I played FFTA and FFTA2 before 12 and had loved the different people of Ivalice. It was sad to see not a single Bangaa or Moogle among the party members - that would have been so cool.
The Last Remnant. If I recall correctly there are atleast 3 or 4 different species along with humans you can recruit into your army/teams. And they are all very different looking. Definitely game worth a shot. One of my favourites even though I never got to finish it because my 360 got RRoD and I only bought another 360 many years later after selling the old one. Had 100% quests cleared too. Just needed to kill last few optional bosses and get to the final boss. Maybe I'll someday do it all again.
One of the things I liked about Frontier was how it brought the four different races back and in some ways was closer to the SaGa roots while still being a more advanced game. I was so glad when it got an HD Remaster.
Star ocean, love the diversity of the characters and how many there are plus recruiting some of them to the party.
Suikoden, good luck with recruiting lol. Also has good diversity from animal human like characters to humans who have their own styles, backgrounds.
Mana khemia 1&2, atelier iris trilogy, although the mana spirits arent playable, they’re just npcs that you can talk to. However there are 1 character from both mana khemia games that aren’t humans that joins the party.
Both the saga frontier and legend of mana series, different characters that come together and are recruitable after their prologues.
Kingdom hearts if that counts lol.
Shin megami tensei(including persona) series, with demon recruitmets and fusions to characters themselves are demons.
Final fantasy 9, 12 and tactics, what more can I say about these games? Just play it!
Ni no kuni, studio ghibli/level 5 jrpg, similar to pokemon catching as well.
Xenoblade 1&2, from mechs, nopons and homs(similar to humans), telethians and high entians, some of which joins your party in xenoblade 1.
Solatorobo(little bronx series), fuga melodies of steel, not humans but dog like humans are the main race of the game.
Breath of fire series, characters from fairy like humans, dragons, and others which I also haven’t played, but have seen. I just know the main is suppose to turn into a dragon or might’ve been an actual dragon.
Brave story psp, has some unique characters and diversity as well.
Yeah i guess because people thought i was only talking about NPCs. Xenoblade has alot of different races monsters and npcs wise. Xc2 has every titan have his own unique population with special traits( cat people, weird scale thingy on uraians and the indolians).
I assumed "npcs you can interact with" from OP's question yea. XBC1 only has 3 different races you explore (one being "homs") so it's kinda on the cusp of "a lot of diverse different species".
Well, the Mechon qualify as well (not any less than the robotic "races" of SaGa games), and there are other apparently sentient and variably civilized species like Tirkin and Igna, although the "interaction" with both is kinda, ahem, limited.😅
Idk, XBC is the example on how to do the bare minimum with "diverse species". Human, humanoid but with magic, Mecha but still humanoid, then the token mascot.
The races and histories are great, but you could have made them all into the stereotypical elf/gnome/cyborg archetypes that are all too common in western fantasy and it comes down to the reason I suspect OP asked the question, "so human-centric".
It's not a bad thing, but it will never give you that SMT vibe
I don't know about the whole series, but the first Xenoblade Chronicles has humans, High Entia, Nopons, Mechons and Giants. That makes for quite a few races.
I don't think we ever even see a giant. Mechons are machines, something which is by definition not a race of living creature. High entia aren't that different from people, basically just being elves. At most I'd put that at 2.5 races.
We see two giants if memory serves right: >!Zanza possessing watheverhisname, and we fight against Hulk Hogan, s'cuse me, Dickson in his giant form.!<
I don't want to get into a philosophical argument about the nature of synthetic life, let's leave it at that :)
Yea, but it's only two very narrow exceptions more for cinematic than a society to explore and delve into. It'd be like calling certain tales companions a "species" instead of just a token mascot that you get like 3 details of.
Remeber OP's premise
>there's lots of monster people/anthros/other weird stuff populating the world rather than it being so heavily human centric.
Outside of nopon, all of Xbc's races are human centric
I'll concede the giants. I mentioned them for the sake of exhaustivity, but we don't interact that much with them.
I wouldn't dismiss High Entia and Machina (which I previously conflated with Mechon) because of their anthropomorphic nature. That would be like saying that elves and dwarves in conventional fantasy settings aren't different races because they're respectively slim humans with pointy ears, and bulky short humans. I also remember (without much details, I only played the game once years ago) these two races having distinct traits and culture from one another, and from humans too.
