• Welcome to Talking Time's third iteration! If you would like to register for an account, or have already registered but have not yet been confirmed, please read the following:

    1. The CAPTCHA key's answer is "Percy"
    2. Once you've completed the registration process please email us from the email you used for registration at percyreghelper@gmail.com and include the username you used for registration

    Once you have completed these steps, Moderation Staff will be able to get your account approved.

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

I thnk I played the GameBoy version once upon a time, but I doubt I got very far in it. Dragon Quest is one of those franchises I want to explore deeper, but never have had the chance. Or more accurately, haven't made the chance yet. Someday...
 
JBear said:
Unfortunately, it feels like that one dungeon has informed DQ discourse ever since, since DQ-haters love to point at how instant death spells are bad and unfair as a big reason for their distaste (usually followed by complaints about %-success revive magic), despite how vanishingly rare they are outside of the Road to Rhone.
Click to expand...
Yes, instant death spells suck and I wish they would go away forever but you know what else has them? Universally celebrated 2025 RPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Sure they're a bit different and there are ways to mitigate them a bit but they're still there and they still suck.

So yeah, using them as an argument against Dragon Quest specifically is really disingenuous.
 
I was kind of surprised to see DQ2 come up - I had the impression it was thought of as the bad one (maybe crossover impression from FF2? Dunno). I’ve only played it on iPhone and I don’t remember it that well. Still, even if it is the weakest of the first five Dragon Quests those other four games are all great so it’s hardly an insult. And it may not be so anyway.

Also the Japanese cover art is one of my all-time favourites. Wonderful stuff.
 
oh i'm far behind, but actually in the last twenty i think the only ones on my list were:
Romancing Saga 2 - In certain circles this has a tarnished reputation as being difficult in stressful ways, and in my first playthrough that manifested as anxiety towards skill inheritance, and when i first hit a roadblock against the termite queen, worry of a game that is pushing back too much and systems i didn't interact with enough. I still pushed through, but it wasn't until interacting with other saga games and returning that i was able to shake the feeling that I was doing something wrong. That aside, there is very little working against the game, even in its faults (I still don't know how magic research works). The repetition of a new emperor cycle is a strong narrative device, and the gradual expansion of map and races supplements the progression you normally just get from sparking. Everything feels great and is maybe the best paced saga game, which for all I love can often feel ike some play sessions are trudging along without a single spark and little in the way of moving forward.

Xenoblade Chronicles - The anticipation I felt for this game was probably the last great waiting I had felt for a game, me still being a school aged person with free time, when I was at the height of xeno- games appreciation (I have most of them on my list as a spoiler), and maybe notably that I was pushing along with the Wii which was desperate for major RPGs at the time (I hadn't played Opoona yet... me the fool). Really delivered, even if not in the way I was expecting. The gnostic pontification and loose symbolism is on the fringes, and the glory of the game is in moving around the world. Each area unique and thoughtful, the party feeling like it actually integrates with the world as you traverse it, everything about moving around and finding locations feels great, even as the series teeters closer to the "ubislop" open world design of checkmarks to move between.

SMT3: Nocturne - Maybe not my favorite SMT (I feel as tho if it shows it, it means Strange Journey will probably not, though), but when I played it it might have been my favorite RPG of all time. Exudes a coolness, and with a narrative that often branches towards "evil chaos or suffocating order... or the hard mode", this felt open and considerate in a way I didn't expect. I felt a little cheapened by going at the path with extra bosses and difficulty because I wanted to make a decision that felt like a narrative choice rather than a mechanical one, but that's still kind of irrelevant for my appreciation of a game, which for 100 hours is mechanical delights. Maybe my first rpg experience of really exploring atypical boss strategies (Being able to choke out a bosses MP and then slowly bleed them out isn't completely novel, but it was to me) and though I love collection, I always tend to fall out of pokemon games at about the 4th gym, the process of negotiation and fusion hit me in the right tune. It is probably also worth mentioning in this and Xeno- games that I'm a hobbyist theologian.

