The best JRPG you've ever played

Most likely Persona 3.

Super Mario RPG

Persona 3 and 4 are up there for me. I also think that Paper Mario; The Thousand Year Door is still the best-written JRPG period, and hands down one of the funniest games ever made, that was really the draw more than the RPG mechanics, as fun as those were.

Dark Chronicle. My favourite game of all time.

SO:TTEOT is close behind that.

I did a list of my favourite 100 RPGs ever, and my number 1 remains the same as it was then. I don't see it ever changing.

Xenogears.

The gameplay was good, and the art style was good for the time. However, the story is what sets this apart from not only any other RPG out there, but any other video game out there. Say what you will about the second disc (it didn't bother me at all) but the story in this game is absolutely incredible.

It may be different for other people, tastes differ of course. However, I can safely say no video game affected me in the same way Xenogears did. Melodramatic, possibly, but it did change my life in certain ways. Or at least made me think about things differently. I can't say enough praise for the game.

I'm like everyone else, I guess: Chrono Trigger or Persona 3 or 4. Golden Sun is up there too, and so is Fire Emblem if that counts.

Final Fantasy X, by far my favouite game I've ever played with easily the best battle system, item system and levelling system for me. (Also it has an amazing soundtrack, Besaid Island being my favourite song of all time).

Also, if Demon's/Dark Souls counts as a JRPG (which I don't think it does) then I would like to mention the Legend of Zelda series as well (Skyward Sword is probably my favourite, although it switches with Ocarina of Time often - but I would probably accept that Wind Waker is the overall best one of the 3D ones if someone argued it.)

Vanguard Bandits and Front Mission 3 are two of my favourite games of all time, so I guess them. Also a huge fan of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. Spent hundreds and hundreds of hours playing that mofo on my gameboy. And Pokemon Red. Always forget that that is technically an RPG. I just always think of them as their own thing not beholden to a genre, but they really are super deep RPG's.

I'll put in another vote for Valkyria Chronicles. That game surprised the heck out of me and I love love love it.

Persona 3. There's a reason it's getting so many nods here. It's that good.

Can't decide between Vagrant Story, Final Fantasy 6, Front Mission 3 and Persona 4.

I haven't played a ton of jrpg's. I have been playing through Xenoblade, though. It is probably the best one I"ve seen.

Lunar Silver Star Story/lunar-silver-star-story-complete/61-17767/

Earthbound

My favourite is Final Fantasy 7. I'll accept that it's a bit overrated, but it was my first RPG and it'll likely always have a special place in my heart. Unfortunately, it also means that I usually measure other RPGs against it. Only Chrono Trigger, Lunar 2 and Grandia have came close to it for me.

...oh, and no disrepect to Xenogears. What I played of it was great, but I didn't get that far. I imagine it'll be right up there whenever I get a chance to play it properly, though.

Final Fantasty VI will always be my favorite.

My favorite JRPG and favorite game of all time: Final Fantasy Tactics

Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door....though I barely qualify it as a JRPG.

I'm going to echo half the people in here and say Persona 3 and 4 as well. Just nothing quite like them out there. There's also a damned effort at localization that puts SE and Namco to absolute shame.

But the true RPG that's near and dear to my heart is Xenogears. Yes, it is a broken, unfinished, pixilated mess of a game. But as cheesy as it sounds, that game really changed my way of thinking in many ways. I actually take a heavy amount of influence from it in my own writing, it's that big of a deal to me.

Special mention goes to Suikoden 2 as well. I was a bit late to play it, but that story is just phenomenal and brilliant. No dumb clichés or JRPG nonsense, just some hard politics with crazy consequences.

Probably Xenogears. I haven't played it since 2003 or so but I remember being blown away by it.

Tales of Symphonia, Tales of the Abyss, Tales of Vesperia, FF IX, Persona 3.

Although me seven years ago would scream pokemon.

Obvious one: Persona 3

The less than obvious one: Okage: Shadow King

I was about to say Golden Sun (as a series, since those 2 games really need to go together to get the experience), but then I was reminded that Persona exists... and in the tossup between 3 and 4, I'd have to go with 3. That's such a hard choice though.

