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I hate grinding. Help me pick a JRPG
- Thread starter SunshinePuppies
- Start date
Yeah, and actually, keeping expert mode on also freezes your level where it is so you can explore freely and do side quests at your leisure without worry of being over-leveled for your main quest. If it ever gets too hard just level your crew a couple times. I was super sceptical of this approach, but it's actually genius. Now if only I liked the battle system...
Persona 5 has zero grinding if you're going for platinum and just want to see the story to the end. Mementos isn't really grinding because you don't need to keep repeating levels over and over. You just go in, unlock levels and defeat your targets.
I'd know because I am immensely allergic to grinding requirements. For example, in DQXI S I just gave up at the end of the 2nd or third chapter where my party got wiped in one turn by the boss. Yeah I'm not having that shit.
I'd know because I am immensely allergic to grinding requirements. For example, in DQXI S I just gave up at the end of the 2nd or third chapter where my party got wiped in one turn by the boss. Yeah I'm not having that shit.
Persona 5 Royal.
You can unlock the ability to instakill enemies by running into them from one of the party members, doing that gives you full EXP and money and only takes a couple of seconds.
You can unlock the ability to instakill enemies by running into them from one of the party members, doing that gives you full EXP and money and only takes a couple of seconds.
These poll scores seem to be in reverse. As far as I know Xenoblade 2 (haven't played P5R though) is the only one that has dynamic difficulty adjustment, leading to you not needing to grind. (There are two field skill checks in the main path I think that do require you to search out items, it's not difficult but can be tedious).
I don't think I had to grind in any of the games listed, but in terms ranking the games in terms of quality I'd say:
Xenoblade > Dragon Quest XI > Persona 5 > Xenoblade 2
Xenoblade 1 is my favorite game of all time. Just an absolutely stunning world.
Dragon Quest XI is the Mario Odyssey of JRPGs. It's the genre perfected.
Persona 5 is an incredibly stylish game with great art and an outstanding soundtrack, but lacks a soul due to poor execution of its themes. Haven't played Royal, so talking about the base game.
Xenoblade 2 is a mostly great game dragged down by disastrous character designs and some poor writing.
Xenoblade > Dragon Quest XI > Persona 5 > Xenoblade 2
Xenoblade 1 is my favorite game of all time. Just an absolutely stunning world.
Dragon Quest XI is the Mario Odyssey of JRPGs. It's the genre perfected.
Persona 5 is an incredibly stylish game with great art and an outstanding soundtrack, but lacks a soul due to poor execution of its themes. Haven't played Royal, so talking about the base game.
Xenoblade 2 is a mostly great game dragged down by disastrous character designs and some poor writing.
Thanks for expressing interest! I found out recently that the Vita port is in japanese only and requires english patching, which may be easy or hard depending on how it's done.
Therefor it's probably best to try playing it on iOS, unless you can get it working on Vita for dedicated game-console enjoyment.
I played a significant amount of Chaos Rings III while on my old iPhone and it was a blast, plus doing a specific little trick with it to get enough of a currency to never have to worry about it again was very easy on iOS where it was easy to go to settings and back to the game.
If you aren't too bothered by the idea of playing on your phone, it's a great game to enjoy! If you have a Vita that can accept patched japanese bought games, and prefer it on a game platform where you don't need to use touch controls, enjoy an adventure of a lifetime!
And please give the other three (Chaos Rings Prequel Trilogy: CR I, CR Omega, CR II) a try in a similar way, they are also super good, and an update a few years back on the asian vita version gave them their english translations already on the games so you don't need to patch them, it's just Chaos Rings 3 that's weird with that.
I am going to throw in a different couple of games. One is Ys VIII, previously mentioned din the thread. Great combat system, good characters, actually decent story and overall won't take a huge amount of time. It's quite good.
Second is also an RPG from Falcom, but not Trails since thats a rabbit hole hundreds of hours long. (very good one though :P).
Tokyo Xanadu Ex+ is an awesome ARPG by Falcon that mixes combat from Ys and exploration/conversation system from Trails. It's also set in modern day. Great characters, interesting setup, good combat and it is about 50 hours or so. I highly recommend it. It's also dirt cheap during sales.
P5R, DQXI and XCR are amazing games... that can get into 90 to 100+ hours to finish. If you have limited time, a smaller scale game would probably be better.
Also, as far as indies go, Cosmic Star Heroine and CrossCode are two awesome games made by Indie devs that bring back best memories of 16 bit RPGs.
