SNES RPGs worth playing

[Anonymous No.4695253]

Title. Pretty tired of people recommending obscure game #891 just because it was "okay" and they had already played through most of the western SNES releases and many of the popular SFC translations.

Remember that life is short, there are way too many games out there, and there comes a point where it's better to move on to a different console than keep playing games that would have sold like absolute shit/no one would care about had they been released in the West.

Some games are so popular that you have to be an idiot not to give them a try. For instance:

- Chrono Trigger
- EarthBound
- Final Fantasy II
- Final Fantasy III
- Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals
- Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen
- Secret of Mana
- Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars
- Terranigma

Japan-only:

- Bahamut Lagoon
- Front Mission
- Live-A-Live
- Seiken Densetsu 3
- Shin Megami Tensei
- Shin Megami Tensei II
- Star Ocean
- Tales of Phantasia
- Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together

What else is there to be found that is of actual value? (Please don't post "/v/'s recommend games", it would be nice to have actual people explaining why certain games are worth playing)

[Anonymous No.4695359]

>Some games are so popular that you have to be an idiot not to give them a try.

Disgusting,I didn't play Earthbound because it was popular but because on the screenshots it didn't look like another generic rpg like CT or any FF,And if you play a game for popularity it's probably you're going to bitch about it later because what made the game great was story or some shit like that,And many games needs translations but it's not really worth it,Just play other consoles and shit,If only there was a device to put above your screen that auto translate trough google we could play all those games with funny English

[Anonymous No.4695396]

>>4695359
>And if you play a game for popularity it's probably you're going to bitch about it later because what made the game great was story or some shit like that
If you are a retard, sure. I don't let hype carry me away when it comes to criticisms, but I sure do consider hype when it comes to playing games. Especially when it is such a brain dead genre as JRPGs where, unlike western RPGs, it's rare for absolute shit games to be triumphed as "best ever made" (like Skyrim and Fallout 3).

[Anonymous No.4695401]

I enjoyed E.V.O. a lot.

[Anonymous No.4695428]

>>4695253
Final Fantasy 5 and the Dragon Quest games, especially 3

[Anonymous No.4695438]

>>4695401
EVO and Uncharted Waters New Horizons are my 2 most fav SNES games. <3

[Anonymous No.4695441]

>>4695253
FFV because it's the best game in the FF franchise, was a huge innovator for its time and represented polish no other contemporary had, and has insane replayability.

Dark Law because it's almost a tabletop RPG in JRPG form.

[Anonymous No.4695523]

>>4695396
Well I played BG,IWD,F1&2 and they were all disappointing

[Anonymous No.4695556]

>>4695523
RPGs aren't your type then.

[Anonymous No.4695581]

>>4695556
No,I love DQ,TeS,F3&NV but Isometric shit that where walking it's a chore and it can't decide whether it's action or not I can't fucking stand it

[Anonymous No.4695593]

>>4695581
So RPGs aren't your type.

[Anonymous No.4695596]

SRW3 and 4 are classics in the SRW series.
They're also probably the best ones to start off.

[Anonymous No.4695601]

>>4695253
I'm pretty sure you have shit taste but I feel like talking about snes jrpgs so I'm going to post anyway.

- Romancing SaGa 2: Menu-based JRPG with nonlinear story and character progression. The game includes several unique mechanics that fit perfectly together as you control a geneology of emperors as they expand their empire and eventually fight the fabled Seven Heroes. I find battles to be very fun and preparing your party can involve some planning. There's a remastered version available on other systems and unlike most square remasters this one looks fine.
- Der Langrisser: Square-based TRPG with a handful of playable hero characters each with a zone around them that boosts their hireable (and disposable) mercenaries. Contains branching paths that lead you to oppose characters that might otherwise be allies. Note that the saturn version is slightly improved and the mega drive version has better gameplay at the cost of story.
- Fire Emblem Thracia 776. I think this is one of the finest examples of level design in the genre, and it's also complemented by fitting music and decent writing. However you need to play Seisen no Keifu beforehand to follow the story, so I figure you might will skip this one too.

