I remember when the original Nier (which in Japan was Nier Gestalt, Replicant would come out until 2021 outside Japan as a Remake), they gave bad reviews and terrible scores, in short, nobody cared; but when Nier Automata came out, now yes, they considered the predecessor as a cult jewel and it became very sought after (and therefore, certain stores raised their price)
in fact the issue that caused Tales of the Symphonia 2, is to imitate the plot of Devil May Cry 4, it is almost the same where the main hero is associated with the rookie hero and yeah... the main is the new villain.
Fate/Extra was my absolute favorite game on the PSP. I played through it in its entirety on there and then did it again digitally on the Vita. The remake is my most anticipated game right now. But knowing type-moon, who knows when it will be here…
I would love it very much if they rerelease the Drakengard trilogy. I think it is not outside the realm of possibility with the success of Nier: Automata and Replicant. I don’t want to rely on outside sources to read up on the lore and be able to experience it myself.
@@xxJing I never played Drakengard, so this is news to me. Thanks so much for the info. I'll try getting into Drakengard although it would just be on an emulator.
@@xxJing 2 was the best though, just saying. Best soundtrack, best gameplay. Gotta say that none of 3 endings properly link to 1 either (though Ending E from 1 does link into Nier). Drakengard 2 is kinda of a mix of endings A and B from 1, it has the same problem as trying to link 3 to 1, though nowadays Taro considers 2 it's own thing, it was officialized as canon in a book or something (kinda like 3 needed a book ending to properly link it to 1, and it isn't even 1 but more of a reimagining of 1)
@@Galdoth I've read one of the issues of the manga that continues off of 3 and it is really gruesome. It's about One (brother) killing all of his descendants because they are immune to the red eye disease and using that fact to try to rule the world. I haven't played 2 because I read that it's not by Yoko Taro and we'll frankly because it's not totally messed up like the rest of the series. The Niers are a bit more tame but D1 and D3 are like super game of thrones levels of dark.
Say it with me. Soul Hackers is NOT PERSONA 5. I walked into it with realistic expectations and absolutely adored it for what it was. It was nice not having an intricate battle system and stellar characters. It was my go to game for awhile after a hard day at work.
Damn, man , I am absolutely agree with you. Soul Hackers 2 and Valkyrie Revolution totally don’t deserve such scores. In Valkyrie Revolution very good music and narrative. It’s a tragedy that we will never see the sequel of this game :(
I mean those games really were a dissapointment though, maybe not horrible, but definitely not great. Especially Soul Hackers 2 looked so good in the trailers but the game ended up just being a boring walking simulator with horrible dungeon design and a mediocre story.
Soul Hackers 2 had the weirdest hate campaign against it. It started as outrage about the day 1 DLC but then just devolved to blind hatred for everything about it. It's a really good game and I loved my time with it. Clickbait content creators couldn't resist the urge to hop on the hate train.
SH2 was mediocre with dumbed down gameplay from mainline and barely any connections character wise from SH1 aside from reoccuring NPC shop function characters. Dungeons such as Soul Matrixes were souless. Ringo is cool though, wish more MegaTen protags were like her.
Eternal Poison is the game I want Atlus to remaster because it's a decent game but for me I like to watch skill animations and the load times are terrible and make it kind of unplayable.
I'm glad Soul Hackers 2 was addressed. Reviewers, youtubers and other critics played that game and stomped it. It had no business getting stomped. The aesthetic is gorgeous with the green and purple neon, the gameplay is solid and the combat was very SMT like, even if not as tough or deep. It had shortcomings but not enough to throw it under the bus so easily. Soul Hackers 2 will go down as an under-apreciated gem as time goes on and thats too bad because the rep it got is pushing a lot of people away from playing it, even on Gamepass. I personally, LOVE Soul Hackers 2. Thanks Erick!
Tbh as a big SMT and Atlus Fan i really agree with the Critics. Soul Hackers 2 was complete Boring. The Artstyle was Amazing, the Soundtrack was ok and the Story was also average. The biggest Bummer was the boring Dungeon Design. All of the Outside Dungeons were so bland and Boring looking and i dont even wanna Start about this BS Matrix. There was a Reason why they added a QoL Patch with Battle Speed increase and some Dungeon Features. Also the typical Atlus Shady moves with cutting out Staple Demons from the Series or even locking entire Storyparts behind a Paywall. You can clearly see where all the Money goes....and its not into the SMT Series (even Persona technically Starts as a SMT Spinoff ^^)
One thing that's rarely mentioned is that Dawn of the New World has really good comedy moments too. Tenebrae is just amazing, the Skits are sooo good :D
Love the channel but one thing I wish you did on this channel was put timestamps in your videos, I'm sure you have reasons for not doing it but figured i'd mention it as something I feel would make the videos a bit better.
I LOVED Soul Hackers 2, but good god, they needed to spend a little more money on it, giving it more than 6 (I think) dungeon styles... Even worse was that the end area has 2 different styles in it, meaning the rest of the game was stuck with 4 dungeon designs... and they weren't interesting, Subway, docks, office building... the only one that was visually interesting, and fit into the cyberpunk aesthetic were the soul dungeons... It really brought an excellent game down, and I can understand why some people found it mediocre as a result, even if I didn't.
How can you miss out the mother of all trashed by critics games? SHADOW HEARTS... IGN's review of the game is still a punchline among my friends and I.
The worst review of a great rpg was Hyper Magazine's (Was once Australia's no.1 gaming magazine) review of Breath of Fire IV. It made the reviewer infamous in Australia's JRPG fandom. The review was incoherent rambling about how the game made him so mad he got noise complaints from his neighbours and was wishing he was playing FFVI instead (oh yes he compared every rpg he reviewed to FFVI). After failing to inform the reader why he thought BoFIV was bad he gave it a 50/100. Still the worst rpg review I've read and it began my 23 year grudge with the FFVI fan base (Despite the fact I really like the game haha).
Someone else who played Trinity! I appreciate your view on it. It’s not without flaws but it’s a game I’ve replayed and I enjoyed the combat skill system . Kinda wish a similar system would pop up
Thing about the Chrono Cross remaster is that it could have been so much better. People are right to trash a game upon release if it's worse than the original release. Exceptions apply when it comes to ports that have weaker hardware. Long and short, instead of using waufux2 to upscale the backgrounds, they really should have redrawn them by hand. Heck, they could have even used waifux2 or another ai upscale model and touched them up by hand and it would have been ok. But that's not what they did. They just ran it through and called it a day.
Upscaling art manually takes time. You can't expect them to do that. That they just used AI is more than enough. This is an old game. If you want it to look as good as possible, an actual remake is the way to go. Complaints that are valid is when the performance is bad, in particular if it's worse than the original.
@@pite9 "It takes time." Yes. That's what is required to make a quality product. If they aren't willing to put in the time and effort to make a quality product, then I will not be purchasing their product. Miss me with that "you can't expect a multi million dollar company to hire and pay artists" mess.
@@kewoshk yes, it solved most of the problems... but a little late for my taste. It not even PS2 era game, and it had pretty hard freezes and fps-drops at the release. I'm glad, that SE returning those games with some upgrade, but... the quality is not good.
IMO Suikoden 4 had 2 problems. The first is that the ship felt slow, however there is a run/sprint button that makes the boat go faster. Many people didnt know about, but no matter what this gameplay feature is just not great). The rest is the party member of 4, which essentially means that your core party members wont change too much. And Suikoden games had always interesting characters you want to see/experiment with. Other than that the game is solid & the world is very interesting, leading to another sequel that is situated in the same geographical area (Suikoden Tactics, you also go to Kooluk this time). Suikoden 5 evolved from S4 and had more scenarios where your core party members change. S4 also was unfortunate that it was released along with very high profile releases at the time.
This is coming from a gamer that plays their SMT games on hard, Soul Hackers 2 is very difficult. It's about on par with the rest of them. Not the most difficult, but definitely not the easiest
Surprised Arc Rise Fantasia isn't in this list. That game got TRASHED back in the day primarily for bad voice acting, which while bad, isn't taking into account the whole package. It's possible it's poor reception contributed to imagepoch shutting down entirely.
Yes! I posted the exact same thing in this comment section too. Arc Rise Fantasia is absolutely fantastic. It honestly seems like the "professional" critics only played the game for 5 minutes before writing their reviews for the game.
