40 Fantastic JRPGs You Should Check Out

31. Metaphor: ReFantazio – Riley

Hieronymous Bosch-inspired monstrosities and political themes abound, and video games still don’t enjoy the same cultural capital as the other arts, smh

Just when you think Atlus couldn’t worm its way onto this list again, it throws a curveball. From the minds of Studio Zero and the studio head that brought us Persona 3, 4, and 5, Metaphor takes the established formula and takes it a step further. While yes, the game is again split between dungeon crawling and social elements, these are lovingly woven together in Metaphor in a way that exceeds the sum of its parts. Tackling race, wealth disparity, and state leadership, it’s a heavy tale that will keep you on the edge of your seat from beginning to end.

Naturally, the gameplay is typical of what you’d expect from Persona: turn-based battles with elemental strengths and weaknesses. It also boasts a logical upgrade from the Confidant System, allowing you to use double team attacks, taking MP or HP from each executing to complete devastating attacks whilst partnered with your party members. New to this game, though, instead of wielding personas, each party member can take a different Archetype, which is this game’s job system. Any party member can take on any archetype, so experimenting and finding which archetype complements each party member’s stats and strengths is key to winning battles.

If you want a meaningful narrative experience partnered with an incredibly deep, customisable combat system, this game will be perfect for you. Don’t let the countdown calendar put you off either; the game gives you plenty of time to complete everything. The time feels more like a story mechanic than a restraint this time around, which is greatly appreciated.

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32. Final Fantasy X – Sean

It was cool of them to include a little RPG with the Blitzball simulator

Final Fantasy is a long-running franchise, and honestly, narrowing it down to just one pick for this list was somewhat difficult, as each entry has its own special flavour that would make it worthy of a spot. I ultimately chose FFX because, well, it’s my favourite one.

Final Fantasy X throws the player into a colourful landscape filled with a healthy mix of fun, likeable characters and absolute weirdos. For every Auron, there’s a kid who wants to be a Blitzball when he grows up. It’s a real fish-out-of-water story for our hero Tidus that goes to some very dark places with a narrative that takes more than one well-aimed stab at certain real-life conventions that you may or may not agree with.

Tidus would be better at Blitzball if he didn’t wear denim underwater

The ATB system was replaced with the CTB system, which was, in a nutshell, turn-based. No longer would players have to wait for a bar to fill up before they performed their action. Now, you simply had to wait for that party member’s turn, and they would do it as soon as you selected it. There was no time limit either! I know this is basically just turn-based gameplay as we know it today, but back then, this was a big shift for the series.

It was the first Final Fantasy game to feature actual voice acting, which was an impressive first effort, but it did come with some growing pains, such as the actors occasionally having to speak at a faster pace to keep up with the animations.

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33. Racing Lagoon – James

Maybe getting points on your license will level you up?

Bet you didn’t expect a ‘High Speed Driving RPG’ on this list. Racing Lagoon is exactly that. Released in 1999 by Square on the PSX, this game is unfortunately stuck in Japan. You will need a fan translation patch to play it, which can be found in various places. In Racing Lagoon, you play as a green as grass 18-year-old, trying out street racing for the first time. No matter if you reach the win condition of the first race, your MC is now hooked. Thus begins the game.

There are multiple aspects to this CarPG. For most of the game, you drive around in an airborne view of the city, interacting with locations, speaking with people and most importantly being challenged to races by rival gangs. The “RPG” in this CarPG comes from the progression system and the narrative. If you win against a rival, you can spend your points and take one of their parts. The same is true in the opposite direction, so watch out. The driving itself isn’t exactly Ridge Racer Type 4, but it’s servicable. The rest of the game comes from doing story missions and watching FMVs with screenshots of weirdly smooth uncanny valley character models.

The best part of Racing Lagoon is undoubtedly the soundtrack. It’s seeping with jazz, jazz fusion and 90s charm that melds well with the wobbly polygons. Ultimately, even if you can’t give it a try in an emulator, listen to the soundtrack. It’s honestly a blast.