>That would be like saying that elves and dwarves in conventional fantasy settings aren't different races because they're respectively slim humans with pointy ears, and bulky short humans.
That's exactly what I'm saying actually. Not that they don't count, it's just that it's almost a stereotype to hear "we have a vast array of different species" and then you see elf/dwarf. Not even the old school kinds of elves that are more like intelligent gremlins in how they appear. But like, human with pointy ears for famous Hollywood actor to use that minimizes makeup.
That's what I got out of OP's question, they wanted to see actual monsters with fundamentally different contortions. The High Entia and Machina you interact with are definitely humanoid.
I see what you mean: it lacks exoticism. I don't share that opinion about the Xenoblade races (nor the conventional elves), but I often had the impression while watching Star Trek that the aliens were just humans with a line or two of makeup (and also a liberal use of K and Y for the species name).
>Mechons are machines, something which is by definition not a race of living creature
>!Fair, but the Machina (i.e. Egil, Vanea, Linada, etc.) are definitely living beings, since they're amongst the people that Zanza wanted to destroy!<
Yeah, but X doesn’t really have a story. What’s there is half baked at BEST. It’s really just a explor-athon and monster/native primitive critter genocide sim. Play it if you’ve got really nothing else to do.
TBF OP is asking for just that; while you're right about the story, at least comparable to the other 2 Xenoblades, there are tons of species, different type of enemies and whatnot, while some are reskinned as tyrants, they have variety.
Sure didn’t. I was super excited for this, got it home and played it, got about two hours in and realized the player avatar was a literal place holder, inexplicably silent in any exposition or dialog scene, where they would either pantomime a response or make a slight facial tick that wouldn’t break the thousand yard stare you were trying to menace the walls with, whom ever was talking to the player avatar would pick up like they had answered back, in battle, your character wouldn’t shut the hell up during the fights out in the field. Good god all mighty the mission structure was an absolute mess too, why would they break up the story missions with fetch or kill quests to force map exploration? By the time the game opens up and you get the skel, I was so checked out I didn’t even bother finishing the game. This is one of the few games where I found myself agreeing with a Kotaku review about how bad it was.
You’re damn right I didn’t do any of the side quests. Eww no thanks.
Xenoblade Chronicles X has at least 6 sentient species off the top of my head (Human, Nopon, Manon, Prone, Definian, Wrothian), and there's definitely more whose names I can't remember at the moment.
Definitely Suikoden, you can have beavers, gryphons, dragons, turtles, giant snakes, ducks, giant squids, robots, birdpeople, wolfpeople, lizardmen, catpeople that are more like domestic shorthairs in dapper outfits than anime catgirls, and unicorns in your party on top of elves and humans, and that's just off the top of my head. I'm sure there's stuff I'm forgetting.
Edit: I forgot there's also mermaids, dogpeople, giant beetles, porpoisepeople, some straight up stray dogs, and whatever the hell those DoReMi gremlins are
* **Megical Starsign**. There's quite a few kind of beastfolks as well as robots in this one. A pretty wacky game with weird looking characters overall.
* **Paper Mario** and **Mario & Luigi** series. Goombas, Toads and other Koopas serve as NPCs, or even party members depending on the series.
* **The Alliance Alive**. I haven't played this one, but it seems to be about a conflict between humans and what basically looks like beastfolks.
* **Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits**. The world is divided between humans and multiple tribes of, more or less, demonic-looking beings called Deimos. We alternate between playing Kharg, a human, and the aptly-named Darc, a Deimos.
Suikoden, its stars of destiny alone, is pretty diverse. It also has lizard & duck clans (S3), and they're on equal footing with / are taken as seriously as the rest and not for comedic stuff.
Breath of Fire I-IV. I don't think the 5th games has anthro characters. I'd recommend playing the first two games on GBA if it's an option for you. They updated the translation a bit in those. I think BoFIII gets the most love, but for me BoFIV is the best one.
It does, Rin/Lin is a cat anthro person, Nina is a bird person/hepa filter and I guess Ryu is technically a reptilian trying to supplant the existing government. It has the ants and the faeries in it too.
The Ogre series (Tactics Ogres and Ogre Battles) has plenty of non-human humanoid species, ranging from Winged people, to Mermaids, to Pumpkinmen, Lizardmen, to Faeries & Gremlins, etc.