Suikoden 4 is my favorite one, not the best of the Suikoden games, and that opening song i just love it. The second Tales of Symphonia game is good just not as good as the first one, Ya Eternal Poison scores never made sense to me it was damn good. I'm loving Soul Hackers 2 so far, my only problem is i wish the camera could be pulled back alot more, (even if like staring)
Hey Erick as someone who’s watched your videos for a few months now I feel like this video is a bit misguided. I think you could’ve mentioned actual criticisms from IGN or RUclipsrs, because when you present things this generally the nebulous “hater critics” doesn’t debunk anything. In nearly every game you mention common criticisms with the games. Like in Trinity the combat was criticized for being a bit too spammy. That’s a perfectly logical criticism to me. And not enjoying that in a review doesn’t mean critics are just blindly hating. I feel like as someone who plays a ton of jrpgs a lot of stuff you can overlook, that I don’t feel like you can expect everyone to. Again, love the channel but this video dunking on the haters I think you’ve made better content before
I recently started following your channel and several of these posts surprised me because they have games that I plan to play but I didn't know their reputation; Drakengard 3 is the first console game that I planned to play by Yoko Taro and although I had heard brief reviews I did not know that the specialized critics had such a negative opinion, on the other hand all I know of Eternal Poison is what I have seen in this channel and I find it aesthetically beautiful so I'm surprised they went so hard on this game. But without a doubt the one that surprises me the most is Soul Hackers 2, I had seen several reviews on this platform both from people who talk about games in general and from some who focus on SMT and there seemed to be a somewhat negative consensus about this game. I'm really looking forward to both Fate/EXTRA Record and Fate/Samurai Remnant coming out, the trailers look amazing!
About the sour reception of the previous game's character handling in ToS Dawn of the New World. People were probably angry with the fact that said older characters only join you for brief periods of time with transfixed levels and abilities.
I'm playing Chrono Cross on the PS5 now, for the 1st time. It's mostly great, except it's obviously a PS1 game. The only thing they really need to change is the collision detection. When you click on doors and certain things, it has to be exact. It's even more annoying when you're running. They could also auto-select characters that need healing, etc. when casting spells
When it came to Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, I didn't mind NOT playing as Lloyd if it meant I could play the continuation of an absolute favorite of mine in the franchise. The Wii gave the characters a little graphical boost and I thought that was pretty cool, but other then that, the gameplay and dealing with Emil just couldn't grip me long enough. For me, the whole monster battle system, lack of an Overworld map, and Emil's early character development (I know, I'm sure he excels later) was just off to me. Going from Tales of Symphonia, Tales of the Abyss, and Tales of Vesperia to Dawn of the New World, the meat & bones of the game felt like it was missing. Again, just an opinion. I'm sad that the recently released Remastered version didn't include Dawn of the New World, otherwise I probably would have given it another chance.
I Erick, great video. Just wanted to sat you should do a callaberation with Orbalology. She's really smart, knows alot about games. You can talk to her just about games in general. Doesnt have to be a certain game. She is new and her channel is growing fast.
Yeah. I don't get the critiques of Soul Hackers 2. The Soul Matrix needs to burn in a fire, but the rest of the dungeons and the game was fine. Great battle system. Not a groundbreaking story, but good execution.
Do you have a video about Nintendo switch hidden gems? or the best switch jrpg to date I really like your videos and I always use them as a guide to enjoy games
Soul hackers 2 was destroyed by Atlus. They had a possibility to create a great game with adult protagonists. But instead created a game where there is only 1 musical battle track and if you want to know your party better you need to navigate 3 exactly same matrixes. Why could they just change the background colors to those depending on character. Like blue red green would've been nice. But they haven't forgot to sell you additional battle tracks as DLC. Yeah game is disappointing, not because it's bad game. But because it could've easily been made way better. Atlus just didn't want to.
I'd highly recommend the patientgamers subreddit. A lot of people there have far more balanced opinions and nobody seems to be worried about launch hype (or lack thereof). So many games are really worth playing but if they don't get a lot of attention on launch, they often get forgotten about.
Normally I'm a bit concerned when people recommend this sub, as like a lot of subs it's changing and arguably worsening as it grows. Though I think in this case, people from here will be a very positive asset to it.
@@alanscott2517 That could be the case but it's not what I'm referring to. The sub just seems to be moving into a more general cookie cutter gaming sub and away from the aspect of patience and maturity. People are skirting the border with generic rant threads about games exactly 1 year old (or just very recent) and there's an increase of people jumping at others who respectfully disagree. I don't comment much but it's a stark contrast to years back. Similar with truegaming but that one is holding out better I think.
I don’t put much stock into review scores, even from aggregate sites. I’ll read through the review itself to try and get a feel for what the critic actually liked or didn’t, as well as if their tastes are in line with mine, and go from there.
Exactly right on Suikoden IV. Yes, it's not what it could have been, but it doesn't remotely deserve the savaging it gets. As regards the reduction in party size, I would argue III effectively has fewer, since for some inexplicable reason characters in that game move in pairs rather than individually.
I believe some JRPGs get the bad flag because they just take so long to beat and end up being a giant time waster if you didn't like it all the way through.
I'm sorry but I had to disagree with you on soul hackers 2, it was a subpar SMT game. It only had like two memorable dungeons, The twist could be seen a mile away, and the story kind of depends on some people being stupid. That all could be forgiven, because to be fair most SMTs had these flaws. But the most egregious part of it is that it had nothing to say, there was no event that happened that made me go "Damn, that's SMT for you." It's not a bad game but I see it as 3D stylized anime dungeon crawler, okay the skill system was pretty cool I'll give it that.
My issue with Chrono Cross has always been the story. I think it should have been a new IP rather then a sequel to Chrono Trigger because you could cut out the parts of the story linking them without hurting Cross and remove my least favorite parts of the story at the same time. And yes I know later releases of Trigger added a cutscene that was supposed to explain part of what happened between the games but IMO that explanation made no sense. If they absolutely had to link the two games IMO just setting Cross a century or two later would have helped a lot because it would allow the changes between the time periods the games are set to make much more sense.
Coming from symphonia to symphonia 2, my issue was the legacy of Lloyd. Not gonna spoil the story but the game plays like a side story where society looks down on Lloyd and Lloyd doesn’t do anything to fix his rep. Kinda hurts when you watched his story to greatness turns to trash. Symphonia as a whole is kinda like naruto to boruto where naruto was great and boruto can’t live up to the expectations that naruto introduced.
IMO Symphonia 2 wasn't even trying to live up to the legacy of the previous title; it threw out most of what made the previous title enjoyable to play. There is a whole archetype of jrpg that are almost solely made up of sequel games that use the formula it uses. 1 male adolescent. 1 female adolescent. monster collecting. No meeting new and interesting characters. Little to no character development. lots of nostalgia baiting. Dark Chronicles/Cloud 2 is the only game I've played in this formula that didn't feel like a cynical milking of it's host franchise. Other examples would be final fantasy xiii-2 (to be fair I didn't like xiii either), world of final fantasy, dragon quest treasures (haven't played this one) I've come to conclusion to stay well away from any JRPGs with this formula as it screams to me "I have no original ideas of my own. So here is this preprepared formula that I'm told sells to you suc... ahem I mean kids."
Symphonia 2 was fun as heck, in ng+ with a fenia with the right equip you could go Meteor spamming and kill everything on sight. Plus the yuan kafaii / Kratos aurion farewell with derris karlan getting out of radio com was beautiful. 9/10 And Richter Is One of the best villains in all of the talesverse,i mean the poor guy was trying to save the world from you the MC, doesnt often happen that you play a full game to find out you are the bad guy.
Shadow Hearts series is my Favorite series on the Ps2, i still replay it now and then will definitely want a remake of it. Been looking forward to Penny Blood :) Suikoden are all still good for me ;)
A lot of these RPGs you mention was during what RPG fans remember as the Dark Times when western media outlets used the Term JRPG in a negative light to elevate what they deemed real RPGs. Let's get one thing straight Mass Effect games are not RPGs they are shooters with light RPG elements.
I saw just today a very popular reviewer do a live stream of a game that they personally hated, they posted on social media about their dislike of the game when it was announced, and then proceeded to stream the game with a look of sheer disgust on their face... and by the time it was over, half of their audience were convinced it was a trash game and wouldn't be buying it. I'm so glad that when I stream games, I point out that my personal opinion shouldn't determine what another person enjoys. Funny thing is, the game in question is sitting at a 80 on meta critic with an audience rating of 8.0... so, clearly the reviewer wasn't just jumping on some hype hate train, they were genuinely hating on the game and streaming that hate.
I absolutely loved lost odyssey period it was basically the lost final fantasy game I always dreamed of. That said it didnt exactly get bad reviews it was generally low 8's mostly deducting points for the excessive load times which if I'm being honest with myself is a very fair complaint those low times were nuts. It was Nobuo's best work, Actually bringing in the black pages with a choice of brilliance. The story was great and the gameplay was basically the same as final fantasy ten. But damn those load times.