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34. The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky FC- Dave

IDC how good this series is, the “Trails” branding was totally an attempt to get some of that “Tales” money

This is the first game in the long-running Trails series (which is itself part of the even longer-running The Legend of Heroes series). Ambitious and heartfelt, it’s about the journey undertaken by Estelle and her adopted brother Joshua as they seek to become Bracers (certified explorers/peacekeepers/hero types).

In many ways, it’s a fairly standard JRPG. Every individual NPC in the game is surprisingly well-realised, though. Dialogue changes as events occur, which helps make the world feel that much more alive. The game recently had a remake that lets you switch between turn-based and real-time combat. Either way, it’s essential to play a version of FC first before you tackle SC, which is when the story gets really interesting.

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35. The Lord of The Rings: The Third Age – James

I really felt it when Gandalf saved the party from Sephiroth by casting both their bodies into the Nibelheim reactor

To the outside observer, The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age shouldn’t be a JRPG. It’s based on a book from 1940s England, developed by American EA Redwood Shores (Later becoming Visceral Games, developers of Dead Space, of all things). Look deeper, however, and it’s got all of the trappings of a JRPG. You’ve got a turn-based combat similar to Final Fantasy X, featuring turn priority, levelling, and skill trees dependent on skill usage. You’ve got increasingly powerful equipment drops, gemstones with special powers, and lots and lots of LoTR-themed items to use in combat.

In The Third Age, you play as Berethor, aka legally distinct Boromir. You continue to pick up legally distinct characters and travel just one step behind the fellowship across the entire LoTR trilogy, culminating in somehow directly attacking the Eye of Sauron. Don’t ask. As the journey progresses, in key scenes, you pick up temporary party members, like Gandalf, in the fight with the Balrog of Morgoth. The game in itself isn’t especially deep, but if you’re a Lord of the Rings fan, you’ll enjoy defending Helm’s Deep and other key moments from the films.

To round out the experience, you can complete evil mode for each completed chapter. You control the horrible beasties that you’d previously dispatched. What other game allows you to utterly annihilate your enemies as the Eye of Sauron? Highly recommended if you’re looking for a JRPG-style game and are a fan of LoTR.

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36. Baroque – James

Bold of a game to tell me what my financial status will be after buying it

Baroque is an odd one. It is a first-person dungeon crawler with random generation. Released by Sting Entertainment on the Sega Saturn and the PSX, it never did get an English release until the questionable PS2/Wii remake. Before I begin, there are translation patches for both the PSX and Saturn versions. For this list, we’ll be talking about the Saturn version. As mentioned on the Nerve Tower (a fantastic fan website for Baroque,) the PSX version greatly diminishes the aesthetic vision of the game, among other reasons.

You are expected to die, and die a lot. As you adventure, you pick up loot, fight strange-looking enemies and work your way down to the bottom floor of the nerve tower. You have a constant sense of being unnerved as the low draw distance hides what lies in wait. A heartbeat is constantly somewhere in the distance, adding to this feeling. You will come across NPCs who will utter cryptic nothings in your ear, as those who have played Dark Souls and King’s Field will be used to. All of this is topped off by the industrial theming.

I’d recommend Baroque to anyone who is interested in trying out something new and strange.

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37. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Simon

A French JRPG is like the cure to Paris Syndrome

This game came out of nowhere for me. I’d managed to avoid even hearing about it before its release, so I had no idea what to expect. Little did I know, I’d be brought to tears within the first hour of play. This is a testament to many things, such as how quickly you are grabbed by the world and its inhabitants, but also the stellar voice acting and motion capture, which really sell and drive home the emotions present in the situation. And boy, are they in a situation!

Every year, “The Paintress” counts down from one hundred, one at a time, and anyone who’s the age of the number painted gets “Gommaged” (think Thanos snapped) out of existence. Sixty-seven years have passed since the first, meaning the number sits at thirty-four at the start of the game. Every year, the people on the precipice of getting gommaged go on an expedition to kill the paintress, in an attempt to secure the future for the younger generations.

