The Legend of Heroes Series - Possibly The Most Underrated JRPG Series

I'm going to second the opinion on the speed up function being almost mandatory. It saved me probably 10-12 hours per game.

You can also save anywhere and if you lose a battle there is a retry option if you're worried about have to re-watch cut-scenes.
The games have 1000 save slots, and auto saves every time you finish a battle or go into a new screen.
If I do play them I'll probably still emulate them just for the convenience of not having to be stuck using the computer to play them.
 
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If I do play them I'll probably still emulate them just for the convenience of not having to be stuck using the computer to play them.
If it's for on the move reasons than fair. Just make sure you have a hotkey ready to speed things up. Oh, also, I suggest you avoid the Evolution versions, they are remakes with an anime op that basically spoils the game and in my opinion, much worse music.
 
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If it's for on the move reasons than fair. Just make sure you have a hotkey ready to speed things up. Oh, also, I suggest you avoid the Evolution versions, they are remakes with an anime op that basically spoils the game and in my opinion, much worse music.
It's mostly that. Turn based JRPGs are one of the few genres that aren't too bad to play on a phone with a touch screen. I don't have real internet where I live and space is somewhat limited so busting out the the computer every time I wanna play a game is a hassle. It has pushed me to actually figure out how to turn a phone into a decent gaming device though. A lot of shit I would have normally played on PC lately I've been playing via switch emulator and I pretty much missed the entire DS/3ds PSP/Vita handheld era. I never had any of those systems but all of them emulate well on a decently modern phone.

There's a fairly hefty amount of jrpgs I never played from that time and even ps1 games because I was emulating those back in the early 2000's and a lot of them ran like shit or just didn't work so there's quite a few of those I've never played. I've been jumping back and forth between Wild Arms and Dragon Quest VIII right now. I'd never heard of wild arms until recently but it's pretty fun as fuck, like a cowboy Lufia 2. I'm kind of getting sick of dragon quest though. I bought DQ VIII a long time ago on ps2 but I never ended up playing it. This is the third Dragon Quest game in a row now that I'm playing and honestly, VIII's really pretty, especially the mobile remaster version, but the story's a bit meh compared to the last few and I'm not super stoked on the characters so far. Also, in a lot of ways it's exactly the same game as the others I just finished which is both good and bad.

I've been looking around to see what other jrpgs are out there. The legend of heroes games seem like some of the few on the PSP apart from the final fantasy games that aren't strategy rpgs or action rpgs. I'm a bit weird and picky about jrpgs though. I find there's a lot of them I don't really like and I'm not really sure why even sometimes.
 
If I do play them I'll probably still emulate them just for the convenience of not having to be stuck using the computer to play them.
If you do play them, make sure to inspect every chest twice for unique chest dialogue.
chest-icon.jpg
 
So what's the gameplay actually like in these games? There's a bunch of them for psp and I think most of them have English patches. I've heard they're decent games. At least one of them usually shows up in 'best psp RPG' type lists. They all look kind of the same to me though and I've never really seen a good description of the gameplay other than they're jrpgs with turn-based and I think grid-based combat. What kind of story and character progression do they have? Are they linear story driven type games with lots of cut scenes and dialog and shit or are they more exploratory and gameplay focused? Is there any kind of character ability customization type stuff or classes or set characters with predefined abilities? Will the anime shit become annoying if you don't really watch anime but don't actively hate it?

FF7 clones where you spend most of the gameplay watching cutscenes, reading dialogue boxes, or running to the next NPC or cutscene, ocassionally interspersed with combat. The gimmick that internet fans fixate on is that random townsfolk NPCs update their dialogue every so often after every plot advancement which doubles the text length and playtime of the games catching up on every NPC, which ultimately is not worth the effort outside of a handful of minor NPC storylines. The so-called "worldbuilding" of the series is grossly overrated.