Oddly, my personal complaints with Knight of Ratatosk/Dawn of the New World had to do with the awkward transition to 3D gameplay. Hitboxes felt lazy with big invisible fields and weird decisions around how the hit detection was designed for certain moves in a way that didn't match their visual effects. Apart from Lloyd, the Symphonia cast felt 'off' to control, not really balancing their expected abilities with Emil and Marta who were designed to be used the whole game, and were missing too many of their important moves. The best examples would be Colette not even knowing Angel Feathers when she joins your party moments after actually USING it in a cutscene, and Sheena, who was made way too slow, barely had any of her tactically-focused moveset and zero summons despite her using them in cutscenes. The highlight of the game would have to be its monster taming, which doesn't appear in other Tales games, and it actually has some cool choices. The only drawback is how upgrading them depends on cooking, which was removed from the field menu and locked to towns, forcing you to constantly run back to towns to cook for them if you want them to have better stats, and even preventing you from using them in some boss fights if you're worried about them gaining more than one level in the same fight or stretch of gameplay as you want to ideally cook on every level. Despite the annoyances, I wouldn't go as far as saying it's not worth trying out. I'd say that of any Tales game, even the most divisive ones, as I've yet to meet a single Tales fan that didn't have at least one controversial title on their favorites list, despite what some people may try to tell you. :)
I wish they had put more effort into the art style for KoR. Going from Symphonia 1's art style to KoR felt like a graphical downgrade. KoR's graphics and combat reminded me more of Abyss, which is my favorite Tales game despite its technical issues.
@@thek3289 : The same team did make it. I think it's nice seeing the character models for the old main cast compared to the half-step between sprites and models that the first game had, but I agree it felt a bit bland in some ways too.
@@theoaremevano3227 I liked how KoR added new areas to previous dungeons and changed previous towns due to the events of the first game. This helped with the sense of world-building. I also believe the in-game world could have used a similar color scheme to the first game.
Probably one of your best videos. Its much easier for youtubers to go with the flow of community negative consensus for views then stick up for things they genuinely thought are still worth playing Its hard to find a single positive thing said abou Soul Hackers 2 in any forum or review without a "however" or "but" in the same sentence, usually followed by some comparison to how it isnt as good as older SMT games. It isnt trying to be 1:1 like those games in its difficulty, nor is it trying to be this revolutionary game that tries (and often fails in most SMT games) to say something philosophically profound. Its just a fun emotional story that is pretty well executed, even if you see some of the scenes coming. The cast, OST, atmosphere, and parts of the gameplay hard-carry this game to being a pretty good one, and I dont really see the problem with that. Soul Hackers 2 isn't a 9 or 10 out of 10 masterpiece, but it is an engaging, flawed, and fun game that I can easily see being many people's guilty pleasure JRPG. There was a time in the PS1 and PS2 days where that was okay, as if Legend of Dragoon or Skies of Arcadia were some flawless masterpieces and not just really fun and charismatic RPG games. I'd like to say that this is a universal trend in gamer expectations, however games like Scarlet Nexus, Star Ocean, and Xenoblade dont get anywhere near the critical backlash despite being just as, or even more flawed as video games. Whether this is due to the SMT community's elitism or critic's overall moving on from the gameplay style of SMT-esque games in general, it's hard to say, but either way if the trailers or footage for Soul Hackers 2 has you thinking it looks cool, then just play it. Its exactly what it advertises itself as
I'd say its easier to get views by defending jrpgs (which many have never played) because the jrpg community has a lot of people callin every single jrpg underrated. You only see that if you've spent some time watchin 100s of jrpg centric channels 😅
I tried playing Chrono Cross on Switch last year and I shut it down after 5 minutes, the atrocious framerate was just too much for me. I played and beat the game twice on Ps1 back in the day so I love this game.
Honorable mentions: - Xenoblade Chronicles 2: many fans called the worst game of the Xenoblade series (behind Xenogears 2) with the game being 'too anime'. Rex was an annoying, arrogant, immature boy who abused his powers after Pyra (some called being the worst designed character of all time) revived him. The story had a bad presentation at the start with how ridge those scenes were. Many fans avoided the game like the plague for whatever reason but the storyline progressed to be better at the second half. - Fire Emblem Engage: like Soul Hackers 2, many people had high expectations after played Three Houses to be like a hard story telling, Persona like game (which made no sense). Like Xenoblade 2, many fans called Engage to be 'too anime', and the characters design sucked especially with the main avatar. The story was awful for a fan service game and the social sim was toned down. It is like how many people played FE for the first time with a bang only to be disappointed with Engage outside of great gameplay.
I'm gonna be honest, while I didn't hate Soul Hackers 2, I think it was very middling. I think I'd rather play a dumpster fire of a game rather than a game that I think is just ok.
Can I just say - thank you? I never played Eternal Poison, but the song in the background immediately caught me, and I had to search for it. After listening to the whole thing I gotta say - it suddenly became one of my all time favorite musical pieces from a video game. while what you said about the game certainly was persuasive, that song on itself would've made me want to play this game. It's amazing.
I know in the professional "normal" news they sometimes put random guy, not someone how in general do that kind of news, just someone because the right person is busy with a most important topic. And I feel it happens a lot with games. They need to do a reviewer and put someone to do the critic how dislike totally the genre. Because i see things like: XXXXX II bring the same as XXXXX to the table. Is not good? Why is a problem? If I want to play a game for a X franchising I want it to play exactly like the anterior building up over the foundations that come before!
just a week ago i bought my physical copy of chrono cross (switch) after the patch. yup. waited a year before buying it. now i can megaevolve my Pip to weremecha mode hehe
I dont agree with the overview of cross's remaster People should be even harsher if a Company cant even get a freaking remaster to run well and has such weird technical issues Nothing that is remastered should simple score higher or equal for being the same game.
I really despise the mainstream "critics" and "games journalists".. They are just hacks. I laugh when people call them "urinalists" instead! haha Erick Landon > everyone else that covers RPG's : )
Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World is a great game i love it because of it's story and unique battle mechanic at it's time at least it's way better than modern tales games like Tales of Xillia 2, Tales of Zestiria, Tales of Berseria and Tales of Arise
Suikoden 4 left out the generally superior 6 member active party, has the least memorable story/characters of the franchise (including Tierkreis) and has easily the worst version of the large scale battle mechanic. All that said, as my introduction to the franchise it still managed to make me fall in love instead of scaring me away. Plus, I can still play and enjoy it even now.
Worse than the scripted major battle of I, the heavy rng of IIs and pretty much just regular battles of III? I would argue that it is tied with the first game for the amount of memorable characters which isn't a bad thing considering that they have large casts. II, III and V have the most memorable, but my favourite overall cast goes between II and III.
Good thing I am a completionist, and judge games only by own experience. So unlike most reviewers, I dive into the game and reach 100%, instead of just playing a small portion or skipping sidecontent. Optional content and endgame are sometimes the best, as a small extra note.
I streamed Soul Hackers 2 on hard as a blind playthrough and loved sharing it with my community. It has flaws but it was nowhere NEAR as bad as a lot of the reviews
I overall enjoyed Soul Hackers 2 and might shell out for the DLC at some point. I think some people didn't like it because they were expecting Persona 5 part 3... Suikoden 4 wasn't that great, I played it, beat it and then sold it off. Was it horrible? No. It was pretty middle of the road. Since the previous titles were solid it just made this one feel worse than it probably was.
I liked Soul Hackers 2. I never got all of the hate that game got. Sure, it wasn’t Persona or SMT, but it was fine for what it was. I recently picked up Drakengard 3 recently. I’ve been having fun with it. It’s definitely got some technical issues, but there’s still a lot to enjoy. They definitely wouldn’t make that game in today’s “modern audience”climate.
Talking about rpgs getting killed by metacritic scores, my goty of 2022 was Harvestella. And in 2022 i ve got Platinum on AC valhalla, judgment, Horizon 2, like a dragon, 300 hours on xc3, etc. And still i liked harvestella more than all else. Give It a chance and don't give up at the beginning, It Is really Amazing imho. After 35 years gaming i Hope my opinion means something in this Crazy world 😂
One game for me was BLUE REFLECTION. Not sure how the second game (which is very good) was viewed, but the first was called "poor mans Persona" often times. "Sailor Moon JRPG" would have been a better description. It has its flaws, but is very unique in style and with its ideas. I really liked it a lot, even though the second game is a lot better, just because of the fact to revisit just a few sections in the first game a bit too often.
