I should preface this by saying that I got my start with the original Dragon Quest games on the NES. Since then, I’ve played a pretty wide variety of JRPGs, from Chrono Trigger to Xenoblade. However, lately I’ve found myself really getting into a more niche corner of the genre, largely due to its NSFW content.

Games like The Last Sovereign, Demon’s Roots, Black Souls, Monster Girl Quest Paradox, the SEQUEL series by Leaf Geometry, Takamuran’s games, and the like.

I was wondering if anyone knew of other games that scratch a similar itch? Essentially, NSFW games that also have really interesting characters, worldbuilding, and writing. Games where there’s genuinely a lot more to them than just the adult content, if that makes sense. And aren’t afraid to be dark or morally grey at times.

Would appreciate any suggestions!

I've been on a Monster Hunter kick lately so I decided to go back and give this series another try because I love the idea of taming my favourite monsters and riding them into battle. I remember dropping the first game because it felt pretty barebones but so far I'm really enjoying 2, the battle system is fun and the monsters all feel accurate to how they behave in the main games.

It's not perfect, the dungeon design isn't the best and I wish there was an overworld theme, but I'm definitely enjoying it more than the first game so far. I have the demo for 3 but haven't gotten around to it yet.

Hey r/JRPG!

We're a small team of 4 developers from South Korea, working on a game called Archetype Blue. We just released our demo for Steam Next Fest, so I wanted to share a little about it here!

Archetype Blue is a party-based RPG with roguelike deckbuilding combat. While the combat is a big part of the game, we've actually spent just as much time working on the story, characters, and world.

JRPG is one of our Steam tags, and it's a pretty important part of what we're trying to make.

We wanted to create a world that feels worth exploring, with its own history and mysteries, and a story that gives you reasons to care about the people you meet along the way.

You'll encounter all kinds of companions throughout your journey, each with their own backgrounds, personalities, and stories. We've also put a lot of effort into the relationships and interactions between companions, not just their individual stories. We wanted the experience of meeting new people and getting to know your party to be just as memorable as the battles themselves.

As for combat, you build a party of four, and positioning, character abilities, and card combinations all play a part. We're trying to make battles where you actually have to think about your party composition and how to make the most of everyone's strengths.

Another thing we care about is that we haven't used any AI-generated content in the game. All the pixel art, character illustrations, and music are handmade. It's honestly a lot of work for a team this small, but it's something we wanted to stick to.

Anyway, we're currently participating in October's Steam Next Fest, and our demo is available now!

With so many games taking part, it's been pretty hard to get noticed. We even had trouble finding our own game while scrolling through the festival, haha.

If any of this sounds interesting to you, we'd really appreciate it if you could check out our Steam page, try the demo, or maybe add us to your wishlist. It would mean a lot to our little team.

Steam page:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2541560/

And if you do give it a try, we'd love to hear what you think, whether it's about the combat, characters, or story.

Thanks for reading! :)

Hello everyone currently wanted to know what other JRPGs people are playing and what there favorite series currently is?

I have been a big JRPG fan my entire life my favorite series being the Final Fantasy Series, FFX being my all time favorite game of all time. I have played countless series since then. I have played the series such as Tales Of Series, Kingdom Hearts, Arc the Lad, Nier, .hack series(the original and better SAO IMO 😅), Legend of Heros(trails of), Disgaea series, Persona, Chrono Trigger, Dark Cloud, and probably some other small obscure ones i can't remember at this point. My current obsession is currently the Yakuza series as im playing through the game in its chronological order.

Even now I still have a backlog of games that I have yet to try out. Some of these games include Expedition 33, Octopath Traveler, Tokyo Xandu, Granblue ReLink, Shin Megami Tensei 3 & 5, Digimon Time Stranger, which are just some of the few games still sitting in my backlog. I was curious to see if anyone had any other suggestions for JRPGS series. I am always on the hunt for something new to itch my JRPG addiction. Whats your current obsession?

