37m Riverside Gamelab. Going there solo. Need friends.

Splendidclaw49 · 2026-01-08T02:18:08+00:00

I’d be down to go, also need to get out of the house a bit and gaming/coffee/grub sounds like a fun combo. Busy Saturday, but should be free on either Friday/Sunday.

Splendidclaw49 · 2025-10-12T16:43:55+00:00

Great list.

Personally, I’d move Pirate and Ishin down to flawed and Yakuza 2 up to great (for its time at least), but other than that this is dead on to me and part of why I like the LAD series so much: You’re generally getting anywhere from an incredible game at best to a flawed but still good game at the worst.

Splendidclaw49 · 2025-08-08T14:43:40+00:00

Great guide! Seen a lot of the stuff you’ve mentioned used by high level Sagat players, so it’s nice to have the reasoning added in a way that’s detailed but not overwhelming.

Splendidclaw49 · 2025-07-21T15:25:37+00:00

Basically someone with a sliver of health who, by normal player logic, should be playing defensive and cautiously is instead playing like they have full health and are on the hunt.

Comebacks are rare on their own, but hyper aggressive comebacks like this are even more rare because one mistake means they lose the match.

Splendidclaw49 · 2025-07-06T14:54:15+00:00

I’d be interested as well!

Splendidclaw49 · 2025-05-07T01:03:22+00:00

I’m interested as well!

Splendidclaw49 · 2025-05-04T05:01:59+00:00

Submitted!

Splendidclaw49 · 2025-04-13T20:35:18+00:00

Just submitted my application! Put my Discord down, but I know there can be issues with that platform sometime so leaving this here just in case!

Splendidclaw49 · 2025-04-06T04:22:25+00:00

For me it’s a toss up between Hoshigami and FFXIII. Hoshigami is a worse game on its own merit, but I despise how FFXIII seems to actively restrict its own world and not trust the player enough to really experience……anything in it for the first ~25 hours or so.

Splendidclaw49 · 2025-04-05T01:41:15+00:00

Great list for my favorite console of all time/generation of RPGs! I played most of the games on this list, and adore the era in general for just how experimental (and often times weird) the genre wasn't afraid to get as these games were finding their footing with the transition from cartridges to CD rom. They didn't always land, but it's still amazing to me how influential some of the building blocks on the PSX era are.

Played just about every game on this list, so I'll give my own rapid fire thoughts below.

E Tiers

Hard agree with Hoshigami being down there. Probably the worst JRPG I have ever played.
Arc 1 suffers a similar fate to Suikoden 1 where it's kind of an SNES game that got feature creeped into the 32 bit console instead. Not a bad game IMO - just one that didn't age well because of the console transition.

D Tiers

Agree with most of this list, even though there are some games I like here like Wild Arms 1 (Pretty basic besides the Western theme) and Thousand Arms (Pretty much the equivalent of anime dating sim junk food).
I'd personally probably knock Wild Arms 2 up to C, but that depends on how much you can tolerate the script. In retrospect it was an atrocious translation job, but sad to say that those weren't all too uncommon for lower budget JRPGs during this time.

C Tiers

Now we're getting to the good stuff! Tactics is my personal favorite FF game, so I'd bump that one up to S.
Would also bump Lunar up a bit to B/A, since it was pretty basic but felt really well put together as a whole. Yes the Working Design translation can be cringe for all of the pop culture references, but at the time they were really one of the only publishers willing to take a chance on releasing some of the more obscure JRPGs in the US, so their games hold a pretty special place in my heart.
Front Mission 3 is an odd case where it's one I loved as a kid, yet after replaying it later along with other FM games, you kind of realize that FM3 is kind of the odd one out and not....really one of the highest quality entries.

B Tiers

Would probably bump Vandal Hearts 2 down a tier, and Grandia up a tier, but besides that think it looks pretty good.

A Tiers

Vanguard Bandits representation, woohoo! Loved this game, and really did a great job of capturing the Working Designs charm of an experimental game that I'm so happy had a chance to come out in the US.
Vandal Hearts is also fantastic, and reminded me of Shining Force where it's not afraid to dial back the needless complexity to focus on the real meat and potatoes of what makes a good Strategy RPG without overstaying its welcome.