I loved both games. Gotta do a 2nd run of the 2nd game still. Even tho I loved them, they weren't perfect games by any stretch, but I had fun the entire time. Even tho they will never get enough of a budget for them, but they could be even better with some extra backing.
I don't think I could disagree more with your Number 1 Pick if a game runs worse than the original from 20+ years ago it deserves to be trashed. I was looking forward to having an experience with the remaster at least some what upgraded from the original but when I got a downgraded WORSE looking experience at launch than the original PSX version with things such as missing textures as well as poor framerate and graphics it was totally unacceptable for the $40/$30 price tag.
I NEVER LISING TO CRITICS I WATCHING GAMEPLAYS WHIT NO COMENTARY BY THE WAY I PLAYED TALES OF SYMPHONIA 2, 3 TIMES ITS NOT THE BEST TALES OF BUT I ENJOY IT
Valkyria revolution has a great story and characters ... All the playable characters, but the MC and the princess, are extremelly one dimensional, but "The traitors" (the real protagonists of the story) are well developed and interesting characters. The gameplay is a clunky mess, I can't defend that, but overall is a good game
I still haven't had the opportunity to play Soul Hack 2, for a reason that will be my opinion below. I think the game is a good RPG, but it couldn't create an identity that appealed as much as SMT, Persona or Devil Survivor. And the other big reason why it is rightly criticized is the price and its DLCs, which in addition to being expensive, is obviously content cut from the game and not extra content.
to be fair fate extra was one of the first localized fate games. the franchise was basically unknown to western audiences at that point. nobody outside of japan knew the impact that the franchise would have on anime in the west.
My issue with Crono Cross for the Switch is the censorship. I might buy it because Tales of Symphonia also has framerate issues but I still enjoy the game.
Chrono Cross remaster is 30% off on steam right now! I was gonna pick it up yesterday, until I saw the review score. Good to know they patched it, I'll go ahead and get it
For the record, the most influential video game website in France rated Lost Odyssey 11/20 because the characters designs are "questionable", the story soft and the involvement of the player is apparently a failure. Yeah, it hurts.
I think that for Chrono Cross it's fair to call out Square on it, because you could play the game and have a better experience on PS1 than on PC due to all the lag issues. The game is great and everyone knows it, not being able to enjoy it after paying a lot for it because of Square's bad port was terrible, and did generate a lot of hate, rightfully so - towards Sqaure and that version of the game.
Suikoden V was fun but my biggest complaint was that it was far too short, as you mentioned. The speed I could live with, but the length... Where is the rest of my game Konami? I also really enjoyed Soul Hackers 2 but it is grindy and repetitive with the Soul Matrixes. It is fun though, and the characters have their charms.
So glad you mentioned Soul Hackers 2. After seeing the reviews I had no plan to buy it, but then PS+ released a trial so I checked it out and absolutely fell in love with the game. I bought it digitally after the trial time ended and even put down SMTV so I could beat it. Even ended up buying a physical copy once it went on sale just so I could have it in my collection. I really hope they make a 3rd and keep with the idea of an actual protagonist with a voice and personality - Ringo was so well done and there are too many silent protagonists in JRPGs imo.
The silent protag thing is something i really don't understand, okay i get it a bit for smt, you have multiple routes and maybe it breaks immersion when your chaos protag talks like a standard jrpg hero but in persona they even imply what kind of character you play in dialouge choices. When the persona 4 and 5 anime dropped people already knew what kind of person the protagonist will be. So why don't they just give them a voice...
Erick u ever play megaman battle network that’s a good action rpg for the GBA legacy collection coming out next month you should try it out that series is another one where critics whined about it but it was fun and the starforce trilogy I recommend the DX patch for the first 2 it’s great
My issue with Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, was simply that it wasn’t as fun or engaging as the original. Definitely didn’t deserve the trashing it got though.
I haven't watched the video, but it looks like Erick just making an excuse to talk about Chrono cross and Growlanser Wayfarer of Time XD Edit: He didnt talk about Growlanser.
Well, most of Idea Factory + Compile Hearts games can go into this category. But... who else can gives us so many cool, stylish and strange JRPG today? Mary Skelter, Neptunia series, Omega Quinted, Death end Re;Quest, Agarest, Dark Rose Valkirie, Cross Edge... Those guys keep those games coming and, while being mostly B-A games, those are good. Atlus is just producing one-two JRPG games on holidays, SE... okay, waiting (but Diofield and Triangle were good), BN is also waiting and not announcing anything major. NF is put a rest on Legend of Heroes series for now and looking in YS derection. Well, good decision. Still, those games are somewhat feels the same, while IF+CH are really different by all means.
Honestly most games from them are usually lazy and cut corners. They copy paste elements of previous games like enemy models, map assets and even gameplay systems. Usually ripped from the neptunia titles since thats the big flagship series that has the most success. Most games have no explorable areas besides dungeons. Overworlds and towns are represented by menus upon menus upon menus overlayed on still images of generic fantasy or scifi settings. Story is done in visual novel format to save money on animating cutscenes and they usually launch day 1 with $100+ of dlc. Honestly even though they're rarely bad, most IF and CH games deserve the 6/10 to 7/10 scores they usually get because they put a 2/10 effort into making them. The only upside is that in the time it takes other companies to make a game like dragon quest or xenoblade IF and CH can assembly line dozens of titles on multiple platforms and give players something to enjoy in-between bigger releases.
@@Coomamon_Memes THIS I love Neptunia as a series but the fact that when I was playing sister vs sister on PS5 I was amazed to see I actually got to walk around Planeptune for the first time says alot lol
@@godlyBlade after Kuro 2 they made statement that, for now, planning concentrating on YS. Well, that plan is not including translation of the Azurs, Riverie and both Kuro. Those are done by other company. So all there resources are now on YS 10.
I have to disagree VERY strongly with Chrono Cross RDE. If a multimillion dollar company is rereleasing an old game it had better be the perfect/definitive/best version of that game. Otherwise it's a waste of everyone's time and money as I (and many others) will just emulate the original. As a 1999 ps1 game its great. As a product released for modern hardware in 2023 it is garbage at worst and shovelware at best.
The Fate/Stay one is the only one on this list I’ve played. It was okay. Not amazing. I barely remember the story except for the fact that people died when they lost the tournament, so the stakes were high and there were some tragic moments since not everyone was a villain. I think that little hook made it pretty compelling.
I remember when the original Nier (which in Japan was Nier Gestalt, Replicant would come out until 2021 outside Japan as a Remake), they gave bad reviews and terrible scores, in short, nobody cared; but when Nier Automata came out, now yes, they considered the predecessor as a cult jewel and it became very sought after (and therefore, certain stores raised their price)
That was just the retailers playing 4D chess.
in fact the issue that caused Tales of the Symphonia 2, is to imitate the plot of Devil May Cry 4, it is almost the same where the main hero is associated with the rookie hero and yeah... the main is the new villain.
Fate/Extra was my absolute favorite game on the PSP. I played through it in its entirety on there and then did it again digitally on the Vita. The remake is my most anticipated game right now. But knowing type-moon, who knows when it will be here…
Tsukihime Remake in Nutshell
I would love it very much if they rerelease the Drakengard trilogy. I think it is not outside the realm of possibility with the success of Nier: Automata and Replicant. I don’t want to rely on outside sources to read up on the lore and be able to experience it myself.
Drackengard 2 isnt by Yoko Taro and it's also not in the Nier canon. Timeline is D3 - D1 - Replicant - Automata.
I hope if they do it they hire someone to improve combat and music in Drakengard 1.
@@xxJing I never played Drakengard, so this is news to me. Thanks so much for the info. I'll try getting into Drakengard although it would just be on an emulator.
@@xxJing 2 was the best though, just saying. Best soundtrack, best gameplay. Gotta say that none of 3 endings properly link to 1 either (though Ending E from 1 does link into Nier). Drakengard 2 is kinda of a mix of endings A and B from 1, it has the same problem as trying to link 3 to 1, though nowadays Taro considers 2 it's own thing, it was officialized as canon in a book or something (kinda like 3 needed a book ending to properly link it to 1, and it isn't even 1 but more of a reimagining of 1)
@@Galdoth I've read one of the issues of the manga that continues off of 3 and it is really gruesome. It's about One (brother) killing all of his descendants because they are immune to the red eye disease and using that fact to try to rule the world.
I haven't played 2 because I read that it's not by Yoko Taro and we'll frankly because it's not totally messed up like the rest of the series. The Niers are a bit more tame but D1 and D3 are like super game of thrones levels of dark.
