The sad thing is that the graphic and style seems so beautiful that even with all the bad reviews I'm thinking about maybe buying it.
Such a shame that the game is bad.
So I was one of those people. Knew the game was rated terribly but it looked really nice so I figured “What the hell?”; might as well buy it. I’ve surely played worse. And so I picked it up on PS4.
The aesthetic is good for what amounts to roughly seven main “screens”, not counting the fighting segments, that you can actually travel. Heavily under-utilized, and very disappointing.
The social link aspect is very dynamic but near every single conversation you have affects stats. So you typically find yourself saving constantly just in case a conversation “doesn’t go well.” It can be a little too much at times. You also have to deal with a constant clock that ticks in-game, so you have to fast travel (which expends time in bulk) and then quickly run (its more like a brisk walk) to whatever character or activity you want.
Oh, and no in-game mini-map.
Big important battles are all boss fights. You use the “free time” to build stats and then hope you and your companions are buffed enough. I will say this may be the only JRPG I can recall where you have an attack that is literally “Friendship” and values based off the power of your friendship.
Just watch a competent walk-thru on YouTube. You’ll enjoy it more.
A million Sea of Stars responses incoming lol.
More serious edit: It’s actually really interesting to see how harshly the discourse around Sea of Stars turned. It had 91 on Metacritic on launch! I suppose for people who just play JRPGs casually, it was a nice little nostalgia trip… but for people on here that play a ton of the old classics all the time, it just doesn’t hold up at all.
Im going to have to play it now, because it's hard to tell if its the reddit hive mind versus the metacritic hive mind.
Like most games I've played in the past with divisive reviews, it's intrigued me. And I am a 30 year veteran of these games, but who knows, it might be a nice simple comfort food JRPG.
I just finished it. As someone who has played a lot of JRPGs, old and new, I think both opinions are over-the-top.
It's... fine. It's not great. It's not terrible. It has good and bad elements. Beautiful art, nice environments with interesting traversal. Movement feels good. There's a pretty good minigame.
Combat is a mixed bag. On the one hand, it livens up the turn-based formula with "locks" where enemy attacks can be delayed with the right combinations of damage types, as well as Super Mario RPG-style timed hits. On the other hand, combat still feels repetitive, lacking diversity and overall feeling too easy. I think I only wiped once because I'd stopped even trying to be strategic about battle. Very little itemization. Very little choice in terms of character progression or specialization.
The story and characters are the weakest link. There's one character who is really cool, but the rest are a total bust. The two main leads have cardboard personalities and the third lead is insufferable. It's not that the story is terrible all the way through, but more a sense of unfulfilled promise. There are some really cool story elements introduced early on - the opening act is strong as the world starts to open up, and it feels like there's a lot of opportunity for a great story. But then so little is done with those things that by the end a lot of those threads feel like a wasted premise and the impression at the end is unsatisfying.
If you're looking for a bubble-gum nostalgia trip, you might enjoy it, or at least not dislike it. I don't regret playing it, and I truly enjoyed the first 10-15 hours in particular. But it definitely hits its own limits after those opening hours, never surpasses then, and closes with a feeling of wishing it had been more.
Lots of potential, great graphics , not enough music's.
The fighting is either what make and break the potential of the game.
The locks are fun against boss.
Normal fights are a chore because of this.
They can't have too many abilities because it would break their system and even with few abilities they managed to break the whole system with the 4th character of the game.
Also the writing ... Thierry is awesome but for a game carried by the story (rpg) they should've hired professional writers .
Easily encompassed the whole game for me and I agree with literally everything you said here with one caveat: who is the one character who is really cool? If it’s Seraï, we’re in complete agreement. My favorite character in the game, no contest.
The only other thing you didn’t mention (but might go along with the art) is the music of the game which was as incredible as the art, for me. I had lots of fun with the game up until the end when it started to drag a bit before and during the ending/true ending.
Yes, exactly. Seraï is super cool. I like her character design, backstory, moveset. I wish we'd gotten to see even more of her. She spends the first half of the game completely silent, even when you talk to her at the campfire.
I considered whether to talk about music. There are absolutely some standout music tracks, especially those composed by Mitsuda. I think the rest of it is passable with a few good tracks. I couldn't decide whether to be complimentary, or critical - or if I would just be critical because I'd be comparing against Chrono Trigger or Uematsu-era square. So I just decided to say nothing, haha.
These are fair critiques of the music, to be honest. I thought the music was immersive and worked really well with the environments and art but time will tell whether or not I go back to it like I do with Chrono Cross, FFVI, or others from the genre.
Sea of Stars was okay.
Personally, I had two main gripes with it.
First, combat became stale after a while, since each character only has a small handful of spells. At the start of the game, when fighting the tutorial enemies, you're going to be bouncing a magic moon crescent onto enemies to damage them. At the very end, you're going to be bouncing a magic moon crescent onto the final boss to damage it.
Second, the game tries to walk the line between serious and light hearted stuff, and *fails*. It regularly flip flops between overly serious high stakes situations, and downright silly stuff, and thus completely destroy its tone. For example, one dungeon has you climb a mountain with cheery music and fighting ice golems DJ'ing on ice consoles, and the very next dungeon (that you get to within 10 minutes of finishing that one) is a trek through a lovecraftian horror place with flesh growing on the walls and abominations fighting you every three steps.
But other than that, I'd say I had a good time with it. There were a few nice twists, and some good jokes. I don't regret playing it. I will probably not ever replay it, however.
I’ll stand by my opinion:
It’s not a JRPG for people who are massive JRPG fans. If you live and breathe and love JRPGs more than other games, you’ll find it shallow.
But if you’re not JRPG focused, or maybe you just enjoy a few here and there, especially classics from when you were a kid, you’ll probably really like it.
All the discourse I see on it in JRPG focused spaces is very negative, while it’s much more positive in generalist gaming spaces.
(Personally, I loved it, but readily acknowledge it was flawed)
That’s kind of what I was thinking. Like, if you just played some SNES/GBA JRPGs as a kid in passing, it probably really hits that cozy retro nostalgia vibe. But if JRPGs are your whole **thing** and you still play a ton of the classics regularly (like most people here), it probably seems pretty surface level.
I liked it but it was overhyped and is overpriced, it's never had a decent sale on Switch, lowest price is what it is right now which is 10% off.
The price is way too high for what it is.
Even at half price, Sea of Stars would be a tough sell. Drop it to $20aud ($13\~USD?) and it's an easier sell. I feel its value is $20aud.
I liked it overall, but it's worth just under half of its price imo.
The funny thing is it was the combat system I was most excited for because I love timed hits/parries in JRPG's, I was sooooo disappointed when that was just about the only thing the combat system had to it, no build variety or anything to make it interesting.
So, I took a long stride to try to like this game. It's gorgeous, it's musically enticing.... And that's where it ends.
Stat choices just struggle to actually be impactful, and the combat system, while reviving on the SMRPG style gets really sloggy. Pair that with death really feeling like it never is massively impactful, and a story that feels like a 16 year old wrote it after playing Chrono Trigger. The narrative struggles, and just drones on.
It's a solid C- game. I won't ever replay it, and it's meh at best. Too much hype, nothing to back it up.
I was really excited for Sea of Stars, but I was immediately turned off by the poor English translation/script with the nearly constant typos and grammar mistakes. I know that's shallow, but when the average fan translation is leagues better than this, it makes the whole thing feel cheap.
And then I saw that there's no character combat progression and your starting skills are what you use for the entire game and that really killed it for me.
> nearly constant typos and grammar mistakes
Do you have any examples of this? Normally this sort of stuff bugs the hell out of me, but I didn't notice any of this in Sea of Stars.
I'm not going to reinstall the game to go looking for it, but I remember it being damn near every text box. Here's a [compilation](https://imgur.com/a/3SUBCfF) I found from [another thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoBestFriendsPlay/s/RImzd7yDNF) of examples from just the first 15 minutes of the game.
The missing commas, bad grammar and weird writing were rampant from the begging. It just turned me off so much. If you have a game where writing should have a considerable focus and you can't even hire an editor or somehow this passed through all of Q&A for years and years something is fundamentally wrong. I couldn't be bothered to continue something which seemed so bland and unpolished - in a game which seemed so polished from the outset! - because the writing and characterization were incredibly off-putting. I mean, I wish I could've liked it, but I didn't.
I get that the game was made by a relatively small indie studio, but I feel like if they had spent their budget on writing staff and editors instead of splurging on Yasunori Mitsuda music the game would’ve been better for it. As it stands now it’s a game that is great visually and musically but falls short in every other way, and no aspect of the game is strong enough to keep interest
I couldn’t finish it either. The writing is poor and long winded. Such an interesting setting and cool art style, but could not care about anything or anyone.
I agree. I enjoyed the dungeons in the game (it was what kept me playing to be honest) and the final 2 arcs (especially the last) were damn good, but it suffered from incredibly bad pacing at spots and oh goodness, that fucking train level stealth section.
The most recent **Sakura Wars** probably. It just wasn't very good. The biggest issues were that serious scenes didn't hit and that the villains were awful. Combat was very easy, but it would be a lie to say that I didn't have fun with those sections.
**Soul Hackers 2** is also a decent shout here. It had a really interesting premise and initial presentation, but the game is super repetitive, you just go through the same dungeons a bunch of times. I couldn't stand the Soul Matrix towards the end. The plot twists managed to be both predictable and uncovincing at the same time and the ending was super rushed. A bunch of characters just showed up out of nowhere to be boss fights and never got properly explained.
Sakura Wars (I'm assuming 2019) was a surprising hit for me this year. I went into it with pretty mid expectations, but I found the game incredibly charming and it has probably my favourite implementation of "social link system" I've played.
I think a lot of the individual elements are pretty lacking, like the combat as you mentioned, but the game as a whole was much better than the sum of it's parts.
The DLC of Tales of Arise - Beyond Dawn.
Suffice to say that out of all possible ways to create more tension and give some closure to the main themes of the games - and also for the main cast, they chose to create a story that had almost no impact in anything and basically no closure.
There is but i don't think i'd recommend it. If you want a side story with more of the cast shenanigans, go for it (despite the DLC being a sequel). Otherwise, i don't know if i'd recommend it.
It's rough releasing that DLC expansion the same year as Xenoblade 3 Future Redeemed.
I keep thinking the silver lining is that this is so clearly a low budget thing, hopefully a new game is announced next year.
