I haven't played the game but what I've gleaned from other videos; the boss's health scales of off the number of party members, which severely punishes the player for using party members at all.
Fun fact: There's actually a whole series of endings without Konoha! But, uhh, you're not gonna see them. See, whoever you have the highest affection for is who you get an ending with. The problem is that uhh you're going to have everyone's affection maxed out by the time you can beat the game. And no, you cannot pick who you want to be with. Instead, there's a priority system, and guess what? Konoha is always max priority. So you only get a bad ending if your Beloved if Konoha and you choose to kill her. ... And she is more or less the Beloved by default. So yeah, they did not think this through.
That weird string at the end was probably meant to be the red string of fate. I guess Konoha turning into a world-destroying monster at the end was fate. By cutting the string this fate was averted. So Konoha doesn't have to be a monster and she and her cousin can date in peace. Hooray...
If you want the actual worst JRPG, you want something more along the lines of Lunar: Dragon Song, a DS RPG in which running hurts you, while having a really slow walk speed, the story is a complete mess, you have to choose between getting items or XP and you cannot choose targets in combat. Also killed the series it was a part of, which was a huge shame as the rest of the series was actually kinda good.
My favorite part is when the main character is cursed with poor coordination and it prevents him from using his three-hit combo attack because the animation for the ssecond hit has him stand on his head. This is a real plot point in a game that exists. Silver Star Story and Eternal Blue are absolute classics. I don't know what went wrong with Dragon Song.
6:58 If the actual affinity mechanics were more than just a basic choice system the Looping could actually be a good mechanic. If you already know which buttons to push with someone being able to go back and redo things would actually be a way to offset the tedium of having to replay *the entire game again.* They could even take it a step further by having certain things only occur during certain loops or if certain other criteria had been met. In other words, take full advantage of the time travel angle. They didn't do that, but they should've.
So... Baroque, then? It's hard because it's a roguelike rpg, but it actually rewards you with timeloops AND there's a character who can smuggle your items between said loops. And its plot is confusing but it's so worth it to piece it together as you gradually progress and find new ways to die (yes, you advance the plot by dying to new circumstances).
Fun fact, consentual incest is illegal there, it is legal in New Jersey and Rhode Island. Plus eh, some cultures are fine with it as long as they aren't first cousins, cause then there's even less genetic similarities
i'd never heard of this game before, but since it's apparently Cousin Dating Simulator I'm okay with that. This was entertaining, keep up your quest to find the worst JRPG.
@@Its_Moog I think saying it just does looping is a disservice. It does non-linear story telling on a grander scale then I have seen any game done. Meaning you can experience the timeline in a completely different order then someone else's playthrough.
Lunar Dragon Song is probably the worst JRPG that I've ever played so far. Knowing that the average length of a JRPG is roughly 40-70 hours, not counting side content, I Normally would give a JRPG at least 5 hours of game time before giving my first impressions with the game and dictate whether or not I want to keep playing. A lot of my favorite JRPGs do have slow starts (Xenoblade Chronicles and Trails games just to give some examples) if that tells you anything. Most of Lunar Dragon Song's problems were apparent in the first hour and a half and it doesn't get much better the further you keep playing. I mean it looks okay for an early DS game and it has an okay card system... Yeah that's where the major positives I have towards the game end.
What a review... Amazing detail about a absolutely trash game that I never going to play, still stayed to the end. Thank you for your service and surviving this hell of a game. Also... Pretty sure someone on the team had a thing or two with their cousins... Yoichi-San how did we go from Grandia to this? Where did things go wrong?
