What would you consider the hardest JRPG you’ve ever played?

“Devil survivor was the first tactical rpg of the franchise” Uh, no. It was Majin Tensei.

I would say Strange Journey is harder than Nocturne. The alignment system makes forming a party more difficult and it has harder bosses.

Ys is prounounced "Ees" apparently

>“TOP TEN HARDEST JRPGS” >Thracia We will never move past this mentality

Honestly, SMT 3 Nocturne isn't really that hard, you have plenty of resources and most of the hard moments revolves around your demons not being optimal for certain boss.

I gotta disagree with FF tactics there's like 3 or 4 fights that seem unfair but out side of those it's pretty fair. I haven't tried vagrant story since it released as a kid. I couldn't ever really figure it out

More exposure for YS makes me happy

I love seeing The Last Remnant mentioned. In addition to being one of my favorite JRPGs of all time, it also certainly belongs on any "most difficult" list. I 100%'d it a few years back, and that was an insane grind. I will say that if you include JRPGs with the ability to adjust the difficulty, then no JRPG comes close to Tales of Graces F on "Chaos" difficulty. Later game boss battles will take up to 20-30 minutes and getting hit even once by a boss will one shot you. Oh, and that's not even mentioning that have triple the health, double the attack, 2.5x accuracy, and 1.5x evasion compared to their normal mode difficulty counterparts. Sound hard yet? Enemy cast times are also cut in half, so good luck dodging spells that virtually have no windup time. To this day, it's the only JRPG I've never been able to beat, at least at that difficulty. It would take an inhuman feat or some sort of game breaking mechanics that I'm not aware of to do it.

I love SMT3. It’s one of the few games I’ve found that has a great blend of atmosphere and music, kind of like the Metroid Prime games

Cool list. Just to note, Ys is pronounced "ees". It's a long running series dating back to the 1980s. As a kid I always pronounced it "Y-S" only to find out 15 years later once the internet became a thing how to correctly pronounce it. They are amazing games BTW and you should do yourself a favor and play some of the more recent entries.

The Seventh Saga entry gave me PTSD from playing it 30 years ago.

Devil Survivor was not the first Megami Tensei tactical RPG that would be Majin Tensei on the Super Famicom.

Played only The Last Remnant in this list and i didnt finish it. It wasn't due to the difficulty either, it just felt too monotonous and a chore.

Tactics Ogre was hard-the hanging gardens dungeon at the end was relentless. SMTV was also really difficult-so many hard boss battles near the end. Never made it past the final boss.

AI in Nocturne also cheats. I clearly remember a boss bottle that I lost because of an exploited weakness. Round 2 covered the weakness, but the boss never used the ability that exploited that weakness again the second time.

There are a lot of games that I love on this list, especially SMT III: Nocturne which is my favorite game of all time. If you are interested in SMT and SRPGs, I recommend checking out the Majin Tensei games that were released on the Super Famicom. These were SRPG spin-off games of the 16-bit era of SMT that now have English fan translations available and fans of the Devil Survivor games will probably enjoy them.

*Any Wizardry game/clone* Be it the original Wizardry games or the many dungeon crawler clones that follow a similar formula Yes, Etrian Odyssey was mentioned but the true Wizardry games also add *permadeath* either it because of failed resurrection or the character is too old to live. Your powerful team can also be wiped out not only by ferocious monsters, but also by a trapped loot chest that could paralyse, petrify or even turn your whole team to ashes.

“Star Ocean: Till the End of Time” had an insane difficulty spike and learning curve once you got to disc 2. Enemy Ai in general got way more challenging and started spamming party wiping status effects. Then it expects you to level up new party members from level 1 while most of your characters up to the point are around level 50. I know a lot of older jrpgs do that, but this game really didn’t make it easy. Then you have to figure out it’s extremely ambiguous crafting system from that point on to get better armor and equipment. But it’s like a gacha game. Because every item you make is random chance. Chances increasing based on the characters you choose to craft. So if you need a particular item. Good freaking luck. In the later entries in the series they simplified the crafting system and made it way better. Of course once you get through adjusting to all this new stuff you’re good. But I straight up ditched the game for awhile because of this.

In reference to Last Remnant, you're also punished quite a bit for overleveling iirc.

I haven't played any of those except The Last Remnant which I did beat many years ago on the 360, but it is a difficult game to beat. Alot of the Saga games are quite challenging because it's easy to have no clue on where you are going and levelling up can potentially hurt your progression with mobs grinding in sync with you.