Super Famicom | 1996 | Final Rating: D Tier — 4/10 A beautifully presented but painfully bare-bones RPG in appearance only, dragged down by restrictive puzzle-based battles, poorly explained mechanics, trial-and-error design, thin characters, and a story that never develops enough to make the journey feel worthwhile.

TL;DR is at the end.

When I first started Monstania, I actually thought I was going to like it quite a bit.

Released for the Super Famicom in 1996, it immediately has that polished late-generation look. The graphics are colorful, the sprites are detailed and expressive, and the artwork on the box and in the manual gives the game a lot of personality. It looks like the kind of obscure Super Famicom RPG that might turn out to be a hidden gem.

Then there’s the music.

The soundtrack was composed by Noriyuki Iwadare, who would also become well known for his work on games such as Lunar and Grandia, and the music is easily one of the best things about Monstania. There are some genuinely excellent tracks here, and combined with the colorful graphics, the presentation gave me a very positive first impression.

At the beginning, I was thinking this might be a B-tier game.

By the end, I gave it a D — 4/10.

So what happened?

There Just Isn’t Much Here

The more I played Monstania, the more I realized how incredibly bare-bones it is.

The story begins with Fron and Tia, with Fron obsessed with finding a fairy. Fairies are supposedly no longer found on the island of Monstania, and his search eventually leads into a story involving a mysterious stone, recurring antagonists who want it, and the fate of the island itself.

That sounds like the setup for a potentially interesting RPG.

The problem is that almost nothing gets developed very far.

Characters join you for a few battles and then disappear. You learn very little about most of them. The recurring villains spend much of the game simply chasing the stone without enough characterization to make their motives interesting. When the story finally explains what is going on, the payoff is basicallythat humans are damaging Monstania, the island belongs to the fairies, and therefore the answer is apparently to destroy the island instead.

I found the whole thing pretty underwhelming.

There’s supposedly a mainland outside Monstania, but it’s mostly just mentioned. There aren’t really towns to explore in the traditional RPG sense. There are no shops where you save money and decide what equipment to buy. There’s very little NPC interaction. There’s practically no meaningful character-building.

You finish one section, the game moves you to the next location, and you continue.

Everything is on rails.

This Is Not Really an RPG

The biggest problem I had with Monstania, though, is the battle system. I started the game thinking it was some kind of simplified tactical RPG.

It isn’t.

The best way I can describe Monstania is that it is a puzzle game wearing an RPG skin.

Battles take place on a grid, and whenever you move, the enemies move as well. That initially sounds like it could create an interesting tactical system where you have to consider positioning and enemy movement.

But Monstania gives you almost none of the freedom I associate with an RPG or strategy RPG.

You can’t really grind. Character leveling is essentially scripted around the game’s progression. There isn’t much equipment management. The game largely gives you the weapons and items it expects you to have when it expects you to have them.

So if you reach a difficult battle, you can’t really say any of the following…

“Maybe I should level up.”

“Maybe I should buy better equipment.”

“Maybe I should change my party.”

“Maybe I should build my characters differently.”

You are basically at the strength the game wants you to be. That means most difficult encounters come down to one thing and that is…

Figure out the puzzle!

What Kind of Battle Is This?

This became increasingly frustrating as I progressed.

A lot of battles initially look like normal combat encounters, but they’re really built around some specific gimmick that you have to discover. And sometimes the game does an awful job communicating what that gimmick actually is.

There was a boss against a giant plant where I understood most of the intended strategy. I realized I needed to keep my support character protected while Fron attacked the boss.

The problem was that I didn’t know I could use Jump to cross certain obstacles without opening a path through them. That single missing piece of information completely changed the fight.

Later there’s a battle where you have to protect a laboratory from these green bugs. Even the objective makes it sound like you should defeat some of the enemies to buy time.

Except you can’t really defeat them. You’re supposed to repeatedly flip them onto their backs and stall until enough time has passed.

Tia’s Sing ability is extremely useful because it can knock them all over, and an arrow you receive earlier can pierce multiple enemies.

Did I know either of those things was going to matter?

Not really.

Items and equipment are often just handed to you after battles, so they don’t necessarily stick in your mind the way something you deliberately bought or equipped would. Skill descriptions are also vague although some information is in the manual. You might know roughly what an ability does, but not its exact range, area of effect, or targeting behavior.

