Got my new retro handheld emulator. It's an Anbernic Arc-D. Just got 50 GB of roms loaded from my personal currated collection and I kind of think I wanna jump into some jrpgs I can play on the couch when I wanna decompress. Right now I'm looking at starting with GBA titles since I missed that whole era but I'm mainly looking for any suggestions up to PS1 era. I've played all the main ones like Chrono Trigger and FFVI but open to anything.
My current line up is looking like Mario RPG, Mother 2 And 3, and Golden Sun.
What are some other bangers I should definitely check out?
Also the Arc-D is dope as fuck. Stock firmware isn't even that bad.
E: thanks all for the suggestions! Gonna currate a list this morning and probably start with Golden Sun before diving into the rest. A lot of gems I recall missing out on when I was a kids too that I'm eager to jump into.
Fire Emblem 4: Genealogy of the Holy War, Bahamut Lagoon, Racing Lagoon, Ogre Battle 64
I have Genealogy of the Holy War but is the Japanese version. Is there a fan translation floating around that I could grab?
I'm gonna add Ogre Battle to my list too. I vaguely remember playing one of the titles for a bit and finding it unique compared to the regular JRPGs.
Gonna have to look up the other 2 since I'm not familiar with them.
CD Romance has a prepatched ROM, plus other cool Japan only releases
Mario RPG along with those two Mother games are great stuff.
I'd recommend some Dragon Quest games from that era as well. DQ4 is one of my personal favorite games, but it definitely shows its age a bit as a NES game. DQ5 is considered one of the best JRPGs ever made and I tend to agree. Don't know if you're including those in the main ones you've played, since DQ5 didn't get US release until much later.
Agree with @LaGG_3 about Ogre Battle 64, if you've enjoyed the resurgence of auto battlers lately, it's a game that did roughly about 20 years ago.
Fire Emblem had two great GBA games that I'd recommend. Blazing Blade was a little bit better in terms of story, but The Sacred Stones has an updated engine and better quality of life.
Lastly, Phantasy Star IV is a fantastic look at that 16-bit JRPG game design style. And might be a good change of pace from the high fantasy settings I've listed off so far with its more Sci-Fi thing it has going on. It also has those sort of unique anime cut scenes, similar to Ninja Gaiden, during the big story bits that's kind of unique for the genre.
Phantasy Star IV, you say? Never heard of it.
Edit: Eh, this was a dumb joke. I just finished my yearly replay of Phantasy Star IV, though, this time using a fan retranslation. I highly recommend it, I think they did an excellent job: https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/4171/
Interesting! I actually had not heard the translation was bad, but I suppose during that time they were all pretty bad in their own ways haha Will have to remember this the next time I feel like playing it.
I just grabbed DQ5 and have the earlier ones for NES(Dragon Warrior 1-4).
Also got Ogre Battle 64. I like strategy to some extent and last I played Ogre Battle I think I recall it reminding me a bit of the big battles from Suikoden, so I bet it will be fun.
I also checked and do have both Fire Emblems in my GBA folder, so might need to check them out.
And Phantasy Star IV is also on my radar along with Star Ocean for some more scifi fantasy as opposed to high fantasy.
Great suggestions, thanks!
I also checked and do have both Fire Emblems in my GBA folder, so might need to check them out.
The other GBA Fire Emblem, Binding Blade, is also pretty good. The other two GBA games are overall better, though.
Just checked and I have all three in my GBA folder. Binding Blade is a English fan translation too so that's cool.
Me finding games I actually already have since I have like 5,000 roms lol...
Me finding games I actually already have since I have like 5,000 roms lol...
That's the main problem with those handheld emulators lol. I get awful choice paralysis.
For real. And my personal currated collection is actually only closer to 3,000 games but like that doesn't really make much of a difference. I think my entire rom collection is something like 120 GB which doesn't seem like a lot until you consider how small SNES and Genesis games were.
Those NES Dragon Quest games are really great for pick-up, put down. There's a fair amount of grinding, so you can just sort of zone out or stop whenever you want. DQ4 was, in a lot of ways, ahead of its time. It's the first JRPG I can think of that let you at least customize the gender of your character and the chapters-style story telling is really fun. Enjoy, man. I definitely wish I could experience some of those for the first time again, although maybe I'm just wishing I was a kid again haha
I'm sort of mad that I basically missed out on the Dragon Quest series as a kid since we were all about Final Fantasy for the most part. I think I am gonna start with DQ4 when I get to them. You are def selling me on it.
I rarely play JRPGs these days but I played a ton back then. Listing ones I haven't seen mentioned yet:
SNES
Lufia 2
Breath of Fire 2 (find a retranslation patch)
PS1
Suikoden 2
Saga Frontier
Star Ocean 2
Breath of Fire 3 & 4
Grandia
Valkyrie Profile
Lunar
Xenogears
Koudelka (didn't play this one but I had a friend that loved it)
If you like tactical RPGs, Front Mission 3 and Vandal Hearts.
Koudelka is a masterpiece just because there's nothing else quite like it. It's an attempt at making a survival horror RPG.
Parasite Eve maybe, that's also in the same vein. God I love these games
My copy of BoF2 is the USA version so I think it's already a translation? I don't know if I ever actually booted it up so I need to check that out.
The PS1 titles are hitting me right in the nostalgia so I need to grab those and redo my .m3u files for my PS1 folder.
