Its not a very "patient gamer" recommendation, but Sea of Stars came out a couple of weeks ago, it is a modern game inspired by retro JRPG titles like Chrono Trigger. I haven't played it yet, but it looks super cool.
this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2023
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Finished it yesterday, can confirm, while it's not on par of course, it's a great game and an amazing tribute to old JRPG.
Nothing else reaches the same quality as Chrono Trigger in the same way. You have to settle for lower quality with similar pacing, or try to reach the same level of quality in a different way.
Similar pacing, lower quality: Phantasy Star IV, Super Mario RPG, Final Fantasy IV
Comparable quality, different style: Earthbound, Final Fantasy VII (FF6 is the real answer, but FF7 is the most similar game to FF6)
Similar aspects, lower quality: Dragon Quest IV, Radical Dreamers & Chrono Cross, possibly Radiant Historia
Radiant Historia definitely hits some of the same notes.
I'm at the final boss of Super Mario RPG and can vouch for it being really fun. While it's not as epic in scale and story as Chrono Trigger, it's got good humorous writing, good pacing, and the difficulty is just right imo.
I also really like that if you lose a battle, the game resets you at your last save point and carries over any exp you gained, making grinding way less tedious.
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Earthbound probably
New Game +
Huh, this game has that mode? If that is so then that it is amazing.
Yeah. There are some endings that you can only get from new game +.
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Suikoden II is generally considered one of the best JRPGs on the PS1, and while the English translation isn't spotless the writing and setpieces have a similar quality to Chrono Trigger. It is a sequel to Suikoden and you'll enjoy the second game a bit more for having played the first one, but it's not a requirement. The original Suikoden wasn't nearly as polished and I'd hate for you to give up on Suikoden II because you burned out on it.
Absolutely loved Suikoden 2
More Chrono Trigger!
Have you seen all, IIRC, 11 endings?
Honestly, nothing ever hit the same for me. Even Chrono Cross, which I'm sure tons of people love and is supposed to be somewhat of a sequel to Chrono Trigger (I mean... Final Fantasy games did this too where the stories were totally unrelated but were still "sequels"), was unable to draw me in.
Something about the camaraderie between the characters in Trigger just also felt so much more special than in any other JRPG for me. Western RPGs tend to do this a lot; Baldur's Gate 3 is extremely good at making you want to hang out with the companion characters.
Quick note, Cross is very deeply, broadly, and extensively a sequel to Trigger.
Eh officially it is. In reality though they tacked all the references to Chrono Trigger in at the end of development.
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I can't believe it hasn't been mentioned much but Secret of Mana is definitely a strong contender as GOAT JRPG, as good if not better than Chrono Trigge imo.
Better? Never. I will say it is the by far the best real multi player rpg I’ve played.
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Earthbound is fantastic. Also, Chrono Trigger has several different endings and secret things to accomplish along the way, so it is good for more than one play-through. Finally, I remember stumbling into a game decades ago around the same time I first discovered Chrono Trigger called Seiken Densetsu. I remember having a copy in English and really liking it.
None of those reach the same level as Chrono Trigger in my opinion, but they're still great:
- Lufia II - Rise of the Sinistrals (SNES). Note: Lufia is best played out of order, since the start of Lufia I spoils the end of Lufia II.
- Tales of Phantasia (SNES). Preferably through the DeJap translation, IMO better than the official.
- Pokémon Fire Red or Leaf Green (GBA). Pokémon as a series decayed a fair bit, but Gen III was amazing.
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If you want something more modern, but that still feels very classic, try Sea of Stars. It gives off major chrono trigger energy from my play through so far.
It's got that Chrono Trigger Feel™. The first time we triggered a battle, the party and enemies all jumped to their starting places on the map. I was so happy
Chrono Cross, duh
only if you want to render everything you loved and achieved in Chrono Trigger meaningless
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I liked Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age more than Chrono Trigger.
Super Mario RPG is pretty high up there, as well.
Lost Odyssey is a gem that doesn't get enough love. Chrono Trigger might be a bit higher on my list, by this is definitely worth a playthrough. Be prepared for some real pulls at your heart strings if you read through the short stories in the game.
Undertale, tales of vesperia, golden sun, Earthbound are some decent choices
Illusions of Gaia and Secret of Mana 100% - they're action JRPGs but have the same vibe in many ways.
Echoing a few here.
Earthbound. Legend of Dragoon. Illusion of Gaia. Secret of Mana. Suikoden. Final Fantasy 6.
Secret of Evermore, or switch genres. Nothing beats Chrono Trigger.
I just love everything about Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. The second game never came close for me. But most have already played it.
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I am only a few hours into Chrono Trigger so I don't know what metrics to assess quality but currently Xenogears, not mentioned at the time of this post was my absolute favorite go to game.