Two words: Yuri Shibamura. Designer AND head writer of this game. He was an auteur sorta director in the PS1/PS2 era best known for Gunparade, a pretty good series of sci-fi social sims about high schooler mech pilots, as well as Kenran Butoh Sai, a pretty bad and _legendarily_ self-indulgent sci-fi social sim about a submarine on an aquatic Mars. I think the social parts of Loop8 draw a lot from the lattermost game in particular, but the whole game kinda reeks of this dude. So I wouldn't put (too much) blame on the couple of Lunar guys who were involved. As far as I know, this is the RPG debut of an already quite loose-cannon sim designer who does not understand RPGs. (I don't know how into cousin-fucking he is but based on some of the other tropes he's run with I'm sure he was at least fully on board)
JRPG that may be worth checking out: Learn Japanese to Survive. I got this when I was in college hoping it'd help me learn Japanese for school (it didn't, because I'm dyslexic and just never got diagnosed); I don't know how good the story is because honestly the game just made me cringe too much to get very far into it. I didn't get much further than the tutorial, largely because the protagonists where the same outfit no matter what gender you pick (and yes, I know that seems nitpicky but once you've seen it you'll understand). I have the katakana version of the game, which uses the alphabet primarily reserved for "foreign" words (it's also what you'll see on movie and game posters); there's also a hiragana version which I assume has the same plot, like Pokemon, but I'm not sure.
If you have high affection with another character (only one not tying relationship stats), low affection/friendship with Konoha and kill her you can get other characters special endings Depressed ending only happens if you have high affection/friendship with Konoha.
I’m not going to pretend I’ve never seen anime and JRPGs where a cousin is a love interest. But going out of your way to point it out and force the relationship on the player seems weird. Maybe I’m just too use to localization taming it down.
I think that the most hilarious thing I heard about this game is that Micchi killing you doesn't trigger a loop, you receive a game over and forces you to load a save. So... Micchi is the most dangerous "enemy" in the game? 😅
Honestly this game is SO much wasted potential. As for bad JRPGs, have you ever heard of Last Rebellion? I think it's a good contender for it. It's so bad the president of the company had to apologize for it. Might be interesting to check out!
I was really hoping this game was going to be what the anime summer time rendering ended up being. Moral of the story, just watch summer time rendering instead.
The worst JRPG ever? It's gotta be Hoshi wo Miru Hito. A game whose technical blunders defy explanation. Invisible towns, overworld enemies that take from the ENTIRE pool of enemies, a UI that only shows the right most digit of your health, improperly placed warps in towns--it's an absolute mess. My prime candidate for "worst ever." But I'm pretty sure it doesn't have any cousin dating in it, so
Just a little feedback on the video: If you want to put a bit of text to insert a correction or anything really, can you have it on the screen for longer than one frame? Like, have it show up for a couple of seconds while you are talking or something. The frame-perfect text is more annoying than anything.
Good video you earned a sub for summarizing this game better than another video I watched. If you're looking another legendarily bad JRPG, try Last Rebellion on PS3. It looks like a PSP game upscaled and has some bad loading times.
I don’t have a contender for worst JRPG for ya but I think you’d be able to use the Luminous Arc series as a palette cleanser for Loop 8. It’s a DS era tactical RPG series all about getting to know your party members personally. They’re on the generic side and kinda undercooked admittedly, but it’s always satisfying to bond with your faves and decimate enemies by backstabbing them from the high ground. Also, each game is self-contained so you can totally jump in from any point.
I want an anime or game about the crickets cuz by God they are in like 99% of Japanese media during summer times. I get that they exist but... imagine pigeons in every cartoon about a non Japanese place. Its worse then the "eagles" in the desert thrmed places (which btw arent eagles. Yes.. the American screech thing isnt eagle at all.)
There are really that many of the things. You can't have a summer scene without them, it'd be like filming in Manhattan with no car noise. Damn cicadas won't shut up.
@@notbaldfrost Animal Crossing does a really good job of conveying just how much there are and how LOUD they are IRL. They're really everywhere like that in Japan, during the summer months. (IIRC there's two different species, actually, aren't there? They have different cries and one of them pops up later than the other.)
My first thought with the red string was a romantic connection. As two lovers tying a red string to both of their pinkies is a common romantic idea in Japan. But it doesn’t really make sense if the sting is severed and they still end up together. This games seems like someone explained the plot of Persona 3 and 13 Sentinels to someone who knows nothing about game design. Sorry you had to suffer through this.
It's also a general fate thing. Severing the Sting of Fate then you removed her fated death/destruction of the world. The anime Grimgar ash and dust(I think that's the name) had this where the protag can see the fated thread of the enemy's destruction, sometimes. Black Clover has a character that can influence the fates of her friends. In that context, she makes it so that they never die nor get hurt from enemy attacks. There are plenty of other examples of I'm sure, but it is fairly common for the Red String to be a romantic thing. I think Demonslayer has something like that, too.
