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The story
A thread asking “which Super Famicom RPGs would still hook you if you played them today” drew a long list of nominees — Soul Blazer, Shiren the Wanderer, Front Mission, Shin Momotaro Densetsu (“The New Legend of Momotaro”), Mystic Ark, Sansara Naga 2, and more.
At the same time, posters argued that “RPG quality took a real leap forward starting around the PlayStation 1 era” and that “there’s almost nothing pre-Super Famicom that holds up to modern RPG standards” — so the thread went beyond simple recommendations into a debate about the hardware limits of the era and how generational experience colors people’s judgment. When one poster was pointed toward Front Mission, another jumped in with a rival pick — “you’d get more hooked playing Romancing SaGa 3.12 instead” — and the thread never quite settled on a consensus.
What people said
That wasn't an RPG
I've had my eye on that one
Maybe I'll buy it
Put another way, there's basically nothing pre-Super Famicom that holds up to modern RPG standards
PS1's got those load times though
Early PS1 RPGs were garbage though
That's actually what made me quit RPGs, and gaming in general
FF and others got so obsessed with cutscenes and presentation that the pacing tanked
Late PS1-era games got better once devs learned to compromise on that stuff, though
Sure, if there's a good one
That game is seriously incredible
Nah
Forget that, you'd get way more hooked playing Romancing SaGa 3.12????
The combat feels great
Blasting apart an enemy's parts with a machine gun, or landing a bare-fisted dash punch — both are seriously satisfying
The difficulty as a game is pretty low, though
Playing it on PS2 makes it a bit more bearable
Kind of a hassle tracking down that hardware, though
The story and the gameplay are both so simple they just feel boring
People who played it back in the day can push through on nostalgia, but…
Fire Emblem was ridiculously fun though
If it's that easy, maybe I'll give it a shot
Re: #53
Nice character designs
Tons of YouTubers play it, so it must be good
I'll buy it
The way the chibi ("SD"-style) characters move around at the bottom of the battle screen is great
Fun, but way too sluggish
Soundtrack: godlike
World/atmosphere: excellent
Story: so-so
Battles: so-so
If a remake came out I'd definitely play it, but it's way too obscure — I doubt anyone I know has even heard of it
I'm playing PS1 games on an emulator right now, and it's annoying how faithfully it even reproduces the load times
At least there's a 2x speed option, though even sped up, the long ones are still long
Some emulators let you skip loads in the settings
But that throws off the timing in a few rhythm games
Vib Ribbon is out of sync even by default, so just don't let it get to you
World/atmosphere: so-so
Story: so-so
Characters: bad
Soundtrack: excellent
It was fun, but I hated that encounters trigger on a fixed step count
You can straight-up tell which step is about to spawn the next enemy
That's what "Dap Parira" is for
Rights issues, maybe?
Re-releasing them as-is is cheaper than remaking them
Then again, if it got remade, I feel like it'd get some smug, knowing wink-wink treatment — "this is the fun part, right?" — that would ruin it too
Yeah, the battle system is clunky and the pacing drags
The setting is genuinely great, though
Background and key points of the debate
The Super Famicom launched in 1990, and its successor the PlayStation followed in 1994 — roughly a four-year gap in development eras. The view raised in post #24, that “quality took a real leap forward starting around the PS1 era,” reflects a real trade-off: the PlayStation’s CD-ROM format gave developers far more storage for elaborate graphics and cutscenes, but that came at the cost of long load times. On the question of whether these older games still hold up, opinions split largely along generational lines — those who experienced the era firsthand versus those who came to gaming later. Post #47 argues the games would feel “boring to anyone used to later-generation titles,” while post #52 counters that individual games (like Fire Emblem) still hold up well today. The exchange in posts #62, #69, and #84 adds a wrinkle: even playing via emulator, PS1’s notorious load times can remain a drag, showing that comparisons across hardware generations aren’t as clear-cut as they first appear.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (“Nandemo Jikkyo G” / general live-chat board) thread “Which Super Famicom RPGs Would Still Hook You Today.”
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