10 Best JRPG Franchises of All Time

in this video I'll be counting down my 10 favorite jrpg franchises of all time if you've been around this channel for a while you know that my tastes are a little odd so be kind if your favorite franchise isn't on the list and speaking of which drop your favorite franchises in the comments below so we can talk about all of them starting at number 10 I have Rune Factory growing up I absolutely love the Harvest Moon games I love their social Sim elements the way you can build up your farm and it was just a more cozy relaxing different kind of game and then Along Comes Rune Factory and it's basically the same thing but then they added in combat my experience with the franchise started on PlayStation 3 with tides of Destiny I quite enjoyed it it was a really interesting take on this type of game where you did have the farming and the social elements but then you could get on this giant creature and like tread across the ocean and go dungeon crawling it was really interesting however some of the social elements were just a little shallow for my taste then Along Comes Rune Factory 4 and it has great characters in gameplay super Charming but it felt a little long in the tooth to move the story along and it just felt a little little too grinding in that respect then comes Rune Factory 5 and it has a great mix of everything and to me that was my favorite in the franchise I love that you have this big town to explore with so many different characters a deep variety of different things to do in the town and for me it had some of the best social elements and characters and dialogue in the entire franchise now obviously it doesn't have the greatest performance on Nintendo's switch but for me I can forgive that because the rest of the game is so good I thought the series was totally dead after four so I'm so glad it's alive and well with multiple new games on the horizon it absolutely breaks my heart that valkyria Chronicles isn't more popular because it's incredibly special it's known for its really unique take on strategy RPGs they do play out in turn-based fashion but it's not on a grid and it's sort of in real time where you have to actually aim with your guns and you have different classes that can do different things and it's really really neat valkyria Chronicles 1 could be exploited with the scouts it had a lot of missions where you just had to get to a point and if you knew what you're doing you could just run around valkyria Chronicles 4 on the other hand added tons of new classes some really unique objectives and made for a much more Dynamic and challenging experience to be honest I don't really remember much of two I just remember that I was kind of limited with the PSP's power and sadly we never got three now to me where the games shine are in their storytelling they have absolutely incredible characters the game gets you invested right away with these different scenarios that they set up and you want to cheer for them the entire game What's really interesting too is the series seems to ride this line of being goofy yet incredibly heartfelt we've sadly probably seen the last of this series but I love it and it'll always hold a special place in my heart whoa Dragon Quest this low unsubscribed now for those that are still here let me explain I didn't grow up with Dragon Quest at all in fact I even tried to go back to some of the older ones and they're just so archaic slow and just unfun now for me the first game that truly grabby was eight I had such a great cast of characters music and a great gorgeous world to explore but again it felt a little slow and a little too grindy for my tastes I even played it twice both on PS2 and the 3DS re-release and I never finished it either time however I absolutely fell in love with Dragon Quest 11 and for the same reasons I fell in love with eight it had an incredible cast of characters beautiful music and an incredible world to explore for me I think it had a slightly more tolerable combat system and I think because it was a little bit easier and there wasn't as much grinding required and also like I said I absolutely loved exploring in this game every time I got to a new town I would check every little nook and cranny to see what kind of Secrets and treasures I could find talk to all the different characters do all the side quests it was just such a fun world to inhabit and I also really enjoyed the two spin-off Builder games now they're not really true Dragon Quest games I get that but I don't really care they were still really fun now I want to love Dragon Quest more but for my taste it's just a little too traditional I'll be very curious to see what happens with Dragon Quest 12 and the upcoming HD 2D remake of Dragon Quest 3 and I'm hoping I can dive into those and really enjoy them I've had a really up and down relationship with the tale series you can have the incredible highs like arise but then the really low lows like zysteria my journey with the series started way back with 1998's Tales of Destiny on the PlayStation 1. it was pretty fun but I never ended up beating it and that's sort of my history with most of the games in the franchise I start them sometimes multiple times but then I never really finish them because they kind of bore me or they don't hook me long enough to make me want to finish them but when they're good they're really good they have a great signature art style cool character designs and a fantastic action combat system easily the series bright spot what's always bothered me though is the design a lot of the dungeons are very cookie cutter super boring to explore very unfun to play or sometimes the story is just don't hook me enough to keep me going and wanting to see what happens to the end however there are some bright spots like Tales of Grace's death and arise that do it really really well and speaking of arise I think the team is really on to something with that formula and I think if they keep it up this series will shoot up this list dramatically now it might be a shocker to see Pokemon on this list for how high it is people like to complain that it doesn't evolve enough and it should be better than it is and I'm definitely the problem in this situation I pretty much buy them all enjoy the story and then I'm just done I never go shiny hunting I never do multiplayer I just play the main game and then that's it in my experience the series has had a pretty steady level of quality since red and blue when I first started playing in fact here's a picture of me my buddy trading Pokemon instead of participating in our Junior High dance I love the simple Adventures the game's always set up you grab your starter build a team explore the world get badges or the equivalent of whatever game it is and then catch the rare monster on the cover for me that formula just works and it's good enough now I do love certain things that they've added over the years like the ability to buy