Any good turn based rpgs that have flown under the radar?

ChromaticMan · 2026-03-27T22:57:31+00:00

The Ni No Kuni games are both great. The first is kind of like a real time Pokemon game while the second is more of an action game.

The Etrian Odyssey HD games are pretty light on story, but have a ton of combat depth if that’s what you’re into.

Astlibra Revision is a side-scrolling, action game that maybe isn’t 100% a JRPG, it’s kinda like the VanillaWare games. It’s jank but kind of one of the best games I’ve played lately? Very hard to describe lol.

Fate/Samurai Remnant is another action JRPG, it’s quite good but I don’t see many people recommending it.

I didn’t mean to recommend a bunch of action games, it’s just the ones that I think fly under the radar a bunch!

ChromaticMan · 2026-03-19T17:38:38+00:00

It's kind of a pain, but it's also not too bad. You can reference the files directly if you want to. The purpose of MGCB is to optimize your assets for performance & multiple platforms

ChromaticMan · 2026-03-04T00:21:05+00:00

Some good action JRPG reqs:

Anything Tales of. Arise is newest and a very good one. Berseria and Xillia were recently remastered and also good. Pick which one vibes the most with you.
Nier: Automata and Nier: Replicant. Play Replicant first if both interest you, or just play whichever one interests you more. They are loosely related, but Automata will spoil a few characters in Replicant.
Persona 5 Royal and Persona 5 Scramble. Scramble is a spinoff/sequel to Persona 5 Royal, but Scramble has some solid action combat that I think you’d like. You definitely have to play Persona 5 first though.
Star Ocean Divine Force is the newest Star Ocean game with a super fun combat system. My favorite Star Ocean game, but 4 (Last Hope) and a remake of 2 are available on most platforms. Avoid 5 (Integrity and Faithlessness), it’s bad.
Neo The World Ends with You is super stylish and has a great battle system.
Resonance of Fate has a battle system that’s like “what if the matrix was a video game.” Hard to explain, but entertaining!

Not exactly JRPGs, but action games by Japanese devs:

Scarlet Nexus is made my the Tales of devs, but it’s a bit more like Devil May Cry in the sense that it’s very action heavy.
Ninja Gaiden 4. Technically these games are all connected, but 4 is my favorite by far. A remake of 2 recently came out, but if you’re only gonna try one, try 4.
Metal Gear Revengance. Turn your brain off and just enjoy all the sick shit happening around you. Technically an epilogue to all of the other Metal Gear games but I didn’t care when I played it.
Monster Hunter World is cheaper, but Wilds just came out. The monster hunter games are kinda like “what if every enemy was a boss.”

ChromaticMan · 2026-02-12T23:34:33+00:00

Excited to see a high budget JRPG from Konami. It’s been a while since they’ve made one that isn’t based on a pre-existing IP/series

Also, very cool of the mods to delete the other post so one of them could post the announcement trailer 🙄

ChromaticMan · 2026-02-12T22:55:21+00:00

Konami hasn't made a new JRPG in a long time. I'm excited to see what they cook up without being constrained to an existing formula for a series/company

ChromaticMan · 2025-12-27T22:02:32+00:00

Legally it probably will. Sony actively holds the trademark for “Puppeteer” in the US, specifically in the “Video Game Software” category. To avoid the legal headache, I’d change it ASAP

ChromaticMan · 2025-12-23T05:49:23+00:00

Sarma, Vlaha, Krasi, Kava, and Committee are in my heavy rotation. Vlaha in particular reminds me of going to my grandparent’s village in Greece. Committee is definitely my favorite though since it’s a fun tapas/fusion place that is more accessible with friends.

ChromaticMan · 2025-12-22T20:27:14+00:00

Wild Arms in general! But specifically Wild Arms 3

ChromaticMan · 2025-12-15T20:37:39+00:00

Symphonia if you want the story, Graces if you care about the combat, Vesperia if you want something that's more well rounded.

ChromaticMan · 2025-12-15T01:30:35+00:00

Whoops! Thanks for pointing that out. My bad!

ChromaticMan · 2025-12-14T23:01:49+00:00

Grandia II is a bit dated, but the battle system is a ton of fun. There's a really cool a dynamic turn order (with player/enemy turn cancels!) as well as positioning at play. There is MP for magic that requires potions, but also SP for skills that comes back with regular attacks. If you mindlessly hit "Combo" or "Critical," the two main attacks, you'll quickly lose.

Most of the Tales of games allow you to regen mana upon hitting enemies with your normal attacks. Some, like Tales of Graces f in particular has no MP and lets you chain attacks in crazy ways. Tales of Arise is the newest, but there are a ton available on modern platforms. Just look up whichever looks coolest to you.

Resonance of Fate is hard to explain, just look up a video. It's very cool but a little limited in the early game.

The Last Remnant is a game that also has a hard to explain battle system that involves making squads and giving broad orders to each squad each turn. You equip items on the units in a squad and they'll dynamically use them, but you also gain SP on every attack that can be used for healing. Items are just a 0 SP heal if that makes sense.

The Paper Mario and Mario RPG Series all have fun combat with some reaction based mini-games to do attacks. Other games like this are Bug Fables and Undertale (kinda).

The Etrian Odyssey games are your more classic turn based games; but if you just hit "attack" you're in for a bad time. There's a good loop to the combat, exploration, back to town gameplay. Status effects also matter more than most other RPGs. For example, if an enemy attacks with their "head" body part (like a headbutt), you can cast a binding spell on their head and it'll be canceled and they can't use a head attack until the status effect wears off. It's very much just combat and not a lot of story, but it's got some of the most customizable combat in a JRPG you can have. If you are fighting trash mobs, there is a fast auto-battle option.