The combat in Trails in the Sky and the Crossbell games mediocre so just play on the easiest difficulty and skip through them. Cold Steel has fun combat and character building and is pretty enjoyable playing through blind on the highest difficulties, would recommend. The latest game is back to boring gameplay again. Go in with tempered expectations for the story as there is a lot of buildup but almost never satisfying payoffs. You're here for the aesthetics, pleasant characters, the music, and the turn based combat. I would recommend playing Cold Steel as it is the holistically best game in the series, or Trails in the Sky if that older aesthetic appeals to you more and mediocre gameplay does not bother you.

The first Sky game and the first two Cold Steel games are pretty great and I would recommend playing them, even if you do not intend to play the rest of the series. The rest of the series is not as good (still better than whatever Western slop is coming out nowadays) but you are looking at less density of fun over the course of a 1,000+ hour long series that again focuses on story but does not have a satisfying payoff to these 1,000+ hour long storylines.
 
FF7 clones where you spend most of the gameplay watching cutscenes, reading dialogue boxes, or running to the next NPC or cutscene, ocassionally interspersed with combat.
FF7 wasn't really my favourite final fantasy game but I wouldn't necessarily describe it as that. I would definitely describe FFX like that though. I remember FF7 having a fairly decent amount of exploration and hidden shit in it. I also remember it being fairly cut scene heavy but not really dialog heavy. From what other posters have said these Legends games are more a lot of reading than anything else.
The gimmick that internet fans fixate on is that random townsfolk NPCs update their dialogue every so often after every plot advancement which doubles the text length and playtime of the games catching up on every NPC, which ultimately is not worth the effort outside of a handful of minor NPC storylines. The so-called "worldbuilding" of the series is grossly overrated.
I mean I find the stories in pretty much all jrpgs to be overrated honestly. When I hear people go off about how shit like FF6, FF7 and Chrono Trigger are masterpieces of literature I question how many books they've actually read in their life but I mean keeping expectations in check, just having npc dialog update is kind of cool for a jrpg.

Like 90% of them pretty much once you're done in an area it's never worth going back because they feel like they're trapped in a time bubble at the exact moment you finished whatever story shit was in the area. In fact it's pretty immersion breaking when you do go back to a lot of old towns in those games. You'd expect at least something to be different. Especially when you're trying to figure out where to go next. The game starts to feel disheartening.

Some of my favourite little moments playing through DQ VI recently was going back to towns and seeing things had changed. I was stoked when I went back to that port town near the beginning and found that the chick who got framed for poisoning the dog had been cleared and her and the son got together in the end and the other bitch was left out in the cold and then you find out the shitty mayor's got taken to the demon world and it's pretty satisfying. The storyline was kind of simple and dumb but it was nice seeing it progress as the game went on. I found a lot of times in that game going back to old towns trying to figure out what to do, there was always little things that were different. It made coming to yet another dead end feel like a bit less of a waste of time.
The combat in Trails in the Sky and the Crossbell games mediocre so just play on the easiest difficulty and skip through them. Cold Steel has fun combat and character building and is pretty enjoyable playing through blind on the highest difficulties, would recommend. The latest game is back to boring gameplay again. Go in with tempered expectations for the story as there is a lot of buildup but almost never satisfying payoffs. You're here for the aesthetics, pleasant characters, the music, and the turn based combat. I would recommend playing Cold Steel as it is the holistically best game in the series, or Trails in the Sky if that older aesthetic appeals to you more and mediocre gameplay does not bother you.
I have looked them up and seen that the games are pretty easy. That is a bit disappointing because the customization system does sound fun to mess around with. It always makes it a bit less worthwhile though when it doesn't matter what strategy you use and you can always win. I don't really mind the ability to retry after a battle or anything like that though and it sounds like you don't have to use the difficulty reduction shit. I guess it really depends on what you mean by easy. If it's easy in the way where you can just press a and basically attack your way through every battle that kind of sucks but if you have to at least try and you might fail and have to try again then it's not so bad.t even if it's easy to try again.
 
I have looked them up and seen that the games are pretty easy. That is a bit disappointing because the customization system does sound fun to mess around with. It always makes it a bit less worthwhile though when it doesn't matter what strategy you use and you can always win.

