TheJRPGgenre is alive and well. Legendary developers like Square Enix and Monolith Soft are putting out bangers likeFinal Fantasy 7 RebirthandPersona 3 Reloadwhile even the indie scene is seeing serious success with games like Sabotage Studio’sSea of Starsand Rabbit & Bear Studio’sEiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes.
All the same, there was an age in which games in this vein were launching left and right, and so many of them were fantastic. Today, we’re taking a look at several JRPGs that would really benefit from another turn at the wheel, a full-on remake to either underscore their inherent greatness or address certain issues that could bring a flawed gem to freshness.
7Jade Cocoon: Story Of The Tamamayu
It had only been a few years since Pokemon took the industry by storm. Digimon fever was hitting its apex. In partnership with Katsuya Kondō, character designer for the classic Studio Ghibli film Kiki’s Delivery Service, a long-running studio called Genki launched a catch-and-train JRPG with echoes of Pokemon and Digimon alike - Jade Cocoon: Story of the Tamamayu.
Jade Cocoon stars Levant, a Cocoon Master who battles bug-like monsters called Minions. Upon purification, they will battle on Levant’s behalf. Training them up and eventually fusing them leads to the creation of ever more powerful Minions. It’s a great gameplay loop tied to a surprisingly heartfelt story about a young man in search of his father and his efforts to defend his village against nefarious demons.
Why A Remake? What Are The Odds?
A modern spin on Jade Cocoon could be something special. Kondō’s art could seriously shine with the graphical capabilities of the modern age, and there’s a unique blend in Jade Cocoon’s core formula. If nothing else, we’ll always have the PS2 sequel to enjoy. It’s pretty good!
Bit of a recurring theme, we’ll warn you now. But uh, we’re not overly confident this will ever be revisited. Genki still exists, though as best we can tell (correct us if we’re wrong), it’s strictly a support studio now.
6The Legend Of Dragoon
Hot off the heels of the global phenomenon that was Final Fantasy 7, Sony Computer Entertainment seized the day and set about tasking Japan Studio with the production of a Japanese role-playing game to rival it.
The Legend of Dragoon launched in 1999; its claim to fame is its Dragoon Spirit system, in which the heroes would eventually gain the power to transform into magical armored warriors.
The infusion of timed button presses to a turn-based system kept players on their toes, although we’re not sure Japan Studio quite knocked this tidbit out of the park. The timing can be a tad wonky.
The story is uneven, and the English translation is a mess, but the game soars courtesy of its creative designs, mostly enjoyable cast, and surprisingly detailed worldbuilding.
A remake could right a lot of wrong turns in The Legend of Dragoon. A stronger script (with a translation to suit it), a more refined take on the signature battle system, and richer visuals would bring back that Dragoon Spirit in spades.
But with the closure of Japan Studio, and Sony not exactly spinning in follow-up JRPG projects in the years since its debut, this one feels like another long shot.
5Wild Arms
This is a fun one. Much likeEiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroesis the spiritual successor to theSuikodenseries, the Wild Arms series is getting a crowdfunded spiritual successor in Armed Fantasia. Which is great, because the notion of JRPG worlds packed with worldbuilding styled after the Wild West genre is too good to let slide into gradual obscurity.
Wild Arms was a successful series for Media Vision, totaling five mainline games, a strategy RPG spinoff, and an enhanced remake of the original. Why, then, do we think that self-same original game warrants a second remake?
It’s been two decades since Wild Arms Alter Code: F partly reimagined the first Wild Arms, and it’s an excellent blueprint for one more crack at a franchise that fell by the wayside like so many other IPs did after the PS2 generation came to a close.
Media.Vision hasn’t released a game since 2018’s financially tepid Valkyria Chronicles 4, and it’s hard to imagine them returning to past glories.
But again - Armed Fantasia! Wild Arms creative veterans are helming what they’re calling a “Westernpunk” RPG, and it’s very much a new Wild Arms in all but copyright. We’re hoping for the best.
4Star Ocean: Til The End Of Time
Square Enix recently released a lush remake ofStar Ocean’smost beloved entry - the second one. But the third game, while surely controversial for a certain late-game plot twist, still has its fair share of fans. Us included.
Star Ocean: Til the End of Time brought the series into full 3D courtesy of the PlayStation 2’s graphical horsepower. It was a leap in production quality, even if its predecessors’ more two-dimensional designs hold up just as nicely (arguably all the more so).
The superbly named Fayt Leingod navigates an interstellar conflict and fantasy kingdom politics in equal measure with an all-star cast of allies and a riveting battle system to boot.
