I can’t get into ff7 because of how many missables there are. The game was also built to sell guides and, because of my raging autism, I have a compulsive need to scour hidden items which reduces enjoyment for me.
FF7 has plenty of flaws from its translation to some sketchy worldbuilding to straight up broken game mechanics. Hello magic defense on armor. FF7 is greater than the sum of its parts but please for the love of God don't herald it as a prefect game
technically*, it's a complete mess on pretty much every possible level, owing to the fact that nobody responsible for mechanical design or code implementation knew what the frick they were doing. even if the gameplay is to remain unaltered, the modern-day rereleases desperately need a codebase which is freed from the technical debt of a win98 release.
*meant in the literal sense of pertaining to technical elements, not as a figurative word
Materia while an interesting system requires far too much grinding and it also keeps much of the more interesting materia for too late in the game, especially the support materia, so you spend much of the game with not much difference in setups.
I think you hit the nail on the head. Character roles basically can't exist until after Junon at best. That's a long time for every character to be the same and even after that point there isn't that much difference. There are a lot of options and you can break the game if you know what you're doing. But by the time you get to that point the game is about half over
They can be. Part of the problem is that the drawbacks aren't enough. Minus two strength and a 2% drop in HP is not enough to dissuade anyone from slapping on a powerful bit of magic at the expense of a negligible amount of physical damage. At the same token in my current game I pumped Barrett full of guard sources and gave him a mastered cover materia. So he can act as the ultimate shield for my Power Soul Tifa who is shitting out 16,000 damage per turn so long as she can maintain low health and death sentence. But Final Fantasy 7 also has a difficulty problem meaning you're not obligated to make class roles either
It's too easy.
Even when I played it recently and triedto recreate traditional FF jobs into each characters (so unable to give all my best Materia to my "main" party), I steamrolled the game
Yes, I can. VII is a 10/10 masterpiece. However it has five minor flaws and one major flaw, but all of them are forgivable.
Graphics: Although I like them and consider them essential for the game to work with its zany parts.
Navigation: For a first-timer it's difficult to discern where to go. I've seen people on Youtube that have trouble finding Aerith's house much less the harder stuff. I guess the natural glow doesn't attract their attention.
The characters are interchangeable: I prefer this, since I don't want to be restricted in abilities and I want to bring whomever I want even though I rotate everyone in every RPG anyway, but many want them to be individualized.
Cinco de Chocobo: It's the third weakest chocobo song in the series after X-2. The other chocobo songs in VII are great.
Gilgamesh: He's not in it.
(The major flaw.) It's too easy: As a veteran you must use challenge runs or mods if you want difficulty and none of them feel very natural in VII unlike many other entries.
In addition to the six, there's also a single content flaw: The one-two punch of Great Glacier and Gaea's Cliff (as a false dramatic final dungeon buildup) is a bit exhausting.
It can here. The flaws being forgivable does that. In addition 10/10 in the context of game reviewing does not mean "perfect," but "essential to play."
Now much more bizarre is that I consider V flawless, not merely virtually flawless, but actually flawless, but I rate it only 9,5/10.
Chrono Trigger
Suikoden II
Dragon Quest V
Dragon Quest VIII
Final Fantasy V
But it really depends on what they want from an RPG. Some people prefer story, others prefer exploration. I tried to pick ones that balance both and are beginner friendly. And I know people who played those first.
Video game based RPGs aren't really going to be good. You're just playing a series of set events and character personalities the developer created, whether its one set one or they let you choose between 3-6 different ones. But none of them will ever have total roleplay freedom like a PnP game.
But if you just want class choices or to pretend you're a badass or to play as a cute girl, then there's a lot of options.
Since JRPGs are basically anime in video game form, probably ask if they like anime. And if they do, ask which ones they like. Then find a JRPG that has similar themes and setting.
If they don't watch anime, then I'd suggest Chrono or Suikoden as a starting point. Since they're ongoing stories and do the best at portraying anime tropes.
The presentation is amazing. The combat is easy to understand but it hooks you right on. Weird to explain you how if you havent played a jrpg before.
Also is one of the last few jrpgs where the music still has SOVL
Chrono Trigger if you want something that balances simple fast paced combat with enough quirks to make it complex enough not to lose interest and is also a fairly short adventure with not a lot of grinding or story padding.
Persona 4 and 5 are another good entry point thats main draw is the mix of typical JRPG dungeon crawler with life sim, although they are a bit more grindy.
Paper Mario has a more actiony turn based combat that uses quick time events to make it more interesting and keeps you from mashing attack, it also has a bit of puzzle platforming in the overworld.
Dragon Quest VIII and XI are both pretty basic both in combat and story but there is a certain charm to the worlds despite being rather cliche, can be a bit grindy though.
