For context, just 100k is historically a good showing for a JRPG, especially one with this production size. Atelier Ryza hitting 500k back in 2020 was a big surprise. This is well on its way to that mark.
I think there’s an argument to be made that JRPGs haven’t been this mainstream since 1997, and even then it was just Final Fantasy in the west. The genre is much more diverse today. Amazing times.
Sure, Fire Emblem had its breakout in the west with Awakening, but there were real discussions being had about the viability of the genre back in 2013. It was at the tail end of a really bad time (arguably the nadir) for JRPGs on consoles.
Persona 5, NieR: Automata, Dragon Quest XI, and Three Houses all being multi-million sellers is what sparked off the current, unprecedented era for the genre.
Sure, let’s just say Final Fantasy was the only popular JRPG around 1997 and we can forget about Pokemon, Earthbound/Mother, Super Mario RPG, Zelda, Dragon Quest…
Is Zelda a JRPG? I thought one of the defining aspects of the genre was turn- and statistics-based combat. Any Zelda game I’m aware of has real-time combat where hit/miss is based on hit boxes instead of stats.
I didn’t say popular, I said mainstream. Zelda isn’t often claimed by the genre, and Pokémon was literally the only other multi-million seller in the genre in the west.
Earthbound is the very definition of a cult classic, and Dragon Quest wasn’t even getting localized at that time.
So happy to hear this! I bought it on release and finished it yesterday. Then I went back and bought the soundtrack.
Loved the main characters, and loved that it knew exactly how long it needed to be without making it a grindfest. Reminds me very much of my time with Chrono Trigger.
I’ve been watching some streams of it and Chrono Trigger was absolutely what came to mind for me. The art is gorgeous and the music is awesome too. Game’s got good vibes for sure.
I did a semi-completionist run (without a guide) and it took me about 38h start to finish! I played it on my school/work commutes and sank some evenings into it, the game is pretty generous with save points.
If you have a Switch or a Steam deck, I would highly recommend getting it on there, the game really lends itself to portability and has natural stop points that reminds me of how DS/3DS games were structured back in the day
I finished it yesterday as well! Lots of things I loved about this. For me, third act kind of fell on its face a little bit, but that wasn’t enough to put me off, I still really enjoyed it.
Yeah I kind of agree with you there, the villain’s motivations were pretty weak imo. But the rest of the game was so charming that I really didn’t mind that much. It was the perfect breather to play in between Baldur’s Gate and Starfield for me.
I definitely have some nostalgia bias, don’t get me wrong, people that didn’t live through the Gameboy/DS/PSP era of RPGs might not be as forgiving. But it really made me miss the days of sitting on the train or the bus playing my DS on the way to school haha. Mobile gaming just doesn’t have the same feeling for me.
Honestly? It’s enjoyable.
Some of its predictable, some of the dialogue is brilliant, and sometimes the combat is a slog (or just not balanced well - especially early on when you don’t have a lot of options). I do wish it had branching dialogue options but that’s just me.
Oh and the art is top notch.
It’s shockingly become one of my favourite RPGs and that’s saying a lot. The story is quite original with a few really good twists but the characters are also all excellent.
If you like the genre, it is very good. I’d go as far as saying it’s really special. For me, it’s very comforting and just plain good vibes. Fantastic pixelart and tasteful, sensible improvements on the format.
Yes I would really love an old style game with QoL improvements that the modern era had bought for us like better controls, auto-saves, skip dialogue, etc.
Good, I hope this means we get even more turn-based RPGs again. I’m 100% fine with people enjoying the new action-oriented RPGs like Final Fantasy has become, but I love turn based so much more. I didn’t like that it felt like there couldn’t be both on the market. There is just something way more enjoyable to me about turn-based as opposed to mashing buttons and twitchy moves like I’m playing God of War.
I have the feeling there are like 20 turn-based rpg going out every month, it’s one of the most seeked genre out there. Sure, AAA titles kind of strayed away from it but the AA and indie markets are still very much into them.
I agree, I’m glad games like this (and baldur’s gate!) are enjoying so much success and attention right now. It’s better for everyone if we have a variety of polished experiences in different genres.
