Good News for Fans of JRPGs !
I am actually not a big gamer since a decade, but back in my youth I player a lot of games. Thereby the genre that I loved by heart, besides the point&click adventures, were the JRPGs - "Japanese Role Playing Games"
Some of you may be familiar with this genre, and if you are, you probably played them all. JRPGs tend to polarize. Either you love them and can't get enough of them, or you hate them. They usually offer more than 100 hours of fun per game, but include lots of text and much more grinding. Nevertheless, if you dared to take this tremendous amount of a read and to work relentlessly through repetitive combat back in the days, you were rewarded with excellent stories. And the stories back in the days were real masterpieces.
Unfortunately, the era of JRPGs passed and since then a very long time I did not hear about games that could match this great quality that were told in the past. Game producer rather concentrated on big cinematic, action, and other aspects. I don't want to talk modern games bad, but the aspect that fascinated me the most in games, were always the great stories. True JRPGlers would all agree with me here, that no other genre could match these.
Luckily, since the last two years, the generation who loved these games as kids grew older. Some of them are programmers now, and there is a big revival happening to this genre. If you possess a Nintendo Switch, you will be able to enjoy not only many remakes from that golden age of JRPGs, but also will find several really well done new games in this field.
Thereby, the list covers nearly every outstanding JRPG pearl from the past, such as the complete Final Fantasy, Chrono and Shin Megami Tensei series. And many excellent new once, such as Bravely Default or Octopath Travelers, entered the markets too recently. So, it's great news for all fans of JRPGs ^^
Sqare Enix - My All Time Favorite Publisher !
My all-time favorite producer when it comes to JRPGs is without a question SQARE ENIX. This studio is responsible for whole brilliant game series, such as:
Final Fantasy - 12 Main Games
Dragon Quest - 12 Main Games
Kingdom Hearts - 10 Main Games
Star Ocean - 8 Main Games
Chrono - 2 Main Games
These are just the main JRPG series that are probably the best known, and I included only the main games in the list, counting. Each Series has countless spinoffs too and of course there are countless other series and stand-alone games that come to my mind directly, but I am going to leave out here.
There are also many great ones, such as the games from ATLUS, another great publisher. They are responsible for the following series:
Shin Megami Tensei - 5 Main Games
Persona - 5 Main Games
Summarizing the principle of a JRPG is actually not so easy, but I try it nevertheless.
STORY DRIVEN: - JRPGs have one thing in particular, and that is their focus on the story. Probably no other genre is focusing so much on the narratives than this one. There is a vast range of characters in every game, each one with its own story and background. The stories are super dense and deep and after one game, you are left feeling that you know all characters in much more detail than any of your neighbors !
Battle in Dragon Quest 12 "2017" - Still Using Classic Mechanics
BATTLE MECHANICS: - JRPGs always include fighting mechanics. These are commonly turned based. Usually the player controls a group of 4 character, each having a certain amount of HP and MP and a different class, such as warrior, healer, mage, archer, and so on. By defeating groups of enemies they are leveling up and get increased stats, learn new abilities, and so on. There is also commonly a huge variety of equipment hat can be found, produces and used to increase the given stats.
BRINGING IT TOGETHER: - A common JRPG is based on a good mixture of both, story and fighting. The narrative parts are quite large and introduce the characters, new areas, cover discussion between the team, and so on. Throughout the game, there is a huge amount of text to be consumed, and it may feel, like you are playing a book. In between these story bites, there are fighting passages, where you walk the map, enter dungeons and fight one of many end bosses. These games are commonly very grinding intense. Collectibles, special skills and so on, additionally motivate to enlarge these passages too.
And it is as I said before. Either you love these kinds of games with their long text passages, intense combat and time-consuming grinding system, or hate them.
FF Tactics A2 - My Favorite JRPG Ever !!!
The game that I loved the most from the extremely huge collection of JRPGs was actually a spinoff from the Final Fantasy series. Dont get me wrong here, I spend more than 100 hours per game back in the days, but there was this one game that I started over and over again more than any other one. I even put more than 1000 hours in total in it in several runs over the years ! .. Cant believe how much time I spend on games these days. I cant imagine it doing nowadays as a family father with a job, hahaha ... The game is called: Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift
Final Fantasy Tactics A2 - Takes place in an awesome medieval fantasy world, like in FF 9 & FF 12
This game is a spinoff from Final Fantasy 12. It was released in 2007 for the Nintendo DS. It plays in the same scenario as FF 12, in Ivalice, and has all the cute an memorable fantasy species, such as Chocobos, Mogries, Bangaas, Vieras, Gries, Seeqs and classes, such as Black, White and Red Mages, Dragoons, Gladiators, Time Mages, Illusionist, and many many more. Thus, it featured the beautiful medieval fantasy touched worlds from FF 9 and FF 12, which I loved soooo much, and used is as a basic. The variety of race and class combination is simply stunning !!!