A few more quick suggestions
Golden Sun and Lufia for there puzzles inbetween combat
Parasite Eve and Vagrant Story both have an interesting real time with pause combat, PE mixes with survival horror while VS is more a straight dungeon crawler.
Earthbound has a very basic combat but makes up for it with charm and humor.
I've recommended FFVII to like 3 people (2 of them disliked every JRPG game they played) and all three became absolutely obsessed with the game. It's just 3 people, but FFVII is the real deal, dude.
To be fair Final Fantasy 7 has a very strong opening. From the second you start the game you're on a daring terrorist attack to blow up a reactor that is endangering the planet somehow. As far as premises go it's a damn good one and it's executed very well because you feel like you did something rather than do busy work before the game starts.
A lot of FF games have a similar strong opening. I love the opening of FFIV, VI, VII, VIII and X. But then they fall apart halfway through when the "plot twist" is thrown in. And much of the character/plot development from the start is basically made null. This is why I haven't finished a bunch of FF games. And that's a common thing I hear from others as well. They have played like 10 FF games but never finished any of them.
The only plot twist and game that I never go back to is 8. For the record I've gone back to 2 twice even though I think that game is archaic as shit. In the case of seven I actually like the plot twist mainly because of how weak Cloud is at the start of the game actually factors into the story it's trying to tell. Which makes the game better when you start a new save after you've completed it and you realize how many things were off about him from the beginning
You can't send someone who's uninitiated to FF7. That's going too far back. It looks like shit, its written in Engrish, its brain dead easy and boring. Start with FFX or Persona 3 at least.
I feel like Final Fantasy 10 started out super popular. Then it got shit on for a long time. And now it's starting to get some of its popularity back. I've always liked Final Fantasy 10 but I also see myself defending it a lot
Someone can play an 'old' JRPG like Chrono Trigger or Dragon Quest V or Suikoden II and like it just fine. FF7 has the problem that it looks and plays dated because of the early 3D designs. And that was a problem when it first came out. People just fell for the marketing in the late 90s, much like Tekken or Tomb Raider.
So you're right that it's not a good game for a more modern gamer to play. But they can play plenty of older JRPGs and still like them. They just tend to be the 2D games that aged well.
Agreed. Suikoden II and Chrono have aged infinitely better. I'd even recommend any of the recent pixel remasters except II, calm down over FF7. Even FFIX looks miles better than FFVII. I get that they wanted to be first to splash these new graphics in people's faces but they really should have spent more time in the lab. People made fun of the huge disparage between the visuals in combat and the overworld even in 1997.
>People made fun of the huge disparage between the visuals in combat and the overworld even in 1997.
Yeah, I was one of those. But we were drowned out by the people going "b-but the FMVs! I'm cumming!" But it was funny to see them then turn around and try to argue FFVIII was worse. Some even argued FFVII had better models and FMVs precisely because they weren't realistic or even "closer to the classic games". Despite them also hating on FFVI. The cope was huge even in the late 90s.
>that chibi FMV sequence in Mideel
You can still smell the time crunch in that one and it looks ridiculous. I thought it was much more effective to utilize 2D anime like Xenogears. They went with CG for the sake of it being new regardless of how bad it looked.
if they're a zoomer that can't go without VA, Final Fantasy X
if they are fine reading, Final Fantasy VII
if they're a zoomer that can't go without VA and are too ADD for turn-based point them to whichever Tales game post-Symphonia that they like the cover of the best
For little kids (younger than 8), I would do any Dragon Quest or Pokemon
I am surprised nobody said Legend of Dragoon yet, also Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross are good. If they care about graphics then FF X or FF XII. If they want a MMO simulator that is 100x better than SAO then get into the original dot hack series from PS2 era
redpill me on it
I don't know what the abbreviations are for those first two.
p2 hitler edition
so2
ff4/6/7/8
seiken densetu 2
lunar
phantasy star iv
ff 8 is awful, even ff 7 is more tolerable than this pile of nonsense
Chronotrigger is only good JRPG
FF8 was the best FF because it was a card game not a JRPG
Certainly not any FF game.
You literally cannot name a single flaw in FF7.
We can name many. You'll just plug your ears and say they aren't flaws.
hasnt aged well and looks like shit
The translation of the original PS1 game and the censorship of the remake, just for starters.
I can’t get into ff7 because of how many missables there are. The game was also built to sell guides and, because of my raging autism, I have a compulsive need to scour hidden items which reduces enjoyment for me.
FF7 has plenty of flaws from its translation to some sketchy worldbuilding to straight up broken game mechanics. Hello magic defense on armor. FF7 is greater than the sum of its parts but please for the love of God don't herald it as a prefect game
>Hello magic defense on armor.