That being said I don’t often find myself enjoying turn based games lol. Even going back to the super nintendo, I massively preferred Secret of Mana (with it’s real time combat system) to Final Fantasy. There’s just something extremely satisfying to me about a well done action-oriented RPG, where you feel like your skills are improving alongside your character’s.
“Well done” is not to be overlooked, of course. I was quite disappointed with final fantasy 16, as it truly did just feel like mashing buttons
Yeah it’s far more relaxing to play a jrpg with good music, nice looking environments when I can actually listen to the music and look at the world instead of focusing on the enemies tells and dodgeroll at the exact perfect moment. Nothing wrong with perfect dodgerolls. But I don’t want them in all my games.
Final Fantasy moving away from turn-based because it’s “outdated” is peak Square silliness. Have they ever heard of chess, card games, board games, DnD, Civilization, Persona, Dragon Quest, XCOM, Pokemon, Darkest Dungeon? If anything, DMC-style character action games are far more niche.
Funny enough Yoshi P was the one that said turn-based was outdated and he’s worked on DQ before but only the MMO, arcade games, Minecraft clone and a Wii FPS thing. I think it’s pretty obvious he just doesn’t like the genre. DQ11 was the breakthrough hit in the West and he had nothing to do with it.
I seem to remember them being surprised by the success of Bravely Default, not expecting a deliberately old-school RPG to appeal to modern audiences.
The cynical part of me believes this is performative on their part - they know a game like that will be popular, but it won’t be the most popular thing ever and they won’t make all the money. So, they try to push bigger games that are more easily monetized in hopes that people will just forget their own preferences.
Could also just be their own tastes evolving. I used to love turn-based combat RPGs and the RTS genre but I’m kinda over both of them now. If game makers lose passion for those kinds of games, then the “it won’t appeal” might even be more of a “I’m not into it, so if I do make it, it won’t be very appealing” than a “no one wants this kind of game”.
It turned me off the FFVII remake, which is a shame as I really wanted to experience the original but in a modern style. I guess I may actually boot the original up instead; I wonder if there are mods to make it more playable.
I’ve got the benefit of nostalgia I guess, but I played through the original a few months ago for probably the fifth time in my life and still enjoyed myself. The main things that has aged is the ugly character models, this mod can improve those. Might want to look as some of these as well. You want to play through the original+crisis core first before the remake for… reasons.
I never really liked turn-based RPGs until I became an adult with a full time job because they’re perfect for when I’m burnt and wanna play video games but I’m also too burnt to play most games.
I imagine there’s a lot of millennials/early gen-Z that feel the same way. A whole market that is just starting to be tapped
Starts out a little slow for my modern tastes, but I’ve been enjoying the game. Glad I picked it up. But I previously picked up The Messenger so I planned to pick up their next game for sure.
I know that stupid rich CEOs and shareholders don’t understand this, but… “heart”. You make a game with heart, and it’s immediately apparent to the audience. You can try to break down what it is that gives it away, but that’s unnecessary.
If a work of art has heart, it will probably sell well. As long as people can clearly see what it is, and as long as it doesn’t do anything alienating.
I realized pretty early on as a developer that my projects motivated because I wanted the thing I was making were far better than projects motivated because I wanted a project to work on.
A lot of the large companies are now run by business majors who are primarily there to make money rather than make video games.
Though you do need the skills and dedication in addition to the vision, because I’ve also got a bunch of projects that started as something I was very interested in but then stalled because I didn’t have the skills or focus to stick with it.
I love this sentiment, and it can be true, but it also creates this idea that ‘heart’ alone has a high bearing on whether or not a product of any kind (book, film, statue, game) will be successful in its market ambitions.
It doesn’t always correlate. I would argue if often doesn’t correlate. Any indie film or game fest is chock full of projects with a ton of heart. Few of them graduate to success in the market place.
I’m not saying heart is a bad thing. It’s a damn great thing. But strong business fundamentals are a good thing too. And sometimes, you also just need that extra bit of luck or uncontrollable virality too. To find success, you stack the deck with as many good plays as you can, and heart is one of them.
