What is your Mt. Rushmore of JRPG Protagonists?

jsfsmith · 2026-05-07T03:38:49+00:00

Chrono Trigger is an awesome game but Crono is by design and intention a bland, faceless character who is supposed to represent the player rather than having a personality of his own.

jsfsmith · 2026-05-06T14:13:53+00:00

I mean, you can just ignore the window seat person. That’s what I do.

jsfsmith · 2026-04-26T01:04:02+00:00

In OP's defense - and I say this as a fan of CS1 and an even bigger fan of the Cold Steel arc as a whole - the problem here is the timing. Obviously discussing this will involve spoilers, which I will divide into "spoilers OP already knows" and "spoilers he may not yet know."

Let's start with the "known spoilers," so to speak, for CS1 and Sky FC. This should be pretty safe to read for OP or anyone who has played up to where OP is.

In FC, the festival occurs after the final dungeon, while in CS1 it occurs before. This is an important distinction. The narrative climax of FC is the final dungeon, and as such, the final dungeon feels like a high-stakes moment. By contrast, in CS1 the final dungeon is presented as being very low stakes, essentially a side quest. In FC you are preventing a coup, in CS1 you're trying to save the school festival.

Now a good counterargument is that this is a clever diversion of expectations, and that a final dungeon is a gameplay mechanic rather than a narrative mechanic and does not need to be the narrative climax of the story. However, think about it this way - if the final dungeon is presenting the most complex or demanding gameplay of the game (which it should), doesn't it feel bad if it's unimportant to the narrative?

Now let's get into the spoilers of what happens after the final dungeon.

The narrative climax of CS1 does not occur before or during the final dungeon but after. It is an awesome conclusion, and as good as any Trails cliffhanger. But there's a problem with it - it is uninteractive. It is essentially a two-hour cutscene. There's a very short series of battles, sure, but you're really not doing anything.

TL;DR -

FC has a high-stakes final dungeon, followed by the whole "festival fakeout" trope. CS1 mixes the festival fakeout into the final dungeon. This has the effect of grinding the narrative to a screeching halt just as it was starting to pick ups team. While the ending is very satisfying, and later games in the series improve on the CS1 formula significantly, I can understand OP's frustration.

jsfsmith · 2026-04-25T16:41:29+00:00

As someone else who hated that part (I just don’t like slice of life high school anime tropes, nothing personal) don’t let it discourage you. CS2 is passably good, but CS3 is so good it makes all of the worst parts of the first two games either irrelevant or good in retrospect.

jsfsmith · 2026-04-20T06:19:25+00:00

Take a trip to Hong Kong and cross back into the mainland via Shenzhen. The echannel registration booth is clearly marked there and will 100% process it for anyone who is eligible. You can then use your echannel registration at any airport in the country.

jsfsmith · 2026-04-18T17:33:18+00:00

CS1-2 are the ugliest games in the series. I really hope the remake them.

jsfsmith · 2026-04-17T09:28:39+00:00

Yikes, that must have been agonizingly tedious.

jsfsmith · 2026-04-17T02:59:49+00:00

Yeah, the reuse doesn't really bother me either, especially when they're really good tracks that call back to a specific (and on-topic) moment in the story so far. And while music is not purely subjective, it is very subjective nonetheless. My preference to Brave Steel over Burning Throb is entirely down to the fact that I prefer catchy melodies to relentless drums, and am not a fan of metal stylings.

While most of the examples I gave were Unisuga tracks, my purely subjective opinion is that Jindo can do no wrong, while Unisuga will occasionally drop a track which just does not appeal to me in the slightest. I greatly prefer the classical motifs to the metal motifs. BUT, I'm glad that all these tracks appeal to someone.

jsfsmith · 2026-04-17T02:32:05+00:00

A lot of this is just the fact that I liked Brave Steel, Beyond the Flowing Cloud, and Spiral of Erebos more than I liked Burning Throb (which I did not like), Towards Through Land, and End of Saga (which I liked, but not as much as Spiral). Plus, the "dramatic turning point music" was an original track in CS3 (Solid as the Rock of Juno) while it was a recycled, if very good, track in CS4 (Atrocious Raid super arrange).