Say it with me. Soul Hackers is NOT PERSONA 5. I walked into it with realistic expectations and absolutely adored it for what it was. It was nice not having an intricate battle system and stellar characters. It was my go to game for awhile after a hard day at work.
Also SMT 5 is NOT PERSONA 5. I say this as someone who loved both.
its still worse than sh1
Damn, man , I am absolutely agree with you. Soul Hackers 2 and Valkyrie Revolution totally don’t deserve such scores. In Valkyrie Revolution very good music and narrative. It’s a tragedy that we will never see the sequel of this game :(
I mean those games really were a dissapointment though, maybe not horrible, but definitely not great. Especially Soul Hackers 2 looked so good in the trailers but the game ended up just being a boring walking simulator with horrible dungeon design and a mediocre story.
@@Finalrasyou’re right Soul Hackers 2 is mid and the ending was terrible
Soul Hackers 2 had the weirdest hate campaign against it. It started as outrage about the day 1 DLC but then just devolved to blind hatred for everything about it. It's a really good game and I loved my time with it. Clickbait content creators couldn't resist the urge to hop on the hate train.
Good to see you here boss!
@@soratheorangejuicemascot5809 Hey rock on my friend!
@@HallowedBeThyGame I decided to play Etrian Odyssey Untold Le Millennium Grill after Radiant Historia.
SH2 was mediocre with dumbed down gameplay from mainline and barely any connections character wise from SH1 aside from reoccuring NPC shop function characters. Dungeons such as Soul Matrixes were souless. Ringo is cool though, wish more MegaTen protags were like her.
Eternal Poison is the game I want Atlus to remaster because it's a decent game but for me I like to watch skill animations and the load times are terrible and make it kind of unplayable.
I'd like to see that game come to the Switch.
I also would like it to be remastered.
I'm glad Soul Hackers 2 was addressed. Reviewers, youtubers and other critics played that game and stomped it. It had no business getting stomped. The aesthetic is gorgeous with the green and purple neon, the gameplay is solid and the combat was very SMT like, even if not as tough or deep. It had shortcomings but not enough to throw it under the bus so easily. Soul Hackers 2 will go down as an under-apreciated gem as time goes on and thats too bad because the rep it got is pushing a lot of people away from playing it, even on Gamepass. I personally, LOVE Soul Hackers 2. Thanks Erick!
Tbh as a big SMT and Atlus Fan i really agree with the Critics. Soul Hackers 2 was complete Boring. The Artstyle was Amazing, the Soundtrack was ok and the Story was also average. The biggest Bummer was the boring Dungeon Design. All of the Outside Dungeons were so bland and Boring looking and i dont even wanna Start about this BS Matrix. There was a Reason why they added a QoL Patch with Battle Speed increase and some Dungeon Features. Also the typical Atlus Shady moves with cutting out Staple Demons from the Series or even locking entire Storyparts behind a Paywall.
You can clearly see where all the Money goes....and its not into the SMT Series (even Persona technically Starts as a SMT Spinoff ^^)
As always I love your videos and your perspective and opinions.
One thing that's rarely mentioned is that Dawn of the New World has really good comedy moments too. Tenebrae is just amazing, the Skits are sooo good :D
Love the channel but one thing I wish you did on this channel was put timestamps in your videos, I'm sure you have reasons for not doing it but figured i'd mention it as something I feel would make the videos a bit better.
I LOVED Soul Hackers 2, but good god, they needed to spend a little more money on it, giving it more than 6 (I think) dungeon styles... Even worse was that the end area has 2 different styles in it, meaning the rest of the game was stuck with 4 dungeon designs... and they weren't interesting, Subway, docks, office building... the only one that was visually interesting, and fit into the cyberpunk aesthetic were the soul dungeons... It really brought an excellent game down, and I can understand why some people found it mediocre as a result, even if I didn't.
How can you miss out the mother of all trashed by critics games? SHADOW HEARTS... IGN's review of the game is still a punchline among my friends and I.
Dare I ask... how bad?
The worst review of a great rpg was Hyper Magazine's (Was once Australia's no.1 gaming magazine) review of Breath of Fire IV. It made the reviewer infamous in Australia's JRPG fandom.
The review was incoherent rambling about how the game made him so mad he got noise complaints from his neighbours and was wishing he was playing FFVI instead (oh yes he compared every rpg he reviewed to FFVI).
After failing to inform the reader why he thought BoFIV was bad he gave it a 50/100.
Still the worst rpg review I've read and it began my 23 year grudge with the FFVI fan base (Despite the fact I really like the game haha).
Someone else who played Trinity! I appreciate your view on it. It’s not without flaws but it’s a game I’ve replayed and I enjoyed the combat skill system . Kinda wish a similar system would pop up
Thing about the Chrono Cross remaster is that it could have been so much better. People are right to trash a game upon release if it's worse than the original release. Exceptions apply when it comes to ports that have weaker hardware. Long and short, instead of using waufux2 to upscale the backgrounds, they really should have redrawn them by hand. Heck, they could have even used waifux2 or another ai upscale model and touched them up by hand and it would have been ok. But that's not what they did. They just ran it through and called it a day.
Worse than the original doesn't even cover it, my ps1 and ps2 didn't chug in battle like that and neither does just emulating the damn game.
Upscaling art manually takes time. You can't expect them to do that. That they just used AI is more than enough. This is an old game. If you want it to look as good as possible, an actual remake is the way to go. Complaints that are valid is when the performance is bad, in particular if it's worse than the original.
@@pite9 "It takes time." Yes. That's what is required to make a quality product. If they aren't willing to put in the time and effort to make a quality product, then I will not be purchasing their product. Miss me with that "you can't expect a multi million dollar company to hire and pay artists" mess.
It got a huge update recently and a lot of the comments say it solved the performance problems
@@kewoshk yes, it solved most of the problems... but a little late for my taste. It not even PS2 era game, and it had pretty hard freezes and fps-drops at the release.
I'm glad, that SE returning those games with some upgrade, but... the quality is not good.
IMO Suikoden 4 had 2 problems. The first is that the ship felt slow, however there is a run/sprint button that makes the boat go faster. Many people didnt know about, but no matter what this gameplay feature is just not great). The rest is the party member of 4, which essentially means that your core party members wont change too much. And Suikoden games had always interesting characters you want to see/experiment with. Other than that the game is solid & the world is very interesting, leading to another sequel that is situated in the same geographical area (Suikoden Tactics, you also go to Kooluk this time). Suikoden 5 evolved from S4 and had more scenarios where your core party members change. S4 also was unfortunate that it was released along with very high profile releases at the time.
This is coming from a gamer that plays their SMT games on hard, Soul Hackers 2 is very difficult. It's about on par with the rest of them. Not the most difficult, but definitely not the easiest
I mean if the remaster version feel like it didn't have much effort put into it, the player have the right a to bash it.
Surprised Arc Rise Fantasia isn't in this list. That game got TRASHED back in the day primarily for bad voice acting, which while bad, isn't taking into account the whole package. It's possible it's poor reception contributed to imagepoch shutting down entirely.
Yes! I posted the exact same thing in this comment section too. Arc Rise Fantasia is absolutely fantastic. It honestly seems like the "professional" critics only played the game for 5 minutes before writing their reviews for the game.
Drakengard 3 is a game I would like to see ported on modern console and Steam would probably fix a lot of technical issues.
Suikoden 4 is my favorite one, not the best of the Suikoden games, and that opening song i just love it.
The second Tales of Symphonia game is good just not as good as the first one,
Ya Eternal Poison scores never made sense to me it was damn good.
I'm loving Soul Hackers 2 so far, my only problem is i wish the camera could be pulled back alot more, (even if like staring)
Look up more COBA songs. I love them. Loved La Mer from suiko 4. HIs song La Strada is epic too.
@@blondeleogirl COBA is awesome!
Hey Erick as someone who’s watched your videos for a few months now I feel like this video is a bit misguided.
I think you could’ve mentioned actual criticisms from IGN or RUclipsrs, because when you present things this generally the nebulous “hater critics” doesn’t debunk anything. In nearly every game you mention common criticisms with the games. Like in Trinity the combat was criticized for being a bit too spammy.
That’s a perfectly logical criticism to me. And not enjoying that in a review doesn’t mean critics are just blindly hating.
