Top 10 Less Represented RPGs that NEED a Remake

these are some fantastic RPGs that you've probably never played and I want to talk about 10 that I would love to see come back in the form of an HD remaster or remake there are so many awesome old games especially RPGs being ported or remastered games like Final Fantasy 1 through 12 seriously the entire library is accessible on something like the switch Xenoblade Definitive Edition The Last Remnant these have all been incredible to play again and we have even more games games to look forward to Super Mario RPG is coming back Thousand-Year Door is coming back we just got the Star Ocean remaster playing games like these on the switch or a steam deck has been awesome what a timeline we live in so I went through my collection of games pulled out and dusted off some of my old consoles bought a new nice little portable monitor so that I could hook it all up and revisit some of my favorite old RPGs that may never see the light of day again so here are my top 10 RPGs that need to make a comeback number 10 durge of Cerberus Final Fantasy 7 durge of cus is one of those interesting games that few people played or even remember playing but there are dozens of us who love this game for those of us who played the original Final Fantasy 7 and loved it this game was too cool to pass up on Square Enix decided to launch an entire compilation of Final Fantasy 7 Series which was a meta series to expand on the lore and the world of Final Fantasy 7 at the core of this series was the movie Final Fantasy 7 Advent Children a sequel to Final Fantasy 7 before crisis and Crisis Core both prequels to Final Fantasy 7 and of course dur aerus which was a sequel released in 2006 which took place one year after the events of Advent Children now the movie was the first time that we had seen the Final Fantasy 7 world in the full CGI Beauty and needless to say there was so many of us that were all aboard the hype train and there was no stop stopping that train now Vincent was settled on as the main character for this game given his relatively vague background in the original Final Fantasy 7 they also redesigned and expanded on characters that were only references in Final Fantasy 7 for example you have the character lucrecia Crescent that's old seph's Mama they also introduced a new character this mysterious Soldier G who had later become the basis for Genesis introduced in Final Fantasy 7 Crisis Core another amazing game that's gotten to remake and if you haven't yet played that remake on the switch or the PS5 what are you doing go pick that one up jerurus starts off with a CG cutscene that made use of the Advent Children character models and I cannot overstate how mindblowing this was to see on a PS2 these of course did not represent the main game and the main Graphics of the game which were closer to something like Kingdom Hearts 2 but the overall package was so incredible again we went from this to this then they introduced the player to this remnant of shra known as deep ground and they introduce them in one of the most brutal ways possible as they swoop in and start attacking a bunch of civilians in the middle of a celebration and this kicks off the adventure as you learn more of Vincent's story more about lucrecia and Hojo from Final Fantasy 7 and that Vincent is being hunted by a top ranking group in deep ground known as the spets over something called the protomateria so they can use it to awaken Omega this creature who could bring the end of all life on the planet earlier than scheduled it's pretty intense now unlike the typical final Fantasy game the gameplay of this is entirely focused on Vincent and his Gunplay with some very simple and straightforward melee strikes instead of focusing on different weapons armor and accessories and material for different characters like Final Fantasy 7 it's all about customizing Vincent's guns you could make an epic triple barreled Gatling gun a griffin a rifle the Hydra or stick with a short to Mid distance pistol build the Cerberus with a variety of Materia magic to choose from you also have limit breaks where Vincent turns into a gallion beast from the original as well as good old chaos while I immensely enjoyed this game there wasn't a lot of love for it when it came out the game could be clunky at times with its aiming melee combat and Materia and while I got used to it and found it incredibly enjoyable I don't think it aged particularly well so anyway I would love to see this one get the Remake treatment given how well they handled Barrett and yui with their long range abilities in the Final Fantasy 7 remake and that's what makes this one kind of interesting do I think there's a chance this one will come back well in addition to the awesome combat from Final Fantasy 7 remake the DLC did introduce some notable deep C characters from this game and the upcoming Final Fantasy 7 rebirth will bring us to the section of the original game where Vincent showed up so it's very possible that the story will be brought back in one way or another and it's possible the Remake itself is setting us up for some sort of durge of Cerberus Redux with some major enhancements to the overall package based on the Remake battle system graphic story Etc whatever they would decide to do that would be awesome I'm all in oh and apparently Square considered a game like this for Irvine from Final Fantasy 8 Barrett from 7 and Yuna from 102 while I'm not sure those would do as well as durge of cus not that it did that well I would also love to see those that would be kind of great number nine infinite undiscovery infinite undiscovery is one of the few games developed by Trias a studio who will be strongly represented in this list that isn't connected to an existing franchise this game came out in September of 2008 and was part of Microsoft's massive push to get a strong RPG presence on the Xbox 360 this one was an exclusive the initial plan was to have Microsoft publish the game but it was handed off to Square Enix putting this game in the interesting position of having its copyright shared by both Microsoft and Square Enix so that likely means we won't be seeing this bad boy showing up on the switch