• Final Fantasy VI
• Chrono Trigger
• Secret of Mana

In that order.

Final fantasy 9. mostly the part where VIvi finds out his life span is less then a year.

Persona 3

@BlaineBlaine said:

Lunar Silver Star Story/lunar-silver-star-story-complete/61-17767/

*Phew!* I was getting scared that I would be the first person to mention that classic! I love both Lunar games (Dragon Song on DS was kind of a debacle that is best forgotten) so, so much, and who even knows how much of an effect that Silver Star/Story Complete had on my mind during my formative years.

Anyway, my favorite game of all time is Illusion of Gaia, a SNES action RPG over which I wrote an enormous essay analysis, if anybody (nobody) is interested: http://socksmakepeoplesexy.net/index.php?a=illusion_of_gaia Beyond that, I think my favorite RPG is Chrono Trigger, especially because of how incredibly beautiful the world was and how extraordinarily memorable the soundtrack was. Final Fantasy VI comes not close behind. Final Fantasy IV and Phantasy Star IV are both awesome. Lufia 2: Rise of the Sinistrals is a freaking masterpiece of game design in its own right, with its amazingly well-conceived puzzles that abounded in EVERY freaking dungeon! Ugh, there was so much to love in the 16-bit era.

It's a mexican standoff between FFVI, VIII and X.

Persona 3 FES is my favorite JRPG.

The World Ends With You would be my second favorite.

@Pepsiman said:

Now, I bet judging by my avatar, you're expecting me to say how much I love Persona 4 at the top of my lungs. I do think that's a pretty damn great game, and I've written my fair share of creepy threads as a result of that adoration, and that continues to be unwavering even if the severe merchandising of it all is really wearing me down. But that answer would be unoriginal and will probably be uttered by who knows how many old fans of the first Endurance Run.

So instead I'm going to be the one person who says Barkley, Shut Up and Jam Gaiden: Chapter 1 of the Hoopz Barkley Saga. For a dumb freeware game that exists mostly as a joke sequel of both Barkley, Shut Up and Jam and the movie Space Jam, it is not only surprisingly playable (despite the perspective, the gameplay is more like Mario RPG and its ilk rather than other traditional JRPGS), but also humorously very well-written, taking itself just seriously enough for you to be in on it all. It's a short game, granted, but it's a great experience for what it is. And...

SPOILER WARNING: Click here to reveal hidden content.

You'll never really feel the same about video game bosses once you fight Bill Cosby as Ghost Dad.

You can make the argument about whether it's a "true" JRPG since it was made by a Western team, but since a lot of it is so fundamentally riffing on how the SNES Final Fantasy games looked and played (among other games, naturally), I'd argue it's close enough. I'll just leave a video of the first portion of the game. Tracking down the download version should be easy enough without my help.

I'm going to back Barkley Shut up and Jam Gaiden as well, it is a great homage and parody of the 16 bit Jrpg down to the silly/ kind of cool mechanics that are in games like FFVI an how character art in portraits look nothing like the in game models at times. Also the save spots go on really long internet rants on how western games are a blight on video games and how Japan's games are the worlds savior. Barkley making fun of that poem is pretty great.

Also I'd like to mention the Mother series and Persona 3 and 4. Both series take place in modern day and have a certain charm to them. Earthbound is probably by favorite game of all time. Mother 3 would be up there, but I've only played it once, if you can get a english translation running than you have something very special on your hands.

Persona 4 has some great characters, fun combat, and is one of the few games that tackles social issues hardly covered by games.

Come to think of it both the mother series and the Persona games are the few examples where being a child/ teen character makes sense and doesn't feel contrived.

Also of course there are the FF games, I really like 6, 7 and 9. 4 is good as well. Also Chrono Trigger.

And if anyone hasn't played Valkyria Chronicles, play it, it is very good. It's a shame that it's sequels were only for thee psp.