Second is also an RPG from Falcom, but not Trails since thats a rabbit hole hundreds of hours long. (very good one though :P).
Tokyo Xanadu Ex+ is an awesome ARPG by Falcon that mixes combat from Ys and exploration/conversation system from Trails. It's also set in modern day. Great characters, interesting setup, good combat and it is about 50 hours or so. I highly recommend it. It's also dirt cheap during sales.
P5R, DQXI and XCR are amazing games... that can get into 90 to 100+ hours to finish. If you have limited time, a smaller scale game would probably be better.
Also, as far as indies go, Cosmic Star Heroine and CrossCode are two awesome games made by Indie devs that bring back best memories of 16 bit RPGs.
This, imo.
It is a very good game, clearly, but it is a slog at times.
To me... some of the palaces just feel monotonous, Mementos is really not fun at all and is very repetitive imo, and some of the social aspects feel like a chore.
You may not need to grind, but the game does feel like a grind a lot of the time.
The turn based combat is very fun though, especially on hard and when the fights are challenging.
Persona 5 on the easier difficulties isn't really grindy from what I remember. Though personally, the last dungeon or so is a bit annoying as far as the difficulty spike so I did set the difficulty down to Safety just to see the ending (probably about an hour or so before the end of the ~85 hour playthrough, so it didn't bother me a lot, but good to be aware)
Grinding in JRPGs is dead unless you look for JRPGs specifically known for it. I played all of the games in the poll and none of them require grinding. Persona 5 Royal is the best game out of those, just play that.
DQXI is a great game with good characters, classic combat and good world building. So yeah, don't listen to this one and feel free to buy it... Unless you have GamePass.
OP
OP
Haha i really hope not! It seems like people are being thoughtful in their posts
Yakuza: Like a Dragon doesn't have that much grinding outside of one or two instances of difficulty spikes for bosses and even then you can easily grind by going through new optional dungeons that the game opens up for you in those parts of the game (so it won't necessarily feel like a grind).
Im in the same boat, and I played quite a few last year, most frustrated me. Biggest thing I found was to chuck everything on the lowest difficulty and it makes them far less painful (difficulty in RPGs just = amount of grinding anyway tbh).
Xenoblade DE on casual is fine, I got through it all and it was pretty painless, just accept all side missions and kill weak monsters that are marked as counting towards the requirements for xp. I actually got stuck like 3 hours into the game on normal and could see a nightmare ahead so just bumped it down to casual and never looked back. Final boss was a bit touch and go, but that's expected. Beelined it in like 30 hours cuz side missions sucked so no point going out of my way. Xenoblade games are iffy due to their combat - if your tank can't keep aggro from the moment the fight starts or they die, you've basically lost the battle and you're powerless to do anything else, especially in the early parts of the game. It means that even if you level up a bit, it won't necessarily help, and it's kinda luck based. Just shove it on casual really.
I don't think I played XC2 on the easiest difficulty (didn't know it had one), and while I wouldn't say it was grinding specifically, there's a ton of roadblocks in the game for various reasons. Bosses that force you to learn the combat mechanics really well and recognise their attacks - Honestly many bosses from chapter 4 onwards took 2+ hours to beat, like I was regularly getting stuck, but it was doable once I got better at the battle system and I'm kinda glad for the lesson. A boss or two that are almost unbeatable without specifics blades (but you'll probably have them by that point). Traversal blocks by field skills (really only takes a few mins to google and fast travel to places you can buy the items to upgrade them though). DLC with huge side missions requirements to progress the story (like 50% of the DLCs rutime). Not grinding as such, since doing so takes a very long time and doesn't net much xp in XC games so it's not very feasible. Took about 55 hours beelining story content.
Kingdom Hearts games are great and don't really require grinding. Last few bosses were quite difficult actually, but still took less time retries than grinding would've.
Digimon Cyber Sleuth has no grinding and a super fun monster management and evolution system, but story and mission structure is quite lame.
I can only speak for FE Awakening, but it didn't require a ton of grinding on normal, and it's generally very fast to do. Maybe other FE games are similar.
