Sounds like you're talking about Forsaken, which is what first came to my mind but obviously isn't what he's looking for.

Anyone else here played Jaws: Unleashed? And if so, do you also remember laughing your ass off at how awesomely bad that game was?

Sounds an awful lot like Tempest to me...

But it isn't it. Also the graphics aren't that minimal. Gah, I really want to find this game, I have been looking for it all day. The best way I can describe it is Descent, but completely linear, faster, and less detailed. I also know that the first level has a grey color. I now also recall shooting at green rectangles......

Man, I used to play the shit out of this in the 90's. Good times.

This is a video of that Ghost Song kickstarter game that was mentioned earlier. Looks pretty awesome! Must-see for Metroid fans:
http://vimeo.com/72660711

Down to just one last game on my backlog.

Star Ocean The Last Hope International.

And I guess this last game will determine my top 5 modern console JRPGs.

1. Xenoblade Chronicles
2. Valkyria Chronicles
3. Eternal Sonata
4. Ni No Kuni
5. The Last Story or maybe Star Ocean.

Pandora's Tower of course didn't make the cut. As with Final Fantasy XIII.

Not sure if I should try Tales of Xillia. Anyone know if that's good?

If not then I'll just stick with Star Ocean and Grand Theft Auto V coming up.


Edit: LOL my typo said "Last of Us" not "The Last Story" I don't think Last of Us is a JRPG

Man, worst generation ever for jRPGs.

The only one of anything in that post that I've played is FFXIII, and yeah, it was shit. The era of the JRPG is pretty much over it seems, at least for us Western audiences.

Maybe Ubisoft of all devs will revive them (yes, I know they're not Japanese)?

http://www.videogamer.com/news/ubisoft_ ... ght_2.html
http://www.polygon.com/2013/8/19/463562 ... pired-jrpg

tl;dr: it's a side-scrolling game with turn-based battles* inspired by Hayao Miyazaki and Yoshitaka Amano and jRPGs such as FF6, using the same engine as Rayman Origins. Want? Mayyyybe. I'm certainly interested to hear more about it, anyway.

* interesting choice, the only game I can think of that follows this mechanic is the original Valkyrie Profile... which was not an awful game but suffered from being horribly repetitive, but that was not due to any fault of the side-scrolling-with-turn-based-battles system.

This looks like it's shaping up to be pretty awesome. I'd buy this, videogameless bastard that I am, if only because I love the old Metroid stylistic/atmosphere so much. And I'm certain the developers are expecting many others to say the same

One thing I'd hope, however (and I'm not exactly getting this from the gameplay test shown here), is that it were challenging in terms of actual survival and combat. One of the main things that always bugged me about Super Metroid was how fucking easy it was, for the most part. It wasn't really the programming's fault, but more simply that the game so constantly overfed you with health and ammo replenishments that there was never any sense of urgency or danger when encountering adversaries or navigating treacherous terrain. Really the odd boss battle was all you really had to worry about in terms of getting yourself killed, and you usually stood a much greater chance of getting offed by the environment (lava and such) than by combat. If they'd made health/ammo powerups much sparer (and I mean MUCH SPARER) it would've ratcheted up the tension to intolerable (read: fuckawesome) levels and enriched the game as a result.

The game creator says he has been influenced by Dark Souls. Though he has said it won't be all that punishingly difficult (but then I don't think Dark Souls was, but most people disagree). So uh... make of all that what you will.

After I got all the achievements in Dark Souls it was really easy to get the platinum trophy, only took me a couple days I know I have a problem.

I hear it's not so good in Japan too, specially after the success of Skyrim.

The JRPG genre is far from over. There's still some quality titles that have come out over the last 5 years or so, and more on the horizon. We haven't really accounted for portable systems here as well. You can't really judge the entire genre on what Square have decided to do with their flagship franchise. I don't really agree with that statement.

So Sony announced this today:


Very intriguing. Looks like a cel-shaded Ico to me, which of course is a very good thing.

What did PS2 have to offer? I don't remember that generation being good. FFX was the last great Final Fantasy. I can't recall any good JRPGs from that era.

Survival horror peaked for that generation though. Silent Hill, a good Resident Evil, Fatal Frame, Clock Tower.

But yeah this generation wasn't that great.