That's a good thing though, because it makes the enemies appear relevant throughout the game.
technically*, it's a complete mess on pretty much every possible level, owing to the fact that nobody responsible for mechanical design or code implementation knew what the frick they were doing. even if the gameplay is to remain unaltered, the modern-day rereleases desperately need a codebase which is freed from the technical debt of a win98 release.
*meant in the literal sense of pertaining to technical elements, not as a figurative word
Materia while an interesting system requires far too much grinding and it also keeps much of the more interesting materia for too late in the game, especially the support materia, so you spend much of the game with not much difference in setups.
I think you hit the nail on the head. Character roles basically can't exist until after Junon at best. That's a long time for every character to be the same and even after that point there isn't that much difference. There are a lot of options and you can break the game if you know what you're doing. But by the time you get to that point the game is about half over
Materia ends up making every character feel the same. Every character can be the magician or tank.
They can be. Part of the problem is that the drawbacks aren't enough. Minus two strength and a 2% drop in HP is not enough to dissuade anyone from slapping on a powerful bit of magic at the expense of a negligible amount of physical damage. At the same token in my current game I pumped Barrett full of guard sources and gave him a mastered cover materia. So he can act as the ultimate shield for my Power Soul Tifa who is shitting out 16,000 damage per turn so long as she can maintain low health and death sentence. But Final Fantasy 7 also has a difficulty problem meaning you're not obligated to make class roles either
It's too easy.
Even when I played it recently and triedto recreate traditional FF jobs into each characters (so unable to give all my best Materia to my "main" party), I steamrolled the game
Yes, I can. VII is a 10/10 masterpiece. However it has five minor flaws and one major flaw, but all of them are forgivable.
Graphics: Although I like them and consider them essential for the game to work with its zany parts.
Navigation: For a first-timer it's difficult to discern where to go. I've seen people on Youtube that have trouble finding Aerith's house much less the harder stuff. I guess the natural glow doesn't attract their attention.
The characters are interchangeable: I prefer this, since I don't want to be restricted in abilities and I want to bring whomever I want even though I rotate everyone in every RPG anyway, but many want them to be individualized.
Cinco de Chocobo: It's the third weakest chocobo song in the series after X-2. The other chocobo songs in VII are great.
Gilgamesh: He's not in it.
(The major flaw.) It's too easy: As a veteran you must use challenge runs or mods if you want difficulty and none of them feel very natural in VII unlike many other entries.
In addition to the six, there's also a single content flaw: The one-two punch of Great Glacier and Gaea's Cliff (as a false dramatic final dungeon buildup) is a bit exhausting.
>The one-two punch of Great Glacier and Gaea's Cliff
unplayable without fast forward
I ain't no mathematician. But I don't think a game can be perfect 10/10 if it has flaws.
It can here. The flaws being forgivable does that. In addition 10/10 in the context of game reviewing does not mean "perfect," but "essential to play."
Now much more bizarre is that I consider V flawless, not merely virtually flawless, but actually flawless, but I rate it only 9,5/10.
perfect =/= masterpiece
It's not FFVI.
It introduced the series to an audience that gives zero shits about its origins.
Similar to what RE4 did to Resident Evil.
But you're right that this isn't as such a fault of the game itself.
Chrono Trigger
Suikoden II
Dragon Quest V
Dragon Quest VIII
Final Fantasy V
But it really depends on what they want from an RPG. Some people prefer story, others prefer exploration. I tried to pick ones that balance both and are beginner friendly. And I know people who played those first.
what if i prefer... roleplay
Video game based RPGs aren't really going to be good. You're just playing a series of set events and character personalities the developer created, whether its one set one or they let you choose between 3-6 different ones. But none of them will ever have total roleplay freedom like a PnP game.
But if you just want class choices or to pretend you're a badass or to play as a cute girl, then there's a lot of options.
Since JRPGs are basically anime in video game form, probably ask if they like anime. And if they do, ask which ones they like. Then find a JRPG that has similar themes and setting.
If they don't watch anime, then I'd suggest Chrono or Suikoden as a starting point. Since they're ongoing stories and do the best at portraying anime tropes.
I played a lot of the DQ games this year and I want to play more turn-based RPGs
Ff9 is what gor me into it. Its the best one maybe
nu-rpg gays hate this game but the combat is kino and the effects are really pretty
what does it really do differently besides graphics, I haven't heard much about it
The presentation is amazing. The combat is easy to understand but it hooks you right on. Weird to explain you how if you havent played a jrpg before.
Also is one of the last few jrpgs where the music still has SOVL
> watching two friends release nearly a decade of pent-up romantic desire within a single night
Why in God's name would you do this?
Chrono Trigger if you want something that balances simple fast paced combat with enough quirks to make it complex enough not to lose interest and is also a fairly short adventure with not a lot of grinding or story padding.
