5 JRPGs Worth Buying in 2022 & 5 That Are NOT! 

Yeah I totally contradicted myself with Soul Hackers 2 and Trails From Zero lol. Oops!

Digimon Survive is only for those players who like Visual Novels...others will not enjoy it and I think that's fine. I personally love sitting down and enjoying a chill game like that, which still has engaging characters and plots (imo), while not asking me to think too much about strategy.

Soul Hackers 2 - "When you have to speed through your game, I feel like its just boring and you didn't do a good job designing it." Trails from Zero- "While this may be an old game, they added some new features to make it shockingly playable. They added a turbo mode to speed things up."

Nice video, man! I'm currently playing Triangle Strategy, it's really great! I didn't really expect it would grab me as much as it did. Most SRPGs just end up disappointing me because they don't measure up to FFT, but Triangle Strategy is able to capture some of that FFT feeling, but also just going off in it's own direction and doing something unique, so soon I wasn't really comparing them anymore.

Love Trails from Zero and excited for Trails of Azure. Will definitely get the platinum trophy once I have the time and energy to play again.

One team makes Persona 5 and that team is making another game right now that. Not every Atlus game is going to be p5.

I actually really loved Monark. The graphics weren’t the best, and the game doesn’t adequately explain its systems…but I guess that’s just not something that bothers me all that much. I dunno, it was a lot more mature with the anime themes than anime tends to like to be, and I found the cast super engaging.

Scarlet and Violet are not nearly as bad as you’re making them out to be, lol Yes, the framerate is disappointing but outside of that it’s the best Pokémon game we’ve got since gen 5 so it’s kinda not a great review to hinge so much on so little (though, frustrating) while completely ignoring every positive aspect of the game

I didn't have any issues with monark, the combat was amazing, there were not any lag spikes (for me, I can understand maybe some other people will have this problem). The only problem I have with this game is that the dungeon exploring can be boring at times because of the BGM (which is really weird coming from the people that made The Caligula effect 1 and 2 which have absolute bangers while you explore the dungeon). The boss themes are a whole another story, even to this day, almost 5 months since clearing the game, I still have those on repeat on youtube.

Awesome video. 👍When I bored XeonBlade Chronicles 3, I thought I was going to get bored. But at the end of the game I have played it. 120 hours. And I still wanted to play more. I have more fun in this game than God of War Ragnarok and bayonetta 3. This is literally the best game of the year. I can't find anything else. In 2022 That has so much content.❤

this helps so much, you should totally do one of these every 3 or 4 months and a yearly one like this

Even though I disagree with some I 100% dig that you made a list not only featuring positive takes but negative ones too for games this year. I feel like some creators go out of their way to stay blindly positive on every video no matter the title so it feels refreshing to see someone recommending which games to steer away from on top of which ones to prioritize. It's still nuts to me that we have trails from zero localized officially. I hope more jrpg fans can look past the dated graphics and dive into probably one of the best casts and stories JRPGs has to offer.

I hate how much crap digimon survive is getting. I love it. Great story. Great characters. And I love the simple combat. It feels great to immerse myself in that world and hours and hours go by and I don’t even notice.

For me Monark was my favorite February release, I tried the demo and enjoyed it and bought the game. I wasn't too keen on Diofield, I want to play it but after the demo I figure it's a wait until $20 or $30 at most on ps5.

I finished Violet a couple weeks ago, and not once did I have any of these major bugs and glitches besides the obligatory frame drops(that aren’t even that bad to begin with). Is there something wrong with my copy of Violet?

For Monark, what were you playing it on? I've been playing the game on my ps5 and been having a great time and don't have this problem

Awww I actually liked Soul Hackers 2 and Monark LOL I couldn't get into Stranger Of Paradise or the DioField Chronicles :( even though I was originally hyped for the latter. Triangle Strategy was the FFT Advance/A2 successor I've been waiting for 😭 It's probably my game of the year.

