/vr/ - Retro Games

this one cuts deep

Legend of Dragoon and both SaGa Frontiers come to mind.

Also Legend of Legaia doesn't get much attention in general.

>>2045097
As far as underrated and overlooked, probably something that didn't see a huge print run or much marketing. I mean, stuff like Tales of Destiny and Eternia/Destiny II didn't see very much advertising that I can recall, and judging by the fact they cost an assload (Destiny ranges from $75 to $100 where I live, Eternia from $90 to $120) that doesn't bode well for the selling well or getting a big print run. Thankfully emulation (and the PSN, for the cases where some did wind up there; some companies do need to make more of an effort in getting their stuff on the PSN, like how Square-Enix won't even put Valkyrie Profile up) have at least helped them to find more of an audience than they might have initially had.

>overshadowed by a major release
That's something I've actually gotten interested in looking into. Admittedly I've only been looking into release time frames and it's just been speculation on my part, but it certainly seems like at least a few PS2 RPGs got seriously screwed over by releasing too close to more hyped games from bigger series/publishers (not /vr/, but as an example I recall that Shadow Hearts released way too close to Final Fantasy X and judging by current prices and how Shadow Hearts isn't seen much, I'd say it suffered in sales due to it; also Dual Hearts releasing way too close to the similarly named Kingdom Hearts). I'd be interested to know if there were any for-sure cases of that on the PS1 (again, I suppose it's been speculation, but I'd certainly wonder if that sort of thing had anything to do with how hard to find and pricy stuff like Suikoden II and Thousand Arms have gotten, as judging by that they didn't sell well; there were some Squaresoft releases done close to those, but I think a month or so inbetween is stretching speculation a bit).

>>2045124
Legend of dragoon is one of those games that were rushed and unpolished as fuck but were still great. What could have been...

None of the games ITT are particularily overlooked.

Hate to be the party crasher but if there's an underrated PS1 RPG, then I can't think of one. Valkyrie Profile maybe, but it's still rather known. On the other hand, I can think of a shitload that get way much more praise than they're worth. PS1 is kind of an ugly stage where the JRPGs are much clunkier than the SNES ones yet few are as interesting mechanically as the stuff that sprouted on the PS2.

The PS1 port of Super Robot Wars 4. Even SRW fans don't remember that PSX got an improved release.

>inb4 not a JRPG

Threads of Fate. It isn't the best RPG around, but it's decent and a bit off the radar for a Square RPG.

>>2045145
Shadow Tower
King's Field II
Vandal Hearts

Better?

Lets see here... i rarely see anyone mention these

Saiyuki Journey West
Eternal Eyes
Hoshigami: Ruining Blue Earth
Kartia: The Word of Fate

>>2045109
That's the one where the game was designed to be on Saturn, and was released on that system in Japan, but which was rejected for localization, right?

>>2045179
I think it had a Saturn version. Did that Bernie Stolar guy at Sega at the time have anything to do with that particular version not being localized?

>>2045170

Probably because Hoshigami is downright awful garbage. The others are subpar but ok.

>>2045157
More like SRW in general outside of OG.

Official localizations of the Alpha games were attempted, but squashed flat by Harmony Gold because macross.

>>2045097
Guardian's Crusade.

It's not really a good game, per say, but it's entertaining and seems to be completely forgotten by everyone.

Absolutely nothing in this thread is overrated I'm afraid

>>2045490
Underrated‼︎ Doh

>>2045493
But some are overlooked.

>>2045490
>Absolutely nothing in this thread is underrated

Both SaGa Frontier are niche as fuck, I use to make threads about SaGa once in a while and they die after a few days with not even 50 posts, same with King's Field and both Vandal Hearts, SRWs, Shadow Tower and Threads of Fate are all niche titles.

If I may add some I'd say the Arc the Lad Trilogy, it's criminally underrated and while it has its problems it's an all around great game that has aged beautifully.

Whilst not really "Underrated" Final Fantasy IX and VIII were kinda underrated, even if they were Final Fantasy Games. Especially IX.

SaGa Frontier was so bad I couldn't even force myself to play it for more than a few hours.

>>2045839
Maybe if you bothered to learn how to play the game you could have the right to say that.