anytime soon if it ever comes back at all now Trias won me over with games from the Star Ocean series Valkyrie Profile and others that may or may not show up on this list spoilers so I was really excited to see RPGs like this coming to the 360 infinite undiscovery perhaps the trend Setter for ridiculous Square Enix game names like octopath traveler and triangle strategy throws you into a world where the Moon that has magical powers responsible for bringing about life is chained to the World by some evil order the chains bring about monsters sickness and plague to the land and a character named sigment is given this Godlike reverence for mobilizing his band of Misfits to destroy These Chains Capel the main character is a bit of a cowardly bar and starts the game by being imprisoned in a case of mistaken identity because he looks exactly like sigment Apparently after being freed by one of sigman's companions a he is hesitantly thrown into the action by being tasked with saving her from this sickness while the party otherwise continues on their journey to destroy the nearby chain as time and Adventure continue he's forced to take upon sigman's task and title to to liberate the world but with the added benefits of his trusty Dragon flute who says you can't be a warrior hero and a musician am I right anyway Tri a like most of their RPGs took a bit of a different approach from the traditional turn-based RPGs making it more of an action RPG where traversal and battles are seamless and you control Capel un sheathed to fight unleash Combos and end with some cool special attacks the thing about these combos is that they add additional benefits like healing experience or AP boosts when doing things like keeping an enemy in the air a bit into this game you can also separate four person parties roaming dungeons or the Overworld to battle which was pretty awesome to see I don't remember if there was any major benefit to do this but it did make the fighting feel more alive and with all the characters around rather than being tucked away in a menu outside of battle you have the ability to craft and enhanced stats depending on who's in your party making this whole package feel almost like a Star Ocean spin-off game which makes sense it is Trias after all now this game received some mixed reviews when it came out with a bit of slowdown what was considered a pretty basic story and some steep enemy encounters but overall I really enjoyed this game especially as it continued on I will admit when I first started playing it it took a while to get into I wasn't sure if I was going to like this game but once I hit that aha moment I was in for the ride and it was great if in some magical world this game came back I would love to see them tighten up some of their performance especially with some input delay on the attacks but I can see this one being an incredibly enjoyable experience if it got some of the remake treatment on something like the switch or maybe just a remaster if what you mean by remaster is what they did with Final Fantasy 7 Crisis Core considering this is a tria Square Enix game I'd say it doesn't have a 0% chance of coming back after all squareenix has recently been making more pushes to bring some of their old franchises back but given that this one didn't rate super well and according to what I could find it didn't even look like it hit over 500k units and its lifetime sales I'm not really sure this one's a priority to be honest but hey one of the cool things is if if you buy the physical Xbox 360 game and you have an Xbox series X you can play the upscaled version of this game so that kind of counts number eight Eternal Sonata Eternal Sonata initially released in 2007 on the Xbox 360 and later on the PS3 and this may be one of the most unique RPG Concepts on this list this was developed by TR Crescendo a studio initially responsible for all the sound design in the Trias games before working on games like botten kitos with monolith and Eternal Sonata among others and I love that sound design by the way those sweet button sounds according to the director the intent of this game was to help people understand more about Fame classical musician Frederick shopan as well as his music choen chopan shopen shopan so what was the best way to do that make an RPG set in the fictional world of his dream hours before he died at the age of 19th from tuberculosis that's how take some notes developers choking aside I love the very concept of this game coming from a band background in high school the merging of classical music and video games in the form of an RPG was dreaming and I played the heck out of this game with a really good friend of mine shout outs to Renee who will be coming up again in this video we were able to get through it in a decent time I think it was about 20 or 30 hours no Persona 5 commitment here the game has a heavy emphasis on a number of moral and philosophical themes like death war love Etc and it has this interesting blend of gameplay and music appreciation education almost that I've not seen in any other game and this wasn't just a blank canvas for an RPG by making it a dream if we just call it a dream we could do whatever we want and profit on the popularity of shopan the developers did a great job tying scenes from real life events from his life that could in theory lead to a crazy dream like this and the game is just beautiful the scenes the music it's all such a great package shaan's music of course is in in the game but the original soundtrack but matoy sakuraba the composer responsible for awesome music and almost all of the Trias games is also fantastic as for the game play this game ramped up in difficulty with the way the battle system worked but it was so fun and unique especially for its time battles happen in battle arenas where there are light and shadowed spots that can impact both character and enemy abilities in addition to that you have a Time bar that quickly depletes once you start moving so you have to think about your actions so if you need to make it to your enemy before attacking you may only be able to pull off a few hits here and there but then your gauge fills up you can finish with a combo or a special