Fun facts about Hourai: the online thing you talked about was actually mail in rpgs! Back in the day they used to be huge in Japan, you'd send it a slip from a magazine or ad, and you'd get a big thing in the mail explaining the story and such that you'd be playing. It depended on the game, but usually every month you'd send in a long letter about what you wanted to do in the game and the people running the game would send you a letter back describing what happened and what's going on with your characters. Then you'd continue until the game was eventually over. They'd encompass thousands of players and Hourai was one of the most popular ones. On a side note, I bought a reproduction cart for this game a month or so back and you gave me the motivation to check it out again and put some other games down! Haha
I've played the majority of these games. I think the only ones on here that I haven't at least heard of were G.O.D. and Love Quest. I remember Nintendo Power having something on Secret of the Stars back in the day. Great video!
i dont think i have ever felt so UNCOZY watching a video about cozy video games haha. Not criticizing just think its funny the rampent energy you bring
GREAT!!! The video about "unfun games" really helped me to understand something about myself and this one provided me with some gems to try and to play. Thank You a lot!
Fun fact from another RU-vid video: Japanese media tend to use middle and high school as (escapism) setting so much because to many people it was the least soul sucking time of their lives. Let that sink in. Also great video, very much vibe points, i have built a bonfire with my meds now.
1. ha! I've played Hourai High! It was wacky and funny. 2. Ah yes the best Seiken Densetsu/Secret of mana game. I'm glad it got an official english release. I remember playing a fan translation of it it in high school on a snes emulator. It was some fun times. I managed to beat it with the witch girl, Carlie/the half elf priest girl, and the beast boy kevin. It was a bit difficult but i loved this line up. Plus the overarcing story of this game. 3. I've also played Treasure of the Rudra but i couldnt get into it. I loved the aesthetic tho. 4. Admittedly I havent heard of this one. I might check it out.. 6. Hell yea! Romancing SAGA is one of my faves! 7. I have a soft spot for Secret of the Stars too. :) 8. What even... lmao It'd be interesting to see the og famicom version. 9. GOD.... yep I think i started playing this one one time. Never really got into it but I did like the city vibes it had. 10. Star Ocean Blue Sphere is one i ve heard (I once travelled down the Star Ocean series rabbit hole after playing Star Ocean til the End of Time--whatever the ps2 version was called in the West) and I ended up playing the first two games the on SNES and PS1 respectively (and their remakes on the psp/vita and liking those). So i may have to revisit this series again and play Blue Sphere. 11. Legend of the River King! That's definitely a Harvest Moon spin off! LOL So, here are some i suggest you check on, esp if you love the weird quirky mechanics and some good fantasy vibes. (esp if you loved the Romancing Saga games, Seiken Densetsu, and Secret of the Stars or just JRPGs on the SNES in general. Eternal Filena is a snes jrpg based off of the light novels of the same name (the light novels are written by the dude who wrote the scripts for the anime Minky Momo for those who are curious). It's about a princess who was raised as a man or rather a soldier to hide her entity while she tries to find a way to overthrow the empire that took over her home. The story is pretty straightforward and linear but the characters and the scenery and even the atmosphere are pretty chill. The battle mechanics are a bit different though. And while you'll have mainly Filena and her wife, as the main party members, you'll get other party members who'll come and go at different points in the story (kinda like in Final Fantasy 4!). Emerald Dragon, all I can say about this game is that it has great anime aesthetics and it has a weird battle system thats a bit like Bakametsu Kourinden Oni's. You play as a dragon who befriended a priestess and gave her one of his horns. I kinda like forgot what the plot was about (i think the girl gets kidnapped for her powers?) and he has to go find her. La Place no Ma is like if Sweet Home had a baby with your typical 1920's/30s detective story but given the graphics of 7th Saga and had some anime aesthetics slapped onto the character's portraits. It's a horror jrpg at the end of the day but it is kinda cozy to me. idk why. lol You're basically a journalist teaming up with some paranormal investigators to investigate a haunted mansion. Dragon Quest 5, this game is well known by now given that it got a remake on the DS and I think a re-release on some of the newer consoles but this game is always cozy to me, maybe it's because Akira Toriyama has always had a cozy familiar feel to me and the monsters always look comical. But the story in the game is about a young boy who grows into a man looking for his mother and trying to restore his family's legacy while forming a family of his own. It's warm and cozy :) Wonder Project J - I'm sure some people know about this game but basically you're raising a boy robot, teaching him how to interact with the world around him but at the same time you're guiding him to show the people in the world he lives in that robots aren't as bad or worthless as people thought all the while of looking for the robot's creator and overthrowing an evil tyrant. It's pretty fun and cozy. I just love the childlike vibes this game has.