A couple I want to play as well. Me not playing Vagrant Story is a major misstep, which I will aim to rectify. I somewhat suspect DQ1 will show up, but I have that on my list, well up, and appreciation like that should require me to play 2 as well. Suikoden is a series I've desired to play for a long while. And of course Saga games, maybe surprising that RS2 is the only I played from those (I have Emerald Beyond and Frontier on my list, maybe Frontier shows up later), but I do desire to keep moving through the series, and saga-likes (I wish Legend of Legacy would appear, but I'm not expecting it. I had it in my top 5)
 
FDLsP25.png


55. Sea of Stars
Sabotage, 2023: 9th Generation Points: 281 Votes: 9​

With the fifth generation of consoles came the tyranny of the triangle, a cruel yoke we still suffer under to this day. But some brave souls hold out and still follow the path of the dot. That Sea of Stars—a game not just rendered in the ancient modes of pixel art but also subservient to all the constraints of that form—should be a huge commercial and critical success speaks to the timelessness and vitality of the form. Now of course there’s been countless pixel games since the polygons shouldered their way onto the scene, and yes, Sea of Stars does trade in nostalgia, but neither of these diminish the special quality of the game or lessen its popular achievement.

3X4bY9M.png

Because Sea of Stars isn’t only a throwback to the SNES but takes the format of those days and develops it in effective, surprising, and artful ways. For me, the standouts are its strategic, timing focused battle system, its faux-3D environments focused on parkour-inspired exploration, and especially its story. The plot went to some astonishing places I was not expecting. I can’t really discuss it without going into some major spoilers so read ahead at your own risk.

I’m drawn to stories about messianic figures and other instances of divinity walking in creation. Something about stories where the ontological experience of manifested divinity is explored lights my intellectual fire. How surprised was I when one of your primary party members in Sea of Stars turns out to be the literal creator of the universe? JRPGs are not a format to shy away from metaphysical concerns, but rarely has one addressed the issues so directly and with such inventive fashion. You see, there’s no ‘true’ ultimate deity in Sea of Stars’ cosmology. Instead, the godhead resides in two ascended beings, The Alchemist and the Fleshmancer, who used their alchemy (some science of potency that grants control over existence) to make themselves immortal and manifest countless independent realities. In terms of capability, responsibility, knowledge, and scope they are Gods, but in important ways they are still only human, especially in terms of morality. The nature of existence and the threat to the heroes’ world and the driver of the plot all stem from their base and unenlightened interpersonal conflict. The Alchemist has recognized that to intervene in existence only complicates things and has adopted a position of detached non-intervention. And yet, he decides to join the party (God as a playable character!) even though it fundamentally compromises his morality. The game takes this to surprising and intriguing places and doesn’t settle for easy resolutions. Even the happy ending is undercut by the consequences of his actions, and the ultimate fate of the primary characters is stark and startling. All of this is told in a light and bubbly 2D JRPG style, but that only draws attention to the heady and subversive approach that Sea of Stars has towards its theology.

sA3s7qY.jpeg

The point is there’s still life and artistic merit in the pixel-rendered, bird’s-eye-view JRPG of yesteryear. It’s not an outdated form, but still one rich with potential. And seeing a game in this mode find an enthusiastic and willing audience, while also extending the concerns that the form can address, proves that the traditional JRPG has a long life yet.
 
Wow, this placed pretty highly. Now that the final edition is out, and I've heard the majority of my writing doubts assuaged from people here validating it, I may finally give this a try.
 
If I didn't possess a brain that craves novelty and grows tired of things fairly quickly, I would have finished this. As it is, I managed to get somewhere close to the end but haven't found the motivation to finish it. Anything that I could say about it has been said better elsewhere, so I'll just say it was a great game with excellent combat, with writing that I found to be a bit uneven but not nearly so much that it took me out of the game. Highly recommended.
 
I found the start of the game excruciatingly slow but I've heard they changed that up a LOT with patches. It is by far the most boring part of the game and once you're out of there the game is really fun to explore.

As someone who can't do timed hits at all I really appreciated the various items and settings that made it possible for me to enjoy the game.

Finally, I think it's neat that this game came out of a small scene in The Messenger but they reference that game and area in ways that don't feel too heavyhanded.

And super glad one of my favourite tracks came back.



 
I love this game so much. It feels like something that would have been at home on the PS1 or Dreamcast. So many neat things and maybe the best soundtrack of the 2020s (yes even better than Clair Obscur). Still shocking that it outranked so many games below it.
 
I liked this one, but wasn't enamored with it. The visuals were beautiful, the writing was OK, the combat was good, it had some interesting world map stuff, and I didn't bother with the ultimate collectathon to get the secret ending because it seemed pretty tedious. But at the end of the day, I completed it and had fun doing so, and that's what really counts!
 