attack for massive damage as well this made for a really Dynamic interesting and some strategic gameplay oh and once you get Viola you basically don't need to do anything else she will break the game the biggest criticism for this game is that though beautiful in many ways there are areas where the scope is kind of limited enemy variety is limited outfits from equipping new weapons and armor don't actually change the characters and the environments are beautiful but they're pretty straightforward well that and there's some really long- winded scenes that felt like a waste of time so if they were to remake this I would love to see them put a little bit more effort into sprucing some things up even new outfits from armor and weapons could do a lot to make this feel fresh but if they could expand on dungeons add new additional content Etc that'd be really great that being said if they just brought this back I'd be a happy boy as to whether or not I think this one will come back I'd say it's possible Bandai did just remaster baton kitos and Baton kitos or for the switch so this could absolutely come back I'd say if I were to guess we may see it pop up in the next few years and I'll be honest I wouldn't mind a sequel of sorts as well I know you can't really follow up on chopan because uh he did but they could choose another famous composer to work with who knows I'd love to see it number seven Soden 5 Su and 5 released on the PS2 in March of 2006 not long before the PS3 came out and while it was the last main installment that we've seen from the series it was the first Su could end game that I had ever played and this was the game that got me hooked on the entire series except for s in tactics you and I will meet one day what I didn't know at the time was that this game was a prequel of sorts to Soden 1 and two which I love and they're coming back to the switch but without any other context the story and gamep play of this game blew my mind s in 5 story revolves around political tensions and power struggles and the Queen om of fena ruled by Queen arot the mother of the main character Queen arot normally a mild-mannered and doing mother is taken over by this sun Rune one of the 27 true runes and it starts making her a bit uh insane anyway through a series of events the prince is eventually forced to flee and fight against those who would oppose the group this it turns out is the classic sadin setup where the main character is forced to build from the bottom and recruit as many as 108 characters is known as the stars of Destiny to build up their army and if you can pull that off you're rewarded with the best ending each of the characters you can recruit have their own back story and unique Styles as for the game mechanics let's start with the top with the more traditional On The Ground Battle system first you have your six characters in your party and you can make use of formations to organize those characters and what this does is it provides a statistical advantage and there's some special formation specific abilities characters have your attack and Magic options like you might expect as well as unite attacks between some of the characters and they added an auto attack option for some of those Random Encounters to go more quickly in this game which was nice characters also gain SP in battles to increase stats in addition to your normal level UPS next this game also has a full RTS like Army battle system between different armies at different points in the game which I was not at all expecting and each character could be a general of an army with an army specific skill which was really cool again never having played a suo end game before this was a huge surprise for me and finally they ALS also have these One Versus One duels with other characters throughout the game these Duss act like rock paper scissors battles where you have to read your opponent's comments to determine if they're going to attack defend or use a special and you need to respond with the correct option when it was all said and done this ended up being one of the most unique takes on RPG battle systems I'd seen on the PS2 or maybe ever at that point and even today I'd argue the suen series is incredibly unique remaking this and improving the performance could make it feel more like it respects your time when when it comes to the battle Transitions and even how you navigate through some of the menus in addition to this many of the towns and dungeons were either way too big or a bit uninteresting oh and if you have any hope of recruiting the 108 stars of Destinies to get the best ending you better use a guide there's no way you're going to just stumble upon all of them and many are completely missable at certain parts of the game but with all of that said I absolutely love this game it's really too bad that this game didn't perform that well and would end up being the end of the main life Cen series for now but there's still hope with Soden 1 and 2 being remastered and the success of the iodin chronicle 100 Heroes Kickstarter who knows maybe Konami is listening and maybe we'll see this game again and I really hope we do because this is one of the most expensive games to get if you want to play it now number six blue dragon blue dragon was released on the Xbox 360 in August of 2007 as an exclusive RPG developed by the new Microsoft funded Studio called Mist Walker this was another part of Microsoft's major push to get those RPGs on the 360 Microsoft you need to learn a thing or two from the 360 era now missw Walker was helmed by the legendary hironobu sakaguchi the father of Final Fantasy and Creator who helped bring us games like Chrono Trigger alongside Mr sakaguchi was noou yumatu the composer of the final fantasy series and if you watched my C of stars review you know how I feel about music and RPGs like And subscribe if you feel the same and it didn't end there a kir Toriyama of Dragon Ball Dragon Quest and Chrono Trigger Fame helmed the monster designs and illustrations for this game what do you get when you mix sakaguchi yumatu and Toriyama and the promise of a brand new RPG a console sale for an RPG nerd that's what not really that would come later we'll talk about