Man, and I thought Eternights was kinda messy. I’m fine with giving that game a bit of slack, cause it was made by one person. The whole idea of gradually learning about a person’s history and personality is done so much better in Gnosia. Yeah, it’s a time loop, but sometimes you learn little things about a character that helps flesh them out, and inform your gameplay decisions.
When i think about the first game on ps 1, such a classic with a open story writing where you didn't know what happens next and every playthrough had it's own differences with characters who survive or die or events that could change and slightly alter other events and characters social links. Now after all these years we got this utter Shite!
Agreed. It is an affront to the legacy of Lunar. I picked it up when it first released. Five minutes into the game, I went right back to the store and exchanged it for Mario Kart DS.
I haven't played the game but what I've gleaned from other videos; the boss's health scales of off the number of party members, which severely punishes the player for using party members at all.
So it's like summoning in fromsoft games minus the intelligence added by other players.
More like playing the game alone punishes the player for playing…
This game was made for speedrunning
Fun fact: There's actually a whole series of endings without Konoha! But, uhh, you're not gonna see them. See, whoever you have the highest affection for is who you get an ending with. The problem is that uhh you're going to have everyone's affection maxed out by the time you can beat the game. And no, you cannot pick who you want to be with. Instead, there's a priority system, and guess what? Konoha is always max priority. So you only get a bad ending if your Beloved if Konoha and you choose to kill her. ... And she is more or less the Beloved by default. So yeah, they did not think this through.
The worst JRPG ever is called Forever Kingdom, if you ever try to beat it because of my suggestion, I apologize in advance.
you ever play the first evergrace?
at least the soundtrack slaps
@@notbaldfrost I unironically liked Evergrace...
That weird string at the end was probably meant to be the red string of fate.
I guess Konoha turning into a world-destroying monster at the end was fate. By cutting the string this fate was averted.
So Konoha doesn't have to be a monster and she and her cousin can date in peace. Hooray...
If you want the actual worst JRPG, you want something more along the lines of Lunar: Dragon Song, a DS RPG in which running hurts you, while having a really slow walk speed, the story is a complete mess, you have to choose between getting items or XP and you cannot choose targets in combat.
Also killed the series it was a part of, which was a huge shame as the rest of the series was actually kinda good.
My favorite part is when the main character is cursed with poor coordination and it prevents him from using his three-hit combo attack because the animation for the ssecond hit has him stand on his head. This is a real plot point in a game that exists.
Silver Star Story and Eternal Blue are absolute classics. I don't know what went wrong with Dragon Song.
Also your main character does 90% of the work. You never fight the main villain and the lore of the previous game is ignored
Definitely agree with this being among the worst, if not the worst, JRPGs out there
6:58
If the actual affinity mechanics were more than just a basic choice system the Looping could actually be a good mechanic. If you already know which buttons to push with someone being able to go back and redo things would actually be a way to offset the tedium of having to replay *the entire game again.* They could even take it a step further by having certain things only occur during certain loops or if certain other criteria had been met. In other words, take full advantage of the time travel angle.
They didn't do that, but they should've.
Yes exactly, this would have been so much better! There was so much potential for this kind of stuff with the time traveling
So... Baroque, then? It's hard because it's a roguelike rpg, but it actually rewards you with timeloops AND there's a character who can smuggle your items between said loops.
And its plot is confusing but it's so worth it to piece it together as you gradually progress and find new ways to die (yes, you advance the plot by dying to new circumstances).
@@neoqwerty Oh, I'm gonna have to check that out.
When they start specifying the cousin is “twice removed” or some such you always know where it’s going… Alabama.
Fun fact, consentual incest is illegal there, it is legal in New Jersey and Rhode Island. Plus eh, some cultures are fine with it as long as they aren't first cousins, cause then there's even less genetic similarities
"why the true ending is the one you date your cousin?" was not something I was expecting to hear today.
I live in Alabama. I think this game must take place here.