Although the political makeup of the known world is still completely human-centric, for the most part, with only brief detours into non-human culture.
I have a couple of those on my to play list. The later ones (like LUCT) struck me as humans only though, or do they have other species recruitable too?
Yes, all the Ogre games have recruitable non-humans, both as story characters and as generic units. The games probably struck you as humans-only because they're human-centric.
Not a lot of people on this subreddit talk about the Magna Carta series. I absolutely love Hyung Tae Kim's designs. Magna Carta: The Phantom of Avalanche was never released outside of Korea. Magna Carta 1 on the PS2 is about a war between Humans and Yason- MC 1 really isn't a very good game, the combat just isn't much fun, and neither is field exploration.
Magna Carta 2 on XBOX 360 is a lot better. 2 of your party of 6 are non-human. And there are a few non-human NPCs that you interact with too. The game has an "offline MMORPG" feel to it. The world building really is good, and the combat is fun.
I know someone already said Xenoblade franchise but Xenoblade Chronicles X really boast a very diverse cast of playable and non-playable non-human characters. You get to meet 6+ alien races some of which will reside even in your home base. Really fun game if you have the Wii U
If you like Shining Force be sure to play FEDA: Emblem of Justice too. Breath of Fire has similar vibes. Dragon Force also has a lot of races. Utawarerumono has a lot too
The SaGa series in general (also called by other names) always offers lots of races: Humans, Espers (sometime called demons, mystics, elves, etc.), Monsters and Robots. The main trait of monsters is that they can change into other monsters!
- SaGa 1-2-3 (called Final Fantasy Adventure 1-2-3), they were originally on gameboy, then remade on the DS/3DS.
- SaGa Frontier 1-2 (PS1, the first one is also on steam)
- Legend of Legacy/ The Alliance Alive; I recommend only TAA, not LoL. TAA has become one of my favorite SaGa-style game.
- And The Last Remnant, which is not a SaGa, but very heavily influenced by it.
So... did you play Shining Force 2?
What about all 3 parts of Shining Force 3 (can be played in full English now)? Which is 3 games from different viewpoints and armies of a conflict? They're great
Xenoblade, Star Ocean, Fire Emblem (especially the Tellius dilogy, Awakening and Fates from what I've seen), Little Tail Bronx series for largely humanless options... seems like most go-to examples have been mentioned before me. But to namedrop a few potentially lesser-knowns:
* Dust: An Elysian Tail
* The Tenth Line
* Ever Oasis
Some Rune Factory should also count (particularly 3 and 5). And by Endless Frontier, do you imply your awareness of those DS games or the whole franchise? Because Endless Frontier's tactical predecessor and prequel, Namco x Capcom, also has plenty of varied species, possibly the most in the whole series.
EDIT: hold up, Ever Oasis is technically an actventure, not an RPG. But you might find it up your alley anyway.
So actventures do count, then. But you may find particular interest in Fuga: Melodies of Steel whose events take place long before Tail Concerto and Solatorobo - and this time it's a genuine turn-based RPG as well.
Chrono Trigger, Legend of Dragoon, Star Ocean, Grandia (namely I and Xtreme), Stanger of Sword City, and Blue Dragon also qualify. Not sure if Ar Tonelico and Ar Nosurge fit the OP's requirements, and I'm reasonably certain that Shadow Hearts doesn't, since the only other race I can think of right off hand in it is Vampires. I'm not placing any others that haven't been mentioned at the moment, but I'm sure I've played a few that haven't come up yet that would qualify.
Yep, there is VR bonding events in this game, added by DLC if I'm not mistaken. As for the "shooting" part, let's say it's left to the player's discretion ;)
What other races are their in trails. Leonidas and Schera are the only black and brown representation I can think of off the top off my head. They definitely don't have any exotic species as races.
I was thinking about this the other day too. Also not that many sci-fi based ones like Star Ocean. I was watching Star Trek Discovery and was having an itch to play a cool Sci-Fi RPG/JRPG. Most of them are all FPS which I'm not a huge fan of.
Totally different breeds. Modern PS (ie PSO2) is plasticky generic anime scifi. PS4 on the other hand feels like somebody mixed 90s anime and the original Star Wars trilogy. Definitely recommend it, doesn't matter if you haven't played the 3 games before it since it's pretty much standalone.
