The JRPG Games I played in 2024

Here’s a list of the JRPGs - whether turn-based or action - that I played this year. This one is a long read, so for those interested, grab some popcorn and a drink for this. Here we go:

Game that I beaten and liked:

SaGa 3: Champions of Time and Space (Final Fantasy Legends 3 / SaGa 3 DS remake): I started this one on 12-31-2023, but I beat it in 2024, so it still counts. This is currently my least favorite SaGa game that I’ve beaten because it feels like a SaGa lite. It’s still a good game, but doesn’t have much of the spice a SaGa game usually has. Then again, it is a remake of the original SaGa 3, which I hear added in SaGa elements that the original didn’t have (apparently it’s like Final Fantasy Mystic Quest on the GameBoy). The gameplay is still good, with the ability to change your character’s species to be more affiliated with certain weapons (like the beast species being better with spears and martial arts). I’m not a big fan of the character design, more specifically the in-game graphical faces, they don’t look good. The soundtrack is decent, with my favorite being the two final boss themes. Doesn’t stand out that much compared to other SaGa game soundtracks. I do see this game as a nice beginner’s SaGa game, but it’s not easily accessible. I bought an Unofficial English Translation Cartridge on eBay from some user that isn’t on eBay anymore (this and SaGa 2 DS remake), so that’s how I even played this. You would have to have a PC with a DS emulator, with an unofficial English translation patch to play this game, with emulation being tricky and the fact not everyone does that, yeah, not so accessible. I still like this game, along with SaGa 2 DS remake, but I still prefer other SaGa games (not Romancing SaGa SFC though).

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow: Technically this is a Metroidvania game, but Wikipedia does consider it an action role-playing game with the game having RPG elements and it did come from Japan, so I’ll let this count. I played the DS games & SOTN before the GBA games, so it made sense I would finally play these. With the Advance collection on all platforms, that was the way I experienced these games (I do have a GBA, but wasn’t going to pay the price for Aria of Sorrow). This one ended up being my favorite of the bunch and in my top three Castlevania games. Nice gameplay, good exploration, fun boss battles, and a good soundtrack, especially considering it’s with the GBA soundfont. Feels weird playing Aria after Dawn of Sorrow, since that is the sequel, but is still a really good game, especially considering Aria doesn’t have that dumb touch screen gimmick.

Soul Hackers 2: The first decisive one. This game ended up being a better experience for me since those patches were released, fixing the camera angle and slow walking speed issues with the game. Some people liked it, some people didn’t, some were mixed. I’m on the side that liked this one. I like the graphics, the vibe, the characters, soundtrack, and gameplay. Dungeon exploration is still the weakest aspect, it would take an overhaul to fix. One of the memory dungeons was a pain, I think it was Saizo’s memory 4, that one sucked. Eitherway, I ended up being very pleased with the game. Not as high as Mainline SMT, Digital Devil Saga 1-2, and Soul Hackers 1, but I prefer this over Persona.

Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (remake): I like this one, I don’t love it like everyone else does. I’m glad this remake fixed most of the backtracking, there is still some, but at least it’s more contained. Superguard is easier, since the game is at 30 FPS, making the timing easier than trying to in the original’s 60 FPS. I still like the story, characters and gameplay as I did previously. This game is good, I just simply prefer other RPG games like SaGa, Shin Megami Tensei, Bravely, Octopath Traveler.

Bravely Default II: Another decisive one. And despite what Adam said, I did not grow bored. Usually I hear people say the two previous Bravely games were better, but eh, I think all three games have their strengths and weaknesses. Let’s not ignore Bravely Default’s repeated second half, that was unnecessary padding. Back to BF2, I like how the new developers managed with this game. I’ll admit, Seth isn’t a very interesting main character, while Gloria is fine, Elvis is the most entertaining MC, and Adelle is also entertaining. Job classes are again great with high customization. Weight having more of an impact compared to the previous two. Soundtrack is great, considering it’s a Bravely game, hard to rank each Bravely game, all are simply great. I do think the last hours or so of the game is rushed, considering the pandemic caused a struggle with the developers. I still say it’s a great but flawed game all things considered.

Granblue Fantasy Relink: Wanted to play this since I saw the trailer. One of my anticipated games for 2024 and this game did not disappoint. Great gameplay with a diversity of different characters, especially the lovely Narmaya. Soundtrack is really good. Graphics are good. Story and characters are fine. It has this cheesy vibe which is fine for those into it, but I personally don’t see myself watching most of the cutscenes via replaying it. I wasn’t expecting a great expansive story in this game, so it’s fine. It’s one of those play-it-for-the-gameplay type of game.

Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven: The crown symbolizes that it’s my favorite one. Of course as a big SaGa fan, I didn’t have a doubt. An example of a great remake retaining the elements that made the original game stand out, polishing up some of the outdated stuff, and adding in new mechanics to add more depth to the gameplay. Stunning remake of the soundtrack from the great KENJI ITO! Getting more character depth with the Seven Heroes is great, knowing them, Orieve, and other characters of the past. Now for some nitpicks I have with the remake: I do admit the new quirk of only being able to equip 2 weapons (including martial art) instead of 4 threw me off, but it was obviously for balancing reasons and having a focus on what character uses what. I can do without the slow ledge walking, I don’t play a SaGa game for that cinematic BS. Lastly, I don’t like that they made Past Kzinssie some generic nervous young character. Seeing the old official artwork where Kzinssie’s an old warrior in black armor made him more awesome and makes more sense than him being a twink wearing Final Fantasy dress wear. Outside of these tiny issues, it is still a great game, my new favorite SaGa game (and game of all time), very pleased. Here's hoping Xeen makes more great quality stuff.

Ys Seven (PSP): Ys Seven being “My Hero” is because, no joke, it’s the only PSP game I played this year that I really liked. Non JRPG games, so I won’t go into it, but it really shows how outdated those games are and how my standards have risen. Ys Seven stands out with it being a great Ys and a great game in general. Great twists and turns, great gameplay, great back of characters, great standard Ys soundtrack, great game overall. I’m slowly getting closer to the Ys line, I’ll try to play 8 next year.

Games that I didn’t like:

Castlevania: Circle of the Moon: This one doesn’t hold up for me. Level scaling mainly sticking out really bad. As the usual ruke, the lower level you are, you deal less damage and take more damage. This game has the grindy feel to pad out time and the final boss definitely shows that. Also, the cards are obtained from enemies with a low drop rate. I remember doing so many back and forths with the red dressed lady to get one damn card. I ended up using a flame circle attack as my main Dual Set-up attack since I can just graze the enemy and they take damage. Not a good attack for the final boss. I foolishly stuck with that set-up and used the rewind feature since I was playing the Advance Collection. At that point, I just wanted to see the ending. I did have the cross secondary attack, so that helped. The controls aren't great, with the stiff feeling, but considering it was made by a different team and it being the first Castlevania GBA game, I guess I can understand the lack of fluidity. Soundtrack is fine, one song sticks out, but I don’t remember the name atm. Yeah, not too happy with this one. What makes it sting even more is that I heard about the glitch where you can use any DSS combo without getting the cards. Basically:

1.) Select a DSS combo that you have.

2.) Activate it.

3.) As Nathan begins to glow, quickly pause. 4.) Now select any DSS combo, choosing cards from empty slots.

5.) Now instead of the DSS combo you first activated, you will get the new one you chose.

Yeah, makes the whole grinding for the cards genuinely not worth it. The game does have depth, yes, but man does it sting how it’s handled. Also included putting in fighting style button prompts to use certain special secondary attack from certain Dual Set-up attacks. Yeah, this game’s giving me a headache, moving on.

Games that I beaten and ended up being mixed with:

Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance: This game is better than COTM, but not better than Aria. Feels like a spiritual sequel to SOTN but with a not so nice control feel. It also feels as easy as that game. Don’t have much to say about this one, I like it, but I can’t say I really like it. Soundtrack here is good, which is usually Castlevania standard stuff, even though I thought COTM’s soundtrack was kinda underwhelming.

Nier Replicant: Mixed mainly coming from gameplay. Gameplay is good, but doesn’t have enough, mainly when you go after the other endings (outside of Ending E where you play as a different character). It’s nice and all for the first half, then the second half you get two new weapon types, then replaying the second half twice for Endings B, C, and D isn’t all that fun. Especially when you have to fight those fixed/ cinematic boss fights multiple times. Soundtrack is good, not the biggest fan of chorus music pieces, so I’m biased. But the singer is great, especially in the overworld theme. Characters are good and all, Kaine I’m split with. On one side she’s humorous and badass, other times she comes off like an edgelord. Gonna say this, her speech in Ending E comes off as pretentious to me, it made me prefer Ending C. Overall, a good game, I understand the cult following and all, but I don’t see this as something to come back too. Which is fine, some games are meant to be played once, especially considering I got all the endings and gameplay doesn’t have as much depth as other games. Here’s hoping Automata does disappoint me.