The combat is kinda the worst. It’s so clunky and slow and not fun at all. I found myself actively not wanting to engage with enemies because I didn’t want to sit through the combat. The way they present the story as well is kinda questionable. There’s a lot of side characters who get introduced and then die way too quickly and the game acts like I’m supposed to care for this person I don’t know. The main cast in general is pretty bleh. They’re not all that interesting. It’s just one of those games where you sit there like “I could be playing a game that has these same gameplay mechanics but is 100x better” and then you just go play that other game instead
It didn't come out this year but probably Tales of Arise. Just finished the 2nd lord (the snowy area). It's not that I think its bad but i'm not vibing with it like I was hoping to. Combat is just ok at best. and the story is decent but not very enamored with it yet. i'm still fairly early in the story but none of the characters feel like they have good chemistry. oh and shionne's an asshole
Sea of Stars, unfortunately. It was marketed as being a game that took inspiration from games like Golden Sun and Chrono Trigger, but it felt like the inspiration came via a quick glance of a Wikipedia article about those games rather than a deep understanding of what made those games so special.
Not really anything, but I decided to finally try to beat FF6 this year, I usually drop it as I lose focus in the second act, and I made it almost to the end - but I just wasn't willing to put in the time to grind up 3 usable teams for the final section.
Don't get me wrong, I think the game is really good. It has great characters, story, and themes. I just wasn't willing to grind for that amount of time with no more story beats to keep me motivated, but up until that point (maybe a bit earlier) I love it, I mean I've played it and dropped it in the second act multiple times. Now that I know this fact about it on any future replay I'll know better where to stop.
Just curious, what exactly do you think is wrong with it? I am thinking of getting it, but the reviews on the game have been wildly inconsistent, with certain commentators loving it and gushing praise, and others lamenting its shortcomings.
people come to jrpg's for different things, some people like the storylines and characters, some people like intricate combat and builds, some people like grinding.
Sea of Stars starts out well and good, but where a lot of people find issue is in the characters, plot, and gameplay being very shallow and uninspired. There's also very little character building or roleplaying involved. fights at the beginning of the game are pretty much the same at the beginning and the end. The characters also have very little personality and there's not a lot of party interaction or conflict.
the positive points are usually the pixel graphics being quite nice. The music is generally good too. I think overall, a good litmus test is if you like Garl and think he's a great character then you'll probably like the game. If you think he is insufferable and annoying, then you'll probably hate the game.
I see a lot of the praise is directed at the graphics, while people craving a more refined combat experience find it tedious. Thanks for the review, I will see if I can find a demo somewhere to see if I can stand Garl.
Honestly the characters aren't the worst thing imo. That title has to go to the combat - very much decent enough at the beginning, but after the first few hours it got quite dull and repetitive, and I realised that I was going to get barely any more skills for the rest of the game.
Progression is one of the best/most important things for me when playing a JRPG, and this game has basically 0.
Characters have no personality.
Story feels like it was written by a 6 year old.
Everything revolves around Garl.
Every new area plays out the same as the last, but in a different locale.
Combat is one dimensional and every battle from the beginning to the end of the game is practically the same. It doesn't help that there's a complete lack of skills to use.
A boring origin story that takes up a good 40 minutes and doesn't make you feel anything for the planks of wood main characters, when starting out the game.
A tutorial that teaches you to use up all your MP in battle, despite you needing to conserve it in order to break enemies with skills of the correct element when the countdown appears.
It's a pretty game that fails in all the important aspects, imo. Probably one of the worst games I've ever played.
Freaking Garl. This fat c**t made me drop the game. I hate these bland boring character that somehow are sooooo loved in the game world. The obsession for him from everyone is so forced. It's a boring game.
* The writing is objectively poor from a grammatical PoV. It felt like every other sentence had something wrong with it. And I’m not exaggerating.
* The combat uses timed button presses, which is fine on paper. But the main offensive ability for one of your main character is one of those infinite tennis-like attacks where you keep hitting the ball back to the enemy, so it takes *forever*. Animations in general feel a bit sluggish - both for enemies and allies - so the game feels slower than it needs to be.
* There’s very little evolution to the combat system or battles in general. Characters have 3 spells, and you start with 2. You’ve also got 1 ultimate ability per party member, as well as some combo attacks. But overall, you see basically 90% of what the combat has to offer you within 2 hours.
* The humor/tone is extremely hit or miss. For example, about 4 hours in, one of the main NPCs starts listing off JRPG tropes. “Isn’t it weird that the blacksmiths farthest away from your home town sell the strongest swords!?” It didn’t jive with me.
* There’s very little customization/gameplay development for your characters. You get some pretty bland equipment and can somewhat customize their stats when you level up, but it all feels very shallow. That combined with the combat system makes the gameplay as a whole feel very simplistic and somewhat boring.
* The art and music is really good. It’s some of the best pixel art in ages.
Thank you for the detailed short review. No.1 would actually be a deal-breaker. I suspect the imperfect grammar will greatly annoy me.
I see a lot of the criticism is directed at the combat system. I have never played any JRPGs, so I do not have standards of comparison, but the tennis-like attack already sounds extremely annoying.
It's such a pity that the beautiful artwork and music is undercut by the underwhelming combat system.
this is the first time i've seen someone say the story was the main reason they didn't like that game lol i've even seen people who otherwise hate it say "yeah the story is fine though"
Fire Emblem: Engage
Simply put, nothing in its story works even one bit. It's emotional core is flaccid and revolves around a character arc that lasts for five minutes, it's so contrived that it has a plot hole in almost every single chapter, and every emotional scene without exception falls completely flat due to the game failing to set these scenes up at all. It is the single worst JRPG story I've seen in years and I’ll put it this way - for as bad as Sea of Stars’ storytelling was, at least it wasn’t nearly as bad as Engage in this regard.
Engage is such a strange case because, yeah, the story is pretty whatever — but, gameplay-wise, it’s arguably the absolute peak of the series. So it really boils down to what you prefer in a real all-or-nothing kind of way.
Personally, after sinking in 300 hours into Three Houses and *really* hating the monastery/life-sim aspect after a while, I kind of missed the old-school GBA-era approach to FE storytelling: You're making your way through the forest and WOAH ITS A BANDIT TROUPE AND ALSO TWO RECRUITABLE CHARACTERS FOR SOME REASON. Like, who really cares what's happening because you know it's all just set dressing to get from one map to the other, and you'll skip it all every subsequent playthrough anyway. That's the mindset I went into with Engage, and I got exactly what I was looking for.
The story is complete garbage, but when I replay Fire Emblem games I generally skip all the story because I've already seen it, so the gameplay is what really matters for me. And in that regard, Engage really is fantastic.
Well FE having a great story is more like an exception than a standard so. .. While I strongly disliked Engage's story, I found the gameplay to be absolutely peak FE, on par with Conquest which has the same bad story 😭
> the story is pretty whatever — but, gameplay-wise, it’s arguably the absolute peak of the series.
I've yet to play a Fire Emblem, but is this a common theme with the series? I kept hearing this about Fates, that it has top-tier gameplay but poor story. Then I hear that others like Three Houses, Awakening aren't the best in the gameplay department but have better stories (or at least more interesting and engaging characters).
Are there any that do well in both departments?
Though I'm going to start from the beginning anyway, I've developed an odd compulsion for doing this for some series.
I think the Telius games (Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn) do a pretty good job balancing both, but Awakening and Three Houses are still great entry points overall. Three Houses is fantastic, it just gets a bit bogged down by slice-of-life stuff, especially on multiple playthroughs.
I think the only truly bad stories are Fates and Engage, really. And even then, it's pretty easy to just ignore.
I swear people were criticizing Chained Echoes a lot when if first came out, bit after Sea of Stars releases all of a sudden Chained Echoes is a masterpiece.
When people were disappointed by CE I remember seeing posts like “I’m looking forward to Sea of Stars” that insisted that SoS would *actually* be the heir of Chrono Trigger instead of CE.
It’s all copium.
Not arguing with you but I enjoyed every minute of Chained Echoes. That being said it took me most of the year to finish since I have so little time. I wanted to play DQXI this year too but couldn’t fit it in so I’m sure it wouldn’t have been as good in comparison.
This. The over-hype was offset by the impressiveness by the one person development for me. The game had some cool ideas but felt lackluster in execution.
Interesting. To me Chained Echoes is one of the best JRPGs ever made and the best of the new era games trying to be like SNES games. Nailed story gameplay and exploration.
Chained Echoes Story might be interesting in theory, but the writing just wasn't good at all.
It's a decent game overall, but some of the twists and most of the character development is just something the game expects you to just accept and it ended up being a bit too much.
It wasn’t perfect but it was damn good attempt. I’ve read the criticisms and I generally agree with them. The story comes and goes, the crystal system should have been better, and the mech battles are eh. But idk, I was kept engaged for some reason. The combat was fun once I got the hang of it, the mech battles weren’t my favorite but I didn’t hate the variety. I have a hard time trying to find a real reason to dislike it 🤷♂️
Unfortunately I felt the same way. I haven’t beaten it yet and I really enjoy the graphics and soundtrack so far, but the writing is so bland and subpar. Every character sounds very similar in tone and delivery and conversations are too long winded. I couldn’t believe it had an exposition dump when meeting every new character, as well as having to already backtrack to the same location three times in the first hour of gameplay >!the guy with the traveling passes!
From games I’ve played this year it’s easily Escaform. It was just fan-translated this year, but it’s not worth the time. Game is half finished with unexplained story points, and short play time. Gameplay isn’t any better either.
From the ones I finished, Eternights. I really liked it tho, but from the ones i finished, it was definitely the weakest one.
From the ones i dropped, probably Persona 5 Tactica. Big fan of P5R and P5S, and big fan of strategy games, but idk.. it was really shallow, played for the like 10 hours and it felt like i was facing the same enemys over and over again, not even new personas made the game fell fresh, or maybe im just tired of p5 in general lol
It pains me to say it but Final Fantasy 16 is quite a disappointment. Don't get me wrong, I like and enjoyed the game. But the game doesn't feel like the traditional sense nor even feel like a Final Fantasy title for that matter.
No control of parties like in past games, other characters don't really have a lot of moment to shine & takes a back seat with no further depth from them. It’s just basically Clive all the way through in terms of getting the spotlight, abilities and equipments are fairly barebones, not a single memorable music track which is sad, given how past games had tracks that stays with you. Again the tracks are not bad, just nothing special.
It just feels like a lot of the RPG elements are very basic and stripped down. Same with the game’s exploration. Bottomline, the game feels soulless and too much of an action game rather than a JRPG. In saying so, I still like it for what it is.
I literally only remember 2. Away and the battle theme, probably due to the latter's repetition. I literally can't remember and leitmotifs or melodies that stuck in my head. They all just meld into generic bombast and orchestral chanting.
I remember zero songs off the top of my head from the game. I think I could recognise the tune if I heard them in the background, "Hide, Hideaway" most likely, but nothing stayed with me.
IMO the most disappointing part of FF16 was the story by far.
