Xbox JRPGs

[Ges]

Help a brother out!

Despite me knowing of them, I still haven't really bought a lot of Xbox JRPGs, I know of Vesperia and Blue Dragon and Lost Oddysey and all that stuff, but never really got around to playing any of them.

My quick question for you: what would you suggest if I only would be picking up one?

What are the Xbox exclusives? If that game is multiplatform, which system is it generally considered better on?

Just for reference, here's what I do have, RPG-wise, on the Xbox. if there aren't many more JRPG-ish titles out there for it, any decent RPG would do.

Star Ocean: The Last Hope
Fable 2 + 3
Fallout 3 + New Vegas
Mass Effect 2

[Luisfe]

Lost Odyssey? Blue Dragon?

Also, F3 and New Vegas are considerably better on the PC.

[Phakiel]

There is also Infinite Undiscovery but I dont know if its any good.

[Priest4hire]

I've played it a little. I remember it being alright. Mostly I remember them talking about the whole deal with the moon being tied to the planet via huge chains. My response. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSxD7ANFONM)

I should be better able to answer this, as I own a bunch of them. I've just been terribly lazy about getting around to playing them. I did play Blue Dragon some and it was OK. Very traditional feeling with underaged protagonists, turn-based combat, bright colours and airships.

Oh, and there's also Enchanted Arms. Haven't played it yet though.

[Sushi_b]

Well most of the big RPGs have already been mentioned.


Tales of Vesperia
Eternal Sonata
Enchanted Arms
Blue Dragon
Lost Odyssey
Infinite Undiscovery

There is also Operation Darkness and Spectral Force 3. Both of those are Strategy RPGs (from what I gathered). I know for sure that Blackdragon dumped some serious time on Operation Darkness and he might have played Spectral Force 3. I was really interested in Operation Darkness but as it got closer to release I just overlooked it.

[CoolOtaku]

Last Remnant is on 360, right? I very very briefly played the PC demo, but not enough to get any idea of its quality.

[Sushi_b]

Wow, I totally forgot about that game. It really sold poorly and the PS3 port was canned. Now that I think about it, I should check it out.

[Luisfe]

It is also notoriously undiscounted on Steam.

[Blackdragon]

I kinda like Last Remnant. It's hard as hell at times, but still has a bit of a fun factor with putting together your Unions (Battle Parties) and out-strategizing the AI.

Only complaint I have is that you can't control all your units actions, especially when it would be drastically needed.

What did anyone of you think of Star Ocean: The Last Hope? I think I want to give it another shot.

[drunken monk]

I wouldnt recommend Last Remnant to my worst enemy. That game was terrible. In my eyes it was a shining example of everything thats wrong with the JRPG right now.

Id say go for Lost Odyssey. The combat is very traditional but its a solid system. I loved the story and the characters. I cant remember the last time I played a JRPG that had characters I actually liked... And the presentation is very nice.

I never played Resonance of Fate but that looked pretty sweet.

[CoolOtaku]

Star Ocean: The Last Hope was just not worth the frustration. I couldn't sit through the whole thing.

The same thing happened for Resonance of Fate and for similar reasons. Sparse save points and lots of frustration in-between caused me to just drop it.

[Idun]

Only complaint I have is that you can't control all your units actions, especially when it would be drastically needed.


That is the point of the battle system anyway. People should get a heads up about this, because it is their main complaint. Some also complain that they don't know their team actions, which just means they're dipshits because you can press one simple button to see the possibility of upcoming actions.

Beat the game, loved the game. Next to less than two games out there, it is my favorite "JRPG" for the system. I'd recommend anyone interested in Xbox "JRPGs" to play as follows:

Tales of Vesperia
Infinite Undiscovery
The Last Remnant
Star Ocean 4
Enchanted Arms (just because it is really cheap)
Lost Odyssey (very slow, boring game)
Blue Dragon (boring).

I haven't had time to play games in a year, but that's what I can think of so far.

[Cyrus the virus]

Idun o_O?

I'm anxious for a new Tales game.

[Sushi_b]

Lost Odyssey (very slow, boring game)
Blue Dragon (boring).


Alright, while I can see someone disliking the Blue Dragon story for being far too linear and just a rehash of old stories, Lost Odyssey shouldn't be called boring.

Lost Odyssey has often been overlooked this generation despite being a game that really did everything differently from a traditional Japanese console RPG did before it. It's a far more adult plot and focuses on issues of growing old without control of the world dying around you. The dreams are incredibly well written and offer insight and emotion that many other games do not.

[Idun]

Lost Odyssey isn't nearly as "adult" or about "impermanence" without the reading the memories as supportive evidence. The dreams aren't required, are text heavy, and for a game that progresses very slowly until Disc 2 (which I would argue, doesn't pick up much from Disc 2 either), they often times go to the backburner of important-things-to-do-before-beating-this-game.

I say it's boring because there are no perks to the battle system. I say it's boring, because the random encounter rates along with the average loading times is frustrating. In consideration of this, I felt no incentive to explore and rather preferred shooting straight through the game. The best writing comes out in the memories, and maybe Lost Odyssey would have benefitted more from being a graphic novel.

[Sushi_b]

Lost Odyssey was story heavy and perhaps the goal of the game was to allow the player to invest into it as much as they cared to do so. I personally chose to try and gather as much of Kaim's story as I could. Maybe that is a big part of the reason that so many people chose to stay away from the game, it looked far to time consuming from a story point alone. Lost Odyssey may well be the most text heavy game of this generation.

I don't get the feeling that Mistwalker was trying to gloss over the gameplay as a truly different RPG experience then what they have produced before (concerning some of their employees). They story is the most important part of the game by far, with music and graphics following after that. It lived by that fact and apparently died by it as well.


Didn't LO get a Manga or Graphic novel series in Japan?

[Idun]

I'm not sure.

The graphics were pretty nice. Infinite Undiscovery falls into the same boat as The Last Remnant and Lost Odyssey for good graphics gone bad: environment rendering lags. I'm also not sure if this would be the case should you have downloaded them to a hard drive.

[Blackdragon]

I'm on pin and needles for another Tales game myself. I played the crap out of Vesperia, and am even helping my girlfriend get through a playthrough.

Something about Lost Odyssey didn't sit well with me. I tried it about a year ago and found myself falling asleep just after the first town following the introduction. That was a sign to me.