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I had a good feeling! Celebrating 40 Years and 108 JRPGs of Destiny

Crystal Project!

This one actually didn't even make my list, but it was in consideration for it for sure. I don't have much to say that JBear didn't already cover, but I will mention one thing.

Lokii said:
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This Knight, right here? He will not let you into that door, which is a dungeon and your main 'exit' from the starter regions, if you don't have three crystals. However, if you're clever, and perceptive, and skilled... you can get around the dungeon entirely.

There are a handful of other gates on progress that require a certain number of crystals... and yet, it is feasible to complete the game without obtaining a single one.
 
Crystal Project is some of the best exploration and some of the best RPG of all time. Either would stand up on its own. Simply an incredible game.

It's getting a sequel.
 
I voted for Crystal Project and stand firm in the truth that it absolutely belongs on this list. Its praises have already been sung, but even I who switched to easy difficulty after getting annoyed at a boss about halfway through had an absolute blast with it. Exploration is really the name of the game here, and everything serves to make navigating the huge, excellently designed world give you a sense of adventure that manages to keep one-upping itself. Like, big exploration spoilers, but when you find the fucking owl and suddenly you can FLY (well, glide) and that opens up the world in a way you'd never expected, and then again when you find the fish and suddenly, you're fucking kidding me, you can explore THE WHOLE OCEAN ARE YOU KIDDING ME are all-time great open-world game moments. (That category of moments isn't necessarily rare among open-world games, sure, but CP is an all-timer among them.) And also, the job system is really fun and satisfying to engage with.

This is absolutely a game that will appeal to Sickos of all shapes and sizes, it gives you so many tools and opportunities to break shit and play in the sand, but also you don't need to be a Sicko at all to jump in and enjoy the hell out of it.
 
Crystal Project is something that I strongly admire while accepting in full that it would fail to scratch any of my JRPG itches and only frustrate me. Super cool it exists though!

Metaphor is one where I liked the idea, but got worried when the demo seemed to be positioning it as “game about racism written by people who heard about racism one time on Sesame Street”, before ultimately loving it when it stopped being quite so in your face with obvious and milquetoast commentary. It ended up having great characters, a section of endless Etrian Odyssey nods I naturally adored, deeply compelling combat and growth systems, and a breakneck pace without any of the completion anxiety or high school weirdness of its Persona ancestry. An instant classic for sure.

Devil Survivor meanwhile is probably the SMT I most got along with, certainly the only I beat multiple times and ever came close to 100%ing. We’re long overdue a third entry!
 
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69. Star Ocean: The Second Story
tri-Ace, 1998: PSX Points: 239 Votes: 7​

I’m not sure what the first “maximalist” JRPG is—that sub-genre of the form where length is the point, systems are to be thoroughly mined, and the player is enticed to ‘experience it all’ as much as they are charged to reach the story’s conclusion—but surely Star Ocean 2 is a notable early example. It’s interesting however, that so much of the maximal possibility space of its design is locked behind separate playthroughs. Considering the dual protagonist perspectives, the mutually exclusive party members, and the many small variations that make up its touted 86 endings, much of the game's breadth can’t be experienced unless you’re happy to return to this lengthy and slow-paced game another or perhaps another half dozen times.

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Still, it has the heart and soul of a maximalist game, especially in the way it encourages you to use its systems to break it wide open. And just the possibility of encountering an Ashton instead of an Opera or seeing an ending where Rena marries Dias instead of Claude lends a certain mystique to the game. It encourages you to make those playthroughs your own via careful consideration and planning, and having an ending tailored to all your minute choices out of a wide possibility space is genuinely charming.

Charming is a good word for the game. Ambitious, but restrained. Maximalist in its mechanics, but tempered in its tone. More about the journey than the destination. It’s a big game that doesn’t necessarily seek to wow, but will absolutely give you the tools to create counterfeit medals or do 40 million damage. I guess the best way to sum up the game would be that ‘it was somewhere around 80 points.’

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I played the recent remake that came out a few years ago and enjoyed it. The battle system wasn't entirely my jam, but it had a lot of energy and charm to it.
 
oh wow, it's one i voted for! to be honest a long time ago i considered this one an awkward middle child but it turns out star ocean is basically a series of awkward middle children so this one is pretty good. i do truly think a lot of the fun is the open-ended point where the last dungeon opens up and you can waste as much time as you want crafting and wandering the worlds before the final boss, who is stupidly overtuned even compared to another final-dungeon boss fight which is significantly harder than anything earlier in the game. because there is no One Real Star Ocean 2. savescumming to craft the eternal sphere at the earliest possible moment and stomping the fighting tournament and then the rest of the game is star ocean 2. spamming the lowest rank spell in the game (thunder bolt!) so the last boss can't finish many casts is star ocean 2. rolling the gacha hundreds of times to get healing star and then spamming it till it full heals your party instantly is star ocean 2. recruiting opera's boring boyfriend to steal armor from him is star ocean 2. skipping both of them to get ashton who is kind of generically useful but never as good is star ocean 2. (i still wonder what his deal is, because there's a also a persistent gag in the atelier series about protagonists looking at barrels and remarking on them)

this game is kinda silly but it has a wide variety of prerendered dungeon backgrounds from boring rock caves to surreal checkerboards so who's to say if it's good or bad
 
