overwhelming the bad guys through these means. At any given point in a
battle, there's usually more than one strategically viable option, which is a godsend for a genre
that's stereotyped into just picking the "Fight" option over and over.
It's also particularly user friendly. There are so many characters - 44 total, although you'll never
get all of them in the first playthrough - and so many different elemental configurations, that the
developers realized that you may be ill-equipped for battle. During any fight, even the final one,
you can flee and regroup without penalty, reducing the need for frustrating (and usually
unnecessary) Game Over screens.
Considering the fervent fanbase and Square's tendency to milk their properties, lack of a third
Chrono game continues to be one of RPG gaming's greatest mysteries, perhaps only exceeded
by Matsuno's disappearance from the Final Fantasy XII project. Cross' bizarrely open-ended
finale left plenty of room for a sequel, yet Square was apparently unhappy with the results of
Cross, as they've never followed it up. Though it was financially and critically successful, it was
perhaps not the super hit they desired, and despite its strength, it was transparent that it was a
vastly different game from its predecessor.
Phantasy Star: End of the Millennium
For some reason, JRPGs have tends more towards swords and sorcery than robots and lasers.
This was undoubtedly due to the fact that most of them sprung from Wizardry and Ultima, which
in turn borrowed from Dungeons and Dragons, which in turn borrowed from Lord of the Rings. In
the Famicom days, there were a number of Dragon Quest clones that incorporated other themes,
including the futuristic sci-fi settings of Konami's Lagrange Point and Hot-B's execrable Hoshi no
Miruhito. One of the earliest - and best - examples of setting was Sega's Phantasy Star.
Designed in part by Sega developer Yuji Naka, Phantasy Star featured gorgeous graphics,
superior music, and a relatively intricate plot. Where the Dragon Quest sequels boasted larger
game worlds, Phantasy Star offered three different planets to explore. The first-person dungeons
feature smoothly scrolling graphics, putting most of its contemporaries to shame,. Furthermore,
Sega had the guts to bring it to America a good year before Nintendo even bothered to localize
Dragon Quest.
The setting wasn't the only unique aspect about Phantasy Star - its best asset is its speed.
Dragon Quest began to get bogged down with its text narrations, and Final Fantasy's visions of
sprites waving swords at thin air eventually grew tedious. Phantasy Star, on the other hand, is
blazingly fast. The sequel, Phantasy Star II for the Genesis improved everything, with a longer
quest and an expanded character roster, although it lost the first person dungeons, cranked up
the difficulty even further and bogged down the battle system with some unnecessary animation.
The third game is an interesting experiment, allowing you to follow three generations of a single
hero, but is so far removed from the series, both in narrative and in aesthetics, that it's often
considered the black sheep.
The absolute pinnacle of ideals from the original Phantasy Star came in the last true game of the
series: Phantasy Star: End of the Millennium, usually just referred to shorthand as Phantasy Star
IV. The adventure begins with Alys and Chaz, two bounty hunters out to investigate some
mysterious biohazard, but soon expands into a huge quest that, once again, spans the entire
galaxy. It features fantastic graphics, some of the best music on the Genesis, and a plot that's
easily next to Square's efforts as one of the best of the 16-bit era, tying the entire series together
and only stumbling due to some inconsistencies in the English translation. There's plenty of
fodder for longtime fans, including the new incarnation of pretty boy mainstay Noah (or Lutz, if
you're playing in Japanese), a rematch against King Lassic, one of the bad guys from the original
Phantasy Star, and the ability to explore the ruins of the planet Parma, demolished back in
Phantasy Star II. Dragon Quest III shocked everyone by cleverly tying the first three NES games
into a clever little circle, but Phantasy Star takes advantage of the series' history to even greater
heights.
All of these taken together make for an extraordinarily solid experience, but where Phantasy Star
IV really excels is its blistering fast pace. Long gone are the little characters that crawl slowly
across the screen - your party members dash across towns and through dungeons. The battles,
using the over-the-shoulder perspective used in Phantasy Star II, are just as quick - the screen
flashes white, the combatants fight, and full rounds barely take more than a few seconds. You
can even program macros for each of your characters, if selecting individual commands isn't your
thing.
It's not just the movement and fighting though - even the plot moves along at a quick and steady
pace. The dungeons fly by quickly, with each event leading quickly into another without any
random stumbling or unnecessary grinding. In short, it's the best of the straightforward aspects of
8-bit RPGs with the strong storytelling chops developed in the later 16-bit games. For all of the
CD-based 32-bit RPGs that succumbed to long battle transitions, even longer fights, and
excessive cutscenes, Phantasy Star IV is one of the best antidotes - and an example more
developers should strive to follow.
Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter
Throughout the 16 and 32-bit eras, Capcom's Breath of Fire series was always solid, if not
particularly ambitious. That all changed with Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter - the fifth game in the
series, although the numeral "V" was left out of the English release. This is because it's only
barely related to any of the prior games. Sure, the main character is named a guy named Ryu,
who, like all of the other games, can transform into a dragon. And there's still a girl named Nina,
who still has wings, but this time takes on the appearance of a frail little girl. But beyond that, one
could barely tell it's part of the same series.
If nothing else, Dragon Quarter feels like a spiritual successor to Square's PSOne title Vagrant
Story. Both feature dark, oppressive atmospheres, long segments of dungeon crawling, and
minimal NPC interaction. Both are scored by legendary game music composed Hitoshi
Sakimoto, although while Vagrant Story's soundtrack leans on the atmospheric side, Dragon
Quarter features more industrial and electronic influence. And both are unrelentingly unfriendly to
newcomers, and subject newcomers to a trial by fire to learn the game's innovative intracices - as
a result, both are love-it-or-leave-it games amongst RPG fans. Where the games diverge is with
its battle system. Unlike most traditional RPGs, the battle segments play out like a tactical
strategy RPG, allowing your selected party member to run freely around the field and attack, as
long as they have action points remaining. Once you get into the meat of the game, Dragon
Quarter lets you control three player characters. Ryu is your melee fighter, but he's hardly a tank,
and is usually the most susceptible to damage. Lin uses guns, allowing her to attack from
different ranges and knock enemies around the playing field. Nina, the physical weakling of the
trio, utilizes magic spells that can be used to attack multiple enemies at once, or stun them with
skillfully placed traps. Most RPGs feature similar character relationships, but Dragon Quarter so
strongly defines each character's role that none is more important than the rest, and using all of
them effectively is the key to winning the game's most brutal battles.
The other most interesting aspect of Dragon Quarter are the survival elements. Dragon Quest with its similarly sparse save points and limited inventory and magic use - has been using these
same elements all along, while most other RPGs have eliminated them for the sake of user
accessibility. Dragon Quarter has taken those elements and put them at the forefront, making for
a stressful, yet exhilarating, experience. Taking a small cue from the Resident Evil games, your
resources in Dragon Quarter are severely limited, at least compared to any other modern RPG
where you can carry almost unlimited healing supplies. More pressing is the D-Counter, which
starts up after the first few chapters. In the previous Breath of Fire games, the dragon powers
were extremely powerful attacks, and Ryu's transformations provided a sense of awe and
excitement. Here, the dragon power is a curse, slowly eating away at Ryu's humanity. Every few
steps, the counter creeps up, slowly marching towards 100%, at which point the power consumes
Ryu and the game will end. Additionally, each time Ryu calls upon his dragon powers, it chews up
even more of the D-Counter, hastening his advance for death. Given that nearly all of the boss
battles are extremely difficult, it's all too easy to give into temptation and use these skills to easily
demolish your foes, but using them too judiciously will lead to an earlier end. There's no way to
reset it, either, short of restarting the entire game. Thankfully, at any time, you choose to begin
the game from scratch, but keep some of the skills and experience you've learned, so
subsequent playthroughs will be much quicker and easier. It even rewards players with extra
cutscenes. It's also relatively short for an RPG - the full story can be played through in less than
ten hours. This same idea was carried forward with similar effect in Capcom's Xbox 360 zombie
slayer Dead Rising. Despite the frustrations inherent in this system, it makes for an intensity by
removing the safety net that so many JRPGs seem to feature, and is all the better for it.
Suikoden II
Konami's Suikoden series focuses on the tragedies of war. This in and of itself is not particularly
distinguishing amongst video game plots - many tactical RPGs, like Nintendo's Fire Emblem and
Quest's Tactics Ogre, feature similar tales of political intrigue and shady backstabbing, evil
empires and scrappy rebellions. Suikoden, however, is usually ahead of the curve, giving a more
personal concentration on the people behind the fighting. The series' big draw is the ability to
recruit up to 108 characters, each unique with their own style, personality, and role. Not all of
them are fighters - some simply exist to be drafted into your hero's burgeoning castle, allowing
you to assemble a loyal community from the ground up.