As for the slightly lesser title that are still worth considering, Front Mission has an additional campaign on PS1/DS. For Tactics Ogre both the snes and psp versions have their own problems, overall I'd go with the psp version. Super Mario RPG is a good choice if you happen to fall into the 5-8 age group. Final Fantasy V is "okay" but I get the impression you want to play a Final Fantasy game and it's certainly better than the others so you can decide if that makes your list.

Most other games you listed are just "okay" if not actually bad. My next favorite snes RPG might be Energy Breaker but that has a lot of problems so I won't recommend it.

[Anonymous No.4695604]

>>4695601
>Super Mario RPG is a good choice if you happen to fall into the 5-8 age group
Watch out guys, looks like we've got a serious, adult Mature Gamer around us.

[Anonymous No.4695607]

>>4695593
No I just hate Rpgs that are some shit between action and turnbased like BG or FF when the ATB system shitted everything up
>>4695596
3 is hard as balls,2 it's the best starting point if you abuse the white base for healing

[Anonymous No.4695613]

>>4695601
>I'm pretty sure you have shit taste
A weird deduction to make since I never stated which one of those games I actually like (or have played, for that matter).

>Romancing SaGa 2
>Der Langrisser
>Fire Emblem Thracia 776
>Front Mission
>Final Fantasy V

All in my preliminary list which wasn't posted here, but only because I want people to actually recommend them first and using arguments.

Energy Breaker was on it too, but there's so little info around that I don't know whether it actually is good or just another one of those "it's obscure and it's sort of okay, so heavily recommended!!!".

[Anonymous No.4695614]

>>4695601
>this one looks fine.
No it doesn't you Romancing FaGGa

[Anonymous No.4695641]

>>4695596
How would the games be for someone who hasn't seen a mecha anime in his entire life, and the one he has seen (Evangelion) isn't featured in the games? I suspect it would be very boring.

[Anonymous No.4695663]

>>4695641
Well, they are still fun strategy games, and you can actually get into the series featured in the games. The stories are like a mix of their stories meshed together and doing one big plot where all these series' universes are converged.
I still recommend them even if you never watched the series.

[Anonymous No.4695684]

>>4695641
I played them without a watching a single anime (Older games expect you to know but stuff Lije J don't) and it's not really necessary but it's like playing smash without knowing half the roster.
Speaking of this it would be really cool if someone makes a srw game but with smash characters,Like they did with touhou,Hell even a srw2 hack would good enough but I'm just average at drawing

[Anonymous No.4695715]

Avoid Treasure Hunter G - terrible non-sensical story, grid based battles were a good idea but it's so easy and repetetive that it doesn't matter, ost is mediocre to amazing at times, but the game looks nice

Also Bahamut Lagoon is shit for a lot lf the same reasons

[Anonymous No.4695828]

OP, maybe try a different genre of game if you only care about playing "the best of the best" in as little time as possible.

[Anonymous No.4695838]

>>4695828
I only play RPGs, so time isn't a problem. As longas I stick to the 7+ games and not the extremely mediocre ones.

[Anonymous No.4695870]

>ffv

Even though the official ps1 translation is awful, it's miles better than the sfc fan translation. I wouldn't recommend playing ffv's sfc translation. Even though the gba version has bad audio and washed out graphics, I'd suggest that over the sfc translation as well.

[Anonymous No.4696009]

>>4695604
No I'm serious, this is my #1 recommendation for that age group. Or maybe if you're a Mario fan that hasn't played a JRPG before. It's a good game with humor, music, simple combat, and enough gimmicks to keep things fresh. The simplicity might make it tiresome to most people but it's a good game.

>>4695870
Yeah in English the gba version + patches is presumably the way to go.

>>4695613
You seem like a fag because
>games that would have sold like absolute shit/no one would care about
>such a brain dead genre as JRPGs
>so popular that you have to be an idiot not to give them a try
Because you have a different perspective than me I suspect your taste in JRPGs will differ, and since I am a paragon of good taste that means by contrast you have shit taste.

