I like them all so it's tough to choose. I'll split into mainline and spin-offs
Mainline:
Sequels/spin-offs:
Oh yes that's a tricky part. There's a couple of blue magics to pick up too but that's just more stress lol
I finished my first HK rando run yesterday, clocking in at 5h 46m. Feels slow, I'm sure I can improve that time. It didn't help that this seed was stingy with giving me claw. It's such an essential early game traversal item that it threw me off not having it. OTOH I'm surprised where I can get without it.
VATS made sense in 1 & 2 due to the third-person isometric design. It feels clunky and shoehorned in a first-person setting. The gunplay in vanilla is awful but mods fix that and make it a proper shooter in a way Bethesda can't seem to manage.
I understand the philosophy of carry weights but fiddling with inventories in Beth games has never been engaging to me. And the mods add a lot of new stuff so it compound the problem. What's the point of adding new stuff if you're not picking it up?
Sure! This is the guide to install TTW
and this is a mod guide with a few hundred compatible mods.
Do everything in the first guide. For the second guide, I would do everything in the Extra Utilities & Fixes and Optimization sections, and then you can pick and choose from the rest. I ended up installing everything but Overhauls. I also installed STARS (armor rehaul mod) which was part of the main guide a couple days ago but has been moved down to the appendix.
I love DQ3 SFC. My favorite of the series (that I've actually played anyway)
I finished Romancing SaGa 2 a bit ago. I was nervous to fight the last boss as I had read about how it was supposed to be one of the most difficult last bosses in the series and then I did it one attempt without any major problems. Maybe I just got lucky with attacks because mechanically I can see how it's supposed to be a hard boss. Overall I enjoyed the game but it's a hard one to recommend to people due to how unconventional it is.
I skipped RS3 for now and moved on to the SaGa Frontier remaster. It's fun but also a step back in complexity from the RS games and so it feels a little too easy sometimes. Also the limited rehashed quests gets old fast (ugh runes). Anyway I'm hoping to be done with this one before Emerald Beyond comes out. I'm abusing NG+ so I don't have to grind out every single scenario so I don't think it'll take too long.
This will save you some time. It's an archive of all known English translations for many if not most major systems, already patched and ready to go.
There's an official translation, but it is notoriously bad and possibly the worst on the SNES. It's a great game tho so it's worth patching with a fan translation
I rarely play JRPGs these days but I played a ton back then. Listing ones I haven't seen mentioned yet:
SNES
Lufia 2
Breath of Fire 2 (find a retranslation patch)
PS1
Suikoden 2
Saga Frontier
Star Ocean 2
Breath of Fire 3 & 4
Grandia
Valkyrie Profile
Lunar
Xenogears
Koudelka (didn't play this one but I had a friend that loved it)
If you like tactical RPGs, Front Mission 3 and Vandal Hearts.
Yes! It's really incredible what they could accomplish on the GB. I wish the other two games were better.