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BoneSnapDeez wrote:The Falcom library alone makes the PCE one of the best JRPG systems of all time.

Ys Book I & II
Ys III: Wanderers from Ys
Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys
Popful Mail
Brandish
Sorcerian
Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes
Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes II
The Legend of Xanadu
The Legend of Xanadu II

I'd add Exile to that list. The first Exile is highly decent.
If you were feeling sporty, maybe Cosmic Fantasy 2 as well.

But what matters most on that list is...

I have a ton more respect for Brandish after playing through Dark Revenant. Good, good stuff.

After the 16-bit era, JRPGs lost me.

I think it's because that's when we got to the era of the "convoluted-mess" style of story telling in JRPGs where I would struggle to summarize the plot to a person who hadn't played the game.

Too much anime, I guess. Lots of convoluted plots there, too.

Exhuminator wrote:

BoneSnapDeez wrote:The Falcom library alone makes the PCE one of the best JRPG systems of all time.

Ys Book I & II
Ys III: Wanderers from Ys
Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys
Popful Mail
Brandish
Sorcerian
Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes
Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes II
The Legend of Xanadu
The Legend of Xanadu II

I'd add Exile to that list. The first Exile is highly decent.
If you were feeling sporty, maybe Cosmic Fantasy 2 as well.

Yeah Exile is one of my favorite games of all time. I was just listing the Falcom stuff though. It's too bad Dinosaur and Lord Monarch never made it to the PCE.

Cosmic Fantasy 2 is also not very good.

marlowe221 wrote:After the 16-bit era, JRPGs lost me.

I think it's because that's when we got to the era of the "convoluted-mess" style of story telling in JRPGs where I would struggle to summarize the plot to a person who hadn't played the game.

What loses me in modern JRPGs is when the blatantly obvious artificially longevity comes into play. I'm okay with optional extra fluff, but when you start forcing it on the player I get rather vexed. I'll take a lean mean straight to the point JRPG any day of the week. Sadly those started going out of style during the PS2 era.

Exhuminator wrote:

marlowe221 wrote:After the 16-bit era, JRPGs lost me.

I think it's because that's when we got to the era of the "convoluted-mess" style of story telling in JRPGs where I would struggle to summarize the plot to a person who hadn't played the game.

What loses me in modern JRPGs is when the blatantly obvious artificially longevity comes into play. I'm okay with optional extra fluff, but when you start forcing it on the player I get rather vexed. I'll take a lean mean straight to the point JRPG any day of the week. Sadly those started going out of style during the PS2 era.

I don't know, I feel a lot of the older JRPGs were artificially inflated with grinding and forced random encounters. So while the meat of the main story can be relatively small, the games feel longer.

What are some examples of blatantly too long JRPGs

I was surprised when one of my friends said he beat Valkyrie Chronicles in 20 hours or something. That doesn't sound long to me at all and I'm not complaining.

Jmustang1968 wrote:What are some examples of blatantly too long JRPGs

That topic is likely new thread material in and of itself. I start to get really tired of JRPGs once they reach the 50 hour mark. Anything beyond that has to be truly amazing to not feel like it's just wasting my time. Honestly my ideal time-frame for a JRPG is 20-30 hours.

Xeogred wrote:I was surprised when one of my friends said he beat Valkyrie Chronicles in 20 hours or something. That doesn't sound long to me at all and I'm not complaining.

I don't know about that. Without using a guide my time to beat was 31 hours. Which not-coincidentally is exactly the cited majority time for Main Story at HLTB.

Exhuminator wrote:

Xeogred wrote:I was surprised when one of my friends said he beat Valkyrie Chronicles in 20 hours or something. That doesn't sound long to me at all and I'm not complaining.

I don't know about that. Without using a guide my time to beat was 31 hours. Which not-coincidentally is exactly the cited majority time for Main Story at HLTB.

Hmmm, hold the phone... this particular friend of mine seems to play point by point with a guide. So that's probably why.

Man it annoys me how deep he reads into things. It was frustrating listening to him go through Dark Souls talking about so many needless things. Special boss weapons this and that, I'm just like dude, I beat the game with a generic claymore and brute force.