I feel like as someone who plays a ton of jrpgs a lot of stuff you can overlook, that I don’t feel like you can expect everyone to. Again, love the channel but this video dunking on the haters I think you’ve made better content before
I recently started following your channel and several of these posts surprised me because they have games that I plan to play but I didn't know their reputation; Drakengard 3 is the first console game that I planned to play by Yoko Taro and although I had heard brief reviews I did not know that the specialized critics had such a negative opinion, on the other hand all I know of Eternal Poison is what I have seen in this channel and I find it aesthetically beautiful so I'm surprised they went so hard on this game.
But without a doubt the one that surprises me the most is Soul Hackers 2, I had seen several reviews on this platform both from people who talk about games in general and from some who focus on SMT and there seemed to be a somewhat negative consensus about this game.
I'm really looking forward to both Fate/EXTRA Record and Fate/Samurai Remnant coming out, the trailers look amazing!
About the sour reception of the previous game's character handling in ToS Dawn of the New World.
People were probably angry with the fact that said older characters only join you for brief periods of time with transfixed levels and abilities.
I'm playing Chrono Cross on the PS5 now, for the 1st time. It's mostly great, except it's obviously a PS1 game. The only thing they really need to change is the collision detection. When you click on doors and certain things, it has to be exact. It's even more annoying when you're running. They could also auto-select characters that need healing, etc. when casting spells
Ps5 has movies simulators
Somethibg like chrono cross is a gem
When it came to Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, I didn't mind NOT playing as Lloyd if it meant I could play the continuation of an absolute favorite of mine in the franchise. The Wii gave the characters a little graphical boost and I thought that was pretty cool, but other then that, the gameplay and dealing with Emil just couldn't grip me long enough. For me, the whole monster battle system, lack of an Overworld map, and Emil's early character development (I know, I'm sure he excels later) was just off to me. Going from Tales of Symphonia, Tales of the Abyss, and Tales of Vesperia to Dawn of the New World, the meat & bones of the game felt like it was missing. Again, just an opinion. I'm sad that the recently released Remastered version didn't include Dawn of the New World, otherwise I probably would have given it another chance.
I Erick, great video. Just wanted to sat you should do a callaberation with Orbalology. She's really smart, knows alot about games. You can talk to her just about games in general. Doesnt have to be a certain game. She is new and her channel is growing fast.
Dunno why, but I haven’t seen a recommendation for one of your videos in a couple weeks. I clicked on this as soon as I saw it!
Yeah. I don't get the critiques of Soul Hackers 2. The Soul Matrix needs to burn in a fire, but the rest of the dungeons and the game was fine. Great battle system. Not a groundbreaking story, but good execution.
This video was so great! And I had a great time with soul hackers 2. The point for me of playing a game is to have a good time, and I did.
When you are just grinding for stats instead of unlocking new moves or ally, that is when I consider it is a flawed tactical rpg
Do you have a video about Nintendo switch hidden gems? or the best switch jrpg to date
I really like your videos and I always use them as a guide to enjoy games
you are better off to find another RUclipsr who does that
Soul hackers 2 was destroyed by Atlus. They had a possibility to create a great game with adult protagonists. But instead created a game where there is only 1 musical battle track and if you want to know your party better you need to navigate 3 exactly same matrixes. Why could they just change the background colors to those depending on character. Like blue red green would've been nice. But they haven't forgot to sell you additional battle tracks as DLC.
Yeah game is disappointing, not because it's bad game. But because it could've easily been made way better. Atlus just didn't want to.
Or just Sega and Sammy dont gave them proper budget. Even TMS is better game, than SH2.
that's why i say
HIDE critics threads
IGNORE critics posts
DO NOT REPLY to critics posters
I disregard all people that say they can't play a game if it is 30 frames, give me a break.
My issue with the Chrono Cross remaster was that they censored it.
I’m sick of that shit.
I'd highly recommend the patientgamers subreddit. A lot of people there have far more balanced opinions and nobody seems to be worried about launch hype (or lack thereof). So many games are really worth playing but if they don't get a lot of attention on launch, they often get forgotten about.
Normally I'm a bit concerned when people recommend this sub, as like a lot of subs it's changing and arguably worsening as it grows. Though I think in this case, people from here will be a very positive asset to it.
Betting a nickel that "it's changing an arguably worsening" means panic over wokeness.
@@alanscott2517 That could be the case but it's not what I'm referring to. The sub just seems to be moving into a more general cookie cutter gaming sub and away from the aspect of patience and maturity. People are skirting the border with generic rant threads about games exactly 1 year old (or just very recent) and there's an increase of people jumping at others who respectfully disagree. I don't comment much but it's a stark contrast to years back. Similar with truegaming but that one is holding out better I think.
@@alanscott2517 With reddit it's less-so wokeness, and moreso i-don't-give-a-fuckness.
IMO Tears to Tiara 2 was heavily underrated.
I don’t put much stock into review scores, even from aggregate sites. I’ll read through the review itself to try and get a feel for what the critic actually liked or didn’t, as well as if their tastes are in line with mine, and go from there.
Exactly right on Suikoden IV. Yes, it's not what it could have been, but it doesn't remotely deserve the savaging it gets. As regards the reduction in party size, I would argue III effectively has fewer, since for some inexplicable reason characters in that game move in pairs rather than individually.
I believe some JRPGs get the bad flag because they just take so long to beat and end up being a giant time waster if you didn't like it all the way through.
especially if you had a busy life
This. When I was young it was fine, but not anymore.
I'm sorry but I had to disagree with you on soul hackers 2, it was a subpar SMT game. It only had like two memorable dungeons, The twist could be seen a mile away, and the story kind of depends on some people being stupid. That all could be forgiven, because to be fair most SMTs had these flaws. But the most egregious part of it is that it had nothing to say, there was no event that happened that made me go "Damn, that's SMT for you." It's not a bad game but I see it as 3D stylized anime dungeon crawler, okay the skill system was pretty cool I'll give it that.
My issue with Chrono Cross has always been the story. I think it should have been a new IP rather then a sequel to Chrono Trigger because you could cut out the parts of the story linking them without hurting Cross and remove my least favorite parts of the story at the same time. And yes I know later releases of Trigger added a cutscene that was supposed to explain part of what happened between the games but IMO that explanation made no sense. If they absolutely had to link the two games IMO just setting Cross a century or two later would have helped a lot because it would allow the changes between the time periods the games are set to make much more sense.
Coming from symphonia to symphonia 2, my issue was the legacy of Lloyd. Not gonna spoil the story but the game plays like a side story where society looks down on Lloyd and Lloyd doesn’t do anything to fix his rep. Kinda hurts when you watched his story to greatness turns to trash. Symphonia as a whole is kinda like naruto to boruto where naruto was great and boruto can’t live up to the expectations that naruto introduced.
IMO Symphonia 2 wasn't even trying to live up to the legacy of the previous title; it threw out most of what made the previous title enjoyable to play. There is a whole archetype of jrpg that are almost solely made up of sequel games that use the formula it uses. 1 male adolescent. 1 female adolescent. monster collecting. No meeting new and interesting characters. Little to no character development. lots of nostalgia baiting. Dark Chronicles/Cloud 2 is the only game I've played in this formula that didn't feel like a cynical milking of it's host franchise. Other examples would be final fantasy xiii-2 (to be fair I didn't like xiii either), world of final fantasy, dragon quest treasures (haven't played this one)
I've come to conclusion to stay well away from any JRPGs with this formula as it screams to me "I have no original ideas of my own. So here is this preprepared formula that I'm told sells to you suc... ahem I mean kids."
Also the new cast is supper annoying.
Symphonia 2 was fun as heck, in ng+ with a fenia with the right equip you could go Meteor spamming and kill everything on sight. Plus the yuan kafaii / Kratos aurion farewell with derris karlan getting out of radio com was beautiful. 9/10
And Richter Is One of the best villains in all of the talesverse,i mean the poor guy was trying to save the world from you the MC, doesnt often happen that you play a full game to find out you are the bad guy.
@@astralwyrm3787 Aren't jrpg franchises generally formulaic though?
What's the game shown in the first couple of seconds of the intro?
Don't listen to any reviews or scores. You should always make your own mind up if you like something or not. Todays gen do not appreciate anything.
Shadow Hearts series is my Favorite series on the Ps2, i still replay it now and then will definitely want a remake of it. Been looking forward to Penny Blood :)
Suikoden are all still good for me ;)
A lot of these RPGs you mention was during what RPG fans remember as the Dark Times when western media outlets used the Term JRPG in a negative light to elevate what they deemed real RPGs. Let's get one thing straight Mass Effect games are not RPGs they are shooters with light RPG elements.