I really like 1st and 2nd and think they are a true testament to good JRPGs. But Eternal Sonata, while great, had gameplay issues. It's almost an action RPG in the sense it's a button masher RPG. Button mash your way to victory. Instead of a dodge move like God of War or Bayonetta you have a guard move you have to time to reduce damage, which absolutely must be used with skill unless you want to do some insane grinding and be able to take every hit. Last boss, and most bosses in fact, can OHKO you no problem if you aren't timing your defends well.

Ni No Kuni had horrible AI. I basically had them doing nothing while I did all the hard work and swapped leaders. Only in critical moments use the all out heals or attacks.

The Last Story is only 5th place cause nothing else could be. It was charming and had good moments. But there really wasn't much to it.

But my god. SNES

1. Final Fantasy IV (best game of all time)
2. Final Fantasy VI (2nd best game of all time)
3. Chrono Trigger (god tier)
4. Final Fantasy V (excellent gameplay and job system. challenging)
5. And there's just tons more. Breath of Fire, Fire Emblem, etc.



I think it's cause we were trained on Demon's Souls though. People who start fresh with Dark Souls seem to agree on its difficulty. Patches (not the NPC, no pun intended) reduced its difficulty some too.

Increasing production costs killed JRPGs. Japanese developers are probably looking at AAA Western games with their amazing motion capture animations, full voice-acting, and cutscenes with stunning visuals and then saying ,"hey, let's take what those guys are doing and put those in our 30-50 hour long games!" I'm pretty damn sure that's what happened to Final Fantasy 13.

Final Fantasy 6 took only a year to develop. Final Fantasy 13 took five years.

Handheld RPGs still going strong though, since developers aren't obligated to make a "cinematic experience".

Found this from an apparent JRPG fan:

Persona 3 and 4
Digital Devil Saga 1 and 2 (2 part game.)
Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne
Devil Summoner 1 and 2
Dark Cloud 2
.hack//G.U. vol. 1-3 (3 part game.)
Xenosaga Episode 1-3 (Basically 3 part game.)
Wild ARMs 3-5 and Alter Code: F
Tales of the Abyss
Valkyrie Profile 2
Ar Tonelico 1 and 2
Dragon Quest 8
Suikoden 3-5 and Tactics
Odin Sphere
Disgaea
Makai Kingdom
Jade Cocoon 2

I didn't play very many PS2 jRPGs, so I wouldn't be able to speak for most of that list. I've heard Rogue Galaxy and Shadow Hearts were also good. jRPGs have migrated to portable consoles this generation, it seems.

PS2 had Suikoden III at least. It's not as good as II (then again not much is), but from what I can gather it's just as well loved by fans of the series as any other installment (though I hear IV is kinda shit, and I've never played V). And I know Xenosaga was basically just an 80 hour movie with a game shoehorned in whenever they needed a scene transition, but I liked it a lot regardless and all sources point to the next two games in the series being better than that first one. Not to mention Persona and Shin Megami Tensei, which I haven't played but have giant fanbases so I'm definitely intrigued. And I haven't played more than a few hours of either and they're admittedly pretty goddamn hard to take seriously, but the Kingdom Hearts series is pretty popular too.

PS2 may not have been better than the SNES or PS1 era, but it certainly wasn't the dearth of quality or even options that this last generation was.

Isn't Suikoden 2 the one that you can level up like, forever? I had a friend who tried to "master" it, and it was just absolutely ridiculous. If I'm thinking of the right game, I know its really rare, right?

It is super rare, yeah, but I dunno about leveling up forever. It scales, so you will just be getting 1xp from the toughest areas eventually (but you could bring a low level dude in the party and beat a battle there and watch them shoot up sixty levels). And since there's 108 characters, and like, 85 of which are playable, getting everybody to level 99 sounds absurd.

Some of my favorite games from my childhood are from that transition period between the end of the PS1's generation and the beginning of the PS2's generation. Games like Drakan: The Ancient Gates, The Mark of Kri, and Blood Omen 2 (yes, I genuinely enjoyed that when it seems no other LoK fan did). They each had their own respective reasons for keeping my attention, but they all had a certain charm to them that went away as the PS2 went along its life cycle. Nowadays I enjoy the three games for various other reasons besides nostalgia; aside from all three being well put together gameplay and control wise, Drakan has an absolutely phenomenal score, Mark of Kri's art direction is wonderful as well as incredibly atmospheric, and Blood Omen 2 follows suit with every other game in the LoK series with its voice acting being among some of the best I've ever heard.

Final Fantasy Tactics for PS1 will always be my favorite.

