What are the greatest JRPGs of all time?

I'm never sure if I remember all of the games I beat in a genre when I post in these types of threads, but off the top of my head: Valkyria Chronicles, Persona 3 & 4 in any form, and Radiant Historia come up. I would include Demon's / Dark Souls, but even after playing through one of them, I'm just not sure whether such an arduous journey would fit into a sane man's definition of "great". There are a lot I'm missing I'm sure, so fill in the gaps won't you?

Final Fantasy VI and Dragon Quest VIII.

For me Persona 4, Chrono Trigger and Persona 3.... those are also the only ones I've actually completed too so don't listen to me except for Persona 4

I don't know what "greatest" means, but my favorites are Persona 3 FES, Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride and Dark Cloud 2.

Shin megami Tensei 3 is the greatest of the greatest.

others under it... Final Fantasy 12, Digital Devil Saga 2, Persona 2 and Resonance of Fate.

Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 6 will always be answers to that question. Other stuff is more a matter of taste.

Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy XII, EarthBound, Chrono Trigger and Parasite Eve.

Chrono Trigger and Breath of Fire 4.

I find it hard to pick favorites from different generations, but from this generation "my greatest" were Valkyria Chronicles and Demon's/Dark Souls. Also just finished Okami HD and it is definitely in my top 5 of all time, such a cool game.

Star Ocean: The Second Story, such a shame it was so hard to get hold of in the UK the result of this being that it's rarer than rocking horse turds now.

Man, I just put a long list in your other thread. You're going to make me do this again!?

• Final Fantasy
• Final Fantasy IV
• Final Fantasy VI
• Final Fantasy VII
• Final Fantasy X
• Final Fantasy XII (...I liked it)
• Final Fantasy Tactics
• Chrono Trigger
• Tactics Ogre
• Fire Emblem
• (The rest of the good Fire Emblems, I'm not listing them all)
• Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne
• Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey
• Persona 3
• Persona 4
• Dragon Quest (Pick one, I don't know them all)
• Chrono Cross
• Xenogears
• Xenosaga
• Xenosaga 2
• Xenosaga 3
• Xenoblade Chronicles
• Suikoden
• Suikoden 2
• Suikoden 3
• Dark Cloud
• Dark Cloud 2
• Demon's Souls
• Dark Souls (kinda JRPG's, a lot more like a WRPG made in Japan
• Mother
• Mother 2 (Earthbound)
• Mother 3
• Pokemon (all of them)
• Kingdom Hearts
• Kingdom Hearts 2
• Odin Sphere

...and I'll let someone else finish.

My favorites are Final Fantasy 6, Chrono Trigger, Earthbound, and Pokemon Gold/Silver.

I was personally here to say this, and that Pokemon Gold will be stuck in my memory as a great.

And of course, Persona 4.

I always seem to be the only one in threads like these with any love for the classic Wild Arms. Also, best intro movie and song ever:

Persona 4 is the only JRPG in my top 5 of all time so I'll go with that one.

Final Fantasy Mystic Quest

Final Fantasy 7 has a lot of haters, but it was amazing for the time.

Final Fantasy 9 for being relatively underrated.

Final Fantasy 10 for being the last truly great Final Fantasy game.

Xenogears was a truly epic adventure.

Persona 4 for the sheer size and quality.

Lot of light weight responses :P Okay so... top 5. At this moment anyway, would take hours to really do it right.

5: Chrono Trigger

4: Final Fantasy 7 (be real, it actually made JRPG's popular, you got laughed at in public for talking about Final Fantasy before this.)

3: Phantasy Star 2 (would have to explain it, number of reasons)

2: Persona 3 (yes 3, not 4)

1: Xenogears

Honorable mentions: Wild Arms 1, Breath of Fire 3, Lufia 2, Shadow Hearts 1, Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre, Xenoblade Chronicles, Final Fantasy 6, Dragon Warrior/Quest (a bunch of em), Suikoden 1/2, and good ol Pokemon.