that one this game feels like a throwback to some of the old classic RPGs with a modern well it used to be modern anyway skin it felt in line with many of the other RPGs of the time you have the cutcenes over the top anime characters with of course an annoying but lovable sidekick the game kicks off with the main character Shu and Pals who have their Town attacked by a land shark it turns out to be this giant machine controlled by the big bad of the game named n yeah you heard that right n NE and this kicks off the quest to take down the evil na with a few twists and turns along the way to save the world the main traversal was on the Overworld with different areas and treasure to be found and of course you could find dungeons there were some really cool monster designs but what really got me hooked was the gameplay each each of the characters in this game are paired up with a different shadow that gives them magical abilities and the strength needed to take down those monsters but the main character is shoes sporting the one and only blue dragon in classic Final Fantasy 5 fashion these Shadows give the ability to mix and match different classes that feel familiar with those who have played any Final Fantasy game by maxing out each of these classes you get the abilities that you can mix and match to build out your party in different ways once you have the generalist class maxed out too you have a ton of skill slots that can make the rest of your class class combinations crazy now admittedly this game is one you'll see a lot of mixed opinions on online some didn't appreciate the tried andrue formula that blue dragon employed but you have to remember the 360 didn't have RPGs at the time and this game feels very much like the Final Fantasy Dragon Quest and other RPGs that we love and it worked the 360 to this day is the highest selling Xbox console globally and you can thank blue dragon for that that being said if this ever did come back they could definitely use some tuneups but just getting this one on a handheld like the switch would be amazing unfortunately this game is not really likely to see the light of day again with any updates like infinite undiscovery it is still technically playable on the series X seriously though get these games while you still can but sakaguchi has stated in a recent interview that he's not interested in spending time remastering or re-releasing Mist Walker's old games as he would rather spend the energy on something new while I can respect that I really hope he changes his mind or Microsoft or somebody else like Nintendo can give misw Walker the support they need to incentivize them to make this happen number five Valkyrie Profile 2 s Maria Valkyrie Profile is another series developed by Trias turns out I specifically love Tri a games the original Valkyrie Profile released in 2000 on the PS1 and did well enough to get a port on the PSP called Valkyrie Profile lenen in July of 2006 just 2 months before it sequel would come out even though Valkyrie Profile has seen a recent port on the PS4 and the PS5 alongside the most recent release of Valkyrie elisium Valkyrie Profile 2 is still stuck on the PS2 now these games are known and loved for their deep lore immersive plots that are tied to Norse mythology as well as their tragic character stories as in herar are these great warriors that have died in battle and are recruited by a valkyrie because of this the tone of these games are very different than most RPG G's as tragedy is a core component Valkyrie Profile 2 Still Feels Like The Pinnacle of the series to me this game is technically a prequel but it's kind of not and the story starts by introducing the player to Alicia the princess of a rebellious Kingdom and the host of Valkyrie Saria Soul their adventure begins by dealing with the immediate threats of another Valkyrie coming for Saria and Alicia trying to get back to her kingdom to see if they can align against Odin to thwart the coming disaster Master to both mortal and divine Realms along the way you're introduced to a number of characters including a number of in herar Warriors that fight alongside the valkyrie and Lazard a notable character from the first game that's obsessed with the valkyrie lenen in the previous game his obsession caused him to perform many let's say immoral acts and becomes one of the main antagonists but this is a prequel he's younger now and not bad right now navigation of this game was really interesting cuz it's all sidescrolling environments whether you're in towns or dungeons but it's a lot more compelling than you might expect there's still many things to be discovered and the 3D scenes still give the overall feel of an open 3D plane some of this exploration includes finding crystals that contain the souls of Fallen Warriors that become your inir yard to build your team with fortunately arrim one of the coolest in harar from the first game is introduced in the story in chapter 3 just like the first game the battle system is unique to this series you have four characters in your active party with buttons assigned to them but in this game battles take place in a real-time arena with free freedom of movement which was pretty cool enemies have attacks that have indicators with red areas that you need to avoid and if you can Dash to the side or the back of enemies you have the most impact and fun now this game was touted as being brutal and to be fair if you walk in front of a boss and not to the side or the back you're going to get hit but the challenge is part of what made this game incredibly fun and it stands out as one of the more unique battle systems in the RPG genre if they were to remaster or remake this game I'd love to see them address some of the performance issues bump it up to 6 frames if possible give some more exploration options kind of like the fan remaster shout outs to look back gaming for letting me use his footage but we'd love it native honestly if they could just get it on Modern consoles preferably the switch that would be awesome and I do believe this game has a chance of coming back it seems like Square Enix was testing the waters for this series that being said Valkyrie elisium didn't do as well as