Looking for a JRPG

Padinn

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So I've been looking into picking up a JRPG. I've read good things about Blue Dragon and Tales of Vesperia, as well as some other 360 games.

Blue Dragon is pretty cheap nowadays, anyone know where I can find a good deal on Tales? Also, does anyone have an opinion on either of these games? I love old RPGS like Final Fantasy/Earthbound with the turn based combat. Also, how long is Tales of Vesperia? I'm hoping for a 40+ hour game.

If you have a recommendation, let me know. I have all 3 consoles.
 
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I've played Tales of Vesperia, Blue Dragon, Infinite Undiscovery, Eternal Sonata and Lost Odyssey. Out of all of them, I enjoyed Lost Odyssey the most. The music, story and character's are great. The fighting system is probably the slowest of all the others, but if you want a good JRPG you won't mind much.

Tales of Vesperia is also a close second if LO is not your thing.
 
[quote name='mrniceguy8']I've played Tales of Vesperia, Blue Dragon, Infinite Undiscovery, Eternal Sonata and Lost Odyssey. Out of all of them, I enjoyed Lost Odyssey the most. The music, story and character's are great. The fighting system is probably the slowest of all the others, but if you want a good JRPG you won't mind much.

Tales of Vesperia is also a close second if LO is not your thing.[/quote]


Thanks for the input. I think I'm gonna go with Tales. After looking into the game some more I think it's right up my alley. Now to find a deal on it...
 
Tales would be my no. 1, followed closely by Lost Odyssey, then Eternal Sonata. Tales will be the most expensive right now, still full price. LO is down to $30 new everywhere, while Eternal Sonata varies from $17-$40 new depending on the store.

If you go with Tales and feel like getting the best, I highly recommend the LE version of the game for $70. Comes in a steelbook with extra art in the instruction manual and a soundtrack CD. I think Amazon still has some copies.

Another thing to note is Lost Odyssey is turn-based combat (feels a lot like FFX) while Tales is real-time combat. Eternal Sonata is a mixture of the two.
 
Eternal Sonata is a great game, can't say anything else that is on the 360 though since I haven't played them.

If you like JRPGs and have a PS2 laying around or a backwards compatible PS3, check out the Shin Megami Tensei series. Persona 3 Fes, Persona 4, and Nocturne are fan faviroties
 
[quote name='Tom Ato']Might I heavily recommend Valkyria Chronicles for the PS3? The finest RPG on the current consoles. Although it is more of a strategy RPG, here's a decent gameplay video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJSlEfTGYqg&feature=related

Also Persona 4 on the PS2 is great.[/quote]
I played the demo for Chronicles yesterday and while I enjoyed the combat, it gave me absolutely no inclination about what the game is about. How is the story in Tales/Chronicles?

Also, in Chronicles, is there a "game world" to explore, or is it simply progress from one battle to the next? The demo was very sparse.
 
I grabbed Chronicles, and while it's fun, I don't think it's really what I was looking for. That said, I played it for about 7 hours straight, so I'm enjoying it. I might try picking up a more traditional RPG though. I know it seems to get shat on a lot these days, but I really love RPGs like FF10. I enjoy the turn based combat, fancy graphics, and deep, if somewhat corny, story. Lost Oddysey was like 25 bucks used, so I'm thinking that will be it. Hell I might just pick up FF10 and play through it again.
 
[quote name='FloodsAreUponUS']360 RPGs go like this.

ToV>LO>TLR>>>>>>>>>>ES>>>>>>>>>BD[/quote]

I would say:
ToV>LO>ES>>>>>>>>>>>IU/BD>>>>>>TLR; mainly because TLR is nearly unplayable unless you install it to the HD, even then it doesn't run smoothly.

The Tales story is a little cliche but it begins with Yuri, the thief/troublemaker with a slightly dark sense of justice, trying to restore working water to the poor section of the capital city he lives in when someone takes the aqua blastia, one of many crystals that power most of the machines in the world. After he is arrested for breaking into the house of a rich person who either has or knows where the crystal is, he escapes the castle with Estelle, a girl who is being chased by the castle guards.

Game has an anime style and what's cool about the Tales series (this is my first one outside of playing Tales of Symphonia on the Gamecube for 4 hours once) is during the game you'll be prompted to hit the back button to view a skit that expands on the story. If you view all of the skits in the game, you get an achievement.

If you look under the E3 2008 section of the XBox Live Marketplace under game videos, you can find a good Tales of Vesperia trailer.
 
TLR runs fine off a hdd. No worse then any other UE3 game.
It just slows down when you have way to many enemy combat chains.

Its no worse then some RPGs.

The story/VA in ES makes me want to punch babies.
TLR is a fine game if not marred by the fact they had to use the worst engine ever in the unreal engine 3.

IU is so bad it does not even make the list.
 
[quote name='Padinn']I played the demo for Chronicles yesterday and while I enjoyed the combat, it gave me absolutely no inclination about what the game is about. How is the story in Tales/Chronicles?

Also, in Chronicles, is there a "game world" to explore, or is it simply progress from one battle to the next? The demo was very sparse.[/quote]
Valkyria Chronicles is a strategy RPG, so there's no playable game world. You move from chapter to chapter, with each chapter containing a few cutscenes and a battle or two. Outside of battle, you're limited to basically choosing who will be on your team, and how you want to customize/improve your team. If you've ever played Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy Tactics, or other SRPGs you should be familiar with the setup.