Hey Erick how about a top 10 jrpg favourite endings or most disappointing endings (without actual spoilers)
I saw just today a very popular reviewer do a live stream of a game that they personally hated, they posted on social media about their dislike of the game when it was announced, and then proceeded to stream the game with a look of sheer disgust on their face... and by the time it was over, half of their audience were convinced it was a trash game and wouldn't be buying it. I'm so glad that when I stream games, I point out that my personal opinion shouldn't determine what another person enjoys. Funny thing is, the game in question is sitting at a 80 on meta critic with an audience rating of 8.0... so, clearly the reviewer wasn't just jumping on some hype hate train, they were genuinely hating on the game and streaming that hate.
I think Lost Odyssey got unfair scores by critic and it is one of my favorites for sure
I absolutely loved lost odyssey period it was basically the lost final fantasy game I always dreamed of. That said it didnt exactly get bad reviews it was generally low 8's mostly deducting points for the excessive load times which if I'm being honest with myself is a very fair complaint those low times were nuts. It was Nobuo's best work, Actually bringing in the black pages with a choice of brilliance. The story was great and the gameplay was basically the same as final fantasy ten. But damn those load times.
Oddly, my personal complaints with Knight of Ratatosk/Dawn of the New World had to do with the awkward transition to 3D gameplay. Hitboxes felt lazy with big invisible fields and weird decisions around how the hit detection was designed for certain moves in a way that didn't match their visual effects. Apart from Lloyd, the Symphonia cast felt 'off' to control, not really balancing their expected abilities with Emil and Marta who were designed to be used the whole game, and were missing too many of their important moves.
The best examples would be Colette not even knowing Angel Feathers when she joins your party moments after actually USING it in a cutscene, and Sheena, who was made way too slow, barely had any of her tactically-focused moveset and zero summons despite her using them in cutscenes.
The highlight of the game would have to be its monster taming, which doesn't appear in other Tales games, and it actually has some cool choices. The only drawback is how upgrading them depends on cooking, which was removed from the field menu and locked to towns, forcing you to constantly run back to towns to cook for them if you want them to have better stats, and even preventing you from using them in some boss fights if you're worried about them gaining more than one level in the same fight or stretch of gameplay as you want to ideally cook on every level.
Despite the annoyances, I wouldn't go as far as saying it's not worth trying out. I'd say that of any Tales game, even the most divisive ones, as I've yet to meet a single Tales fan that didn't have at least one controversial title on their favorites list, despite what some people may try to tell you. :)
I wish they had put more effort into the art style for KoR. Going from Symphonia 1's art style to KoR felt like a graphical downgrade. KoR's graphics and combat reminded me more of Abyss, which is my favorite Tales game despite its technical issues.
@@thek3289 : The same team did make it. I think it's nice seeing the character models for the old main cast compared to the half-step between sprites and models that the first game had, but I agree it felt a bit bland in some ways too.
@@theoaremevano3227 I liked how KoR added new areas to previous dungeons and changed previous towns due to the events of the first game. This helped with the sense of world-building. I also believe the in-game world could have used a similar color scheme to the first game.
Probably one of your best videos. Its much easier for youtubers to go with the flow of community negative consensus for views then stick up for things they genuinely thought are still worth playing
Its hard to find a single positive thing said abou Soul Hackers 2 in any forum or review without a "however" or "but" in the same sentence, usually followed by some comparison to how it isnt as good as older SMT games. It isnt trying to be 1:1 like those games in its difficulty, nor is it trying to be this revolutionary game that tries (and often fails in most SMT games) to say something philosophically profound. Its just a fun emotional story that is pretty well executed, even if you see some of the scenes coming. The cast, OST, atmosphere, and parts of the gameplay hard-carry this game to being a pretty good one, and I dont really see the problem with that. Soul Hackers 2 isn't a 9 or 10 out of 10 masterpiece, but it is an engaging, flawed, and fun game that I can easily see being many people's guilty pleasure JRPG.
There was a time in the PS1 and PS2 days where that was okay, as if Legend of Dragoon or Skies of Arcadia were some flawless masterpieces and not just really fun and charismatic RPG games. I'd like to say that this is a universal trend in gamer expectations, however games like Scarlet Nexus, Star Ocean, and Xenoblade dont get anywhere near the critical backlash despite being just as, or even more flawed as video games. Whether this is due to the SMT community's elitism or critic's overall moving on from the gameplay style of SMT-esque games in general, it's hard to say, but either way if the trailers or footage for Soul Hackers 2 has you thinking it looks cool, then just play it. Its exactly what it advertises itself as
I'd say its easier to get views by defending jrpgs (which many have never played) because the jrpg community has a lot of people callin every single jrpg underrated. You only see that if you've spent some time watchin 100s of jrpg centric channels 😅
I tried playing Chrono Cross on Switch last year and I shut it down after 5 minutes, the atrocious framerate was just too much for me. I played and beat the game twice on Ps1 back in the day so I love this game.
Duckstation , psp , vita
Intro having shadow hearts made ME SO HAPPY
Honorable mentions:
- Xenoblade Chronicles 2: many fans called the worst game of the Xenoblade series (behind Xenogears 2) with the game being 'too anime'. Rex was an annoying, arrogant, immature boy who abused his powers after Pyra (some called being the worst designed character of all time) revived him. The story had a bad presentation at the start with how ridge those scenes were. Many fans avoided the game like the plague for whatever reason but the storyline progressed to be better at the second half.
- Fire Emblem Engage: like Soul Hackers 2, many people had high expectations after played Three Houses to be like a hard story telling, Persona like game (which made no sense). Like Xenoblade 2, many fans called Engage to be 'too anime', and the characters design sucked especially with the main avatar. The story was awful for a fan service game and the social sim was toned down. It is like how many people played FE for the first time with a bang only to be disappointed with Engage outside of great gameplay.
Bruh, most of these games in the video are my favorite especially Eternal Poison and Fate/Extra... Good thing I don't listen to those critics.
I'm gonna be honest, while I didn't hate Soul Hackers 2, I think it was very middling. I think I'd rather play a dumpster fire of a game rather than a game that I think is just ok.
Can I just say - thank you? I never played Eternal Poison, but the song in the background immediately caught me, and I had to search for it. After listening to the whole thing I gotta say - it suddenly became one of my all time favorite musical pieces from a video game. while what you said about the game certainly was persuasive, that song on itself would've made me want to play this game. It's amazing.
I know in the professional "normal" news they sometimes put random guy, not someone how in general do that kind of news, just someone because the right person is busy with a most important topic. And I feel it happens a lot with games. They need to do a reviewer and put someone to do the critic how dislike totally the genre. Because i see things like: XXXXX II bring the same as XXXXX to the table. Is not good? Why is a problem? If I want to play a game for a X franchising I want it to play exactly like the anterior building up over the foundations that come before!
just a week ago i bought my physical copy of chrono cross (switch) after the patch. yup. waited a year before buying it. now i can megaevolve my Pip to weremecha mode hehe
I went for the platinum on Soul Hackers 2, and loved every minute. I have less than 10 platinums so it takes a lot to suck me in that completely.
I dont agree with the overview of cross's remaster
People should be even harsher if a Company cant even get a freaking remaster to run well and has such weird technical issues
Nothing that is remastered should simple score higher or equal for being the same game.
I really despise the mainstream "critics" and "games journalists"..
They are just hacks. I laugh when people call them "urinalists" instead! haha
Erick Landon > everyone else that covers RPG's
: )
Soul Hackers 2 is really good and with the update it had it became much faster with much better pacing.
Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World is a great game i love it because of it's story and unique battle mechanic at it's time at least it's way better than modern tales games like Tales of Xillia 2, Tales of Zestiria, Tales of Berseria and Tales of Arise
Suikoden 4 left out the generally superior 6 member active party, has the least memorable story/characters of the franchise (including Tierkreis) and has easily the worst version of the large scale battle mechanic.
All that said, as my introduction to the franchise it still managed to make me fall in love instead of scaring me away. Plus, I can still play and enjoy it even now.
Worse than the scripted major battle of I, the heavy rng of IIs and pretty much just regular battles of III? I would argue that it is tied with the first game for the amount of memorable characters which isn't a bad thing considering that they have large casts. II, III and V have the most memorable, but my favourite overall cast goes between II and III.
Good thing I am a completionist, and judge games only by own experience. So unlike most reviewers, I dive into the game and reach 100%, instead of just playing a small portion or skipping sidecontent.
Optional content and endgame are sometimes the best, as a small extra note.
I streamed Soul Hackers 2 on hard as a blind playthrough and loved sharing it with my community. It has flaws but it was nowhere NEAR as bad as a lot of the reviews
I overall enjoyed Soul Hackers 2 and might shell out for the DLC at some point. I think some people didn't like it because they were expecting Persona 5 part 3... Suikoden 4 wasn't that great, I played it, beat it and then sold it off. Was it horrible? No. It was pretty middle of the road. Since the previous titles were solid it just made this one feel worse than it probably was.