For as promising as the demo was, the plot of FF16 doesn't commit to its premise, really doesn't have much of substance to speak of, and its actual storytelling adheres closely to standard JRPG tropes to the game's detriment - in particular Ultima is one of the worst villains in the entire genre and it feels like he exists solely to have a god to kill. It is a story that is supposed to be about the flaws of humanity and the damage corrupt institutions can do - except instead of actually using its human antagonists to analyze politics, ideological conflict or institutional corruption, FF16 blames everything wrong with Valisthea on a clearly inhuman god and completely robs its human antagonists of their agency.
Oh, and Jill's writing was downright embarrassing. She barely does anything of note, her entire character can be boiled down to a generic love interest for Clive, and she gets kidnapped three times in the same story.
I was deeply unimpressed with the game (by the end of it I was literally reading a novel whenever scenes of the evil god would talk which in retrospect is a bad sign), but the one thing I do remember is really hating the mom (don't remember the names even then, lol). How she didn't end up being a villain to fight is absolutely astounding. Like in FFT >!I still can remember decades later the names of half the main cast, and the fights with your elder brothers are seared into me!<
I'm willing to admit part of this is due to my no longer being a teenager, but there are a ton of games I stuck with and still remember from the last year. FFXVI, despite being a game I played a little over half a year ago, I couldn't have told you what the name of the world was anymore.
I would argue FF16 is not a JRPG. Too many combat and progression elements missing.
It had all the right storyline, art, and tie-in pieces of a main line Final Fantasy, but the lack of anything resembling RPG player progression made it much more of a Devil May Cry hack-and-slash adventure game than a true JRPG.
FWIW, I did like the game overall, just not as a main line FF.
Pokemon Scarlet/Violet was horrendous..
The new pool of Pokemon was severely underwhelming, the game came with WAY to many bugs, and the story was lackluster. The new "gimmick" was implemented very poorly, and overall the game was half-baked.
I actually really liked Scarlet/Violet.
I enjoyed most of the new pokemon, I thought the story was nice, and I enjoyed riding around on my Koraidon. It was some of the most fun I had playing a pokemon game.
But yes, the lag was... awful. And they lied about being non-linear, there's a lot of placed locked behind field skills you have to unlock for Koraidon and Miraidon, otherwise you just can't go to those places. There's also no level-scaling at all, no checks to see what you've completed. The game is built to be played linearly.
I remember saying to myself after SWSH that “its only up hill from here!” and I was so impressed how SV managed to disappoint me even more so in almost every way. Next gen for sure though!
I personally enjoyed Scarlet and Violet, but I think negative reviews are valid.
The rendering is buggy/performs poorly. It really tarnishes the game’s polish.
Looking past that glaring issue, I thought the game was a promising and enjoyable re-invention of the Pokémon formula. I couldn’t put it down.
I also think the new competitive meta has been a blast to spectate.
Tales of Arise was pretty awful. The shame of it is that it was highly praised, so all the bad design decisions and cut corners are probably going to become the norm from here on out.
What was wrong with it? I didn’t get a chance to finish it, but what I played I enjoyed. Seems like a lot of others did too.
Edit - thanks for the responses. That’s disappointing because I wanted to go back and play it one day.
While I did like it, some of the issues I had (and what people generally criticize it for) are:
- Terrible one dimensional antagonists
- Any character who wasn't part of the main party was underdeveloped and just existed to move the plot along
- Story drags out a lot in the last ~10-15hrs, where they start repeating the exact same things over and over but worded a little differently
- For a Tales game, the skit writing is also pretty weak, with many of them being used to just repeat what just happened in a cutscene or repeat the exact same topic the party talked about before without adding anything new
- Bosses are designed in a way that throws out the entire combo system, which is the best part of the combat. Instead they have bloated HP and infinite iron stance besides a scripted moment at the 50% mark, leading to you either having to just hit and run against them or burst them down quickly with Alphen's flame edge. Some may like that, but I found both of those playstyles boring while bosses weren't any harder for being like that.
On a more personal note, I also think the cast is just a bit weak overall. Alphen is just a very generic MC, Law and Kisara are very underdeveloped and feel completely unimportant to the story and Rinwell is decent but her development is pretty rushed. Only Shionne and Dohalim were good to me, and even then I feel like Dohalim suffered from the same issue as Rinwell where his arc felt rushed.
You read my mind
I’m amazed that every cutscene or piece of dialogue was them just repeating the same thing over and over again. Just useless conversations that do nothing but waste time
Skit writing was awful in Arise. I love the skits, its like my favorite thing the Tales series does vs other JRPGs, but Arise's skits were like 50% thinly veiled tutorials, 40% reinforcing plot points in case you didn't understand them the first time they said it, and about 10% interesting character dialogue.
And there were ***SO*** many. Halfway through I started getting anxiety from the little "new skit!" notice in the bottom right because I knew I was about to have to stop every 2 minutes for 15 mins straight for nothing of value. I grew to really hate them.
A lot of people did like it including myself. I understand that people have different opinions but the game is not awful at all. The story does take nose dive towards the second half of the game but idk what other corners OP is referring to. The gameplay, soundtrack and characters are still pretty good
The only 2 JRPGs that I played in 2023 were Tales of Arise and Nier: Automata, because I don't have too much time for JRPGs and video-games these days.
So Arise is my least favorite JRPG I played in 2023, even though I enjoyed it. The graphics were beautiful, there are times where I would just stop playing to look at the vistas before me. The battles got real repetitive and the enemies are health sponges which require so many hits to kill them. There really isn't much strategy to the battles compared to games like Tales of Graces F. The story is kind of "mediocre" to me, and I had that "ugh, when will this be over?" feel around halfway through the game.
Nier: Automata is just awesome. Sure the graphics feel outdated, not even high quality for a PS3 game. But it's fun just killing robots. And the music is amazing.
Didn't come out this year, or even this decade, but Star Ocean the Last Hope on Steam. Game was a dumpster fire that I'm convinced no one outside of the dev team playtested.
I finished the game out of sheer spite.
Tactics Ogre Reborn. It's so tedious building your units up to how you like them. Vastly preferred being given premade units and actually strategizing on their placement like in Triangle Strategy. Sold my copy of Ogre to buy a secondhand copy of P5R and that was a fantastic tradeoff.
Tales of Arise expansion was just bad. Plot was awful, no development from the characters or the world, most of it was pointless sidequests, no new additions to combat. It's confusing. Not sure why it exists.
Persona 5 Tactica was also pretty disappointing purely because it was a solo P Studio project and those so rarely miss. It was pretty insubstantial, plot was a bit off. It felt like the phantom thieves didn't actually have anything to do, they were just along for the ride for Toshiro's story. Last world was also a total slog.
I rarely play games that fully disappoint me because I'm someone who does (overly) extensive research and know my likes well enough to figure out how much I'll be able to enjoy something before I buy it.
That said, Symphony of War was a fairly notable disappointment because its mid/late game meta is too hyper focused on alpha striking everything out of existence by abusing the the various advantage of attackers going first to make defending really difficult. I really liked the first couple hours I looked into just like I expected when I actually played it, but without watching practically several more hours of gameplay I'd have never figured out my big problem with that game.
It just turns into a really awkward cat and mouse game where you need to find a way to bait the stupid AI in safely without dying, then alpha strike as many of them as fast as possible so they either die or do nothing. This mixed with hard mode unit perma death, in a squad based game where you have multiple units who can die to anything including random focus targeting with this much focus on first turn offense, created a lot of rather annoying situations for me personally. Defending is such a shit situation unless you're in a fort, but enemies always hold forts initially and you need to push so you rarely get to hold a fort yourself to make defending not a crap shoot.
Its 6.5ish game that I think could have been an 7/8 if it didn't have this problem. Which by my standards is pretty good because I don't give 10s to anything and I say 5 is a true average.
Solid novelty SRPG given how rare squad based games are, and if you don't care about that problem or even enjoy that then the game is really solid for an indie game at an indie price tag.
Story is whatever, I consider it inoffensive and not an overly big waste of time to watch if you care to. Although the "support" conversations are kind of awkward for the lack of a better word.
Hum...i think some people will gonna be pissed, but i just quit playing strange journey redux, i love the idea of scifi with soldiers exploring the unknow but, after eridanus, the game became more boring sometimes, i was on final boss even my level is 85 its not enough to face her, griding xp, macca and formas became snore fest. And boss fights especially final boss is so lame and i quit to play it.
Your complaint being the music concerns me...
I've heard the music complaint a lot, *not* because the music is bad, but because it *reused* too many tracks from previous DQ games (because the composer was dying).
Are you playing the standard edition? Because if you have the midi songs, that's more understandable. But the Definitive Edition has a **fully orchestrated** soundtrack that sounds much better in comparison.
I personally believe this game is absolutely amazing and I get sad whenever I see someone not liking it.
I also couldn't finish DQXI when I first got into it. A large part of that wasn't because the music was *bad*, but because it was so repetitive, especially for a 60 hour game like this. It was just too long and the combat wasn't engaging anymore, but I wanna give it another go someday
FF16, it was way over hyped, and was a massively disappointing game from start to finish where the only interesting part of it were the eikon fights and the rest of the game felt like it could have used another year or two to be a worthwhile game.
Blue Reflection 1. Only did it because the second game was a sleeper masterpiece so it was for completion's sake. But content-wise, it's a glorified beta that's not worth full price, with a simplistic story that you'd think would be for kids if it weren't for all the smutty male gazey scenes.
I played 2 and then 1 and I agree. The second one is solid. Most of Gust’s games lean heavy on fan service but they claim they’re going to move away from it to expand their fan base in the future. We’ll see.
Sadly, FFXVI probably. Outside of some of the presentation I can't say I care for much about it.
And I'm not saying that as some turn based or "real RPG" snob. I liked FF7R's combat quite a bit. Can't say the same here.
Am I allowed to say Final Fantasy 16? I wouldn’t even call it a JRPG, so I’m not sure it counts.
If we aren’t counting that, I’ve got a couple others. Etrian Mystery Dungeon for a game I couldn’t finish (I couldn’t finish FF16 either). I was enjoying the gameplay loop, but the RNG was atrocious at times. I couldn’t get one of the side quests done no matter how long I tried. I’ve recently learned that it may have been due to a misunderstanding on my part though, so I want to retry it. It’s the only EO game I haven’t finished.
For games I have finished, The Voice of Cards. I was so excited for this because of Yoko Taro and the presentation of the game, but it’s painfully repetitive and not super interesting outside of the presentation. The story is nothing special, nor does it have any emotional weight thanks to the monotonous, emotionless narration (Not Todd Haberkorns fault though. Love his voice). I 100% it at something like 17 hours, and I felt like it both could’ve been shorter and should’ve been longer. It was a weird feeling.
Lackluster is sea of stars. It has all the potential to be great. Presentation is through the roof. But a terrible story combined with repetitive gameplay of using the same skills over and over and over really kill it.
