I remember when the original Nier (which in Japan was Nier Gestalt, Replicant would come out until 2021 outside Japan as a Remake), they gave bad reviews and terrible scores, in short, nobody cared; but when Nier Automata came out, now yes, they considered the predecessor as a cult jewel and it became very sought after (and therefore, certain stores raised their price)

in fact the issue that caused Tales of the Symphonia 2, is to imitate the plot of Devil May Cry 4, it is almost the same where the main hero is associated with the rookie hero and yeah... the main is the new villain.

Fate/Extra was my absolute favorite game on the PSP. I played through it in its entirety on there and then did it again digitally on the Vita. The remake is my most anticipated game right now. But knowing type-moon, who knows when it will be here…

I would love it very much if they rerelease the Drakengard trilogy. I think it is not outside the realm of possibility with the success of Nier: Automata and Replicant. I don’t want to rely on outside sources to read up on the lore and be able to experience it myself.

Damn, man , I am absolutely agree with you. Soul Hackers 2 and Valkyrie Revolution totally don’t deserve such scores. In Valkyrie Revolution very good music and narrative. It’s a tragedy that we will never see the sequel of this game :(

Eternal Poison is the game I want Atlus to remaster because it's a decent game but for me I like to watch skill animations and the load times are terrible and make it kind of unplayable.

One thing that's rarely mentioned is that Dawn of the New World has really good comedy moments too. Tenebrae is just amazing, the Skits are sooo good :D

IMO Suikoden 4 had 2 problems. The first is that the ship felt slow, however there is a run/sprint button that makes the boat go faster. Many people didnt know about, but no matter what this gameplay feature is just not great). The rest is the party member of 4, which essentially means that your core party members wont change too much. And Suikoden games had always interesting characters you want to see/experiment with. Other than that the game is solid & the world is very interesting, leading to another sequel that is situated in the same geographical area (Suikoden Tactics, you also go to Kooluk this time). Suikoden 5 evolved from S4 and had more scenarios where your core party members change. S4 also was unfortunate that it was released along with very high profile releases at the time.

As always I love your videos and your perspective and opinions.

Say it with me. Soul Hackers is NOT PERSONA 5. I walked into it with realistic expectations and absolutely adored it for what it was. It was nice not having an intricate battle system and stellar characters. It was my go to game for awhile after a hard day at work.

I'm glad Soul Hackers 2 was addressed. Reviewers, youtubers and other critics played that game and stomped it. It had no business getting stomped. The aesthetic is gorgeous with the green and purple neon, the gameplay is solid and the combat was very SMT like, even if not as tough or deep. It had shortcomings but not enough to throw it under the bus so easily. Soul Hackers 2 will go down as an under-apreciated gem as time goes on and thats too bad because the rep it got is pushing a lot of people away from playing it, even on Gamepass. I personally, LOVE Soul Hackers 2. Thanks Erick!

Thing about the Chrono Cross remaster is that it could have been so much better. People are right to trash a game upon release if it's worse than the original release. Exceptions apply when it comes to ports that have weaker hardware. Long and short, instead of using waufux2 to upscale the backgrounds, they really should have redrawn them by hand. Heck, they could have even used waifux2 or another ai upscale model and touched them up by hand and it would have been ok. But that's not what they did. They just ran it through and called it a day.

I mean if the remaster version feel like it didn't have much effort put into it, the player have the right a to bash it.

Drakengard 3 is a game I would like to see ported on modern console and Steam would probably fix a lot of technical issues.

Someone else who played Trinity! I appreciate your view on it. It’s not without flaws but it’s a game I’ve replayed and I enjoyed the combat skill system . Kinda wish a similar system would pop up

Suikoden 4 is my favorite one, not the best of the Suikoden games, and that opening song i just love it. The second Tales of Symphonia game is good just not as good as the first one, Ya Eternal Poison scores never made sense to me it was damn good. I'm loving Soul Hackers 2 so far, my only problem is i wish the camera could be pulled back alot more, (even if like staring)

This is coming from a gamer that plays their SMT games on hard, Soul Hackers 2 is very difficult. It's about on par with the rest of them. Not the most difficult, but definitely not the easiest

I'm playing Chrono Cross on the PS5 now, for the 1st time. It's mostly great, except it's obviously a PS1 game. The only thing they really need to change is the collision detection. When you click on doors and certain things, it has to be exact. It's even more annoying when you're running. They could also auto-select characters that need healing, etc. when casting spells

