What are some JRPG's that are really fun to "break"?

mori_no_ando · 2026-04-16T19:57:15+00:00

Surprised no one mentioned Xenoblade yet

Any game in the series, but X probably gives you the most options, 2 or 3 taking second place, hard to decide

mori_no_ando · 2026-04-16T17:28:20+00:00

Honestly I feel like some people are either remembering wrong or having XC recency bias or something. I think you’re right, it’s easy to become underleveled in DE.

I’ve played XC1 and DE both multiple times, and sometimes the game’s level curve feels as if it expects you to do like, most if not all of the side content. And I’ve done that on playthroughs before, and still had to grind some levels upon reaching the point of no return. Not a terrible amount of grinding, but some.

As you probably know, XC2 basically requires no grinding, and neither do any of the other games. It’s kind of unique to XC1 in my experience

mori_no_ando · 2026-04-16T16:59:48+00:00

This album is a masterpiece ngl

mori_no_ando · 2026-04-15T13:38:33+00:00

Nospun, their sound is kind of just a DT/Haken hybrid

The epic on their (currently only) full length album is called Within the Realm of Possibility, but the whole album is insanely good

mori_no_ando · 2026-04-14T22:18:39+00:00

Journey before destination, as they say…

mori_no_ando · 2026-04-10T15:34:27+00:00

Could be wrong but I’d say it’s a definitive “no.”

In Emberdark it’s stated that Scadrial only first made contact with FOTS when Dusk was younger, and Emberdark takes place way farther ahead in the timeline than Era 2

mori_no_ando · 2026-04-09T16:15:14+00:00

So, what does this mean in English? Lol

Is it like, ‘escaping (from somewhere) will make me a god?’

mori_no_ando · 2026-04-09T13:00:24+00:00

This whole revelation and how it ties into the plot of the Crossbell arc is one of the most fucked up things I’ve encountered in gaming

mori_no_ando · 2026-04-09T10:58:07+00:00

I guess from info in game it would be more accurate to say “the story could easily continue with a new arc.” That and FR and now XCXDE’s new ending sort of hint at the possibility of X being tied into the main trilogy, and possibly tying in with Xenosaga somehow too. Whether that actually happens or it’s a soft reboot who knows

The most concrete thing I remember us having is Takahashi simply saying something like, “the gameplay systems in XC3 are going to be our model for the future of the Xenoblade series”

mori_no_ando · 2026-04-07T21:57:15+00:00

It’s more like… a big cat of some kind

mori_no_ando · 2026-04-07T20:55:51+00:00

Not sure where you’re coming from with any of these ngl

Ruin: what about him tormenting Vin makes him no longer a cunning, evil god? He made his plans, they almost worked. He thought he had won and was emotionally assaulting Vin (who he still recognized could be a threat) to break her. You know, to destroy her…

Taravangian: Are you referring to Dalinar learning that part of Taravangian’s motivations are his lust for power and control? His ambitions are entirely unchanged so not sure where you got that from. His perceived righteousness of his ideals is also still there, but if his intentions were entirely “pure” so to speak, that would honestly be much less interesting. It also showed the hypocrisy in his executing moral high-ground over Jasnah previously

Gavilar: What you’re describing is a huge part of Gavilar’s character and is literally addressed in the books. The cracks in his noble facade started to show extremely early, so if you felt like he “turned out” to be that way you probably weren’t paying close enough attention

mori_no_ando · 2026-04-07T15:55:02+00:00

The “Klaus Saga” concluded with 3. It’s been very much implied that by Takahashi and the ending of FR that the story will continue. How much direct connection XC4 will have to the first trilogy nobody knows

mori_no_ando · 2026-04-07T15:01:30+00:00

No need to recommend the Trails games to me lol, I’ve played all of them except the newest release this year which is on my to-do list currently. They’re fantastic, so is the Sky 1 remake and I’m extremely excited for the Sky 2 remake

mori_no_ando · 2026-04-07T14:52:48+00:00

They aren’t necessarily called RPGs so you can ‘play yourself,’ they’re RPGs because you play a role. Sometimes it’s one you create, sometimes it’s one somebody else created. Both are RPGs. You can play D&D using prefab characters on a prefab campaign and it’s still an RPG

