OrangeEnot

I guess Oreshika: Tainted Bloodlines would count. It's a turn-based JRPG for Vita, don't know if there was any other releases. Your job is to manage a cursed Japanese clan where everyone lives for around two years, yet for some reason is able to reproduce with the help of Japanese gods. The pantheon is quite large, each god has certain elemental affinities and other interesting inheritable features.

Started playing It Takes Two recently. The game introduces basic controls, and that's that, no additional tutorials, no hints how to solve puzzles, no characters telling you what to do next when you are "stuck" (many games have these annoying verbal hints when you do nothing for a minute, this one respects its players). It has a lot of places where players can simply play around with mechanics and see what happens, just for the joy of exploration and not some immediate gain.

And it reminded me of playing Spyro back in my childhood days, a feeling I didn't think I'd ever get from any game again. The only downside is that the characters are surprisingly cruel at times, the game's creators certainly lack empathy.

XII is my favourite as well. Interesting how controversial gambit system ended up to be, some love it, some hate it. I personally love that it gives the freedom to do any type of weird stuff you'd like to do and maintain good pace in battles.

Those who dislike it, I imagine, don't enjoy combat where the player doesn't have to push buttons, but 1) you never have enough gambit slots for everything you'd like to do, so you have to adapt and choose magicks/items yourself at times; 2) many RPGs suffer from exactly the opposite problem - you encounter a familiar enemy, know of one efficient way to defeat it and have to choose the same options in battles against it time after time just because you know that it works; mindlessly pushing a few buttons isn't much different from not pushing any buttons at all in this case.

I'm a huge fan of otome visual novels, but I don't think it's something that many here would appreciate lol, so I'd rather talk about a different subgenre that I like, Danganronpa-esque VNs. Basically, these are crime novels involving a quickly shrinking group of characters with interactive elements. For me the entertaining part is that actually thinking about cases matters to progress the story. I love to guess "whodunit" based on clues and my own intuition.

Of these, there are 3 Danganronpa games (there's a spin-off, but it has a vastly different gameplay). These are great to check out VNs in general if you don't know if that's your thing. They are very well-made, although their aesthetics may not be for everyone. The second one is my favourite, mainly because of its catchy tunes.

Zero Escape games - also a staple of this subgenre. They are half VN, half puzzle games. It's a great sci-fi story involving time shenanigans, you'll probably like it if you enjoyed Steins;Gate.

Kimi ga Shine - I really, really love this game! It's a Japanese indie game made by one person, Nankidai. It's available for free and also has a Steam version. It's not complete yet, but it's absolutely worth it to check out the content that already exists. What makes it stand out is that your choices have a great impact on the following story. An atmospheric, psychological game that feels very authentic. It has plenty of interaction, it's not long and it's fun to replay to make other choices.

I also love Ryukishi07's VNs, "When They Cry" series. The art is admittedly ugly, but the stories are very intricate and convoluted in the best sense of the word.

I don't like recent FF tendency of reducing the playable party to just one character. The whole beauty of JRPGs is that you can play around with your party, and XV and XVI don't have that, which is a shame. VII Remake, however, is great at combining action with the party management, I hope Square would choose this path for future FFs.

I second the Trails suggestion in this thread. Only played the Sky, but these games probably fit your preferences. Long story, large party of characters, short entertaining skits just like in Tales + turn-based combat.

One of my favourite series. Started with vanilla P3 back when it was released, during the golden era of PS2 JRPGs, then put hundreds of hours into P4, P3P, P4 Golden and P5, both royal and original. Also went back to check out the first Persona and two P2 games.

P2 and P2 aren't really "Persona" games, they are "Shin Megami Tensei: Persona" games. Dungeon crawlers with random battles. Unlike more modern Persona games, you don't go to school in these games, you go out of it by beating the shit out of demons. No school life simulator, no social links, just good ol' 10% story + 90% battles. I love P2's story, though. It's the most... entertaining, I'd say, and definitely feels different compared to other Persona games. Probably because the characters are mainly adults. If you decide to give it a try, beware that it has two games and the second is the direct continuation of the first. Hope it gets remade as well someday. It's also the best Persona game in terms of demon negotiation. The player can choose one or several members of the party and make them do a comedy act, play violin, tell jokes etc. to acquire persona cards. It's a lot of fun to explore these little scenes, as they change with the story's progression. P5 sort of added demon negotiation back, but in its early SMT form of "answer the question right". It's not even half as fun.

