well, its mostly because the passage to HD made most japanese company gone bankrupt during the 360 and early ps3 era... north american dev teams were hitting homeruns and were using realistic graphics that became popular while the japanese were more varied yet, less apreciated.

@@charlestrudel8308 I have also always thought that JRPGs with 3D models lose all their soul. Perhaps with the exception of Nier, FF, DQ and Persona where the artistic style is more defined. All the rest look very generic.

@@franciscobutte i would say that you are completely right, Falcom and its trail series has a generic character design indeed for example. but thats because the company doesnt have that much budget and is concentrating its effort on something that no one else is doing, sadly, players wants graphics above all else and so, we have started to get just that above all else too.

@@charlestrudel8308 i think the cold steel games look amazing on ps4, especially considering how huge the games are. just started the final dungeon in part 4 and 4 looks especially good. i could care less about realistic graphics if i can have rpgs that huge, with that insane level of character and world development.

@@Jack_80 the overall design is great, but that kind of graphic could work on a 360 or a ps3 if the company had more budget. so yeah, falcom is limited by budget on the graphic front. Not that i care, i find it great as is. (keep in mind that my old pc that cant run most game 2017 and later can easily run cold steel 3 and 4 at 60 fps / 1080p resolution.)

I snagged the american version on play asia for cheap, I was surprised it was still there when I bought it. Really hard to find game.

Glad I grabbed that one when I did that's for sure!

Is it really that expensive? I literally have an unopened copy on my shelf.

Ok, so it isn't unopened (damn you Gamestop) but nobody has ever played the disc so, near mint I guess?

@@mightymanatee5342 Yeah it's worth quite a bit even opened. I think later down the line this game will explode in value. Not 100% sure though, just speculating.

I got a recommendation from some guy on 4chan. I said I want a game similar to SMT Soul Hackers, and this was his recommendation. Bought it (for the Switch), finished it, love it!

Yeah

Out of all the games on this list, Crystar has the best story/lore/world building, if you're into it's themes. Collecting all the memoirs of the dead might be a pain in the butt to do, but reading all of them after I finished the game, and all it's endings turned the game from a 6/10 to a solid 9/10.

@@demariogoss9732 I reY I really liked the first playthrough. But I was turned off by learning I had to play a large portion of the game a second, third and I think even FOURTH time to unlock the rest of the story. A lot of the reviews said on top of that that the payoff wasn't worth it. So I gave up. Almost picked it up again before I remembered that. Still, it was an interesting game and I'm glad I did give it a try.

@@LoneWolfAudio0524 Yeah. Not gonna lie, that part almost had me quit the game until I started basically skipping 99% of the enemies, and going to the boss. The game is fun until it forces you into a situation where you have to deal with it's repetitive nature to 100% complete the story.

The game did get a tad repetitive here and there with the long stages, and the enemies and bosses were not really all that challenging. Heck if it weren't for the great music and story I would have given up, worth it though imo.

Ah yes the dinner dinner game

Crystar is a very good game, but it's a solid "play for the story, not the gameplay" affair, so make sure to go into it with this in mind. Dragon Star Varnir is also a very good game, but it has a REALLY annoying micro managing mechanic, that will lock you out of some endings if failed. It also permanently locks out one of the playable characters, if you pick what seems like the sensible option in one of the visual novel segments.

@@user-xu2pi6vx7o - indeed. I'm finer with that. Getting into it, actually.

Summon night 6 isn't very good.

I like that game. But it seems like instead of using it as a spinoff series it was so popular that all yakuza games will now have the rpg gameplay. Can't we just do both? Sigh.

@@Lazrael32 Well, I think I've heard that they're giving Judgment a sequel which will have a more similar gameplay stye to the original Yakuza titles.

It's a great game that's also very hard with a deep combat system.

I hadn't heard of those two so i'll be looking into them. Thanks for bringing them up!

@@Lazrael32 no problem. Apparently Xuan Yuan Sword is actually a spin off of a long running series of RPGs that were only in China/ Hong Kong, and Sword and Fairy 6 is part of that series as well. The series itself was often compared as a "Dragon warrior type series" , but also has a lot of Chinese folklore/ historical fiction type elements involved. They are subtitled in english, which I don't mind, but some might care about that. These two titles were the first to ever be released on a console btw. The rest, from what I understand, were PC only ( mainly due to mainland China had banned consoles from early Nintendo era up until the release of the Ps4) I hope you enjoy them if you decide to check them out. :)

@@Disfrigginguy sounds really interesting. Chinese folklore is usually a lot of fun! Thanks again!

Xuan Yuan Sword : Gate of the Firmament looks pretty good. It was also released for PS4?

@@mangasystem7011 indeed it was... it was released sometime in 2017. Incidentally Xuan Yuan Sword 7 is releasing next week.

@Minh Le you mean Kousuke Fujishima? No wonder it's so familiar, with me a big Tales of fan

Friendly advice: if you play only for the story you'll have zero problems. If you want trophies, though, get some pills ready.

He is most well known for his Manga series: You're Under Arrest and Ah! My Goddess(which is my favorite manga/anime series of him). Kosuke Fujishima is a legend :)

@@gorillabuttons6731 ah, it's okay cuz im not concerned much about trophy

@@gorillabuttons6731 I remember having my doubts about the final boss on very hard, but then without grinding and with some buffs I oneshot him with the protagonist using Zorc Mission in the first round. Also on easy you won't be able to get 5 stars with all the girls in one playthrough because the rewards for missions dedicated to girls "favor" are also reduced.