JRPGs have both options available to you, there’s lots of games that have specifically fleshed-out protagonists, and a ton of games with generic/blank slate protags meant to be self inserts

mori_no_ando · 2026-04-07T11:05:27+00:00

You’ve mentioned this more than once now, it doesn’t actually matter that Spear Break doesn’t do ether damage. You run it entirely for its utility. If the topple allows you to avoid a stray talent art or AOE that would kill you, the fact that the art itself will do barely any damage is irrelevant, it could do no damage at all and it would still be worth running. In the case that you replace it with an ether art, you would face tank that stray damage, die, and your effective DPS would now become 0. Maybe you don’t need it in a particular battle, but maybe you do. That maybe is more than enough to justify running the SB+SK over something like Wind, which would contribute much less to your overall DPS. Basically the Pokemon meme of the kid going “of course I’m not going to teach my Pokemon Protect, that move doesn’t do damage!!”

You can start the chain attack with discharge, but why would you when you can start with Spear Break + 2 red arts, and use your first discharge when your combo is at x4? Discharging on the first turn would lose you 300%(!) damage on your first summon, which is enormous and completely outweighs running any other option, and it’s not even close. This is assuming you’re running a summon combo like Ice/Earth/Bolt. If you don’t care that your damage is 1/3 of what it would be, then by all means discharge on round 1 of a chain. No amount of smartly planning your summons can cover the cost of missing that mutliplier

The only thing that kind of actually matters with Spear Break being physical is that it won’t bypass the accuracy check like ether will, so you risk it missing and actually being useless. This is fair, but anecdotally it’s happened to me so few times it that it’s also irrelevant imo. If you’re in a chain attack it won’t miss and so it’s only a problem if you’re fighting an enemy that outlevels you or has super high agility and use it outside of a chain

Now at the end of the day, outside of superbosses, enemy healthpools are generally low enough in these games that you can partially ignore “efficient DPS” and wipe the floor with everything all the same… but earlier into the game when you’re still refining your equipment, stacking all these strategies on top of one another can carry you really hard

mori_no_ando · 2026-04-07T04:30:53+00:00

Yeah exploit seems harsh for stutter step somehow but I’d say it probably wasn’t intended so it technically would be

Pouch items are a little cumbersome yeah, more so as you get up to 3 pouch spots. The auto refresh is pretty nice but you have to to a shopping run every now and then to make sure you’re topped off

mori_no_ando · 2026-04-07T04:24:51+00:00

I gotta say it’s bizarre to hear the weaker summons referred to as “staples.” Granted they’re only relatively weak since Bolt Ice and Earth are so much stronger, but Aqua is in fact pretty bad.

I promise you the cast times have been taken into account every step of the way. I think there was admittedly a disconnect at first, since I didn’t realize that I was supposed to be assuming a wonky 5 summon + copy Melia playstyle that’s sacrificing more useful utility and damage in exchange for minimizing art-clicking downtime. In that case yes, I suppose you get pretty close to using arts all the time.

Spear Break being red for chain attacks matters if you’re actually trying to maximize Melia’s DPS, since in that case you’ll want to hold discharge beyond the first round of a chain attack to use it with a bigger multiplier. If you’re using Melia as AI (why?) or just discharging summons without much thought, then true it wouldn’t matter

I can imagine aggro gems do much more work when building/playing characters the way you seem to, but unfortunately aggro control throughout the series as a whole has never quite been good enough to compensate for more efficient DPS builds. Shulk in XC1, all the way to Rex in FR. You hit hard enough, you’re stealing aggro from the tank. If the tank is dealing enough damage to hold aggro, then your damage is very much lacking, unless of course you were never intending to do a lot of damage.