Amongst the five main entries of the series, most fans will point to Suikoden II as being the
strongest. (The unfairly derided Suikoden III is just as strong in the storytelling department,
although it's brought done by the moronic battle system.) Suikoden II focuses on two young men the unnamed Hero and his friend Jowy - who inadvertently end up on separate sides of an
escalating war. The two, formerly best friends, end up separating working through the ranks,
eventually emerging as the leaders of each faction. It's a compelling take on the "brothers fighting
brothers" archetype, a theme which isn't explored nearly enough in video game literature. One of
the most crushing moments occurs you lead a critical assault on your old friend's empire - the
viewpoint cuts to Jowy, bidding his wife to escape and start a new life, hoping that she find safety
from your brutal warriors. Like any well-told, war tale, it keeps from becoming a story of good
versus evil, and humanizes the faces behind the destruction. There are certainly evil characters,
the most prominent being the sadistic Luca Blight, who must be faced in multi-stage battle
consisting of dozens of fighters, but even he is just a small cog in the enemy forces. The best
ending - provided you manage to find all of the hidden characters - is one of the most
appropriately touching finales in all of video gaming. Just make sure to check the FAQs and else
you'll be stuck with a terribly depressing send-off.
In short, the Suikoden games triumph primarily because they contain far more mature story-telling
than your average video game. It's strange, that they slightly stumble when it has to fit the mold of
an RPG. Your party members will need to hike through overworlds and through dungeons,
fighting woodland creatures and other silly monsters that feel thematically removed from the main
themes of the game. The battle system allows for six characters at a time, but beyond Chrono
Trigger-style attacks that allow you to combine the abilities of certain party members for special
attacks, there's not much depth to it. On occasion, tactical board game-style battles will pop up,
although they often seem more driven by story events than any actual strategy. It's no wonder
that Konami created the Japan-only Suikogaiden games, visual novels that focused entirely on
story. Ultimately, these issues don't matter, as the enthralling tales and intriguing game world primarily influenced by Chinese folk lore and European medieval tales, but drawing from several
other influences - help justify the triple digit figures that Suikoden II fetches on the aftermarket. If
you can't afford it, Suikoden V, despite the constant and obnoxious load times, is the next best
thing, even though the story isn't quite as involving.
Final Fantasy V
Final Fantasy V, at least amongst Western fans, is often remembered as the bastard stepchild of
the 16-bit era Final Fantasies. It was skipped over for localization in favor of lesser games, like
the American-focused Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, and wasn't officially released in English until
2000 as part of a Playstation anthology. Even those that suffered through its technical issues
found that the story and characterizations were lacking compared to both Final Fantasy IV and VI,
much less its contemporary 32-bit RPGs. Even its soundtrack, composed by the usually sterling
Nobuo Uematsu, was viewed as a bit of a letdown. And yet, amongst long time fans, Final
Fantasy V is regarded as one of the best of series.
The sole reason for this lies in one of the most fascinating character customizations seen in an
RPG - the Job System. The original Final Fantasy introduced six different classes, and your
selections were set in stone at the outset of the adventure. Final Fantasy III (the Famicom one,
not the retitled SNES game) greatly expanded that number, and allowed gamers to change
classes between battles. Final Fantasy V went one better and allowed the party members to
permanently learn skills while assuming a character class, allowing one to customize their party
members with practically any ability. Technically, Dragon Quest III implemented something very
similar, but the type of skills found in Enix's games were just variations on your standard attack,
status, and buff/debuff skills. Final Fantasy V goes completely crazy with jobs like Geomancers,
where the type of background will determine a special attack, with no MP cost; Samurais, which
can toss spare gold for huge amounts of damage; Mimes, which are the most customizable
characters and can mimic the preceding character's attacks; and Necromancers (in the 2006
GBA port), which turns a party member into a zombie but allows them a special range of dark art
magic spells.
The possibilities for hybrid classes are astounding. Imagine creating a Mystic Knight, who can
enchant swords with elemental powers, with the Monk's charge ability, allowing you to delay an
attack for a few seconds and unleashing a more powerful attack - you can totally destroy an icebased foe for insane amounts of damage. And you can customize your whole party like this, if
you want. If figuring out ways to break the game's balance makes you absolutely giddy, Final
Fantasy V is the perfect puzzle. Of course, in order to balance all of your powerful skills, Final
Fantasy V is significantly more difficult than either IV or VI. Leveling up through traditional means
barely offers any real rewards, so if you get slaughtered a boss, blindly grinding up levels won't
help at all. Rather, it gives you incentives to try out different jobs, explore different skills, and
basically just play around to your heart's content.
The Job system does have a few limitations which are a little frustrating. In order to maintain
some semblance of balance, you can only equip one additional skill in addition to your current
job. As a result, many lesser skills become obsolete - or even useless - in lieu of more important
abilities. Furthermore, you can't choose which order to learn your skills, forcing you to fight
through some of the weaker abilities in order to reach the ones you actually want. Both of these
were fixed in the absolutely brilliant Final Fantasy Tactics - a melding of Final Fantasy V's Job
System with Tactics Ogre's strategic battles.
Screenshot credits:
Phantasy Star Pages - http://www.phantasy-star.net/
Socks Make People Sexy - http://www.socksmakepeoplesexy.net/
Fantasy Anime - http://www.fantasyanime.com/