Yeah it is kinda weird like that ain't it @RR529, like it isn't going to be the turn based JRPG that changes your mind if you don't like these kind of games. And I wouldn't even say if you are a One Piece fan, it is a must play. But I think it is the only pure turn based game that has come out this year at this level of production quality, unless there is something I missed? And like again, I know that is a weird reason to rate a game, but when you get like two at this level a year maybe you gotta just enjoy what you can.
And I'm not even saying those indie games are bad, they end up being the games I spend the most amount of time with over the course of the year, but after a while playing all those big ambition low budget indie titles you are like... man, imagine this with production values.
Finished up Valkyrie Elysium yesterday. It's a bit brief by RPG standards (I finished it in just about 20 hours, & I believe even managed to get the best ending), but that wasn't a big deal because there's not much story to it (most world building & background lore is relegated to environmental pickups called Hollow Blossoms & Verdant Blossoms which give you notes about the state of the world, and the latter particularly are important for getting the best ending. Also, you learn most of the deeper aspects about your party members by completing each of their own side quest lines, though I don't think these effect ending outcome).
Combat is really quite fun & snappy (you can lock on & zip to enemies from quite a distance away), and there's a lot of different ways to get the edge on your enemies (each enemy type is weak to one of the ten or so different weapons you collect, and each also has one of 5 elemental weaknesses, which you can take advantage of with magic attacks. Also, each of your party members has an elemental affinity & summoning them to fight by your side will coat your weapon with their element & amp the effectiveness of your magic attacks of the same type), with bosses usually having different points you can attack & dismember from them. That said, at least on Normal I was able to get by easily enough just by taking advantage of element weaknesses (I usually only took the time to take weapon weakness into account as well during boss fights).
It has a few small issues, like the fact that it doesn't feel buttery smooth 100% of the time (this is a very mid budget cross gen title, so the PS5 shouldn't have any issue at all), but the drops weren't as noticable as they were in Star Ocean: the Divine Force (which I also really enjoyed, BTW), so not a big issue. Also, you can only have so many weapons, magic, items, etc. equipped to their various quick access slots, so in the latter parts of the game I often had to pause at the start of nearly every single combat encounter in order to reassign slots (usually magic, since there are only 4 quick access slots, but 5 element types + healing magic, the latter you'll want to have equipped to a slot at all times since use of healing items negatively affects your mission completion grade if that matters to you. Grades don't effect which endings you have access to though, so it's not a big deal if you don't grade well).
Also not really an issue, but I get the feeling that a 5th party member was planned but cut at some point. There are enemies that are weak to Darkness, and while you do have access to Dark magic to counter them, there is no Dark element party member you can team up with to get the boosts you can get with the other element types. Plus, none of the bosses are weak to Darkness, even though there are a few that aesthetically/thematically SHOULD be (they're usually weak to something random like Lightning, or even weirdly enough Light, which is thematically their own element).
Anyways I picked it up during the PS Store's Black Friday sale for $30 (it also came with a free copy of one of the older Valkyrie Profile games, which I'm not sure if I'll play), and am glad I gave it a go.
Currently Playing:
Switch - Blade Strangers
PS4 - Kingdom Hearts III, Tetris Effect (VR)
Honest question: How is the Star Ocean series? I've barely even sniffed in its general direction before passing it by before. Not because I think it's bad or anything. It's more because RPGs can get quite long and I gotta be choosey. With all the positive feedback I've seen regarding Star Ocean: The Second Story R, I'm starting to think I'm missing out on something really good. Would this be a great entry to try? Or is it over hyped?
@Tyranexx Star Ocean: The Second Story was a top ten PS1 rpg when it originally released and developer Gemdrops have done a great job with the remake. Don't skip it.
Switch Physical Collection - 1,551 games (as of March 3rd, 2026)
Switch 2 Physical Collection - 4 games (as of December 8th, 2025)
@Magician High praise indeed! I added it to my watchlist on DekuDeals. I appreciate the recommendation.
Couple more questions. I see First Departure R is also on the Switch, though it's digital only. Is this a good entry too? Looks like it came first. Is there any series continuity where you need to play some or all games in a certain order, or are they pretty much standalone?
@Tyranexx Star Ocean is such a weird series. I've seen people say Star Ocean 2 is one of the best JRPGs of all time and that Star Ocean 5 is one of the worst ones of all time lol. The remake of Star Ocean 2 was my introduction to the series and I thought it was phenomenal. It's one of those RPGs where the gameplay was the strongest part. I engaged with every bit of side content the game offered me lol. The games also have 2 protagonists who offer different perspectives on the story depending on which one you pick so there is a little replay value.
I did find out that a timeline actually connects the games but it wasn't super tightly connected. There is a demo for the Star Ocean 2 Remake so you can always give that a try and see if you like it or not
@Vortexeo That's another reason why I'm only just now curious; I've historically seen differing impressions across the board so often wrote Star Ocean off as a B series that's good, but not great. The impressions were sort of like how some people feel the Final Fantasy games after [insert X release or gameplay change here] went downhill. That said, I've seen almost nothing but praise for Star Ocean: The Second Story [R].
I had no clue there was a demo, so I appreciate the mention! Might try that out first before actually buying then. Glad you seemed to have a very fun time with the game.
I'm almost done with the Super Mario RPG remake... though I'm taking a break from it for now because of the Splatoon 3 Splatfest. Nintendo just announced that they'll be adding the Golden Sun games to the GBA catalog on NSO, I wonder if that's a good one to start playing after SMRPG? I did hear that they're good games.
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@Tyranexx I recently played it, and it's kind of weird. The gameplay is absolutely as amazing as everyone says. However, the game puts a lot of focus on it's very weak cast of characters and story. The villains are so forgettable. I can't even remember any of their names except the leader.