It's always on sale cuz nobody wants to buy it full price. Dark Rose Valkyrie is only a bad game because it's combat is poorly explained, and trying to understand it is far more frustrating compared to just button mashing with it. They've made complicated systems before, but they were very refined, and extremely fun when understood like Cross Edge, or Record of Agarest war, but this game ain't it chief.

The devs made more games ike it for PS4 like Fairy Fencer and that idol one.

@@triniking1234 I played Fairy Fencer, imo its one of their best games :) But the idol one never held my attention and it was overly grindy even for me, im not into idols anyhow.

Abondened bruh

The hardness is what makes it so good.

@@buckroger6456 yeah i hate it when rpgs are too easy, with no harder difficulty options. ff7 on ps1 is a perfect example of these. i enjoyed it as a kid when it was my first rpg, but replaying it years later it was overly easy and the only time i ever lost a battle was in the battle arena and maybe once or twice fighting the ruby and emerald weapons. overall it was just way too easy to find it enjoyable. ff12 was one of my favorites because it was very challenging. i was all excited to buy the remaster to play it again, only to find that challenge had been completely removed from the remaster. it went from being one of the more challenging rpgs i've played to the easiest. in the original no matter how good you set up the auto-battle, when you were fighting bosses you'd have to jump in and manually make moves with your party or you'd die, in the remaster you can set up a basic auto-battle and literally auto-battle your way through the entire game, with no option to play it with the original difficulty. makes me so mad when they do stupid shit like that.

@@Jack_80 and that's what bugs me about a lot of these new jrpgs. I just finished Witch Spring 3 on switch and while I enjoyed the game, it was just stupid easy. Last year I played Omega Quintet on PS4 and that was beyond old school hard. One of the few games that made me work for the platinum.

I gotta disagree. The story was predictable and boring because it literally repeated the same plot point for almost every party member, the gameplay was excessively repetitive, and the characters were more tolerable than actually good. It's the only JRPG that I outright hated and regretted buying. It was also forgettable. I'll give you the part about voice acting, but there's literally nothing else about the game I think is even remotely good.

@@MoostachedSaiyanPrince And that's precisely why I included it. Because that's the reaction I imagine a lot of people had. And it's not that I disagree. But what can I say? It captured my interest, and despite its many shortcomings, I saw it through to the end. I've given up on more highprofile RPGS, so for me that says ... I'm not sure what it says about me actually.

@@LoneWolfAudio0524 My reason for disagreeing that it could get a place on this list or any other list like it as that most of the games on this list can usually be described as pretty good. They have some shortcomings, but are worth playing through despite their faults for the most part. I really don't feel like I can say that for Akiba Beat because it's the only JRPG I came away from and felt a long lasting and scathing hatred for it afterwards. Which is an impressive feat because I also ironically found it fairly forgettable. I pushed through to the end despite realizing that I didn't like it sometime around the 4-5 hour mark and even then, I only beat it out of obligation to get my money's worth out if it as I was pretty broke at the time and was in denial that I'd wasted my money. I would literally never recommend playing this game to anyone under any circumstances. Sure, it is an obscure game, which is the subject is for this list, but the rest of the games are pretty good despite being obscure, while Akiba Beat is obscure because it sucks. It technically fits on the list if you're just going by the title, but it doesn't fit with the other games.

@@MoostachedSaiyanPrince That's the posative power of agency. To like, or dislike whatever one wishes. I felt the same way about Dragon Warrior XI. Tried it twice now and just Can't. And I spent full price on it. And most people would agree it's one of the better RPGS on the system. I got even saltier towards it after finding out it was getting a same console re-release, and that I'd have to pay considerably to upgrade it. Also have not played Persona 5 yet. So maybe I just have a soft spot for the underdog ... or the dead underdog. Either way, I rather thought my suggestion would be buried under all the other comments. I played Akiba's Beat on PS Now. so maybe that helped my disposition towards it.

It's not very good though

@@Shiro92224 Awww, too bad.

i just did a search for summon knight 6 on the ps4 store and couldn't find it. unless it's actually spelled night and that's why, pretty sure in his list it said knight though.

I have it in my collection. Have not played it.

Excellent game with a wonderful story!! It can get a little repetitive in the last 3rd of game as you have to repeat the last 3 levels 3 times, each time the story changes, but some people really disliked this aspect. Otherwise I highly recommend it.

Be patient and ask your GameStop to check their internal system for copies nearby, also you could punch random zip codes in until you find one and then go to your nearest store and ask them to have it transferred. It took a few weeks but I ended up with 3 copies

@@Nanoha3972 I'm super dumb, I forgot that was an option. Thanks bro

It is indeed.

They're not that unknown, especially not since IV

Devour is broken. And this game has the most beautiful "bad ending" I've ever seen.

@@gorillabuttons6731 As I said besides the battle system was this a good game, devour is a little broken but idea behind it was pretty creative. The mc is pretty boring but the witches are good especialy the younger ones. I played all ending as well and I agree.

Presumably simple economics. There is enough of a market to make low budget games profitably so developers do it

Thats fair, the big budget realm is far riskier and jrpgs have lots of competition from other genres these days

They're cheap to make and easy to produce, meaning more profit. Especially for Compile Heart.