The saddest thing is that Xenogears as great as it is, is incomplete. The reason why the second disk goes into that weird story telling mode is because they ran out of time and were rushed to finish it so they just put something together. They had so much planned but couldn’t implement it and it breaks my heart.
Still think Xenogears was amazing. It is to this day the only RPG I can think of that successfully married Martial Arts, Melee weapons, Guns, Magic, and Gundam style Giant Robots while making it all work. The real shame is that Monolith Soft couldn't pull it off with Xenosaga.
This is half true. A lot of the staff were also pulled off of the team for _Final Fantasy Ⅷ,_ meaning that they could not complete the game as they originally intended.
Vagrant Story's complexity is subterfuge. As long as you're keeping your weapons upgraded, all you need is (1) a slashing weapon, (2) a crushing weapon, and (3) that attack add-on that increases PP. Keep your two weapons topped off on PP and you can hurt basically anything. In a pinch use gems/spells to increase type/elemental affinity.
Vagrant Story, the semi horror game that behaves like a Parasite Eve game with rpg elements, that also is connected to the Ivalice Universe from Final Fantasy franchise.
Looks like there is some decent interest for it so we’ll definitely get to it at some point soon enough! We do have a few other video topics we wanna tackle first though
For the part 2 i have to recommend a contender for best handheld rpg ever, Radiant Historia. A beautiful game with almost entirely adults focusing on an infamous special operative soldier in a steampunk fantasy world. Super mature time traveling story about war, rulership, and religion with very relatable characters, realistic dialogue and an ost by Yoko Shimamura. The time traveling is also incredibly well thought out having a timeline and everything. All that AND an in depth combat system that has great strategy to it. I love this game, and heavily recommend!
Agreed on all counts. That game is on my short list of the best in genre games of the past 2 decades. Jrpgs like that don't come around often anymore. In my opinion, it fits in with some of the all time snes greats like chrono trigger and ff6
Came here to recommend this. Literally one of the best traditional JRPGs ever made. One of the few games where it was adults doing adult things and wasn't 'mature' just by being grim dark or gratuitous either.
@Edel Tamayo Facts. For as much as they added or expanded on FFVII, there are many *many* unneeded changes. Fighting Sephiroth after leaving Midgar and those dementor looking things? Yeah, hard pass.
Japan is big on the whole "people vs Gods/Fate" story. A lot of JRPG stories will usually revolve around the main characters defying God, Fate, or Destiny in some way. One game that I do particularly love for it's story is Tales of Xillia. You play as a God that's been stripped of powers, and have to travel through a world that's essentially turned their back on God (you).
That makes nothing but pure sense. If you think about it Japan as an entire country had to, and did defy fate. They defied the fate that every other country & people on earth fell under & before ! The European colonial march destroyed every single grand but backwards empire on earth almost. Japan is the ONE & ONLY country that saw their fate and defied it. It took them no time at all to change themselves from a medieval empire destined to be crushed under the boot of the European powers into one of the greatest industrialized societies on earth. They even far surpassed and outstripped many of the colonizing countries. To this day and for decades Japan has been on the cusp of human ingenuity, doing better then half of Europe !!! Did I mention they went from a medieval society to fully industrialized and on the level of any European power in less then 50 years !? Defying fate is something Japan is good at !
My friends & I created an original RPG in high school using RPG maker 2000. Story was typical high school kids who get transported to a new world and go from trying to get home to being caught between armies and gods. It was a 250+ hour RPG.
