Your First JRPG

Got a Final Fantasy 7 demo from a old Playstation magazine that I borrowed from a cousin back in the day. Never played the full game didn't enjoy it.

So my actual first one was probably Phantasy Star Online for Dreamcast. Never beat it either but enjoyed the hell out of it.

After that I played and actually beat both Final Fantasy 10 and 10-2 enjoyed those quite abit. Persona 4 Golden on Vita was next and it's a all-time classic to me. I've beaten that one numerous times over the years.

Played and beat Persona 5 once I liked it a lot but haven't had any desire to go back to it. I liked the characters but mainly the reason I haven't been back is because of those horrible dungeons. I also see no reason to get Persona 5 Royal for that reason as well

Recently got and am playing through Persona 3 PSP version enjoying it as well.
 
I don't totally remember. I was a little older when I started to actually play JRPGs. I remember getting sucked into the hype for FFVII to an extent, but I was also really curious about this other game I was hearing some classmates also talking about: Suikoden!
I know I had rented a PS1 with both FFVII and Suikoden. Didn't know there was a way to run in FFVII, so I got super pissed off, and swore the game off after a couple attempts to beat the clock in opening sequence at walking speed. Suikoden was way better, though. (Can't even run without a particular rune in Suikoden!) I got those games with a Playstation not long after. Beat Suikoden, and Suikoden II when it came out, almost immediately. Plodded through FFVII, and eventually finished it years later. Still hate it, although I did realize that I needed to run and how to do it.

The tricky thing is that I can't remember if that rental was before or after I had played Breath of Fire II and Final Fantasy II (NA) on an emulator. It was at least around the same time. I would have played Chrono Trigger around that time, as well. It kind of amuses me that I liked those three games quite a lot as an adolescent, but can hardly stand them now.

Since then, and especially in the last decade, I've beaten most of the JRPGs people could really name, and a whole bunch that no one really knows of. Except Legend of Dragoon. Made it to Disc 3, and just couldn't take anymore after that.

Personally, I think those are better games anyway! ;)
Gah! I want to agree completely, but I love FF III (NES) too much. It always amazes me when looking at the original Phantasy Star side-by-side with the original Final Fantasy that they were first released only two days apart from each other. I like the original Final Fantasy, but Phantasy Star is way better. I like Phantasy Star II better than FFII, as well. It's the IIIs where I can't go with PS, though.
(I don't like PSIV as much as most seem to, but I do like it more than FFIV!)


Earthbound. :sick:
Oh my god! Are you okay? How did you survive that torture at such a young age?

There's gotta be counseling for this sort of thing, if you still need it.
 
I don't remember the first time since I've seen too many as a kid to remember the very first among them. tbh I've only known them as games and not categorically as JRPG but the first one I've finished after discovering the genre tag has to be breath of fire 3. It has a sweet painful memory as well since I had to beat it without a memory card and if I died it restarts all progress. I was close to many heart attacks wth alot of scripted fail boss battles. OMFG. haha.
 
Hard to say, memory gets a little vague that far back. The first JRPG I ever owned though was Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap on the Master System. But even that's more of a grey area since Wonder Boy is an action RPG with very minimal plot. Because like an idiot I never picked-up Phantasy Star back in the day, it wasn't until years later that I began to appreciate what the series had to offer as JRPGs.
 
My first true JRPG playthrough was Breath of Fire 3 on the PSX.
I played a few here and there before then but I was so young, I do not recall.
BoF3 was my first loved jrpg tho. Still go back to it each and every year so I do not forget about it (i have a really bad memory)
 
Wonderboy is definitely not a JRPG. At all lol
Fair enough. In that case, I'd have to jump to the 16-bit era for my first true JRPG. Which would be... Sword of Vermilion I'm pretty sure. Although the combat is still real-time instead of turn-based like in Wonder Boy, just the damage in combat is now informed by a D&D style stats system. Bit of a pattern for me I guess, the hybrid gameplay in Sword of Vermilion was a good gateway into more traditional turn-based JRPGs.

Bonus: it turns out that Sword of Vermilion was directed by none other then Yu Suzuki. I guess it makes sense why the gameplay was real-time. Yu Suzuki really did intend the game to be a bridge between his normal arcade style and more complex RPGs. I wonder if he was thinking about Shenmue, or something very much like it, even back then in 1989.
 
Yu definitely was Producer or some other major role; between Dreamcast Magazine and other outlets at the time, people were taking a lot about him not having a history with RPGs (as 'mue was coming out), commenting that Vermillion wasn't that great (which it can be; taste matters).
 
Yeah, actually, now that I'm looking at Moby Games' info on Suzuki's works, I'm feeling more ashamed to use it as a source--according to them he was one of the "Game Designers" on Kingdom Hearts: Unchained X,

All I really meant to say was that I was sure he didn't direct Vermilion.
It's not listed on his director credits on his website:

It is on his Producer credits list, though (1989):

Haven't played enough of Vermilion to make any judgement, but the other AM2 Mega Drive action RPG, Rent A Hero, is pretty great.
 
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My apologies to Hiroshi Hamagaki then, since he was actually the director. With Yu Suzuki actually being the produced on this project.

Either way I can definitely understand the criticism about Sword of Vermillion's gameplays. It sits between a beat-em-up and a RPG, which isn't going to exactly please dedicated fans of those genres. Still, it's an enjoyable once you get the hang of it and technically impressive for such an early Mega Drive game.
 
Tales of Berseria way back when I was a wee lad in 2015.

Okay, I lied, it was Dragon Warrior on the NES. At least, that's the first JRPG I can specifically recall playing (and I put a lot of time into it!).

RPGs are still my favorite genre, but man, they seem so time consuming anymore! I've hardly played any JRPGs recently, and the RPGs I usually play are big, but actiony. I think the remastered Kingdoms of Amalur was the last big RPG I played.
 
Wonderboy is definitely not a JRPG. At all lol

Fair enough. In that case, I'd have to jump to the 16-bit era for my first true JRPG. Which would be... Sword of Vermilion I'm pretty sure. Although the combat is still real-time instead of turn-based like in Wonder Boy, just the damage in combat is now informed by a D&D style stats system. Bit of a pattern for me I guess, the hybrid gameplay in Sword of Vermilion was a good gateway into more traditional turn-based JRPGs.

Bonus: it turns out that Sword of Vermilion was directed by none other then Yu Suzuki. I guess it makes sense why the gameplay was real-time. Yu Suzuki really did intend the game to be a bridge between his normal arcade style and more complex RPGs. I wonder if he was thinking about Shenmue, or something very much like it, even back then in 1989.

An action rpg can be a variant of a jrpg, especially if it's made in Japan.

I don't restrict jrpgs to menu based mechanics. (I've never been strict with the label.)

Vermilion was a hybrid of action rpgs and wrpg dungeon games like Wizardry. It's a jrpg, albeit an experimental one. (The modern conventions to define a jrpg or wrpg didn't exist back then.)
 
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I think JRPG has turned into a genre (like how Mangiacake has changed meaning throughout the years), whereas before it indeed meant, "an RPG made in Japan."

But WB isn't really a true RPG; it's a platformer with RPG elements, kinda like Popful Mail. An Action-RPG, in my mind, would be something akin to Diablo or Record of Lodoss War or Baldur's Gate.

But that's just me ;)
 
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