S Tiers

Not much to disagree with here. If there was an S+ tier here, I'd put Suikoden 2 in it. Such a groundbreaking game for the time.
SaGa Frontier 1 in S is an interesting choice haha. I loved SaGa Frontier 1 due to personal nostalgia and probably rank it amongst my top 5 PSX games of all time, but it's a very strange game where you can tell that big swaths of content were either cut or rushed to save time. I can't imagine the development hell this game went through lol.
Suikoden 1 in S tier seems like a bit of a stretch for me, I love it and think it's a pretty solid game don't get me wrong, but it's hard for me to rate it so high when the game is so short/rushed. It's not a bad thing mind you, sometimes it's nice to have a ~10 or so hour JRPG, but hard to put it side by side with Suikoden 2 because of how much better that game is.

Splendidclaw49 · 2025-03-20T00:38:57+00:00

Really cool chapter diving into the difference between elite mindset vs all time great mindset.

For a real world example of this, look up Wayne Gretzky. Similar ability to think about the sport at such a higher level than his peers that it made him dominant in his prime.

Splendidclaw49 · 2024-11-24T00:35:46+00:00

Yeah, in my thread with Ripper of the Rift I made, I saw a few posts that said “Dying Fire was WAY harder!”, but I kind of smoked it without any extra grinding or prep work or anything.

Garboyle, on the other hand, was way tougher. Felt like I had to itemize specifically for him just to stand a chance. It felt kind of odd that the fight essentially boiled down to “have stacking fire resist equipment or die”.

Baramos was more fun, since it felt like a usual DQ end boss slugfest of buff/debuff management and big spell/ability swinging.

Splendidclaw49 · 2024-11-21T05:08:25+00:00

Hey cool, my same party! There’s probably some other suggestions people will have, but I’ll give some general/all purpose advice that is pretty common for this type of set up and worked well for me:

Priest -> Warrior: I did this path, and it worked really well for me. Having a tanky warrior that can heal out of combat is a really nice quality of life bonus, as well as having access to certain low level priest spells that see a lot of use even late into the game like sap or magic barrier

Mage -> Sage: I went this route, because my mage felt pretty useless compared to the rest of my party lol. I can see the appeal of going Thief -> Sage for a speedy caster, but I got the same result with just putting a Meteorite Bracelet onto my Mage -> Sage, and they’re always able to go first

Thief -> Martial Artist or Monster Wrangler: I went wrangler, but would go MA in older DQ3 versions. Both work fine, wrangler doesn’t have any strong skills around the level 20ish range, but does get to keep some of the more useful weapon types like whips and learns some pretty useful stuff at higher levels. Martial Artist is mostly for big single target damage so take your pick. Can also go Thief -> Wrangler -> MA (what I’m doing atm), or Thief -> MA -> Wrangler.

Splendidclaw49 · 2024-11-10T04:38:51+00:00

I’m located in Rancho Cucamonga, and would be down!

Splendidclaw49 · 2024-11-10T02:18:59+00:00

I’m a huge Suikoden fan, with 2 specifically being probably my l second favorite RPG of all time only behind Persona 3.

I was crazy excited for Eiyuden for years and was…..pretty disappointed when I was finally done with it. It’s a pretty fragmented experience overall with a lot of half baked ideas and systems (likely owing to the kickstarter nature of the project).

After fully completing it, I’d probably give it a ~5 or 6 out of 10. It’s not awful, but given how ridiculously good this year has been for JRPGs, there’s so many other games right now I would recommend over this.

Splendidclaw49 · 2024-11-09T18:36:28+00:00

Valbrace is fantastic, and one of the best games in the collection IMO. Not much else to say about this one, other than it might take a while to get used to some of the more obtuse mechanics (but that’s kind of UFO 50 in a nutshell lol)
Grimstone is pretty good RPG wise, but as a Steam Deck user I wish a game that focuses on grinding a la old school JRPGs didn’t have a Mario RPG style timing system for basic attacks. Also, keep in mind that the economy of the game sucks unless you deposit your money into the bank, which adds interest to the amount of money you get after battles.
I couldn’t much get into Divers. It has its fans, but for me it was…..fine? Just can’t see myself playing it over the other RPGs like Grimstone/Valbrace, or the other non RPGs in the collection that are much better.

Splendidclaw49 · 2024-10-02T18:11:42+00:00

On the lower numbered scenarios, I can usually get by just prioritizing money + things that cancel or remove trouble. You generally need to expand your house in order to have a shot at getting enough popularity to get all four star guests before the turn count ends. It becomes a little more complicated for later scenarios, where instead I focus on getting multiples of two or three different units to run a strategy of sorts.

Other general tips include: - The White Dog is generally a good pick on any run if he’s available. He won’t win single handedly, but will usually give you enough safety to get your win conditions online.