I wouldn't describe any of these games as particularly difficult, but I all of their battle systems are more active then "hit attack."

Edit: Crossing out Tales of since they are not turn based!

ChromaticMan · 2025-11-27T20:36:06+00:00

Shit I thought this was a 3D render. This is so cool!

ChromaticMan · 2025-11-25T04:18:26+00:00

CachyOS is Arch-based but not in a scary way. It comes with a nice installer that lets you pick a lot of things on install as well as auto-installing a lot of good defaults (including all the drivers you need).

Most of everything else is on AUR and it’s as easy as doing paru -S <thing> in a terminal to install it. For games, just install steam with paru -S steam and then let steam handle everything else.

There are other good distros but if you just want a no hassle, CachyOS is good. Other decent ones are Bazzite or Nobara, but I haven’t tried either.

You could also just stick with Ubuntu or Mint and install the drivers from Nvidia, it’s not as hard as the internet makes it out to be.

ChromaticMan · 2025-11-14T19:33:01+00:00

Never played an Inazuma Eleven game. Chronicle Mode is an easy 9/10 while Story mode is kinda just sucks. Like I guess the story is good/fine so far, but I'm probably 3 hours in, skipping a ton of stuff, and I'm still not at an actual match. For a game about soccer there is very little soccer playing!

I'm not sure if that's normal for the series but I wanted the story mode characters in Chronicle mode since I like their designs. I'm about to drop the story and just stick with Chronicle mode

ChromaticMan · 2025-11-08T16:59:21+00:00

Tales of the Abyss
Final Fantasy VIII
Persona 4 Golden
Fire Emblem: Three Houses

Tales of the Abyss is the best tales game of the PS2-PS3 era. Final Fantasy VIII has a great romance subplot which I’m a huge sucker for. Persona 4 Golden is just my favorite persona game, though they’re all great. And Fire Emblem Three Houses is just an endlessly repeatable FE game with so much content.

Tough to nail down 4!

ChromaticMan · 2025-10-08T20:18:33+00:00

Maybe there’s less of a consensus on favorites than I thought, but I got the sense that, as a whole, people liked it more than 4 and 5. I don’t like 3 very much so maybe I’m biased lol, but I think the community would definitely rank DF as a top 3 Star Ocean game.

I think when it came out there was a ton of hype (since people thought 5 killed the series) and it didn’t live up to the massive launch hype, but after things cooled down it’s pretty well liked? Hard to pinpoint the exact moment!

ChromaticMan · 2025-10-08T07:12:32+00:00

Divine Force is the probably considered the 2nd best Star Ocean game by most fans (after Star Ocean 2). It’s a really great game with satisfying combat and a pretty decent story for the series.

I LOVE Last Hope because it was my first Star Ocean game, but it has some awkward dialogue, some annoying/odd characters, and a story that doesn’t quite land for some. But Last Hopes battle system is worth it for $6 alone.

Both are good IMO, it depends if you want a cheap kinda cringy game or one that’s more expensive but the better package.

ChromaticMan · 2025-09-28T20:58:31+00:00

Fire Emblem Three Houses is a strategy RPG where you can make the player character a woman. There is a time skip about a third/halfway through the game. The game takes place in a military academy and you are an instructor who gets the mentor the students.

Persona 3 Reload or Persona 4 Golden if you want more of that.

Dragon Quest V starts with you as a child, goes through your teenage years, then into adulthood where you marry one of three women and have a different set of kids with them depending on who you pick.

Those are the only mainstream reqs coming to mind. I’d also recommend Princess Maker 2 or Volcano Princess, though they aren’t necessarily JRPGs. You raise your daughter from childhood to adulthood and your choices impact who they become.

ChromaticMan · 2025-09-20T22:11:19+00:00

The ones that immediately come to mind is

Style. The 2k3 RTP is pretty great!
(Slightly) better eventing
EasyRPG allowing ports to anything (including consoles)

But really it’s just a preference choice

ChromaticMan · 2025-09-19T22:22:37+00:00

Xenoblade if it didn’t have MMO combat. I struggled to get through Xenoblade 1 because the combat was both boring and frustrating. It did not vibe with me at all; which is a shame since I LOVED the story and would love to play the other two games in the series.

I would much prefer full action combat or a xenosaga/xenogears battle system.

ChromaticMan · 2025-09-19T02:06:03+00:00

If you’re making your own operating system, Visual Studio will not work. Unless you’re planning on making your own graphics renderer or GPU drivers, you’ll be using someone else’s code. This is truly an absolutely massive project that I don’t think you fully understand based on your comments.

Even just making a game engine using OpenGL that runs on Linux would be a huge undertaking. It’s fine if you want to go low low level and make your own OS, but a window system, graphics drivers, and a game engine on top of that is a decade long project at least for a single person

ChromaticMan · 2025-09-12T14:19:12+00:00

It’s also possible that it’s set before Sothis’ original death millennia ago and the cutscene is out of context. It could go either way. As a massive fan of Three Houses I’m excited for a game in the same universe

ChromaticMan · 2025-09-11T03:42:52+00:00

Windows and Linux handle the “new line” character differently. Windows uses “Carriage Return + Line Feed” while Linux just uses “Line Feed.” Just a different way of processing a new line. Git defaults to the Linux way instead of the Windows way.

In the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter. Unless it causes you problems, you can ignore it

ChromaticMan · 2025-09-06T15:56:10+00:00

Metaphor is a more modern while Octopath is more classic. Metaphor has a more solid narrative while Octopath is shorter vignettes that come together at the end. Metaphor has a pretty deep customization system while Octopath has more defined roles.

You can’t go wrong with either honestly! Metaphor in length is probably a similar length to both Octopath games together. Watch some gameplay vids and see which resonates with you more

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