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Overrated/Underrated JRPGs

BryceNobody

BryceNobody

Member
Sharpen those pitchforks and grab your torches, NeoGAF. What’s the most overrated/underrated JRPG?
shouting the simpsons GIF



OVERRATED: Final Fantasy IX

I hear people throw this out as the best mainline FF title, and I’ve seen it slowly emerge as a fan-favorite over the years. Gotta be honest, didn’t like it all that much. Story was bleh, characters outside of Zidane and Vivi were forgettable, and the combat was woefully slow (those battle animations took years off my life). It’s not the worst JRPG I’ve played by any stretch, but the absolute fervor around the game really baffles me. Maybe just not for me.



UNDERRATED: Lost Odyssey

Another Sakaguchi game in the mix, I played this after years of either not having the time or not being interested in an Xbox 360 JRPG because I didn’t know anyone who played it or had much to say. Holy shit, I was so wrong. Story’s fantastic, combat was a perfect-blend of old school mechanics meets modern graphics, world felt fresh and interesting- but those dream sequences? Oh, man. Having incredibly moving short stories play out solely over text was something I’ve seen few games pull off as effectively as Lost Odyssey. If you haven’t given this game a shot, do yourself a favor and try it.
 
Torrent of Pork

Torrent of Pork

Banned
Star Ocean 2 was one of PS1's best jrpgs. The game was so unbelievably broken that in 3 hours you could save-scum your way to an weapon you shouldn't be able to have until 25 hours in, allowing you to over level in a convenient area not meant for you for another 15 hours.

You can also get the best sword in the game at the start of disc 2, roughly halfway through the game. Yes I'm talking about the Eternal Sphere being the best weapon, and I know it isn't the highest damage, fite me SO2 nerds.
 
M

Modrot

Member
Overrated: literally any AAA jrpg (FF, Tales, Pokémon, Persona, so on).

Underrated: the winds are changing but the SaGa games are pretty dope.

Disclaimer because this is a gaming forum after all: overrated /=/ bad.
 
Torrent of Pork

Torrent of Pork

Banned
BryceTheNobody said:
UNDERRATED: Lost Odyssey

Another Sakaguchi game in the mix, I played this after years of either not having the time or not being interested in an Xbox 360 JRPG because I didn’t know anyone who played it or had much to say. Holy shit, I was so wrong. Story’s fantastic, combat was a perfect-blend of old school mechanics meets modern graphics, world felt fresh and interesting- but those dream sequences? Oh, man. Having incredibly moving short stories play out solely over text was something I’ve seen few games pull off as effectively as Lost Odyssey. If you haven’t given this game a shot, do yourself a favor and try it.
Click to expand...
I haven't had videogame music kick me right in the feels like this game did during the memory sequences until Undertale.
 
BennyBlanco

BennyBlanco

aka IMurRIVAL69
Underrated- SMT IV/SMT IV Apocalypse

Maybe my favorite Atlus game ever. Combat feels better than any of their other games. Really bizarre writing and story that ends with you killing all your friends and God if you feel like it. 10/10 OST.




Overrated- Tales of Arise

Holy fuck this game is long winded. The dialogue just goes on and on and they never get to the point. Pretty graphics and cool combat but damn. Didnt live up to the hype for me.
 
Hustler

Hustler

Member
Your go to overrated JRPG is FFIX?

This thread won’t end well. I enjoyed my time with Lost Odyssey.

Overrated I’ll say Xenoblade Chronicle.

Underrated, Not sure how underrated this really is given how successful it is. But I couldn’t get over how much I loved every minute of Dragon Quest VIII. I feel it should’ve been just as popular as the Final Fantasy series back in the day. Only now the series is really taking off in the West.
 
BryceNobody

BryceNobody

Member
Torrent of Pork said:
I haven't had videogame music kick me right in the feels like this game did during the memory sequences until Undertale.
Click to expand...
Completely agree, God did a tremendous job on the OST. I have to add: even though FFIX as a whole wasn’t that great, the opening theme for the game was phenomenal. “The Place I’ll Return to Someday” is easily one of his best FF tracks.

 
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Torrent of Pork

Torrent of Pork

Banned
BryceTheNobody said:
Completely agree, God did a tremendous job on the OST. I have to add: even though FFIX as a whole wasn’t that great, the opening theme for the game was phenomenal. “The Place I’ll Return to Someday” is easily one of his best FF tracks.