When it came to Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, I didn't mind NOT playing as Lloyd if it meant I could play the continuation of an absolute favorite of mine in the franchise. The Wii gave the characters a little graphical boost and I thought that was pretty cool, but other then that, the gameplay and dealing with Emil just couldn't grip me long enough. For me, the whole monster battle system, lack of an Overworld map, and Emil's early character development (I know, I'm sure he excels later) was just off to me. Going from Tales of Symphonia, Tales of the Abyss, and Tales of Vesperia to Dawn of the New World, the meat & bones of the game felt like it was missing. Again, just an opinion. I'm sad that the recently released Remastered version didn't include Dawn of the New World, otherwise I probably would have given it another chance.

What's the game shown in the first couple of seconds of the intro?

The worst review of a great rpg was Hyper Magazine's (Was once Australia's no.1 gaming magazine) review of Breath of Fire IV. It made the reviewer infamous in Australia's JRPG fandom. The review was incoherent rambling about how the game made him so mad he got noise complaints from his neighbours and was wishing he was playing FFVI instead (oh yes he compared every rpg he reviewed to FFVI). After failing to inform the reader why he thought BoFIV was bad he gave it a 50/100. Still the worst rpg review I've read and it began my 23 year grudge with the FFVI fan base (Despite the fact I really like the game haha).

IMO Tears to Tiara 2 was heavily underrated.

About the sour reception of the previous game's character handling in ToS Dawn of the New World. People were probably angry with the fact that said older characters only join you for brief periods of time with transfixed levels and abilities.

I recently started following your channel and several of these posts surprised me because they have games that I plan to play but I didn't know their reputation; Drakengard 3 is the first console game that I planned to play by Yoko Taro and although I had heard brief reviews I did not know that the specialized critics had such a negative opinion, on the other hand all I know of Eternal Poison is what I have seen in this channel and I find it aesthetically beautiful so I'm surprised they went so hard on this game. But without a doubt the one that surprises me the most is Soul Hackers 2, I had seen several reviews on this platform both from people who talk about games in general and from some who focus on SMT and there seemed to be a somewhat negative consensus about this game. I'm really looking forward to both Fate/EXTRA Record and Fate/Samurai Remnant coming out, the trailers look amazing!

How can you miss out the mother of all trashed by critics games? SHADOW HEARTS... IGN's review of the game is still a punchline among my friends and I.

I think Lost Odyssey got unfair scores by critic and it is one of my favorites for sure

Can I just say - thank you? I never played Eternal Poison, but the song in the background immediately caught me, and I had to search for it. After listening to the whole thing I gotta say - it suddenly became one of my all time favorite musical pieces from a video game. while what you said about the game certainly was persuasive, that song on itself would've made me want to play this game. It's amazing.

How did you do the voice over? and how did you edit the video and put it together? did you use capcut?

Can someone please tell me the name of the second game showcase in the intro.

This video was so great! And I had a great time with soul hackers 2. The point for me of playing a game is to have a good time, and I did.

I LOVED Soul Hackers 2, but good god, they needed to spend a little more money on it, giving it more than 6 (I think) dungeon styles... Even worse was that the end area has 2 different styles in it, meaning the rest of the game was stuck with 4 dungeon designs... and they weren't interesting, Subway, docks, office building... the only one that was visually interesting, and fit into the cyberpunk aesthetic were the soul dungeons... It really brought an excellent game down, and I can understand why some people found it mediocre as a result, even if I didn't.

Surprised Arc Rise Fantasia isn't in this list. That game got TRASHED back in the day primarily for bad voice acting, which while bad, isn't taking into account the whole package. It's possible it's poor reception contributed to imagepoch shutting down entirely.

Love the channel but one thing I wish you did on this channel was put timestamps in your videos, I'm sure you have reasons for not doing it but figured i'd mention it as something I feel would make the videos a bit better.

I Erick, great video. Just wanted to sat you should do a callaberation with Orbalology. She's really smart, knows alot about games. You can talk to her just about games in general. Doesnt have to be a certain game. She is new and her channel is growing fast.

My issue with Chrono Cross has always been the story. I think it should have been a new IP rather then a sequel to Chrono Trigger because you could cut out the parts of the story linking them without hurting Cross and remove my least favorite parts of the story at the same time. And yes I know later releases of Trigger added a cutscene that was supposed to explain part of what happened between the games but IMO that explanation made no sense. If they absolutely had to link the two games IMO just setting Cross a century or two later would have helped a lot because it would allow the changes between the time periods the games are set to make much more sense.