Stranger of Paradise is a game that TOTALLY surprised me. I really got into it and ended up loving the game despite being kind of put off by the initial trailer and demo.

Personally i reallly enjoyed survive but i agree with you on triangle strategy and the diofield chronicle

Really loving your videos! Great content. Random question. Did you enjoy the ni no Kuni games? 😊

Just found your channel very quality! Keep it up!

I just completed all the storylines in Pokémon Scarlet/Violet and I must say it’s an incredible game. The music alone makes it worth it! Yeah sure it lags here and there but it wasn’t enough for me to put it down and move on; in fact, I couldn’t put it down! 10/10 would recommend!

I wish there had been an easy/casual mode for Strangers of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin. Very challenging gameplay that requires twitch muscle memory isn't as fun as more hack n slash. I'm definitely interested in DioField Chronicles, it's pretty much ignored by RU-vidrs so I'm glad you mentioned it. I definitely agree with you that Triangle Strategy is totally worth it! I loved my playthrough and can actually see myself going back and get the golden ending.

I think the expectation that Valkyrie is one genre is coming from people that seem to have forgotten what those games are. Every valkyrie game is wildly different from each other in terms of gameplay and presentation, Elysium is just the first time they're doing real time combat, that's really the only difference. There is no "established" Valkyrie throughline. Star Ocean has that for Tri-Ace but Valkyrie has always been experimental.

i am eagerly waiting to finally jump in to the crossbell arc of the trails series. i just got hooked on the trails series late last year and i've been lovin it. already play through the sky arc and cold steel 1 and 2(which sadly spoiled quite a bit of major plot of the crossbell arc so if you havent played that beware). im waiting to play zero early next year so i could jump in to azure and then finally continue the cold steel 3 and 4. woooh so many games.

You speak your mind dude and I admire that. Not all RPGs are have equal worth.

One thing I learned recently is that JRPGs are VERY cutscene heavy. Having stopped seriously playing games around the PlayStation era, I picked up Yakuza last week and in ten hours playtime I think I had control of the character for like maybe two of those hours 😅 still kind of fun though tbh

Nice vid, I pretty much agree with everything, lol. Worth it: Crystal Project & Chained Echoes(was released after this vid was made, but I like it so much, I gotta mention it everywhere I go, lol)

I think this is a fair list. Ppl have already pointed out the contradiction between your treatment of Soul hackers 2 adding speed options as a negative and trails from zero adding turbo mode being a positive. I enjoyed Soul Hackers 2 for the most part, but it 100% played like a slow burn after a while. I spent most of my time using the speed ability anyway to move faster, but it didn't have options to skip animations in fights like some other games. I would put it on auto-battle through the generic enemy turns to make it go faster. I liked the story, despite it being relatively small/simple, but the ending was lackluster imo. I've played many SMT games, not just persona, and this one was maybe a 5/10 for me. It would have been a 6 if it had the QOL features of the recent update when I played.

Thank you so much for the great content! Truly appreciated. I want to wish you and the family a Happy Christmas! I can't wait to hear your analyses of Octopath Traveler 2, Granblue Fantasy Relink, Final Fantasy XVI, Sea of Stars, Eiyduen Chronicle: 100 Heroes, and hopefully Ys X & Dragon Quest III 2D-HD :). Have a fantastic New Year!!

Digimom survive is 100%worth it if you actually know what you're going into because a lot of people were under the misconception that this was going to be a straight battle type of game with little story.

I love XC3, and I really loved XC2 as well, such beautiful games!

This video idea was genius! Honestly, I would love if you did a video like this maybe twice a year to help contextualize all the new JRPG releases.

Oh my god, how did i missed a Trails series release, thank you for this roundup

I was hoping to get the Valkyrie Profile feel with Valkyrie Elysium. Man that was a bust. And another burn was Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. So much bug I just couldn't handle it anymore. My poor wallet was beating my head in for my idiocy. Though Xenoblade Chronicle 3 was a breath of fresh air. Eunie was such an adorable doll. I totally love her.