Xenoblade DE on casual is fine, I got through it all and it was pretty painless, just accept all side missions and kill weak monsters that are marked as counting towards the requirements for xp. I actually got stuck like 3 hours into the game on normal and could see a nightmare ahead so just bumped it down to casual and never looked back. Final boss was a bit touch and go, but that's expected. Beelined it in like 30 hours cuz side missions sucked so no point going out of my way. Xenoblade games are iffy due to their combat - if your tank can't keep aggro from the moment the fight starts or they die, you've basically lost the battle and you're powerless to do anything else, especially in the early parts of the game. It means that even if you level up a bit, it won't necessarily help, and it's kinda luck based. Just shove it on casual really.
I don't think I played XC2 on the easiest difficulty (didn't know it had one), and while I wouldn't say it was grinding specifically, there's a ton of roadblocks in the game for various reasons. Bosses that force you to learn the combat mechanics really well and recognise their attacks - Honestly many bosses from chapter 4 onwards took 2+ hours to beat, like I was regularly getting stuck, but it was doable once I got better at the battle system and I'm kinda glad for the lesson. A boss or two that are almost unbeatable without specifics blades (but you'll probably have them by that point). Traversal blocks by field skills (really only takes a few mins to google and fast travel to places you can buy the items to upgrade them though). DLC with huge side missions requirements to progress the story (like 50% of the DLCs rutime). Not grinding as such, since doing so takes a very long time and doesn't net much xp in XC games so it's not very feasible. Took about 55 hours beelining story content.
Kingdom Hearts games are great and don't really require grinding. Last few bosses were quite difficult actually, but still took less time retries than grinding would've.
Digimon Cyber Sleuth has no grinding and a super fun monster management and evolution system, but story and mission structure is quite lame.
I can only speak for FE Awakening, but it didn't require a ton of grinding on normal, and it's generally very fast to do. Maybe other FE games are similar.
Always a bit weird when people come in threads like these to declare long JRPGs don't have grinding... maybe the fact that you don't see it means you're not really on the same page as OP and therefore not the best person to give recommendations.
i feel like many people here have a different concept about grinding than the one that is usually understood by the majority
using the P5R example, it doesnt matter if the battles take two seconds using ryuji's instakill or two minutes, if you need to go around killing enemies to gaing xp/money/resources to progress in the game, it's still grinding. having to invest time building social links and getting points to advance them faster is a grind. despite being "different" content going through mementos is still grinding (tartarus technically is "new" content too but i hardly think anyone would say p3 isnt grindy)
on the other hand a game being long isn't necessarily grindy either unless you consider using your time part of the "grind" (which makes no sense) and considering OP listed four above the average mark games for consideration it would imply they don't think it is either
It all depends on the game and difficulty setting. For example, P5/P5R is a long game and grinding is unnecessary by the virtue of you spending bunch of time on combat anyways.
However, you can set it to Safety and breeze through the game, mainly engaging in Social events and story, cutting probably good 20 hours off the time to finish.
So as always, the answer is "It Depends". That said, IMO P5R or DQXI are a tad too long for what OP is looking for.
If I had to rank those 4 games into a list of least grindy to most grindy
Dragon Quest XI - I didn't finish this one due to being distracted but I don't remember feeling like I needed to grind that one at all. As others have said, it was a bit on the easier side.
Xenoblade 2 - Assuming you take advantage of the fact overkilling bosses with the burst chain attack thing(forget the name) you get plenty XP just from killing the boss to be able to do the next boss. I was skipping most random encounters by the end of the game because I was a bit sick of how long dungeons were going on for.
Persona 5 - I'm assuming Royal is the same as the base game anyway, not played Royal. Overall I felt like just getting through the dungeons gave me enough levels to beat the boss. There was 2 dungeons which felt like they overstayed their welcome but was fine for the most part.
Xenoblade 1 - I've played through this game twice, once on wii and the next on Switch, and each time I hit bosses which I was unable to even attack due to the way the agility stat works. If you're 3 levels below a boss you just can't even hit them and you'll die because of it. That's unless you stack agility gems, which is easier said than done. So I rank this as the most grindy. Now admittedly if you explore every nook and cranny and do a lot of side quests, maybe you'll not hit those difficulty spikes, but I wasn't exactly ignoring exploring or quests myself, so I dunno... On the Switch you can at least drop the difficulty though, so that's something.
Dragon Quest XI - I didn't finish this one due to being distracted but I don't remember feeling like I needed to grind that one at all. As others have said, it was a bit on the easier side.
Xenoblade 2 - Assuming you take advantage of the fact overkilling bosses with the burst chain attack thing(forget the name) you get plenty XP just from killing the boss to be able to do the next boss. I was skipping most random encounters by the end of the game because I was a bit sick of how long dungeons were going on for.
