Codex Best jRPGs Ever Poll RESULTS

[Maxie]

tl;dr - Codex poll, for jRPGs only, the results

Thank you all for participation in the poll, first announced on Feb 2, closed this morning. I received votes from 85 Codexers who have collectively nominated 140 jRPGs. Poll participants were asked to give 10 points in total to a maximum of five games they deemed the best jRPGs ever. Let's cut to the chase;

1. Which games got the most points?

Ladies and gents, my congratulations to the top three best jRPGs in history points-wise:

First place goes to Dark Souls (2011), 66 points in total from 23 posters. Congrats, souls dorks!
Second place goes to Dragon's Dogma (2012), 49 points in total from 16 posters. Congrats, souls dorks!
Third place goes to Chrono Trigger (1995), 43 points in total from 19 posters. Congrats, so- chrono dorks!

Full list below:

2. Which game is the most popular?

Now that we know the points spread, let's focus on popularity alone. Out of 140 games nominated, 107 games received 2 votes or less. Out of these, 78 games were nominated by a single poster only.

Which games are the most popular, though?

The same three as the top scored, as a matter of fact. 23 for Dark Souls, 19 for Chrono Trigger, 16 for Dragon's Dogma.

Full list below:

3. How old are the games?

I asked the participants to name games from times immemorial up to Q4 of 2020 (impressively, only one 2021 game was nominated). Partly to check which decades of jRPG were the best in the eyes of Codexers, partly to check how ancient a game you'd be willing to name as one of the best.

Boomer award belongs to Dragon Quest 1 (1986)! Congratulations!

Zoomer award belongs to two games - Nioh 2 and Yakuza: Like a Dragon (2020)! Congratulations!

2020 - two games,
2011 - 2019 - 27 games,
2001 - 2010 - 44 games,
1991 - 2000 - 58 games,
1986 - 1990 - 9 games.

Once again the 90s win as the most prosperous of times, closely followed by the aughts. Decline sets in during Obama's presidency, obviously.

Full list below:

Once again thank you all for participation!

Datasheets: https://www66.zippyshare.com/v/u45556Vq/file.html

 

[Falksi]

Great to see an action gaming winning it.

 

[Silverfish]

Very happy to see that my five point vote for Shadow Hearts fucked over nearly every Pokemon game and several Final Fantasies to boot.

 

[Duraframe300]

Bit surprised by Nier Automata tbh. Good showing.

 

[Modron]

Only I voted for Front Mission? Decline.

Can you release a spreadsheet/txt/heck even a numbered list using the built in functions in the forum would be easier to parse.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

FFT being higher ranked than TO is shameful. TO is better in every way, be it in story (demons do not usurp the political intrigue and war story that the game begins with), better characters, more job variety, more content, and bigger maps. Only thing that FFT does technically better is having 3D maps that you can rotate, and you can have multiple ties at the same place but at different elevations (ie, someone standing underneath an arch and another person standing on top of said arch).

 

[Maxie]

Only I voted for Front Mission? Decline.

Can you release a spreadsheet/txt/heck even a numbered list using the built in functions in the forum would be easier to parse.

Sure, tell me how to and I'll link them instead of scrolling screenshots.

 

[Modron]

Sure, tell me how to and I'll link them instead of scrolling screenshots.

Well you could always just upload an spreadsheet to any multitude of file hosting sites, or do what pepe does and use google docs as far as I know you can enter the data into an excel spreadsheet online and then share it.
felipepepe

 

[Maxie]

Adding the download for datasheets

https://www66.zippyshare.com/v/u45556Vq/file.html

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

This is worthy of a Codex news post. Infinitron

 

[Bohrain]

Some observations:
-I'm surprised Nier Automata did that well, I had the impression that Codex at large thinks it's overrated compared to general public. In comparison FF VII, a game usually pretty high in mainstream lists got as many points as Rance X, a game that isn't even available in English.
-Dark Souls 3 only having a single point, tying up with the RPG Maker porn pastiche Black Souls 2. I've generally heard that people vastly prefer DS3 over 2, but it clearly isn't the case here.
-Tactics Ogre LUCT losing to Final Fantasy Tactics by quite a wide margin. I guess most people were only exposed to the PSP remake of the former with the awful class exp system.
-Most popular FF and SMT titles were spin-offs, FFT and SMT:Strange Journey.
-Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest as franchises got a lot of points, but evidently they turned to shit to the point that no games from those series were mentioned that were released after 2006.

 

[Kev Inkline]

What are these j...j-...jrpgs?

Just rpgs or?

 

[mushaden]

Not enough participation to be definitive

 

[Sentinel]

Dark Souls is not the best jRPG of all time.

That's all.

 

[lightbane]

Even here Dark Souls takes over polls, dammit! Oh well, at least Zelda isn't second place or anything.

 

[Sentinel]

-Tactics Ogre LUCT losing to Final Fantasy Tactics by quite a wide margin. I guess most people were only exposed to the PSP remake of the former with the awful class exp system.

Which version of the original do you recommend playing? PS1 western release or a fan translation of SNES/Saturn?
I did try LCUT and holy shit the class system is so fucking shit it makes me not want to play it. Being punished so hard for trying out new classes isn't fun.

 

[fork]

Dark Souls is not a jRPG.

ftfy

 

[thelegend]

Dark Souls is considered to be JRPG.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Japanese_role-playing_game_franchises

 

[thelegend]

The greatest jrpgs would be final fantasy and dragon quest. None of the games would exist without these two franchises.

 

[Zlaja]

Dark Souls is not a JRPG.
Dragon's Dogma is not a JRPG.

Those responsible for recommending these to be added to the voting list deserved to be sanctioned by Codex mods in similar fashion to how Russian oligarchs are being treated right now by the West.

Dark Souls is considered to be JRPG.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Japanese_role-playing_game_franchises

By retards, yes. Which should be irrelevant for us at the Codex. We aren't supposed to scale to other's level, after all.

 

[Bohrain]

I see that we are yet again delving on the age old question of "What is a Rocket Propelled Grenade?".

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

No, it's simply the perpetual confusion between JRPG meaning Japanese-developed RPGs and JRPG referring to a specific RPG subgenre that originated in Japan but is not limited to Japanese-developed games. The poll explicitly used the former definition.

 

[Jaedar]

Maxie
Would to be possible to get results by developer? And possibly series?
Series might be a bit arbitrary (do you count demons souls as same series as dark souls? what about bloodborne?), so maybe just developer is better.
But I think a decent amount of people split their votes to just one game in a series (it's more fun that way), or similar so it could be neat to see it grouped up.

 

[Maxie]

Maxie
Would to be possible to get results by developer? And possibly series?
Series might be a bit arbitrary (do you count demons souls as same series as dark souls? what about bloodborne?), so maybe just developer is better.
But I think a decent amount of people split their votes to just one game in a series (it's more fun that way), or similar so it could be neat to see it grouped up.

It must be done by someone smarter and less lazy than me

 

[ElectricOtter]

if you ever needed proof rpg codex is full of retards this poll is a great reminder of this :3