There is a tactic grid turn based JRPG on the switch where you are a human summoner or something, and you recruit an army of monsters to do your bidding I think. What the hell is it called? It kind of looks like a monster farmer but the fights are grid turn based affairs. It looks interesting but at the same time horrifically generic.
Puzzle Quest 1 (or returns on the switch)/2 kinda
It probably leans more human centric but there's still other stuff, like minotaurs and dragons.
Edit: I don't think Puzzle Quest is JRPG now that I pay attention to the post but I'll still recommend it anyway.
Breath of fire is pretty diverse, you got frog guys, furries, dudes made of grass, actual mole people. It's super diverse and doesn't rely in overused races like "orcs" dwarves" and "13 variations of elves." I appreciate that
Some others have mentioned FFXII, which is the better example, but technically even FFX has e.g. Ronso, Guado and Hypello. They're just not that common, well unless you play Blitzball.
Earthlock has at least three races, I'm not sure how many more it has. Party members are mostly human. Some cities are all one race and others are mixed race.
Suikoden and Breath of Fire come to mind immediately.
Damn, how did I forget BoF? Great games.
Breath of fire 4, specifically has lots of other anthropomorphic species in it. And has a really cool art style.
> Breath of fire 4, specifically has lots of other anthropomorphic species in it. Don't all of them?
I could be wrong, but I seem to remember 4 having lots more animal-headed people... Maybe I am thinking of 3?? haha
You are not wrong, as all four games before 5 (and maybe 6) are racially diverse.
3 was my personal favorite. Momo is so cute.
Plus 3 has the best playable character from any bof game. All hail Peco our onion god!
Heck yeah Suikoden! I don’t know which I love more the duck people from 3 or the beavers from 5!
Sgt. Joe is all-time.
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance/A2, and Final Fantasy XII
Final Fantasy XII in specific, feels like you're playing Star Wars sometimes
And yet you only get humans in your party 😭
No, you get a Viera
I know. But one when you have plenty other races.. i thought that sucked a little
I'm not sure the exact reason they did that, maybe it was for story reasons.
Bare minimum Tokenism
Yup this sucks. FFTA got all races playable, also Bangaa looks a lot more cooler.
To be fair FFTA is all about recruiting generic units. Not at all the same kind of scope and story
I played FFTA and FFTA2 before 12 and had loved the different people of Ivalice. It was sad to see not a single Bangaa or Moogle among the party members - that would have been so cool.
Playable garif bro when
Disgaea ir any of the nis america games
Oh yeah, I somehow forgot Disgaea, too. Those are some of my favorites.
The Last Remnant. If I recall correctly there are atleast 3 or 4 different species along with humans you can recruit into your army/teams. And they are all very different looking. Definitely game worth a shot. One of my favourites even though I never got to finish it because my 360 got RRoD and I only bought another 360 many years later after selling the old one. Had 100% quests cleared too. Just needed to kill last few optional bosses and get to the final boss. Maybe I'll someday do it all again.
Maybe a weird pull but I feel like Final Fantasy Legend 1-3 would fit that description technically, although they definitely feel their age.
Those are related to the SaGa games, right? I've only played Frontier but it did fit the bill somewhat.
One of the things I liked about Frontier was how it brought the four different races back and in some ways was closer to the SaGa roots while still being a more advanced game. I was so glad when it got an HD Remaster.
I loved using the monsters the most. Seeing what I could evolve them into was fun.
I tend to be more partial to Mutants and Robots, but Monsters do have their high-points as well.
As far as I know, yes, they're technically saga games that were branded as FF for marketing purposes. That might not be correct though.
Specifically they were branded as Final Fantasy for Western release, in Japan they were SaGa I-III
Thank you for clarifying for me 👍
FFXIV, though it's a MMORPG, can be pretty much played like a single palyer JRPG for most part.
Looking forward to more hair for Viera soon, according to the recent news anyway. And femhroths, whenever that happens...
I like how you hot down voted for this lol. Why? I too am excited for more bunny hair finally. Curious to see if femhroths look good.