I just finished the Sky trilogy, and while I wouldn't call them hard I wouldn't call them easy either. If you aren't retarded then you'll beat most fights first try exploiting element weaknesses and buffing/debuffing on normal. Outside a few difficulty spike bosses that is.
 
Forgot to post an update. Finished Cold Steel 3 and the first act of 4. The harem shit really ramped up in 3 and I still don't like it. Brave Orders were a nice change, but unbalanced as hell. (Sara's was ludicrous in 3). Mech flights still kind of suck.

Getting pretty tired of playing as Rean, the first act of 4 was a nice break.

Edit. Don't even get me started on Roselia. 800 year old vampire, are you fucking serious?
 
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Forgot to post an update. Finished Cold Steel 3 and the first act of 4. The harem shit really ramped up in 3 and I still don't like it. Brave Orders were a nice change, but unbalanced as hell. (Sara's was ludicrous in 3). Mech flights still kind of suck.

Getting pretty tired of playing as Rean, the first act of 4 was a nice break.

Edit. Don't even get me started on Roselia. 800 year old vampire, are you fucking serious?

CS3 is horrendous; absolutely fuck all happens until you get to Heimdallr. It's all just memberberries and key-jangling horseshit. Also, yes, sexual harassment is funny, you see. Shirley and Roselia can just fuck off and die.
 
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Finally finished up the Cold Steel games. I thought they were fine, if quite a bit worse than Sky/Crossbell. My expectations were pretty low to start, which helped a bit. I don't mind the change to quartz, and all of the changes to the battle system were good (expect mech battles, those never grew on me).

I don't really have anything to say that wasn't already said earlier in this thread. Rean was kind of annoying and the harem shit was awful.

Just finished Act 2 of Reverie, I'm starting to see why you all laughed at me when I complained about the number of characters in Sky 3...
 
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Falcom does NPC's well. My first game was CS1 (it and 2 are among my favorites) and ok yeah talking to every npc is kind of gay but at the same time each one has personality other than "good morning chrono" and "welcome to the town"

Most even get their own little arcs (the throuple in Daybreak, the rich family downsizing in Crossbell, etc)
 
Played Kuro with a fan patch and already have downloaded another fat patch for Kuro 2 for when I decide I'm willing to swim in those waters. Just hoping some spergs keep doing those fan translations for the rest of the series since it seems Falcom doesn't notice that the lolcalizers are cancer.

Finally finished up the Cold Steel games. I thought they were fine, if quite a bit worse than Sky/Crossbell. My expectations were pretty low to start, which helped a bit. I don't mind the change to quartz, and all of the changes to the battle system were good (expect mech battles, those never grew on me).

I don't really have anything to say that wasn't already said earlier in this thread. Rean was kind of annoying and the harem shit was awful.

Just finished Act 2 of Reverie, I'm starting to see why you all laughed at me when I complained about the number of characters in Sky 3...
Cold Steel is the sort of story that gets dumber the more you think about it. It's not something to say "fuck it, I drop the whole series and never want to play again", but like you said, it's definitely a step down from earlier arcs. Reverie I found a fin little adventure though, it's easy and fun to break in half and you can use your favorite characters for the most part. The minigames are hit and miss (mostly miss), but are a nice extra effort to keep things varied.

Let us know what you thought of the routes when you are done.

Falcom does NPC's well. My first game was CS1 (it and 2 are among my favorites) and ok yeah talking to every npc is kind of gay but at the same time each one has personality other than "good morning chrono" and "welcome to the town"

Most even get their own little arcs (the throuple in Daybreak, the rich family downsizing in Crossbell, etc)
Agreed, and it's incredibly revealing how irrelevant NPCs are in most other RPGs after getting used to going full tism with the Trails series. Though talking to all NPCs after each event really does add up on the playtime and I have also noticed that the little NPC stories are either less interesting than in earlier entries or maybe I'm just tired of doing the rounds. Whenever I get to Kuro 2, I may decide to pass or only stick with the NPCs that really grab my attention.
 
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