Its such a whirlwind of a story, and while the second disk is a bit of a let down playability wise, lots of story and exposition is still there. The last few fights are amazing.
And additionally Final Fantasy XIV, the MMO has one of the best story narratives I've ever experienced across the main game and it's expansions concluding with endwalker last year. I love Xenogears, but if I ever got to wipe my memory to experience something for the first time I'd pick FFXIV. It's a stout 150hrs ish though to get through it though at this point but all soloable/minimal party play.
My big 3 on that system were Chrono Trigger, Earthbound, and Mario RPG, in no particular order (though I generally lean toward Earthbound). I would throw Zelda: A Link To The Past as an honorable mention (not an RPG in the same sense of course). All classics and worthy of respect in their own light
Chrono trigger has a sequel, Chrono cross
Great game. Awful sequel.
I agree with this assessment a lot. The art and environmental design is gorgeous. The music is top notch (the battle theme is a bit polarizing though). In terms of production it's seriously well put together, for the most part. But, it suffers a lot of the worst excesses of 90s JRPG design, with a meandering, nonsensical plot and a battle system that's more interested in being fiddly than in being fun. It feels like one of the worst examples of a company just straight up not understanding the appeal of a game and making a "sequel" that could easily have been called something else. As a recommendation for someone just coming off of Chrono Trigger, I can hardly imagine something worse, oddly.
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I'd like to give people in this thread the warning I wish they had given me about this game. Don't go into Cross expecting it to have anything to do with Trigger (or expecting it to be 10% as good as Trigger). They made a weird JRPG where every character is just a text filter and then decided in the last 3 hours that it was the sequel to Chrono Trigger. It has nothing in common with CT except a couple of place names and some dead characters, and would be a much better game if they called it Lynx Quest or Radical Dreamers 2 or what the hell ever.
Can't agree enough. My brother and I played through Chrono Cross together and that's honestly the only reason we even finished it.
It's tenuously connected to Chrono Trigger at best and those plot points are terribly written anyway. Combat is mediocre, the element system is annoying, and there's so many characters that only a couple of them get any screentime.
If you enjoyed CT, don't play CC; you'll almost certainly be disappointed.
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For some newer ones, Chained Echoes and Sea of Stars have been fantastic.
I find the usual large and long SNES/PS1 era JRPGs quite bloated and grindy, to be honest. A while ago I played Phantasy Star IV, which is a lot more lightweight, linear and shorter than say, FF6, and I found that quite refreshing. Maybe you can try that as a change of style.
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I'm kinda surprised how few people have mentioned Chrono Cross. It's not the same game, but it has a lot of cross over, and might help scratch that itch for "more chronotrigger".
There are a lot of good jrpg recommendations in this thread, but more focused on the jrpgs of that time. If you are looking for something more recent, I can't recommend Persona 5 enough, you don't need to have played the earlier ones as the stories are independent from each other, it is as good as Chrono Trigger for me, and now quite accessible since persona 5 royal came to pc and all consoles. The recent dragons quest games are also pretty good.
- Secret of Mana
- Secret of Evermore
- Suikoden 2
- Suikoden 5
- Suikoden Tactics
- I am Setsuna
- Okami
There are tons and TONS of amazing games on my list, these are just the few that come to mind immediately.
edit: pretty much any game in the Star Ocean series
I guess that depends on what you liked about it. Here are some other JRPGs I've enjoyed:
- Golden Sun
- Xenoblade Chronicles
- Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky
I personally prefer more action, so here are some ARPGs I really enjoy:
- Ys series - especially Ys 1 and Ys Origin
- Zelda series - currently playing Skyward Sword and loving it
- Tokyo Xanadu Ex+
JRPG isn't my favorite category (I prefer ARPGs with minimal loot), so I'm probably looking for something different than you, but hopefully something here was helpful.
Live-A-Live is probably the best game similar to Chrono Trigger since the whole non-random battles element came from there (and the SaGa titles). That and several of the team members that worked on Live-A-Live worked on Chrono Trigger. Also, the whole OST is by Yoko Shimomura, the lady who did the osts for;
- Kingdom Hearts
- Street Fighter II
- Super Mario RPG
- Legend of Mana
The Remaster is well worth it and fixes a lot of RNG issues that the original SFC version had.
Nothing surpasses chronotrigger even after all these years.
Two contemporaries of chronotrigger that were much different but still quite good are terranigma and seiken detensu 3.
Two games that claimed to be trying to do something similar mechanically that are RPGs are septerra core and anachronox. Both are for PC and should run on a potato these days.
The legacy of Kain series and in particular the soul reaver offshoot has a great story and time travel elements, but they're more action puzzle games.
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