Do you have a video about Nintendo switch hidden gems? or the best switch jrpg to date I really like your videos and I always use them as a guide to enjoy games

My issue with the Chrono Cross remaster was that they censored it. I’m sick of that shit.

Dunno why, but I haven’t seen a recommendation for one of your videos in a couple weeks. I clicked on this as soon as I saw it!

Soul Hackers 2 had the weirdest hate campaign against it. It started as outrage about the day 1 DLC but then just devolved to blind hatred for everything about it. It's a really good game and I loved my time with it. Clickbait content creators couldn't resist the urge to hop on the hate train.

When you are just grinding for stats instead of unlocking new moves or ally, that is when I consider it is a flawed tactical rpg

Oddly, my personal complaints with Knight of Ratatosk/Dawn of the New World had to do with the awkward transition to 3D gameplay. Hitboxes felt lazy with big invisible fields and weird decisions around how the hit detection was designed for certain moves in a way that didn't match their visual effects. Apart from Lloyd, the Symphonia cast felt 'off' to control, not really balancing their expected abilities with Emil and Marta who were designed to be used the whole game, and were missing too many of their important moves. The best examples would be Colette not even knowing Angel Feathers when she joins your party moments after actually USING it in a cutscene, and Sheena, who was made way too slow, barely had any of her tactically-focused moveset and zero summons despite her using them in cutscenes. The highlight of the game would have to be its monster taming, which doesn't appear in other Tales games, and it actually has some cool choices. The only drawback is how upgrading them depends on cooking, which was removed from the field menu and locked to towns, forcing you to constantly run back to towns to cook for them if you want them to have better stats, and even preventing you from using them in some boss fights if you're worried about them gaining more than one level in the same fight or stretch of gameplay as you want to ideally cook on every level. Despite the annoyances, I wouldn't go as far as saying it's not worth trying out. I'd say that of any Tales game, even the most divisive ones, as I've yet to meet a single Tales fan that didn't have at least one controversial title on their favorites list, despite what some people may try to tell you. :)

I don’t put much stock into review scores, even from aggregate sites. I’ll read through the review itself to try and get a feel for what the critic actually liked or didn’t, as well as if their tastes are in line with mine, and go from there.

I dont agree with the overview of cross's remaster People should be even harsher if a Company cant even get a freaking remaster to run well and has such weird technical issues Nothing that is remastered should simple score higher or equal for being the same game.

Shadow Hearts series is my Favorite series on the Ps2, i still replay it now and then will definitely want a remake of it. Been looking forward to Penny Blood :) Suikoden are all still good for me ;)

I'd highly recommend the patientgamers subreddit. A lot of people there have far more balanced opinions and nobody seems to be worried about launch hype (or lack thereof). So many games are really worth playing but if they don't get a lot of attention on launch, they often get forgotten about.

Erick would you recommend playing Chrono Cross on PS1 or Switch for the first time? Great vid btw!

Hey Erick as someone who’s watched your videos for a few months now I feel like this video is a bit misguided. I think you could’ve mentioned actual criticisms from IGN or KZfaqrs, because when you present things this generally the nebulous “hater critics” doesn’t debunk anything. In nearly every game you mention common criticisms with the games. Like in Trinity the combat was criticized for being a bit too spammy. That’s a perfectly logical criticism to me. And not enjoying that in a review doesn’t mean critics are just blindly hating. I feel like as someone who plays a ton of jrpgs a lot of stuff you can overlook, that I don’t feel like you can expect everyone to. Again, love the channel but this video dunking on the haters I think you’ve made better content before

Yeah. I don't get the critiques of Soul Hackers 2. The Soul Matrix needs to burn in a fire, but the rest of the dungeons and the game was fine. Great battle system. Not a groundbreaking story, but good execution.

just a week ago i bought my physical copy of chrono cross (switch) after the patch. yup. waited a year before buying it. now i can megaevolve my Pip to weremecha mode hehe

Valkyria revolution has a great story and characters ... All the playable characters, but the MC and the princess, are extremelly one dimensional, but "The traitors" (the real protagonists of the story) are well developed and interesting characters. The gameplay is a clunky mess, I can't defend that, but overall is a good game