Success is not a recipe, and if it was, everybody would be doing it…
I agree with you completely. I just wasn’t about to write an essay on potential contributing factors that can help one succeed, plus luck. I just wanted to say that these days, there are a lot of indie smash hits out there that succeed in part because people saw a whole lot of love in them, when a lot of the more cynical corporate creators would never have made such things in such ways. Hell, it’s not just indies. It’s why many Nintendo games are so beloved, even “forgotten” ones like Earthbound. ^^
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For context, just 100k is historically a good showing for a JRPG, especially one with this production size. Atelier Ryza hitting 500k back in 2020 was a big surprise. This is well on its way to that mark.
I think there’s an argument to be made that JRPGs haven’t been this mainstream since 1997, and even then it was just Final Fantasy in the west. The genre is much more diverse today. Amazing times.
I don’t know about them never being this mainstream this century.
Golden Sun sold over a million globally in the early 2000s, and the Fire Emblem series had their best selling games in the millions in the 2010s.
Granted, these are rookie numbers compared to the juggernaut that is Final Fantasy, but still respectable.
Sure, Fire Emblem had its breakout in the west with Awakening, but there were real discussions being had about the viability of the genre back in 2013. It was at the tail end of a really bad time (arguably the nadir) for JRPGs on consoles.
Persona 5, NieR: Automata, Dragon Quest XI, and Three Houses all being multi-million sellers is what sparked off the current, unprecedented era for the genre.
Sure, let’s just say Final Fantasy was the only popular JRPG around 1997 and we can forget about Pokemon, Earthbound/Mother, Super Mario RPG, Zelda, Dragon Quest…
Is Zelda a JRPG? I thought one of the defining aspects of the genre was turn- and statistics-based combat. Any Zelda game I’m aware of has real-time combat where hit/miss is based on hit boxes instead of stats.
I didn’t say popular, I said mainstream. Zelda isn’t often claimed by the genre, and Pokémon was literally the only other multi-million seller in the genre in the west.
Earthbound is the very definition of a cult classic, and Dragon Quest wasn’t even getting localized at that time.
So happy to hear this! I bought it on release and finished it yesterday. Then I went back and bought the soundtrack.
Loved the main characters, and loved that it knew exactly how long it needed to be without making it a grindfest. Reminds me very much of my time with Chrono Trigger.
I’ve been watching some streams of it and Chrono Trigger was absolutely what came to mind for me. The art is gorgeous and the music is awesome too. Game’s got good vibes for sure.
I’m playing through it, and my house mate described it as a love letter to Chrono Trigger.
Also it’s gorgeous. Play it just for the eye candy if nothing else.
How long did it take you?
I did a semi-completionist run (without a guide) and it took me about 38h start to finish! I played it on my school/work commutes and sank some evenings into it, the game is pretty generous with save points.
If you have a Switch or a Steam deck, I would highly recommend getting it on there, the game really lends itself to portability and has natural stop points that reminds me of how DS/3DS games were structured back in the day
I finished it yesterday as well! Lots of things I loved about this. For me, third act kind of fell on its face a little bit, but that wasn’t enough to put me off, I still really enjoyed it.
Yeah I kind of agree with you there, the villain’s motivations were pretty weak imo. But the rest of the game was so charming that I really didn’t mind that much. It was the perfect breather to play in between Baldur’s Gate and Starfield for me.
I definitely have some nostalgia bias, don’t get me wrong, people that didn’t live through the Gameboy/DS/PSP era of RPGs might not be as forgiving. But it really made me miss the days of sitting on the train or the bus playing my DS on the way to school haha. Mobile gaming just doesn’t have the same feeling for me.
Yeah, I got the sense they had to cut some of the story out late in development to make a deadline or something. I dunno.
But it’s hard to get very specific what I mean without giving away a boatload of spoilers.
You gotta love seeing indie studios doing good.
This game is so hyped. How good is it really?
I just finished it yesterday. Verdict? Super fun, gameplay is great, looks beautiful, has a retro vibe. The story… is okay.
It would have been a lot better with 3d graphics and cutscenes, and a full voice acted cast of NPCs. That’s basically the baseline now.