Sounds like Fire Emblem Fates Invisible Kingdom
You know the romance is bad when more than one yandere exist.
I saw the character designs and my first thought was "how could this be that bad?" The definition of "Don't judge a book by its cover"
yeah its a shame the game actually looks good
@@questionmarkquestionmarkques another one that looks good but is terrible is Lunar Dragon Song for the DS
@@subtledemisefox paper mario sticker star
@questionmarkquestionmarkques oh I forgot about that one. I think I played it for 10 minutes and hated it
i'd never heard of this game before, but since it's apparently Cousin Dating Simulator I'm okay with that. This was entertaining, keep up your quest to find the worst JRPG.
13 Sentinels does looping well. This seems infuriating.
I've heard great things about that game. Maybe I need to play it as a palate cleanser after this mess of a game haha
i would strongly recommend it, game is very beefy and there is a metric ton to unpack from it.@@Its_Moog
@@Its_Moog I think saying it just does looping is a disservice. It does non-linear story telling on a grander scale then I have seen any game done. Meaning you can experience the timeline in a completely different order then someone else's playthrough.
Lunar Dragon Song is probably the worst JRPG that I've ever played so far.
Knowing that the average length of a JRPG is roughly 40-70 hours, not counting side content, I Normally would give a JRPG at least 5 hours of game time before giving my first impressions with the game and dictate whether or not I want to keep playing. A lot of my favorite JRPGs do have slow starts (Xenoblade Chronicles and Trails games just to give some examples) if that tells you anything. Most of Lunar Dragon Song's problems were apparent in the first hour and a half and it doesn't get much better the further you keep playing.
I mean it looks okay for an early DS game and it has an okay card system... Yeah that's where the major positives I have towards the game end.
Is that the game where running hurts you?
@HouseLyrander Yup
What a review... Amazing detail about a absolutely trash game that I never going to play, still stayed to the end. Thank you for your service and surviving this hell of a game.
Also... Pretty sure someone on the team had a thing or two with their cousins... Yoichi-San how did we go from Grandia to this? Where did things go wrong?
Two words: Yuri Shibamura. Designer AND head writer of this game. He was an auteur sorta director in the PS1/PS2 era best known for Gunparade, a pretty good series of sci-fi social sims about high schooler mech pilots, as well as Kenran Butoh Sai, a pretty bad and _legendarily_ self-indulgent sci-fi social sim about a submarine on an aquatic Mars.
I think the social parts of Loop8 draw a lot from the lattermost game in particular, but the whole game kinda reeks of this dude. So I wouldn't put (too much) blame on the couple of Lunar guys who were involved. As far as I know, this is the RPG debut of an already quite loose-cannon sim designer who does not understand RPGs.
(I don't know how into cousin-fucking he is but based on some of the other tropes he's run with I'm sure he was at least fully on board)
JRPG that may be worth checking out: Learn Japanese to Survive.
I got this when I was in college hoping it'd help me learn Japanese for school (it didn't, because I'm dyslexic and just never got diagnosed); I don't know how good the story is because honestly the game just made me cringe too much to get very far into it. I didn't get much further than the tutorial, largely because the protagonists where the same outfit no matter what gender you pick (and yes, I know that seems nitpicky but once you've seen it you'll understand). I have the katakana version of the game, which uses the alphabet primarily reserved for "foreign" words (it's also what you'll see on movie and game posters); there's also a hiragana version which I assume has the same plot, like Pokemon, but I'm not sure.
If you have high affection with another character (only one not tying relationship stats), low affection/friendship with Konoha and kill her you can get other characters special endings Depressed ending only happens if you have high affection/friendship with Konoha.
Okay I was wondering how on earth you got those haha
It wasn't worth figuring it out. @@Its_Moog
@@conneranderson4186 This is so true lol
I’m not going to pretend I’ve never seen anime and JRPGs where a cousin is a love interest. But going out of your way to point it out and force the relationship on the player seems weird. Maybe I’m just too use to localization taming it down.