Probably one of your best videos. Its much easier for youtubers to go with the flow of community negative consensus for views then stick up for things they genuinely thought are still worth playing Its hard to find a single positive thing said abou Soul Hackers 2 in any forum or review without a "however" or "but" in the same sentence, usually followed by some comparison to how it isnt as good as older SMT games. It isnt trying to be 1:1 like those games in its difficulty, nor is it trying to be this revolutionary game that tries (and often fails in most SMT games) to say something philosophically profound. Its just a fun emotional story that is pretty well executed, even if you see some of the scenes coming. The cast, OST, atmosphere, and parts of the gameplay hard-carry this game to being a pretty good one, and I dont really see the problem with that. Soul Hackers 2 isn't a 9 or 10 out of 10 masterpiece, but it is an engaging, flawed, and fun game that I can easily see being many people's guilty pleasure JRPG. There was a time in the PS1 and PS2 days where that was okay, as if Legend of Dragoon or Skies of Arcadia were some flawless masterpieces and not just really fun and charismatic RPG games. I'd like to say that this is a universal trend in gamer expectations, however games like Scarlet Nexus, Star Ocean, and Xenoblade dont get anywhere near the critical backlash despite being just as, or even more flawed as video games. Whether this is due to the SMT community's elitism or critic's overall moving on from the gameplay style of SMT-esque games in general, it's hard to say, but either way if the trailers or footage for Soul Hackers 2 has you thinking it looks cool, then just play it. Its exactly what it advertises itself as

I believe some JRPGs get the bad flag because they just take so long to beat and end up being a giant time waster if you didn't like it all the way through.

I know in the professional "normal" news they sometimes put random guy, not someone how in general do that kind of news, just someone because the right person is busy with a most important topic. And I feel it happens a lot with games. They need to do a reviewer and put someone to do the critic how dislike totally the genre. Because i see things like: XXXXX II bring the same as XXXXX to the table. Is not good? Why is a problem? If I want to play a game for a X franchising I want it to play exactly like the anterior building up over the foundations that come before!

Soul Hackers 2 is really good and with the update it had it became much faster with much better pacing.

Exactly right on Suikoden IV. Yes, it's not what it could have been, but it doesn't remotely deserve the savaging it gets. As regards the reduction in party size, I would argue III effectively has fewer, since for some inexplicable reason characters in that game move in pairs rather than individually.

I got Trinity when it first came out. Awesome game and very underrated.

Hey Erick how about a top 10 jrpg favourite endings or most disappointing endings (without actual spoilers)

I saw just today a very popular reviewer do a live stream of a game that they personally hated, they posted on social media about their dislike of the game when it was announced, and then proceeded to stream the game with a look of sheer disgust on their face... and by the time it was over, half of their audience were convinced it was a trash game and wouldn't be buying it. I'm so glad that when I stream games, I point out that my personal opinion shouldn't determine what another person enjoys. Funny thing is, the game in question is sitting at a 80 on meta critic with an audience rating of 8.0... so, clearly the reviewer wasn't just jumping on some hype hate train, they were genuinely hating on the game and streaming that hate.

I tried playing Chrono Cross on Switch last year and I shut it down after 5 minutes, the atrocious framerate was just too much for me. I played and beat the game twice on Ps1 back in the day so I love this game.

I NEVER LISING TO CRITICS I WATCHING GAMEPLAYS WHIT NO COMENTARY BY THE WAY I PLAYED TALES OF SYMPHONIA 2, 3 TIMES ITS NOT THE BEST TALES OF BUT I ENJOY IT

Good thing I am a completionist, and judge games only by own experience. So unlike most reviewers, I dive into the game and reach 100%, instead of just playing a small portion or skipping sidecontent. Optional content and endgame are sometimes the best, as a small extra note.

Intro having shadow hearts made ME SO HAPPY

I haven't watched the video, but it looks like Erick just making an excuse to talk about Chrono cross and Growlanser Wayfarer of Time XD Edit: He didnt talk about Growlanser.

Bruh, most of these games in the video are my favorite especially Eternal Poison and Fate/Extra... Good thing I don't listen to those critics.

The first Tales I played was symphonia on the gamecube and loved it, just 5 years ago. I bought a practically new ps3 the year after and grabbed the 2 symphonia games super cheap new. I know its not popular opinion but I really enjoyed new world and enjoyed it more than the first one.

Heyy... I love Fate Extra. I remember playing it on the psp. At first i thought its gonna be a rpg turnbased but then it is like Rock paper scissors type jrpg. Kinda weird but not even realised i was hooked till the end credits. It was a blast. Heard the remake its coming and im sure getting it when its released.

