Top 5 Tuesday: JRPGs
While RPGs had existed long before their console brethren, JRPGs reinvented the genre to make it more accessible for the medium it was produced for.
From the humble beginnings to the million dollar titles that they are today, there are five particular games that stand out above the rest.
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5. Earthbound: This game didn’t settle for being “just another JRPG,” it instead took almost everything the genre stood for and turned it on its head. Almost everything presented in the game is done so for either comedic value, or just to make the player scratch their head in confusion. Despite all the wild and crazy things that came together to make this title, it still manages to tell a rather complex and deep story.
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4. Chrono Trigger: The world of Chrono Trigger seems rather simple and straight forward at first, despite the mesh, fantasy and science fiction. This simplicity is, however, thrown up with the advent of time travel that has the heroes racing against time to save their world. While many of the elements that went into the game were formal, the characters and battle system set it apart from the others and offered up a game that many wish would have had a longer running series.
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3. Suikoden 2: While many game series of the time used different stories and even different worlds to tell the next tale, Suikoden instead stuck to an overarching story that played off of the result of the previous game. While this feature alone made the game series pretty unique, the option of recruiting upwards of fifty or more people to your cause is something unprecedented in any other JRPG to date.
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2. Tales of Phantasia: The Tales series may not be as big as the Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest series, but it definitely isn’t a slouch. Tales of Phantasia featured stunning graphics and several little extras that really made it stand out. Most important of these was the combat system that played more like a fighting game and opened the door for more action oriented JRPGs that we have today. The other fascinating extra was that the the game featured some voice acting, as well as an intro with singing.
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1. Persona 3: The Persona series did its best to ground itself firmly in modern day settings to get away from the fantasy cliches that make up the majority of JRPGs. While doing this, they mixed in the Devils that inhabited their main series, Shin Megami Tensei, for an interesting mix of occult and myth that gives the series an almost horror-story like feel. The series was taken to the next level with the release of Persona 3, which added several elements that the previous games were lacking. Topping it off is, of course, one of the best soundtracks in gaming history.
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Agree? Disagree? What are your top 5 JRPGs?
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