The best JRPGs on PC

This PS2 era RPG has a bit of a cult following, and it’s largely due to its slightly more macabre tone compared to most other JRPGs. Your character moves to a small country town just before a string of murders begin, the bodies all found near mysterious telephone poles. Compared to the other Persona games, it’s not as bleak, but it does have rather adult themes and explores characters that, in many ways are atypical for the genre, in a relatively mature way.

By socialising with friends outside of dungeons, you can build up your character’s bond to grant them bonuses, both in and out of battle. Its turn-based combat system is deceptively simple on paper as enemies do regularly go after weaknesses, but you’re also able to recruit new demons to aid your main character in battle. It helps that the PC version is the definitive version, even if it’s just an upscaled version of the updated game on PS Vita.

What begins as possibly the worst stag any groom-to-be could ever dream of, Final Fantasy XV turns into an action-packed adventure that features its own unique battle system. You play as Noctis, the crown prince of the kingdom of Lucis, as he uses his warp ability and striking greatsword to keep enemies at bay, alongside his trusted allies and best pals Gladiolus, Ignis and Prompto. You can indirectly control other allies in battle as well, by performing certain actions or using chunks of the Tech Bar to command them.

If you are looking for a JRPG with the visual quality of a Studio Ghibli film, why not play the game that the renowned Japanese studio actually worked on. You take on the role of Oliver, a young boy transported to an alternative world that’s linked with our own via the idea of soulmates – how every person in one world has a counterpart in the other.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon’s combat is nothing like the previous Yakuza games, which were more about learning combos for real-time fisticuffs with street thugs and enemy Yakuza. Instead, Like a Dragon opts for a classic turn-based battle system, as whenever the new protagonist Ichiban throws down, he just starts “thinking in Dragon Quest terms”. The big difference here is that rather than silly names for regular spells, Like a Dragon has you battering thugs with bikes and summoning giant lobsters with a quick phone call. If that’s not setting the tone for this bizarre caper, then we don’t know what is.

Octopath Traveler’s stunning visual style is the main draw to this JRPG – with a mix of 2D sprites set against gorgeous isometric backdrops. No matter if you’re walking around a snowy town or fighting monsters in desert plains, this JRPG is immensely pleasing to the eye, like something from a concept art book. Completing all eight character stories may sound daunting at first, but Octopath Traveler breaks down each story into digestible chapters, so as not to overwhelm, and it lets you explore at your own pace.

At times the gameplay can feel rather old-fashioned, with a similar focus on multiple protagonists that fans of Square Enix’s Saga series will recognise. However, each playable character has unique actions outside of battle, such as pickpocketing unsuspecting victims or inquiring with townsfolk for more information. They also have unique talents that are used in the turn-based battle system, which also uses the classic Final Fantasy job system, and its own risk-reward break and boost system that allows you to whittle down enemy defences gradually, then boost to strike harder at the cost of some of your turns. There’s a lot going on in this JRPG and it’s absolutely worth exploring for yourself.

Let’s face it, this is the worst version of one of the greatest JRPGs ever made, but even with that caveat laid bare we would still highly recommend Chrono Trigger, largely due to its distinctive art style, designed by Dragon Ball’s Akira Toriyama. What begins with the disappearance of a young girl at a fairground soon becomes a saga about travelling through time to stop a monster from the future ending the world. With the help of a wide variety of allies, from tech-savvy friends to robots and a frog knight, your job is to prevent the world from turning into a post-apocalyptic nightmare.

Grandia is a hero’s tale about a young lad who answers the call to adventure after discovering a mysterious stone in a temple, and before long he meets fellow adventurers to see what lies in the journey ahead. While the story is the hook, it’s the surprisingly well thought out combat that reels you in. In a similar vein to Final Fantasy games of the era, Grandia has its own take on an active battle system that’s a lot of fun to play. Depending on where the pips representing your characters are at any time, it’s possible to use certain attacks like the single-hit criticals to interrupt an enemy that’s about to use a high-damaging skill or heal themselves.

Compared to other RPGs made in the era of 90s polygon backgrounds and 2D sprites, Grandia doesn’t age anywhere near as badly, and there is some rather laughably bad voice acting to enjoy. The second Grandia game is also on PC, but we think the first is still the best.

While its sequel is more of a tactical RPG, South Park: The Stick of Truth is probably the closest we’ll ever get to Paper Mario style combat. As the ‘new kid’ that’s just moved into South Park, where the rest of the town’s children are playing a town-wide fantasy game, you soon ally with Butters, Kenny (who is dressed as a princess), and Cartman as you try to recover the hallowed Stick of Truth. The story soon descends into utter madness, with alien abductions, Nazi zombies, and a jaunty trip to Canada. Your overall enjoyment of The Stick of Truth largely depends on whether you find Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s sense of humour ‘funny’, and whether or not you can stand callbacks to many prior episodes of the TV show.

One thing is for certain though: the battle system is actually pretty solid. Each action that either the ‘new kid’ or one of the South Park residents executes requires a button or sequence of buttons to be pressed at the right time, making for an engaging battle system that keeps you on your toes. Everything here is absurd, and yet it has some of the more memorable moments in a JRPG of recent years, especially if you live in Europe or Australia as their versions have censorship screens (Europe has a picture of the statue of David with his head in his hands, while Australia shows a crying Koala) that are somehow far funnier than the action they describe.