I'm currently playing Nocturne on the Switch. I find it quite easy tbh. NPCs teach you the mechanics and tell you where to go. There are savepoints everywhere. Matador is as hard as Brock's Onix in Pokemon Yellow. I talk for Normal difficulty only. If you chose Hard mode of course the game is hard.

Nocturne has zero hand holding like you said, I have been lost literally lost running in that game for hours on PS2

Hmm, YS: Oath in Felghana does sound pretty difficult. I am going to play that soon, anyway, though. I loved the games in the series that I played until now(finished chronicles 1 a few days ago) so the difficulty will not deter me 💪

I read online that Resonance of Fate PS3 and 360) is a difficult game to get into. It is a gun shooter oriented JRPG where how you play can affect your outcome in battles. You play as 3 characters and if one character dies in battle its game over. And buying items and resources can break your bank.

Sadly, you cannot buy the Last Remnant on Steam. It's such a shame, as it's one of the best games I ever played. For the most enjoyable experience, though, it needs to be played on PC with a good Trainer, as the way each unit levels up is based off the types of actions it does (basic + weapon attacks count as Combat, while magic spells count as Mystic), and each action counts toward a particular class. Some units are far better in a specific class, and having to ration attacks / spells / item use to make sure the unit gets to that class is awful without a trainer that logs that info for you. Plus, the trainer provides a ton of QoL features like guaranteed rare spawns that provide tough battles to ensure you're leveling your units properly, and it provides certain waypoints to remove some of the tedious parts like the desert quest. That being said, the feeling I got when I went through a large map, making sure to provoke every enemy in the area so that they're all permanently chasing me, rounding them to a small room and using the timeshift so that I capture them all and engage in a 100-enemy battle, I don't think I can recapture that feeling in any other game.

Of this list Scarlet Graces is the one that’s been most difficult. Hard to understand the mechanics when you don’t have frequent encounters

Bro I absolutely LOVED ys ark of napitishm on PSP!!! I played that game sooooo much

The Last Remnant is not a difficult or a punishing game at all. It is, however, a wiki game - almost nothing is explained, you can easily miss important quests by not repeatedly talking to an npc and some upgrade materials may only drop from a few mobs in the middle of a dungeon with no hints in the game.

Etrian Odyssey it's the only game I've beaten on this list

The last remnant. I've never raged so much with a game like this one. I gave up after 54 hours. I still have nightmares. :/

Saga Scarlet Grace is actually the EASIEST of the post gameboy Saga games I've played... try Romancing SaGa 2 or 3, or oooof, the SNES original for Romancing SaGa 1....

Yeah, i still cant beat DDS2. Made the mistake of going for the 'true' ending on my first run (SMT veteran so I didnt think anything of it) and the final gauntlet wrecked me several times so far. Grinding wont help, as fights give the smallest amount of exp. Its either restart and go for an easier ending or grind for HOURS to MAYBE have the demons I need. Same with Strange Journey Redux.

Tales of Phantasia was kind of tough ^^

waiys of of falghana

The last remnant remastered was hard? Maybe its because im a completionist and i did everything and found the game pretty balanced from this perspective, yea some of the later battles were a bit challenging but shouldn't video games be challenging? Easy games are boring, or maybe its because i love stat progression and micro managing everything, what draws me to RPGs first and foremost is progression, progression is just another word for RPG mechanics and a game genre is defined by its mechanics so what makes a RPG a RPG is progression, and i just love the progression in this game, its what makes it addictive and i just love figuring out the right party comp and builds, and i think build variety is the key to making a good RPG whether it be a JRPG or a western style RPG, i dont really differentiate between the two because to me what makes a great RPG remains the same no matter where the game was made

As a SMT fan i can say that SMT3 is not hard. The game give you more power than you need and he just ask for you to pay attention on the battle. Also FFT is in the same bag.

Nocturne no.1 😤😤😤

Disagree on a few. FFT is not hard and it takes 3 turns for your unit to die permanently. outside of that 1 protect mission and 1 solo fight you are given significant power and units, far outweighing anything mos encounters can handle. (basicallly a rom hack) 7th sage is hard because it's changed from the original version "Elnard". Elnard is a very easy game. The game renamed 7th saga buffed enemies and even weakened the player character. They reduced the stats gained at level up while your rival retained their original stats, making the fight terribly lopsided. you can still employed a tactic of agility up to dodge, def up, waste the mp, and making sure to def then attack to double dmg. It's also important to dismiss your second party member and find them again so they have their original stats. doing so makes the fight after your rival a joke. it's more a grindfest and beating your rival before the difference in stats is too much. I'm playing vagrant story now and i have to wonder where the difficulty is. every boss goes down in 1-2 chains and you can get about 4 turns off before they attack. just carry 3 weapons for type coverage and i haven't had an ounce of challenge yet. i hear it's quite easy and so far the menuing is bad. I hope it picks up a bit, it's not very strategic. devil survivor is a pretty fair and average difficulty game outside 1 route. Saga starts off hard in the beginning and takes a nose dive. Etrian is fine, it starts out tough for 2 stratums, then when you can customize your team it drops by a fair amount and then it jump scares you until it picks up post game. Nocturne is fair because the enemies cheat and you need to do it right back. Honestly most JRPG don't retain their difficulty too much. a small learning curve and it becomes normalized.