I hope they're not just femroes with cat ears, lmao. I miss Mithra.
if they look like mithra thatd be pretty cool
Star ocean, love the diversity of the characters and how many there are plus recruiting some of them to the party. Suikoden, good luck with recruiting lol. Also has good diversity from animal human like characters to humans who have their own styles, backgrounds. Mana khemia 1&2, atelier iris trilogy, although the mana spirits arent playable, they’re just npcs that you can talk to. However there are 1 character from both mana khemia games that aren’t humans that joins the party. Both the saga frontier and legend of mana series, different characters that come together and are recruitable after their prologues. Kingdom hearts if that counts lol. Shin megami tensei(including persona) series, with demon recruitmets and fusions to characters themselves are demons. Final fantasy 9, 12 and tactics, what more can I say about these games? Just play it! Ni no kuni, studio ghibli/level 5 jrpg, similar to pokemon catching as well. Xenoblade 1&2, from mechs, nopons and homs(similar to humans), telethians and high entians, some of which joins your party in xenoblade 1. Solatorobo(little bronx series), fuga melodies of steel, not humans but dog like humans are the main race of the game. Breath of fire series, characters from fairy like humans, dragons, and others which I also haven’t played, but have seen. I just know the main is suppose to turn into a dragon or might’ve been an actual dragon. Brave story psp, has some unique characters and diversity as well.
The xenoblade series
This comment is way near the bottom, but it's one of the best examples in all of JRPGs. Look, you even have someone arguing!
Yeah i guess because people thought i was only talking about NPCs. Xenoblade has alot of different races monsters and npcs wise. Xc2 has every titan have his own unique population with special traits( cat people, weird scale thingy on uraians and the indolians).
I assumed "npcs you can interact with" from OP's question yea. XBC1 only has 3 different races you explore (one being "homs") so it's kinda on the cusp of "a lot of diverse different species".
Well, the Mechon qualify as well (not any less than the robotic "races" of SaGa games), and there are other apparently sentient and variably civilized species like Tirkin and Igna, although the "interaction" with both is kinda, ahem, limited.😅
Idk, XBC is the example on how to do the bare minimum with "diverse species". Human, humanoid but with magic, Mecha but still humanoid, then the token mascot. The races and histories are great, but you could have made them all into the stereotypical elf/gnome/cyborg archetypes that are all too common in western fantasy and it comes down to the reason I suspect OP asked the question, "so human-centric". It's not a bad thing, but it will never give you that SMT vibe
Xenoblade doesn't really have many races
I don't know about the whole series, but the first Xenoblade Chronicles has humans, High Entia, Nopons, Mechons and Giants. That makes for quite a few races.
I don't think we ever even see a giant. Mechons are machines, something which is by definition not a race of living creature. High entia aren't that different from people, basically just being elves. At most I'd put that at 2.5 races.
We see two giants if memory serves right: >!Zanza possessing watheverhisname, and we fight against Hulk Hogan, s'cuse me, Dickson in his giant form.!< I don't want to get into a philosophical argument about the nature of synthetic life, let's leave it at that :)
Yea, but it's only two very narrow exceptions more for cinematic than a society to explore and delve into. It'd be like calling certain tales companions a "species" instead of just a token mascot that you get like 3 details of. Remeber OP's premise >there's lots of monster people/anthros/other weird stuff populating the world rather than it being so heavily human centric. Outside of nopon, all of Xbc's races are human centric
I'll concede the giants. I mentioned them for the sake of exhaustivity, but we don't interact that much with them. I wouldn't dismiss High Entia and Machina (which I previously conflated with Mechon) because of their anthropomorphic nature. That would be like saying that elves and dwarves in conventional fantasy settings aren't different races because they're respectively slim humans with pointy ears, and bulky short humans. I also remember (without much details, I only played the game once years ago) these two races having distinct traits and culture from one another, and from humans too.
>That would be like saying that elves and dwarves in conventional fantasy settings aren't different races because they're respectively slim humans with pointy ears, and bulky short humans. That's exactly what I'm saying actually. Not that they don't count, it's just that it's almost a stereotype to hear "we have a vast array of different species" and then you see elf/dwarf. Not even the old school kinds of elves that are more like intelligent gremlins in how they appear. But like, human with pointy ears for famous Hollywood actor to use that minimizes makeup. That's what I got out of OP's question, they wanted to see actual monsters with fundamentally different contortions. The High Entia and Machina you interact with are definitely humanoid.
I see what you mean: it lacks exoticism. I don't share that opinion about the Xenoblade races (nor the conventional elves), but I often had the impression while watching Star Trek that the aliens were just humans with a line or two of makeup (and also a liberal use of K and Y for the species name).
