I think it might be a retro JRPG kind of new year - looking for suggestions.
Got my new retro handheld emulator. It's an Anbernic Arc-D. Just got 50 GB of roms loaded from my personal currated collection and I kind of think I wanna jump into some jrpgs I can play on the couch when I wanna decompress. Right now I'm looking at starting with GBA titles since I missed that whole era but I'm mainly looking for any suggestions up to PS1 era. I've played all the main ones like Chrono Trigger and FFVI but open to anything.
My current line up is looking like Mario RPG, Mother 2 And 3, and Golden Sun.
What are some other bangers I should definitely check out?
Also the Arc-D is dope as fuck. Stock firmware isn't even that bad.
E: thanks all for the suggestions! Gonna currate a list this morning and probably start with Golden Sun before diving into the rest. A lot of gems I recall missing out on when I was a kids too that I'm eager to jump into.
Awesome, thanks! I have Superstar Saga and Phantasy Star 4 but the only DS game I have right now is Dragon Quest 7. Gonna grab Bowser's Inside Story and add it to my queue.
Mario RPG along with those two Mother games are great stuff.
I'd recommend some Dragon Quest games from that era as well. DQ4 is one of my personal favorite games, but it definitely shows its age a bit as a NES game. DQ5 is considered one of the best JRPGs ever made and I tend to agree. Don't know if you're including those in the main ones you've played, since DQ5 didn't get US release until much later.
Agree with @LaGG_3 about Ogre Battle 64, if you've enjoyed the resurgence of auto battlers lately, it's a game that did roughly about 20 years ago.
Fire Emblem had two great GBA games that I'd recommend. Blazing Blade was a little bit better in terms of story, but The Sacred Stones has an updated engine and better quality of life.
Lastly, Phantasy Star IV is a fantastic look at that 16-bit JRPG game design style. And might be a good change of pace from the high fantasy settings I've listed off so far with its more Sci-Fi thing it has going on. It also has those sort of unique anime cut scenes, similar to Ninja Gaiden, during the big story bits that's kind of unique for the genre.
I just grabbed DQ5 and have the earlier ones for NES(Dragon Warrior 1-4).
Also got Ogre Battle 64. I like strategy to some extent and last I played Ogre Battle I think I recall it reminding me a bit of the big battles from Suikoden, so I bet it will be fun.
I also checked and do have both Fire Emblems in my GBA folder, so might need to check them out.
And Phantasy Star IV is also on my radar along with Star Ocean for some more scifi fantasy as opposed to high fantasy.
Those NES Dragon Quest games are really great for pick-up, put down. There's a fair amount of grinding, so you can just sort of zone out or stop whenever you want. DQ4 was, in a lot of ways, ahead of its time. It's the first JRPG I can think of that let you at least customize the gender of your character and the chapters-style story telling is really fun. Enjoy, man. I definitely wish I could experience some of those for the first time again, although maybe I'm just wishing I was a kid again haha
Edit: Eh, this was a dumb joke. I just finished my yearly replay of Phantasy Star IV, though, this time using a fan retranslation. I highly recommend it, I think they did an excellent job: https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/4171/
Interesting! I actually had not heard the translation was bad, but I suppose during that time they were all pretty bad in their own ways haha Will have to remember this the next time I feel like playing it.
There's an official translation, but it is notoriously bad and possibly the worst on the SNES. It's a great game tho so it's worth patching with a fan translation
Just gonna throw out that if you like SaGa Frontier, and also like more traditional fantasy settings (vs the weird modern-scifi-urban fantasy gonzo kitchen sink of SF1) then SaGa Frontier 2 is, in my opinion, an even better game.
Yeah it's RPG Maker XV. It's a peak RPG Maker game. Made me bawl my eyes out multiple times. I will warn that it goes a lot deeper than a normal JRPG on the philosophy side bordering on cognito hazards, but I think that's what makes it such an amazing and emotional game. The soundtrack is some of the best I've ever heard. Spaces in Between makes me cry from just hearing it.
I love Zone of the Enders GBA, it is top tier like Golden Sun 1/2 for me. After that Dragon Quest 3 and Breath of Fire series took so much of my time growing up.
Just checked and I have Zone of the Enders so I added it to the list. Glad I'm not wanting to tackle all these this next year because this list is getting hella long. My IRL friend even suggested some Zelda games which I've always considered JRPG adjacent.
If you want a weird underrated one I would recommend Legend of Legaia from the PS1 era. It's a neat one with a kinda cheesy story but what sets it apart is the combo system; to do attacks you set a series of inputs like high punch, low kick, high kick etc on your turn and that gets executed. Some enemies are weaker to certain things, some characters are stronger in certain things. The fun comes from finding each characters unique combos though...maybe doing high high low low triggers one of their special moves for instance. And then once you discover those, you discover that if 2 characters do their special moves on the same turn you get a combo special move. It's both really shallow and yet has enough illusion of depth as to feel really satisfying.
It's one of those weird underrated games I never hear anyone talk about but that has a special place in my heart. I won't pretend like it's an amazing game, it is definitely from it's time, but it did some cool things and is worth checking out
A lot of people here have already suggested Ogre Battle and Ogre Battle 64, but I'd also recommend Tactics Ogre. It's in the same series but is an SRPG instead of the... Whatever you'd describe Ogre Battle as. The story is quite good and the game has 3 pretty fleshed out routes. There's also 3 versions of it, the newer two (PSP and current consoles) have a better translation but from memory the original is passable. I'm sure there's a patch if you find it bad, though I would have to check.
Beyond that, Xenogears was already mentioned and is great. I'm quite partial to the Mana games and Terranigma. Moon is also really interesting, being a sort of parody RPG that heavily influenced Toby Fox when making Undertale.
I played Xenogears when it first came out but wanna save a replay for when I finally tackle the rest of the Xeno-verse games, even though they aren't all conical to each series.
I do need to give the other Mana games a go. I played Legend on Switch and burned through like 4 differnet team makeups and actually enjoyed it for its mindless fun.
Def forgot about Terranigma so will be adding that.
And of course also forgot about Tactics Ogre so I can grab the PSP version. I have the emulator for it so might as well put it to use.