@McGhee Don't be silly. The game is awesome and has perhaps the best JPRG intro movie ever made.

Earthbound, Chrono Trigger, and FFVI all have to be on this list, and I would be hard-pressed to tell you which of those games is the best one on the SNES. This is even after paring down stuff like Secret of Mana, FFIV, and Super Mario RPG: LotSS. PSX might have had the most good JRPGs, but anybody who tells you that the SNES didn't have the best ones is a liar. Persona 4 is the best JRPG released in the last 10 years, and I'd be inclined to say that P4G is the superior version. Paper Mario: TTYD is certainly worthy of mention on this list.

If you're accepting a loose definition that includes SRPGs, throw in FFT and Fire Emblem: Awakening. People who say Dark or Demon's Souls and Castlevania: SotN are crazy though, those both fall into the action game subcategory of Metroidvania.

I'll name my personal top five because I don't think a long list really works here. But I love a lot of JRPGs.

Lunar 2: Eternal Blue

Phantasy Star 4

Skies of Arcadia

Tales of Vesperia

King's Field II (technically it's a JRPG)

@believer258:

Duder, the effort is appreciated.

Also, I don't know why, but I kinda wanna play the Mother series.

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 and Chrono Trigger are up there without a doubt in my mind.

JRPGs that I enjoy are Pokemon, all the different Mario RPGs, Kingdom Hearts, Tales of, and Dragon Quest.

From what I've dabbled in:

Final Fantasy (1, 4, 6, 7, Tactics in particular), Chrono Trigger, Dragon Quest (3, 5, 8 in particular), Pokemon (Red/Blue, Gold/Silver in particular), Dark/Demon's Souls if we are counting them, Secret of Mana if that counts.

There are so many JRPGS that I still need to play.

@believer258: Suikoden V is the best in the series if only for the plot, Xenogears is good for 20 hours then bad for 60, Xenosaga 2 is a good game in terms of the plot but it does have like a 10 hour learning curve that isn't due to challenge but simply bad design of the combat and it is so difficult to get back into after the fact (you're much better served just watching the cutscenes on youtube) and while the combat eventually got fun it was an arduous journey to get there (though it does have like 30 hours of sidequests in the NA version), Demon's Souls is vastly inferior to Dark Souls (but possibly still deserving of a spot on the list), Final Fantasy VIII is the best regarded one in Japan where JRPGs are ultimately judged, Final Fantasy IX has the best first disc/first 20 hours and that has to count for something, Chrono Cross has the best soundtrack ever but isn't a particularly good game aside from that, Run-on sentence over.

To pick a Dragon Quest it's VIII and no other one deserves to be on the list, end point. Valkyrie Profile 2, Vagrant Story, Front Mission 3, Rogue Galaxy, Shadow Hearts Covenant, Vandal Hearts 2, Grandia, Star Ocean 2, Valkyria Chronicles and yes... Final Fantasy XIII all need to be on this list, if it's going to be that large. If you want the list to just be one game it's Vagrant Story, two games and it's Vagrant Story and VP2, three games and it's Vagrant Story, VP2, and a three way tie between Tactics Ogre, Front Mission 3, and Final Fantasy Tactics... and so on and so forth. If Final Fantasy VI didn't fall off a cliff after the world of balance it would be the best but too bad, world of ruin is garbage from a plot and challenge perspective. The only other one that's a serious contender is numero uno for obvious reasons.

If you want to order by storyline it goes something like this: Xenosaga, Xenosaga 2, FFT, Front Mission 3, Shadow Hearts: Covenant, Vagrant Story, Valkyrie Profile 2, Vandal Hearts 2, Suikoden V, and Tactics Ogre.