There’s not much else I can say about the story without spoiling it, but I can honestly say it did not go anywhere near where I thought it was going. A few times it pulled the rug out from under my feet and left me confused (and emotionally wrecked). But by the end, all the pieces fell into place, and left me with one of the hardest decisions I’ve had to make in a game in recent memory.

Mondo Cool

The world created is one I also want to shout out. It feels both beautiful and depressing. I stopped many times to admire the beautiful and dreamlike scenery, and other times to take in the sombre coat of paint that had been painted over that beauty. The environments played with my emotions almost as much as the characters and story did. I suppose I should have expected that, as Clair Obscura translates to “light-dark” in English, and is usually associated with a style of painting that uses strong contrasts between dark and light.

Gameplay

The game is turn-based with a twist. I normally get quite bored with the combat in turn-based games, as the games usually run anywhere from 40-100 hours, and at some point, you find yourself just doing the same thing over and over. I’m not saying this wasn’t the case with Expedition 33, but I only felt this towards the very end of the game.

Expedition 33 attempts to hold this feeling off as long as possible by giving each character a unique mechanic and also introducing free-aim shooting and a Souls-like real-time dodge/parry/jump mechanic. This means you have to stay fully alert and engaged, or you can easily get wiped out in a few short moves. It makes you study the attack pattern of each different enemy, and pull off parries and dodges with pinpoint precision. There are other mechanics at play, too, such as Pictos and Luminas, which allow you to augment your skills.

There are so many systems at play that it can seem overwhelming at first, but I promise it’s worth sticking with, and you’ll experience one of the most intriguing and original games in years. Plus, it’s on Xbox Game Pass, so there’s little excuse not to try it! I’m not sure how Sandfall Interactive can top this, but they’ve made a believer out of me, and I can’t wait to see what the future holds for them.

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38. Star Ocean: The Second Story R – Dave

This game lets you publish your own books and get rich off the royalties

The Star Ocean franchise is yet another one of Square Enix’s many RPG children. It stands out for its dedicated science fantasy setting, which makes it a bit more distinct from most franchises. It is also notable for how insanely modular each playthrough is. While the main story will be largely similar, the majority of party members are optional and every character can invest in extremely specific skills that are complemented by randomly generated talents.

The Second Story R is a remake of the second game, which embodies the aforementioned modularity. There are two main characters with their own exclusive content. Hundreds of potential endings. The character art is breathtaking, the voice acting is as good as it’s going to get (there are multiple options, including different Japanese casts, though the English cast becomes the Richard Epcar show towards the end), and the world is rendered immaculately in 2.5D, a style I never get tired of.

This game is out of this world. *double finger guns*

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39. Infinite Undiscovery – Azza

Square Enix random name generators really be like this

Infinite Undiscovery is kind of hard to describe. On one hand, you could say it is similar to Final Fantasy with a solid cast of diverse characters with distinct personalities. On the other hand, you could say it’s a bizarre adventure revolving around an odd family tree and a world enslaved by a massive organisation.

To be honest, the latter is exactly what it is, but the game is fun and the story is packed with humour, so it’s definitely one to try out. Most players will be surprised at the level of depth in the crafting system and the tactics required when assembling parties. The combat has aged like milk, but if you are used to PS2-level gameplay with Xbox 360 graphics, then give this a go; it will be right up your alley.

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40. Franken – Dave

With regards to Mary Shelly, for being the first domino in the 200-year-long chain of events that created this game

Subversive, but traditional. Hilarious, but profound. Franken is the most accessible game on this list because it’s both free and short. Like, it’s literally an hour long, if that. Even Barkley is hidden in the darkest reaches of malware-infested interwebs. This game is just there.

Having said that, it’s easier to appreciate this game after you’ve been exposed to lethal amounts of JRPG tropes. That’s why it’s the last game on this list. Also, the soundtrack slaps. Check it out on itch.i.o!

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Take a look at our other recommendation lists and see if any of your favourite games were chosen by our members. An earnest attempt was made to limit particular franchises from dominating, but Square Enix still fell on top. Expect a new list when we’ve broadened our horizons and gathered enough exp to rend legions of the damned asunder.

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