This only meets the minimum requirements.
Kingdom Hearts .02 Birth by Sleep - A fragmentary passage.
It will probably be the shortest RPG suggested here.
I gave Tales of Berseria a little time on the Steam version, and I‘m digging the art style and characters so far, so I think I’ll be picking it up on PS4 to have a physical copy and because I think I‘ll prefer it on console (mostly to have proper DualSense support, which is something I really wish more devs would include for PC versions of their games). It’ll just be a matter of finding a copy that‘s not the Greatest Hits version (I’ve absolutely never liked the bars they slap on the box art)
So far so good, though! I'll report back for any other suggestions I check out in the near future, too
Alongside Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts is probably the only other JRPG series I‘ve kept up with over the years (though it coming up made me realize I never really thought of it as a JRPG series until just now, lol). I loved fragmentary passage, except for the part where it made me want a full-on Aqua-led game that we’ll probably never get
@sapphicvalkyrja Here’s hoping the next one remedies that, though I know it is a silly thing to expect profundity in Kingdom Hearts.
We’ll find out in 7 years!
@HyggeState I just wanna get on another one of Nomura‘s wild rides—let’s maybe skip the attraction attacks this time though, lol
Phantasy Star
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I‘ve always been curious about Angelique for the SNES and I’ve tried playing it but my Japanese isn't good enough yet. the other day I found a partially translated ROM but uhhh… It still needs work
Gave the CrossCode demo a shot, which definitely wears its love for Chrono Trigger on its sleeve in a good way. I‘m not sure how I feel about the control scheme, though, particularly for the shooty bits, which I couldn’t seem to change in the demo for gamepad, though. Definitely liked my time with it though, so I may go ahead and swing for the full version at some point
I'm still not sure what about its pixel art works for me compared to other modern pixel offerings, though, lol
Ys Origin is pretty good if an action rpg appeals. I think it’s intended to be played through three times, once with each protagonist of whom only one is a lady. Her version of the game is the best of the three though, and the other two are the same dungeon with different player abilities and story variations so it’s fine to just play her version. This is a pretty good post about the game from a led by the ladies kind of perspective.
A bit more obscurely, and somewhat debatably on the led by ladies front, is the 3DS game Beyond the Labyrinth. The framing is that you’re playing an online dungeon crawler. You have a blank slate player character (I don’t remember if you can choose a gender or if it’s just the four letter name) plus three party members, in the fiction controlled by other players of the game. Added to this is a single in-world character, a young woman trapped in the dungeon. Arguably she is the lead, I guess. It never came out in English, but there’s a patch. With custom firmware, the 3DS can live patch the game while you use a cartridge copy, which is how I played. I wrote a bit about my playthrough on another forum
@穴 I played it last year using mostly Retroarch‘s in-built translator! And honestly, most of the dialogue is pretty front-loaded. You do get small scenes where Angelique’s suitors come in, but it's much more mechanics-driven once you get past the beginning.
Some cool people did a let's play of it, I think it covers a lot of the early game:
neat! i would've never thought to do that. the fact that you can see the japanese text first and then the english could be quite helpful to improve my japanese
I've never looked in to this -- is there much involved in getting it set up and working?
I'm totally one billion percent on board with this mission of yours OP!
Having read through here's a couple with my own bias towards older-and-Sega stuff
the first Phantasy Star
Royal Stone (Game Gear tactics RPG)
Popful Mail (less of an RPG to be honest--it's an action platformer more or less)
Princess Crown (it's the game I always wished Guardian Heroes was)
Also I don't know if I saw it mentioned but Wild Arms 3 too!
Remembered another one : Ghost Lion
@穴 Yeah! There is the caveat that it‘s not localized, so it’s really just doing very literal translations.
@rejj It's actually very simple! The AI service is built into Retroarch, you basically just have to point it to a translation service (like https://ztranslate.net/).
Spent an hour or so with Banner of the Maid and the localization just isn't for me on this one which my literature major makes me almost incapable of getting past. The character art is lovely though, and it pushes me a bit toward picking up Three Houses when I can, as it was definitely scratching a bit of that itch I got from playing the Unicorn Overlord demo. Those evergreen Nintendo prices are always such a pain, though…
@sapphicvalkyrja I‘m curious now, as another literature major, to know what you noticed in the localization. I only played like 10 hours of it a couple years ago, so the details of the prose aren’t fresh in my mind.
@Mnemogenic Nothing about it was particularly wrong, but I found it sort of dry/stiff and to lean heavily on exposition in a way that made me think of some of FFXVI's worst bits, where it felt a bit like I was reading a history textbook rather than engaging with a narrative. I may have also been a classical studies major, but I was definitely more on the storytelling side of that than I was the history side of it
I don't always dislike that kind of thing (I've definitely enjoyed some Matsuno in my time), but I need a particular balance between the exposition and the character stuff (and ideally, for the exposition to be woven into character work in a way that feels natural) that I wasn't finding here
@sapphicvalkyrja Ahh that makes sense. Now that you say it, I do remember some pretty boring cutscenes.
Meant to get to this suggestion and forgot! I've never played any of these, so it's a bit overwhelming to know where to start, lol. Thankfully I'm not usually bothered by fan-service stuff, but it is good to know about ahead of time in terms of calibrating expectations
At the moment, I discovered Valkyrie Elysium has a demo, so I‘m waiting for that to download, and I think I’ve more or less decided that I'm going to treat myself to at least one of the full-priced games from this thread soon, with more to follow as time and money allow thanks to all these recs
I think I've narrowed it down to Three Houses, Tales of Berseria, or Odin Sphere Leifthrasir to start. Only Berseria has a demo (which I enjoyed), but both of the others look pretty appealing at the moment, too: Three Houses for the tactical side and Odin Sphere because the art style made me think of Legend of Mana, which was one of my favorites on the original Playstation
I feel more energized to buy a huge stack of games than I have in years, which is great!
ctrl+f: blue reflection, no matches found
FOR SHAME!
Seriously though, Blue Reflection and its sequel are great games. By Gust, who are better known for the Atelier series (don't sleep on those either). BR though is a magical girl RPG in which your power grows as you deepen your friendships with your friends. The writing in Second Light is much better than in the first game, but it's still a good time.
Also, two of my fave RPG soundtracks of the last while.
I'll also recommend Caligula Effect 2, though there you choose your character's presentation and pronouns. One of the coolest battle systems, another fantastic soundtrack, and unlike Persona, doesn't hate its women or queer characters.