I think Square was hoping for so it's possible Valkyrie Profile 2 will remain stuck on the PS2 despite how awesome it is and nobody even knows what Valkyrie Profile Covenant of the plume on the DS is but Square you can totally bring that one back too number four fire emblem Path of Radiance after my love for Fire Emblem 7 and 8 on the Game Boy Advance otherwise known as simply fire emblem and Fire Emblem The Sacred Stones I was really excited to learn that they were finally coming out with a Fire Emblem experience on the GameCube in 2005 also as a side note you can assume that any Fire Emblem game could have made this list this was the series first forray into 3D graphics and cutcenes and voice acting and apparently this came with many development challenges but this wasn't game freak so it turned out pretty darn good there were later interviews where some of the producers confessed they considered this game to be about 70% complete at release which tells me this gem is primed for a definitive edition am I right this game was of course followed by a sequel radiant Dawn that I would also love to see come back but I think this game stood out to me as the more memorable overall experience that and it's not insanely hard and Ike is still one of my favorite Fire Emblem Lords of all time the premise of this game is that a neighboring country danan launches a surprise attack into Crea the home of our main characters and they get caught up in the conflict Ike is a part of the gr mercenaries named after his father and is a fledgling Commander at the beginning of the game and of course through a number of circumstances he's thrust into the position of leadership that causes the group to Splinter because Ike is inexperienced the group is forced to flee South to the kingdom of Galia the home of the Lago animalistic humanoids with the ability to transform into different creatures such as lions dragons herons Etc and that's where many of the main themes of the game reveal themselves the plot delves right into themes like racism moral ambiguity with characters on both sides displaying Shades of Gray rather than a clearcut good or evil and you will follow Ike as he navigates these Muddy Waters alongside friends who are in some cases like him and in other cases part of the problem this game maintained your expected grid based tactics with a weapon triangle perade classes and supports but it also introduced a number of gameplay mechanics to the series that are worth highlighting for example characters that hit Level 21 would Auto promote to a new class which was a very welcome change since you didn't have to wait for seals to promote a ready character well everyone except Ike anyway but Boyd and Oscar promoting early was that being said this game ditched the Overworld navigation introduced in the previous title Fire Emblem secret stones and went back to the more linear progression which meant you didn't have the ability to grind Up characters as freely they also opted out of Arenas in this game so getting the most out of each chapter was incredibly important for making sure your team was built like you wanted this really caused me to reflect on exactly who I wanted as well because I didn't want to waste any experience to make up for this a bit they introduced the camp in between each chapter where you could gain supports have other conversations with characters that could lead to new items or supports as well as the manage M of bonus experience and skills this was the first Fire Emblem game in the west to feature skills which would become a large part of later installments and bonus experience was awarded for beating chapters and meeting certain conditions and I would recommend holding on to that first batch of experience to level up characters you attain over time or you could be a doofus like me and just dump it all into Ike who can't promote till later anyway and finally the Lago offered a really interesting Twist on the game play as their human forms can't attack and they take time to transform but the Beast transformations were much more powerful than your standard units so this introduced some tactical risks and advantages now when this game came out it was criticized for the amount of dialogue in it which isn't unfair but I'm a sucker for a story and character so I really don't mind it was also criticized for outdated Graphics even at the time and the Simplicity of its gameplay and of course perade which was later addressed with the rewind mechanics and Casual mode in later fire emblems so if you just took this game spruced the graphics up a bit and added some Modern Fire Emblem mechanics you have your self a classic remaster and again this would work perfectly well on the switch because some of these text Heavy games by which I mean almost every RPG benefit heavily from the ability to pick up and put down at any time and you know what I'm probably most confident that we'll see this guy come back in some shape or form in the future Fire Emblem is on fire these days and Nintendo has already worked with intelligence systems to get some remasters or remakes out in the franchise which is Shadows of valentia on the 3DS so while I don't think we'll see this immediately I would actually bet on this one coming back hopefully but sometimes Nintendo actually doesn't want our money so who knows number three rodata stories as we've already seen from some of the other games on this list Square Enix was pulling out all of the stops between 2004 and 2006 with an absolute barrage of big releases they had every big name under the sun releasing a new installment games like Final Fantasy Dragon Quest Dragon guard Kingdom Hearts Star Ocean Valkyrie Profile it was an incredible time to be an RPG fan but one smaller non-named RPG that came out in 2005 was criminally overlooked and this game was rodat stories compared to the multi-million dollar sales of Final Fantasy X Kingdom Hearts 2 and Dragon Quest 8 ronata stories didn't even crack 500,000 units and man did people miss out on this one this is probably one of the most unique RPGs out there brimming with personalities charm and humor ronata story starts you off by introducing you to the main character named Jack