What are the best JRPGs that still hold up?
With the recent sale of old Square games on PSN, I got to thinking about classic JRPGs and wondering if any of them hold up.
That's all I used to play and I want to share a lot of these games I have memories of with my daughter, but are any of them still worth it?
Well, it's time to find out as I play though a shitton of them over the next couple of years.
I will be going mostly in chronological order, with some exceptions. If a game had a great re-release that modernized it, I'll probably check that out (which is why I didn't start with FF IV). I'll be hitting up stuff that I played, mostly, with some that I didn't thrown in (but I played A TON of JRPGs pre-360/PS3 era, but also why I'm not starting with Phantasy Star). I never played any NES era JRPGs so I have no nostalgia there; for me, the genre starts at the SNES. I will be giving some other game a shot, to see if they click with me (Phantasy Star 2 and Shadowrun on the Genesis would come before FF VI if I went with them first).
I'm going with this definition of a JRPG - it's a role playing game from Japan. Combat is turn based/menu based. There is a party of characters. There will be random battles. You talk to folks and have inventories and equipment. Obviously, some games are going to diverge a bit. Some of these games will have more real-time combat; some will have a very small party; some won't actually be from Japan. Those issues will be addressed. But I feel there is a distinct difference between JRPGs and everyone elses, hence why we refer to them as JRPGs!
This list isn't every JRPG, obviously. But it's pretty damn close to a definitive, QUALITY version of that list.
