All you young kids with your vidja games nowadays playing your Portal 2: Black Ops, Super Street Fighter IV: U.S. Navy Seals, and Fuck, Death, Kill: Unnecessary Violence and No Characters need to get off my lawn and let me take you back to the days of the Sony Playstation JRPG (Japanese Role Playing Game). In my opinion, the original Playstation gave the world the best single-player JRPGs of all time. It was the first system to use CDs well and as such gave a player the chance to enter a whole new world for over a full work week. These games gave you at minimum 40 hours of play time in your first attempt after an era of Super Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog.
I’m going to start with a definition. A single-player role-playing game for the purpose of this article is any video game where one person controls a variety of characters and follows their lives through an epic storyline that has an effect on the world at large. For those who know a bit about this nerdy business, this is a pretty cookie-cutter definition of a JRPG.
These games have roots in the pen and paper Dungeons & Dragons. You’ve probably at least heard of Dungeons & Dragons, but the major difference between the games I’m going to talk about and D&D is that there is no game master. Within the pen and paper RPG world there has to be one person who creates storylines and things for the players to do within the crafted rules of the game. When you play a game on a console, your GM(s) are the story creators and programmers. The most important aspects of any RPG are the characters. In D&D and MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games, such as World of Warcraft) people invest themselves in a single avatar that they develop from day one and directly control their interactions with other players and the environment. In a standard JRPG, the player controls a party of characters through a fairly linear storyline with a decent amount of optional side quests.
Now that we’re a bit educated, let’s look at some of the best single player JRPGs of the Sony Playstation. (By no means is this list exhaustive, just my favorites in no particular order).
Final Fantasy VII (Available on Playstation Network for purchase)
Originally released in 1997. This game changed the way RPGs would be constructed and made forever after. FF7 was one of the first 3D rendered games. It provided CGI cut scenes that were gorgeous at the time. I learned how to play most of the songs featured in the game on the piano it was so good. The main character is a guy named Cloud who has a huge fucking sword and has quit working for the giant megacorporation Shinra to work for a man with a gun arm. I’m talking this guy had his hand broken and then cut it off to replace it with different guns. The setting is in a post-industrial society on a world only referred to as The Planet. It’s difficult to get into the plot without true spoilers since the game has been out for fourteen years, but there is death, betrayal, personal deception, cloning, a sentient planet, and an evil super villain who might be one of the most badass video game characters ever conceived of. The game also spawned a full length feature movie, third person shooter, mobile phone game, PSP game, anime episode, and series of short stories set in the same universe. Also, there is a scene at the end of disk one that legitimately made a 15 year old guy want to cry.
Dragon Warrior VII
Released in North America in 2001. Dragon Warrior 7 was not a game changer, it wasn’t even extremely special. The graphics could have been on the NES, the music was nothing special, the main character never speaks and it actually came out after the PS2 was released so it was even further behind the times than it needed to be. However, there’s a reason collectors will pay upwards of 100$ for used copies of the game. (I bought mine for $25 at a flea market in 2005). This game has one of the most fleshed out worlds to play in. There is easily over 100 hours of game play and one of the best class systems in the genre to master. You start on a single tiny island and then travel through time and solve some sort of issue in the past to bring lands back into the present day. There are religious themes, funny characters and plenty of difficult tactics to master.
Legend of Legaia
Originally released in 1998. Legend of Legaia was one of the prettiest games I ever played on the PSOne. It was fully in 3D with some of the best CGI cuts of the time. There are three main characters who fit firmly into heroic stereotypes but the way the story plays out you truly give a damn about them and their support. In the beginning God created Seru and it was good. Seru made life easy for people, and then everything goes terribly wrong with technology of the mist corrupting the stronger magical Seru. Luckily there are Ra-Seru that can bind with people to make them stronger, able to use magic and basically just be better than everyone else. The battle system in Legaia is an awesome cross between a traditional JRPG and Tekken. It was overshadowed in release time because everyone was waiting on the next game.
Final Fantasy VIII (Available on Playstation Network for purchase)
Originally released in 1999. Final Fantasy 8 was probably one of the easiest RPGs ever created. Monsters level with you, the GF system used makes it extremely easy to make your characters much stronger than they ever need to be. This game is set in a world where technology exists but is feared because of wars in the past. Our main characters belong to an elite military force called SeeD who have mastered the use of Guardian Forces (GF). We start the game in one of the best opening sequence ever made. Soon after there is a war, there is oppression, a terrible sorceress, you fly to the moon and all the while you have a chance to master a card game created for the FF8 called Triple Triad.
Xenogears (Available on PSN for purchase)
Originally released in 1998. If you want an epic fucking tale this is your game. Even now after beating the game five or six times it takes me about 70 hours to get through it. The story is outstanding; it’s an extreme blend of pretty much every sci-fi theme you could ever want. There are shadowy conspiracies, killer robots, zombies, people with mental powers spiced with heavy religious and philosophical themes. There are two types of battles, either inside of gears (huge-ass metal robots you can pilot) or on foot (standard RPG fare). The cities are huge, complete 3D environments and the ability to jump on the map brings a whole new level to exploration. It has also spawned a huge encyclopedia and ridiculous amounts of fanfiction on the internet.
I could go on and on, as there were roughly 75 RPGs released for the system and I’ve played a pretty fucking decent portion of them, but I’d rather hear what games you guys like in the comments.