Honestly? It’s enjoyable. Some of its predictable, some of the dialogue is brilliant, and sometimes the combat is a slog (or just not balanced well - especially early on when you don’t have a lot of options). I do wish it had branching dialogue options but that’s just me. Oh and the art is top notch.
8 hours in, it’s pretty good. I think it’s one of those games that just came out at the right time.
2 hours in. It is quite good. I have no regrets buying it.
1hr and some change in. I’m loving it so far
22 hours in. Still really fun. Don’t expect anything groundbreaking in terms of story though.
This is beautiful!!!
Is the game good?
It’s shockingly become one of my favourite RPGs and that’s saying a lot. The story is quite original with a few really good twists but the characters are also all excellent.
Soundtrack is most excellent.
High praise! I’ll be looking forward to trying this out then
I really liked the first 10 hours,but then it became really repetitive. I couldn’t bring myself to finish it. Maybe it’s just me though
Maybe the charm got old. You could play it in-between big games
If you like the genre, it is very good. I’d go as far as saying it’s really special. For me, it’s very comforting and just plain good vibes. Fantastic pixelart and tasteful, sensible improvements on the format.
Yes I would really love an old style game with QoL improvements that the modern era had bought for us like better controls, auto-saves, skip dialogue, etc.
Good, I hope this means we get even more turn-based RPGs again. I’m 100% fine with people enjoying the new action-oriented RPGs like Final Fantasy has become, but I love turn based so much more. I didn’t like that it felt like there couldn’t be both on the market. There is just something way more enjoyable to me about turn-based as opposed to mashing buttons and twitchy moves like I’m playing God of War.
Anyone know of any 2d turn based RPGs that are coop?
I have the feeling there are like 20 turn-based rpg going out every month, it’s one of the most seeked genre out there. Sure, AAA titles kind of strayed away from it but the AA and indie markets are still very much into them.
Really? I love real time strategy games but feel like most of the new strategy games I see are turn based.
I agree, I’m glad games like this (and baldur’s gate!) are enjoying so much success and attention right now. It’s better for everyone if we have a variety of polished experiences in different genres.
That being said I don’t often find myself enjoying turn based games lol. Even going back to the super nintendo, I massively preferred Secret of Mana (with it’s real time combat system) to Final Fantasy. There’s just something extremely satisfying to me about a well done action-oriented RPG, where you feel like your skills are improving alongside your character’s.
“Well done” is not to be overlooked, of course. I was quite disappointed with final fantasy 16, as it truly did just feel like mashing buttons
Have you already played Chained Echoes? It’s another masterpiece in the world of 2D turn-based RPGs.
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClrZiz_IMmY
Looks nice! Will have to take a look, thanks!
I bought it awhile back, but never got very far into it. I might pick it up again after I beat Sea of Stars.
Yeah it’s far more relaxing to play a jrpg with good music, nice looking environments when I can actually listen to the music and look at the world instead of focusing on the enemies tells and dodgeroll at the exact perfect moment. Nothing wrong with perfect dodgerolls. But I don’t want them in all my games.
Final Fantasy moving away from turn-based because it’s “outdated” is peak Square silliness. Have they ever heard of chess, card games, board games, DnD, Civilization, Persona, Dragon Quest, XCOM, Pokemon, Darkest Dungeon? If anything, DMC-style character action games are far more niche.
Uh… I hope they’ve heard of Dragon Quest. They own it.
I’m really worried about the new dragon quest. It’s possibly my favorite series and I’m concerned that 12 is going to be action and not turn based.
I haven’t seen anything about it. Is there info out that makes you think this?
I believe spinoffs like “Dai” and “Heroes” will be action based, but the main game and “Monsters” will be turn based
But so they know that they own it? That’s the question here!
Funny enough Yoshi P was the one that said turn-based was outdated and he’s worked on DQ before but only the MMO, arcade games, Minecraft clone and a Wii FPS thing. I think it’s pretty obvious he just doesn’t like the genre. DQ11 was the breakthrough hit in the West and he had nothing to do with it.
I seem to remember them being surprised by the success of Bravely Default, not expecting a deliberately old-school RPG to appeal to modern audiences.
