You don’t need me to tell you that 2023 was an overwhelmingly good year for video games. What you may not have realized is that Japanese role-playing games (JRPGs) – or games heavily inspired by Japanese role-playing games – also had an amazing year.
From my personal Game of the Year Sea of Stars to great remakes like Super Mario RPG, there was a lot to play for fans of turn-based combat and melodramatic science-fantasy narratives. I mean, just look at our list of the best JRPGs of 2023.
The good times for gamers as a whole didn’t end with the turn of the year. We’ve got Dragon’s Dogma 2 on the horizon and Elden Ring DLC sometime in the nebulous future, along with who knows how many other great titles that haven’t been announced yet (Hollow Knight: Silksong has to come out in 2024, right?). But until such games do get revealed, it’s clear JRPG fans like myself will be eating better than most throughout the new year.
I’ll address the giant Buster Sword in the room first: the highly anticipated follow-up to Final Fantasy 7 Remake releases on February 29. While I’m not the biggest Final Fantasy fan, I can’t claim I didn’t greatly enjoy Remake – absurd finale aside – and expect great things from its sequel, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. From the nostalgia-laden trailer revealed back in September, Final Fantasy VII will likely challenge for Game of the Year here and at other outlets come the end of 2024. Thankfully, Rebirth is actually an RPG, unlike last year’s Final Fantasy XVI.
While Rebirth will likely dominate discussion around the genre all year long, I believe JRPGs are often at their best when experimenting with new, quirky experiences – and the more awkward the title, the better. Atlus and Vanillaware have me covered with Unicorn Overlord and Metaphor: ReFantazio. Previous Vanillaware games like Dragon’s Crown have, given certain in-game physics and character designs, proved rather embarrassing to be seen playing, but other than the title, there’s nothing embarrassing about Unicorn Overlord. It looks like a kind of overly complicated JRPG and army management sim that will sap a hundred hours of my life when it releases on March 8.
We don’t know much about Metaphor: ReFantazio at the moment, but Atlus rarely misses. Despite releasing two trailers, all I’ve been able to glean from them is that there’s a high-concept story in a fantasy world with some combination of stylish action and turn-based combat. Even with such little information, I quite enjoyed Atlus’ Shin Megami Tensei V from 2021, and I’d rank the mainline Persona titles as absolute masterpieces of any genre, so I pray to the JRPG gods that ReFantazio hits its expected Fall 2024 release date.
Atlus has Persona 3 Reload to keep fans like me busy if it doesn’t, however. Considered by many to be the best Persona game, it releases right around the corner on February 2.
If that wasn’t enough, Nintendo is bringing a remake of the best Mario RPG – Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door – to the Nintendo Switch. Square Enix has Visions of Mana in the works and Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake lost but not forgotten.
We’re also likely to get a Pokémon game or two before the year is through. Given the Rapidash pace that Game Freak put out Sword and Shield, The Isle of Armor and The Crown Tundra DLCs, Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, and Legends: Arceus before a short break that concluded with Scarlet and Violet, I’m surprised we haven’t heard about six new Pokémon games already. Game Freak is cooking, and whether it’s an entire new generation, another Legends game (please?), a remake of Black and White, or all of the above, I can all but guarantee we’ll see Pikachu and friends before 2024 is through. I just hope it’s a technically sound game with a framerate that runs better than a paralyzed Slowpoke.
With how massive these games are likely to be, I could realistically only play JRPGs for most of the year. I still have barely touched Xenoblade Chronicles 3, have 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim sitting on my shelf still wrapped neatly in plastic, and picked up Star Ocean First Departure R in order to prepare for the sequel that came out recently. Quite a few of the 2024 JRPGs will slip into 2025 and beyond for me. If I’m lucky, 2025 will be a bad year for the genre, and I’ll have time to catch up.