>>2045457
Truth. And half the series has fucking Aeon Genesis sitting on their hands translation-wise. SRW4 is only 12 years late now, and at approximately 0.1% complete.

>>2045189
>I think it had a Saturn version.

The definitive version too. Bliss to play. Voice acting is still kinda awful though.

>>2045907

Still waiting for a translation.

>>2045839

Is this what a wrong opinion looks like?

>>2045910
>2014
>waiting for translations

Time to learn some Moon.

>>2045170
Eternal Eyes and Hoshigami were just steaming piles. I wanted to like Hoshigami but it made it impossible.

>>2046048
Eternal Eyes was basically Pokemon Conquest but 10x better to me.

I liked the monster raising, but other than that other titles outclass it.

>>2046051
All thise monster raising RPGs on the PS1 and Game Boy really appeal to the /an/ in me.

Speaking of which, Jade Cocoon.

>>2045457
why the fuck do they have a license they aren't going to use? wish we could take them to court over getting that unused shit out of their hands. wonder if we could maybe GET SRW games then.

>>2045794
i hate that SaGa games are so underrated. Hell, during Halloween night, i was doling out the candy and I started a new file with Red on my PsOne. Some little kid was wondering what I was playing and he thought it was cool when I transformed into Alkaiser.

We need to get the word out, get these games more played or at least get them on PSN.

>>2046085
>he thought it was cool when I transformed into Alkaiser.

Shit nigga, that kid got some taste, he deserved that candy.
SaGa games are underrated because they're hard to get into, most of them require some serious dedication, especially RomaSaGa II and Unlimited, but once you understand what you're doing they're amazing.
They're even more Wrpg than most Wrpgs out there.

Then again, The Last Remnant is a spiritual successor to SaGa and it had a very cold reception in the west outside of a few people so I wonder whether the series will ever be appreciated.

A shame since it's one of the few Jrpgs that isn't a press X to win or mash buttons furiously to start a combo macro shitfest.

Moon

>>2045109
Wow, I consider this to be one of the worst JRPGs ever, especially a shame coming from the guys that gave us Lunar. It's a game all about exploring, but the dungeons are all super straight forward and boring as fuck.

>>2045137
This one as well, holy fuck I hated Tales of Destiny 2. Tales of Destiny 1 is actually one of my favorites on the system, but 2 was a horrid disappointment. It doesn't help that they made an actual sequel to Tales of Destiny, but we never got it because they had already marketed this piece of hot trash as Destiny 2 in the west.

>>2045112
It has so much good in it, I love that the story is a series of smaller vignettes and the whole thing has this wonderfully melancholy feel. It's just a shame the combat was so clunky and terrible. Only ever facing left or right while in battle? Really?

>>2045119
This is a fantastic choice. Great story, cool characters, fun battles. Ershin fucking rocks.


In the end though, I gotta go with Lunar Eternal Blue. Even though the Vic Ireland translation sucks ass and the game is actually a step backward from the Sega CD one in some ways, it's still an excellent and oft overlooked game.

>>2046135
Why exactly did you hate Tales of Eternia? I thought it was an excellent game and one that still holds up pretty well in a lot of ways.

>It doesn't help that they made an actual sequel to Tales of Destiny, but we never got it because they had already marketed this piece of hot trash as Destiny 2 in the west.
While I do think that the name change from Eternia to Destiny II in the west (something about Mattel already holding the rights to using Eternia out here or wanting to give the game more recognition as being same series as Tales of Destiny; though with the latter I feel that the "Tales of-" in the title does that well enough) likely played a part, I think the bigger issue was a lack of sales of both Destiny and Eternia out here that prevented us from getting the actual Destiny 2 (the fact Namco hasn't liked doing much marketing for the series until recently hasn't helped). Hell, I'd be willing to bet that if Nintendo hadn't stepped in and helped market Symphonia in the west (given that the Gamecube really didn't have a lot of JRPGs on it, I'm sure they wanted at least a few of them to be successful out here), to the point the series became a good deal better known, we wouldn't have gotten it, and possibly none of the later games in the series either.

Even heard rumor that after Destiny's low sales out here Namco didn't even want to localize Eternia in the first place (admittedly I'm not sure if that's accurate); if true, I'm personally glad they wound up willing to do so in the end.

