by Tryphon » Tue Oct 27, 2015 8:36 am
The rankings and marks are not necessarily related. Marks take into account the hardware and state-of-the-art of JRPGs at the time, whereas I rank the games accordingly to how much I loved them when I played them.
4th: PS4 9/10. Admittedly the most advanced. Huge, beautiful, everything. But I find it lacks personnality. Characters are so-so, scenario wants too much to recall of events from previous games, game's story suffers from Final Fantasy syndrom (so much side stories than you lose the focus, coupled with childness).
3th: PS1 10/10. With no doubts the best 8 bits RPG ever made. Released one day after Final Fantasy 1, and so much above that it looks like another generation of console. A much more developped plot too. That said, it has aged, and while it's still impressive graphically, the bad sounding musics (I played the SMS version with no FM) prevent me to really dive into its world
2nd : PS3 6/10. One of the strangest game I played. The game is full of good intentions, but every of them is flawed in a way or another, be it technique (great and sharp gfx, but always the same, great monster design, but no animations, great musics, but scratchy) or scenario-wise (generation system, ending in similar half-stories ; closed shrines and caves, etc.). What saves the game for me is that it has personnality, and an atmosphere. Yes, the world is bland, but that makes you feel why these are generations of doom.
1st : PS2 10/10. There are 3 JRPGs that I remember having really felt something about : PS2, FF6 and Xenogears (and for this last, it took a lot of time). The plot is incredible, and while its realisation was slightly above average at this time (except for the musics, which are great), the game has this 70-80 japanese SciFi vibe that I was so fond about. Its difficulty is for me a strong point, some standard battles become as tough as boss battles in other games and force you to think strategiccally, rather than hit C repeatedly (FF6...). I doubt another game will ever give me such feelings like this game did.
Also, this ranking is also the order in which I played those games.