-
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:
- The CAPTCHA key's answer is "Percy"
- 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
- Thread starter Lokii
- Start date
-
- Tags
- shrug life
The music, artwork, and sprites of Secret of Mana are amazing.
The game play not so much. I would frequently have party members get stuck on geometry and have to back track so they could get around it.
Worst of all for me is pausing the action to cast spells. Secret of Mana is an action RPG and cold stopping the action to cast spells feels bad.
(I don't love it in FF Remake either. I tolerate it because I like the rest of the game, but I don't love it.)
The game play not so much. I would frequently have party members get stuck on geometry and have to back track so they could get around it.
Worst of all for me is pausing the action to cast spells. Secret of Mana is an action RPG and cold stopping the action to cast spells feels bad.
(I don't love it in FF Remake either. I tolerate it because I like the rest of the game, but I don't love it.)
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
Interesting, I loved this because I wanted to balance XP and level ups and also wasn't always great and keeping track of which enemy was weak to which thing. I liked getting this much control, something I wouldn't get in real time.
Has SoM at #16 and it coulda been higher, but really everything in the top half of my list is a fave. Sure there’s a lot of jank, but it still works. The systems are far more understandable than later in the series and the whole thing is pretty dang cozy. And the music, man, Kikuta is a mad genius, and his style is so distinct from all the other greats of the 16-bit era.
Oh and I listen to this album at least once a month, probably.
SoM was my #6. I believe I was 11 when I played it and so excited for it. I played the majority of the game 2-player with my younger sister and we wore that game out, grinding max levels and all orbs. You cannot separate that multiplayer fun from SoM for me. I certainly had never played anything like it before at the time. There were many coop games, but very few if any had the kind of persistent world/party dynamics of SoM, especially on console. That Square wrapped such a beautiful, artful package around these new mechanics places it in a rare pantheon of games.
I'll tell this story when another game appears (cough, FF6), but when I was a kid RPGs were an impenetrable curiosity I only read about in Nintendo Power. Secret of Mana looked beautiful and incomprehensible to me. I've never had the chance to play it yet, but it's on The List and I will someday.
32. Pokemon Red & Blue (& Yellow)
Game Freak, 1996: GB Points: 421 Votes: 10 Previous Rank: 27
Pokemon conceiver Satoshi Tajiri once joked to Shigeru Miyamoto that in order to outperform Mario one would have to sell a game to each customer twice. So that’s what he did. I once heard Pokemon described as the perfect game concept, and history has borne that out. It’s no new fact that Pokemon is the number-one most profitable intellectual property in the world, dominating such monoliths as Marvel, Disney Princesses, and Hello Kitty. But of course, it would be. The concept is laser hewn to exploit cynical capitalist behaviors: gin up 150 cute-pop cartoon creatures, trademark, market, and sell via game, cartoon, movie, trading cards, toys, and Happy Meals. I remember early reporting on the Japanese phenomenon that had kids enthralled and the concern that it would turn them into bleary-eyed consumer zombies (as if that wasn’t already our fate).
But when you look at Red and Blue themselves, despite the “Gotta Catch ‘Em All” catchphrase and framing, there’s very little of this cynic capitalist exploitation or consumerist attitude on display. Instead, Pokemon presents its setting as a kind of eco-utopia, where the player’s goal is less to acquire strength to beat the villains than it is to participate in a multibiocentric society, where to “become the best” means perfecting a harmonious understanding of an entire zoology.
The perfection of Pokemon as a game concept is evident: go out, explore, find cool bugs, show them off to your friends, pick your favorites and lavish them with love. Pokemon is explicitly designed to tap into the “intense interest” phase of childhood, where a kid explores their self-identity and self-capacity by becoming an expert on some topic, be it dinosaurs, sports stats, or a hundred and fifty wacky animals. With their stats, moves, types, and so on. Pokemon becomes a potent object for this kind of interest. That it rewards deep engagement with sophisticated strategizing, hidden stats, secret rumors, and other esoteric knowledge creates a metaphor for engagement with real-world ecologies. It’s a message speaking to the complexity of Nature as an invitation for understanding and cohabitation. Pokemon also limits the player to six primary monsters out of its large roster, fostering a kind of self-expression, a declaration through team composition and build. The player is asked to pick their favorites, develop their strengths, to share and test them against others’. There’s no real reward for doing this, other than the intrinsic reward of participating in a real-world community, one that is argued for, and in a sense, modeled by the community depicted in the game.