Yimothy said:
I was kind of surprised to see DQ2 come up - I had the impression it was thought of as the bad one (maybe crossover impression from FF2? Dunno). I’ve only played it on iPhone and I don’t remember it that well. Still, even if it is the weakest of the first five Dragon Quests those other four games are all great so it’s hardly an insult.
Click to expand...
I don't remember ever seeing anything that said it had a bad reputation for anything (other than maybe the difficulty of the final stretch). But I also don't see it discussed or mentioned nearly as much as the other games in the series. So maybe it is the weakest or maybe just the least memorable or least discussable when it comes to the first 4-5 games in the series.
 
Sea of Stars has great music, and later in the game
the remixed versions of the battle theme to reflect the shift in setting
were really surprising.
 
I kinda felt the game was too much of a slog. The intro was certainly pretty slow-paced, and it's good to hear they patched that up since release, but I even made it to the first real big plot twist and that felt like it took a good dozen hours maybe? I basically lost the momentum right when the plot started to change a bit.
 
Lokii said:
With the fifth generation of consoles came the tyranny of the triangle, a cruel yoke we still suffer under to this day. But some brave souls hold out and still follow the path of the dot.
Click to expand...
Just wanted to say that I’m really enjoying these write ups, even for games I haven’t played like this one. This intro had me like what is Lokii talking about… oh! I love the dot, enjoy the triangle, but dream of the stately quad.
 
adM7tiy.png


54. Final Fantasy X-2
Square Division 1, 2003: PS2 Points: 285 Votes: 8
​
I haven’t played X-2, somehow, so I can’t speak in detail to any of its particular qualities, only its surface-level peculiarities, of which it has in spades. It makes monetary sense for there to be direct sequels to any of Square’s hugely successful Final Fantasy titles, and yet precedent saw each new numbered entry as an entirely new project with wholly original stories, settings, and gameplay conceits. Even after X-2 broke the seal and presented a game that was a direct follow-up and continuation of a mainline title, the idea of the direct sequel has found very little traction with really only The After Years, the FFXIII games, and the much maligned Dirge of Cerberus serving as genuine follow-ups.

V1LRKhk.png

​
Personally, I’m relieved that Square has shown such restraint. The concept of a direct sequel is as corporate as they come; and while certainly Square is no stranger to the seas of brand exploitation, they tend to position their mercenary endeavors as spin-offs, inessential prequels, or mobile experiments rather than anything so prestigious as to warrant a “-2” in the title.

And thankfully, even though explicitly continuing the tale told in the beloved Final Fantasy X, X-2 absolutely refuses to be confined to those terms. X-2 is a wild game, furiously shaking up not just the gameplay systems, pacing, progression, and story concerns, but outright altering the foundational threads of tone and vibe. This is most drastically seen in the redesign of Yuna from a serious and somber religious martyr to a hot pants-donning, guns akimbo-firing, “get in loser we’re going spherehunting” galboss.

OLN9s2y.png

Why this change works so well is that it's in lockstep with X-2’s position as a sequel. The world of FFX was locked in a 1000 year death conspiracy that overshadowed all arenas of existence, but with the defeat of Sin it is free of both the threat of annihilation and the social institutions that kept that threat in place. The world of Spira is breathing free for the first time in a millennium and there’s a great deal of both exhilaration and awkwardness as it transitions into the Age of Eternal Calm. Yuna’s transformation mirrors this and deepens her character. Eternal Calm is an opportunity for her to discover new, lighter, sides to her personality, ones that simply couldn’t exist in a world with Sin. It’s a neat trick that the setting, characters, and systems all exhibit this sense of awkward exhilaration and relieved silliness. It’s a brave approach to take for a named sequel: to directly contradict so much of the mood and character of the previous game, and X-2 is all the better for it.
 
I adore Final Fantasy X-2. As soon as you start a new game, it hits you in the face with change: tonally, the opening song is as different from the tone of Final Fantasy X as you can get (well, not the beautiful title screen music. That feels 100% like a Final Fantasy X song. I'm talking about the opening cutscene). You might go into it expecting a somber, "let's rebuild the world" type of game given the ending of Final Fantasy X, and that's not what you get - you get a full on pop concert with "Yuna" in one of the old blitzball stadiums. The lyrics tie into her character arc from the first game wonderfully - "what can I do for you?" being, essentially, a one line descriptor of what the old world wanted from her. It's wild.