In a game where positioning is everything, that information matters. There were plenty of moments where I would use an ability and basically discover through trial and error whether it could even hit the enemy I wanted.

Dying Just to Learn the Rules

This became my biggest issue with the game.

There were too many battles where I felt like I had to die first just to understand what kind of battle I was playing.

Am I supposed to kill everything? Protect somebody Survive for a certain amount of time? Ignore endlessly respawning enemies? Use one specific skill? Stand in one specific place? Trigger something on the map?

The game frequently doesn’t make that clear enough before you’re already committed to the encounter.

Near the end there’s an especially ridiculous sequence involving a giant rolling iron ball coming down a hallway.

You need to figure out that one character should hide in a small safe area, use the other character to trigger the ball, run back, get both characters into the safe spot, and let the ball roll past.

How are you supposed to know all of that ahead of time?

You basically have to see what happens, die, try something else, die again, and gradually figure out what the designers expect.

And even when I knew what I was supposed to do, enemy positioning could get in the way and make actually reaching the safe area annoying.

Immediately afterward, the game throws strong fire salamanders at you that can attack from range, take a lot of punishment, and are especially annoying when your own attacks can miss.

By this point, I was completely exhausted with the combat.

The Colored Triangle Puzzle

Then there’s one late-game puzzle involving colored triangles. At first I couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to do at all. This was something like right out of Terranigma.

Eventually I learned that Fron can pick the triangles up and move them. Once I knew that, the puzzle itself wasn’t even especially difficult. But that’s exactly the problem.

I didn’t know picking up objects was something I was supposed to consider or I could even DO in the game.

I really dislike when games suddenly require a mechanic that they have barely taught or reinforced beforehand. If picking up and moving objects is going to be important in a late-game puzzle, the game should introduce that interaction much earlier and make sure the player understands that it is part of their normal set of tools.

Good puzzles should make me think,

“Oh! I know what I can do here. Now how do I use those mechanics to solve this?”

Not…

“Wait, I can do that?”

Those are very different kinds of difficulty.

Some Puzzles Were Actually Satisfying

To be fair, I didn’t hate every puzzle.

Earlier in the game, there’s a section where you have to clean the floor of a restaurant by moving over the tiles in a continuous route. There are three puzzles like this.

The second one probably took me about half an hour, and while I was doing it I thought the whole thing was kind of stupid. But I somehow managed to solve all three without looking up a guide. And when I finished them, I actually felt pretty satisfied.

That showed me that my problem isn’t simply that Monstania contains puzzles.

My problem is when the game doesn’t properly communicate the rules of those puzzles, especially when those puzzles are disguised as RPG battles.

A Seven-Hour Game That Felt Much Longer

Monstania took me about seven hours to finish. That sounds extremely short for an RPG. And yet somehow, it felt much longer.

I usually have about an hour in the morning to play games before I have to get ready for work. I want that hour to feel meaningful. I want to feel like I made progress.

There were mornings with Monstania where I could spend 30 minutes repeatedly dying because I was trying to figure out the gimmick of one battle.

Then I would finally finish it and think,

“Okay. That’s enough Monstania for today.”

That might be the most damaging thing I can say about the game. Even though it’s incredibly short, I rarely wanted to play it for a long stretch.

It never created that feeling of wanting to see the next area or play just one more hour. A difficult game can still be enjoyable if the difficulty feels fair and gives me ways to improve.

Maybe I can level up. Maybe I can find better equipment. Maybe I can learn the combat system better.

But when difficulty comes from repeatedly dying until I understand an encounter-specific gimmick, I don’t find that satisfying. Likewise, I don’t enjoy games that require hours of grinding just to progress. Both waste my limited gaming time in different ways.

Monstania unfortunately fell into that first category far too often.

Great Presentation, Thin Game

And that’s what makes Monstania so disappointing. There clearly was talent behind this game. The graphics are beautiful. The sprites are excellent. The colors are vibrant. The box and manual artwork are fantastic. Iwadare’s soundtrack is genuinely great.