There’s a purity and wholesomeness at the core of Pokemon as game that’s in direct opposition to Pokemon as corporate property. We see that the collect-em-all attitude, as it exists in the play experience, is not to foster consumption but community. We find in its mechanics opportunities for presence and self-expression. We find in its themes a celebration of the interconnectedness of Nature and an invitation to get out into the world and know it deeply. If it weren’t for the core game experience succeeding, Pokemon as a property would never have become successful. And the core of the game experience is of community, connection, understanding, cooperation. That’s pretty perfect.
-
Surprisingly, only Gens 1, 2, and 7 made the top 100, but the rest of the series saw lots of love. Here’s how the votes broke down:
#109 White/Black, 145 points 3 votes
#140 Ruby/Sapphire, 93 points 2 votes
#155 Pokemon Conquest, 71 points 2 votes
#175 Heart Gold/Soul Silver, 50 points 2 votes (submissions had these and vanilla gen 2 on the same lists, so I had to break them for fairness’ sake. If you want to consider Gold/Silver as having earned truly 419 points and 33rd place, go for it!)
#176 Legends: Arceus, 49 points 1 vote
#178 Black/White 2, 47 points 2 votes
#180 Fire Red/Leaf Green, 45 points 1 vote (would put Red/Green at 466, 27th place)
#190 Diamond/Pearl, 35 points 1 vote
#196 X/Y, 29 points 1 vote
#197 Scarlet/Violet, 28 points 1 vote
#205 Mystery Dungeon DX, 18 points 1 vote
Pokemon is a marvel of forward compatinbility. Not every copy of every game can transitively connect to others, and it's got bugs and gaps, and some of the necessary online services are to be discontinued; but data originating as far back as 2002 is still compatible in 2026, and due to rereleases this includes every mainline title, even those technically made earlier such as Red & Blue. There's an official world champion and you can use your childhood Mudkip to compete in the same matchmaking pool as them.
It's because of that interoperability that I've come to think of Pokemon as basically a single evolving game, akin to a vintage MMORPG with dozens of expansions.
It's because of that interoperability that I've come to think of Pokemon as basically a single evolving game, akin to a vintage MMORPG with dozens of expansions.
The biggest problem with Pokemon is that I will NEVER be able to catch 'em all!
Sarge
hardcore retro gamin'
I didn't vote for it, but this is the only Pokemon game I've beaten. I did not catch them all, but I enjoyed it all the same. I didn't even know about the cartoon or any of that when I got it, I just saw the coverage in Nintendo Power and was like "Game Boy RPG!" I don't think I have it in me anymore for the grind, but I respect the series and what it's done.
I had Pokémon RG(B) at #20 on my list. It is the progenitor of an iconic and enduring part of Nintendo consoles, the JRPG pantheon and pop culture.
lunch boxes, breakfast cereals, flamethrowers...
Like MissingNo.?
But you GOTTA!
Johnny Unusual
(He/Him)
This is the only main Pokemon game I've played so far (I have Scarlet sitting on my to-play shelf). Positive memories playing on the gameboy after the all-night safegrad party in the wee hours of the morning.
I've played these ones!
I didn't have a single Pokemon game on my list, which is ironic because I'm kind of a huge Pokemon-head. But the thing is, I've barely interacted with the series as RPGs. I was really too old to be the in the target audience for the initial marketing push - RGB hit when I was already in college, plus I didn't have Nintendo's portable consoles until much later anyway. But I was definitely *aware* of the series, and the ever-growing roster of cool little critters with lots of increasingly detailed attributes really tickled my inner field scientist nature, so every time a new game was announced I would pour over the leaked pokedex details. Eventually I started getting into some of the spin-off puzzly games like Pokemon Picross and Pokemon Shuffle... and then GO came out and basically took over my life.
So yeah, I couldn't really vote for these because I haven't really played any beyond like 15 minutes of Red on a borrowed GameBoy once and then like 80% of Let's Go Eevee on Switch, but, hat's off nonetheless to a franchise that's impacted my life more than most.