different outfits for your character I always like to do that in game games when it gives you that option even some of the more experimental games like Arceus were really fun exploring around in an open world and actually physically throwing the pokeballs was kind of cool I know a lot of people want more from this series but for me I don't know it just works now I know we're only two games deep with octopath traveler maybe three if you count the mobile game but that's enough to be considered a franchise right I have completely fallen in love with what screenix has created here everything from eight different character Stories the gorgeous HD 2D art style the incredible music and that excellent turn-based combat system with most games if you don't like a story you can kind of be stuck with it but with octopath if you don't like a particular story you can just kind of skip through it and then you have seven other character stories you can try and with octopath traveler 2 the stories got way more compelling and there's way more of them that I enjoyed compared to one the combat is also so versatile with how you can build characters you'll start out with a certain class button you can mix and match abilities from different classes to create these really cool customizable teams Square could pop one of these out every five years for eternity and I'd be there day one every time Fire Emblem is a series that has very quickly become one of my favorite franchises in all of gaming it started with Awakening back on the 3DS and I pretty much played every game since Fates gets a really bad reputation and I'm not totally sure why I really enjoyed it and enjoyed all the characters Shadows of Valencia was really cool a little bit experimental for my taste but I still had a fun time with it three houses is awesome great variety of different characters and a really dark interesting story and while engage's story is not that interesting it really Nails the gameplay and heck I even played the two Warriors games and I think Fire Emblem Warriors to this day is still my most played switch game and I think why I love Fire Emblem so much is that it's the only consistent high quality strategy RPG series that's still in production I love this genre and we just don't get enough games at this production level and I think since Awakening when the franchise was totally revived they've just slowly gotten better over time and in my opinion I think three houses is probably the best so far thanks to the school system and its dark interesting story and engage does have some good ideas but again has a weak story in the next game if they can mash the two together that could make for something really special much like octopath traveler I'd happily buy a new Fire Emblem game every single time when released ease is a franchise that I feel like only gets better as time goes on my experience with the franchise started with oath and felgana on the PSP and I really enjoyed it to me what really hooked me was the fun action combat and that rocking soundtrack then I moved on to E7 one of the very few games that I beat and immediately started a new file because it was just so fun and I really think the ease formula was perfected in ease a one of my all-time favorite games and in my opinion one of the best jrpgs ever made I think I like ease 9 more than most people it has some really high highs with its movement mechanics and side activities but can get a little bogged down with some of the story elements overall though the quality of this Series has stayed consistently high and unlike a lot of the other franchises on this list you never have to wait too long for a new release it feels like we just got ease 9 and East 10 nordics is right around the corner I feel like this series core tenets of fun action combat and incredible music have stayed remarkably consistent over the years and have kept me hooked for over a decade as long as Falcon keeps popping the map I'm gonna keep buying them Final Fantasy was the franchise that got me into jrpgs and has stuck with me more than any the other it's weird to think that I can vividly remember stages of my life when each game released Final Fantasy is sort of like this very old friend to me seven was my first and will in all likelihood always be my favorite I never knew I could play a game for a story and get so invested with its characters it brought me beautiful music that I'll listen to for the rest of my life nine brought me back to what classic Final Fantasy was and introduced me to Vivi one of my favorite characters in all of gaming and of course I can't forget about tactics a game that'll just never shut up about to me Final Fantasy represents one of the most high quality experiences ever created for the medium of games back in the day it felt like every game was chasing it and back in the day me and my friends would always play anything with the name Final Fantasy on it and while the series has certainly stumbled over the years recent releases like Final Fantasy VII remake in the upcoming Final Fantasy 16 feel like the franchise is back on track in the right direction Final Fantasy holds some of my fondest gaming memories and will always be very very special but for me nothing tops Persona in my time experiencing the series it's been nearly flawless I started with Persona 4 on the PS2 and absolutely fell in love with it it toppled Final Fantasy VII as my long-held favorite game of all time I feat that I thought would never happen I went back and enjoyed Persona 3 and then got totally obsessed with Persona 5. and I've gone on to play just about every spin-off since from the dancing games to Persona 5 Strikers persona's core pillars of stylish art social link system Incredible characters and dynamic turn-based combat are everything I love in games persona's core game Loop is unlike anything I've experienced in games and easily takes over my life every time a new game drops I love its variety of gameplay and how you can take on your own schedule and experience the game however you want I've even fallen down the rabbit hole with games trying to emulate Persona like Tokyo Xanadu in my 20 plus years of playing video games no single franchises had this long of a stretch of high quality releases as Persona and I don't see this streak ending anytime soon now those are my favorite jrpg franchises but if you want to hear my top 10 favorite jrpg games be sure to check out this video right here and special thanks to reset switch Tyler kuzava and the Miyazaki man for supporting me over on patreon to get exclusive videos and other cool perks consider supporting me over on patreon.com the gaming shelf thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time

Channel: The Gaming Shelf

Views: 41,657

Keywords: best jrpg, best jrpgs, best jrpg series, best jrpg franchise, best jrpg games

Id: WRrM7WPzR1M

Length: 10min 46sec (646 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 02 2023