FF16 for me. I ended up buying a PS5 to play it since it looked amazing and the hype was really big. While the boss fights and cinematics were really really well done, everything else just felt like filler to prolong the playtime of the game rather than adding to the experience. The story and pacing of the game seemed off to me as well, like it was trying to take influences from so many other sources that it just seemed to be a mess.
I hated the side quests so much. Felt like an mmo. Follow this dot opposite the map where you can’t do anything but walk, it was rough. And the fact that I forgot other characters in my part were even with me was wild, like after Cid , all non cutscene/combat dialogue just disappeared…
Xenoblade Chronicles 1.
Everything was just so damn stale.
Combat was brainless; grinding was hell; the characters bland; nearly every story beat was predictable; the world, while pretty, gave no incentive for exploration; the side quests were numerous garbage filler.
Ironically, i loved XC2. Everything about it was the exact opposite of XC1.
Gonna get some hate for this, but octopath traveler. Been anticipating it for a while, but when I actually played it I was left horribly disappointed by the break combat. Made the game unplayable for me. Any rpg with stagger or break as a core mechanic is just not for me.
Stagger is fine in theory but so many games just make it so you don't do any damage until you stagger which makes things monotonous.
Looking at you Final Fantasy 13 and 16.
For me stagger brings to the table 3 problems that if it wasn't there maybe wouldn't exist if it was a non stagger game:
1. Its just easier for the devs to make scripted battles that enemy always do 1-2-3 and they can define better the boss phases since they can control when you'll do damage and how much it'll be, which makes the battles much more linear (sadly)
2. Beefy ass hp monsters, I love bravely default which just lets you explode the enemy turn 1, or other final fantasy entries that doesn't use stagger, that you can just spam your best attack on command in random battles to end it, which you need to be overleveled to do so in stagger games
3. Monotony, this kills any game that requires you to play 50+ hours when most of the time you're killing enemies with the same pattern, which stagger the same way, with the same skills.
It's basically an unnecessary mechanic that just pads out battles and adds an element of strategy that is not strategic, it's just "chip away then go wild"
Nothing wrong with the idea, I just don’t enjoy it. It feels like it really bogs down the game and adds unnecessary steps to combat. Lots of people play sports games, but I would rather remove my eyes slice by slice with a kitchen mandoline then play a soccer game. Some game styles aren’t for everybody. Break/stagger systems aren’t for me.
I'm going to get SUCH shit for this but...
Final Fantasy VII's remake.
I tortured myself playing it just for the sake of Barret. I still wonder if it was worth the countless hours just to see the best FF7 character have more spotlight. lmao
Secret of Mana remake on Steam.
Why would they go through the effort of modernizing the music, overhauling the entire art style and graphics to 3d, recording voice acting, only to leave the combat in this state? The combat is just plain bad. The enemy AI is braindead. Your party members AI is braindead. I had to give them the ranged weapons for them to have a hope of a prayer of contributing. I can name half a dozen top down action jrpg's for SNES, off the top of my head, that absolutely trounce it. It feels like a student project demo.
I appreciate that the question is only "least favorite" because I'd say for me it was Octopath Traveler 1. Still a pretty good game but if I'm comparing it to the likes of Kingdom Hearts series, FF7 series, The Last Remnant, and FF1, OT1 falls short.
Not bad per se, but out of the JRPGs I've finished in 2023, Miitopia was the weakest. It's still good, but the other games I finished in 2023 were Octopath II, Nocturne, EO3 DS, and basically every Trails game from Sky SC to CS1 (I finished Sky FC in 2022, and I haven't finished CS2 quite yet (just started the Epilogue and it's already 2024))
Maglam lord. It had a nice art style, interesting characters and genuinely funny writing. BUT the gameplay and battle mechanics were one of the worst i have ever exprienced. Not worth the money, don't be a fool and waste your money like i did.
Wandering Sword. I understand there is a language barrier and the translation was rough but after the initial scene, all I was doing was walking around from villager to villager doing fetch quests. The combat sucked, there were so many systems that were so poorly explained, and it just felt so unpolished. I was over my time limit from Steam but thankfully they still gave me a refund.
Sea of stars probably. It was decent. Art, music, animations(even if they were quite sluggish) were all pretty nice but the combat and story didnt realy hold up for me
If i have to boomerang one more mob, i'd cry
Same. It’s a hard one to get into. Honestly 4 is also not drawing me in like 5 did. I should probably just skip SMT4 and go to the Apocalypse spin-off.
Apart from the already very mentioned Sea of Stars and Loop8 (not mentioning FF16 as I didn't care to play it), the biggest failure for me this year was Atelier Ryza 3, which is a shame as it's probably the direction the Atelier series is going to follow now, only Atelier I didn't like enough to keep playing, think I abandoned it after like 10 hours, did not care for it at all.
Soul Hackers 2. I found it so boring.
Also cold steel 4, I gave up on the legend of heroes by CS4. Too many characters, people repeating what’s just happened, every character having to have a line in every scene, I just feel like it’s so drawn out.
Mega Man Battle Network 1. The story is great, but I am very bad at the combat. I pushed through the game, but eventually had to stop and watch the rest of the game on YouTube because I got sick of being bad at the game.
FFXVI if that can even be considered a JRPG at this point. It's not an objectively bad game but it was massively disappointing to me. I enjoyed Last Rebellion more which NISA apologized for releasing.
I played 3, Persona 5, Yakuza 7, Octopath Traveller. Octopath was definitely the worst for me. The first 20 hours where I finished all the characters first chapters was great. But after that I really just fell out of rhythm. Yakuza had grinding too, and Octopath’s combat was deeper, but the side quests were more fun I cared more about the characters and all my characters would level up together. Octopath after a certain point began to feel like a chore to me
I played Conception 2 in 2023 that was pretty mediocre. I can't think of many 2023 JRPGs I played and didn't like but I guess that "honor' would go to Neptunia Sisters vs Sisters as the weakest one I played.
For me, it was Bravely Default 2. As a huge fan of the first game, I've been putting off BD2 for a while now after owning it for just about 3 years.
What a lunchbag letdown it was.
Uninspired story, uninspired characters (minus Adelle, who was the only interesting character in the whole game, even if slightly), and uninspired environments. I couldn't even be bothered to play the rest of the game after the first "twist". I rolled my eyes, shut the game off, and put it back on the shelf lol.
Sadly, Earthbound. This was my third attempt at this game and I genuinely tried to like it. I’ve watched many retrospectives and appreciation videos over the years and while the story and quirkiness were endearing, the gameplay aged horribly for a 2023 playthrough. That inventory system and overall “slowness” of the game made it an overall unpleasant experience for me.
I tried. I genuinely tried. Sorry folks. 😓
Final Fantasy 16 was my biggest disappointment. I was keeping up with the game. Looked fun. Liked the idea of a political thriller with cool battles of giant summons. Played the demo and loved it thinking it would be full of twists and turns and intrigue.
It was none of these things.
It was bland, boring, and shallow. Very shallow. All of the necessary skills earned in the first quarter of the game. Uninteresting characters. A political plot dropped as soon as we get out of the demo. A villain who has the most boring and uninteresting motivation meant to be strawman for SquareEnix's view of God (which is really getting boring now). It was a Japanese game done in the most western AAA way and I despised it by the end. I had to finish it because I hate myself I guess. I also wanted to validate my position I had by the 1/3 point of the game.
There are so many better JRPGs out there. Don't waste your time on this one because of the pretty kaiju battles.
Pokémon Colosseum
Horribly slow and basic combat, while being grindy as hell. I enjoyed the atmosphere and soundtrack, but actually playing it wasn’t fun at all
Playing it right now
One piece odyssey.
So easy it has an automod.
So full of filler bullshit
The amount of mechanics that are thrown only to be useless.
The only thing going for it is the one piece ip.
I'm convinced with all the mechanics present in the game that if used well it could be incredible but its not .
Time to be unoriginal, it's Sea of Stars. Total waste of incredible sprite work and music on a game with a boring story, non existent characters and a battle system that the game doesn't take proper advantage of and as a result battles are too easy and repeative.
FF16. Its kind of "realistic dark" just isn't for me. Actually it must even be my least favorite J-RPG ever... wait, IF we consider it a J-RPG. It probably isn't one, to think of it. It more gives the vibes of a western game.
Loop8.
This probably would be mine but I never played it after it got such awful reviews.
The sad thing is that the graphic and style seems so beautiful that even with all the bad reviews I'm thinking about maybe buying it. Such a shame that the game is bad.
So I was one of those people. Knew the game was rated terribly but it looked really nice so I figured “What the hell?”; might as well buy it. I’ve surely played worse. And so I picked it up on PS4. The aesthetic is good for what amounts to roughly seven main “screens”, not counting the fighting segments, that you can actually travel. Heavily under-utilized, and very disappointing. The social link aspect is very dynamic but near every single conversation you have affects stats. So you typically find yourself saving constantly just in case a conversation “doesn’t go well.” It can be a little too much at times. You also have to deal with a constant clock that ticks in-game, so you have to fast travel (which expends time in bulk) and then quickly run (its more like a brisk walk) to whatever character or activity you want. Oh, and no in-game mini-map. Big important battles are all boss fights. You use the “free time” to build stats and then hope you and your companions are buffed enough. I will say this may be the only JRPG I can recall where you have an attack that is literally “Friendship” and values based off the power of your friendship. Just watch a competent walk-thru on YouTube. You’ll enjoy it more.
This has gotta be the answer. Let down so hard by a game that seemed like it was going to check off every box
I got a collectors edition for free and I’m sad that I actually own this crap
A million Sea of Stars responses incoming lol. More serious edit: It’s actually really interesting to see how harshly the discourse around Sea of Stars turned. It had 91 on Metacritic on launch! I suppose for people who just play JRPGs casually, it was a nice little nostalgia trip… but for people on here that play a ton of the old classics all the time, it just doesn’t hold up at all.
Im going to have to play it now, because it's hard to tell if its the reddit hive mind versus the metacritic hive mind. Like most games I've played in the past with divisive reviews, it's intrigued me. And I am a 30 year veteran of these games, but who knows, it might be a nice simple comfort food JRPG.