have never played xenosaga 2? That game is harder than everything on this list.

Oath in felghana wasn't that hard, ys origin was harder imo

As someone who has been a fan and into the SMT and Etrian Odyssey franchises for about 16 years now, seeing THREE of those entries on this sort of list is... An odd feeling. Because - believe it or not - I consider myself a really casual gamer. :D (Not a fan of PvP/arena stuff and such, guess I'm just not competitive enough) However, I will absolutely give that they can be tricky for newcomers to get into because you kinda just have to accept that the enemies WILL hit like a truck if ya allow them, they ABSOLUTELY can ruin your day with status spams and such things, and lastly, there 100% WILL BE TIMES that those game's ain't even trying to act "fair" in the slightest and will straight up laugh at ya stupid face for even considering that was ever on the table. For example, you FOR SURE can get ambushed into a fight that obliterates you in a single turn or at the very least leave you at VERY bad spot at the start of the battle (where you're basically praying you'll be able to run from the fight) and you can get "unfair" game overs this way too as well. ...Rather frequently, even. But the thing is that while these games are unfair to you, they also allow YOU to be unfair to your foes as well. Foes won't fight nice and fair? Well, if all the rules are off the table, what reason have you to follow 'em either? Just gang up on 'em and make them beg for mercy for ever even looking at you funny! Most of the time you DO have the tools to deal with 'em, you just might not be aware of it. There are some BS fights in all of these games for sure and also things that have not aged that well (and in some case, like with a lot of older SMT's, also some mechanics and or even rules in some battle that the game will NOT tell you about and WILL result by you winning a surprise game over easily) and there absolutely is some learning curve included. But once you know a trick or two or know what sort of things to look for (what demons are useful in SMT games, what skills are good in EO etc.) they're actually really easy to make progress in. SMT in general is really good in this (aside for SMT V...) because they're games where you don't have to resort to grinding. All you need is a good plan for whatever you're facing, good squad of demons - sometimes even tailored solely for getting through a certain boss fight and then immediately making new demon after it - and... sometimes a bit of luck, admittely. Challenging and unfair, but fair. If that makes any sense. And that's the reason I love those series really much and find 'em fun. You could consider 'em as sort of "puzzle games" in a way, if you want to make progress in 'em without resorting to grinding, and personally I just find that so immensily fun and enjoyable with both series.

>hardest >felghana instead of ark of napishtim Man... I mean sure there were a couple frustrating parts like the ice cave and Valenstein castle platforming but other than that felghana was pretty normal and manageable. Hell, in my opinion Nightmare in Felghana is easier than Origin.

I would put alundra on this list, but I suppose the first is more zelda like than rpg like. But alundra 2 holy shit that game was so hard both of them drove me mad but I never finished alundra 2 cuz it was so hard.

the last remnant

Wait ys oath is in switch in English???

Unicorn Overlord..

Debisaba is hard? nah, more like I spam ma and get holy dance and in 2 just get multistrike asap and it's done lmaoo

thought Hoshigami will be in the list...

Why's? Lol, wut? 😂

I personally did not find Oath of Felghana hard at all.

how final fantasy tactcs and Etrian Odyssey is hard ? seriously bro

Persona Q series should join on the list too

i would put fire emblem engage and conquest in there it's a hard but also very fair strategy based game

I think hoshigami tactics from ps 1 is hard as weĺl. On the same vein as ff tactics.

Half the games on this list aren't JRPGs

A lot of these games are hard because they lack quality of life aspects meaning it's not a FUN sort of challenge, just a frustrating difficulty.

SaGa Scarlett Grace is one of the easiest games in the franchise lmao.

Hi

Thracia is not a jrpg. It’s a damn puzzle game

All easy tbh jrpgs are notoriously pushovers even on their hardest difficulties unless you go out of your way to limit yourself with challenges (like no grid ffx and pokemon nuzlockes)

Thracia and devil survivor arent even that hard at all bruh what are they doing here