With the apparent success ofStar Ocean: The Second Story R, we could see Til the End of Time eventually remade. But we’re not quite sure if Square will pull the trigger on this one - this is likely a harder game to remake, and it doesn’t command the same degree of fan fever.
3Breath Of Fire
Just as Konami once touted Suikoden as their JRPG flagship franchise, Capcom kept pace with Breath of Fire. A series starring protagonists named Ryu who can invariably transform into mighty dragons, Breath of Fire had Capcom’s flash-bang factor down pat, and its medieval backbone gradually expanded into impressively vast worldbuilding.
The first two games, released on the SNES, don’t quite hold a candle to the PlayStation entries that followed, nor the fifth game on PS2. Breath of Fire III is especially beloved all-around, and Breath of Fire IV - one of the most gorgeous PS1 games, hands down - has the honor of hosting one of gaming’s greatest antagonists.
Just the same, there’s plenty of charm in Breath of Fire and its first sequel, and loads could be done to incorporate some of the innovative features seen in their follow-ups.
If Capcom ever feels the urge to bring back Ryu’s draconic adventures, it might be wise to give it all a fresh start. But would they?
Capcom has had tremendous success focusing on core, proven, IPs like Monster Hunter and Resident Evil. Getting them to greenlight even “just” a remake in a franchise that relatively few remember would be a tough sell.
2Chrono Trigger
There’s a reason they call it “the dream team.”
In 1995, Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii, Dragon Ball and Dragon Quest character designer Akira Toriyama (RIP), Final Fantasy VI director Yoshinori Kitase, Live A Live director Takashi Tokita, Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu, and a who’s-who list of up-and-coming legends teamed up to create the timeless time-travelingChrono Trigger.
We’re hard-pressed to think of a game with better pacing, and only the aforementioned Dragon Quests can rival Chrono Trigger in charm. Under the steady guiding hands of these industry icons, a game with pitch-perfect combat, vivid and memorable designs, and a majestic tale of era-hopping heroism against an otherworldly threat struck the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It was glorious.
Should Chrono Trigger ever be remade, millions of diehards will doubtless scrutinize whatever comes of it. As well we should - Chrono Trigger is one of the only video games we might be tempted to label “perfect.”
Why remake it, then? We think Chrono Trigger’s every aspect has the DNA to be brought forward in a modern sense without losing an ounce of its charm.
Besides, it’d be a bona fide revival of what may be gaming’s shortest-lived beloved series. Chrono Cross, a far more divisive but nonetheless beautiful sequel, landed in 2000. 1996 text-based choose-your-own-adventure Radical Dreamers exists, but up until Chrono Cross’ 2022 remaster, very few in the West had ever touched it.
It’s been 24 years and counting since Cross… it’s time. Chrono Trigger commands a legion of fans for a reason. Still, it’s a tall ask. A lot of money would need to go into this one. Outlook unclear.
1Xenogears
The young, relatively untested, Tetsuya Takahashi worked closely with his wife, Soraya Saga, and Chrono Trigger co-writer Masato Kato to deliver a game that was one part conventional JRPG, one part twisted psychological thriller, and ten parts unlike anything that came before it.
Xenogears is, frankly, outrageous in scope. Takahashi poured so much into it that a several-hundred-page companion compendium, Xenogears Perfect Works, is mandatory reading for anyone fully swept up in the game’s plots within plots, far-reaching and millennia-spanning backstory, and the overarching origins of its mythos.
It could have been the start of its own series. It wasn’t meant to be. As we covered in our Xenosaga entry, Takahashi founded Monolith Soft, trying his luck again with copyright-dodging Xenosaga.
That one went somewhat sideways as well (though it’s plenty worth playing), but hey, he’s nailed it with the ongoing success ofXenoblade Chronicles.
Even still, there’s still nothing like Xenogears. They threw everything but the kitchen sink at this one, and it nearly came apart at the seams. Many late-game story events are reduced to - literally - protagonists Fei Fong Wong and Elhaym van Houten describing them in front of static imagery.
This project proved too vast for any one game to contain, let alone a game produced largely by young developers who lacked much prior experience.
The benefits of a Xenogears remake rather speak for themselves, then. But it might be the most far-fetched inclusion on this list… and that’s saying something.
Xenoblade Chronicles continues, and Square Enix is canceling plenty of projects in order to consolidate their resources for more surefire bets. We can’t see Tetsuya Takahashi returning when he’s spearheading a successful studio, and we can’t see Square Enix caring to ask him in the first place.