Energy Breaker is a JRPG on a grid moreso than a TRPG. There are some cool ideas there but also it seems unfinished, or simply wasted potential. e.g. you can distribute points to four 'energy' parameters which give you stat boosts and allow you to use different skills, but partway through the game you max out everything and that becomes irrelevant. The battles might have required some thinking in rare occasions but items can be used at much lower turn cost than other actions, and some items can even restore turn cost, so that's an easy way out of any situation. Speaking of items it's neat that you can inspect all sorts of things and pick up items but that can become cumbersome to some due to the small inventory size (fortunately you can discard items and still get money as if you sold them, otherwise my ocd would make this game unbearable). One of the strongest points of this game is the characters, In particular the protagonist Myra who has an optimistic attitude and makes witty comments on whatever you inspect. The story is not bad and it involves time travel if that's your thing. I also quite liked the music. Overall I enjoyed it a lot but again I do not recommend Energy Breaker.

[Anonymous No.4696065]

>>4695641
>I suspect it would be very boring.
You suspected correctly. These games are cynical products put out to be fan service and make a quick buck, the writing in them is atrocious.
>>4696009
>+ patches
Those "restoration" gba patches still don't look and sound anywhere near as good as the originals.

[Anonymous No.4696139]

>>4695641
The flashy animations are still cool-looking. They aren't particularly good SRPGs, though.

[Anonymous No.4696160]

>>4695253
Dragon Quest IV and V are must-play games. Both games have an wonderful story, strong characters and a big world to explore.

[Anonymous No.4696167]

>>4695641
I didn't know anything about mecha, but I always had thought mecha were cool so I got into the games. They're fun, but they're all pretty same-y after a while, especially if you can't read them. I'd recommend SRW J on GBA.

[Anonymous No.4696242]

>>4695253
Chrono Trigger is basically the pinnacle of /vr/ JRPGs to the point where everything else is just less than...I'm not saying everything else is bad, it's just that CT was the complete package done well in every regard and it's hard to play other games in the genre without comparing them to it.

[Anonymous No.4696285]

>>4695715
Whaaat. I loved THG's back-to-basics storytelling and setpieces. After a bunch of movielike RPGs it's like Square just decided 'fuck it, kids, on a wild adventure!' and rolled with it. It's easy, yeah, but so's SMRPG and both exude a fun atmosphere.

Bahamut Lagoon has a good aesthetic and though the story is flat rebels vs empire there's a weird empty, desolate feeling to it on purpose, which you understand after the plot takes a few turns. A lot of the characters lose out on happiness, but unite to save their skyborne world, and it's this I liked about it.

Just beat FEDA, pretty much the Shining team that left Sega after the first two games doing another. While it's not as good in some regards, like the slowness of area changes and even slowdown moving your units around, I did love its morality system, where different units stay/leave the party based on whether you stick to mission objectives or adopt a 'kill em all' approach. There's units unique to good and evil alignments so you won't see all the game has to offer in one playthrough. Characters having unique skills they could unleash was a neat touch too, though there's nothing quite as cool as Shining Force's promotions, an element sadly lacking. Given you can see it's FEDA and not Shining Force, you can get stuck into a decent story and well defined characters, and some great attack animations give some oomph to the battles.

[Anonymous No.4696346]

>>4695438
Ahh New Horizons..

[Anonymous No.4696434]

>>4696346
I am really surprised to hear that this was a JRPG. Is it cool?

[Anonymous No.4696467]

>>4695253
You act like the SNES library is infinite.

[Anonymous No.4696578]

i just bought the first shin meegami tensei, do the players you get to dump stats into matter? whats the significance of the intro? im brand new to the series

[Anonymous No.4696596]

>>4696578
Put your stats into whatever makes your shooting better. I think INT helps you with demon negotiation. Are you just playing it in Japanese?

[Anonymous No.4696626]

>>4696467
Well, it does get infinite when people start recommending tons upon tons of obscure games.

[Anonymous No.4696786]

>>4696596
no, english translation. ive put it into strength and luck

[Anonymous No.4696792]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFOw90kjf1E

[Anonymous No.4696803]

>>4695641
The best part about them are some kickass animations and sprite work, and of course the OST

I disagree with people who say the games are same-y. The original characters tend to be a bit cliched, though in some newer games like D or Z they're badass as fuck.

[Anonymous No.4696804]

>>4695253
Romancing SaGa 3 (jpn only): one of the most open ended games for it's time, really fun non linear jrpg that uses the classic Kawazu elements added into his creations(no levels, sparking techniques from battles, LP system, etc). It's now the oldest SaGa game in the series to not be released or remastered to NA.