Contrary to other JRPGs, the combat takes place on a defined area with set tiles. The characters move in a certain order, for a certain range of tiles and have also attacks, heals or bufs with a certain range of tiles. Thus it is more like a strategic chess play, then the classical scheme. The overall combat is turn-based and due to the vast range of combinations possible, regarding the races and classes, the fighting team and used strategy is highly adaptable. Each surrounding and enemy motivates to switch around to find the best starting team, and there are soo many possibilities ! You have to consider the terreain, attack and movement range, weeknesses of the enemy and much more. SOme battles last even an hour or longer ! .. This makes the combat unique every single time and has a tremendous addiction potential .. There are actually two other similiar spinoffs like this one, from the Shin Megami Tensei series. They are called: Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor. You may guess it, I also played them to the felt infinity ^^
Overall, the combination of the setting, the vast range of race and job combinations, the strategic chess like battle system, the super cute and lovely old school graphics, the humorous story and much more, made this game my all time favorite JRPG that I have ever played in my life .. and I played a lot of them ;) .. If you are a fan of such games and have an DS at home, definitely give it a try. This game is not as famous and well-known as others, but an outstanding and fantastic one nevertheless !!!
Triangle Strategy
When I heard that a similar game was just published a while ago, on March 4, I directly looked it up. Just after a few minutes, I figured out, that it is extremely narrative. It should even feature so much story and narrative depth, that people complain about it ! .. It has the same old perspective of view upon the world, but with far more details, such as camera rotation, zoom, detailed and well painted areal structures, a vast range of different landscapes and areas, moving water animations, highly detailed character drawings with animated expressions, and far more. I love this style, and it has such a nostalgic touch, that it directly triggered me .. Even the combat system is very siiliar, also it is not featuring so much complexity in charackter classe. Basicly every charackter has a fixed class and only a few skills to learn.
The game is also published by SQARE ENIX and the assigned developer, who created Bravely Default and Octopath Traveler, got astonishing good critics for those two games. I could not withstand and got the game for myself. I accomplished a lot, regarding my private and job oriented life, and I think, that I deserve a good old-fashioned, but new JRPG again. I did not go into the story too much and tried to get as less spoilered as possible, as I like to get surprised by myself ^^ .. I really hope that it matches my high expectations and that I can spend another 100 hours in a great medieval fantasy world with a stunning narrative story, character with a depth background, with struggles and conflicts within themselves and in-between others, as well as a hard and challenging strategic battle system :)
I could have of course started with some of the many remakes of older JRPGs, which are available now on the Switch and which I know are excellent, but I wanted to get a new one. If This one catches me, I may get addicted again to the former gamer days and even start to look up my other favorites. It's indeed a great nostalgia retro phase happening now and a highly welcome pleasure to all the old school JRPG nerds out there ^^
Lets Make a Hold Here !
I am better going to stop here at this point ! I see that, according to PeakD, I already used around 2000 words in my posts and have created 10 minutes ^^ .. I am so excited about the game and will definitely use the coming Easter holidays to get into it as far as I can. Unfortunately, I don't have the time and capacity anymore to spend whole nights gaming ;) .. I will document my first experience in the game and write about it. If you like what you read until here, have the feeling that I know what I might be talking about and thus may leave a well written review of the game, then I am inviting you to read my next post about it.
This is actually my first post about a video game. I am not sure how you people in the Hive Gamin Community handle your topics and what you are interested in. But I will at least try one posts that introduces the story of the game, maybe something about the game mechanics, and finally my own opinion that states how I like the game and if I can recommend it easily, or with maybe a bit of a precaution .. You are also always invited to leave critics too, or can wish for a certain topic if you like too .. Maybe I will only post on or two posts in the future, but if you like my style, I may also extend it, hehehe :)
Thank You For The Attention !! !
Screenshots are taken by myself, ©@adalger, with my Nintendo Switch Light. For information gathering I used articles on Wikipedia and as picture examples surces from the interweb. In these cases, the sources are stated as hyperlinks in the subtitles.
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