I know everyone has that one RPG they fell in love with that will always have a special place for them.
Maybe it was never popular. Maybe it was a love it or hate it and had mixed reviews. Maybe it was a product of nostalgia and the time of your life you played it.
For me it was Saga Frontier on the PSX.
A game where you pick one of multiple characters and play thru the same game world on each one completing a different quest and seeing things from a different angle.
People would say the story is sparse, for me it was enigmatic and mysterious. People would say the battle system was obtuse, too difficult, or required too much grinding. I loved the challenge and getting wiped by it as a younger version of myself who wasn’t ready for that level of difficulty, slowly figuring it out just made it all the more epic.
What’s your game?
Threads of Fate/Dewprism. It’s an action RPG with two protagonists so you have to play it twice to get the full story. It was actually one of the first JRPG or JRPG-adjacent games I ever played. Still, it’s hard to explain why it left such an impression on me. The story isn’t particularly deep and it’s not particularly difficult, except for the part where it becomes a platformer for some reason, and I don’t think I ever actually finished it as a kid, probably because of the platforming section now that I think about it. But for some reason whenever I feel nostalgic about old games this is the one I always go back to and play through.
Xenoblade 1
Love the combat system mechanics, love the moveset variety among party members, love the huge enviroments, love the side content in general, love the pacing on the main quest, love everything about it. It was my first JRPG and generally the most formative game for my taste in video games.
I think I have more posts mentioning the game on this site than posts that don’t mention it lol. Granted part of that is the current lack of more specific/niche discussion topics (which will hopefully be solved as the site grows) as I do have alot of game interests outside of JRPGs.
I think the one I have the most nostalgia for is Destiny of an Emperor. The main boss theme is instantly transporting for me. That 8-bit Capcom sound is so iconic.
Final Fantasy IV is what truly got me to fall in love with the genre, though. It was one of my first 16-bit games, so I was blown away by the graphics and especially the music.
The saboteur
This is a boring answer, but Super Mario RPG and Chrono Trigger for me. Secondarily, Final Fantasy II (by which I mean IV of course) and III (i.e. VI) and V (i.e. V, because I just played the fan translation, sometime after playing the rest of the aforementioned games).
All of these games are just generally solid narrative experiences with effective and well-designed gameplay, coupled with excellent pixel artwork and music. Not all of them are equal in all regards, of course. But probably most importantly, I played all of them during some of the most formative years of my tastes in videogames.
Not a boring answer, Super Mario RPG was the goat. It took beloved but normally lighthearted and silly characters and put them in an epic story, long before Kingdom Hearts ever did. Blew my mind as a kid.
Star Ocean 2 is so cool. All the party members are interesting and their interpersonal dynamics are great, which made me equally interested and conflicted that you can’t get all of them at once. I played it a whole lot when I was a teen. I’m really looking forward to that remaster.
For me it has to be Grandia. This game feels like a pure dose of adventure, and to me it is a nostalgia pill I sometimes take for the trip. That it doesn’t get more recognition in the modern day is beyond me.
To a lesser extent, Secret of Mana is also a game I like to redo every other year with different people, and that I know absolutely by heart (can’t wait to experience that with my son someday).
Lastly I developed a love/hate relationship with the Trails series back in 2011, and the first game in this series in particular shifted my view on JRPGs forever. It is a bit too recent though to be “that game”, but had it be published in the 90’s it might have been