Persona 5 - I'm assuming Royal is the same as the base game anyway, not played Royal. Overall I felt like just getting through the dungeons gave me enough levels to beat the boss. There was 2 dungeons which felt like they overstayed their welcome but was fine for the most part.
Xenoblade 1 - I've played through this game twice, once on wii and the next on Switch, and each time I hit bosses which I was unable to even attack due to the way the agility stat works. If you're 3 levels below a boss you just can't even hit them and you'll die because of it. That's unless you stack agility gems, which is easier said than done. So I rank this as the most grindy. Now admittedly if you explore every nook and cranny and do a lot of side quests, maybe you'll not hit those difficulty spikes, but I wasn't exactly ignoring exploring or quests myself, so I dunno... On the Switch you can at least drop the difficulty though, so that's something.
Persona is a game all about Social Links though at the end. I mean, thats like 1/3 of the content and the reason why people play it. If you are not a fan of Social Links story snippets or combat , why play Persona games?
You also don't really have to grind for money/XP unless you are trying to 100% the game or are playing on higher difficulties. Yes, if you want to say complete your Persona compendium, you will need some serious cash.
However, if you are playing on Easy to enjoy the story, social link interactions and some stylish combat... none of that is needed. Game is still going to be like 80+ hours though, but that's kind of the point of Persona games.
I mean, this may be true for some games. Some games do stats which effect the combat system in such a tangible way that it makes the fight far more difficult besides the boss just doing more damage though. In the case of Yakuza 7 mentioned here, levelling gives you more speed, which in turn means your turn comes up faster. If you're underlevelled that means the enemy will end up having far more turns than you as well as the usual them doing more damage too, so it can feel like any turns you do get you just have to play a bit defensive and you don't really get many opportunities to go on the offense. In the case of Xenoblade, it has the agility stat which determines hit chance/evasion, and if you're too low level you just won't even be able to hit the target which means no amount of strategy will actually help kill the boss.
For both you can get gems, or accessories to try and mitigate these design choices, but I'd argue that still kinda comes under a similar barrier to grinding, since you'd have to grind to get said gems, or accessories since they're not just bought.
DQXI only requires grinding for the final boss, or at least I was like 20 levels too low or something despite having 0 problems up till that point.
grinding when you stop any kind of (quest) progression to go and mindlessly level up
even if they're long games, that was never something I had to do in any modern JRPG like Persona. they're just long. pacing issues aren't the same thing by any means.
This guy is wrong. It's a boring, "go through the motions" while doing nothing engaging, slog. Silent protagonist is awful, the UI is poor, and you'll be grinding for gold to afford the better gear in each new area. To Top it off the repetitive music will literally put you to sleep.
Got no time to grind?
Half Minute Hero from Marvelous Entertainment has you covered.
You'll grind so fast your toilet breaks will be longer.
Half Minute Hero from Marvelous Entertainment has you covered.
You'll grind so fast your toilet breaks will be longer.
who the hell buys gear in DQXI? did you even play the game
Yep, that was quite strange unless they were looking for ARPG in DQ for some reason :P.
I guess it's really true what they say: "Different strokes for different folks". It's certainly one of my favorite DQ games and JRPGs in general.
Literally none of this is true other than the music being repetitive lol
The gear they sell in the shops that are upgrades over your old gear in each new town? I'm going to take a wild guess and say a lot of people.
Better explanation of what OP is looking for
I feel like the OP's problem is probably not with grinding but with game length or games that don't respect your time. Your average modern JRPG doesn't require any grinding as long as you're not actively avoiding most battles and playing intelligently. For that matter, a number of JRPGs out there don't require grinding even if you're playing them on the hardest difficulty.
Like Persona 5 Royal, you can play through the whole thing on Hard mode without grinding other than maybe a single boss & even there, smart persona setups will get you further than more XP. But on the other hand, Persona 5 Royal is about 100 hours long which is a rather large commitment.
as soon as you get the forge (and that's pretty soon) shops become obsolete in DQXI. you can always forge better stuff than whatever is being sold. even if you forge exactly what is being sold in stores, its still going to be better unless you really suck at the forge minigame, where its going to be the same (and free)
in fact money is mostly useless in the game unless you want to go to the casino
As much as i love it.... dont play octopath. you dont have to grind at all if you know what you are doing, but in your first playthrough there is a chance that you will hit blocks because of the wrongbuild, not having the right strategy, etc.