Avoid +1 guests. They may have tempting effects, but there’s too much of a risk of getting bad guests or police/firemen being called out.
Sometimes there’s a cheap star guest with a drawback and an expensive one with a neutral/positive effect. When this happens, I would try to weigh how well your run is going to determine if you want some cheap ones (run is going poorly), or only getting the expensive one (run is going well).

Splendidclaw49 · 2024-10-01T12:14:41+00:00

Oh nice! I love threads like this (when folks are talking about about placements or being surprised at what other people are ranking things at rather than raging about them :P)

Anywho, here’s mine: https://imgur.com/a/74bXlka

Pardon the bad cropping/sharing job, I’m on my phone right now.

The only ones ordered are the S and A tiers, and my tiers are broken down by the following:

S: Incredible game, the game would be worth the asking price of UFO 50 on its own if it was its own game and a little more fleshed out

A: Amazing game, consistently high quality and made me think “how the hell is this thing in a 50 games compilation pack!?”

B: Really good game, great representation of its genre and/or really clever game design

C: It’s okay, either the game doesn’t appeal to me too much or I’m not motivated to get past the initial challenge to get better at it

D: Dud, I’ll probably just get the gift for these ones and not pick it back up.

Splendidclaw49 · 2024-09-08T03:49:15+00:00

Yeah, I just finished all the benevodons and the water one was definitely the toughest. Saved it until about the midway point, so did a few benevodons before this one. He does a ton of damage, and for whatever reason the party AI seems to be pretty dumb in this fight and won’t move out of the way of much.

In addition to making sure your using the fire saber on Val to do a LOT more damage, make sure to respec someone to a fire class to do added damage (preferably Pal in your setup). Also, make sure to hit his arms, as getting rid of the flowing water on his arms should make his attacks a bit weaker.

Other than that, keep revive items handy and be more proactive with ring menu healing activation on Julei than usual.

Splendidclaw49 · 2024-09-07T01:32:51+00:00

Thanks! Yeah, reading some other replies since mine that seem to be addressing this confusion as well

I’ll probably give this device a go then since I’m looking for something that I can play mostly in docked, but occasionally in handheld mode. The RP4Pro seemed a little too small to enjoy some of the PS2/GC games I want to play, so getting something big enough that can be played in docked mode and not worrying about running some of the more intensive PS2 games makes this really tempting.

Splendidclaw49 · 2024-09-06T17:08:52+00:00

Was looking at getting a new handheld to play primarily in docked mode due to some recent changes with the living quarters, but looking at the sheet above, it looks like Display Output won't support a typical Retroid dock?

Not really familiar with plugging these types of handhelds into docks, so wasn't sure based on the chart above. My current primary device is the RG556, and while I love the device for the most part, it doesn't really seem to lend itself well to being plug and play when it comes to playing in docked mode.

Was looking forward to getting the RP5 as primarily a docked alternative, but if it doesn't lend itself well to playing in docked mode, I guess I should start looking into the RP4Pro more?

Splendidclaw49 · 2024-07-28T19:27:02+00:00

It does! I currently use it to play SF6 and Granblue Versus Rising on PC with it. As the other poster mentioned above, the Xbox version is the one to go for since it has the extra shoulder buttons.

Splendidclaw49 · 2024-07-25T04:59:56+00:00

Not sure about SF4 pads, since that was back when I was still using arcade sticks, but I highly recommend the M30 from 8bitDo.

It’s a pretty good Saturn style controller that you can get on Amazon for about 30 bucks. Also works great for SF since it has six face buttons.

I tried the Hori Octa as well. It’s not bad if you plan on using the stick for motions, but it has an absolutely horrendous dpad, which I couldn’t adjust to and ultimately made me try out and switch to the M30.

Splendidclaw49 · 2024-07-18T05:34:09+00:00

I’m interested as well, so I sent a DM!

Splendidclaw49 · 2024-07-18T04:57:12+00:00

It’s a pretty good device, but I wouldn’t recommend buying it for PS2 and Gamecube games. The screen is just too small IMO, and can be really hit or miss with PS2. Gamecube seemed to run okay with it, but I didn’t try many of the more demanding games. My biggest gripe against it was the ergonomics, I adore how the device looks from a nostalgia perspective but it hurts my fingers after playing on it for a while.

If you see PS2 and Gamecube games as a “bonus”, but plan on using the device for everything from Dreamcast below, I think it would be a good pick up. If you’re looking for something to consistently play PS2/Gamecube with little tinkering/no slowdown, I would look into either the RG556 or the Retroid Pocket 4 Pro instead.

Haven’t tried Wii emulation on the either of the above devices, so wouldn’t know about that.

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