Playing Pokémon Scarlett now and having a blast! I haven’t noticed any bugs or glitches, just the occasional frame drop (which doesn’t hinder the game). Tactics Ogre reborn I would definitely put into the worth it category as well, they put a ton of work into the remaster of it (and it shows).

I have really loved Scarlet and Violet myself. Sure it could have been much better ie not removing set mode (why gamefreak?), allowing exp share to be turned off, opponents should use items (2 heals and hold items), not sending their tera last, glitches, and frame rate; however, it has the best story I've seen in a mainline pokemon game period, I actually felt attached to some characters, terastalizing is dope af which easily beats out d/g-max and z-moves adding a new level of strategy, and is quite long. I quite enjoyed my play through and I even plan on trying online and doing a wonderlocke at some point 😁 Otherwise a great list. Definitely gonna check out the Dio Field Chronicle and give Triangle Strategy a go.

Soul hackers 2 is underrated, it's a bit of a acquired taste and if you're an smt fan you will probably enjoy it. The later dungeons are awesome, and the character dungeons are pretty fun if you're not expecting too much.

this is a cool idea taylor you should do more of these when you can. some of these i agree with and some i respectfully disagree with but i like it anyway.

I actually really liked this type of video. A really good way to know what is worth spending my time on.

Love this list. Just wish you had said which systems these are for.

I like your opinions and that a lot of people don’t agree so you have that conversation. I haven’t played any of the RPGs on the list so I can’t say much but the not worth it made sense to me.

I beat stranger paradise final fantasy origins story in 20 hours at launch and never looked back. That includes me grinding every class to max. It was very disappointing to me being a major fan of nioh and its insane amount of content. Has the dlc really added that much content?

Pokemon scarlet and violet are pretty great games. Yeah there are a few bugs but in my playthrough I only saw a few and it didn't affect anything. Yeah I could see into the ground during battles a few times. Oh well, the game is still worth playing in my opinion.

Definitely agree regarding Valkyrie Elysium. Currently streaming it and the one word I would use to describe it is "bland". It's not a horrible game. It looks OK, plays OK, runs just fine on PC, but nothing about the game really grips you or stands out. I'll definitely finish it due to its short length, but I was really hoping for more from a game with the "Valkyrie" name attached to it.

i think i would have liked digimon survive more as a pure visual novel the battles feel rly unbalanced sometimes. i played on normal difficulty and there were bosses i almost oneshotted, on the other hand there were bosses which were just unfair doing almost twice as much dmg as my digimon had hp + having crazy evasion and mobility on top.

Hard disagree on both Soul Hackers 2 and Digimon Survive. I honestly think everybody should play them.

Man I really want to play the trails games they look so good especially from a story/lore perspective

Team Ninja is a Japanese company and it does work alongside SE, so yes, Stranger of Paradise: FF Origin IS a JRPG.

i know this is a stupid reason, but i haven't bought trails from zero yet, cause.....i don't know what to get it on. do i get it on playstation, pc or switch? i have reason why i would like it on all of them, but i just can't decide.

One of your best videos, entertaining and helpful.

I enjoyed SH2 but your arguments are valid, i find it suffer a lot of what i think a huge lack of budget and it's sad because it could have been much more than what it is. And Stranger of Paradise is so good, can't wait for the final dlc.

I respect your opinion but me personally i enjoy pokemon scarlet and violet dispite bugs but I would love to try acouple games on your list

I have some of the “worth it” and “not worth it” titles on that list! lol. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 was the first and only title in the series that hooked me in and had me finish it! I’d have to say, it’s one of the very few JRPG’s that I actually enjoyed doing sidequests for. I’m two months late to the party here, but it was my underdog GotY against those heavy-hitters!

Totally agree with what you've said, I've just dusted off my psp because the majority of the offerings this year have been truly dire...