@Renwoxing Sorry but your interpretation is very wrong and also your view of history and it is also very generalized against Europeans, whom you vilify. Almost every country and ALL empires did the whole conquest, colony and rule via trade things. Colonialism isn't just something Europeans have done. China expanded a lot and would invade countries refusing to pay the tribute they wanted. The position of the Chinese Emperors was to be ruler over the whole world and refused to accept any official relationship with countries that would not pretend to agree on thd nature of the relationship. Look at how they treated European diplomats. There were no attempts to colonize China or Japan but Portugal tried to gain influence via introducing Catholicism, which spread fast and wide on Kyushu for specific social conditions in Japan of that era, which had just emerged from a long period of infighting. And what did Japan do after that? Invade Korea, which only survived due to Chinese troops. Look at European literature or museums about that time and you will see Euro-Japanese relations were good until the third shogun, who banned Christianity and closed its doors to all but the Dutch at one harbor. Many European countries had no colonies at all. Germany began very late after Bismarck was removed (he was against colonialism) and got only tiny places or deserts (Namibia) and some remote islands. Your name sounds Chinese so I will also mention Tsingtau, where the Germans created the highest living standards in all of mainland Asia and was praised by the KMT/RoC founder Sun Yat-Sen as model for a modern Chinese city. It probably did so well because it was not a colony in the legal sense but mainly created to have a navy harbor in this geopolitically important area. After WWI, it was given to Japan, which would conquer many more countries. I love Japan and don't blame the people. It was also quite funny that America of all places punished Japan for expansionism lol. The UK is now getting colonized in the reverse. One could see it as irony but it just will cause more suffering. Almost forgot : the heroes going out and killing gods is a common JRPG trope but it's not a very old trope in Japanese writing in general. It has no more to do with history than any other trope. Japan did relatively well for quite some time in the isolation but things went down, Japanese people wanted smuggled Dutch knowledge in science. It was actually a blessing in disguise that it was forced to open trade. As Japan has long been a very civilized, industrious and also highly organized culture, it sent large groups of educated people all over the world to learn what is good about other countries and bring it home. It didn't take long for Japan to be on the same level as Western Europe and America.
@@Renwoxing13 They didn't "defy fate" when America atomized their people for being dickheads and invading China and slaughtering 300,000 people. They can't defy fate. They can't even defy the US checking them when they lose their minds with bloodlust.
I was born in France in 1983, so your words at the beginning of the video saying you will talk about old games brought me joy to my heart. I used to buy imported games like Xenogears, Chrono Cross, Legend of Mana, Valkyrie Profile, etc. ; and yes I said imported because these games were never released in France. I felt like an alien when I was a teenager because I was playing games my friends never heard of while they were playing Fifa. Please, make a part 2 !
Lost Odyssey is easily my favorite JRPG ever. The story is really good, the characters are well developed, the game mechanics are fun and rewarding and the soundtrack is simply captivating. I still have good memories of playing this game with my older brother and I remember how much fun we had. If you're an rpg fan, I can't recommend it enough.
Lost Odyssey and Digital Devil Saga are a couple of games I've been meaning to play, but just haven't been able to with the consoles I have. I couldn't agree with you more about how amazing Nier's soundtrack is, especially the Replicant remake from last year. I love these suggestions and I'll be bumping up a few on my backlog when I want to dive into a more mature story. I am all for the more common JRPG stories about teenagers saving the world, but more mature stories are always a nice change of pace I think. Thanks for another great video guys!
Thanks for watching as always! Whenever you do get around to LO and DDS I think you’re in for a good time. LO I’m a little less optimistic about ever getting a re-release or port but I could see Atlus rereleasing some of the other older games in the future since Square seems to sorta be doing it now, one can only hope at least
@@GamingBroductions Yeah, I have a similar feeling about a LO port/rerelease. There's always the emulation route, but I'm going to be patient and wait. Thankfully there's so much still to play right now.
I'd definitely like a part 2. I subbed because of this video. I'll mention a few below that I feel deserve a mention and reasons why. Xenoblade chronicles and XC2, Reason: these two games have young protagonists yes, but they do have other characters of varying ages with deep back stories with ability to play them and the writing is brilliant. The last Story Reason Coming in from mistwalker, the studio created by the legendary final fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi. This had a very good story behind it with great pacing. Though the characters can come across as being quite young, I felt they struck a good balance of maturity and to me at least, I felt they where quite mature in age. Radiant Historia chronology Reason Now this one I'm still currently playing through, but is most definitely worth a mention. This sits up there with the likes of chrono trigger,ff7 and ff9. It had a time traveling, time line switching mechanic I haven't really seen before. You are presented with a number of choices through out the game and you have the ability to change that present and future, however this may lead you to go back to another timeline and prevent events that in that future, that the original event happened and changed and continued, to change the outcome of the other time line so that you may proceed. So far this has done this on a number of occasions and though that seems tedious, they have some how made it so it never gets boring. They never give any indication of what choice you make be bad or good before you choose. The writing is strong and they music is put of this world (one of my personal favorites along with chrono trigger and XC1 and XC2). Anybody reads my comment should download this on there 3DS now!! Honorable mentions Alliance Alive Oninaki Dragon quest 5 Dragon quest 11 Breath of Fire 1&2 Chrono Cross Trials of Mana (including remake) Ys origin
You're committing the same mistake than the author of this video: you're assuming that just because the protagonist is young ,the the story isn't mature. You can make a mature and deep story with teenagers and young characters. And just because the protagonist is a 40 year old doesn't necessarily mean that the story is mature.