The main thing I know about Star Ocean, having never touched the series, is that one of the games has an all time terrible ending that undermines the entire game's story.
@kkslider5552000 Are you talking about Star Ocean 3 :Till the End of Time? I remember finishing that game and...well...I kinda was done playing it and sold it soon after. Unless I'm mistaken.
That ending still sours my opinion of SO3. I tried getting into the others but I just couldn't break into the series. I much prefer Phantasy Star as my fav sci-fi RPG series.
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@imadeanaccount Hmm...In that case I might go ahead and just try the demo before grabbing the full game. While plot and interesting characters usually rank highest for me in RPGs, I've played some where the engaging gameplay kept me going. I appreciate the feedback.
Hate to dump this with little lead up but Octopath Traveler II has been the perfect sequel so far; it makes so many small but inspired gameplay tweaks it feels like the successful culmination of not just Octopath Traveler but the entire ten(!) years of the job system-oriented gameplay Bravely Default and contemporaries brought back to the forefront.
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Just completed Granblue Fantasy Relink (PS5). Reposting this from the "Games You Recently Beat" thread.
This was really fun. Combat is very fast & slick (a lot of people compare it to Tales, but it honestly felt more Ys like to me, which I enjoyed because that's probably my favorite Action JRPG battle system).
The main story mode manages to feel just as exciting as FFXVI at it's best points, but without hardly any of the downtime or time consuming fetch quests holding it back, and this assuredly at a fraction of the budget. It's an all killer, no filler, 15-20 hour adventure you won't want to put down as you can't wait to see which wrinkle it'll add next (during battles on the deck of your airship you can man the cannons to shoot down foes before they board, there's a boss fight that calls to mind the kind of scale you'd expect from Shadow of the Colossus, even boss fights where you'll take control of the series' version of Bahumut & fight other massive beasts akin to FFXVI's showpiece Eikon battles, and more).
Now, it does seem to expect you to be somewhat already familiar with the cast (from the previous mobile game) as your party is already complete from the get go, and aside from a very brief moment in the prologue are never separated. This means that I never really got quite as invested in the group as other JRPG parties, as you really don't see them narratively grow as they normally would (also in part due to the fact that the big console game is the spin-off, it's a footnote in terms of the narrative of the franchise as a whole). That said they're a likeable enough group & I liked spending time with them. I'd levy similar thoughts to the story as a whole, as it hits all the cliches you'd expect to find but isn't as thematically rich as a Final Fantasy or Xenoblade Chronicles. However it's very wonderfully produced (the fantastic art direction goes a long way as well), and easily holds your attention for it's duration. If you do wish to learn more about a character's backstory, they each have "Fate Episodes" you unlock as you progress (most of these are text only affairs, but a few offer a playable segment) that brush you up on their history (and they give stat boosts upon reading/completing them, so you might as well).
Of course, if you really get into the gameplay loop the story mode is really only the opening salvo, as the real meat is in the extensive quest system (a few of these see you taking on waves of enemies under various conditions, but a good 90-95% of them are rematches against the game's many bosses with ever increasing difficulties). Easy & Normal rank quests are available during the main story, but once you clear the story mode you can work your way up through Hard, Very Hard, Extreme, Maniac, & Proud rank quests, where the grind really comes into play. There are about a million & one different ways to buff up your party (and heck, there are about a dozen different new party members to unlock as well, even though they're not story relevant), and while you don't have to explore these much to see story mode to the end, you'll need to get to grips with it all if you want to clear harder quests (at least clear them with good scores), and it can get pretty grindy when you need to start taking on certain quests multiple times in order to grind out drops. Seriously, each character has two seperate skill trees, one for offensive buffs/abilities, the other defensive, and each one is absolutely gargantuan (each one is just as large if not moreso than what you'd expect a character's entire skill tree to be in any other JRPG). Seriously, my main party members are all level 88-92 and yet each of their two skill trees I only have 60-70% complete. I haven't worked on anyone else (let alone the myriad of optional unlockable characters I mentioned), and that just accounts for one way you can power up characters (Fate Episode stat boosts. weapon crafting & upgrading, which BTW each have their own tiny skill tree. Sigils, which take the place of armor/accessories here, you can equip up to at least 10 and you can upgrade those as well). Heck, even once you do have a character's skill tree maxed out you can apparently still spend skill points on them to raise stats randomly (I'm not sure if there really is a hard cap on how strong a character can get).
I can definitely see the appeal in the grind, and I do enjoy it in doses, but I definitely enjoyed the exciting cinematic story mode moreso than the post game grind. It's important to note too, as completing story mode only puts story completion at 95%. You see, without getting into spoilers, there are few loose ends, and in order to tie them up and hit 100% story completion you are required to advance through Extreme rank quests (you'll slowly acquire lore notes as you grind your way up through the rankings, and along the way you'll unlock the last couple big cinematic story moments, the last of which is truly awesome). This leaves Maniac & Proud rank quests as truly the only optional ones if you really want to see the story to it's ultimate conclusion. It took me 20 hours to complete story mode, and a further 16 grinding my way up the quest ranks just to knock off that last 5% of the story. Definitely enjoyed the first half of the experience more, though it admittedly felt good seeing the story to it's true end.
Currently Playing:
Switch - Blade Strangers
PS4 - Kingdom Hearts III, Tetris Effect (VR)
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@Ryu_Niiyama Just beat it and walked away very very unimpressed. I know it was going to be a budget game visually, but it genuinely looks ugly even for a budget game. The story isn't really gripping in the demo, and nor is the world. Combat also felt really repetitive. Only good thing I could say about it is Yoko Shimomura's music, but even then music doesn't save a game.
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