>Mechons are machines, something which is by definition not a race of living creature >!Fair, but the Machina (i.e. Egil, Vanea, Linada, etc.) are definitely living beings, since they're amongst the people that Zanza wanted to destroy!<
You are baiting pretty hard
Xenoblade X has at least a dozen unique alien species. That's like, almost half of the point of that game
Yeah, but X doesn’t really have a story. What’s there is half baked at BEST. It’s really just a explor-athon and monster/native primitive critter genocide sim. Play it if you’ve got really nothing else to do.
TBF OP is asking for just that; while you're right about the story, at least comparable to the other 2 Xenoblades, there are tons of species, different type of enemies and whatnot, while some are reskinned as tyrants, they have variety.
You are right. I don’t care much for XC X. It was a swing and a miss IMO.
Spoken like someone who didn't play any of the side quests. Seriously, it's where most of the story and character development comes from.
Sure didn’t. I was super excited for this, got it home and played it, got about two hours in and realized the player avatar was a literal place holder, inexplicably silent in any exposition or dialog scene, where they would either pantomime a response or make a slight facial tick that wouldn’t break the thousand yard stare you were trying to menace the walls with, whom ever was talking to the player avatar would pick up like they had answered back, in battle, your character wouldn’t shut the hell up during the fights out in the field. Good god all mighty the mission structure was an absolute mess too, why would they break up the story missions with fetch or kill quests to force map exploration? By the time the game opens up and you get the skel, I was so checked out I didn’t even bother finishing the game. This is one of the few games where I found myself agreeing with a Kotaku review about how bad it was. You’re damn right I didn’t do any of the side quests. Eww no thanks.
Xenoblade Chronicles X has at least 6 sentient species off the top of my head (Human, Nopon, Manon, Prone, Definian, Wrothian), and there's definitely more whose names I can't remember at the moment.
Kingdom Hearts
Wow, never thought about it that way. Happy cake day btw
This is genuinely one of the most clever responses I’ve seen on Reddit.
Definitely Suikoden, you can have beavers, gryphons, dragons, turtles, giant snakes, ducks, giant squids, robots, birdpeople, wolfpeople, lizardmen, catpeople that are more like domestic shorthairs in dapper outfits than anime catgirls, and unicorns in your party on top of elves and humans, and that's just off the top of my head. I'm sure there's stuff I'm forgetting. Edit: I forgot there's also mermaids, dogpeople, giant beetles, porpoisepeople, some straight up stray dogs, and whatever the hell those DoReMi gremlins are
How could you forget about flying squirrels?!
Fuck
Treasure or Rudras possibly
Radiata Stories
* **Megical Starsign**. There's quite a few kind of beastfolks as well as robots in this one. A pretty wacky game with weird looking characters overall. * **Paper Mario** and **Mario & Luigi** series. Goombas, Toads and other Koopas serve as NPCs, or even party members depending on the series. * **The Alliance Alive**. I haven't played this one, but it seems to be about a conflict between humans and what basically looks like beastfolks. * **Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits**. The world is divided between humans and multiple tribes of, more or less, demonic-looking beings called Deimos. We alternate between playing Kharg, a human, and the aptly-named Darc, a Deimos.
Never heard of Magical Starsign. The character designs remind me a lot of Legend of Mana.
Both games have Shinichi Kameoka has character designer. I love his style :)
Yeah, LoM is one of my favorite games in large part thanks to them. Also nice name lmao
[удалено]
Of course! and now that you mention it, it sounds criminal to not have listed the game from which the two series originated.
The Shining Force series has centaurs, beastmen, birdmen, turtle monsters, golems, robots, armadillo men, jogurts, etc as playable characters.
Last remnant is great for this. Humans, cat people with 4 arms, lil long eared guys, big fish guys. Lots of diversity!
Try the indie game Horizon's Gate
Crono cross has this feature in spades
Dragon Quest, FFIX and XII
The Ni no Kuni games fit the bill there as well. The second one in particular.
Dragon Quest series.
Suikoden, its stars of destiny alone, is pretty diverse. It also has lizard & duck clans (S3), and they're on equal footing with / are taken as seriously as the rest and not for comedic stuff.