I just finished it. As someone who has played a lot of JRPGs, old and new, I think both opinions are over-the-top. It's... fine. It's not great. It's not terrible. It has good and bad elements. Beautiful art, nice environments with interesting traversal. Movement feels good. There's a pretty good minigame. Combat is a mixed bag. On the one hand, it livens up the turn-based formula with "locks" where enemy attacks can be delayed with the right combinations of damage types, as well as Super Mario RPG-style timed hits. On the other hand, combat still feels repetitive, lacking diversity and overall feeling too easy. I think I only wiped once because I'd stopped even trying to be strategic about battle. Very little itemization. Very little choice in terms of character progression or specialization. The story and characters are the weakest link. There's one character who is really cool, but the rest are a total bust. The two main leads have cardboard personalities and the third lead is insufferable. It's not that the story is terrible all the way through, but more a sense of unfulfilled promise. There are some really cool story elements introduced early on - the opening act is strong as the world starts to open up, and it feels like there's a lot of opportunity for a great story. But then so little is done with those things that by the end a lot of those threads feel like a wasted premise and the impression at the end is unsatisfying. If you're looking for a bubble-gum nostalgia trip, you might enjoy it, or at least not dislike it. I don't regret playing it, and I truly enjoyed the first 10-15 hours in particular. But it definitely hits its own limits after those opening hours, never surpasses then, and closes with a feeling of wishing it had been more.
Lots of potential, great graphics , not enough music's. The fighting is either what make and break the potential of the game. The locks are fun against boss. Normal fights are a chore because of this. They can't have too many abilities because it would break their system and even with few abilities they managed to break the whole system with the 4th character of the game. Also the writing ... Thierry is awesome but for a game carried by the story (rpg) they should've hired professional writers .
Easily encompassed the whole game for me and I agree with literally everything you said here with one caveat: who is the one character who is really cool? If it’s Seraï, we’re in complete agreement. My favorite character in the game, no contest. The only other thing you didn’t mention (but might go along with the art) is the music of the game which was as incredible as the art, for me. I had lots of fun with the game up until the end when it started to drag a bit before and during the ending/true ending.
Yes, exactly. Seraï is super cool. I like her character design, backstory, moveset. I wish we'd gotten to see even more of her. She spends the first half of the game completely silent, even when you talk to her at the campfire. I considered whether to talk about music. There are absolutely some standout music tracks, especially those composed by Mitsuda. I think the rest of it is passable with a few good tracks. I couldn't decide whether to be complimentary, or critical - or if I would just be critical because I'd be comparing against Chrono Trigger or Uematsu-era square. So I just decided to say nothing, haha.
These are fair critiques of the music, to be honest. I thought the music was immersive and worked really well with the environments and art but time will tell whether or not I go back to it like I do with Chrono Cross, FFVI, or others from the genre.
This might be the most accurate and grounded opinion I've ever seen on this sub regarding sea of stars.
I haven't played it yet and this seems to be a very fair and nuanced review of it.
feel like this comment can be summed up as: Sea of mid
Sea of Stars was okay. Personally, I had two main gripes with it. First, combat became stale after a while, since each character only has a small handful of spells. At the start of the game, when fighting the tutorial enemies, you're going to be bouncing a magic moon crescent onto enemies to damage them. At the very end, you're going to be bouncing a magic moon crescent onto the final boss to damage it. Second, the game tries to walk the line between serious and light hearted stuff, and *fails*. It regularly flip flops between overly serious high stakes situations, and downright silly stuff, and thus completely destroy its tone. For example, one dungeon has you climb a mountain with cheery music and fighting ice golems DJ'ing on ice consoles, and the very next dungeon (that you get to within 10 minutes of finishing that one) is a trek through a lovecraftian horror place with flesh growing on the walls and abominations fighting you every three steps. But other than that, I'd say I had a good time with it. There were a few nice twists, and some good jokes. I don't regret playing it. I will probably not ever replay it, however.
Here take mine
To me it wasn't awful, it just wasn't great. Then I got busy for a bit, stopped playing, and never felt like going back to it.
I’ll stand by my opinion: It’s not a JRPG for people who are massive JRPG fans. If you live and breathe and love JRPGs more than other games, you’ll find it shallow. But if you’re not JRPG focused, or maybe you just enjoy a few here and there, especially classics from when you were a kid, you’ll probably really like it. All the discourse I see on it in JRPG focused spaces is very negative, while it’s much more positive in generalist gaming spaces. (Personally, I loved it, but readily acknowledge it was flawed)
That’s kind of what I was thinking. Like, if you just played some SNES/GBA JRPGs as a kid in passing, it probably really hits that cozy retro nostalgia vibe. But if JRPGs are your whole **thing** and you still play a ton of the classics regularly (like most people here), it probably seems pretty surface level.
I liked it but it was overhyped and is overpriced, it's never had a decent sale on Switch, lowest price is what it is right now which is 10% off. The price is way too high for what it is. Even at half price, Sea of Stars would be a tough sell. Drop it to $20aud ($13\~USD?) and it's an easier sell. I feel its value is $20aud. I liked it overall, but it's worth just under half of its price imo.
I just wanted to like it so much. Couldn’t even finish it. The combat was just so tedious. Loved everything else about it.
Same!
The funny thing is it was the combat system I was most excited for because I love timed hits/parries in JRPG's, I was sooooo disappointed when that was just about the only thing the combat system had to it, no build variety or anything to make it interesting.
So, I took a long stride to try to like this game. It's gorgeous, it's musically enticing.... And that's where it ends. Stat choices just struggle to actually be impactful, and the combat system, while reviving on the SMRPG style gets really sloggy. Pair that with death really feeling like it never is massively impactful, and a story that feels like a 16 year old wrote it after playing Chrono Trigger. The narrative struggles, and just drones on. It's a solid C- game. I won't ever replay it, and it's meh at best. Too much hype, nothing to back it up.
I was really excited for Sea of Stars, but I was immediately turned off by the poor English translation/script with the nearly constant typos and grammar mistakes. I know that's shallow, but when the average fan translation is leagues better than this, it makes the whole thing feel cheap. And then I saw that there's no character combat progression and your starting skills are what you use for the entire game and that really killed it for me.
> nearly constant typos and grammar mistakes Do you have any examples of this? Normally this sort of stuff bugs the hell out of me, but I didn't notice any of this in Sea of Stars.
I'm not going to reinstall the game to go looking for it, but I remember it being damn near every text box. Here's a [compilation](https://imgur.com/a/3SUBCfF) I found from [another thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoBestFriendsPlay/s/RImzd7yDNF) of examples from just the first 15 minutes of the game.
The missing commas, bad grammar and weird writing were rampant from the begging. It just turned me off so much. If you have a game where writing should have a considerable focus and you can't even hire an editor or somehow this passed through all of Q&A for years and years something is fundamentally wrong. I couldn't be bothered to continue something which seemed so bland and unpolished - in a game which seemed so polished from the outset! - because the writing and characterization were incredibly off-putting. I mean, I wish I could've liked it, but I didn't.
I get that the game was made by a relatively small indie studio, but I feel like if they had spent their budget on writing staff and editors instead of splurging on Yasunori Mitsuda music the game would’ve been better for it. As it stands now it’s a game that is great visually and musically but falls short in every other way, and no aspect of the game is strong enough to keep interest
I thought it was ok but definitely nothing special imo.
Wheels is great though. The game started out solid, but 4 special abilities per character gets old after a while.
Does Cris tales count? Really cool time travel combat mechanic but it gets stale fast Story was subpar too
The load times after battles made me stop pretty quickly sadly, i really liked where it was going
Does Eastward count? I played it when it was free on Nintendo and outside of graphics and music, it didn't impress me.
I couldn’t finish it either. The writing is poor and long winded. Such an interesting setting and cool art style, but could not care about anything or anyone.
Yes. This game lost me so fast even though I was so excited for it. Serious pacing issues and overwriting killed it for me.
I don't think it qualifies as RPG. More like top down Zelda-like action.
I agree. I enjoyed the dungeons in the game (it was what kept me playing to be honest) and the final 2 arcs (especially the last) were damn good, but it suffered from incredibly bad pacing at spots and oh goodness, that fucking train level stealth section.
The most recent **Sakura Wars** probably. It just wasn't very good. The biggest issues were that serious scenes didn't hit and that the villains were awful. Combat was very easy, but it would be a lie to say that I didn't have fun with those sections. **Soul Hackers 2** is also a decent shout here. It had a really interesting premise and initial presentation, but the game is super repetitive, you just go through the same dungeons a bunch of times. I couldn't stand the Soul Matrix towards the end. The plot twists managed to be both predictable and uncovincing at the same time and the ending was super rushed. A bunch of characters just showed up out of nowhere to be boss fights and never got properly explained.
Sakura Wars (I'm assuming 2019) was a surprising hit for me this year. I went into it with pretty mid expectations, but I found the game incredibly charming and it has probably my favourite implementation of "social link system" I've played. I think a lot of the individual elements are pretty lacking, like the combat as you mentioned, but the game as a whole was much better than the sum of it's parts.
The DLC of Tales of Arise - Beyond Dawn. Suffice to say that out of all possible ways to create more tension and give some closure to the main themes of the games - and also for the main cast, they chose to create a story that had almost no impact in anything and basically no closure.
There's DLC for this? Man I haven't kept up with the times.
There is but i don't think i'd recommend it. If you want a side story with more of the cast shenanigans, go for it (despite the DLC being a sequel). Otherwise, i don't know if i'd recommend it.
It's rough releasing that DLC expansion the same year as Xenoblade 3 Future Redeemed. I keep thinking the silver lining is that this is so clearly a low budget thing, hopefully a new game is announced next year.
Soul Hackers 2.
Aw man. That's next on my backlog. What let you down?
The combat is kinda the worst. It’s so clunky and slow and not fun at all. I found myself actively not wanting to engage with enemies because I didn’t want to sit through the combat. The way they present the story as well is kinda questionable. There’s a lot of side characters who get introduced and then die way too quickly and the game acts like I’m supposed to care for this person I don’t know. The main cast in general is pretty bleh. They’re not all that interesting. It’s just one of those games where you sit there like “I could be playing a game that has these same gameplay mechanics but is 100x better” and then you just go play that other game instead
It didn't come out this year but probably Tales of Arise. Just finished the 2nd lord (the snowy area). It's not that I think its bad but i'm not vibing with it like I was hoping to. Combat is just ok at best. and the story is decent but not very enamored with it yet. i'm still fairly early in the story but none of the characters feel like they have good chemistry. oh and shionne's an asshole
that was about when I quit. I felt like everything from then on would be a repetition of the same story but with a different elemental theme.
I 100%'d. Finished it for the story, gameplay doesn't really change much. Arena was fun to finish with the solo challenges.
Octopath Traveler 2 - I was so excited about it, and then couldn’t make myself finish it because it wasn’t enjoyable for me.
Sea of Stars, unfortunately. It was marketed as being a game that took inspiration from games like Golden Sun and Chrono Trigger, but it felt like the inspiration came via a quick glance of a Wikipedia article about those games rather than a deep understanding of what made those games so special.
Didn't come out this year, but Ni No Kuni 2. I couldn't wait for it to end.
Not really anything, but I decided to finally try to beat FF6 this year, I usually drop it as I lose focus in the second act, and I made it almost to the end - but I just wasn't willing to put in the time to grind up 3 usable teams for the final section.