Russell yep you heard that right who is the son of this famed Warrior he goes off to the Knights of radata and you might expect this tale to unfold like any other but nope Jack gets knocked on his butt in the first round of this tournament that they go through and just when he's expected to get home the knight's commanderin-chief recognizes his name because of his father and offers to bring him in anyway given his Potential from here the adventure kicks off with Jack joining Ridley the girl who kicked his butt in the first round and Gans in the Rose kasham Brigade Gans doesn't know what that means either and from there on the crew goes on missions and Jack a complete doofus starts to sharpen his skills to fulfill his potential there are lots of twists and turns in the story that I do not want to spoil but it leads to the ability to recruit 150 characters overall and a choice at Mid game that splits the ending Trey ice did an incredible job fleshing out the world and making nearly every single character you with their owned background and motivations with their own daily schedule this makes the adventure more intriguing and filled with all kinds of World building opportunities when you take on side quests and Chase down characters to recruit from the four different guilds and did I mention you can kick people to get into Duels for experience it is hilarious and one of the ways you can recruit some of the characters you never knew how much you wanted to kick someone in an RPG until you've played this game that is until you kick one of the guild leaders and they wipe the floor with you but if you can manage to squeak out a win with some of these stronger Fighters it feels so good and you're rewarded with insane amounts of experience and sometimes really good items and the kicking mechanic doesn't stop there either you can kick about anything on the map and find hidden items which made exploring all of the buildings rooms side paths just that much more fun it's such a strange mechanic to come up with and I'm pretty confident this is the only RPG with it but it totally works and the battle system in this game was also pretty unique though it was a bit more simple than your typical Tri I game when ENT during a battle you go into an arena much like Star Ocean and you can freely run around block Dodge and attack Jack can use a multitude of weapons that have different moves you can learn and equip depending on your weapon CP those are your combat points that allow for some solid variety but don't expect any major skills or abilities outside of super attacks called volti blasts outside of this you can let your party Auto Battle or you can issue commands it's no Xenoblade but sometimes you don't need to go through 30 menus to build your character I love you though Xeno Blade I think this game does a really great job with its overall package but I'd still love to see some quality of life features in a remake or an HD remaster or if square and Trias did a followup I'd be thrilled with that too recruiting all the characters can sometimes require some very annoying steps high-en for example is a dark elf you can recruit pretty early in the game but the only way to recruit him is to win four times in a row at gambling there's no trick there's no guarantee you just have to get lucky and 12,000 gold is on the line it can be pretty frustrating for a completionist to have to save reload so many times for a character that ends up being pretty mediocre compared to some of the others progression in the story can also be ambiguous at times as well but I think that's a two-edged sword on one hand you can find the time to go recruit people which is genuinely fun on the other hand there are times where there's no clear cue about what you need to do next to keep progressing one last thing Square Unix since you're obviously watching my videos I wouldn't mind if you came up with a third ending there are two here and there uh well I just would really love a third all that said I absolutely loved this game it is an absolute joy to play it's unfortunate that this game is stuck on the PS2 and I'm honestly not very confident we'll see a comeback for this one there's a definite possibility but because it's not well known and sold so little back on the PS2 this one may unfortunately remain stuck but who knows hopefully I'm wrong and we see that sweet announcement in a Nintendo Direct or seriously try you could just give us a rat of stories too rat rebirth ooh I like that number two the last story The Last Story was another game developed by Mist Walker that came out in 2011 for the Wii in Japan and almost didn't make it to the states at all if not for the effort of operation rainfall now operation rainfall is probably one of the most notable and successful fan campaigns as it's largely credited for being one of the major reasons games like Xenoblade Chronicles the last story and Pandora's Tower three games stuck in Japan came to the west and so our three games came to the states after all and we saw Final Fantasy sorry the last story release in August of 2012 making this the most recent game on the list as for me I had no idea operation rainfall was a thing I just got bored one Saturday looked up RPGs for the week and saw that GameStop had Xenoblade Chronicles and The Last Story available during some crazy sales sakaguchi and yatu again I exclaimed and I was there I traded in some games like a fool and got both games for about five bucks and wow huge shout out to everyone who participated in operation rainfall though because your service is noted and I am forever grateful The Last Story primarily focuses on two major plot lines one of War and the destruction of the land and the other one the budding romance between the main characters Zale and the princess kalista these two buts on the cover and the game does it brilliantly it delves deep into the themes of Love loyalty betrayal and a changing World amidst a Kingdom at War this game is more linear than you might expect from an RPG where working with a chapter structure to progress rather than an Overworld to Traverse but it still encourages exploration as you can find side quest treasure chests and other goodies by