New Persona games are more or less similar, the main difference is the theme and the mood. P3 is blue and depressive, P4 is yellow and fun (but also a bit unhealthy), P5 is red and adventurous. P3 was a true revolution, as it added school life simulator aspects to an existing SMT formula. P4 and P5 use the same formula that was invented for P3, and it's my main issue with Persona series. It doesn't progress anymore. P4 being the same as P3 was understandable, as these games are a couple of years apart and were released for the same system. P5 being the same as the two previous games isn't exciting at all. Yeah, it has better UI, QoL features, of course, better graphics, animations and everything else one might expect from a newer game. However P5's core is the same as P3 and P4, and this core is immersion. At which P5, imo, is worse than P3 and P4. Can't really pinpoint why, maybe its aesthetics are the reason, or the less believable, too grandiose setting. It went from "we are saving the world behind the curtains, but nobody knows it" (P3) and "we are solving a crime case and saving the world, but nobody knows it" (P4) to "we are defeating all sorts of evil people and saving the world and everyone sort of knows it" (P5). P5 felt less immersive than previous games to me. Compare Joker to P3's MC - a chad Arsène Lupin who happens to go to school sometimes vs. a sad emo boy always with headphones on. I liked more down to earth and realistic approach of P3 and P4 in that regard. School life in P5 felt as an honestly unneeded afterthought. Another thing that broke immersion in P5 specifically for me is social links, pardon, confidants mechanic that was too centered on gameplay. In P3 and P4 you could do a run without some social links just because you felt like it, but in P5 your freedom of choice is severely affected by passive abilities gained by meeting with certain confidants. I dislike the game dictating me which confidants I have to prioritise. Don't get me wrong, P5 is a very good game on its own, it's just some things about it rub me the wrong way when I compare it to other games.

btw, I always thought that P3 OST is so unusual because it was composed with the idea that it's the music that the MC listens to first and a game soundtrack second

P3 is one of my favourite games ever. Story, music, characters, art, gameplay - everything is stellar. Haven't yet tried the Reload version, because Atlus taught me to never buy their games before the definitive edition is released. I'll probably wait until the female MC is available. Anyway, I like it more than other Persona games due to how deep and immersive it is. It's the only modern Persona where relationships within the party felt natural to me, where party members didn't instantly become bff just because they shared the same goal. I liked the tension between Mitsuru and Yukari, Junpei's ambitions, Ken's animosity and so on. I enjoyed that the characters were wary of the MC at first and slowly opened up to them. P4 and P5 are a bit more "nakama power" in that regard. Notice how party dynamics remain unchangeable in P4 and P5 - once you get a new character, their story is more or less done and they behave the exact same way until the end of the game. And it's always "one dungeon - one new party character" policy. P3 has less predictable structure.

Didn't say much about P4, but it's also an excellent game, with the best humour in the series.

Our experience's different. I'm playing with my husband, and he's generally better at aiming and shooting, while I'm better at platformer aspects, and the characters we ended up playing are sort of wired in the right way for us, haha. Co-op is definitely super enjoyable in this game.

I'll check Tinykin out!

Admittedly, I'm too lazy and not that much online to help build a community. But thanks for spreading the word about this place anyway!

I like to replay XIII, too. I think its visuals and music are the main reason. The sound of leveling up in Chrystarium is awfully pleasing :D

I enjoy the battle system as well, although can't quite explain why. Okay, I can think of one thing - the game requires the player to buff and debuff enemies for effective combat (Imperil status is especially interesting), and it's not time-consuming. Oh, and XIII has cool flashy summons, Shiva as a motorbike is spectacular.

Thanks, but it's pretty dead at the moment.

This is quite a nice summary! Yeah, the stagger meter is an awesome addition, especially since you have to take into account how exactly you reach the stagger. Do it with three ravagers too fast, and it runs out before you amass enough damage, for example.

My only issue with this battle system is that oftentimes, if you screw up your tactics, the game punishes you with prolonged combat instead of a game over. No MP, nothing to run out of, but you have to be effective so that battles don't drag too long.

Well, to each their own. Gotta note, though, that the vanilla and Zodiac Job System PS2 versions are more challenging than the Zodiac Age version.

I've played Tactics only this year and was surprised how much XII resembles it in mechanics despite these games belonging to different RPG subgenres. It lead me to think that XII only happened because there was this proper foundation of Tactics, so I doubt there'd ever be another mainline game in Ivalice, but more Tactics games are possible, I think.

I wish I'll have enough time at some point to get to the Ivalice storyline in XIV.

XVI looks like an Ivalice-setting game to me, but without the tactical approach of XII/Tactics. I enjoyed the story for what it was, but felt that the game tried too hard to be like one of the cool kids classic installations in the series. It didn't have a new idea, a spark behind it, only a concept that it has to have all notable FF elements like familiar summons, moogles, enemies, weapons, etc. But it's a good game overall, didn't go through development hell like XV and sold well.