I played this when it first came out. Loved the aesthetic, the story, the characters, etc. But I was utterly crushed by the game systems and my own ocd-tendencies. The amount of grinding I did to try and fully explore the crafting system (without a guide no less) was obscene and broke my resolve. I never finished the game until the remake. Lo and behold, the game is short and concise when you just play it like a normal RPG and just ignore all the optional mechanics. Very much a me-problem vs the actual game having any real faults.

My one big complaint about Star Ocean 2 (and a few other games in the series tbh) is how it manages to fail at fulfilling the vague premise of a Star Trek RPG. Later games in the series seem to do a better job in that respect, but fail in other, more spectacular ways.
 
I have never played SO 2, but I appreciate the idea of having a ton of content you will simply not experience, especially in one playthrough, a lot. I like that idea, that you don't need to do and see everything to get a full experience. On my list, I plan to play it one day.
 
This one just missed the cut for making my top 50, which is kinda a bummer, but hard decisions were made. It's a great game, and probably the best of the series. (I still gotta put more time into 4/5/6, but I don't think they're going to top this one.)
 
Oh, hey! I Let's Played this! And, having done so, I more or less solidified my opinion on the game:

Second Duke Revier said:
Star Ocean: The Second Story is doubtless a flawed game. The combat is a touch too simplistic for my liking, putting a bit too much of an emphasis on the raw numbers, and moves making good use of said numbers. The character building looks intriguing, yet is hampered by lots of balancing issues. The writing is pretty bad, and wastes a lot of perfectly good concepts for the sake of pointless and shallow melodrama.

Still, it's a charming game in its own right. The idea of building characters who specialize in things besides murder is very appealing, it's satisfying to get powerful things from indulging in a bit of crafting, and despite the writing, the story has a fair few decent moments in its own right, with the entire Lacuer front line to Eluria Tower's top segment being a major highlight. It's not hard to see how it built an audience back in the day, and how it sowed the seeds for their later, better work. Valkyrie Profile 1, to be precise.
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Looking back, and...yeah. Most of it holds. I also don't think Valkyrie Profile 1 is actually better, after having tried replaying it for my friends. But it certainly has a cooler concept and more artistry behind it, and that's what elevates it above the regular tri-Ace fare for most people. I think spines described their games in a very succinct and apt way:

spines said:
to be honest a long time ago i considered this one an awkward middle child but it turns out star ocean the tri-Ace catalogue is basically a series of awkward middle children so this one is pretty good.
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I only had 1 tri-Ace game on my list, but it was not this one. I like Star Ocean 2 okay enough. I played it when it was new-ish, and so it along with Tales of Eternia were kind of my introduction to that whole lineage of action JRPGs. I also picked up the remake and thought it did a great job of updating the UI and exposing more of the under the hood systems. I'm still not sure if I've fully finished the game once...


Lokii said:
I guess the best way to sum up the game would be that ‘it was somewhere around 80 points.’
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I snorted
 
I loved the shit out of SO2 back in the day (I still haven't played the recent remake). There's just something so inherently satisfying about dropping a sci-fi protagonist into a fantasy world, even if the game ultimately doesn't do much with that premise. And the end of Act 1 reveal of an entire second world with new locations and characters blew my mind at the time. I started with Claude, played the shit out of it, then rolled that file into NG+ and then played it with Rena and absolutely rode the rails off of that save file. The extended end/post-game on this thing gets wacky. There's a giant extended super-dungeon (was this one based on Tower of Druaga, or was that one of the Tales games? Maybe both?) where you can get super speed boots for everyone and everything kills you in one shot and you have to juggle endlessly, and then at the bottom of that mega dungeon is a super boss, and if you kill him then it flips a hidden flag and makes the main boss of the normal narrative stupidly powerful/difficult, if memory serves? I just remember that all of that super hard bonus content felt impossibly deep at the time, and I put over 200 hours into plumbing its depths. A+, would endlessly fail to craft again.
 
One thing I liked about SO2 was the private actions. Just, small character moments that helped flesh out characters and let them interact outside of the main story. Not necessarily a revolutionary or unique idea, but certainly one that helped it stand out against its contemporaries. It also helps make the game's story and narrative feel more substantial and meaty, when the main story is actually quite simple and utilitarian.

Did anyone watch the accompanying Star Ocean 2 anime: Star Ocean EX? It's been 25 years so I don't remember much, but I remember it being a decent adaptation. However, the show ends at about the halfway point in the story. You know the cutoff point. Where the world gets destroyed So it's not a replacement for the game.