So yeah, I couldn't really vote for these because I haven't really played any beyond like 15 minutes of Red on a borrowed GameBoy once and then like 80% of Let's Go Eevee on Switch, but, hat's off nonetheless to a franchise that's impacted my life more than most.
Pokemon deserves credit for proving that RPGs can succeed in a handheld form factor. It wasn't the first, and its popularity was over the top, but it was by no means certain that slow-paced gameplay with complex long-term game state would suit the gameplay habits of Game Boy owners.
The regular structure of Pokemon's game world, its forgiving difficulty curve, and its clear (if not always as detailed as one would prefer) menus and text feedback make the game suitable for a beginner. But the save-anywhere convenience and the compact, visually distinct mazes of its dungeons are concessions to the handheld format, where play sessions may be short and unexpectedly curtailed, and the world is viewed as though through a keyhole.
Handhelds proved to be not only a viable platform for RPGs, but perhaps the ideal such platform. During the next decade, when SNES RPGs were ported with tolerable faithfulness to the GBA, and PS1 RPGs were sold on PSP (which could also be hacked to run emulators), it became clear to me, and I think to many others, that even if the games were otherwise identical, being playable in a handheld form factor improved most RPGs. Being less comfortable to hold than a proper controller is no drawback at all for menu-driven gameplay. A small portable screen, being more intimate and less demanding than a big stationary one, draws one more into the patient and attentive mindset of reading a book, which RPGs are closer to by virtue of their self-paced progression, longitudinal structure, and abstract mechanics.
The regular structure of Pokemon's game world, its forgiving difficulty curve, and its clear (if not always as detailed as one would prefer) menus and text feedback make the game suitable for a beginner. But the save-anywhere convenience and the compact, visually distinct mazes of its dungeons are concessions to the handheld format, where play sessions may be short and unexpectedly curtailed, and the world is viewed as though through a keyhole.
Handhelds proved to be not only a viable platform for RPGs, but perhaps the ideal such platform. During the next decade, when SNES RPGs were ported with tolerable faithfulness to the GBA, and PS1 RPGs were sold on PSP (which could also be hacked to run emulators), it became clear to me, and I think to many others, that even if the games were otherwise identical, being playable in a handheld form factor improved most RPGs. Being less comfortable to hold than a proper controller is no drawback at all for menu-driven gameplay. A small portable screen, being more intimate and less demanding than a big stationary one, draws one more into the patient and attentive mindset of reading a book, which RPGs are closer to by virtue of their self-paced progression, longitudinal structure, and abstract mechanics.
I was a fan of the Pokemon anime when it came out, even though I was a bit "too old" for it. It came right at the time anime was beginning to explode in the late 90's and I was prime into my "All Anime Is Superior To Western Animation" phase. I also enjoyed the first manga, which appeared before the franchise codified it's design and tone around the show, so it was fun to see Fat Pikachu and a slightly more mature version of the story. At one point I even had a life-size stuffed Pikachu, which I was DEFINITELY too old for.
I had Blue, but it came at an odd time when I was not playing many games as I balanced finishing high school and starting college and jobs, and I never actually played it much.
I had Blue, but it came at an odd time when I was not playing many games as I balanced finishing high school and starting college and jobs, and I never actually played it much.
It's been too long since I replied to this. Some recap:
Dragon Quest IX - A favorite of the series for me...even if it more or less abandoned character narrative in favor of multiplayer Streetpass hijinks. I love the class system so much in this one thast it makes up for the general ho-hum save the world plot...which is very unusual for me, haha.
Paper Mario - Outside of OB64, the best N64 RPG experience, and a cute evolution of the SNES game. I think Thousand Year Door refines much of what this brought to the table with a zanier plot and more endearing characters, but a
Trials of Mana - My vote was specifically for the remake, as I've still not gotten to the original. But I strongly believe Trials felt like a long lost Dreamcast game Square never released in that era, and that's the biggest compliment I can give it. I really enjoyed it, even with the hit-or-miss voice direction.
Persona 3 - It's been a very long time since I played it (and Reload seems to fix a lot of my initial criticism), but it's a super stylish, memorable PS2 JRPG that left a strong impression on mid-20s me, until FES arrived and made me despise it, lol. I didn't like the story direction it took AND having to buy the game all over again for something I didn't like, haha. But I am looking forward to giving Reload a full shot sometime soon.