The walking cycle in 2:12 reminds me of old point and click games; it was fine for them, but technology should've evolved already for them
I think that the most hilarious thing I heard about this game is that Micchi killing you doesn't trigger a loop, you receive a game over and forces you to load a save. So... Micchi is the most dangerous "enemy" in the game? 😅
Omori actually does the “feelings” term based combat system idea brilliantly. Idk what the hell this is.
Shoutout to my worst: Lunar Dragonsong. The game where running depletes your health.
Well I'm glad someone went into a studio meeting on a morning in Japan and dared to say that what the JRPG market needs is a cousin love game....
Theres a ready a ton of those. Tourist much?
honestly the concept of the game seems interesting to me like, just the time loop thing BUT WHY DID IT HAVE TO BE EXECUTED SO WEIRD
adding on now: WHY MAKE THE COUSIN A LOVE INTEREST EWWW
RIGHT? This game could have been so cool but they dropped the ball so hard!
@batenjoyer1175 vin diesel taught me theres nothing stronger than family.
Honestly this game is SO much wasted potential. As for bad JRPGs, have you ever heard of Last Rebellion? I think it's a good contender for it. It's so bad the president of the company had to apologize for it. Might be interesting to check out!
I was really hoping this game was going to be what the anime summer time rendering ended up being. Moral of the story, just watch summer time rendering instead.
Ill be forever thankful to loop8... because punchy's review of iy introduced me to gnosia, a weird and awesome game.
at first I was like "oh this game looks kinda cool!" and then the longer I watched the video, the more I was like "why would somebody made this?"
If Loop8 were in public domain, I would make it have a good ending where Nini does NOT date his own cousin!
Thanks for the heart.
The worst JRPG ever? It's gotta be Hoshi wo Miru Hito. A game whose technical blunders defy explanation. Invisible towns, overworld enemies that take from the ENTIRE pool of enemies, a UI that only shows the right most digit of your health, improperly placed warps in towns--it's an absolute mess. My prime candidate for "worst ever."
But I'm pretty sure it doesn't have any cousin dating in it, so
Lifehack: is the world about to be destroyed? If you date your cousin, everything is gonna be okay*!
* Only works if you are actually blood related.
Just a little feedback on the video: If you want to put a bit of text to insert a correction or anything really, can you have it on the screen for longer than one frame? Like, have it show up for a couple of seconds while you are talking or something. The frame-perfect text is more annoying than anything.
Good video you earned a sub for summarizing this game better than another video I watched.
If you're looking another legendarily bad JRPG, try Last Rebellion on PS3. It looks like a PSP game upscaled and has some bad loading times.
Wait, this is an RPG? I've never seen an RPG with only ONE generic enemy.
I don’t have a contender for worst JRPG for ya but I think you’d be able to use the Luminous Arc series as a palette cleanser for Loop 8. It’s a DS era tactical RPG series all about getting to know your party members personally. They’re on the generic side and kinda undercooked admittedly, but it’s always satisfying to bond with your faves and decimate enemies by backstabbing them from the high ground.
Also, each game is self-contained so you can totally jump in from any point.
I think the worst game is likely something small and indie. I'm betting rpg maker
"- Arcane Raise -" comes to mind.
Wonder how mutated would the offspring be like
I want an anime or game about the crickets cuz by God they are in like 99% of Japanese media during summer times.
I get that they exist but... imagine pigeons in every cartoon about a non Japanese place.
Its worse then the "eagles" in the desert thrmed places (which btw arent eagles. Yes.. the American screech thing isnt eagle at all.)
There are really that many of the things. You can't have a summer scene without them, it'd be like filming in Manhattan with no car noise.
Damn cicadas won't shut up.
@@notbaldfrost Animal Crossing does a really good job of conveying just how much there are and how LOUD they are IRL. They're really everywhere like that in Japan, during the summer months. (IIRC there's two different species, actually, aren't there? They have different cries and one of them pops up later than the other.)
You have to try this game called nightcry it’s made by the guys who made clock tower sounds like something you’d be into
I actually made a video on it last year and I’m obsessed with it haha!
Man I saw the reviews on Amazon being 5 stars but I should have been skeptical when the collector's edition was only $25
For another terrible JRPG, try Spectral Tower for the PS1. It's a bland, repetitive dungeon crawler that takes approximately 500 HOURS to finish.
compared to Spectral Tower for the PS1 this game is a masterpiece.
don't play that game. seriously.