Awesome, I got some great ideas here. 👊🏾👌🏾

I loved Monark, is it my favorite game of all time? NO, but is soooo good... I played it on PC so I didn't had any performance problems.

Maybe people comparing the combat of Stranger of Paradise to Dark Souls might be ok on the base game. The endgame however, becomes more of an arcade game that feels like a looter diablo style and it opens up a lot of customization. It's not really for everyone, but it's really good if that's what you are looking for.

Ehh, I really disagree with a lot here. Digimon Survive is a great game for fans of visual novels. I wouldn’t even consider it a JRPG. To say it’s not worth it doesn’t do it justice because it really is a good game for the right audience. And the same goes for Pokémon: for fans of Pokémon, it’s an amazing game with tons of improvements and quality of life changes. It’s such a fun experience and a very welcome change to the usual Pokémon formula.

Xenoblade 3 was such a joy to play but my favorite RPG this year atleast was Triangle Strategy.

Chained echoes by far was my favorite jrpg and was absolutely incredible

Kind of funny, from Trails and after I agree with the worth it but before that my worth it and not worth it were switched from what you showed lol.

I would like to add Star Ocean: the divine force as a worth it buy .. such a great come back for this series

I genuinely agree with most of what you have to say but I have to point out that you said Soul Hackers speed up mechanic was bad but you gave trails a positive for having a speed up mechanic. I like speed up mechanics in games but I feel like it kinda is hypocritical to say it's bad in one game but good in another!

During the Soul Hackers part you compared it to Persona 5’s combat. I have no clue how you got that one. It’s way more like Mainline SMT in that regard.

Played the geofront translation of trails from zero and its so great to finally get the official translation, can't wait for trails of azure official translation.

I can't really say I agree with Pokémon, personally I bought the game Day 1, I've been playing ever since, for the first time I was able to complete the Dex on a Main Line game, I did not get any bugs, the framerate was fine even on day 1, so yeah... If anyone wants an honest opinion it's one of the best Pokémon games since Black and White.

Patiently waiting on the battle network ports

I really liked Trails of Zero. At the beginning i had doubts because i don't like Randy and being one of the MC ... I want the sequel to know more about Rixia. And i would love an official re-release for the trails in the sky trilogy.

I'll crack Survive later but I do think some are too hard on Soul Hackers 2. It's fun game with problems but I do think people were expecting to much. Also, Monark has more than performance issues it is a giant grind fest.

Does every xenoblade series has a different story like final fantasy? Or it is a continous series?

I loved Valkyrie Elysium but… you’re likely right for most players. Great list!

To sped up a game is not necessarily an indication of a bad game as many more games have that feature for faster turn-based combat and not all players got time for that slow pace.

As a huge fan of the Xenoblade series, I have to say X3 is by far the best in the series. It’s a masterpiece

Hold up, did you say that if a game has to add a speed up mechanic it's boring, then just later compliment the addition of a turbo mechanic in another game.

Huge fan of speed up options. Trails does this best. If I want to grind and speed up battle, I can. Pokemon would really benefit from a speed up options.

What about start ocean the divine force? For me it's worth it, but I want to know your opinion.

" people shouldn't settle for mediocrity because we only have so much time to play games " I know I probably paraphrased it , but I love what you said here. I've been making this my motto ever since I started living by myself, and I'm glad someone agrees with me

Got Pokemon Violet-let me just say I'm loving it! Way more than Pokemon Shield! And I haven't really experienced any glitches? Maybe one or two? There was a frame drop here and there, but nothing game-breaking on my end! Don't regret buying it at full price one bit! Heck, I'm still on my first playthrough and can't wait to go through my second-and even, third! Really love pretty much every starter Pokemon this time around!

I really want to play through Triangle Strategy, but I seem to be newbie with srpgs. Maybe time for another try

I have to disagree about soul hackers 2 and strangers of paradise. SOP bored me and SH2 gets too much flak for its dungeons even though p3 and p4s dungeons weren't all that great but the gameplay was awesome.