>>4696578
MAG is a dumpstat for the MC, he never learns magic, and at best it slightly improves magic defense i think but its negligible.

Guns are hilariously overpowered in the first game; if youre doing a gun build I would pump your AGI so you can get your attacks off first in battle, and also pump VIT so you can absorb some damage without worrying too much. STR is a good tertiary stat to increase in case youre in between gun buffs or you find enemies that are immune to bullets (pretty rare though in smt1 iirc)

The first guy you run into, would pump more into str/agi/vit, his magic is okay but hes better for tanking damage and healing with his spells. the second guy is more mag/agi oriented as he gets better spells and you want a better mana pool for him. the girl is the same way.

I forgot what LUK does exactly in the game but i think it helps with evasion and crits so if youre doing a physical melee build, put some (but not all) points into LUK that would go to AGI instead

[Anonymous No.4696825]

>>4696803
When I say they're samey I mean the gameplay is pretty similar across all of them. Especially the later ones, which are just mindlessly easy.
However, being a robotfucker, I still get a huge boner from them. I fucking love SRW and play all the titles in the series that I can get my hands on.

[Anonymous No.4698360]

>>4696242
CT was lightning in a bottle. It still blows my mind that 90% of studios completely ignored the improvements it brought to the genre and went straight back to making shitty dragon quest clones.

[Anonymous No.4698361]

>>4696825
Have you played F/F Final?
It's rather difficult.
As someone said, 3 is pretty hard too.
But yeah after Winky Soft stopped working on them, the series became easier.

[Anonymous No.4698379]

I'm in full support of this thread. Life is far too short to spend it playing mediocre games in a long winded, mostly shit genre

[Anonymous No.4698414]

>>4698360
>atb with some gimmicks
Im not gonna pretend CT isn't great, but calling it a huge innovator is a bit too much.

[Anonymous No.4698460]

>>4696804
I thought INT boosted the protag's demon negotiation chances? I always had some after I read this somewhere, obviously don't go overboard but if this is true then sure, some's worth it.

[Anonymous No.4698489]

>>4695253
Have you tried Far east of eden zero on the snes? That was another good rpg only released in japan, it has a sense of humor like earthbound and the game looks pretty good.

[Anonymous No.4698518]

>>4698489
I have not, but I've heard it is pretty good. It's one of many Japan-exclusive JRPGs I've heard being consistently referred to as great or at the very least "good".

[Anonymous No.4698639]

>>4695253
>games that would have sold like absolute shit
>no one would care about had they been released
Sounds like you only enjoy games based on how many other people enjoyed them. I'd recommend going back to /v/ where you can continue to circlejerk sales numbers and metacritic scores.

[Anonymous No.4698676]

>>4698639
As retarded as the OP sounds, I stand by my wording. I'd rather rely on what thousands have to say than on what two to five users I don't even know the tastes of have to say.

[Anonymous No.4698692]

>>4698676
You realize that there's no point to making this thread, then? There are already documented sales numbers and reviews and the like so you should just look at those because you won't care what a handful of users post in your thread anyway.

That said, if anyone wants to ignore the OP and talk about good games I would like to read your explanations, so don't hesitate to post in this thread even if its existence is questionable.

[Anonymous No.4698698]

>>4698676
That's fine, but you might miss out on a game that you might've really enjoyed if you hadn't discounted it based on some crusty fuck who doesn't even like JRPGs saying "bawww too many battles."

[Anonymous No.4698774]

>>4698414
It took what worked at the time and just made it better...having everyone in the battle be in actual space instead of everyone on one side or the other doing shit to each other was a nice touch.

[Anonymous No.4698804]

>>4698698
Following that logic, I may as well not ask for recommendations and play the entire SNES RPG library myself hoping to strike gold eventually.

[Anonymous No.4698831]

>>4695641
>How would the games be for someone who hasn't seen a mecha anime in his entire life,
Fairly unrewarding. The crossover element is the main selling point of the franchise. I mean the games are a good introduction to shows, but there's gotta be something to draw you in to begin with.
>(Evangelion) isn't featured in the games?
It's in a few. F/Final, Alpha and Alpha 3 all use Eva and some of the newer games use material from the Eva remake movies. None of these games have decent English translations to my knowledge.