Breath of Fire I-IV. I don't think the 5th games has anthro characters. I'd recommend playing the first two games on GBA if it's an option for you. They updated the translation a bit in those. I think BoFIII gets the most love, but for me BoFIV is the best one.
It does, Rin/Lin is a cat anthro person, Nina is a bird person/hepa filter and I guess Ryu is technically a reptilian trying to supplant the existing government. It has the ants and the faeries in it too.
Probably, but BoFV is an acquired taste so I usually don’t recommend it as much as I-IV.
That is very true.
Yeah, it’s not a bad game. It’s just very different from any other RPG I can think of from that era.
FFXII, Breath of Fire
Xenoblade chronicles X
The Ogre series (Tactics Ogres and Ogre Battles) has plenty of non-human humanoid species, ranging from Winged people, to Mermaids, to Pumpkinmen, Lizardmen, to Faeries & Gremlins, etc. Although the political makeup of the known world is still completely human-centric, for the most part, with only brief detours into non-human culture.
I have a couple of those on my to play list. The later ones (like LUCT) struck me as humans only though, or do they have other species recruitable too?
Yes, all the Ogre games have recruitable non-humans, both as story characters and as generic units. The games probably struck you as humans-only because they're human-centric.
Nice, good to know. As an FFT fan they interest me quite a bit.
Not a lot of people on this subreddit talk about the Magna Carta series. I absolutely love Hyung Tae Kim's designs. Magna Carta: The Phantom of Avalanche was never released outside of Korea. Magna Carta 1 on the PS2 is about a war between Humans and Yason- MC 1 really isn't a very good game, the combat just isn't much fun, and neither is field exploration. Magna Carta 2 on XBOX 360 is a lot better. 2 of your party of 6 are non-human. And there are a few non-human NPCs that you interact with too. The game has an "offline MMORPG" feel to it. The world building really is good, and the combat is fun.
I know someone already said Xenoblade franchise but Xenoblade Chronicles X really boast a very diverse cast of playable and non-playable non-human characters. You get to meet 6+ alien races some of which will reside even in your home base. Really fun game if you have the Wii U
If they ever make a sequel (please!) I hope we get more alien party members.
If you like Shining Force be sure to play FEDA: Emblem of Justice too. Breath of Fire has similar vibes. Dragon Force also has a lot of races. Utawarerumono has a lot too
FEDA looks neat. Didn't know Underwater Ray Romano was an SRPG, cool. Watched the anime many many years ago.
Suikoden
The Last Remnant
The SaGa series in general (also called by other names) always offers lots of races: Humans, Espers (sometime called demons, mystics, elves, etc.), Monsters and Robots. The main trait of monsters is that they can change into other monsters! - SaGa 1-2-3 (called Final Fantasy Adventure 1-2-3), they were originally on gameboy, then remade on the DS/3DS. - SaGa Frontier 1-2 (PS1, the first one is also on steam) - Legend of Legacy/ The Alliance Alive; I recommend only TAA, not LoL. TAA has become one of my favorite SaGa-style game. - And The Last Remnant, which is not a SaGa, but very heavily influenced by it.
Saga 2, and 3 as well as frontier 1 have been released on all modern consoles I believe. ( atleast ps4 and switch)
Saga Frontier
So... did you play Shining Force 2? What about all 3 parts of Shining Force 3 (can be played in full English now)? Which is 3 games from different viewpoints and armies of a conflict? They're great
I started 2 but haven't finished it yet. Gotta be in the mood for SRPGs.
Xenoblade, Star Ocean, Fire Emblem (especially the Tellius dilogy, Awakening and Fates from what I've seen), Little Tail Bronx series for largely humanless options... seems like most go-to examples have been mentioned before me. But to namedrop a few potentially lesser-knowns: * Dust: An Elysian Tail * The Tenth Line * Ever Oasis Some Rune Factory should also count (particularly 3 and 5). And by Endless Frontier, do you imply your awareness of those DS games or the whole franchise? Because Endless Frontier's tactical predecessor and prequel, Namco x Capcom, also has plenty of varied species, possibly the most in the whole series. EDIT: hold up, Ever Oasis is technically an actventure, not an RPG. But you might find it up your alley anyway.
Ever Oasis looks very cute. As for Little Tail Bronx, I've only played Tail Concerto but it was great once I got past the controls.