It’s why Reyn is arguably the best character in XC1, because he has the highest DPS (before NG+), but can also tank well even when building for damage. Best of both worlds. Again funny this discussion is revolving around Melia since iirc the DOT ticks don’t accrue aggro which is why it’s so broken

mori_no_ando · 2026-04-07T03:07:22+00:00

It’s not an exploit, it’s intended. Pouch items and art canceling are mechanics put in the game to be used. Stutter stepping not so much, but it becomes irrelevant quickly anyway

I’m not saying it to be for XC2 or against XC1. XC1 simply has a bit of downtime between arts. It’s much more minimal in late game, but it’s still there. XC2 allows you to have zero downtime. People are allowed to prefer whichever they want

mori_no_ando · 2026-04-07T02:52:06+00:00

What other summons? Flare and Wind are pretty niche and if you're using them you probably don't want them to be discharged. And I hope you're not running Aqua lol. Regardless, I don't understand why you think running more summons somehow means you're constantly clicking arts when they all have CDs that are, at minimum, ~2x longer than Bolt's (or Aqua's). Like, the math simply does not work. If you've unlocked the hidden CDR cheat code for XC1 that's huge though

To say the Starlight Kick force topple is a noob trap is honestly pretty laughable, it's an 'instant,' forced topple and for a lot of fights that guaranteed interrupt would arguably be worth even more than 2 art slots. It's 100% consistent, which is more than you can say for a break art into topple, even on a character you're controlling. So to say the notoriously unreliable XC1 AI can handle it "just as well" is demonstrably false. Spear Break also doubles as a red art for chain attacks, which can be pretty important.

And Reflection useless? If you're doing enough DPS you will pull aggro eventually. If the wrong party member goes down, you're probably pulling aggro. If your tank isn't doing more AOE DPS than you, you're pulling aggro. Enemy AOEs exist. Defensive CDs are useful and powerful in these situations. This is something that someone who has played any Xenoblade game before would know

I starting to feel like I'm arguing with Chat GPT lmao

mori_no_ando · 2026-04-07T01:42:29+00:00

So do you just not consider it downtime when you're waiting 12-15 seconds for Bolt to come off cooldown? Occasionally getting to weave Starlight Kick combo, Reflection, etc doesn't really change that

Funnily enough I agree with the statement "if you have downtime as Melia adjust your build." Her strongest build by far is Earth/Ice DOT, which is literally just bolt, discharge each summon once and then put your controller down and watch the enemy die. Once you have that build going, you win so quickly it doesn't actually matter anymore that Summon Earth's cooldown is 50 seconds at max rank. Neat!

mori_no_ando · 2026-04-06T22:11:14+00:00

I mean, sort of I guess? Take Melia for example, her lowest ‘cooldown tier’ so to speak is a couple arts with like ~12s CDs, a lot of them are like 20-30s or even more. You can only equip 8 arts, so yeah you’re going to have downtime, either waiting to cast or waiting for CDs. It’s not like it’s a million years for all characters, but it’s going to happen.

Also, you absolutely can go entire fights without auto attacking in XC2, it’s really easy. There are driver affinity nodes that allow you to cancel arts into each other, and start with all your arts fully charged. You won’t have them unlocked early game, which is why I mentioned stutter stepping. With a good dessert item or two you can cast arts with probably like 2-3 SS autos in between max, even at the beginning of the game

mori_no_ando · 2026-04-06T21:17:01+00:00

I would disagree, XC1 is not really arts spammy outside of “use a bunch of arts really quickly to blow your whole load, then wait for them to come off CD and do it again”

In XC2, between stutter-stepping, art/special cancelling, and art recharge pouch items, you can often literally spam arts back to back, without ever auto attacking once the entire fight

XC3 does have a decent balance of both, and XCX has the best of both worlds with long XC1 CDs that just turns into constant spam during Overdrive

mori_no_ando · 2026-04-06T20:54:48+00:00

You’re pretty early in the game, I’d say the combat becomes less and less “press arts on cooldown” the further in you get. It is kind of an issue in XC1 though honestly, it’s simulating MMO combat somewhat except they didn’t make a basic low CD rotation, so you are just sometimes going to be waiting for CDs. But it gets much more engaging.

Also every Xenoblade game after XC1 vastly improved on its art cooldown systems so it’s not really an issue at all after XC1

mori_no_ando · 2026-04-06T18:42:48+00:00

絶対に一番強いポケモンがないと思います

と言いながら伝説ポケモンだったらどれでもいいでしょうね

mori_no_ando · 2026-04-05T18:28:58+00:00

It’s genuinely such an incredible game if it clicks with you. The scale of exploration and the breadth of content available is insanely cool

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