>>2046403
Honestly, I couldn't tell you at this point. It has to have been like 10 years since it came out. But I do remember hating every character, especially the main guy for some reason. And the battles not being as interesting. As well I think, the towns were all really tiny or something like that.

It might just have been too much hype. When I played Tales of Destiny it absolutely blew me away and was probably my favorite rpg of that era. I loved the game all the way through, and seeing Tales 2 on the shelf got me super excited and then I just remember everything about it disappointing me. But other than that it's a blur at this point.

>>2046135
Just so we're clear your first sentence you werent talking about Grandia, right?

>>2045097
I'm really at a loss as to why anyone would want to play a jrpg sandbox game. That's what always throws me off about the SaGa series is that you have an open world but only one real thing to do in it - kill monsters.

>>2046440
Well, maybe you should consider giving Eternia another go sometime if you can have a bit of an open mind about it. I wouldn't call the cast perfect by any means, but the only one I outright disliked was Keele (given he's got a rather abrasive personality), but even he came around a bit. And I do suppose being overhyped for something can led to heavy disappointment, even if the game isn't bad, just not what one was expecting.

Anyhow, hopefully in the future Destiny 2 gets it's fan translation done (I've been wanting to play it myself), though it might need to be taken out of Cless' hands for much progress to be made (given the guy's so slow, taking 10 years for his Phantasia patch and all). I mean, Absolute Zero pretty much took over the fan translation for Destiny DC on the PS2 from him and within a month they've already translated all the skits (though I do seem to recall them saying that the main content of the game has 17 times the amount of lines the skits have, or something); having a decent debugger for their PCSX2 likely helps as well.

>>2046480
You should probably give Frontier 2 a shot then. They completely got rid of the sandbox idea for a scenario system that was really linear.

>>2046058
>Jade Cocoon
Fucking this.

Also give Azure Dreams a shot. It sounds rather daunting at first because of all the stuff it crams in (some worse than others) but in the end it feels pretty comfy and challenging.

>>2046484
Will do, I still really enjoy Romancing SaGa 2.

Pic related. Also, you guys are a bunch of faggots for not mentioning wild arms. Specially wild arms 2. A game with a soundtrack this awesome doesnt deserve to be forgotten. But https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvVk0L5lpZY

But there is always an underaged moron to say "hurr durr those graphics didnt age well".

>>2045097
>>2045097
Paracite Eve. Best one of the generation.

>>2046481
Maybe when I'm old and grey, but the degree to which it annoyed me at the time and that I barely play RPGs at all these days makes me think I probably won't. If Destiny 2 gets a fan translation I'll check that out, but these days I just pass over anything with the Tales name in it. I haven't made it more than a third of the way through any of them since the Gamecube.

>>2046480
>>2046484
I think the GBA and PSP ports of Final Fantasy II are also worth playing. Those have a pretty good balance mix where you can make your party how you'd like and just go through the game raising them that way. If you don't go out of your way to cheese the system, it's a pretty great game with tons of options.

>>2046497
I really like Wild Arms 1 and 2, and thankfully they seemed to do more than well enough out here to warrant continued localizations of every game the series saw (not something that happens with every JRPG series), so I'd say they were well played enough. On the other hand I remember reading that people used to consider them "filler" JRPGs to play between bigger, more popular/anticipated releases, something I don't think does the games justice as I found them to be quite good. So I suppose I'm not sure if they're actually underrated or not. They certainly seemed to have sold well enough.

>But there is always an underaged moron to say "hurr durr those graphics didnt age well".
While I will say that the second game did have a noticeable increase in the graphical quality from the first, I honestly enjoy the way both look, and there's a good deal of charm in the sprites and models (depending on what's used in the game; WA2 being much more model heavy). If anything what I'd say could have used more polish and editing was the translations, though even they weren't all that bad.

>>2046518
Lets be honest: modern translations are much better than the engrish ones that most of games had.
Still something that can be get over with. Even when its final fantasy tactics level of engrishness.

>>2046095
Unlimited Saga tickles my /tg/ side.

