The Best 2000s JRPGs 15 Years Later
To the 90 90s kids left who would still boorishly proclaim themselves ‘90s kids’, teen fighters in colorful spandex suits and a handful of decent cartoons mostly define that decade for them.
To your eternally pubescent still JRPG playing mid 30s year old, the decade still shines radiantly as our golden era with its fantasies and quests, crosses, and triggers.
Now that we’ve all had about 100 years to meditate-on the decade after the golden era, we can safely call the Two Thousands, the aughts, the naughties, the ゼロ年代s, The Golden Age 2 of Japanese Role Playing Games.
Generally, a touch less profound than their 90s counterparts, the Playstation 2 era of games offered new depths of immersion with intoxicating new graphics and character models that looked kinda like actual people!
After decades of careful consideration, Only JRPGS is proud to bring you our definitive list of the best.
The Blood Brothers - Burn, Piano Island, Burn…
No 2000s JRPG list would be complete without The Blood Brothers, the series that dominated the first half of the decade.
Going out with a bang after the near perfect Young Machetes, which built on all the innovation and promise of Crimes, we’d never see the team back together again.
In retrospect, the release that put this series on the map is the one we end up going back to the most as even if it lacks the variety of the last two games, Burn, Piano Island, Burn… packs the hottest screeching punchy heat.
A great starter to this list of Fucking’s Greatest Hits.
Trophy Scars - Alphabet. Alphabets
An unknown gem, that went under the radar of all the major gaming publications at the time of release, and truly we still owe it its due.
Artists, assassins, apparitions, alchemists, addicts, and alligators, what other game could meld together such a tapestry and make something not just cohesive but beautiful in its grungy meditations on the murk in our hearts?
The Mars Volta - Amputechture
A bit of an opposite philosophy of our first entry, most wouldn’t call Amputechture the most consistent of The Mars Volta’s six RPGs but god does it have the highest highs.
Pushing the player into an ambitious slow burn of a start with no tutorial for what crawled next through the tv screen the ‘Vicarious Atonement’ level remains a stand-out and bluntly speaking ‘Meccamputechture’ might be the greatest dungeon in JRPG history.
Taking Back Sunday - Tell All Your Friends
A venerated Japanese Role Playing classic, people still cosplay the Tell All Your Friends cast to this day… We’re, uh, not just including this because we can’t include B-
The Sound of Animals Fighting - Lover, the Lord Has Left Us…
We all thought no crazy Japanery would top the once mind-melting idea of ‘Final Fantasy meets Disney’ the Kingdom Hearts franchise gifted to the world with its Three Fifty Eight By Two Days and Sleep by Births, but The Sound of Animals Fighting brought together Saosin and Chiodos? Then threw in RxBandits, The Autumns, and Days Away… for good measure?
The second game in the series went particularly crazy with it, drawing in east Asian influences as well as employing a greater use of dynamics than found in most JRPGs.
The Fall of Troy - Manipulator
Unlike Final Fantasy IX, a game that is not better than the more beloved-by-the-mainstream Final Fantasy VII, Manipulator actually IS better than Doppelgänger!
A game with a Guitar Hero II crossover?
Peh, not for Japanese role playing purists like us!
At The Drive-In - Relationship of Command
Persona is to The Mars Volta as Shin Megami Tensei is to At The Drive-In; Despite the former having grown more popular, it actually spun out of the latter.
Entirely different flavors, Relationship of Command brutes a straight forward but disgustingly powerful experience down your skull to The Volta’s stylistic groovy edges; If you make it past the ‘Cosmonaut’ and actually clear the ‘Catacombs’ you’ll be able to handle anything any lesser game will throw your way.
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven
Got to love a legendary, genre-defining JRPG that rips its name off from a documentary about Japanese biker gangs!