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona (1) [Snow Queen Route] (2009, PSP): I have played the SEBEC route back in 2016, so I decided to play this game again to finally play this route. I ended up not liking this one so much, the first reason is the demons. Demon’s weakness and strengths are straightforward and simply leaves you with using certain ones, like demons with status ailment immunity via Lilith. Customization is limited because you take big damage when it comes to weaknesses and certain demon’s skillset is simply better than other demons. Yes, it sounds like basic game design, but it is more limiting here and makes the gameplay weaker. Also, the third tower in the Snow Queen is literally one of my least favorite dungeons in any JRPG I’ve played. I can’t remember the last time my frustration was at the roof while exploring a dungeon. Basically, a curse gets put on the party where if you die in battle, your Persona gets taken away from that character. Without a Persona, not only are your magic spells gone, your magic defense is non-existent, being one shot by demons if they get their turn before certain characters do. You have to go to a certain room to get your Persona back and continue to the end of the dungeon. Problems, there’s only ONE ROOM! So any time your character dies, no matter how far it is, you have to go back to that room to get your Persona/s back. With the tedium of random encounters and easily losing your way back to the room adds up to major annoyance. I’m one of those people that isn’t against random encounters, when done right it can be fine. The problems is that the dungeon’s gimmick along with the mechanics of the game combine into one big fat stinkin’ package. Dealing with the gimmick, along with random encounter, low percentage flee rate (which is a big sin upon MANY JRPG games), easily dying in one hit when hit with a weakness, backtracking to get your Persona’s back to ONE ROOM, all in one big tedium. And of course, there’s a stupid time limit for the dungeon (which are also in the previous two), which could make it a bug pain if you don’t make it to the boss of the dungeon in time. Strangely enough, you can run in the PSP version, so the time limit doesn’t really matter, especially since the time limit is generous. I would imagine the hell it would be in the original PS1 version. This dungeon is the main reason I don’t want to replay this scenario again. Honestly, the limitations in demon customization is the reason I don’t want to play this game in general again. It is a decent game, both routes included, but definitely doesn’t hold up greatly. Thing is, I kinda like the gameplay at first, with getting new Personas and doing basic MegaTen JRPG stuff. It’s the simplified feel that holds it back from me really liking it. Like I said, certain demons have weaknesses that really stings with some having an underwhelming moveset. Because you can’t fuse a new demon while keeping the skills from your previous demons, gotta reset that. I get it, it’s an older Atlus game and all, so unfortunately, it is what it is. The story is nice, and the characters are decent, I like Brown in this scenario specifically, telling off Michiko in the second tower, Nemesis Tower. “So stop horking like a seal and get out of our sight!”

Final note, the soundtrack is pretty good. I understand it’s different from the original PS1 version and is more aligned with Nu Persona, but I still like it. I really like the Snow Queen final boss theme, even though it sounds more like a Final Fantasy theme then a Persona theme. And I can’t do without “Daily Life”.

Games that I dropped:

With the whole “Life is Short” sort of thing and you don’t have a lot of free time, I don’t care if I don’t see a game to the end. If there’s something I don’t like about a game to the point I want to stop playing, I don’t mind doing that. Whether the game gets really boring for me, poorly designed stuff that leaves me frustrated, or said game simply is not for me, I’ll move on to something else. I understand I lost the right to critique a game since I didn’t play it to the end, so these are just my impressions of the game and not a full on critique of it.

Scarlet Nexus: First off, the story and characters don't interest me, which is a problem here since it likes to have interactive moments and a good chunk of cutscenes. It’s like you’re watching a generic anime tv show. I hear critics do say these two factors are generic tropes that aren't fleshed out or better told, so no surprise I found it uninteresting. Or at least that from the five hours I played this game. My expectation of the gameplay was that it would have freedom, but no, it’s kinda static. The controls aren’t tight, so movement is kinda stiff along with the combat. The psychokinesis is kinda free flow in normal battles while in boss battles it’s fixed and for me, the one that made me drop this felt lame. Some giant plant thing you had to lower a big heavy thing on it but it’s that lame cinematic fixed gameplay style, not that free flow try things out. I’ll leave this as not for me.

Nostalgia (Nintendo DS): I might’ve liked this one more if I played this earlier when I played a handful of JRPGs. But now since I played JRPGs with more engaging gameplay with a more in depth combat, this one no longer interests me. You get four characters with very straight forward movesets and stagnant standard gameplay. The ship battles are also underwhelming, where I felt like they weren’t worth doing. I understand this is a spiritual successor to Skies of Arcadia, and while I haven’t played that game, that game seems to have more going for it than this game. Again, not for me.

Avalon Code (Nintendo DS): The combat is a generic action RPG with puzzles in each dungeon room, which becomes very tedious since there isn’t that many and they just repeat with just more to do. Also, having to do a lot of menu work to switch out this tetris piece here or there is what lost my interest. I respect the experimentation this game has going for it, but I personally think it could’ve been done better. Kinda between not for me and getting bored of it.