For not grinding
Tales of games dont require grinding at all, DQ11 dont, pokemon does not, others have said xenoblade does not....pick your poison.
For not grinding
Tales of games dont require grinding at all, DQ11 dont, pokemon does not, others have said xenoblade does not....pick your poison.
Octopath is so open that you're virtually never stuck on any specific challenge. There's always 8 main dungeons to tackle, + more side dungeons and side quests, with chests to pillage and loot to buy/steal off of NPCs. The game is such a wonderful blend because of how much freedom there is to avoid grinding.
Yeah, but it also expects you to figure that things out, so i have seen a lot of people being stuck in the grinding mindset since they are used to the linear games.
My first playthrough was 80 hours with a few hours grinding sprinkeled in just because i found the battle system fun and explored areas.
On my secong playthrough i think i was done in 25 hours, since i knew when was how to do, where the secondary jobs are (that open up so many strategies), where the best equipment is (on your first playthrough you probably wont know till later in the game that level is irrelevant compared to equipment)
So if someone wants a "JRPG" and does not wont grinding... i think 95% of the time they want a more or less linear story driven adventure.
I'm sorry bro, can see the rest of your critique as a matter of opinion (Also yeah the music definitely gets repetitive after 30+ hours) but, like others said, shops are really only there if you can't be assed to do a mini-game for like 3 seconds before a boss battle and got money to burn. Especially in 11 S where you're literally able to forge anywhere and instantly buy materials you're missing from the Forge menu.
Otherwise, DQ XI is like, the gold standard JRPG for someone looking for something old-school but updated for modern convenience.
Unless I'm going for postgame content/superbosses I have very rarely had to grind (and if so, only for about 15-20 minutes) in an RPG since Phantasy Star 2. (OK, Breath of Fire 2 had a lot of grinding but that's definitely more the exception) After the 8 bit and early 16 bit eras, I was able to get by with smart use of items, exploiting enemy weaknesses, trial and error, actually using those buffs/debuffs that get ignored so frequently... although I will admit occasionally I'd get lazy and grind a bit (especially if I was into the battle system).
OP
OP
You know what? This actually describes my situation perfectly. I want to be able to play on the hardest level without feeling like I need to grind. To me the hardest difficulty just means that I need to interact with the game's mechanics on a deeper level. This is actually why I love Sekiro and its lack of impactful leveling, despite it in my opinion being the hardest modern From game.
Yeah Xenoblade is a bad recommendation for a non-grindy game. Although if you love the game and do every sidequest and chase around some of the notorious monsters you'd probably be good. But it's not one that I'd say 'respects your time'.
I feel like VIIR is a good recommendation. I don't think there's any grinding in that game whatsoever, and that includes if you decide not to do side content.
People will argue that Xenoblade 1 doens´t have grinding when it most definitely does. If you just run from place to place you´re gonna end up underleveled.
With a little exploration and the monsters along the way you´re gonna be fine. And as people has said the problem can somewhat be mitigated by lowering the difficulty when the grind catches up to you.
The game is clearly made for you to map out every single area doing sidequests along the way.
Similarly with DQ11. If you explore a bit, the grind probably isn´t too bad.
With a little exploration and the monsters along the way you´re gonna be fine. And as people has said the problem can somewhat be mitigated by lowering the difficulty when the grind catches up to you.
The game is clearly made for you to map out every single area doing sidequests along the way.
Similarly with DQ11. If you explore a bit, the grind probably isn´t too bad.
I always replay Xenoblade completely FFX style and i can finish it. Maybe you need to understand better the battle system, builds etc but it's entirely possible to finish the Wii version with zero grind. It doesn't mean i ignore every sidequest ever, i tend to accept all of them but never actively tried to do any, so i end up finishing some just by playing normally.
Along with the fact that Xenoblade on Switch has a casual mode.
Persona 5 Royal: just set the difficulty to Safety and enjoy the ride. In particular, get your relationship with Ryuji to stage 7 as soon as possible for his Insta-kill ability. Be sure to max Maruki's confidant as well to access the outstanding third act.
Xenoblade Chronicles DE on Switch also has a Casual mode, which makes battles extremely easy. If you're waiting for Royal to head to PC, that's another solid choice.
Xenoblade Chronicles DE on Switch also has a Casual mode, which makes battles extremely easy. If you're waiting for Royal to head to PC, that's another solid choice.