>dat reel rolling

>>2046521
That's true. And even some dumb translations for games have their fans due to how odd they can get at times. Still, I am left hoping that if Wild Arms 2 ever sees a remake of sorts, the translation team is at least more competent (or possibly not as rushed, depending on what the issue was; also if at least some of the people involved were fans of the series and could catch certain things that should be left alone, it would probably help, given that with ACF some parts for the translation were better, while Agetec still messed up at other points, which likely could have been avoided by having someone on the team play the original game prior).

So, if I wanted to get into the SaGa games, where should I start?

Romancing SaGa? Those GB Final Fantasy Legend games?

>>2046085
Unfortunately, as far as Square-Enix and the PSN goes, they seem pretty picky about what gets put up and gets put on the overseas PSN as well. They don't seem to have any issues with getting the Final Fantasy games, Parasite Eve, Xenogears, Threads of Fate, Vagrant Story, Chrono Cross, Legend of Mana or Front Mission 3 up there, but with other games/franchises they own the publishing rights to, they just seem to ignore putting them up there for whatever reason: some stuff like Dragon Warrior VII and Valkyrie Profile aren't even up there, while others like Brave Fencer Musashi and Saga Frontier 1 and 2 are apparently up there in Japan but were simply never cleared to have their English versions put on the US or PAL PSNs. Hell, last I'd heard they hadn't even put up the PSP version of Valkyrie Profile, nor either of the Star Ocean games on the PSP either.

Arc the Lad
Azure Dreams
Chocobo's Dungeon 2
Dragonseeds
Front Mission 3
Monster Rancher 2
Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen Limited Ed.
Persona 2: Eternal Punishment
Star Ocean: The Second Story
Vandal Hearts

Some of those are SRPGs but whatever.

>If you speak moon:

>Shinsetsu Samurai Spirits
A really fun Samurai Shodown JRPG with sprites from the fighting games.
>PoPoLoCrois Monogatari
A cute and whimsical classic fantasy tale/romance with simple grid-based combat.
>Racing Lagoon
A game that fucking combines street racing with JRPG mechanics, character growth and plot progression.
>London Seirei Tanteidan
A comfy RPG with amazing sprite art and world design taking place in early 20th century London, gives off a Ghibli feel.
>Bealphareth
Super cute but dark dungeon crawler where you can switch your player character on the fly.

>>2046535
FFL is probably your best bet. Simple and fun.

>>2046573
>Arc the Lad

Fucking this. Played the first three games early this year (all part of the ATL Collection) and was surprised at how great they were (especially ATL2).
Lots of tearjerker moments, too...

>>2046573
>JRPG set in London
Well, you don't see that everyday (though I know there's a few set in somewhat alternate versions of Earth, like Shadow Hearts on the PS2 or Nostalgia on the DS). There a particular reason that was left overseas?

>>2046058
I second this. This is a great game and not many people know about it.

Alundra 2 was a ballbuster if compared to Alundra, but if you gave it a chance and ignored the name, it was quite enjoyable.

That considering "overlooked" games. As in they are good but were ignored for some reason. For example, Beyond the beyond was quite ignored, but I honestly thought it sucked back then.

Also, oddly enough, Suikoden. Not Suikoden II, but the first one. Most people played Suikoden II and when going for the first one, it is a massive downgrade in music (quality), graphics and gameplay. It is a shame because it is a great game.

>>2045875

That pisses me off so much. Alpha Gaiden's translation is a fucking travesty, and will probably never get fixed. He also let some sperglord unfamiliar with the source material translate it.

AGTP's stuff is usually fantastic. But for some strange reason his SRW translation work is abysmal.

>>2046658

I meant to say that he let some Sperglord unfamiliar with the source material translate SRW3.

>>2046612
How recommendable are the DS remakes?

Breath of Fire IV easy. It's a truly fantastic game and hands down my favorite in the series if not genre.

It ha the misfortune of coming out right at the tail end of the PS1 era, so it was overlooked thanks to PS2 hype

>>2046095
I just got SaGa Frontier and Minstrel Song in the mail. Which one should I start first?

>>2047585
Play SaGa Frontier, throw away the other one

>>2047606
Minstrel Song is good for when you want to throw away 300 hours of your life but are tired of Bethesda's wrpg shit. Its not the best game ever but its not bad at all.