looking around each chapter in some cases the side quest even opened up chapters you could totally Miss and offer awesome rewards like special weapons and of course more story my favorite kind of reward each chapter provides really interesting and diverse settings so it manages to keep things fresh and the voice acting in this game is some of the best if you love RPGs because of the Epic tales and characters they often introduce this game is one of the best it somehow manages to pull off the world realism of characters and multiple story threads beautifully and we haven't even talked about the gameplay yet the combat mechanics in this game are unlike anything you've ever seen in an RPG it's like a single player style tactical RPG hack and slash with third person archery and Mage bombs it's pretty awesome don't have a word for all of that nobody has attempted this it was so good in fact that they added a multiplayer mode where you could do PVP and boss battles like something you'd see out of an Uncharted game or something and it worked as you progress zail and team unlock new abilities and it gets downright Bonkers at some point you'll run around slice through things drop some bombs destroy some environments at one chapter go in stealth mode and another by putting enemies to sleep and sneak by the gameplay in this game is so underrated it's crazy it made you think figure out your strategy and the boss battles could be super intense this could introduce some frustration if you had trouble keeping up with all those new abilities you get but overall there is nothing quite like this have I already said that enough now this game clearly pushed the limits of the Wii when it released toward the end of its life especially in battle with some occasional performance issues the combat system could also be a bit clunky at times and the multiplayer lost its luster after a few boss runs or PVP so if they did ever decide to bring this one back in the form of a remaster or a remake I think they could add the tweaks needed to lock that frame rate and deunk the combat this is another game that has a very small chance of coming back given sakaguchi comments about not wanting to spend time remastering old work that being said Nintendo has a knack for bringing back old classics that that none of us expected that and The Last Story characters are actually in Super Smash Brothers which gives me hope but I think Nintendo would need to make this happen and if they did it would be incredible this is a game that more people need to experience and it's pretty much at the same level as number one Lost Odyssey Lost Odyssey was an incredible experience it is one of the most overlooked RPGs in my opinion and it's another sakaguchi yumatu combo platter that was delicious this game was released in 2008 on the Xbox 360 and like blue dragon this was a Microsoft funded project to continue to get that RPG support on the 360 and I am so glad they did While Blue Dragon felt like sakaguchi attempt at the classic Final Fantasy formula Lost Odyssey felt like a passion project from the industry Legend to start with sakaguchi intentionally kept the turn-based combat in order to focus on writing and the emotional impact of the story he combined his efforts with Japanese novelist hioshi shimatsu to create an incredibly emotional journey following the main character K who is an immortal who's been around for at least 1,000 years and you can find 30 stories in this game titled A Thousand Years of Dreams where this game just hit you right in the feels when the marketing cycle began for this game I was so blown away by everything I saw and I couldn't believe that something like this a game that would give Final Fantasy 12 will run for its money was going to be on the Xbox 360 what was going on and this game is ultimately what made me buy an Xbox 360 in fact I bought this game before I even got a 360 because I was so hyped for it and I had an awesome friend named Renee remember that guy from earlier he let me borrow his Xbox 360 because he knew how excited I was to play this game I basically borrowed it until I could save up enough money to buy the 360 on my own instead of you know uh putting money on my college loans sorry Mom so huge shout outs to Renee let's be real though this game like the last story is sakaguchi trying really hard not to call his game final fantasy The Last Story Lost Odyssey I mean come on it even has a character named Seb this game feels like it could have been Final Fantasy X or 13 had sakaguchi stayed at Square Enix this game is set in the unique world where magic and Technology coexist in the magic Industrial Revolution and like I said you play as the immortal protagonist kind who carries the weight of the world on his shoulders and has lived through it all though he remembers none of it the game starts with him in the middle of a war completely wiping out his foes with no remorse on his face and the transition from cinematic to gameplay was still to this day amazing and when disaster happens and everybody's wiped out on the battlefield Kim just stands up and walks away you'll progress through the story and your party will be built with both Immortal and Mortal characters and the combination adds this emotional weight as they get closer why because Kim and the Immortals will continue to Live While Mortals they love will die just like they always have for the past 10,000 years this includes friends family everyone and so K struggles with keeping a distance from his memories that he's lost and the Thousand Years of Dreams really drive this home these stories tell of Kes many experiences and they're so emotionally impactful and you read them with sad or touching music in the background which just makes it worse I'm reminded of this example A Hero's Return where Kim is in a bar with his other soldier in short some kid starts egging the soldier on and the soldier gets mad so the kid pulls out a knife time knocks it out of his hand and the kid flees and afterwards Kim and the soldier talk the soldier carries what he calls this sin stone that has progressively gotten darker as he's had to kill to survive in the war he's afraid to return home and face his wife and