Will you make a video on the trials in the sky trilogy games in the future? They are the first deep jrpgs I have ever played,and I still have enjoyed any jrpg like the trials in the sky since.
Would love to eventually cover that trilogy in more depth, can’t necessarily promise when as there’s a lot of other RPGs I still wanna cover from that generation as well but it is something we’ll likely do at some point. Those games really impressed me with their incredibly deep lore and world building at a time where I thought I had already played all the classics from that era, I’ll still never forget the ending of the first one and how it totally took me by surprise In the meantime I’ve talked about them in some videos before, our video about RPGs that capture the spirit of adventure being the most recent example
I really want it to be ported to the pc. So frustrating that this game is being left behind in the dust. I shouldn't have to dust off my old 360 to play this game again.
@@cruelwraith2games926 I don't own an Xbox one. Most xbox games are available on pc as well, but Lost Odyssey has remained forgotten. Besides, backwards compatibility for this game is not the same as having it re-released for modern systems.
I would include Baten Kaitos Eternal Wings and Origins on this list. These games were released for the Nintendo Gamecube back in the early 2000s. The story is really good, there's a great cast of characters, turn based card battle system, beautiful graphics and the best OST I have ever heard on a JRPG. If you have not played Baten Kaitos do yourself a favor and check it out. Its a game that unfortunately when largely unnoticed but deserves your attentions if you are looking for a great JRPG to play!
Vandal Hearts 2 is darker with a slant towards realistic rather than fantasy dark elements but has more political intrigue and has some choices early on that decides the ending you get that are not obvious. The Hero is more gritty and flawed, sometimes more an anti-hero. It plays closer to FF Tactics in story, but the hero is of peasant birth I think. Overall good but its not as simple as the original which is both a plus and a minus. No connections to the original that I can recall besides the name.
Yep. In my opinion, Vandal Hearts II would have been the definitive experience if it was visually like the first game (I love the backdrops, but I am referring to the battle animations, character models and character portraits which granted is my opinion) and the gameplay was like the first, but just with additions rather than trying to change it. The story and music are so good.
I think it's time for me to replay Lost Odyssey, such a fantastic game. I usually hate when games convey story through in-game "books", it just seems lazy - but the stories in this were so well written that it's probably the only game where I didn't mind it.
Vagrant Story is great adult rpg. The story alone hits a lot of adult theme love, death, afterlife, religion, etc. I know the weapon and armor mechanics is a little bit overwhelming at first, but you will get it, and bythe end of the game once you master it, you can be so OP and be satisfy. The story is incredible is a shame we never got some type of sequel or rework. One of my favorite games.
Nier game then end credits blew mind. I went in blind and had no clue what I was in for. I would give anything to replay Lost Odyssey. The mini thousand year stories were amazing. I think there is a book of just those that got published and translated.
So glad Lost Odyssey is on there, it's underrated and needs a re-release. I bought another XBox 360 (as my old one died) just so I could replay this game. And with Nier, Square Enix's marketing was correct, I found Nier as a father more compelling than as a brother, it creates a different relationship with the narrative. I felt it was underrated at the time, so I'm glad that Nier Automata got so much love and brought attention to the original too. Oh and the Playstation version of Final Fantasy VI is the best version. I am sad the later releases weren't built from it.
I always loved that despite Graff being a giant bastard for the whole game he's just very intentionally preparing you for the final boss who he tells you must be destroyed at the beginning of act one.