This sounds like a game with a good ideas that's just executed poorly. Too bad.
My first thought with the red string was a romantic connection. As two lovers tying a red string to both of their pinkies is a common romantic idea in Japan. But it doesn’t really make sense if the sting is severed and they still end up together.
This games seems like someone explained the plot of Persona 3 and 13 Sentinels to someone who knows nothing about game design. Sorry you had to suffer through this.
It's also a general fate thing. Severing the Sting of Fate then you removed her fated death/destruction of the world.
The anime Grimgar ash and dust(I think that's the name) had this where the protag can see the fated thread of the enemy's destruction, sometimes.
Black Clover has a character that can influence the fates of her friends. In that context, she makes it so that they never die nor get hurt from enemy attacks.
There are plenty of other examples of I'm sure, but it is fairly common for the Red String to be a romantic thing.
I think Demonslayer has something like that, too.
It makes me sad that the game is bad... it has a lot of thing I enjoy, the JRPG, the Persona-like relations, time-loop, dating your cousi-
i sort of want to play Persona but on gameover the socal links reset
How you got through this game with the dialogue and loops only you know lol
3:47 Only if you had played Falcom JRPGs.. At least the stories were good in those games. **The quality may vary**
if yandev made a persona game
I watched a long review of this so I know how it goes, therefore I already know this will be hilarious
On the fence about buying this game for $20, even if it is the worst!😅 Awesome review and very funny as well. I'm gonna subscribe 👍
I almost bought it! But then reviews didn’t read well and I just couldn’t drum up the excitement.
Thanks for this video! I’m excited to watch more!
It's really suspicious that the only good endings is where you date your cousin 🤨
seeing how much you seem to like JRPG, how about Dungeon Dreams series on steam?? would love to hear your opinion on it.
It’s so funny that “horrible reviews” means 5, 6 out of 10.. we have made numbers meaningless
The Red String COULD be the Red String of Fate
This video has finally persuaded me to date my cousin. I'm pretty sure that was the take away from this.
Yup, you got it!
Why would you make a time loop game where the main character doesn’t remember looping? That’s literally the whole appeal of time looping.
Thanks for the entertaining delve into Loop8.
Man, and I thought Eternights was kinda messy. I’m fine with giving that game a bit of slack, cause it was made by one person.
The whole idea of gradually learning about a person’s history and personality is done so much better in Gnosia. Yeah, it’s a time loop, but sometimes you learn little things about a character that helps flesh them out, and inform your gameplay decisions.
I thought everyone had learned from persona 3 that forcing you to date every single girl is stupid...
Spectral Tower on the PS1 might take the cake as least playable game.
Isn't this the JRPG where you have to beg your teammates to join and fight enemies with you?
When i think about the first game on ps 1, such a classic with a open story writing where you didn't know what happens next and every playthrough had it's own differences with characters who survive or die or events that could change and slightly alter other events and characters social links.
Now after all these years we got this utter Shite!
I disagree, I think wasted potential is worse then no potential. It hurts so much more to play something bad and see what good you could have had.
Lunar: Dragon Song/ Lunar Genesis for the DS is the worst JRPG.
Agreed. It is an affront to the legacy of Lunar. I picked it up when it first released. Five minutes into the game, I went right back to the store and exchanged it for Mario Kart DS.
Cool video, got a new sub. Why are they so insistent on this cousin thing, at least it's not sister this time
"congratulations! You are now dating your cousin."
i feel like that sums up a LOT of anime media
no no i think you mean a "non blood related sibling"
Earned a sub. This game sounds painful
so... many... endless 8 jokes....
Underated utuber frfr! 🎉🎉🎉
Still a better yandere simulator than Yandere Simulator
there is more endings the game is just terrible at that to
I keep hearing gayguy...
Worst…. No. Horrible… Yes.
poop8
Wait you can date your cousin? Is tbis game bad or not? Your giving mixed signals lady?
Xenoblade chronicles is the worst jrpg of all time, not this
You're kidding right?
Guess you just weren't feeling it!
Great video