 
Never played this one (the remake is on my wishlist), but I have a memory of watching my friend playing-- all the characters and enemies running around the battlefield, pausing when it was their turn and attacking or casting magic. One kept casting "Southern Cross", which seemed to be a pretty nice magical nuke, and the name sticks with me because of the second season of Robotech.
 
I think I have 1 tri-Ace game on my list. It isn't from the Star Ocean series.

Star Ocean is like Atelier series for me. I want to try it, I just don't think I have time in my life for a new RPG series.
 
The good thing about Star Ocean 2 vs other Tri-Ace games is that it's actually a pretty brief game, so long as you don't get sucked down crafting hole, or do multiple playthroughs. RPGs have really become this genre defined by bloated playtimes and SO2 stands in defiance of that.
 
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68. Tales of Symphonia
Namco Tales, 2003: GC Points: 242 Votes: 7 Previous rank: 48​

Dragon Quest was a revelation and a significant commercial success, and almost immediately after its release a slew of imitators appeared aping the style and eager for a piece of the pie. But as the years moved on and Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy established themselves as the two premier franchises, a trend emerged among various publishers to develop a signature JRPG series of their own in order to contend for the lofty third seat alongside those illustrious two. Capcom, Konami, Atlus, Nintendo, Sega, Sony, etc. all took a go at crafting a bespoke series with hopes that it would really stick. Among all of these contenders Namco’s Tales series has just as good a claim to that third position—if we must name a winner—as any other and a bigger claim than most. With 17 mainline titles and numerous spin-offs, Tales has a lengthy history of dynamic innovation of its unique approach to both storytelling and combat. It’s a rich series with its own voice and character and every game worthy of close examination.

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Alas, Symphonia is the only Tales to make the list. It’s not a surprise why. Symphonia is considered a premiere Tales in general, but I think it holds a special place in the West for hitting at the right place and right time. It is the first 3D Tales and was developed for the GameCube. While not as RPG-poor as the N64, the GameCube still lagged far behind the PS2 in the genre, and having an exclusive premier title felt like a real win. And Symphonia’s 3D update of the classic Tales linear action-based battle system provided a fresh and compelling experience that has served as the basis for nearly every Tales game since. Never mind all the other Tales particularities such as character skits, the grade shop, titles, elaborate cooking systems, themes of prejudice and dual worlds, and of course a very strong television-esque anime aesthetic. Symphonia pulls all these off with aplomb and it's no shock that the votes would accumulate round it.

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That’s not to suggest other Tales didn’t also see plenty of admiration, but none of the rest managed to break the top 100. Like the Fire Emblems, I thought this would be a good opportunity to highlight them as we won’t be seeing any more higher up.

#102 Tales of Phantasia (155 points, 5 votes)
#128 Tales of Vesperia (110 points, 4 votes)
#159 Tales of Graces (66 points 2 votes)
#168 Tales of Destiny (57 points, 1 vote)
#176 Tales of Berseria (49 points, 1 vote)
#188 Tales of the Abyss (37 points, 1 vote)
#192 Tales of Arise (33 points, 1 vote)
#193 Tales of Legendia (32 points, 1 vote)
#205 Tales of Eternia, (20 points, 1 vote)
 
Played Symphonia like 5 times in the year or two after it came out. Not having a PS2 and needing an RPG fix outside of GBA and DS certainly motivated that.
 
I played and beat Symphonia, but there was a bug after beating the final boss where every text box between that and the credits loaded and flew past almost instantly, so I wasn't able to read any of the text at the ending of the game as the cutscenes blew past at top speed. This is close to the only thing I remember about its story: that I never actually saw the ending.

I also remember the hot coffee trick Lloyd pulled.
 
Just one vote for Abyss? For shame. (It was me, I had it at #25.)

As for Symphonia, I had it right behind at #26. Great game, that. They've remastered it so many times, and it frustrates me that they're all based on the PS2 version and not the GC, which runs at 60 FPS. There was a very good stretch there on Gamecube where it did get some fantastic RPGs back to back - this, Baten Kaitos, Skies of Arcadia, and Paper Mario: TTYD in a roughly two-year window was nice.
 
I'm surprised too. I know Abyss started off kinda maligned, but opinion has really turned around on it and these days I frequently see it named as one of the best.
 
I adored Symphonia back in the day for the same reason Juno did (although I only played it once, not five times lol) but have yet to go back to it. I really enjoyed it at the time, though.

The other Tales I really love is Abyss - I've only played the 3DS version, but I really enjoyed it.
 
Tales of Symphonia didn't make my list, but that's honestly more me forgetting about it last December.

Anyway Presea is great and one day I hope to play Symphonia with a full group of four people.
 
Hah, I thought so. I was the single vote for both Tales of Destiny (my beloved) AND Tales of Eternia (it's OK). I'm honestly surprised that Destiny didn't get more votes, seeing as it was the first one released in the states and introduced a lot of people to the series from near the beginning.
 
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