Secret of Mana - Flawed as it is, it's a defining SNES game with one of the greatest 16-bit soundtracks of all time. The multiplayer was rad, the visuals stunning, and it had so much GOOD VIBES in it even if the programming was barely holding things together thanks to its troubled, flip-flopping development (Nasir deserves so much praise for getting this game this functional given its original CD-based ambitions).
Dragon Quest IX - A favorite of the series for me...even if it more or less abandoned character narrative in favor of multiplayer Streetpass hijinks. I love the class system so much in this one thast it makes up for the general ho-hum save the world plot...which is very unusual for me, haha.
Paper Mario - Outside of OB64, the best N64 RPG experience, and a cute evolution of the SNES game. I think Thousand Year Door refines much of what this brought to the table with a zanier plot and more endearing characters, but a
Trials of Mana - My vote was specifically for the remake, as I've still not gotten to the original. But I strongly believe Trials felt like a long lost Dreamcast game Square never released in that era, and that's the biggest compliment I can give it. I really enjoyed it, even with the hit-or-miss voice direction.
Persona 3 - It's been a very long time since I played it (and Reload seems to fix a lot of my initial criticism), but it's a super stylish, memorable PS2 JRPG that left a strong impression on mid-20s me, until FES arrived and made me despise it, lol. I didn't like the story direction it took AND having to buy the game all over again for something I didn't like, haha. But I am looking forward to giving Reload a full shot sometime soon.
Secret of Mana - Flawed as it is, it's a defining SNES game with one of the greatest 16-bit soundtracks of all time. The multiplayer was rad, the visuals stunning, and it had so much GOOD VIBES in it even if the programming was barely holding things together thanks to its troubled, flip-flopping development (Nasir deserves so much praise for getting this game this functional given its original CD-based ambitions).
You really are getting me interested in Trials of Mana!
$15 on the eShop right now!
31. The World Ends With You
Square Enix, 2007: DS Points: 425 Votes: 9
What a blow, what a backslide, what an abandonment of a beautiful dream when we relinquished the dual screen handheld to the dustheap. At first it seemed the delusion of a crackpot, two screens. Crazy Old Man Nintendo up to his madcap whimsies yet again. Yet the DS proved itself time and time again, not just as a viable format for game design, but an essential one. Far more than a gimmick, the system’s dual and touchscreen features radically transformed how games could be presented and interacted with. Developers went wild and brought forth an era of creativity and innovation that we’re unlikely to see again in this fallen, single-screen future.
At the forefront of the wild experiences the DS enabled was The World Ends With You, the most singular game Square ever made. Like its protagonist Neku, the game follows its own values and doesn’t let such tired and dusty concepts like convention hold back its shining stylish ipseity. Nothing in TWEWY works as you’d expect, except for maybe HP. Traversal, battles, talking to NPCs, shopping, leveling, difficulty levels, progression, all work in strange new ways, as if the JRPG tradition had been warped into counterculture graffiti-bedazzled forms just like the game’s enemies.
TWEWY depicts the events of The Reapers’ Game, a metaphysical contest taking place in a sort of Purgatory layer between life and death. Recently deceased individuals (all hyper-stylish teens) are given a chance to return to life if they survive a week of deadly contests. Part of the rules is that this can only be accomplished by teams of two and so player character Neku is forced to team up. This is the fulcrum of both gameplay and story and character development as Neku is a real snotty little shit. He’s a perfectly rendered 15 year old, aloof, self-satisfied and cynical. He’s in desperate need of a wake-up, which comes in the form of Nega-Tokyo where he’s forced to pair up with a cohort of annoying hipsters. For all its bonkers setup, the game really is less about the metaphysical fantasy and anime shenanigans of The Reapers’ Game and more interested in psychological isolation and healthy mental development.
This is stated directly in the game’s title, The World Ends With You, which is explained to mean that one’s experience of existence only extends as far as that person allows the world to penetrate their psychological barriers. Sure, one can live life self-sheltered and cynical, but that will allow for only a narrow avenue to be in the world. What Neku learns over the course of The Reaper’s Game is how to dissolve his barriers and expand his world.