@@macielaguilarochoa8832 Dude, come on. I obviously meant the game that is shown a millisecond after the 0:50 mark. If I was referring to FFT, why would I timestamp the very last possible frame of its clip?
"VagrantStory can be beat in 20h." *_looks at my ps1 memmory card with almost 500hours ..._* ok I clearly should had not spend less time crafting stuff...
Vandal Hearts 2 has a great story circulating on war, politics, and religion with themes of betrayal, friendship, etc… Kinda similar to FF Tactics! VH2 was one of my favorite tactical rpgs.
Really like that Yakuza like a dragon is on here. It was my first Yakuza game and I loved it. I later played Yakuza zero which should definitely be on the part 2 list if you ever make one! I play a lot of jrpgs but even a few of these I was unaware of. Very good list!
I know this has probably been touched on by now, but 360 in Japan got Gestalt while the ps3 got Replicant exclusively and when they ported it over they didn’t want to put in the budget to port both versions so they just ported Gestalt since they thought it would resonate better with western audiences.
One JRPG I'd like to add to this list is Yggdra Union for PSP, forget about the cute, chibi animations, the story is surprisingly dark. Few games based on war themes, make you face the real ramifications of war, where innocent people die and nobody truly escapes the horror. In this game you try to defend your land and protect your people, but you'll end up fighting and killing people who are trying to do the exact same as you, some of them just plain suckered into a war they never wanted (think of Belgium in WW1). Your MC starts this game as just another generic ¨heroic war leader rising against tyranny¨, but at the end, you'll end up feeling like a morally gray, hypocrite POS and war criminal too. Fantastic.
I mean feel like this could probably easily be a 30 part series. Also want to give a bit of attention to Fuga: melodies of wind. Not in regards to it being especially dark or even deep story but a good game that just kind of generally really got overlooked. It's a rag tag bunch of kids piloting a giant mech taking down an opposing military force to rescue their parents. Has something of a rock paper scissors style combat. Game sold like garbage but the developers self published it and are still determined to finish the trilogy.
I remember playing Vagrant Story when I was kid. Oh man.. it was too hard for my little brain at the time. There were so many things you have to put in consideration in battle which makes so hard sometime. Anyway, I still have PS1 CD.
I think recently Tales of Arise was refreshing it was mostly adults in party. I love Digital Devil Saga!! They got me into SMT and I went and played all the older mainline titles
I'd like to give honorable mention to Xenosaga and Suikoden 3 as well. I think there may be ties between Xenosaga and Xenogears as many of the topics you referenced as part of Xenogear's story are also present in Xenosaga. I also have to give s/o to Suikoden 3 as it was the first videogame that i had ever played which highlighted that in conflicts there rarely is a objectively good or evil side and that oftentimes good or evil can be decided by what side of the conflict events are viewed from
Nier Gestalt is still one of my favorite games of all time and probably has the best music of any game ever (I still listen to the OST often). The combat in Replicant remake was better for sure but they changed the music and I know some people didn’t mind but they made it more like Automata’s music and while good, imo Gestalt’s music was perfect so any changes are not for the better. Also the narrative is stronger with a father and daughter as seen in Gestalt, but the extra content added at the end in the Replicant remake is interesting. So it’s hard to recommend which someone should play but Gestalt will always be my choice. Either way I don’t think you can go wrong and there are story moments that are sadder than *any* other game too with a very interesting plot overall. It was great to see it on your list - I didn’t know if I’d see it since idk if I would actually call it a JRPG but nonetheless very happy to see it recommended so maybe more people play it!
I got really mad at Xenogears after (spoliers, maybe?) what Citan does to the team in the factory. I mean it felt like it was trying to shock us with something completely avoidable just to be shocking Great video as always buddy, May i suggest Alundra for PS1 for a potential part 2?
I was really enjoying Yakuza: LaD (story, characters, gameplay, the whole shebang) until I got to that boss fight where you fight the 2 original Yakuza characters at the same time. I spent at least 20 minutes struggling through it (on top of the 30 minutes or so leading up to the fight with no saves) just to get wiped. It was the first time seeing the GAME OVER screen in that game. I was so pissed after that, I haven't been back to it since.