Damn, I read about River King in a game magazine when I was a kid, said 'Man, I wanna play that', and evidently that single event touched me enough that when I saw it show up on this list I went "River King! Hell Yeah!" as nostalgia washed over me. I never even played it, I just read about it in a magazine.
You should try Growlanser. It's a fun strategy/romance and it has a rather sophisticated "personality system" where your actions over the course of the game give the protagonist different personality stats. Your stats will determine where the story goes, who you can romance, the ending, and what events will trigger. Every choice you make matters, no matter how small. The player has a lot of agency within the narrative and it's great. Each playthrough is different. The game has great art and music. The story is very much about love and made me cry like 10 times, and the worldbuilding is really cool. I'm obsessed with every character and you can also build your own city for some reason?? I've never seen anything like this game, and wish that other games like it existed. It's also relaxing.
If I recall correctly, there’s an article on it in Bitmap Books’ “A Guide to Japanese Role-Playing Games,” so I guess I assumed there’d be some sort of translation effort by now… Hopefully someday!!
I've only played a couple of those, so thanks for the recs! You sold me on Hourai High. And I appear to have downloaded G.O.D. at some point, so maybe I should actually play it, haha.
SaGa mentioned!!! WOOOOOH! Also, probably people already said it, but SaGa was created by the guy made FF2 so it's pretty much a spinoff series. Like they took the FF2 mechanics and decided to refine them. It's like Final Fantasy's weird but cool younger brother.
Saga is currently having resurgence by now,considering dozen of SQEX key member(developer as well) was longtime fan of the series, not to mention the Saga gacha mobile games was fairly popular in Japan,by resurgence i meant RS2 getting a remaster and remake,Minstrel Song Remake,RS3 port,SF1 remaster,Emerald Beyond as mainlinr title
Great video, your editing is top tier and I always learn about new games even I, as a lifelong niche JRPG fan, have never heard of. One nitpick I have tho is that Japanese is a phonetic language, meaning its symbols will have exactly the same sound every single time. Whereas in English, "Ba" could either sound like "Bah" or "Baa," it will always sound like "Bah" in Japanese
Specifically related to the Love Quest section, but god, I *hate* the selfish snobby collectors that refuse to share literal lost media. The very concept of hoarding a rare game all to yourself that you aren't even going to play is just gross to me. You can *keep* the rare artifact, just put the ROM online so others can experience it. Anyway, interesting list of games. Lol.
I've yet to play any Romancing Saga games, have had them on my mind for a good decade now, but it's really frustrating to see the disservice so many Square games get with "touched up" graphics, all those musty phone parts they shove on PC. The FF Pixel Remasters aren't perfect but they're a miracle compared to other ports they've done.
@@pixaafterdark9915 i dont think so,i went to the site i get my roms from, to the snes section, filtered the games to just rpgs and sorted them by downloads, this was on the last page lmao
Nope its not as obscure as you think it is. Anyone who has played Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger, and the final fantasy snes games in the 90s would definitely have known about it since it was made by the American branch of Squaresoft back in the day. It's one of my fave SNES games ever.
This video is good and I like how cool these games seem, but you might want to slow down a bit. Your delivery and editing is exhausting and frantic while the subject of the video is something relaxed and interesting. You can just talk, you know?
No Live-A-Live mention? Plus, Treasure of The Rudras can't be a Final Fantasy knock-off due to the fact that it was made by the creators of Final Fantasy!
@@pixaafterdark9915 true even some zoomer i talked with know them solely because they researched lot of thing from the old,i even found some 2000s kids proclaimed to be longtime fan of certain series like Armored Core,Ace Combat,Live A Live despite only playing and getting to know them in 2010s period
@@pixaafterdark9915 Shining Force Neo, its gorgeous but the voice acting sure is a treat and a translated DS game that's kind of like the Atelier games, Nora and the Time Studio.
Actually SaGa's growth systems are random, and the game punishes you for trying to get stronger with tougher battles out of your league. They're not cozy; they're a management nightmare. I challenge any Romancing SaGa expert to teach a novice how to play the second and third games so they can be beaten reliably.
Bro why all the Inindo hate, it's a great game and I love it 🥲 It's a game set in the Sengoku (warring states) period of Japan, done by the same guys who did Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Nobunaga's Ambition, but instead of being a ruler you're a sole ninja in search of power and revenge. You travel around Japan, finding companions, rivals, searching for the lost teachings of your destroyed ninja clan. The game even simulates the diplomacy and battles between the different Japanese provinces and you can take sides, perform espionage, sabotage and even lead armies to influence the course of the war. It's an amazing game and more people need to play it 🙏