Good stuff

Strangers of Paradise is LITERALLY NIOH reskinned..im not sure if you ever played NIOH but its the same game combat and mechanic wise. I was shocked that you didn't even mention NIOH as being part of it..

Is ff7 poorly designed? It has a combat speed toggle. Its for people that want to grind. Super handy and appreciated feature.

Xenoblade 3 (Plan to buy it, the collector edition was out of stock before I know it) Digimon Survive (Got it few days ago in deep discount, I probably won't get it if this video was uploaded few days earlier) Final Fantasy Origin, Stranger Paradise (Doesn't plan to buy it, I am bad at soulslike game) Soul Hacker 2 (Plan to buy it, The collector edition was overpriced, so I didn't get it at release) Monark (Got a Collector Edition, I like NISA. lol) Chronicle of DioField (Plan to buy it, I like the demo but should be priced at $40) Valkyria Elysium (Plan to buy it, I like the demo) Trails From Zero (Got a Collector Edition, I like NISA. lol) Pokemon Scarlet and Violet (Doesn't plan to buy it,never play Pokemon games before) Triangle Strategy (Bought It)

Stranger of paradise was definitely one of my favorites this year. The story and characters were a large part of that.

Everyone just got their own tastes of the games they wanna play, no hate

I really like xenoblade but I also like pokemon s/v so not sure what to think about this

Monark was was a good game. Personally I didn't have performance issues and I played it on Switch. The game does have Ps2 era graphics, but if graphics are none of your concern it's a nice game to pick up. It would be no different than picking up an old jrpg like Persona 3 today. Monark has a good story, great music, the English voice acting is great, I enjoyed the puzzles and characters, and combat is a nice change from the usual. The only thing holding it back are the graphics, and amount of grinding needed to catch characters up at certain points. As for it being worth 60 bucks, I'd say not currently. This is because it's been about a year since it was released. I rarely pay full price for games anymore since most games suck now, but the marketing and music sold me on Monark. There is a demo for the game, so I encourage trying it before skipping it least. I've learned lessons from trusting other people's opinions. Many said Indivisible was a great game, but it's actually pretty bad to mediocre. I believe it only received great reviews because it caters to a certain community.

I'm starting to see a pattern with these game reviews

I recommend highly before buying Xenoblade 3 to play Xenoblade definite edition and Xenoblade 2 , Xenoblade 3 will have a bigger impact on you if you do

I didn't enjoy diofield all too much from what I played - it seemed like the kind of game like I wanted to play, but the controls felt quite fiddly - definitely made for controller and while the keyboard and mouse controls were serviceable, felt like everything required way more clicks or presses than it really needed to, combined with the positional aspect not feeling all that crucial. Idk, maybe I should've just tried to play with a controller but yeah, just kinda wish it felt more like FFXII's ADB system with the controls of something like Dragon Age Origins or Baldur's Gate 3.

I'm surprised octopath traveler wasn't on here

Would be ace if you said wich platform its on..

Glad to see another Strangers fan ❤

Soul hackers 2 defi itely is a miss, as you said, it had so much potential. But i didnt like persona 5 anyway, i think the best games out of these is shin megami tensei 5, amazing gameplay, the art is something else, soundtrack is amazing

I bought and beat valkyrie elysium then completely forgot i had bought the game. There are games that i still haven't beaten but remember fully like dark cloud 2 and okami

I've tried and tried to get into stranger of paradise. Something just doesn't click with me for that game. I just wanted Nioh: Final Fantasy

I'm playing XC3 and I want to get Nier Automata for switch later this week. I thought of getting Valkyrie Elysium but it's only 12 hours long?! I think I'll look at something else for $60.

Admittedly dnt watch your stuff very often. Just not that into jrpgs nowadays as oppose to competitive multiplayer games. That being said, damn do I love your vids ! Super quick and to the point, nice editing, and some great insight. Just great all around. I wish you the best going forward.