But yeah, Mother 3 is probably the best JRPG I've played. Something is just great about it, it has so much charm and spirit, it's both funny and tragic, and thats a quality that I admire.

Another vote for Shut Up and Jam Gaiden. That game was fantastic.

Golden Sun

There are just too many fantastic, life-consuming JRPGs/series out there to list (Xenogears, Legend of Dragoon, Wild ARMs, Suikoden, Star Ocean, Grandia, Chrono, Dragon Quest, Valkyrie Profile, Persona, etc.), and even some somewhat later gen (.HACK and Xenosaga spring to mind) have their moments, but if I had to go with my absolute favorite...

It'd be a toss up between Phantasy Star IV (Sega Genesis) and Final Fantasy VII (Playstation One). A close second would be either Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete (Playstation One), which is one of the few games I've beaten. Then there's Breath of Fire III -- oh no, I've started listing! D: I'll just stick with the two top choices.

The latter's (FFVII) definitely the more life-all-consuming (I'm now addicted to anything even remotely related to FFVII for fun, lol), but the former (PSIV) is the first game I ever beat -- and the only game I've bothered to beat twice, maybe even three times (I'm not sure at this point how many times I've beaten it, but it was definitely more than once!).

Having said that, I can understand why JRPGs get a bad rap these days. It seems nowadays they're all the same random anime whatever; even the more modern entries in Wild ARMs and Suikoden franchises, just to name a couple, have fallen into that trap. It's not necessarily bad, for something to play every once in a while, but it doesn't have me rushing to the store to buy every single JRPG out there.

If we had to talk about Nier (and I'll do so briefly), I appreciate it for trying to do something different, and its soundtrack is absolutely AMAZING, but it's just too damn depressing/ugly for me -- there's not one single happy ending. At least it's something different, though! High hopes for Xenoblade Chronicles!

But, in short (too late), they're nowhere near as fantastic as the JRPGs of old which, while having some faults (especially if there were way, way too many random battles), were awesome fun.

Final Fantasy VII.

@starleafgirl: My god, I haven't seen that first video for ages. Nostalgia trip...

Skies of Arcadia

Final Fantasy IX

Persona 3 and 4 hands down.

@starleafgirl: My god, I haven't seen that first video for ages. Nostalgia trip...

Hmm... for me it's gonna be a game that I played as a kid that had some kind of effect on me as a kid.

Xenosaga series really kept me interested (at the time I was all into super long cutscenes but not so much anymore) and also Atelier Iris 2. I still remember playing those games over summer breaks in middle school. Good times.

More recently would be Tales of Vesperia and Persona 3. While those games are better. They don't have the same place in my heart.

FF6

Rouge Galaxy. Wonderful game. It really did things that I still don't see implemented in other JRPGs. That, or one of the Pokemon games.

Phantasy Star IV ranks pretty high up there for me. As well as Shining Force...i love my old Genesis RPG's.

Persona 4, Lost Odyssey, Final Fantasy Tactics, Chrono Cross. Those are my favorites. It should be noted I really don't like most JRPGs and these appealed to me because of incredibly disparate reasons.

@AdzPearson said:

@starleafgirl: My god, I haven't seen that first second video for ages. Nostalgia trip...

I had to alter it, as I'd never seen the first video. (Well, I did watch it just now before realizing how amateur it was.)

Personally I'm not a big jrpg fan but I did love ff9 back in the day. Like many others here I was a huge fan of the endurance run, I'd rather watch jeff and vinnie play a jrpg than play it myself.

Final Fantasy X, followed by Persona 3, Nier and Final Fantasy XII.

Persona 4 and FFX.

Dragon Quest 8 on the PS2, I usually stay away from jrpgs and I have only finished a handful. I loved the artstyle (from the dbz dude: akira toriyama) and cell shaded/anime graphics, sweeping orchestral music and the game surprised me more than once in terms of gameplay mechanics, from ways to traverse the world, day/night cycle, monster training/battles, simple story with a secret zone/area after the main game. In short I had heaps of fun despite random turn based battles. I remember picking it up after watching a video review on Gamespot which gave it a 9/10.