Everything about the presentation makes Monstania look like there should be a bigger, richer RPG underneath it.

There just isn’t.

I’ve started noticing something while playing some of these more obscure Super Famicom games that never received English localizations.

Sometimes the packaging works incredibly hard to sell you on the experience.

Monstania’s packaging plays up its mixture of action, puzzles, and RPG elements. Looking at the box and manual, you get the impression that this is going to be some ambitious hybrid adventure full of different gameplay systems.

Then you actually play it.

There’s no real exploration. No meaningful economy. Barely any equipment management. No traditional leveling system. Almost no NPC interaction. Very little character development.

And the majority of your time is spent solving highly controlled puzzle encounters.

With some of the weaker games I’ve played, I’ve noticed this funny contrast where the box is doing a much better job selling the adventure than the game itself does delivering it.

Monstania might be the best example yet.

From B to C to D

What’s funny is watching how my opinion changed while I played.

At the beginning.

B tier.

The presentation was great, the battle system was unusual, and I was interested to see where it went.

Then…

C tier.

I started realizing how bare-bones the RPG elements were and how much the battle system was really just a collection of puzzles.

And finally.

D tier.

The closer I got to the end, the more tedious the battles became. I stopped looking forward to playing. The story never developed enough to make up for it, and the puzzle combat became increasingly frustrating.

That puts it alongside the Super Famicom Tenchi Muyo game for me. They’re different games, but they have something in common. There just isn’t enough there.

Monstania is certainly much prettier and has vastly better music, but presentation can only carry a game so far.

If the main thing I spend my time doing in a game isn’t fun, great graphics and music can only save it so much.

And Then It Just Ends

Maybe the most fitting thing about Monstania happens after you beat it. The credits finish. And then the screen goes black.

That’s it. No music. No “The End.” No final message. No little closing image. Nothing.

Just a black screen.

And honestly, that might be the perfect ending for Monstania. The entire game constantly feels like there should be something more.

More character development. More exploration. More RPG systems. More freedom in the battles. More story. More substance.

The presentation keeps suggesting that there is a larger adventure waiting underneath everything. And then, just like that black screen after the credits, you eventually realize…

There isn’t.

Final Rating: 4/10 — D Tier

TL;DR: Monstania is a beautifully presented but extremely bare-bones game that looks like an RPG while playing more like a series of puzzle rooms. There’s almost no traditional progression, no grinding, no shops, very little equipment management, barely any NPC interaction, and most battles revolve around figuring out a specific gimmick rather than developing your own strategy. Too often I felt like I had to die first just to understand what the game wanted me to do, whether that meant protecting an NPC, stalling immortal enemies, avoiding a giant rolling ball, or using a mechanic the game barely explained. The graphics are colorful, the sprites are great, and Noriyuki Iwadare’s soundtrack is easily the highlight, but the story and characters are too thin to make up for how tedious the combat became. It took me about seven hours, yet somehow felt much longer because I rarely wanted to play more than a few battles at a time. Even the ending feels unfinished: the credits roll, the screen goes black, and that’s it. 4/10. D TIER.

Next up: Super Mario RPG — Square and Nintendo’s 1996 Super Famicom classic. I’ve already made it to the Forest Maze, and so far I’m enjoying this game even more than I remembered.

By far the most time I've spent of a JRPG. Couldn't get through DQ7 and felt done when I reached DQ11's endgame. Also, Dragon Quest 11s MC is so boring and lame, bootleg Trunks minus all the sauce.

I find 5's story really intriguing.

Great series though.

R.I.P Toriyama Sensei. Real expressive art style that is such eyecandy at times!

I played so many jrpgs on 3ds, but I haven’t really been able to get into them on switch

Looking for a turn based where you make the whole party and I’m fine with non-existent story for good gameplay (subjective criteria, almost useless to mention) I’ve been looking it up, but it seems what was rare then is even rarer now.