Saga Frontier is definitely better, probably the best in the series (I'm sorry SF2 I love you pls don't leave me)

>>2046523
>>dat reel rolling
Now in Webm, just for you Anon.
>>2046535
FFL or SaGa Frontier are the best games for peoplw new to the series, they're not hard as the other games and let you learn the core mechanics with ease.
>>2046615
>Dat ATL 2 Ending
>Arc and Kukuru flying away in the clouds with this music
Bitch tears man, also Tosh and Shu are one of the best bromance ever
>>2047585
Play Frontier first, Minstrel Song is harder and less forgiving, you'll need to at least know most of the base mechanics of SaGa to play MinSon or you'll screw up your entire game session after literally 20 minutes.

>>2046097
I want to believe that they're still working on the translation and plan to release it soon.

>>2047612
I'd rather people just play the Super Famicom original but I guess I can't expect everyone to conform to my purest weeb nazi ways.

Anyone else played both Minstrel Song and Dark Law for the SNES?

How exactly did the mechanics of that old game series work their way into a Saga game? so mysterious

>>2047620
They really messed up with the character models. I picked the fairy prince guy who is son of the lord of the isthmus and he pisses me off. At least I finally got Grey and the Lizardman plus that dancer and the red witch. Pretty ballin team besides that one winged faggot. Sort of want to restart with another MC.

>>2047620
Hasn't Minstrel Song been ported into RS3's framework by obsessive Japanese modders already?

My lack of fluency has always bothered me since I could never get into that scene. I'm just not gud enough at the moon runes

>>2047625
they're definitely strange

but after a while I think they kind of grew on me?

A lot of people dislike Albert and Aisha specifically and it's not like I can't see why

Jamil and Sif and Hawke and Barbara are all much better anyway, so its not a big deal, you can just start with a different character if you don't like someone

>>2047617
Good luck waiting for Gideon Zhi
>>2047620
The SNES version is very different from the rmake, they're almost completely different games so you should play both imho.
>>2047626
They made Character models and a few quests, yes, but again, they even ported Unlimited: Saga characters in the game, RS3 is a modder heaven.

Also, making a SaGa thread right now, bear with me.

>>2047635
It's done
>>2047636
>>2047636
>>2047636

>>2047635
I can't play Minstrel Songs because I think it looks dumb

>>2047626
Playing RPGs helps a lot, just set the text speed really slow and prepare for hours and hours and hours of mindless repetition until your brain is natto

>>2047642
Well, I don't dislike it, though they changed some characters models like Aisha and Albert's redesign is pretty fucking dumb.

Some other redesigns are pretty good, Barbara is not bad at all for instance.

>>2047620
>I'd rather people just play the Super Famicom original
Except Romancing Saga 1 for the SNES is fucking garbage and nobody should be forced to suffer through it.

>>2047771
*Super Famicom, whatever

>>2046573
>London Seirei Tanteidan

I NEED to play this. God, it looks so comfy.

I miss all the wonky as hell JRPGs from the PS1.

Even if some of them weren't entirely well executed, it was fun to see all the different ideas that developers had.

Anyone who says JRPGs haven't changed in 20 years have forgotten all the weird and experimental stuff on the PS1 that just never caught on for some reason.

>>2048051
True that.

I loved how suddenly you got all these neat ideas coming out of a combination of the RPG being bigger than ever and practiced veterans expanding out to different ideas. It really inspired everyone to try something new.

It doesn't seem to happen that often anymore in general.

>>2047928
>tfw this wasn't translated

>>2047928
London Spirit Detective Agency

Iwanttoplayit

>>2047771
Yeah well that's just like your opinion man

>>2048319
That's not garbage, that's a fucking fact. The concept art might be pleasing to look at, unfortunately it's not representative of the game.
>less interesting story/graphics/music than the other games in the series
>movement is slow
>each area has you getting swarmed by 214 enemies
>on top of all that, combat is slow
>weapon levels being tied to individual weapons is the stupidest kind of skill raising to appear in the series
I can't think of a SaGa game that is worse. It's baffling how Unlimited gets shit on all the time yet RS1 gets a free pass. Yeah it was revolutionary, but so was Akalabeth and nobody considers that a good game.