Click to expand...

Everybody shits on FF8, but it legitimately had one of the best soundtracks of the franchise. Here's a violin cover of 'Fragments of Memories' from an old JP release I imported of the key pieces done with a full orchestra.



Fucking beautiful, and not just as a 'videogame theme', that's beautiful music right there.
 
Ladioss

Ladioss

Member
Overrated : FFVII. The game 'cult' status is due to it being a generational milestone for the PS1 crowd IMO.

Underrated : Far East of Eden.
 
BryceNobody

BryceNobody

Member
TheHustler said:
Overrated I’ll say Xenoblade Chronicle.

Underrated, Not sure how underrated this really is given how successful it is. But I couldn’t get over how much I loved every minute of Dragon Quest VIII. I feel it should’ve been just as popular as the Final Fantasy series back in the day. Only now the series is really taking off in the West.
Click to expand...
Great take on DQVIII.

I gave both Xenoblade Chronicles 1 & 2 a shot. For the most part, I can see why they’re so popular and don’t have a specific problem with either of them… that world is just not one I want to spend hundreds of hours in, for some reason.
 
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pramod

pramod

Banned
I don't play many modern RPGs so I can only talk about old ones:

Overrated:
Phantasy Star 4 (pls don't kill me for saying this, I just felt it was too easy and the plot too similar to PS2)

Underrated:
Evolution series
Puzzle Quest 2 (I don't care it's not a "true" RPG, I love these types of games and hope they make more)

I was also going to say Langrisser, but the fact is even though it's not a well-known franchise, all the people who played the game worship it.
It has a big enough fanatical fanbase so I wouldn't say it's "underrated".
 
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Doom85

Doom85

Member
An overrated/underrated thread, eh? How long before I hear a take I absolutely can’t agree wi-

BryceTheNobody said:
OVERRATED: Final Fantasy IX
Click to expand...

Hollywood Netflixph GIF by Netflix Philippines



JK, you do you, but it’s still my favorite FF title and in my top 10 games of all time. I’m just glad so many people did come to love it, like both the creator and the music composer of the franchise have stated they consider it the best entry themselves so it would have been weird for it to be the one FF title most people ignored.
 
pramod

pramod

Banned
BTW, I know this is blasphemy but I think Chrono Trigger is a bit overrated. I started playing it and I don't really see anything "godly" about it to deserve being listed among the all time great RPGs. I think just because it avoids a lot of the typical bad JRPG tropes like random encounters, slow combat, etc, people immediately put it on some sort of pedestal?
 
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D

DonkeyPunchJr

World’s Biggest Weeb
Overrated: Final Fantasy X. Cast of unlikeable douchebag tropes with bad writing, dopey exaggerated animations, and stupid costumes. Battle system lets you swap any character at any time so the only strategy, beginning to end, is “swap in the character that can hit this enemy’s weak point”. Plus you’re constantly swapping just to make sure everyone gets to take a turn and get AP.

Underrated: Final Fantasy XII. It’s like a FF game for adults. People criticize it for “playing itself”, but I found programming your characters to your exact specifications was more strategic and fun than the actual battles in the old turn-based games.

Even Vaan, while not a stellar character, was decent as the eyes and ears of the player. He had a reason to hate the empire (war orphan who lost his brother) and it kinda made sense why the others would take him along. He had the balls to sneak into the palace right under Vayne’s nose, and I could see a capricious rogue like Balthier taking him under his wing.
 
marcincz

marcincz

Member
pramod said:
BTW, I know this is blasphemy but I think Chrono Trigger is a bit overrated. I started playing it and I don't really see anything "godly" about it to deserve being listed among the all time great RPGs. I think just because it avoids a lot of the typical bad JRPG tropes like random encounters, slow combat, etc, people immediately put it on some sort of pedestal?
Click to expand...
CT is from '90.
Back then it has many innovative aspects. Few endings, visible enemies. Plus time travel and dream team creators on the board.
 
BryceNobody

BryceNobody

Member
pramod said:
BTW, I know this is blasphemy but I think Chrono Trigger is a bit overrated. I started playing it and I don't really see anything "godly" about it to deserve being listed among the all time great RPGs. I think just because it avoids a lot of the typical bad JRPG tropes like random encounters, slow combat, etc, people immediately put it on some sort of pedestal?
Click to expand...
I personally love Chrono Trigger but I’ll concede the status of the game these days can be a bit much. It’s great, but Squaresoft released plenty of other quality titles on SNES that deserve more attention.

