Top Five: Japanese RPG's

5. Tales Of Symphonia (Gamecube)















A slightly controversial choice to begin with perhaps, Symphonia can often frustrate later on with it's complex dungeon puzzles. It's beauty however lives in it's sublime graphics, surprisingly decent story and wonderfully enjoyable battle system which eliminates the usual tedious nature of grinding for level gain in this genre.


4. Xenogears (Playstation)















Certainly a love/hate kind of game Xenogears is often lambasted for it's convoluted plot and wayward second disc. This criticism whilst justified in places doesn't take into account what a stunning, stylistically gorgeous and intelligently mature game this is, even with its faults it's one of Squaresoft's best games and something that every RPG fan needs to experience.


3. Seiken Densetsu 2/Secret Of Mana (SNES)















This was the game Pal Snes owners had been waiting for, and boy did it not disappoint, from it's wonderful graphics and haunting score to it's fabulous in depth world and locales. Mana is without a doubt a classic and would be the greatest action RPG of all time if it wasn't for......


2. Seiken Densetsu 3 (SNES)















Wow, this is everything Mana was and then even more. To begin with the graphics have been significantly upgraded and are in my opinion the best graphics on the SNES, the game is both darker in it's colour pallete and plot which is again an improvement as Mana could be slightly sugary in places.
The music also has a darker feeling to it, but it's also haunting and uplifting. Again this is one of the game's finest attributes and is easily in the top three soundtracks on the machine.

Seiken Densetsu 3 also plays like a dream, and sports some absolutely fantastic boss battles throughout it's course.

Unfortunately Seiken Densetsu 3 was only released in Japan, however there is a wonderful fan translation available meaning that this truly fantastic game can be appreciated by everyone via emulation.

Awesome gameplay sample video here


1. Chrono Trigger (SNES)















Well what can i really say about this that hasn't been said before, Chrono has a great plot, graphics and artwork, probably the best soundtrack ever and above all is a fun game to play. Many RPG's seem to forget this simple fact, that above all else games should be fun. Chrono is often criticised for being either too short (at 30 hours or so) and too easy but in my opinion in this genre i class those as strengths rather than weaknesses.

Chrono Trigger can be played via emulation or through a wonderful Nintendo DS version if you don't want to stump up or the expensive US Snes release so there's no real excuse to avoid it unless you despise this genre.

Video here of the best opening sequence and theme tune in video game history.