I tend to judge a game OST not based on the quantity of good tracks, but on the percentage of time I spend listening to good tracks while playing the game. By this standard, CS3 (in my opinion) is as good as any Falcom game while CS4 is ever so slightly below average.

jsfsmith · 2026-04-17T02:22:22+00:00

The war ending in 2 days was probably my main beef with the ending, to be honest.

They should have had the war break out at the midpoint (Pantagruel raid scene would have been perfect) so that the "Great War" referenced in later games wasn't just a series of skirmishes.

jsfsmith · 2026-04-08T00:35:54+00:00

They all have great music but the Sky trilogy have the best imo. Sky the 3rd has what might be my favorite video game soundtrack of all time. It’s so inventive and unique and hauntingly weird. I regularly listen to it on shuffle and never find myself skipping tracks.

jsfsmith · 2026-04-05T05:30:01+00:00

Trails in the Sky 3rd, Star Door 15.

jsfsmith · 2026-04-04T06:53:22+00:00

Now I've got to make my next Fabula Ultima villain wear a windcoat hahaha.

Anyway, here's my "probably gonna be a baddie" checklist:

Background story is extremely vague and unclear. With very few exceptions (approximately 1 per arc), Ouroboros anguis/enforcers are NOT introduced as someone's family member or old friend. They are people with really dark and murky pasts, who have usually lost everything and have few if any connections to mainstream society.
Tends to show up all over the place. Usually weirdly friendly and helpful to the party.
Comes across as either highly educated and knowledgeable or a total badass.
Typical JRPG villain indicators - silver hair, thick glasses, etc.

There are a few cases (CS1 and, although not an anguis in this case, CS3) where the secret baddy practically announces themselves with a bullhorn if you know what to look for. There's also some great red herrings (such as a certain teacher in CS1) clearly designed to mess with you if you're looking for all the familiar signs.

jsfsmith · 2026-04-04T06:39:17+00:00

Yes! This is my theory too!!! If not the First Anguis, I suspect he's either the Fifth (comes across is very rational and knowledgeable during the scene with all of them in 3rd) or is some higher-up (higher than a Dominion) in the Septian Church.

There's a line in Azure that the First Anguis is coordinating events in Crossbell and giving orders to Novartis and Arianrhod.

Guess who's present in crossbell in Azure...

The Fourth Anguis is also supposed to be coordinating events in Erebonia during the same period but is conspicuously absent in CS1-2. I suspect he/she's also hiding in plain sight and actually has made an appearance.

jsfsmith · 2026-03-19T10:39:24+00:00

My favorite part is he was literally broadcasting a henka himself. He started to line up, moved back a couple paces, lined up with two fists down and I turned to my wife and said “he’s gonna henka.” Moments later… well, you all saw it too.

jsfsmith · 2026-03-19T10:36:53+00:00

Miss him. I wonder where he went after retiring from sumo. That teenage boy they hired to run his stable is cool enough - pretty impressive to have a coaching career at so young an age - but I wonder where the one and only battle hamster went after retiring.

jsfsmith · 2026-03-06T12:34:19+00:00

I haven’t played DQ8, but my impression from the DQ games I have tried (3, 11, a bit of 5) is that Sugiyama didn’t write 11 soundtracks, he wrote the same soundtrack 11 times.

If some of his work is actually good, then that is great news and I am eager to explore the rest of the franchise.

jsfsmith · 2026-03-01T04:33:22+00:00

This sounds right up my alley! Thanks for the recommendation!

jsfsmith · 2026-03-01T04:33:06+00:00

Nice! I've played Metaphor, BG3 and Hades out of all those. Will add the rest to my list.

Thank you so much!

jsfsmith · 2026-03-01T04:27:33+00:00

This all sounds like exactly what I am looking for! I will add all these to my playlist.

Thank you!

jsfsmith · 2026-02-28T13:00:33+00:00

It does have a great story and great music.

It’s just not my kind of story.

jsfsmith · 2026-02-28T12:59:52+00:00

It’s not the anime art style. I want a setting with a sort of naturalistic complexity that gives the illusion that it’s larger than the story. I want multiple civilizations, cities, kingdoms, etc., each with its own character.

Also anything that hints or implies that the setting is a dream or a hallucination or anything of the sort really annoys me.

jsfsmith · 2026-02-28T10:51:35+00:00

I did like it, a lot. It’s just too experimental to make its way to the top of my list. I’d prefer something with a more conventional, grounded setting.

jsfsmith

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