Unrelated, but I’m excited about the Chrono Cross remaster next month. Barely know anything about the game, excited to finally play if for the first time.
 
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BryceNobody

BryceNobody

Member
DonkeyPunchJr said:
Overrated: Final Fantasy X. Cast of unlikeable douchebag tropes with bad writing, dopey exaggerated animations, and stupid costumes. Battle system lets you swap any character at any time so the only strategy, beginning to end, is “swap in the character that can hit this enemy’s weak point”. Plus you’re constantly swapping just to make sure everyone gets to take a turn and get AP.

Underrated: Final Fantasy XII. It’s like a FF game for adults. People criticize it for “playing itself”, but I found programming your characters to your exact specifications was more strategic and fun than the actual battles in the old turn-based games.

Even Vaan, while not a stellar character, was decent as the eyes and ears of the player. He had a reason to hate the empire (war orphan who lost his brother) and it kinda made sense why the others would take him along. He had the balls to sneak into the palace right under Vayne’s nose, and I could see a capricious rogue like Balthier taking him under his wing.
Click to expand...
Restarted XII after failing to finish previously and loving it much more the second time around. It definitely feels like a FF meant for adults, and I love the MMO-esque combat after taking the time to figure it out.
 
Shifty1897

Shifty1897

Member
3DS Edition:
Overrated: Radiant Historia
People made this game out to be a modern Chrono Trigger with its hopping between alternate timelines, but having two different timelines doesn't matter if they are both boring. Every aspect of the game just feels drawn out, from dungeons to exploring to cutscenes and combat itself.

Underrated: The Alliance Alive
This is the best implementation of the SaGa battle system that has ever happened, and it's not even officially a SaGa game. You can tell the game had a smaller budget, but the game design is great. The exploration is exciting, the battle system is fun, the characters and world are interesting. I recommend picking it up on Switch the next time it goes on sale!
 
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ULTROS!

ULTROS!

People seem to like me because I am polite and I am rarely late. I like to eat ice cream and I really enjoy a nice pair of slacks.
Overrated - Tales of Vesperia - I guess it was good during its time but the other Tales games beat it. For example, Tales of Graces f has much better combat and Tales of Berseria has a much better cast. I also feel Tales of Arise is a much better game than Vesperia.

Overrated - Octopath Traveller - I didn’t like this game as much, sure the unique abilities of characters and how they interact others were cool but the gameplay isn’t as interesting and can get repetitive. It’s also grindy.

Underrated - Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals - I gotta say the gameplay loop of this is addicting for me. Like the puzzles are laid out nicely and it’s pretty interesting. Also the Ancient Cave is the bomb.

Underrated - Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse - For some reason, I really like this game over SMTIV. It’s fun, the quests are fulfilling, and for some reason the characters are fun. Also they’ve improved the gameplay. I’d say this game is basically a much fun SMTIV.
 
kunonabi

kunonabi

Member
Too many overrated rpgs to count so I won't bother.

As far as underrated goes, Persona 2: Eternal Punishment is the greatest rpg of all time and Xenoblade X is the best rpg since.
 
NotMyProblemAnymoreCunt

NotMyProblemAnymoreCunt

Gold Member
BryceTheNobody said:
Sharpen those pitchforks and grab your torches, NeoGAF. What’s the most overrated/underrated JRPG?
shouting the simpsons GIF



OVERRATED: Final Fantasy IX

I hear people throw this out as the best mainline FF title, and I’ve seen it slowly emerge as a fan-favorite over the years. Gotta be honest, didn’t like it all that much. Story was bleh, characters outside of Zidane and Vivi were forgettable, and the combat was woefully slow (those battle animations took years off my life). It’s not the worst JRPG I’ve played by any stretch, but the absolute fervor around the game really baffles me. Maybe just not for me.



UNDERRATED: Lost Odyssey

Another Sakaguchi game in the mix, I played this after years of either not having the time or not being interested in an Xbox 360 JRPG because I didn’t know anyone who played it or had much to say. Holy shit, I was so wrong. Story’s fantastic, combat was a perfect-blend of old school mechanics meets modern graphics, world felt fresh and interesting- but those dream sequences? Oh, man. Having incredibly moving short stories play out solely over text was something I’ve seen few games pull off as effectively as Lost Odyssey. If you haven’t given this game a shot, do yourself a favor and try it.
Click to expand...
I love both lol

If you want to talk overrated, Final Fantasy 7, both the OG and Remake suck, same with all of the Kingdom Hearts games
 
O

Ozzie666

Member
Under rated - Twisted Tales of Spike McFang on the Super Nintendo. He was using his hat well before Marion in Odyssey.
Over rated- Shining Force 2, the first was far superior.
 