There's an official translation, but it is notoriously bad and possibly the worst on the SNES. It's a great game tho so it's worth patching with a fan translation
I think I'll need to dust off my patching chops. There is an online tool for patching that I used a while back that I think I have saved somewhere.
This will save you some time. It's an archive of all known English translations for many if not most major systems, already patched and ready to go.
Dang lol wish I would have seen this comment like 10 mins ago before I manually patched BoF2 lol! I'm saving this archive tho because this is awesome. Thanks!
Just gonna throw out that if you like SaGa Frontier, and also like more traditional fantasy settings (vs the weird modern-scifi-urban fantasy gonzo kitchen sink of SF1) then SaGa Frontier 2 is, in my opinion, an even better game.
Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga
Mario & Luigi: Bowsers Inside Story
Phantasy Star 4
Awesome, thanks! I have Superstar Saga and Phantasy Star 4 but the only DS game I have right now is Dragon Quest 7. Gonna grab Bowser's Inside Story and add it to my queue.
The shin megami tensei series is full of bangers. Strange Journey on DS stands alone well.
I keep seeing these games but have never checked them out. Will give them a go.
Not retro per se, but has a retro vibe. Omori is fucking amazing.
Yo, I'm adding this to my wishlist regardless because it seems like it's right up my alley regardless. Is this an RPG Maker game?
Yeah it's RPG Maker XV. It's a peak RPG Maker game. Made me bawl my eyes out multiple times. I will warn that it goes a lot deeper than a normal JRPG on the philosophy side bordering on cognito hazards, but I think that's what makes it such an amazing and emotional game. The soundtrack is some of the best I've ever heard. Spaces in Between makes me cry from just hearing it.
Sort of absolutely selling me on it tbh. Might be checking the bank account here real quick since it's on sale. I dig RPG Maker games. I loved To The Moon and been wanting to play the sequels but haven't gotten to it. I've also been wanting to check out Yumi Nikki because I like wield stuff in general.
In the past I've even considered getting RPG Maker because I wanted to try my hand at it but I think that ship has sailed.
E: Gonna keep an eye on the protondb reports for the game and probably get it at a later date. Or I might get it on Switch if it goes on sale.
Pirate RPG maker and do it. It's fun and worth it. Yeah, Omori has big Yume Nikki vibes but isn't as directionless as that game. Yume Nikki is cool, but the only people I've seen enjoy it are hardcore gamers or extremely casual gamers that don't care about game structure at all. If you download it, I expect that you'll probably only want to play it for an hour or two. It's free so there's no consequence, but it really is a difficult game to get into.
Omori has that weirdness and emptiness without feeling incomplete. This game hits me harder than any of the Lisa games while also being far less dark. There's this dream like confusion that defines the game that adds quite a bit to the emotion. Omori is difficult to get into thematically, besides it being fairly dense, I'd also describe it as the opposite of a game like Celeste. This game isn't about finding yourself, it's about losing yourself. I've never had a game leave me feeling so empty yet satisfied after beating it.
I love Zone of the Enders GBA, it is top tier like Golden Sun 1/2 for me. After that Dragon Quest 3 and Breath of Fire series took so much of my time growing up.
Just checked and I have Zone of the Enders so I added it to the list. Glad I'm not wanting to tackle all these this next year because this list is getting hella long. My IRL friend even suggested some Zelda games which I've always considered JRPG adjacent.
If you want a weird underrated one I would recommend Legend of Legaia from the PS1 era. It's a neat one with a kinda cheesy story but what sets it apart is the combo system; to do attacks you set a series of inputs like high punch, low kick, high kick etc on your turn and that gets executed. Some enemies are weaker to certain things, some characters are stronger in certain things. The fun comes from finding each characters unique combos though...maybe doing high high low low triggers one of their special moves for instance. And then once you discover those, you discover that if 2 characters do their special moves on the same turn you get a combo special move. It's both really shallow and yet has enough illusion of depth as to feel really satisfying.
It's one of those weird underrated games I never hear anyone talk about but that has a special place in my heart. I won't pretend like it's an amazing game, it is definitely from it's time, but it did some cool things and is worth checking out
I totally forgot about this one. Grabbed it and adding it to my rom collection now lol.
Grandia for PlayStation 1 introduced one of my favorite jrpg battle systems, and the story is fun and mostly lighthearted.
A lot of people here have already suggested Ogre Battle and Ogre Battle 64, but I'd also recommend Tactics Ogre. It's in the same series but is an SRPG instead of the... Whatever you'd describe Ogre Battle as. The story is quite good and the game has 3 pretty fleshed out routes. There's also 3 versions of it, the newer two (PSP and current consoles) have a better translation but from memory the original is passable. I'm sure there's a patch if you find it bad, though I would have to check.
Beyond that, Xenogears was already mentioned and is great. I'm quite partial to the Mana games and Terranigma. Moon is also really interesting, being a sort of parody RPG that heavily influenced Toby Fox when making Undertale.
I played Xenogears when it first came out but wanna save a replay for when I finally tackle the rest of the Xeno-verse games, even though they aren't all conical to each series.
I do need to give the other Mana games a go. I played Legend on Switch and burned through like 4 differnet team makeups and actually enjoyed it for its mindless fun.
Def forgot about Terranigma so will be adding that.
And of course also forgot about Tactics Ogre so I can grab the PSP version. I have the emulator for it so might as well put it to use.
All great suggestions, thanks!