Persona 4 and 5 are another good entry point thats main draw is the mix of typical JRPG dungeon crawler with life sim, although they are a bit more grindy.
Paper Mario has a more actiony turn based combat that uses quick time events to make it more interesting and keeps you from mashing attack, it also has a bit of puzzle platforming in the overworld.
Dragon Quest VIII and XI are both pretty basic both in combat and story but there is a certain charm to the worlds despite being rather cliche, can be a bit grindy though.
A few more quick suggestions
Golden Sun and Lufia for there puzzles inbetween combat
Parasite Eve and Vagrant Story both have an interesting real time with pause combat, PE mixes with survival horror while VS is more a straight dungeon crawler.
Earthbound has a very basic combat but makes up for it with charm and humor.
I've recommended FFVII to like 3 people (2 of them disliked every JRPG game they played) and all three became absolutely obsessed with the game. It's just 3 people, but FFVII is the real deal, dude.
To be fair Final Fantasy 7 has a very strong opening. From the second you start the game you're on a daring terrorist attack to blow up a reactor that is endangering the planet somehow. As far as premises go it's a damn good one and it's executed very well because you feel like you did something rather than do busy work before the game starts.
A lot of FF games have a similar strong opening. I love the opening of FFIV, VI, VII, VIII and X. But then they fall apart halfway through when the "plot twist" is thrown in. And much of the character/plot development from the start is basically made null. This is why I haven't finished a bunch of FF games. And that's a common thing I hear from others as well. They have played like 10 FF games but never finished any of them.
The only plot twist and game that I never go back to is 8. For the record I've gone back to 2 twice even though I think that game is archaic as shit. In the case of seven I actually like the plot twist mainly because of how weak Cloud is at the start of the game actually factors into the story it's trying to tell. Which makes the game better when you start a new save after you've completed it and you realize how many things were off about him from the beginning
This tends to be my problem with MOST JRPGs, the opening kicks ass and by the mid-point it really feels like the game meanders.
This game’s ability to hook people who don’t enjoy JRPG gameplay is astounding
>mediocre social life gameplay
>mediocre dungeon gameplay
>semi-mediocre combat sys.
That game is a bait
Don’t care, it’s fun
I would judge it way more harshly (It's one of the two turn based games, that I hate for its gameplay), but he's still correct.
You can't send someone who's uninitiated to FF7. That's going too far back. It looks like shit, its written in Engrish, its brain dead easy and boring. Start with FFX or Persona 3 at least.
I feel like Final Fantasy 10 started out super popular. Then it got shit on for a long time. And now it's starting to get some of its popularity back. I've always liked Final Fantasy 10 but I also see myself defending it a lot
Someone can play an 'old' JRPG like Chrono Trigger or Dragon Quest V or Suikoden II and like it just fine. FF7 has the problem that it looks and plays dated because of the early 3D designs. And that was a problem when it first came out. People just fell for the marketing in the late 90s, much like Tekken or Tomb Raider.
So you're right that it's not a good game for a more modern gamer to play. But they can play plenty of older JRPGs and still like them. They just tend to be the 2D games that aged well.
Agreed. Suikoden II and Chrono have aged infinitely better. I'd even recommend any of the recent pixel remasters except II, calm down over FF7. Even FFIX looks miles better than FFVII. I get that they wanted to be first to splash these new graphics in people's faces but they really should have spent more time in the lab. People made fun of the huge disparage between the visuals in combat and the overworld even in 1997.
>People made fun of the huge disparage between the visuals in combat and the overworld even in 1997.
Yeah, I was one of those. But we were drowned out by the people going "b-but the FMVs! I'm cumming!" But it was funny to see them then turn around and try to argue FFVIII was worse. Some even argued FFVII had better models and FMVs precisely because they weren't realistic or even "closer to the classic games". Despite them also hating on FFVI. The cope was huge even in the late 90s.
>that chibi FMV sequence in Mideel
You can still smell the time crunch in that one and it looks ridiculous. I thought it was much more effective to utilize 2D anime like Xenogears. They went with CG for the sake of it being new regardless of how bad it looked.
Undertale.
God awful bait, Undertale isn’t a JRPG cause it’s actually good
Tales of Symphonia or Tales of the Abyss
if they're a zoomer that can't go without VA, Final Fantasy X
if they are fine reading, Final Fantasy VII
if they're a zoomer that can't go without VA and are too ADD for turn-based point them to whichever Tales game post-Symphonia that they like the cover of the best
For little kids (younger than 8), I would do any Dragon Quest or Pokemon
Any Persona game really.
i've only got into jrpgs properly recently and it was dqxi that got me into them
I am surprised nobody said Legend of Dragoon yet, also Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross are good. If they care about graphics then FF X or FF XII. If they want a MMO simulator that is 100x better than SAO then get into the original dot hack series from PS2 era