My favorites were Legend of Legacy and 7th Dragon iii code vfd

lol had pre-made party members and no classes. The battle system, the minimal story, and exploration made it great even tho there wasn’t character creation besides weapon system

7th dragon let me make the whole team entirely, that’s the sort of thing I’m looking for. (Also awesome battle system)

I’ve got disgaea 5 but I only really got 12 hours in and it really didn’t click. I might restart and give it another shot tho.

I’m not really the target for most fanservice sadly. So while there’s some cute boy classes… a lot of them are ugly compared to the girls.

“Moe style” boys, muscular men and everything in between that’s what I’m into.

I was looking at mugen souls (z) cuz it’s on sale and because there’s character creation. But it seems more waifu oriented being an older port. (Bathing minigame in the trailer 💀) And there’s a set main character which I’m not really into

(I’ve got Etrian Odyssey remakes, but they didn’t hit like the ones on 3Ds)

Pardon me for making a new post here because lately I was wondering about how console RPGs could focus on a specific idea like loneliness where the game has a moody vibe because one person struggles to find friendship.

I mean, don’t get me wrong in that I appreciate whimsical RPGs about people working together as a team with games like the NIS works for instance as it’s just that I often spend my time on social media to find escapism from reality that I suddenly became interested in seeing how JRPGs could use compelling stories centered around loneliness as a concept with compelling turn based gameplay design as the idea sounded interesting to me in ways I cannot explain.

Not a big turn based rpg player I only enjoyed one game which was metaphor refantazio. I know these are different but which one would you recommend I’m trying to decide between

Trails in the sky 1 remake

Octopath 0 ( I think it has one story instead of multiple right? I prefer that unless the other games were really good lmk)

Ff resonance

I joined this community for some time and started viewing the game post.

Lunar : The Silver Star caught my eye as I read in the post that it has romance elements and is a great game.

The next day I downloaded the game and I am about to start it.

Is there any recommendations on what should I do first after starting the game ?

Platform: Switch 2

Genre and Sub-genre: Any

I'm looking to get back into gaming and I'm looking for JRPGs that have no grinding and no random encounters. I want something I can play at the end of the work day to relax before going to bed.

Bonus if the game is replayable.

I have played Wargroove and Advance Wars. I also liked Into the Breach. Though they are not JRPGs, they fit the no-grinding and no-random encounter feel that I am looking for. Most of the games I have not are tactics / strategy RPG but I want to look for JRPGs as well.

The last JRPGs that I finished were FF7 and Lunar Silver Star Story back in the PSX. Although I enjoyed these games, I remember spending a lot of time grinding for XP and fighting throughout random encounters.

Trails is a series I always meant to get around to, and these remakes were my sign that the time is now. I regret not playing earlier, but I’m so excited to start now. I’m hooked and will be playing every title. Glad to be a newcomer to the fandom! Any Nihon Falcom fans here? I’ve already fallen in love with the worldbuilding, characters, and storytelling, and I can tell this is going to be a series that stays with me for a long time. I have a LOT of catching up to do!

Not a joke but it’s up to you to decide the sincerity based on the effort I put into describing the context.

While I finished Xenoblade X’s main story about a week ago by now, I keep it around my desktop due to the scope of the post game content. And suffice to say for its reputation, this game demands a lot of grinding and time. Grinding for mats to fight superbosses, tracking down all the treasures and secret bosses the game itself will never tell you about, grinding to make all your party members individually solo content with their quirks instead of one shotting with Skell or Ether Blossom. It just goes in and on.

It’s really a sprawling game, but a lot of the grinding falls into a pattern of dangerous mundanity when you reload the same warp point 40 times to repeatedly laser the mob you’re farming for an ultra rare drop.

I’m suffering from a depression crisis in real life so I would just go on grinding completely spaced out like a robot for well over 16+ hours a day going in circles to get the loot/mats I need. After yesterday though I suffered a mild concussion and fell unconscious. I don’t know what happened or why but I have to take the time off to go to a hospital because of severe head pain.

While I do have personal issues that probably led up to this, I’ve never played a JRPG with a lull of addictive grindset like this ever before even though other JRPGs similarly encourage a grindy path towards superboss content. And I want others to be careful with this title specifically.