What makes TWETY special is how it actualizes this through several maneuvers. The game doesn’t use typical inventory or level-up systems at all. Rather, character progression is accomplished by frequenting the many trendy restaurants and boutiques of Shibuya, trying a variety of different foods and sporting a wide range of fashion styles. Progression comes from literally expanding your experience and taking a maximalist approach to life. Stagnation is disincentivized and sticking to familiar lanes will slow or even stop stat development.
Even more to the point is the game’s battle system. How to even describe it? By equipping various lapel pins Neku is granted access to various psychic powers like telekinesis or pyrokinesis which are activated by slashing, scratching, or scribbling on the touch screen. So combat comes down to a balance of flicking Neku around the field with the stylus to dodge attacks while trying to perform the various gestures to launch your own abilities. This would be tricky enough, but the game adds a whole other layer. The player also has to manage Neku’s partner on the top screen, who is fighting a simultaneous battle against their own foes. By inputting different combinations on the d-pad the player executes their attacks and defences. Additionally, there is a “light puck” that passes back and forth between the characters, and by timing attacks to correspond with it the player builds up special combos and synergies. It is a lot to manage and requires a splitting of the brain’s attention across both screens that at first feels unnatural or even impossible. But as the game progresses and the player learns to expand their awareness across both screens they are actualizing Neku’s own journey of psychological expansion. The kind of elegant play that can be achieved when the player’s two hands are working in tandem and their attention perceives action across multiple displays mirrors Neku’s own growth and capacity for companionship.
It’s the kind of gameplay/story/thematic harmony that can only be produced through the DS’s unique hardware features. Square’s attempt to update the game to modern, single-screen consoles is noble and works well enough, I suppose. But it is fundamentally a compromise of the original vision and can never recreate the exact harmony of character interiority, gameplay conceit, and stylized counterculture input controls that the original game relished in. The World Ends With You was a startling game when originally released and has only become more so now that we’ve abandoned the halcyon peaks of two-screen gaming for these dour single-screen mires.
I want to write more when I’m not on mobile, but I loved this game and it is without a doubt the wildest combat system I’ve ever mastered, probably in any video game genre. I seems almost impossible to wrap your head around at first, but when it clicks, it clicks. I’m trying to remember if I ended up collecting every possible pin, which I remember being kind of an insane endeavor, but I definitely got close.
gorha
For the Ylory of Mankind
TWEWY was my #3. You covered most of what I would say about it @Lokii - it's a singular experience that was only possible on the DS, the battle system is awesome, the story goes to some truly wild places, the mechanics complement the story's themes like few other games.
To add to that last point, one of the progression systems in the game is PP, which is used to level up your pins. You get PP by winning fights, and you get some from leaving the DS in sleep mode with TWEWY running. But you can also get it by streetpassing other players (more if they also have TWEWY running, but any DS in sleep mode will give you a bit), and some pins require this "mingle" PP to evolve. So this game about the importance of interacting with the world around you rewards you for going outside and meeting people instead of sitting in your room playing video games all day.
To me, this is the missing piece in the modern versions of the game, even more than the redesigned battle system. It's basically impossible to experience nowadays even if you play the DS version, since passing even one other person who still uses their DS in current year is incredibly unlikely, let alone the dozens you could get by walking around a city for a few hours when TWEWY came out. I'm really glad I got to experience it.
To add to that last point, one of the progression systems in the game is PP, which is used to level up your pins. You get PP by winning fights, and you get some from leaving the DS in sleep mode with TWEWY running. But you can also get it by streetpassing other players (more if they also have TWEWY running, but any DS in sleep mode will give you a bit), and some pins require this "mingle" PP to evolve. So this game about the importance of interacting with the world around you rewards you for going outside and meeting people instead of sitting in your room playing video games all day.
To me, this is the missing piece in the modern versions of the game, even more than the redesigned battle system. It's basically impossible to experience nowadays even if you play the DS version, since passing even one other person who still uses their DS in current year is incredibly unlikely, let alone the dozens you could get by walking around a city for a few hours when TWEWY came out. I'm really glad I got to experience it.
That game came around at a pretty crucial time in my life for its message to resonate. I love it. The soundtrack is top-notch, the presentation is so cool, and the characters are super memorable. Some of the plot threads get a bit confusing, what with the mysterious secret reports you can unlock, but that's to be expected. Also, Tin Pin Slammer is a really fun minigame that I'm sad didn't have an equivalent in the sequel.