The unique thing about VC, though, is its battle system. During battle, you and the enemy take turns ordering your units around on each of your respective turns, so it's a regular turn-based SRPG system like that, but as soon as you actually select one of your units to control, the game switches to a real-time behind-the-back camera view, and you're given full control over that character until that character runs out of "Action Points" -- that is, until you've reached a certain limit of movement. During this time, you'll basically be able to do whatever you want, but you can only fire at enemies once during that movement.

You can also use characters more than once per turn. Each turn you get a number of "Command Points". Its costs 1 CP to be able to control most units, though you could, say, spend 3 CP on one unit on one turn to control that unit three times on that one turn (and you can attack with them each time), though they'll start off with fewer Action Points each subsequent time you use them on one particular turn.

And of course there is the gamut of special abilities and the like that individual characters or individual weapons will have.

As for the story, I haven't finished the game yet, but from what I've seen, it's not going to blow your socks off, but the story definitely has a strong foundation that gives you a will and a reason to fight. Where I am in the game right now things are starting to change a bit, and the story may start heading in a slightly different direction, but I won't say anything more than that (namely because I still don't know exactly what's coming; I'm only about a third of the way through, heh).

If you want a quick summarization of the plot: "It's a fantasy world that basically has WWII technology. The continent Europa is divided into three countries, and the two largest countries are currently at war. When one of the two countries invades the third (small and neutral) country (your homeland), you join the militia, become the leader of a squad, and are tasked with defending it." There's more detail to it than that, and there are other themes such as romance, and racism is touched upon, too. What I wrote above is definitely not all there is to the story.

And I realize you've already played the game, Padinn, so you should be familiar with the battle system, but I tried to write this as a general overview of the game, so I included the parts about the battle system anyway.

As for myself, I truly do wholeheartedly recommend Valkyria Chronicles.
 
[quote name='Josh7289']Valkyria Chronicles is a strategy RPG, so there's no playable game world. You move from chapter to chapter, with each chapter containing a few cutscenes and a battle or two. Outside of battle, you're limited to basically choosing who will be on your team, and how you want to customize/improve your team. If you've ever played Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy Tactics, or other SRPGs you should be familiar with the setup.

The unique thing about VC, though, is its battle system. During battle, you and the enemy take turns ordering your units around on each of your respective turns, so it's a regular turn-based SRPG system like that, but as soon as you actually select one of your units to control, the game switches to a real-time behind-the-back camera view, and you're given full control over that character until that character runs out of "Action Points" -- that is, until you've reached a certain limit of movement. During this time, you'll basically be able to do whatever you want, but you can only fire at enemies once during that movement.

You can also use characters more than once per turn. Each turn you get a number of "Command Points". Its costs 1 CP to be able to control most units, though you could, say, spend 3 CP on one unit on one turn to control that unit three times on that one turn (and you can attack with them each time), though they'll start off with fewer Action Points each subsequent time you use them on one particular turn.

And of course there is the gamut of special abilities and the like that individual characters or individual weapons will have.

As for the story, I haven't finished the game yet, but from what I've seen, it's not going to blow your socks off, but the story definitely has a strong foundation that gives you a will and a reason to fight. Where I am in the game right now things are starting to change a bit, and the story may start heading in a slightly different direction, but I won't say anything more than that (namely because I still don't know exactly what's coming; I'm only about a third of the way through, heh).

If you want a quick summarization of the plot: "It's a fantasy world that basically has WWII technology. The continent Europa is divided into three countries, and the two largest countries are currently at war. When one of the two countries invades the third (small and neutral) country (your homeland), you join the militia, become the leader of a squad, and are tasked with defending it." There's more detail to it than that, and there are other themes such as romance, and racism is touched upon, too. What I wrote above is definitely not all there is to the story.

And I realize you've already played the game, Padinn, so you should be familiar with the battle system, but I tried to write this as a general overview of the game, so I included the parts about the battle system anyway.

As for myself, I truly do wholeheartedly recommend Valkyria Chronicles.[/quote]

Yup, I went ahead and bought it. It's fun :) I'm still looking for a good more traditional FF10 type RPG. I'm trying out demos of Tales, Blue Dragon, and Sonata today.

Anyone know anything about the new Star Ocean game coming out? Would that be the type of game I'm looking for?
 
Star Ocean is action-based like Tales.

Honestly, I think you should try out Lost Odyssey. I haven't played it, but its the closest thing to FFX's style (traditional) on the current gen consoles. (especially since Lost Odyssey is Mistwalker's Final Fantasy, just like Blue Dragon is Mistwalker's Dragon Quest)

And yeah, Valkryia Chronicles is fun. That's a good first impression.

It will grow on you, though. :p
 
I've yet to play LO, but I'm on my third go for ES (two on XB360, this time on PS3) and BD.

BD is terrible. I just could not find anything really redeemable about it. However, ES is excellent. I plan on getting Valkyria after I go through LO.
 
[quote name='Treehouse Gamer']I've yet to play LO, but I'm on my third go for ES (two on XB360, this time on PS3) and BD.

BD is terrible. I just could not find anything really redeemable about it. However, ES is excellent. I plan on getting Valkyria after I go through LO.[/quote]

If you like FF X you will like LO. Also LO is $30 new/$25 used now.
 
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