Poll: Which JRPG should I play next? (JRPG haters, please stay out of this)

[Onyx Oblivion]

I'm working on Tales of Vesperia and am wondering what to play when I'm done. I've narrowed it down to a small number of choices.

Infinite Undiscovery (360)
Didn't play for more than 20 minutes to see if the disc worked at all, before deciding that I must finish Vesperia first, before starting another game.

Blue Dragon (360)
I love the combat system, but the story is very "meh".

Grandia 2 (PS2)
Nearly beat this before, but couldn't actually get past a certain point due to disc issues, managed to get a new copy. Deleted data since.

Thank you. Constructive Comments and opinions are welcome.

Subtract 1 from Grandia 2's vote count as I voted it to speed up the process of viewing the results.

 

[BolognaBaloney]

The best jrpg's in my opinion were the golden sun series

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

The best jrpg's in my opinion were the golden sun series

I've played those. Fantastic games.

 

[PedroSteckecilo]

Jeez, you've just got a beevy of mediocre there...

Personally, out of the three, I found Grandia 2 to be the best... though now it is extremely dated.

 

[fix-the-spade]

Grandiah since it's the only one I've any experience with.

 

[BolognaBaloney]

The best jrpg's in my opinion were the golden sun series

I've played those. Fantastic games.

I would love to see these resurrected, or given sequels, or something.

 

[Darkwolf9]

I've heard good things about all of em. Why not give the persona series a go?

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

Jeez, you've just got a beevy of mediocre there...

Personally, out of the three, I found Grandia 2 to be the best... though now it is extremely dated.

Well, mediocrity is what I'm left with. I'm not really willing to buy another new game right now. I'm pushing it keeping my subscription to Gamefly as is. Got fired in March. Although I can see about borrowing Persona 3 or 4 from a friend...

 

[pigeon_of_doom]

Although I can see about borrowing Persona 3 or 4 from a friend...

Then do that instead of playing those games you've given as options. While I haven't played any of them, the recent PS2 Persona games are much more highly regarded.

 

[electric_warrior]

how about shinzamu: legend of the legendary north star of the north 12: the 3rd revenge of the legion of kiyankamu!!
ive heard it's very good

 

[PedroSteckecilo]

The best jrpg's in my opinion were the golden sun series

I've played those. Fantastic games.

I would love to see these resurrected, or given sequels, or something.

I don't get the appeal, I found the first one very formulaic and cliched. Couldn't get more than 5 hours in before I quit.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

Have you played Lost Odyssey? Was pretty adult in its themes. Pretty epic. Blue Dragon is good too. Story is a little lame but it's fun. Also The Last Remnant. A bit different.

I have LO, saw all the dream sequences, and that was really all I wanted to do. Those things were amazing.

 

[BolognaBaloney]

The best jrpg's in my opinion were the golden sun series

I've played those. Fantastic games.

I would love to see these resurrected, or given sequels, or something.

I don't get the appeal, I found the first one very formulaic and cliched. Couldn't get more than 5 hours in before I quit.

It wasn't that it wasn't a cliche game, on the contrary, it was riddled with cliche and plot-holes. But for me, it was the story, the exploration, and the fun combat that drew me in.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

Although I can see about borrowing Persona 3 or 4 from a friend...

Then do that instead of playing those games you've given as options. While I haven't played any of them, the recent PS2 Persona games are much more highly regarded.

It might be hard to borrow them from him, seeing as he's playing 4 at the moment, and his brother is playing 3. But I'll see what I can do.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

I'll be busy playing Vesperia until FFXIII probably comes out heh. So much to do in that game and the replayability is excellent with the grade shop.

The Grade Shop sounds awesome, but I'm not into 100% my games. It usually offers a terrible time to reward ratio...So, I'm just going to finish another game instead. At the moment, it looks like Grandia 2.

Does anyone know if the Persona games are funny, like do they have a comic relief character who's actually funny and has a decent number of lines?

 

[Therumancer]

Hmmm, well I can't comment on Grandia 2 having never played it, but I was not all that impressed by Infinite Undiscovery overall, and felt that Blue Dragon was just "okay". I own copies of both but have yet to play either on my system (have played them elsewhere).

Truthfully I think the best JRPGs out there right now are all PS-2 or portable games for the most part, as sad as that is. Given your options seem to be PS-2 or 360 Disgaea 3 (pretty good), and the upcoming Cross Edge Game probably aren't even options (and the latter being upcoming it's impossible to give a fair opinion).

For the PS-2 I like Persona 3 and 4 a whole lot, 4 being a general improvement on the ideas from 3. However the best PS-2 SMT games probably being Nocturne, and the Digital Devil Saga duology (part 1 and 2, part one being hard to find). Both are pretty hardcore. Nocturne is probably better overall, but DDS 1 & 2 have some extremely intense limited resource dungeon crawling in thems.

Then you've also got Devil Summoner (and an upcoming sequel) and Rogue Galaxy if you like action RPGs. The latter (Rogue Galaxy) being a personal favorite for action-RPGs. For the PS-2 there are a lot more JRPGs out there that are more mainstream than the ones I mentioned which you are likely to be familiar with.

If your ever interested in a project you might try seeing if you can find all four Shadow Hearts games and play them in order. Yes I said *4* because the first game in the series is a fairly short PS-1 game called "Koudelka" that sets up events even before the original Shadow Hearts. Not only do characters from Koudelka appear in the other games, but it explains some key elements about Mr. Bacon.

It can be hard to track down, but "Chaos Wars" (A gamestop exclusive for the PS-2) is a pretty decent game. Not all it could have been, but a pre-cursor to Cross Edge (in spirit) featuring a crossover between a lot of characters from differant RPG series.

 

[Sevre]

I can't think of one to recommend so I'm going to say Grandia because it looks more interesting.