[Anonymous No.4698857]

>>4695253

Dragon Quest 1&2 remake
Dragon Quest 3 remake
Dragon Quest 5
Dragon Quest 6


DQ 3 remake is one of the best RPG's I've ever played

[Anonymous No.4699078]

>>4696434
You can pick the cartographer guy and just go on a big world wide adventure discovering wonders and shit, it's pretty fun

[Anonymous No.4699184]

>>4698361
Bring the eyes back!

[Anonymous No.4699868]

- Chrono Trigger
- EarthBound
- E.V.O.: Search for Eden
- Final Fantasy II
- Final Fantasy III
- Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals
- Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen
- Secret of Mana
- Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars
- Terranigma
- Uncharted Waters: New Horizons

Japan-only:

- Bahamut Lagoon
- Dark Law: Meaning of Death
- Dai-3-Ji Super Robot Taisen
- Der Langrisser
- Dragon Quest I & II
- Dragon Quest III
- Dragon Quest V
- Dragon Quest VI
- Energy Breaker
- Far East of Eden Zero
- FEDA: The Emblem of Justice
- Final Fantasy V
- Fire Emblem: Thracia 776
- Front Mission
- Live-A-Live
- Romancing SaGa
- Romancing SaGa 2
- Romancing SaGa 3
- Seiken Densetsu 3
- Shin Megami Tensei
- Shin Megami Tensei II
- Star Ocean
- Tales of Phantasia
- Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together

We are onto something.

[Anonymous No.4700581]

>>4695253
- Glory of Heracles IV
- Metal Max returns
- Dragon Quest III - VII

[Anonymous No.4700865]

>>4698489
It's one of the prettier games in the series, but not the best. The TG-16 parts and that Saturn spin-off are crazier, and the GBA one (in English) has excellent non linear RPG gameplay but average everything else.

[Anonymous No.4701002]

Metal Max Returns.
It's "obscure" but also technically impressive, original and incredibly fun. There's so many things I like from it that I need to recommend it again and again. Sadly not too many people end playing it.

[Anonymous No.4701043]

>>4701002
I absolutely loved that you can have the "world hub" right in your hand, in the form of that computer. You can customize which menus appear on it and everything.
Actually, there are so many actions in Metal Max that you can customize a lot of shortcuts for stuff, like pushing L+A to get out of the tank, and so on.

I also discovered a few days ago that if you get too drunk at the bar, the character will sometimes fail to get into the vehicle, falling off it.

[Anonymous No.4701058]

>>4695641
SRW F Final.
Also not retro, but SRW MX.
Both have EVA.

[Anonymous No.4701205]

>>4700865
I tried oriental blue but it was literally so boring that i fell asleep playing it on two separate occasions.

[Anonymous No.4701209]

>>4701002
It's top 5 SNES JRPG tier for me. People who only think they like JRPGs won't like it though (ex: "bawww why are random battles a thing" type people).

[Anonymous No.4701920]

One of my first JRPG's was Mother 3. The game seriously impressed me with its good writing and very careful pacing. You're always hooked and wondering what's gonna happen next. It holds your attention till the very end.

After completing it, I thought hey there's tons of similar games on the SNES, isn't there? I'm gonna have a blast! And so I started playing the obvious choices: Earthbound and Chrono Trigger.

They bored me to tears. Had to eventually drop them both.

Most of the playtime is just very simplistic and tedious dungeon crawling, and then you get a short cutscene with Fox Kids like dialog. And that's it, rinse and repeat.

How are these types of games even worth shit if you compare them to real RPG's like Ultima, Dark Sun, Baldur's Gate etc?

[Anonymous No.4701931]

>>4701920
You started with what’s considered to be far and away the best JRPG in terms of writing and storytelling, so it’s only going to be downhill from there.

[Anonymous No.4702196]

>>4701043
Sometimes I see Metal Max as some sort of japanese proto-Fallout. The world hub and the Pipboy are pretty much the same concept.
The other game that causes me a really similar feeling is Steambot Chronicles. I would like to know if there's some connection between both.

[Anonymous No.4702221]

Legend of River King

[Anonymous No.4702229]

>>4701931
>he never played Xenogears

Obviously M3 isn't half bad but I'd say Xenogears is the actual pinnacle of writing in JRPG history, though I'm looking forward to play persona 2 soon to see if it challenges it