Otogi: Myth of Demons (Xbox): I don’t have great excuses for these two. I was going through my Xbox original collection and seeing if the exclusives (mainly meaning the one that weren’t backwards compatible with X-360 or isn’t BC in general) were worth keeping. Me personally, not really, wanted to thin out my collection a bit and these two games fell into that boat. For this game, each new level just added in a new annoying gimmick which ranges from being management to being tedious. I think the last one I played was that windy level where when you fight the big bird guy and the wind keeps blowing in different directions, making it harder to attack and dodge the enemy, yeah, I was getting tired of it. I did beat the level, but I felt like the next levels would just keep throwing too much shit at you, I just didn’t care. I’m sure it’s a good game if you stick by it, but I’ll probably emulate this via a Xbox emulator if I want to give it a second try.

Otogi 2: Immortal Warriors (Xbox): For this one, it’s dealing with different characters to use in each level of a section. On one side, it gives you an incentive to use different characters for each level so you don’t just use one. On the other side, it leads to trial and error to figure out what characters are best for a certain level. The point where I stopped caring was this level where you have to destroy all the eggs in the level. It was a pain trying to hit the one that explode on you if you’re too close because you can take big damage from them and they one shot the female character if she’s too close. Then there’s the ones on the ceiling at the end of the level. I have no idea what button combo to hit because I don’t have the manual for the game. I tried looking up combos for the characters I had accessible, but I didn’t get a clear answer for doing an upward attack. I’m missing something, I just know. I could have reloaded a save and use a different character to try it again, but I foolishly saved everything on one save slot. And I didn’t have the motivation to continuously figure out the upward combo like it’s a fighting game or start the whole game again just to use a different character I’ve already used. Too much trial and error for my liking. I simply didn’t have the heart for these two games, maybe in the future I will.

Edge of Eternity: Consider this an honorable mention because I know this is not a JRPG in the sense it is from Japan. This is a French RPG game that has the style of a JRPG, hell on Midgar Studio’s website, they describe this game as “Our French Touch J-RPG”. Anyway, it’s an open world JRPG game with a hexagon combat system similar to Wild ARMS 4&5 (haven’t played either of those games, so I’m not 100% sure). It’s undercooked and it needed more time in the oven. It’s a generic Steam game with a boring open world with lame empty space, and combat isn’t that interesting, it’s like a mini tactical game with moving from hexagon to hexagon, and it was pretty slow paced and left me uninterested. No thanks.

Star Ocean: The Last Hope (Original Xbox 360 Version): Bad acting, meh characters & character design, static gameplay with a lack of free flow. Which I’ll admit, I’m not into, it just doesn’t feel good to me. I can understand why people don't like this game. Star Ocean is that franchise I try to get into, but it just has shortcomings or stuff in general that hold it back for me. The fifth also sucks, the sixth one still isn’t good, while 1, I found underwhelming. No, this isn’t the last straw, I just wanted to make that joke. I’m gonna try Second Story R, but that’ll be my make it or break it deal. Not touching 3, I watched a review that made me not interested in it, plus I hear that the game is decisive from fans.

Way of the Samurai 3: Another not for me game. I played for up to two hours before deciding meh. Combat doesn’t interest me that much, and I wasn’t into the sandbox feel of the game. Something about just didn’t click with me.

Games that I like as a guilty pleasure:

Little Witch Nobeta: While not a bad game, it is somewhat hold back. I don’t watch magical girls shows or movies, those aren’t usually my sort of thing. This one though, I kinda like the vibe in this one. Story is either not well explained or it just didn’t grab with me. Gameplay is good for what it is. It’s a lower budget game, but it isn’t very janky and more than manageable. I like the mix of platforming, third person shooting, and lite souls elements in this game. What holds it back is the small enemy variety, not the lowest I’ve seen in a video game, but it has less than Nioh (which isn’t that low, but kinda lacking compared to a FromSoft game). Also, the boss battles in the first half of the game are challenging and fun. While in the second half and I can’t recall the first one, they become so easy to be distant from and just shoot them away. I think the girl with the dual wielding sword was meant to be challenging, but doesn’t dash close enough to hit me, leaving her guard down the whole fight. Using the lightning sniper shot does easy work with all these bosses, including the final boss. So it loses itself near the end, but I still had fun with this game. Sometimes it’s nice to be a powerhouse young witch against these odds. I mean, the previous bosses were at least challenging, so at least the whole game wasn’t too easy. I still would’ve liked it if they gave me more to deal with. Still a fun game, here’s hoping for a sequel or spiritual successor.

A really good year with a nice selection of games. Looking forward to next year. Share your thoughts and all. I typed a lot here, and probably left out some things.