I was never a Final Fantasy guy. RPGs as a whole were never really my bag when I was a regular gamer, although the constant barrage of "HOLY SHIT, THESE GAMES ARE AMAZING" I've been hearing lately from my guitarist about Dark Souls and Demon's Souls is making me curious to try them. Since they're more action-RPGs, I might be more into them considering my aforementioned love of Drakan: The Ancients' Gates, as well as many a nonstop session of Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance from back then too.

More than the PS3, that's for fucking sure. It had Suikoden 3, Suikoden 5, Wild ARMs 3, Wild ARMs: Alter Code F, uh... okay, that's kind of it, I guess. Haven't played Wild ARMs 4-5, Breath of Fire 5 (I heard very mixed opinions on it) nor any of the Persona/SMT games so I can't comment. .hack and Xenosaga were goddamn boring though, and all Tales of ___ games can die in a fire.

But anyway, Suikoden 3 and 5 destroy anything this generation has produced with a very wide margin. So, while the PS1 is probably the best generation for jRPGs, PS2's still better than PS3. If this trend continues I can only dread what the PS4 will be like... As others have said, they have mostly moved on to portables.



Were you like... poor, growing up? 'Cause I can't imagine why anyone would pick those bargain bin garbage games as favourites.


Did you play the other LoK games? I imagine not, 'cause, you'd understand.

Oh, and to soothe HellBlazer's frustration about this conversation, Rime looks pretty interesting. Everyone should definitely check out that trailer.

EA, must you ruin everything?
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=657069 (in short, they're rebooting Dungeon Keeper as a terrible-looking mobile-only game)

Now you know how Legacy of Kain and Breath of Fire fans feel like!

Have you read the recent Neogaf threads on LoK? It's really interesting stuff - not to mention depressing.
Legacy of Kain: Dead Sun (PS4, cancelled) / Legacy of Kain: Nosgoth (PC, upcoming)
The 10 Cancelled Legacy of Kains

I miss the awesome simplicity of games like FF 4-6. I still remember ditching school for a few days when I got FF6 and beating it before all of my friends. I did a speed run in FF6 where I beat the whole game in 6 hours (probably my crowning achievement in life!) I should have a trophy for that I didn't see anyone mention Secret of Mana, that game was amazing and probably one of the first real RPGs that wasn't completely turn based.

EDIT: I'm sure I will hear about Rime at work today, but that video looks excellent!

I'm replaying FFX (International this time, which is a first) for the trillionth time right now and am on Luca. This is one of my top 5 favorite games, fuck everyone.

Look who just announced an expansion, Diablo 3 Reaper of Soul

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/age?r=%2Fd3% ... f-souls%2F

what is added

New hero: The Crusader, meele character with shield and swords / hammers / flails (i.e. Paladin).
One new Act: Supposedly much more of a "dark feel"
New level cap (70): new skills and runes.
Loot runs: Entirely randomized dungeons that take 15-20minutes to complete (for endgame).
Nephalem Trials: Currently unknown.
Expanded paragon system: Paragon levels are now account wide (applies to all characters), no more cap.
Loot 2.0: Modified loot-system, multi-level legendaries and a new system called "smart drops", loot will drop less but the drops will be better and more meaningful for you.
Transmogrification: Change the look of your stuff but keep the stats (see WoW).
The Mystic: Artisan that allows you to re-attribute the stats of your items (think reforging).
Some legendaries are account bound.

It wont be but they should make it free for releasing the far inferior product that was D3

Jesus, fucking finally. Probably too late for me though, I'm pretty sick of the game.

I bought the Humble Weekly Bundle: McPixel, Amnesia - The Dark Descent, Botanicula, The Showdown Effect, Thomas Was Alone
You can determine how much you pay and how much of that goes to the devs, charity water and the hosters - if you pay more than the average, you get Amnesia (else you don't). Let's see how much I can play Amnesia before quitting while crying like a baby

Why do you think I posted that comment? I actually replied in those threads.... I'm Morrigan Targaryen on NeoGAF.

Oh shit, I actually found it. The game I was looking for turned out be Tunnels of Armageddon And what do you know? It looks a little bit crappier than I remember it to be. Awesome nostalgia rush though.

I assumed you made that comment because of Nosgoth, I was referring specifically to the more recent leaked stuff about Dead Sun.

So is anyone playing Divekick?

Does anyone else here play Minecraft? I started playing about 2 weeks ago and I've become addicted.

Yeah I know all about Dead Sun. Depressing as shit, it could have been really cool, certainly better than some online Squeenix crap. ;_;