Then you get into battles, and they're active time battles - no more fully turn based battles from the first game. They can be difficult at first, before you start to gain abilities and dresspheres (jobs). But you start to get the hang of it and then you realize, it's a semi-open world - you have the airship as soon as you finish the first mission, and rather than the long trip basically from A to B that most of Final Fantasy X was, you take on missions in the various areas you've been to before.

Everything is different, and everything is wonderful. Fantastic game.

(the secret ending sucks though)
 
I played FFX for the first time about five years ago. I had a great time, played through it twice and even obtained and upgraded all of the Celestial Weapons.

I got two hours into X-2 and did not gel with anything the game was doing. I’ve debated giving it another shot, though it seems this was such a divisive sequel that it killed any further interest in Spira Final Fantasy media.
 
R.R. Bigman said:
I got two hours into X-2 and did not gel with anything the game was doing. I’ve debated giving it another shot, though it seems this was such a divisive sequel that it killed any further interest in Spira Final Fantasy media.
Click to expand...
X2 was a success by basically any measure, and the contention that if X2 had played it safer in a way that appealed more to you personally, we'd have gotten more subsequent FFX games (or anime? Really not sure what you're driving at here) strikes me as a very bizarre, unlikely claim.

(For the record, I've never actually played X2 myself for reasons that have nothing to do with the game's quality that will likely come up in a later entry, although true doom murderheads may remember why.)
 
Last edited:
I assumed the fact that it was so different, namely the super fast battle system that was overwhelming for me after X’s nice, take-your-time approach, was an issue for a lot of people. Square-Enix certainly did not play it safe with X-2, and we haven’t seen these characters since.

For all that’s different with the FF7 remake trilogy games, S-E seems to be giving most of the fans what they want.
 
Number 25 on my list, one of the lower ranked FFs. I still enjoy it a whole lot. Simply for the fact, that Yuna can finally enjoy herself, even if part of that is just her trying to actually find herself, know who she is, without the burden of having to save the world.

To get my dislikes out of the way: The battle system is too fast for me. It's ATB, but even faster than normal, and I had to try three times, to get the fast pace and actually reach the end.

Aside from that: I think I love everything about it. The goofy j-pop opening, Leblanc and here henchmen (including that bizarre massage minigame, oh boy), having Yuna run around in a moogle costume to distribute leaflets, stopping tourists from using one of the old temples as an attraction (by having monkeys have sex in there, pairing them up correctly), having to listen to that old man, without skipping, droning on for minutes, to get that 0.1 %,...

I love small open worlds, and FF X-2 kinda is that. You can go everywhere, and do whatever you like. You skip what you don't like. It's a great system. Even here, gameplaywise, the opposite of the linear, regular FF X.

There are a lot of jobs, and a lot of fun costumes. I love playing dress-up with my characters.

I don't remember the story well, I forgot most of the details. It doesn't matter. It is fun enough, well done enough, and has good moments. I remember that, even if I don't remember which. Oh, aside from Yuna giving a concert, to unite the world with music, which is a favourite thing of mine.

To end this, I want to say that I appreciate, that Square did something wild and interesting, instead of going with the same kind of game that FF X was.
 
I loved X, and I even picked up X-2 right when it came out. I don't know why I never played through it? Maybe once I'm done with all the REs I can play through this one.

Seeing as I got my PS2 all hooked up for Code Veronica already.
 
I was a bit flabbergasted with X-2 at release. I was expecting something tonally different but it went to lengths I'm not sure I appreciated at the time. But because the combat was mostly snappy, and the dressphere system was interesting, I kept with it and got all the way to the end but never finished. (This is a chronic problem with me, basically getting to the final hours and then dropping out. I should really try to figure out why.) Certainly, learning there was a special ending and you needed to do ALL THE THINGS (and some of them are missable) to get the special ending greatly dampened my enthusiasm. "Well, you don't have to get the special ending", I hear you say, and that's the kind of nonsense I must wave away.

Despite all the ways in which I enjoyed FFX-2 - it's fun! cool job system! Paine! - in my heart of hearts I wish it would have been something else. It's a fun game that is ultimately a disappointing follow-up to a better game. It is the Chrono Cross of Final Fantasy.
 
My brain allows for the special ending to suck. My brain does not allow for not getting it.

Or at least, that was the story 23 years ago. If I ever play X-2 again, I will have a stern conversation with my brain. "Look, my guy, YouTube is right there. We don't need to get it. Many people already did it for us! Those schmucks! The absolute buffoons!"
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top