I liked Soul Hackers 2. I never got all of the hate that game got. Sure, it wasn’t Persona or SMT, but it was fine for what it was.
I recently picked up Drakengard 3 recently. I’ve been having fun with it. It’s definitely got some technical issues, but there’s still a lot to enjoy. They definitely wouldn’t make that game in today’s “modern audience”climate.
Talking about rpgs getting killed by metacritic scores, my goty of 2022 was Harvestella. And in 2022 i ve got Platinum on AC valhalla, judgment, Horizon 2, like a dragon, 300 hours on xc3, etc. And still i liked harvestella more than all else. Give It a chance and don't give up at the beginning, It Is really Amazing imho.
After 35 years gaming i Hope my opinion means something in this Crazy world 😂
One game for me was BLUE REFLECTION. Not sure how the second game (which is very good) was viewed, but the first was called "poor mans Persona" often times. "Sailor Moon JRPG" would have been a better description. It has its flaws, but is very unique in style and with its ideas. I really liked it a lot, even though the second game is a lot better, just because of the fact to revisit just a few sections in the first game a bit too often.
I loved both games. Gotta do a 2nd run of the 2nd game still. Even tho I loved them, they weren't perfect games by any stretch, but I had fun the entire time. Even tho they will never get enough of a budget for them, but they could be even better with some extra backing.
I don't think I could disagree more with your Number 1 Pick if a game runs worse than the original from 20+ years ago it deserves to be trashed. I was looking forward to having an experience with the remaster at least some what upgraded from the original but when I got a downgraded WORSE looking experience at launch than the original PSX version with things such as missing textures as well as poor framerate and graphics it was totally unacceptable for the $40/$30 price tag.
I loved suikoden 4, I originally played it as a kid and then replayed it in my 20s, it’s still good. So never understood the hate.
I NEVER LISING TO CRITICS I WATCHING GAMEPLAYS WHIT NO COMENTARY BY THE WAY I PLAYED TALES OF SYMPHONIA 2, 3 TIMES ITS NOT THE BEST TALES OF BUT I ENJOY IT
Um dude. Your caps lock is broken.
@@bustergundo516 i know XD
Valkyria revolution has a great story and characters ... All the playable characters, but the MC and the princess, are extremelly one dimensional, but "The traitors" (the real protagonists of the story) are well developed and interesting characters.
The gameplay is a clunky mess, I can't defend that, but overall is a good game
I still haven't had the opportunity to play Soul Hack 2, for a reason that will be my opinion below. I think the game is a good RPG, but it couldn't create an identity that appealed as much as SMT, Persona or Devil Survivor. And the other big reason why it is rightly criticized is the price and its DLCs, which in addition to being expensive, is obviously content cut from the game and not extra content.
to be fair fate extra was one of the first localized fate games. the franchise was basically unknown to western audiences at that point. nobody outside of japan knew the impact that the franchise would have on anime in the west.
My issue with Crono Cross for the Switch is the censorship. I might buy it because Tales of Symphonia also has framerate issues but I still enjoy the game.
Chrono Cross remaster is 30% off on steam right now! I was gonna pick it up yesterday, until I saw the review score. Good to know they patched it, I'll go ahead and get it
I liked Suikoden 4 a lot. Plus you get to see Ted again.
For the record, the most influential video game website in France rated Lost Odyssey 11/20 because the characters designs are "questionable", the story soft and the involvement of the player is apparently a failure.
Yeah, it hurts.
100% agree on the Soul Hackers 2. It was a good and decent game.
ahh drakengard 3 the final boss at the true end, instakill attack when you're character is off-screen and can't see anything but the giant boss
I think that for Chrono Cross it's fair to call out Square on it, because you could play the game and have a better experience on PS1 than on PC due to all the lag issues. The game is great and everyone knows it, not being able to enjoy it after paying a lot for it because of Square's bad port was terrible, and did generate a lot of hate, rightfully so - towards Sqaure and that version of the game.
Suikoden V was fun but my biggest complaint was that it was far too short, as you mentioned. The speed I could live with, but the length... Where is the rest of my game Konami?
I also really enjoyed Soul Hackers 2 but it is grindy and repetitive with the Soul Matrixes. It is fun though, and the characters have their charms.
Damn Eternal Poison looks right up my alley
Is it weird that it bugs me that in your intro you use battle music from The Last Remnant, but then The Last Remnant wasn't on the list...?
So glad you mentioned Soul Hackers 2. After seeing the reviews I had no plan to buy it, but then PS+ released a trial so I checked it out and absolutely fell in love with the game. I bought it digitally after the trial time ended and even put down SMTV so I could beat it. Even ended up buying a physical copy once it went on sale just so I could have it in my collection. I really hope they make a 3rd and keep with the idea of an actual protagonist with a voice and personality - Ringo was so well done and there are too many silent protagonists in JRPGs imo.
The silent protag thing is something i really don't understand, okay i get it a bit for smt, you have multiple routes and maybe it breaks immersion when your chaos protag talks like a standard jrpg hero but in persona they even imply what kind of character you play in dialouge choices. When the persona 4 and 5 anime dropped people already knew what kind of person the protagonist will be. So why don't they just give them a voice...
@@brotbrotsen1100 Agree completely, voiced protagonists would add a lot to those, and most, JRPG stories imo.
Erick u ever play megaman battle network that’s a good action rpg for the GBA legacy collection coming out next month you should try it out that series is another one where critics whined about it but it was fun and the starforce trilogy I recommend the DX patch for the first 2 it’s great
My issue with Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, was simply that it wasn’t as fun or engaging as the original. Definitely didn’t deserve the trashing it got though.
How did you do the voice over? and how did you edit the video and put it together? did you use capcut?
I haven't watched the video, but it looks like Erick just making an excuse to talk about Chrono cross and Growlanser Wayfarer of Time XD
Edit: He didnt talk about Growlanser.
Well, most of Idea Factory + Compile Hearts games can go into this category. But... who else can gives us so many cool, stylish and strange JRPG today?
Mary Skelter, Neptunia series, Omega Quinted, Death end Re;Quest, Agarest, Dark Rose Valkirie, Cross Edge... Those guys keep those games coming and, while being mostly B-A games, those are good.
Atlus is just producing one-two JRPG games on holidays, SE... okay, waiting (but Diofield and Triangle were good), BN is also waiting and not announcing anything major.
NF is put a rest on Legend of Heroes series for now and looking in YS derection. Well, good decision. Still, those games are somewhat feels the same, while IF+CH are really different by all means.
Honestly most games from them are usually lazy and cut corners. They copy paste elements of previous games like enemy models, map assets and even gameplay systems. Usually ripped from the neptunia titles since thats the big flagship series that has the most success.
Most games have no explorable areas besides dungeons. Overworlds and towns are represented by menus upon menus upon menus overlayed on still images of generic fantasy or scifi settings. Story is done in visual novel format to save money on animating cutscenes and they usually launch day 1 with $100+ of dlc.
Honestly even though they're rarely bad, most IF and CH games deserve the 6/10 to 7/10 scores they usually get because they put a 2/10 effort into making them. The only upside is that in the time it takes other companies to make a game like dragon quest or xenoblade IF and CH can assembly line dozens of titles on multiple platforms and give players something to enjoy in-between bigger releases.
@@Coomamon_Memes True.
@@Coomamon_Memes THIS
I love Neptunia as a series but the fact that when I was playing sister vs sister on PS5 I was amazed to see I actually got to walk around Planeptune for the first time says alot lol
NF is still on the Trails train hard though.
@@godlyBlade after Kuro 2 they made statement that, for now, planning concentrating on YS. Well, that plan is not including translation of the Azurs, Riverie and both Kuro. Those are done by other company.
So all there resources are now on YS 10.
I have to disagree VERY strongly with Chrono Cross RDE. If a multimillion dollar company is rereleasing an old game it had better be the perfect/definitive/best version of that game. Otherwise it's a waste of everyone's time and money as I (and many others) will just emulate the original. As a 1999 ps1 game its great. As a product released for modern hardware in 2023 it is garbage at worst and shovelware at best.
The Fate/Stay one is the only one on this list I’ve played. It was okay. Not amazing. I barely remember the story except for the fact that people died when they lost the tournament, so the stakes were high and there were some tragic moments since not everyone was a villain. I think that little hook made it pretty compelling.
I got Trinity when it first came out. Awesome game and very underrated.