When recommending JRPGs to someone who wants to get into the genre, discussions are usually always limited to the most popular titles in the market. Square Enix’s Dragon Quest and the Final Fantasy series, Atlus’ Persona series, Bandai Namco’s Tales series, and a few more.
There is no doubt that quite many really good JRPGs get overshadowed by these behemoths. Games that can provide an equally if not amazing experience for newcomers to the genre.
So we sat down to list a couple of underrated JRPGs that we feel would be perfect for any beginner looking to get into this genre.
Best underrated JRPGs for beginners on modern-day systems
Chrono Cross
Chrono Cross was the much-anticipated follow-up game to Square’s Chrono Trigger, the title that is considered one of the most important Japanese role-playing games of all time.
It was released in 1999 for the first Playstation, and even though it did not become as big as its prequel game, it has since become a cult classic.
Just like how the previous games dealt with a story surrounding parallel timelines, this one deals with the existence of a parallel world. The combat in the game uses a special stamina and element system, which is much different and in-depth from Chrono Trigger’s combat.
A remastered edition of the game with updated models and textures was released in 2022 on modern systems titled Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky
Among the behemoths of Japanese RPGs like Square Enix, Atlus, and Fromsoftware, there is one very underrated developer who has been super consistent with the quality of their games. Nihon Falcom was founded in 1981 by Masayuki Kato and is known for some of the most loved JRPGs in the community.
The Legend of Heroes is one of Nihon Falcom’s most important game franchises, spanning multiple game series and subseries. The most celebrated of these is the Trails series released in 2004, also known as Kiseki series in Japan.
The series has been praised for its scope of world-building, characters, and setting, and is even compared with other popular media such as Marvel comics, Dungeons & Dragons, and more.
The first game, ‘Trails in the Sky’, was released for Windows in Japan, and later publisher Xseed Games brought it to the West on PlayStation consoles. The whole franchise has since been released on multiple modern systems. A modern remake of the first game is also in development right now.
Monster Hunter Stories
It is no new information that Capcom’s Monster Hunter is one of the biggest video game franchises in existence right now and has spawned several small sub-series. Some of these never got too popular to spawn a sequel, but one such series has been gaining popularity in its niche.
The Monster Hunter Stories franchise brings a cute Pokemon-like monster collection spin to the whole franchise. Unlike the main series, where the main theme of the game is about hunters tracking down various monsters, in Monster Hunter stories, the goal is taming the monsters.
The tamers are called riders who steal monster eggs to hatch and tame them to fight in a turn-based JRPG combat. Originally released on the Nintendo 3DS in Japan, the franchise has come a long way and is easily available on most modern systems, even mobile phones.
A sequel for the game was also released in 2021 titled Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin.
Utawarerumono
Utawarerumono is a fairly popular JRPG franchise in Japan, spanning several games, anime, manga drama CDs, and more. But it is not so popular in the West where Final Fantasies and Personas are more talked of.
Utawarerumono is actually a visual novel franchise that uses tactical turn-based combat in its gameplay as a secondary point of interest.
Much of the gameplay in this series involves reading through hours of dialogues between characters. The story in the game is nothing out of the ordinary, set in a fantasy world involving magical beings, but slowly develops into something different by the end with twists and turns.
As already mentioned, during combat sequences in the story, the visual novel switches to a tactical turn-based system that utilizes grids for movement and fights. The last game in the Utawarerumono trilogy was released in 2016, and the whole franchise has since been available on most modern systems.
The Caligula Effect: Overdose
Most of the JRPGs covered in this list generally have a medieval fantasy setting, so we thought of changing the palette with this one.
The Caligula Effect is a franchise that is much like Persona and the Shin Megami Tensei games in terms of world-building, set in the modern era.
The Atlus roots for this franchise do not just end there as it is written by Tadashi Satomi who is known for games such as Persona 2 and the Digital Devil Saga duology. Even the music is composed by Atlus veteran, Tsukasa Masuko.
The general plot for The Caligula Effect revolves around a virtual reality created by an idol, where high school students are trapped. Our protagonists band together to make the ‘Go-Home Club’ to try to break out of this virtual reality.
The gameplay follows dungeon crawling through corridors to stumble upon enemies, which then triggers a turn-based combat system that uses a special chain system.
The Caligula Effect was originally released for PS Vita in 2016 and has gained enough popularity to spawn an anime and a sequel game to the series worldwide in 2021.
Etrian Odyssey HD
First-person dungeon crawlers have become a rare sight among modern RPGs. The Shin Megami Tensei franchise from Atlus originally used to have first-person gameplay but the modern and more popular titles from the series have moved to a third-person camera that is seen in so many JRPGs of today.
One Atlus franchise that has still kept the first-person grid-based gameplay is the Etrian Odyssey. Originally made for the Nintendo DS and 3DS systems, Etrian Odyssey was a unique JRPG for allowing players to actually use the Nintendo system’s stylus to draw and plan their own dungeon layouts in these games.
Originally released in 2007, Etrian Odyssey follows in the footsteps of classic JRPGs with a medieval fantasy setting as opposed to Atlus’ other games.
It utilizes the job system that was popularised by classic Final Fantasy games, with each class having its own separate skill tree system that can be unlocked by leveling up through fights in turn-based combat.
The game resorts to a row-based system during combat which involves using tank and heavy characters in the front, while the ranged archers and mages would hang in the back row. In 2003 all the games in the franchise were revived and remastered for modern systems.
Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch
The Ni No Kuni games at first glance, in terms of art style, may look very familiar to movies from Studio Ghibli. That is because these games involved a collaboration between the world-renowned animation studio and the game’s developers, Level-5.
Originally released for the Nintendo DS in Japan, on the developer’s 5th anniversary, Ni No Kuni caught everyone’s attention for having cutscenes made by skilled animators at Studio Ghibli.
Ni No Kuni was later remastered and ported to the PlayStation 3, which is the most common version of the game that is so well known outside Japan.
The story of the first game follows a young boy who travels to the other world to search for answers on how to save his mother. The gameplay involves you journeying through an open fantasy overworld, coming across villages, and points of interest, and encountering enemies.
The combat surprisingly uses a sort of lite monster collection system, where you get to tame familiars and command them in fights along with other human allies. The games have since been released on multiple modern systems, and a sequel with a new story titled, Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom was released in 2018.