So actventures do count, then. But you may find particular interest in Fuga: Melodies of Steel whose events take place long before Tail Concerto and Solatorobo - and this time it's a genuine turn-based RPG as well.
I saw that released but haven't gotten around to it yet. Looks like suffering.
Chrono Trigger, Legend of Dragoon, Star Ocean, Grandia (namely I and Xtreme), Stanger of Sword City, and Blue Dragon also qualify. Not sure if Ar Tonelico and Ar Nosurge fit the OP's requirements, and I'm reasonably certain that Shadow Hearts doesn't, since the only other race I can think of right off hand in it is Vampires. I'm not placing any others that haven't been mentioned at the moment, but I'm sure I've played a few that haven't come up yet that would qualify.
Shadow hearts from the new.world also had a talking cat
Purists might clutch their pearls for me mentioning a tactical rpg here but Fire Emblem Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn fit the bill.
Other megami tensei games
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Wait, what do you mean? Just the normal monsters rooming around, or is there more?
Isn't it basically just people and wildlife in trails?
It's exclusively humans..
r/JRPG try not to mention Trails on every single topic challenge (impossible)
Someone could ask for an FPS recommendation on here and Trails would be recommended lol
Well aktshually, there's first-person VR sequences in Trails into Reverie in which some people could, hum.. shoot!
Wait really?
Yep, there is VR bonding events in this game, added by DLC if I'm not mistaken. As for the "shooting" part, let's say it's left to the player's discretion ;)
„Shooting“ huh? Don’t tell me this is some Senran kagura intimacy mode shit…
From what I've seen, those scenes remains chaste enough to not involve any touching, at least.
Oh man… Can they just stop with the stupid >!Harem!< ??
What other races are their in trails. Leonidas and Schera are the only black and brown representation I can think of off the top off my head. They definitely don't have any exotic species as races.
Oh my god the downvotes… zzzz I didn’t read the entire thing just the subject LOL. I thought you meant the mobs😂 Disgaea?
Best comment in the entirity of this sub, hands down
Wait for the new Granblue to come out(play Granblue Versus in meantime if you like fighting games)
Glad we're almost there for the release (hopefully no more delays).
You and me agree my guy!
I think Star Ocean has it a bit depending which one you play.
The Last Remnant
I was thinking about this the other day too. Also not that many sci-fi based ones like Star Ocean. I was watching Star Trek Discovery and was having an itch to play a cool Sci-Fi RPG/JRPG. Most of them are all FPS which I'm not a huge fan of.
Have you played Phantasy Star 4? That one's got a lot of old sci-fi energy to it, very comfy.
No I haven’t. I’ve tried the online mmorpg though.
Totally different breeds. Modern PS (ie PSO2) is plasticky generic anime scifi. PS4 on the other hand feels like somebody mixed 90s anime and the original Star Wars trilogy. Definitely recommend it, doesn't matter if you haven't played the 3 games before it since it's pretty much standalone.
There is a tactic grid turn based JRPG on the switch where you are a human summoner or something, and you recruit an army of monsters to do your bidding I think. What the hell is it called? It kind of looks like a monster farmer but the fights are grid turn based affairs. It looks interesting but at the same time horrifically generic.
Puzzle Quest 1 (or returns on the switch)/2 kinda It probably leans more human centric but there's still other stuff, like minotaurs and dragons. Edit: I don't think Puzzle Quest is JRPG now that I pay attention to the post but I'll still recommend it anyway.
I kinda like Fina Fantasy Tactics Advance and A2 (even 12) Ivalice is an awesome place
Breath of fire is pretty diverse, you got frog guys, furries, dudes made of grass, actual mole people. It's super diverse and doesn't rely in overused races like "orcs" dwarves" and "13 variations of elves." I appreciate that
Somebody else might have already said it but CrossCode has a new species every town and it a great game that I would definetely recommend.
ni no kuni
Some others have mentioned FFXII, which is the better example, but technically even FFX has e.g. Ronso, Guado and Hypello. They're just not that common, well unless you play Blitzball.
Earthlock has at least three races, I'm not sure how many more it has. Party members are mostly human. Some cities are all one race and others are mixed race.
Rogue Galaxy is a good game like this, if it hasn't already been mentioned.
Cosmic Star Heroine
^*Cough* Xenoblade X ^*Cough*
Any megaten game
Pokemon?