Chrono Cross remaster is 30% off on steam right now! I was gonna pick it up yesterday, until I saw the review score. Good to know they patched it, I'll go ahead and get it

I loved suikoden 4, I originally played it as a kid and then replayed it in my 20s, it’s still good. So never understood the hate.

ahh drakengard 3 the final boss at the true end, instakill attack when you're character is off-screen and can't see anything but the giant boss

My issue with Crono Cross for the Switch is the censorship. I might buy it because Tales of Symphonia also has framerate issues but I still enjoy the game.

Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World is a great game i love it because of it's story and unique battle mechanic at it's time at least it's way better than modern tales games like Tales of Xillia 2, Tales of Zestiria, Tales of Berseria and Tales of Arise

I overall enjoyed Soul Hackers 2 and might shell out for the DLC at some point. I think some people didn't like it because they were expecting Persona 5 part 3... Suikoden 4 wasn't that great, I played it, beat it and then sold it off. Was it horrible? No. It was pretty middle of the road. Since the previous titles were solid it just made this one feel worse than it probably was.

to be fair fate extra was one of the first localized fate games. the franchise was basically unknown to western audiences at that point. nobody outside of japan knew the impact that the franchise would have on anime in the west.

I still haven't had the opportunity to play Soul Hack 2, for a reason that will be my opinion below. I think the game is a good RPG, but it couldn't create an identity that appealed as much as SMT, Persona or Devil Survivor. And the other big reason why it is rightly criticized is the price and its DLCs, which in addition to being expensive, is obviously content cut from the game and not extra content.

I went for the platinum on Soul Hackers 2, and loved every minute. I have less than 10 platinums so it takes a lot to suck me in that completely.

This was a great concept for a vid, thanks for this

you just got some props form me its nice to see another lover of dawn of the new world such an amazing underrated gem im personally lucky that im not blinded nostalgia for symphonia my first tales of game was abyss and i didnt play symphonia or dawn of the new world until they released together on ps3 and dawn of the new world is by far the superior game of the two at least in the gameplay department no free run made it so i couldnt even last a couple hours before i quit symphonia lol

The last remnant boss music at the beginning instantly made me want to play it again. Yet another amazing game crapped on by critics who couldn't be bothered to learn it's combat system.

Drakengard 3 is one of the funniest games Ive ever played lol. Great great story too.

Wasn't Chrono Cross remaster fixed recently?

Coming from symphonia to symphonia 2, my issue was the legacy of Lloyd. Not gonna spoil the story but the game plays like a side story where society looks down on Lloyd and Lloyd doesn’t do anything to fix his rep. Kinda hurts when you watched his story to greatness turns to trash. Symphonia as a whole is kinda like naruto to boruto where naruto was great and boruto can’t live up to the expectations that naruto introduced.

Well, most of Idea Factory + Compile Hearts games can go into this category. But... who else can gives us so many cool, stylish and strange JRPG today? Mary Skelter, Neptunia series, Omega Quinted, Death end Re;Quest, Agarest, Dark Rose Valkirie, Cross Edge... Those guys keep those games coming and, while being mostly B-A games, those are good. Atlus is just producing one-two JRPG games on holidays, SE... okay, waiting (but Diofield and Triangle were good), BN is also waiting and not announcing anything major. NF is put a rest on Legend of Heroes series for now and looking in YS derection. Well, good decision. Still, those games are somewhat feels the same, while IF+CH are really different by all means.

100% agree on the Soul Hackers 2. It was a good and decent game.

I streamed Soul Hackers 2 on hard as a blind playthrough and loved sharing it with my community. It has flaws but it was nowhere NEAR as bad as a lot of the reviews

Nice. I actually managed to play and beat Spectral Souls. It was long!