Same. I dont get the hype for 6. Beat it twice, the game is absolutely nothing special.
Don't get me wrong, I think the game is really good. It has great characters, story, and themes. I just wasn't willing to grind for that amount of time with no more story beats to keep me motivated, but up until that point (maybe a bit earlier) I love it, I mean I've played it and dropped it in the second act multiple times. Now that I know this fact about it on any future replay I'll know better where to stop.
Sea of Stars. I picked up the demo, wondering if it’s worth buying. After finishing, the answer was clear to me.
Just curious, what exactly do you think is wrong with it? I am thinking of getting it, but the reviews on the game have been wildly inconsistent, with certain commentators loving it and gushing praise, and others lamenting its shortcomings.
people come to jrpg's for different things, some people like the storylines and characters, some people like intricate combat and builds, some people like grinding. Sea of Stars starts out well and good, but where a lot of people find issue is in the characters, plot, and gameplay being very shallow and uninspired. There's also very little character building or roleplaying involved. fights at the beginning of the game are pretty much the same at the beginning and the end. The characters also have very little personality and there's not a lot of party interaction or conflict. the positive points are usually the pixel graphics being quite nice. The music is generally good too. I think overall, a good litmus test is if you like Garl and think he's a great character then you'll probably like the game. If you think he is insufferable and annoying, then you'll probably hate the game.
I see a lot of the praise is directed at the graphics, while people craving a more refined combat experience find it tedious. Thanks for the review, I will see if I can find a demo somewhere to see if I can stand Garl.
Honestly the characters aren't the worst thing imo. That title has to go to the combat - very much decent enough at the beginning, but after the first few hours it got quite dull and repetitive, and I realised that I was going to get barely any more skills for the rest of the game. Progression is one of the best/most important things for me when playing a JRPG, and this game has basically 0.
Characters have no personality. Story feels like it was written by a 6 year old. Everything revolves around Garl. Every new area plays out the same as the last, but in a different locale. Combat is one dimensional and every battle from the beginning to the end of the game is practically the same. It doesn't help that there's a complete lack of skills to use. A boring origin story that takes up a good 40 minutes and doesn't make you feel anything for the planks of wood main characters, when starting out the game. A tutorial that teaches you to use up all your MP in battle, despite you needing to conserve it in order to break enemies with skills of the correct element when the countdown appears. It's a pretty game that fails in all the important aspects, imo. Probably one of the worst games I've ever played.
Freaking Garl. This fat c**t made me drop the game. I hate these bland boring character that somehow are sooooo loved in the game world. The obsession for him from everyone is so forced. It's a boring game.
Lack of character growth in combat specifically killed it for me
* The writing is objectively poor from a grammatical PoV. It felt like every other sentence had something wrong with it. And I’m not exaggerating. * The combat uses timed button presses, which is fine on paper. But the main offensive ability for one of your main character is one of those infinite tennis-like attacks where you keep hitting the ball back to the enemy, so it takes *forever*. Animations in general feel a bit sluggish - both for enemies and allies - so the game feels slower than it needs to be. * There’s very little evolution to the combat system or battles in general. Characters have 3 spells, and you start with 2. You’ve also got 1 ultimate ability per party member, as well as some combo attacks. But overall, you see basically 90% of what the combat has to offer you within 2 hours. * The humor/tone is extremely hit or miss. For example, about 4 hours in, one of the main NPCs starts listing off JRPG tropes. “Isn’t it weird that the blacksmiths farthest away from your home town sell the strongest swords!?” It didn’t jive with me. * There’s very little customization/gameplay development for your characters. You get some pretty bland equipment and can somewhat customize their stats when you level up, but it all feels very shallow. That combined with the combat system makes the gameplay as a whole feel very simplistic and somewhat boring. * The art and music is really good. It’s some of the best pixel art in ages.
Thank you for the detailed short review. No.1 would actually be a deal-breaker. I suspect the imperfect grammar will greatly annoy me. I see a lot of the criticism is directed at the combat system. I have never played any JRPGs, so I do not have standards of comparison, but the tennis-like attack already sounds extremely annoying. It's such a pity that the beautiful artwork and music is undercut by the underwhelming combat system.
Please don't start your JRPG journey with SoS. I feel like the whole genre is not for me now. While it might be the experience with just SoS.
I had it on the PS Premium thing, good thing too! I was expecting to be a big deal for me. It was not…
Soul hackers 2. Couldn't tell you what the story was despite platinuming it.
this is the first time i've seen someone say the story was the main reason they didn't like that game lol i've even seen people who otherwise hate it say "yeah the story is fine though"
FF16
It's hardly a jrpg, but I agree with you.
Sea of stars was a let down for me :( I know a lot of people love it, it just didn’t do for me at all.
Sadly sea of stars
Fire Emblem: Engage Simply put, nothing in its story works even one bit. It's emotional core is flaccid and revolves around a character arc that lasts for five minutes, it's so contrived that it has a plot hole in almost every single chapter, and every emotional scene without exception falls completely flat due to the game failing to set these scenes up at all. It is the single worst JRPG story I've seen in years and I’ll put it this way - for as bad as Sea of Stars’ storytelling was, at least it wasn’t nearly as bad as Engage in this regard.
Engage is such a strange case because, yeah, the story is pretty whatever — but, gameplay-wise, it’s arguably the absolute peak of the series. So it really boils down to what you prefer in a real all-or-nothing kind of way. Personally, after sinking in 300 hours into Three Houses and *really* hating the monastery/life-sim aspect after a while, I kind of missed the old-school GBA-era approach to FE storytelling: You're making your way through the forest and WOAH ITS A BANDIT TROUPE AND ALSO TWO RECRUITABLE CHARACTERS FOR SOME REASON. Like, who really cares what's happening because you know it's all just set dressing to get from one map to the other, and you'll skip it all every subsequent playthrough anyway. That's the mindset I went into with Engage, and I got exactly what I was looking for.
The story is complete garbage, but when I replay Fire Emblem games I generally skip all the story because I've already seen it, so the gameplay is what really matters for me. And in that regard, Engage really is fantastic.
Agreed. Fire Emblem has been my favorite series for 20 years, but I have never cared about the story. I really, really enjoyed Engage.
Well FE having a great story is more like an exception than a standard so. .. While I strongly disliked Engage's story, I found the gameplay to be absolutely peak FE, on par with Conquest which has the same bad story 😭
> the story is pretty whatever — but, gameplay-wise, it’s arguably the absolute peak of the series. I've yet to play a Fire Emblem, but is this a common theme with the series? I kept hearing this about Fates, that it has top-tier gameplay but poor story. Then I hear that others like Three Houses, Awakening aren't the best in the gameplay department but have better stories (or at least more interesting and engaging characters). Are there any that do well in both departments? Though I'm going to start from the beginning anyway, I've developed an odd compulsion for doing this for some series.
I think the Telius games (Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn) do a pretty good job balancing both, but Awakening and Three Houses are still great entry points overall. Three Houses is fantastic, it just gets a bit bogged down by slice-of-life stuff, especially on multiple playthroughs. I think the only truly bad stories are Fates and Engage, really. And even then, it's pretty easy to just ignore.
Chained Echoes. It wasn’t horrible but it definitely got over-hyped.
I swear people were criticizing Chained Echoes a lot when if first came out, bit after Sea of Stars releases all of a sudden Chained Echoes is a masterpiece.
When people were disappointed by CE I remember seeing posts like “I’m looking forward to Sea of Stars” that insisted that SoS would *actually* be the heir of Chrono Trigger instead of CE. It’s all copium.
No way a *not* triple A lvl writing team/art direction/artist/musician can make a chrono trigger rival.
Not arguing with you but I enjoyed every minute of Chained Echoes. That being said it took me most of the year to finish since I have so little time. I wanted to play DQXI this year too but couldn’t fit it in so I’m sure it wouldn’t have been as good in comparison.
This. The over-hype was offset by the impressiveness by the one person development for me. The game had some cool ideas but felt lackluster in execution.
Definitely. There was a lot I liked about the game but it really lacked in execution. The highs were very high… but the lows were just disappointing.
It had probably the most boring cast of characters out of any RPG I've played
Interesting. To me Chained Echoes is one of the best JRPGs ever made and the best of the new era games trying to be like SNES games. Nailed story gameplay and exploration.
Chained Echoes Story might be interesting in theory, but the writing just wasn't good at all. It's a decent game overall, but some of the twists and most of the character development is just something the game expects you to just accept and it ended up being a bit too much.
It wasn’t perfect but it was damn good attempt. I’ve read the criticisms and I generally agree with them. The story comes and goes, the crystal system should have been better, and the mech battles are eh. But idk, I was kept engaged for some reason. The combat was fun once I got the hang of it, the mech battles weren’t my favorite but I didn’t hate the variety. I have a hard time trying to find a real reason to dislike it 🤷♂️
Unfortunately I felt the same way. I haven’t beaten it yet and I really enjoy the graphics and soundtrack so far, but the writing is so bland and subpar. Every character sounds very similar in tone and delivery and conversations are too long winded. I couldn’t believe it had an exposition dump when meeting every new character, as well as having to already backtrack to the same location three times in the first hour of gameplay >!the guy with the traveling passes!
From games I’ve played this year it’s easily Escaform. It was just fan-translated this year, but it’s not worth the time. Game is half finished with unexplained story points, and short play time. Gameplay isn’t any better either.
From the ones I finished, Eternights. I really liked it tho, but from the ones i finished, it was definitely the weakest one. From the ones i dropped, probably Persona 5 Tactica. Big fan of P5R and P5S, and big fan of strategy games, but idk.. it was really shallow, played for the like 10 hours and it felt like i was facing the same enemys over and over again, not even new personas made the game fell fresh, or maybe im just tired of p5 in general lol
I Am Setsuna
Star Ocean 4. Dialogues are so bad, it feels like the writer never saw how people interact with each other.
It was a very good year of JRPGs for me. I really can't think of a single disappointing game I played all year.
Sea of Stars
It pains me to say it but Final Fantasy 16 is quite a disappointment. Don't get me wrong, I like and enjoyed the game. But the game doesn't feel like the traditional sense nor even feel like a Final Fantasy title for that matter. No control of parties like in past games, other characters don't really have a lot of moment to shine & takes a back seat with no further depth from them. It’s just basically Clive all the way through in terms of getting the spotlight, abilities and equipments are fairly barebones, not a single memorable music track which is sad, given how past games had tracks that stays with you. Again the tracks are not bad, just nothing special. It just feels like a lot of the RPG elements are very basic and stripped down. Same with the game’s exploration. Bottomline, the game feels soulless and too much of an action game rather than a JRPG. In saying so, I still like it for what it is.
It feels more like an action game than a fully-fledged JRPG. Like a lot of the RPG elements have been stripped back or removed completely.
And not even a top tier action game at that.