Gameplay and you've got: Vagrant Story, Valkyrie Profile 2, Dark Souls, Demon's Souls, Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy VI, Valkyria Chronicles, Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy IX, Final Fantasy VIII, Grandia, Star Ocean 2, and Secret of Mana (which is so weak in every other regard it doesn't need to be on the overall list)

Characters: Delita, Albedo, Margulis, Lukav, Ashley Riot, Guildenstern, Sydney Losstarot, Brahms, Siegmeyer of Catarina, Celes, Baal from Grandia, Georg Prime (from Suikoden II and V as it happens), and kind of too many to list; main idea here is Xenosaga's story is fucking awesome until you get to 3.

Hardest: Vagrant Story, Dark Souls, Demon's Souls, Final Fantasy IV on fastest (piece of cake on slower speeds)

Hardest Last Boss: Guildenstern, Gwyn, Zeromus, The True Conqueror from The Last Remnant

Hardest Superboss: Determined Dirna, Ethereal Queen in SO4, The Fallen and the White Conqueror from the Last Remnant, and the old classics Shinryu and Omega from FFV

Music: Chrono Cross

Graphics scaled to time: Vagrant Story, Final Fantasy XII (still looks great), and Valkyrie Profile 2

Best Line: "Ah ma belle peche"

While there are other companies Square is an absolute juggernaut when it comes to JRPGs, and most notably the best games they've made don't have the prefix "Final Fantasy;" The VS/FFT/FFXII team can do no wrong as far as I'm concerned, but we still haven't had a supremely good JRPG from them in almost 7 years, despite the brilliance of XIII's battle system the other flaws with the game (summed up in one word: "Hope") are well documented.

Final Fantasy VI is the correct answer.

@joshthebear: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPy96vCa7wE

Greatest in term of the year it came out would be FF7, such a huge game at the time. The story ,characters and battle system are still awesome, plays really nicely on a PSP.

So sad to see what that brand has become.

you should, they're amazing

Well, mother 3 at least... that game might be the best GBA game released. Also the tagline was no crying until the end

(you will cry before the end)

I mean earthbound is cool and all, but it's much more just riffing on established JRPG genre shit. Mother 3 is in a whole other league

I don't know about "greatest" but the two Jrpg's that will always remember are Dragon Quest VIII and Persona 4.

'Final Fantasy X', heavily biased by my life at the time.

man to properly answer this would take a long time and with the list function currently busted on GB my heart is just not into it. Quick and dirty though

this is a good answer

@fredchuckdave: I just made a list of JRPG's off the top of my head that I remember getting a fairly good reception and lasting a fairly decent amount of time, it was never meant to be exhaustive and I haven't actually played all of those games (if anyone has, that's quite a feat).

There is a huge list of great JRPG's, most of which have been mentioned (No Phantasy Star 4 makes me question the taste of some of you people. It's soooo much better than FF7.)

If you put a gun to my head and made me pick one, I'd go with Shadow Hearts: Covenant.

Dragon Quest V

Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals

Final Fantasy VII

Alundra

Xenogears

Chrono Cross

Suikoden II

Persona 4

Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. Fuck everyone in this thread.

@tafae: except this guy.

Personally, it's one of:

• Mother 3
• Mother 2
• Dragon Quest V
• Chrono Trigger
• Final Fantasy XII
• Final Fantasy Tactics
• Vagrant Story
• Secret of Evermore
• Breath of Fire V
• Lufia 2

Final Fantasy VI

Final Fantasy VII

Final Fantasy X

Final Fantasy XII

Suikoden

Chrono Trigger

Persona 4 Golden

Vagrant Story

Final Fantasy Tactics

Secret of Mana

And how has Lunar Silver Star Story Complete not in this thread even once yet

In some particular order:

• Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions
• Final Fantasy IX
• Persona 4 Golden
• Fire Emblem: Awakening
• Earthbound
• Final Fantasy VI
• Valkyria Chronicles
• Final Fantasy XIII
• Suikoden II
• Xenogears
• Final Fantasy X
• Chrono Trigger
• Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen
• Xenosaga: Episode I - Der Wille zur Macht
• Grandia II
• Kingdom Hearts 2
• Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars
• Breath of Fire II