I've said my opinion about Tales of Symphonia Knights of Ratatosk before and why is the one tales of game I don't replay. That being said, you gave a new comment about the game, which I disagree with, thay being "people were angry that you couldn't play as Lloyd" If that was the case people would also badly review Xilia 2 and is one of those top tales of games. For the rest of the list the ones I've played I agree with what you said and the ones I haven't palyed... well no comments xD

Damn Eternal Poison looks right up my alley

Erick u ever play megaman battle network that’s a good action rpg for the GBA legacy collection coming out next month you should try it out that series is another one where critics whined about it but it was fun and the starforce trilogy I recommend the DX patch for the first 2 it’s great

I feel like a lot of the list is great. I agree with you, however... I am a fan of the Devil Summoner games the most from the SMT Series. So when Soul Hackers 2 came to light and more unfolded I feel like they threw out the lore of the series and only continued it on with only names as references of what came before it. My example of some story beats feeling too convenient is when Kununoha cut off his arm. If the revenants are so mysterious and no one knew how they worked properly, how did a human with very limited knowledge make a fake one and also learn he could move it to a different part of his body and cut it off giving it to someone else? It would have been more impactful if he had longer than 5 minutes screen time and also was mising more than just one arm. It also felt very linear compared to the earlier games (Do dungeon, go to your hide out and repeat until the game is done) and the microtransactions dragged it down further. I feel like they made it too time consuming to level unless you purchased the DLC that helped with that. That's my gripes with it. If they removed the DLC and made it just a bit easier to level so that people can actually see the end game fusions without grinding for 8-10 hours exclusively, then that would be fine in that department. The very distant story felt more like a Spin Off of the original Soul Hackers game.

Suikoden 4 left out the generally superior 6 member active party, has the least memorable story/characters of the franchise (including Tierkreis) and has easily the worst version of the large scale battle mechanic. All that said, as my introduction to the franchise it still managed to make me fall in love instead of scaring me away. Plus, I can still play and enjoy it even now.

I liked Suikoden 4 a lot. Plus you get to see Ted again.

I started playing Valkyria Revolution and I more so agree with the opinions in this video, it’s not the worst thing out there and it’s clearly a spin-off. It’s funny enough about Fate/Extra that we only got the base version in the west but it got about 2 updated versions and with that next remake coming (eventually) I think it’s definitely going to go down a lot better this time around (since especially nowadays things that are related to the Fate/ series don’t tend to flop). Funnier still is that Fate/Extra got two warriors style sequels that we did get in the west (Fate/Extella and Extella Link) I had been waiting for the “4th” installment but I guess all the people that worked on them are working hardest on the remake instead. (And I really can’t wait for that next Extella game since going from the “1st” to Link not only revamped the gameplay and elevated it to a more unique degree but it increased the roster from 19 to 29 (save for one alternate version of a character that was only related to the story of Extella).

I liked Soul Hackers 2. I never got all of the hate that game got. Sure, it wasn’t Persona or SMT, but it was fine for what it was. I recently picked up Drakengard 3 recently. I’ve been having fun with it. It’s definitely got some technical issues, but there’s still a lot to enjoy. They definitely wouldn’t make that game in today’s “modern audience”climate.

A lot of these RPGs you mention was during what RPG fans remember as the Dark Times when western media outlets used the Term JRPG in a negative light to elevate what they deemed real RPGs. Let's get one thing straight Mass Effect games are not RPGs they are shooters with light RPG elements.

One game for me was BLUE REFLECTION. Not sure how the second game (which is very good) was viewed, but the first was called "poor mans Persona" often times. "Sailor Moon JRPG" would have been a better description. It has its flaws, but is very unique in style and with its ideas. I really liked it a lot, even though the second game is a lot better, just because of the fact to revisit just a few sections in the first game a bit too often.

Suikoden V was fun but my biggest complaint was that it was far too short, as you mentioned. The speed I could live with, but the length... Where is the rest of my game Konami? I also really enjoyed Soul Hackers 2 but it is grindy and repetitive with the Soul Matrixes. It is fun though, and the characters have their charms.

Soul hackers 2 has a beautiful art design but is just boring. It's true that i'm a little saturated of smt after smt5 and p5r finished last year, but sometimes i restart apocalipse and strange journey, so i don't think that is the smt mechanic, it didn't catch me at all (like the first).

Is it weird that it bugs me that in your intro you use battle music from The Last Remnant, but then The Last Remnant wasn't on the list...?

The original Tales of Symphonia was the first JRPG I played other than Pokemon. Great game. I was disappointed with Dawn of the New World, mainly because I didn't like the monster collecting element. Felt out of place in a Tales game. I didn't mind that Lloyd was treated as a villain at first. Honestly, I was disappointed to learn he wasn't really the villain. I WANTED him to be the the villain. It could have been a great reflection of the first game, where Mithos began as a hero and became a villain in his attempt to try to preserve the world. Seeing Lloyd go down a similar path could have been really cool.

as expected you started with my fave JRPG idk why people hate dawn of the new world, i found it fun and story wise is enjoyable