Strictly talking about the plot, I'll go to bat for Final Fantasy XIII. It's dense and hard to get into, but the overall plotting is excellent and the characters are realistically complicated. Plus, unlike too many FF games, the plot never goes totally off the rails. Although it does get a bit too reliant on deus ex machina in the final chapter. Even then, I consider it the most mature and well-told story in the FF series. Also, right now I'm playing Tales Of Beseria and I am *loving* the dark villain-protagonist storyline. The way it looks like a cutesy anime game, but stars a character driven completely insane by vengeful rage and survivor's guilt, creates a really interesting vibe. It's not AS deep as some of the other games on this list, but it's still so refreshing after playing way too many "teens killing god with the power of friendship" RPGs.
FF13 is objectively garbage and anyone who likes it has 0 taste. You'd have a better and easier time defending the artistic merits of the Twilight series than you would have in trying to convince anyone who knows better that FF13 is anything but the lowest form of trash.
Gods, Vagrant Story needs a remake. I always hoped for a sequel, but by now I would even be happy with a HD version for PS5. A really great game that suffered from some very tedious combat system. ...I one shot'ed a Dragon by stabbing it with a knife/dagger.😅 I prefer NIER Gestalt, because we don't have enough older adult heroes in JRPGs. Why couldn't they do a remake for that one too. I would have bought it. I played Vandal Hearts 1 and 2. 2 has more in game politics and it is also longer and I think also more difficult. There are 4 different endings, I think, depending on your actions. I think it Vandal Hearts 1 compares to 2 like Dragon Age 1 to Inquisition in my opinion.
I agree on all points. Always wanted sequel to Vagrant Story, especially as it feels like it was teased on at the end. Yes, we need more mature RPG and JRPG MCs. I still hope they make a Gestalt remake/enhanced version... one can hope, right? I too played Vandal Hearts 1 and 2 and agree with your assessment.
Glad SMT n these mature JRPGs are still around, as much as I love my jrpgs to be goofy, have a boppin' presentation, generic medieval fantasy. I strongly prefer Mature JRPGs even tho they can get edgy for the sake of being edgy. There is a sense of believability with the story n characters connecting with the player even tho in a fantasy world.
I loved Vandal Hearts, The art looked really good on a CRT (compared to seeing every pixel blown up at HD resolutions here) As well as the mature religion & war story, it went to some crazy places literally, Ant lions, time paradoxes, weird guys from other dimensions and the love, death and betrayal plot points meant though FFVII is lauded for those things being more well known, for those who played VH beforehand, those same things were not a big deal in Square's game. The tactics maps have some cool one-off features such as rolling boulders, pushing switches etc, and secret items on every map (See also Jeanne D'Arc on PSP) and alternate win conditions such as the possessed village at 10:20 where you have to destroy all the evil statues without killing the villagers, but they are so weak that the automatic counter attacks every unit does usually one-shotted the poor fools, the best I did was 1 kill. I'd highly recommend it as an introduction to TRPG/SRPG games and the general idea of levelling up and changing equipment.
ya i recently started emulating vagrant story and its a great game alot of menu's and a little difficult to get used to but once you do its pretty dam good
Lost Odyssey was the 1st jrpg that I stopped playing because of too much needless grinding. The story segments were way too long and the trips in-between was a slow boring grind. It seemed cool but just couldn't make it through. (I played a good quarter of the game if not close too half.)
Xenogears is by far one of the best RPGs ever released for PSX. People might have ranked it higher if Square had relaxed their policy about games needing to be completed within 2 years. The second disk is definitely jarring, and the fact that not all of the planned Omni gears were able to be finished in time definitely sucks. Regardless, the story is insanely good and made me question my perception on our own reality.
Xenogears is If Neon Genesis Evangelion had a much larger history, and a good ending, they nailed the Religious Future troupe better than Evangelion would ever do.
So basically Xenogears manages somehow to be better than literally the lowest form of trash storytelling in all of the history of fiction? Not a hard bar to pass.
@@the-NightStar the comparision is Just of the troupe that the two stories tackle that IS the Religious Future Just that because everything else cannot be compared It is actualy unfair
