There weren’t many highlights to 2017, but there were at least some highlights to the JRPGs released throughout the year. From the launch of long awaited localisations like Persona 5 and Yakuza 0 to reinterpretations of classics like Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age and Fire Emblem Echoes with plenty of smaller titles to play, JRPG fans were really spoiled for choice. If your favourite isn’t featured, it’s probably because I didn’t have time to play it! Before we count down the best JRPGs of 2017, let’s show off some of the standouts from 2017, starting with the recipient of the most important award.

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Best Food – Zwei: The llvard Insurrection

Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection was a fine action RPG that served up a smorgasbord of different delicacies. Since the heroes gain experience solely from eating food, there are over forty types of meals to gobble down. You can even trade ten pieces of food to get a more filling meal that gives out a significantly larger number of experience points, like exchanging ten meatballs for some ham. It doesn’t make much sense, but it’s an interesting levelling mechanic that rewards skilled and starving players. A buffet of food is also your reward for making it through each stage; there’s nothing like the satisfaction of slapping a slot machine and seeing it start to rain pizza.

Best Localisation – Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia

Honestly, I felt like the overall quality of RPG localisations in 2017 were lacking. With so many Japanese games being released internationally, I’m sure translators were stretched thin and projects were rushed, something noticeable even on major releases like Persona 5 and Ys VIII. That said, there were definitely highlights. With so many RPGs being localised into English in 2017, this was a tough one to call, but 8-4’s handling of Fire Emblem Echoes stood out to me as the year’s strongest. The script has such a wonderful flow that you’d never expect it originated from a Famicom title. From the natural-sounding narration to the quirky dialogue in the support conversations, the English localisation does a great job of capturing the emotional highs and lows of the storyline. This Fire Emblem entry also boasted the most voice acting in the series to date, but the English casting was spot-on, especially for the leading roles of Ahm and Celica.

Best RPG that I almost forgot released in 2017 – Etrian Odyssey V

Read our full impressions of Etrian Odyssey V!

Etrian Odyssey V is an excellent dungeon crawler. So excellent, in fact, that I was playing it in 2016 when it released in Japan so it didn’t even cross my mind for Game of the Year considerations. This entry gets back to the dungeon-crawling core of the series, stripping out ship exploration and set characters to focus firmly on exploring a vast, creatively-designed labyrinth. With the redone class and race systems, there are a lot of options to customise your party of dwarves and rabbit people right down to their voices and colour schemes. It’s a tough, but brilliant RPG that makes great use of the 3DS format. I’d call it the console’s swansong if I wasn’t so sure there was another Etrian Odyssey in development!

Best RPG Spinoff – Kemono Friends Fight

Kemono Friends might have started out as a mobile RPG, but Nexon’s game didn’t exactly grab audiences’ attention and shut down well before it was turned into an anime series in 2017. It’s been fascinating to watch this franchise about cute anime animal girls go from nothing to the year’s breakout anime hit (and then back to nothing thanks to Kadokawa’s mishandling of the second season). This doujin fighting game by StudioS was released at the peak of Kemono Friends’ popularity and it’s a fun adaptation of the series. With the easy inputs and combos it makes for an accessible anime fighting game with a hilarious counter system where you and your opponent can just keep on deflecting moves. It’s janky, but it wouldn’t be a faithful adaptation of Kemono Friends if it wasn’t. This is a title that prides itself on being the most poverty of fighting games, down to the odd references to Arc System Work’s Fist of the North Star game. If you’re interested, Kemono Friends Fight is now also available on DLSite under a different title in case it runs into a friend who’s very good at copyright law.

Strangest Character Design – Xenoblade 2’s Frozen Furry Sheryl Nome With Back-Breaking Breasts

Enough said.

Not an RPG But You Absolutely Need to Play – Culdcept Revolt



It may have been released for the 3DS long after Nintendo fans had moved on to the Switch, but Culdcept Revolt is reason enough to keep that uncomfortable little handheld around. As a hybrid of board and card game, players compete to amass the largest amount of magic by claiming territory and waging war with their deck of different creatures. Matches are lengthy, but it’s addictive to try and unlock new cards. Players who get into the deckbuilding side of things will find all kinds of card combinations to exploit to drain the funds of your local or online opponents. Culdcept Revolt is a totally different genre, but there are definitely RPG stylings to the creatures and combat that fans will enjoy, so it’s an easy recommendation. Certainly no other game I played this year had me cheering and screaming at my console quite as much.

Best Soundtrack – Persona 5

Shoji Meguro knocked it out of the park again with a stylish soundtrack for this modern day RPG. With all the unintelligible English lyrics, I’ve found some of his work on the Persona series grew grating over time, but there isn’t a single dud in his acid jazz score this time around. Highlights include the moody Beneath the Mask, intense battle themes like Blooming Villain and one of the best shopping tracks of all time in Layer Cake.

The Imageepoch Memorial Prize for Worst JRPG of the Year – Dark Rose Valkyrie



I’m sure there were worse RPGs, but thankfully the likes of Valkyria Revolution and Akiba’s Beat were preceded by demos that urged me to stay far away. So with that in mind, the worst RPG I played from this year has to be Compile Heart’s Dark Rose Valkyrie. The idea of building up relationships between a squad of Kosuke Fujishima-designed characters wielding oversized weapons in 1920s Japan is sound (even if ripped straight from Sakura Wars) but it’s a real disappointment on almost every front. Poor dialogue, map design, encounter design, difficulty curve, sound design, visual performance and a whole mess of game mechanics make for one of the most lackluster RPGs of the year, if not the whole generation.

Most Moe Character – Goro Majima (Yakuza 0/Yakuza Kiwami)

Majima is a man who will find hundreds of creative ways to beat your face in and then offer you a moist towelette. In Yakuza 0, at least, we see an unexpected, more vulnerable side to this gangster goofball. It’s hard not to be charmed by the way he helps out the citizens of Osaka by breaking bones and belting out karaoke. Besides, if Konosuba, Another and Captain Feathersword have taught us anything, it’s that eyepatches are totally moe.

Stay tuned for our final picks of JRPG of the year!