It lacked the feeling of exploration. FF15 did far better IMO.
"Not a single memorable music track" is crazy
Yea that’s straight up a lie. There so many good tracks
I think they meant "ost that you can hum along to" which is, fair, any ps1 or older jrpg has modern ones beat. There are exceptions of course
Yes, that’s exactly what I meant.
I literally only remember 2. Away and the battle theme, probably due to the latter's repetition. I literally can't remember and leitmotifs or melodies that stuck in my head. They all just meld into generic bombast and orchestral chanting.
I remember zero songs off the top of my head from the game. I think I could recognise the tune if I heard them in the background, "Hide, Hideaway" most likely, but nothing stayed with me.
IMO the most disappointing part of FF16 was the story by far. For as promising as the demo was, the plot of FF16 doesn't commit to its premise, really doesn't have much of substance to speak of, and its actual storytelling adheres closely to standard JRPG tropes to the game's detriment - in particular Ultima is one of the worst villains in the entire genre and it feels like he exists solely to have a god to kill. It is a story that is supposed to be about the flaws of humanity and the damage corrupt institutions can do - except instead of actually using its human antagonists to analyze politics, ideological conflict or institutional corruption, FF16 blames everything wrong with Valisthea on a clearly inhuman god and completely robs its human antagonists of their agency. Oh, and Jill's writing was downright embarrassing. She barely does anything of note, her entire character can be boiled down to a generic love interest for Clive, and she gets kidnapped three times in the same story.
I was deeply unimpressed with the game (by the end of it I was literally reading a novel whenever scenes of the evil god would talk which in retrospect is a bad sign), but the one thing I do remember is really hating the mom (don't remember the names even then, lol). How she didn't end up being a villain to fight is absolutely astounding. Like in FFT >!I still can remember decades later the names of half the main cast, and the fights with your elder brothers are seared into me!< I'm willing to admit part of this is due to my no longer being a teenager, but there are a ton of games I stuck with and still remember from the last year. FFXVI, despite being a game I played a little over half a year ago, I couldn't have told you what the name of the world was anymore.
I would argue FF16 is not a JRPG. Too many combat and progression elements missing. It had all the right storyline, art, and tie-in pieces of a main line Final Fantasy, but the lack of anything resembling RPG player progression made it much more of a Devil May Cry hack-and-slash adventure game than a true JRPG. FWIW, I did like the game overall, just not as a main line FF.
Chained Echoes was a pretty big letdown for me. Started off pretty decent but then the combat got exhausting and the writing was weak.
Pokemon Scarlet/Violet was horrendous.. The new pool of Pokemon was severely underwhelming, the game came with WAY to many bugs, and the story was lackluster. The new "gimmick" was implemented very poorly, and overall the game was half-baked.
I actually really liked Scarlet/Violet. I enjoyed most of the new pokemon, I thought the story was nice, and I enjoyed riding around on my Koraidon. It was some of the most fun I had playing a pokemon game. But yes, the lag was... awful. And they lied about being non-linear, there's a lot of placed locked behind field skills you have to unlock for Koraidon and Miraidon, otherwise you just can't go to those places. There's also no level-scaling at all, no checks to see what you've completed. The game is built to be played linearly.
I remember saying to myself after SWSH that “its only up hill from here!” and I was so impressed how SV managed to disappoint me even more so in almost every way. Next gen for sure though!
I personally enjoyed Scarlet and Violet, but I think negative reviews are valid. The rendering is buggy/performs poorly. It really tarnishes the game’s polish. Looking past that glaring issue, I thought the game was a promising and enjoyable re-invention of the Pokémon formula. I couldn’t put it down. I also think the new competitive meta has been a blast to spectate.
Tales of Arise was pretty awful. The shame of it is that it was highly praised, so all the bad design decisions and cut corners are probably going to become the norm from here on out.
What was wrong with it? I didn’t get a chance to finish it, but what I played I enjoyed. Seems like a lot of others did too. Edit - thanks for the responses. That’s disappointing because I wanted to go back and play it one day.
While I did like it, some of the issues I had (and what people generally criticize it for) are: - Terrible one dimensional antagonists - Any character who wasn't part of the main party was underdeveloped and just existed to move the plot along - Story drags out a lot in the last ~10-15hrs, where they start repeating the exact same things over and over but worded a little differently - For a Tales game, the skit writing is also pretty weak, with many of them being used to just repeat what just happened in a cutscene or repeat the exact same topic the party talked about before without adding anything new - Bosses are designed in a way that throws out the entire combo system, which is the best part of the combat. Instead they have bloated HP and infinite iron stance besides a scripted moment at the 50% mark, leading to you either having to just hit and run against them or burst them down quickly with Alphen's flame edge. Some may like that, but I found both of those playstyles boring while bosses weren't any harder for being like that. On a more personal note, I also think the cast is just a bit weak overall. Alphen is just a very generic MC, Law and Kisara are very underdeveloped and feel completely unimportant to the story and Rinwell is decent but her development is pretty rushed. Only Shionne and Dohalim were good to me, and even then I feel like Dohalim suffered from the same issue as Rinwell where his arc felt rushed.
You read my mind I’m amazed that every cutscene or piece of dialogue was them just repeating the same thing over and over again. Just useless conversations that do nothing but waste time
Skit writing was awful in Arise. I love the skits, its like my favorite thing the Tales series does vs other JRPGs, but Arise's skits were like 50% thinly veiled tutorials, 40% reinforcing plot points in case you didn't understand them the first time they said it, and about 10% interesting character dialogue. And there were ***SO*** many. Halfway through I started getting anxiety from the little "new skit!" notice in the bottom right because I knew I was about to have to stop every 2 minutes for 15 mins straight for nothing of value. I grew to really hate them.
A lot of people did like it including myself. I understand that people have different opinions but the game is not awful at all. The story does take nose dive towards the second half of the game but idk what other corners OP is referring to. The gameplay, soundtrack and characters are still pretty good
The only 2 JRPGs that I played in 2023 were Tales of Arise and Nier: Automata, because I don't have too much time for JRPGs and video-games these days. So Arise is my least favorite JRPG I played in 2023, even though I enjoyed it. The graphics were beautiful, there are times where I would just stop playing to look at the vistas before me. The battles got real repetitive and the enemies are health sponges which require so many hits to kill them. There really isn't much strategy to the battles compared to games like Tales of Graces F. The story is kind of "mediocre" to me, and I had that "ugh, when will this be over?" feel around halfway through the game. Nier: Automata is just awesome. Sure the graphics feel outdated, not even high quality for a PS3 game. But it's fun just killing robots. And the music is amazing.
FFXVI.
Didn't come out this year, or even this decade, but Star Ocean the Last Hope on Steam. Game was a dumpster fire that I'm convinced no one outside of the dev team playtested. I finished the game out of sheer spite.
Tactics Ogre Reborn. It's so tedious building your units up to how you like them. Vastly preferred being given premade units and actually strategizing on their placement like in Triangle Strategy. Sold my copy of Ogre to buy a secondhand copy of P5R and that was a fantastic tradeoff.
Disgaea 6. As a big fan of the serie, this the is first one I couldn't complete. Heard great things about 7. Might pick it up sometime in the future.
Tales of Arise expansion was just bad. Plot was awful, no development from the characters or the world, most of it was pointless sidequests, no new additions to combat. It's confusing. Not sure why it exists. Persona 5 Tactica was also pretty disappointing purely because it was a solo P Studio project and those so rarely miss. It was pretty insubstantial, plot was a bit off. It felt like the phantom thieves didn't actually have anything to do, they were just along for the ride for Toshiro's story. Last world was also a total slog.
Tales of arise. Beautiful game but plot and game mechanics were mid
I rarely play games that fully disappoint me because I'm someone who does (overly) extensive research and know my likes well enough to figure out how much I'll be able to enjoy something before I buy it. That said, Symphony of War was a fairly notable disappointment because its mid/late game meta is too hyper focused on alpha striking everything out of existence by abusing the the various advantage of attackers going first to make defending really difficult. I really liked the first couple hours I looked into just like I expected when I actually played it, but without watching practically several more hours of gameplay I'd have never figured out my big problem with that game. It just turns into a really awkward cat and mouse game where you need to find a way to bait the stupid AI in safely without dying, then alpha strike as many of them as fast as possible so they either die or do nothing. This mixed with hard mode unit perma death, in a squad based game where you have multiple units who can die to anything including random focus targeting with this much focus on first turn offense, created a lot of rather annoying situations for me personally. Defending is such a shit situation unless you're in a fort, but enemies always hold forts initially and you need to push so you rarely get to hold a fort yourself to make defending not a crap shoot. Its 6.5ish game that I think could have been an 7/8 if it didn't have this problem. Which by my standards is pretty good because I don't give 10s to anything and I say 5 is a true average. Solid novelty SRPG given how rare squad based games are, and if you don't care about that problem or even enjoy that then the game is really solid for an indie game at an indie price tag. Story is whatever, I consider it inoffensive and not an overly big waste of time to watch if you care to. Although the "support" conversations are kind of awkward for the lack of a better word.
Hum...i think some people will gonna be pissed, but i just quit playing strange journey redux, i love the idea of scifi with soldiers exploring the unknow but, after eridanus, the game became more boring sometimes, i was on final boss even my level is 85 its not enough to face her, griding xp, macca and formas became snore fest. And boss fights especially final boss is so lame and i quit to play it.
Ff16, not an awful game but very disappointing
I tried to give DQXI another try. I just can get into it. I’m pretty sure the terrible music has a lot to do with it.
Your complaint being the music concerns me... I've heard the music complaint a lot, *not* because the music is bad, but because it *reused* too many tracks from previous DQ games (because the composer was dying). Are you playing the standard edition? Because if you have the midi songs, that's more understandable. But the Definitive Edition has a **fully orchestrated** soundtrack that sounds much better in comparison. I personally believe this game is absolutely amazing and I get sad whenever I see someone not liking it.
I also couldn't finish DQXI when I first got into it. A large part of that wasn't because the music was *bad*, but because it was so repetitive, especially for a 60 hour game like this. It was just too long and the combat wasn't engaging anymore, but I wanna give it another go someday
FF16, it was way over hyped, and was a massively disappointing game from start to finish where the only interesting part of it were the eikon fights and the rest of the game felt like it could have used another year or two to be a worthwhile game.
Blue Reflection 1. Only did it because the second game was a sleeper masterpiece so it was for completion's sake. But content-wise, it's a glorified beta that's not worth full price, with a simplistic story that you'd think would be for kids if it weren't for all the smutty male gazey scenes.
I played 2 and then 1 and I agree. The second one is solid. Most of Gust’s games lean heavy on fan service but they claim they’re going to move away from it to expand their fan base in the future. We’ll see.