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S

Sophist

Member
Chrono Trigger. Has fantastic soundtracks and design but the story is mild. The protagonist doesn't have a single line of dialog during the entire game. I would accept that for a game like zelda but for a jrpg i expect more.
ff7 1997 was not enough appreciated for its themes: ecoterrorism, transhumanism, affiliation, origin of life, relationship to nature, environmental degradation, societal collapse, ... probably because the players at the time were too young (i was).
 
Goalus

Goalus

Member
Underrated:
Blue Dragon
By no means is it a sub-80 metascore game. That Eurogamer review is so pretentious and clueless that I have to question its author's mental capacity. I'd give it a 87 and subtract two points for Marumaro which then results in a 85 score. It's a real treasure of a game that drew me in right from the beginning and kept me hooked until the end (and my first playthrough happened in 2017, which makes it even more impressive).
 
BryceNobody

BryceNobody

Member
Goalus said:
Underrated:
Blue Dragon
By no means is it a sub-80 metascore game. That Eurogamer review is so pretentious and clueless that I have to question its author's mental capacity. I'd give it a 87 and subtract two points for Marumaro which then results in a 85 score. It's a real treasure of a game that drew me in right from the beginning and kept me hooked until the end (and my first playthrough happened in 2017, which makes it even more impressive).
Click to expand...
I’ve considered playing this after liking Lost Odyssey so much. Mistwalker’s doing serious damage to my backlog.
 
StreetsofBeige

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Havent played JRPG since the Genesis days.

But Id say Phantasy Star 4 was overrated. Awesome production value as it was I think a 24mb cartridge. Problem was it was so easy. Phantasy Star 2 isnt exactly hardest game in the world to begin with, but some reason they made #4 incredibly easy. The core reason why it was so easy is because you can add a 5th character later to your party, but it's not like enemy battles had more enemies to balance it out. So with that you could plow through the game.
 
March Climber

March Climber

Member
Overrated(in story only): Dot Hack G.U. Trilogy/Last Recode
I'm sorry Dot Hack G.U. fans, but if you take away the really cool offline MMO concept and gameplay, the story for this specific series and it's connection to the original felt really undercooked. Everything else about it is an A+ game however, so don't take it too personally.

Underrated: Code Vein
I'm not calling this a masterpiece or anything, but it definitely was a game that was looked down upon and scoffed at up and down by Soulsborne fans, and it ended up being better than what people wanted to paint it as being. What I ended up playing was a pretty damn good B game that had interesting mechanics that I think could be included into the primary Souls series, and a story that was told through character memories and interactions that ended up being better than it should have been, including what happens at the end and what it connects to.
 
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manfestival

manfestival

Member
BryceTheNobody said:
Sharpen those pitchforks and grab your torches, NeoGAF. What’s the most overrated/underrated JRPG?
shouting the simpsons GIF



OVERRATED: Final Fantasy IX

I hear people throw this out as the best mainline FF title, and I’ve seen it slowly emerge as a fan-favorite over the years. Gotta be honest, didn’t like it all that much. Story was bleh, characters outside of Zidane and Vivi were forgettable, and the combat was woefully slow (those battle animations took years off my life). It’s not the worst JRPG I’ve played by any stretch, but the absolute fervor around the game really baffles me. Maybe just not for me.



UNDERRATED: Lost Odyssey

Another Sakaguchi game in the mix, I played this after years of either not having the time or not being interested in an Xbox 360 JRPG because I didn’t know anyone who played it or had much to say. Holy shit, I was so wrong. Story’s fantastic, combat was a perfect-blend of old school mechanics meets modern graphics, world felt fresh and interesting- but those dream sequences? Oh, man. Having incredibly moving short stories play out solely over text was something I’ve seen few games pull off as effectively as Lost Odyssey. If you haven’t given this game a shot, do yourself a favor and try it.
Click to expand...
You got this backwards. LO is overrated and well.. FF9 isn't underrated ... but it isn't overrated.
 
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