>>2048319
That's not an opinion, that's a fucking fact. The concept art might be pleasing to look at, unfortunately it's not representative of the game.
>less interesting story/graphics/music than the other games in the series
>movement is slow
>each area has you getting swarmed by 214 enemies
>on top of all that, combat is slow
>weapon levels being tied to individual weapons is the stupidest kind of skill raising to appear in the series
I can't think of a SaGa game that is worse. It's baffling how Unlimited gets shit on all the time yet RS1 gets a free pass. Yeah it was revolutionary, but so was Akalabeth and nobody considers that a good game.

>>2045479
It's "per se", not "per say". I have nothing else to contribute to this thread but I hope you appreciate my grammatical assistance.

>>2048908
But who is Percy?

>>2048943
>Sorry, boss.

>>2047626
RS3 seems to be on the same level of hacking as Pokemon FireRed is now. Everything that can gets ported back eventually.

>>2048757
Unlimited was really bad though.
And hardly anyone really considers the first game at all, positively or negatively, this is honestly one of the only times I've ever even had a discussion about it.
I'd say it's definitely flawed, but a lot of the flaws are what make it enjoyable for me ala every SaGa game ever. The weapon-level system thing you're complaining about is actually super broken once you figure it out. I'm sorry you can't have fun playing it but that is definitely a personal problem.

>>2049341
>Unlimited was really bad though.
It's a mixed bag. When it's not being frustrating as fuck, it's really good. The worst thing about it is how stingy it is with giving you important information - most notably there's no way to display weapon speeds in the game.
>I'd say it's definitely flawed, but a lot of the flaws are what make it enjoyable for me ala every SaGa game ever. The weapon-level system thing you're complaining about is actually super broken once you figure it out. I'm sorry you can't have fun playing it but that is definitely a personal problem.
Being broken is just one side of the issue. Also what is the worst is the overabundance of encounters in the entire game. God forbid the player gets stuck in a cluster of enemies - nothing worse than fighting trash mobs for half an hour straight.

>>2049341
>Unlimited was really bad though.

It's the most balanced SaGa game there is, I don't know why people say it's bad, the only bad thing in the game is that they removed the classic field exploration and opted for a chessboard. All the rest is great if you have enough time and brain to understand how it works.
And how>>2048757 says, the first RomaSaGa is much worse, it hasn't aged well at all and most of the mechanics are pretty stupid and clunky compared to the other SaGa titles.
You can understand why RomaSaGa 2 got so much following, it was a huge improvement over the first one.

Besides, there's already thread for SaGa discussion.>>2047639

>>2049765
I agree, I think Unlimited is a real underrated gem, but only for serious players. It really takes some time and several plays to get the hang of it, I don't think I beat a single characters game for almost a year after I had it.

>>2049791
The problem with Unlimited is that it's amazingly complex, literally everything you do has atrocious importance in your progression, it requires long term planning and a mind of steel for certain things, it's absolutely brutal and what little info you can get from sources like the manual ends up being exactly what you don't have to do in the game.

Being even more abstract and tabletop like obviously alienates a SaGa player, most other jrpg players can't even understand what the fuck is going on and dismiss it as crap.

It's actually one of the most complex, satisfying and interesting jrpg system of all time, a shame most are scared off by its complexity.

>>2049805

Complexity doesn't exactly make something good.

TLR for instance was super complex but nowhere near the comlexity of unlimited saga and people hated that as well.

I like both for the record, just pointing out that complexity doesn't exactly mean anything.

>>2050428
the first thing he said was that being complex was a problem for it
>can't into reading comprehension

>>2046135
>Wow, I consider this to be one of the worst JRPGs ever, especially a shame coming from the guys that gave us Lunar. It's a game all about exploring, but the dungeons are all super straight forward and boring as fuck.
Honestly i think it's as bad as Lunar. But at least it has a feeling of a grand adventure going on.

>>2047558
Yes, it is amazing and has a surprisingly strong story. You can clearly see why Fou-lu decided to do what he tried to, and his point of view is totally understandable, especially after the girl that liked him was used as a sacrifice and most likely tortured and raped before.