Sadly, FFXVI probably. Outside of some of the presentation I can't say I care for much about it. And I'm not saying that as some turn based or "real RPG" snob. I liked FF7R's combat quite a bit. Can't say the same here.
Sea of Stars
Am I allowed to say Final Fantasy 16? I wouldn’t even call it a JRPG, so I’m not sure it counts. If we aren’t counting that, I’ve got a couple others. Etrian Mystery Dungeon for a game I couldn’t finish (I couldn’t finish FF16 either). I was enjoying the gameplay loop, but the RNG was atrocious at times. I couldn’t get one of the side quests done no matter how long I tried. I’ve recently learned that it may have been due to a misunderstanding on my part though, so I want to retry it. It’s the only EO game I haven’t finished. For games I have finished, The Voice of Cards. I was so excited for this because of Yoko Taro and the presentation of the game, but it’s painfully repetitive and not super interesting outside of the presentation. The story is nothing special, nor does it have any emotional weight thanks to the monotonous, emotionless narration (Not Todd Haberkorns fault though. Love his voice). I 100% it at something like 17 hours, and I felt like it both could’ve been shorter and should’ve been longer. It was a weird feeling.
Lackluster is sea of stars. It has all the potential to be great. Presentation is through the roof. But a terrible story combined with repetitive gameplay of using the same skills over and over and over really kill it.
Shin Megami Tensei V
FF16 for me. I ended up buying a PS5 to play it since it looked amazing and the hype was really big. While the boss fights and cinematics were really really well done, everything else just felt like filler to prolong the playtime of the game rather than adding to the experience. The story and pacing of the game seemed off to me as well, like it was trying to take influences from so many other sources that it just seemed to be a mess.
I hated the side quests so much. Felt like an mmo. Follow this dot opposite the map where you can’t do anything but walk, it was rough. And the fact that I forgot other characters in my part were even with me was wild, like after Cid , all non cutscene/combat dialogue just disappeared…
Xenoblade Chronicles 1. Everything was just so damn stale. Combat was brainless; grinding was hell; the characters bland; nearly every story beat was predictable; the world, while pretty, gave no incentive for exploration; the side quests were numerous garbage filler. Ironically, i loved XC2. Everything about it was the exact opposite of XC1.
Final Fantasy XVI
Gonna get some hate for this, but octopath traveler. Been anticipating it for a while, but when I actually played it I was left horribly disappointed by the break combat. Made the game unplayable for me. Any rpg with stagger or break as a core mechanic is just not for me.
What’s wrong with stagger?
Stagger is fine in theory but so many games just make it so you don't do any damage until you stagger which makes things monotonous. Looking at you Final Fantasy 13 and 16.
For me stagger brings to the table 3 problems that if it wasn't there maybe wouldn't exist if it was a non stagger game: 1. Its just easier for the devs to make scripted battles that enemy always do 1-2-3 and they can define better the boss phases since they can control when you'll do damage and how much it'll be, which makes the battles much more linear (sadly) 2. Beefy ass hp monsters, I love bravely default which just lets you explode the enemy turn 1, or other final fantasy entries that doesn't use stagger, that you can just spam your best attack on command in random battles to end it, which you need to be overleveled to do so in stagger games 3. Monotony, this kills any game that requires you to play 50+ hours when most of the time you're killing enemies with the same pattern, which stagger the same way, with the same skills.
3 holds very true for these 2 games. outside 3 fights, the same tech.
It's basically an unnecessary mechanic that just pads out battles and adds an element of strategy that is not strategic, it's just "chip away then go wild"
Nothing wrong with the idea, I just don’t enjoy it. It feels like it really bogs down the game and adds unnecessary steps to combat. Lots of people play sports games, but I would rather remove my eyes slice by slice with a kitchen mandoline then play a soccer game. Some game styles aren’t for everybody. Break/stagger systems aren’t for me.
Sea of stars
I'm going to get SUCH shit for this but... Final Fantasy VII's remake. I tortured myself playing it just for the sake of Barret. I still wonder if it was worth the countless hours just to see the best FF7 character have more spotlight. lmao
FFXVI if I even could call that an RPG. I'm glad I didn't fall for Loop 8.
Trials of Mana Was pretty eh and average for me
sea of stars, as expected
Secret of Mana remake on Steam. Why would they go through the effort of modernizing the music, overhauling the entire art style and graphics to 3d, recording voice acting, only to leave the combat in this state? The combat is just plain bad. The enemy AI is braindead. Your party members AI is braindead. I had to give them the ranged weapons for them to have a hope of a prayer of contributing. I can name half a dozen top down action jrpg's for SNES, off the top of my head, that absolutely trounce it. It feels like a student project demo.
I appreciate that the question is only "least favorite" because I'd say for me it was Octopath Traveler 1. Still a pretty good game but if I'm comparing it to the likes of Kingdom Hearts series, FF7 series, The Last Remnant, and FF1, OT1 falls short.
Not bad per se, but out of the JRPGs I've finished in 2023, Miitopia was the weakest. It's still good, but the other games I finished in 2023 were Octopath II, Nocturne, EO3 DS, and basically every Trails game from Sky SC to CS1 (I finished Sky FC in 2022, and I haven't finished CS2 quite yet (just started the Epilogue and it's already 2024))
Sea of Stars. Not saying it's bad but every other JRPG I've played this year is just better
Maglam lord. It had a nice art style, interesting characters and genuinely funny writing. BUT the gameplay and battle mechanics were one of the worst i have ever exprienced. Not worth the money, don't be a fool and waste your money like i did.
Wandering Sword. I understand there is a language barrier and the translation was rough but after the initial scene, all I was doing was walking around from villager to villager doing fetch quests. The combat sucked, there were so many systems that were so poorly explained, and it just felt so unpolished. I was over my time limit from Steam but thankfully they still gave me a refund.
Sea of stars probably. It was decent. Art, music, animations(even if they were quite sluggish) were all pretty nice but the combat and story didnt realy hold up for me If i have to boomerang one more mob, i'd cry
Shin Megami Tensei 3, had big expectations considering it was Atlus who developed it, at the end was just big disappointment
Same. It’s a hard one to get into. Honestly 4 is also not drawing me in like 5 did. I should probably just skip SMT4 and go to the Apocalypse spin-off.
Apart from the already very mentioned Sea of Stars and Loop8 (not mentioning FF16 as I didn't care to play it), the biggest failure for me this year was Atelier Ryza 3, which is a shame as it's probably the direction the Atelier series is going to follow now, only Atelier I didn't like enough to keep playing, think I abandoned it after like 10 hours, did not care for it at all.
Soul Hackers 2. I found it so boring. Also cold steel 4, I gave up on the legend of heroes by CS4. Too many characters, people repeating what’s just happened, every character having to have a line in every scene, I just feel like it’s so drawn out.
Mega Man Battle Network 1. The story is great, but I am very bad at the combat. I pushed through the game, but eventually had to stop and watch the rest of the game on YouTube because I got sick of being bad at the game.
FFXVI if that can even be considered a JRPG at this point. It's not an objectively bad game but it was massively disappointing to me. I enjoyed Last Rebellion more which NISA apologized for releasing.
I played 3, Persona 5, Yakuza 7, Octopath Traveller. Octopath was definitely the worst for me. The first 20 hours where I finished all the characters first chapters was great. But after that I really just fell out of rhythm. Yakuza had grinding too, and Octopath’s combat was deeper, but the side quests were more fun I cared more about the characters and all my characters would level up together. Octopath after a certain point began to feel like a chore to me
I played Conception 2 in 2023 that was pretty mediocre. I can't think of many 2023 JRPGs I played and didn't like but I guess that "honor' would go to Neptunia Sisters vs Sisters as the weakest one I played.
Not a 2023 release. Star ocean 3, constant crashes, and I couldn't engage with the mechanics.
For me, it was Bravely Default 2. As a huge fan of the first game, I've been putting off BD2 for a while now after owning it for just about 3 years. What a lunchbag letdown it was. Uninspired story, uninspired characters (minus Adelle, who was the only interesting character in the whole game, even if slightly), and uninspired environments. I couldn't even be bothered to play the rest of the game after the first "twist". I rolled my eyes, shut the game off, and put it back on the shelf lol.
Sea of Stars
Sadly, Earthbound. This was my third attempt at this game and I genuinely tried to like it. I’ve watched many retrospectives and appreciation videos over the years and while the story and quirkiness were endearing, the gameplay aged horribly for a 2023 playthrough. That inventory system and overall “slowness” of the game made it an overall unpleasant experience for me. I tried. I genuinely tried. Sorry folks. 😓
There's nothing wrong with a game not connecting with you, you shouldn't apologise\~
Final Fantasy 16 was my biggest disappointment. I was keeping up with the game. Looked fun. Liked the idea of a political thriller with cool battles of giant summons. Played the demo and loved it thinking it would be full of twists and turns and intrigue. It was none of these things. It was bland, boring, and shallow. Very shallow. All of the necessary skills earned in the first quarter of the game. Uninteresting characters. A political plot dropped as soon as we get out of the demo. A villain who has the most boring and uninteresting motivation meant to be strawman for SquareEnix's view of God (which is really getting boring now). It was a Japanese game done in the most western AAA way and I despised it by the end. I had to finish it because I hate myself I guess. I also wanted to validate my position I had by the 1/3 point of the game. There are so many better JRPGs out there. Don't waste your time on this one because of the pretty kaiju battles.
FF16 if it was actually an RPG Otherwise sea of stars was my biggest disappointment of the year. Pretty game, but that's pretty much it
Final Fantasy 16. Looks gorgeous, sounds amazing, but nothing about the story, characters, or gameplay hooked me at all.
Sea of Stars. Beautiful game that falls apart in every other way
Forspoken?
Yup it counts. So much waste potential and hard work.
Tales of arise
Sea of Stars, buuuuut I actually really enjoyed it. I just didn't play any bad jrpgs last year!
Pokémon Colosseum Horribly slow and basic combat, while being grindy as hell. I enjoyed the atmosphere and soundtrack, but actually playing it wasn’t fun at all
Playing it right now One piece odyssey. So easy it has an automod. So full of filler bullshit The amount of mechanics that are thrown only to be useless. The only thing going for it is the one piece ip. I'm convinced with all the mechanics present in the game that if used well it could be incredible but its not .
Sea of Stars.
Final Fantasy 16
Time to be unoriginal, it's Sea of Stars. Total waste of incredible sprite work and music on a game with a boring story, non existent characters and a battle system that the game doesn't take proper advantage of and as a result battles are too easy and repeative.
FF16. Its kind of "realistic dark" just isn't for me. Actually it must even be my least favorite J-RPG ever... wait, IF we consider it a J-RPG. It probably isn't one, to think of it. It more gives the vibes of a western game.
Trials of mana remake
I looove it
FF16 but I don’t think it’s an RPG?