The cynical part of me believes this is performative on their part - they know a game like that will be popular, but it won’t be the most popular thing ever and they won’t make all the money. So, they try to push bigger games that are more easily monetized in hopes that people will just forget their own preferences.
Could also just be their own tastes evolving. I used to love turn-based combat RPGs and the RTS genre but I’m kinda over both of them now. If game makers lose passion for those kinds of games, then the “it won’t appeal” might even be more of a “I’m not into it, so if I do make it, it won’t be very appealing” than a “no one wants this kind of game”.
I’m kind of sad that the RTS genre kind of died. I like RTS games and I hope they can make a comeback one day.
I stopped liking final fantasy once they abandoned it… Literally last game I played was 12.
It turned me off the FFVII remake, which is a shame as I really wanted to experience the original but in a modern style. I guess I may actually boot the original up instead; I wonder if there are mods to make it more playable.
I’ve got the benefit of nostalgia I guess, but I played through the original a few months ago for probably the fifth time in my life and still enjoyed myself. The main things that has aged is the ugly character models, this mod can improve those. Might want to look as some of these as well. You want to play through the original+crisis core first before the remake for… reasons.
Especially with the huge boost DnD had in the last few years.
I thought this was already understood after the success of octopath traveler… but here we are.
I never really liked turn-based RPGs until I became an adult with a full time job because they’re perfect for when I’m burnt and wanna play video games but I’m also too burnt to play most games.
I imagine there’s a lot of millennials/early gen-Z that feel the same way. A whole market that is just starting to be tapped
Game looks really good. I was hyped to play Super Mario RPG with my kids but might put that off to play this instead.
It takes a lot of inspiration from Super Mario RPG, especially in the battle system. Using a lot of the abilities just feels so satisfying.
Starts out a little slow for my modern tastes, but I’ve been enjoying the game. Glad I picked it up. But I previously picked up The Messenger so I planned to pick up their next game for sure.
It’s “free” on ps plus at the highest tier. That likely helped
Mid tier. I only have extra and got it.
Wouldn’t that hurt instead of help? Those players usually will not buy the game and won’t be counted as sales.
I’m about 8 hours into this game and it’s so refreshing.
I know that stupid rich CEOs and shareholders don’t understand this, but… “heart”. You make a game with heart, and it’s immediately apparent to the audience. You can try to break down what it is that gives it away, but that’s unnecessary.
If a work of art has heart, it will probably sell well. As long as people can clearly see what it is, and as long as it doesn’t do anything alienating.
I realized pretty early on as a developer that my projects motivated because I wanted the thing I was making were far better than projects motivated because I wanted a project to work on.
A lot of the large companies are now run by business majors who are primarily there to make money rather than make video games.
Though you do need the skills and dedication in addition to the vision, because I’ve also got a bunch of projects that started as something I was very interested in but then stalled because I didn’t have the skills or focus to stick with it.
I love this sentiment, and it can be true, but it also creates this idea that ‘heart’ alone has a high bearing on whether or not a product of any kind (book, film, statue, game) will be successful in its market ambitions.
It doesn’t always correlate. I would argue if often doesn’t correlate. Any indie film or game fest is chock full of projects with a ton of heart. Few of them graduate to success in the market place.
I’m not saying heart is a bad thing. It’s a damn great thing. But strong business fundamentals are a good thing too. And sometimes, you also just need that extra bit of luck or uncontrollable virality too. To find success, you stack the deck with as many good plays as you can, and heart is one of them.
Success is not a recipe, and if it was, everybody would be doing it…
I agree with you completely. I just wasn’t about to write an essay on potential contributing factors that can help one succeed, plus luck. I just wanted to say that these days, there are a lot of indie smash hits out there that succeed in part because people saw a whole lot of love in them, when a lot of the more cynical corporate creators would never have made such things in such ways. Hell, it’s not just indies. It’s why many Nintendo games are so beloved, even “forgotten” ones like Earthbound. ^^
They definitely deserve it. The game is awesome.
The game is available on both Game Pass and PS Plus and still manages to reach those numbers. That’s impressive.
Good for them
I will pick it up eventually, but I’ve got too many games to play already!