daughter with this and Kim gives him a bit of a pep talk tells him to go home to his family because at least he has a family to go home to Soldier finally sees the value in going to his family and he stands up to leave and the kid comes back to shoot Kim the Soldier showing his heroism jumps in the way of the bullet and so Kim and IM mortal that cannot die has to watch as someone gives their one and only life because they didn't know listen to the end of this story sprawled on the floor nearly unconscious the soldier thrust the lever pouch in Kim's hand look at my sstone will you maybe maybe he says chuckling weakly some of its shine has come back blood spurts from his mouth strangling the laugh K looks inside the bag and says it's sparkling now it's clean it is gasp a soldier good my daughter will be so glad he smiles with satisfaction holds his hand out for the pouch gently Kim lays the pouch on the palm of his hand and folds the man's fingers over it the soldier draws his last breath and the pouch falls to the floor the Dead Man's face wears a peaceful expression the stone however the man's sin Stone which is rolled from the open pouch is as black as ever and Kim goes on a journey where he has to Grapple with all of this reclaim his memories and face the past man this game was intense and just because the focus was on characters and narrative doesn't mean the term-based combat is anything disne at they did a great job modernizing the battle system while keeping it turn-based and it's one of the best iterations of this style outside of something like Persona in my opinion the party in this game you can have five characters with two rows the back used primarily to protect your magic users with low defense the rows included this guard condition where you had Extra Protection for the back row based on the HP of the characters in the front row adding some complexity to your strategy in battle one of the main updates is the aim ring for the regular attacks now this isn't technically new as you had something like this from games like the Legend of draon for example but this game takes it to the next level and rewards your timing with bonuses to damage crit rates accuracy Etc now one of the really cool things about the immortal and Mortal characters is that the entire concept of the amnesiac Immortals becomes part of the skill system itself you can do what's called a skill link between the two and the immortal character Kim for example can learn skills from The Mortals allowing you to mix and match their skill sets this simultaneously reflects the Game's plot and makes for some awesome builds which is much needed in this game because it can be hard at times and all of this works together to provide this beautifully cohesive fun and deep experience I cannot recommend this game enough while I think this classic is absolutely worth playing as is I think the two big things I would love to see addressed if they were ever to remaster this game is the rate of the Random Encounters as well as the backtrack though they're sort of one and the same some of the dungeons can be confusing if you're going in for the first time and this is especially important for one particular optional dungeon called the temple of enlight where you can get some awesome weapons and a secret spell and because it's confusing the random encounter rate can basically make it so that you gain like 20 Levels by the time you leave so I suppose it depends on whether your a glass is half full or empty kind of person but things like this don't really impede the overall experience now it saddens me to say this is yet another one of those mistwalker gems that we will probably not see come back the good news is again it is backwards compatible on the Xbox series X so if you have a series X and you're interested go buy the physical copy of this game while you still can at a decent price I really wish this game would get the full remaster treatment with some quality of life updates and was released on the switch it's so hard to be stuck on a TV for games like this when that kind of flexibility would be incredible Nintendo Miss Walker make these games happen the Revival would generate so much hype and these games are way too good to be stuck where they are who knows we've seen Studios change their mind and I really hope sakaguchi can make it happen and surpris guys before I go I have a speed round for some honorable mentions that didn't make it in the list because they're technically available digitally on PlayStation or because I didn't play or beat them so here we go Star Ocean 3 this is one of my favorite PS2 games period and it's technically available on the PS5 but it totally needs a remaster bring it to the switch and it needs the same love that Star Ocean the Second Story are G Skies of Arcadia never got to play this one but I want to and oh my gosh look at those eBay prices Pokémon Coliseum XD Gale of Darkness both of these Pokémon Coliseum games could definitely use some quality of life updates and extra polish but I Loved These and would love to see them come back speaking of Pokémon I'd love to get me some gold silver Crystal back but done with some actual love and not just the diamond pearl remakes but you know I'd buy anything because I'm a sucker and I am the problem grandia 3 I never beat this one because I had a friend who let me borrow the first disc and I never got to play the rest but I loved it with one and two collection on the switch let's bring back the third all of the Fire Emblem games dragon card 1 and two anybody Chrono Trigger is this game technically available everywhere PC Mobile Nintendo DS yeah but it's not on the switch while chronocross89 longplay archive World of long plays look back gaming and L cry you guys are awesome and I'll have their channels in the description below

Channel: Retro Brandon

Views: 162,422

Keywords: rpgs, jrpgs, retro, radiata stories, final fantasy, dirge of cerberus, infinite undiscovery, eternal sonata, suikoden, blue dragon, valkyrie profile, fire emblem, the last story, lost odyssey, wii, ps2, xbox 360, video games, top 10

Id: 65fKie3RDkY

Length: 45min 3sec (2703 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 01 2023