Summary
If there was any golden era forJRPGsother thanthe ’90s, it is now. The genre is more popular than ever: while series like Final Fantasy reach new heights, ones like Persona get established as modern classics. And though there are more new games to look forward to every year, sometimes we do wonder about the ones that got left behind.
Whether it was due to low sales or lack of demand, a few excellent JRPGs are still in need of a sequel. With titles like Valkyrie Elysium and Star Ocean: The Divine Force revitalizing their series in the 2020s, we know anything is possible - so here are some other JRPGs we’d love a continuation of.
Suikoden was Konami’s champion in a genre dominated by Square Enix. The JRPG series was poised to become a long-running classic, but the sixth console generation brought about a sudden end. Suikoden 5 had disappointing sales, and since then the series has lain dormant.
In 2025, after years of anticipation, Konami finally publisheda remaster of the first two titles, sparking interest in the series once again. It remains to be seen if the company will give its flagship JRPG a new entry, but it would be nice: Suikoden’s timelines go back and forth often and the games work just fine as standalone titles, so a sequel could be enjoyed by both fans and new audiences.
The Ogre Battle saga has a scattershot history, but its most popular entry has to be Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together. The game won acclaim for the strength of its writing and is cited as an example of video games as art to this day.
After a prequel - The Knights of Lodis - on the Game Boy Advance, the series fizzled out. The development studio folded in 2003, but its team moved on to Square Enix where they made sequels to Final Fantasy Tactics. With Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together being remastered in 2022 as Tactics Ogre Reborn, it goes to show that there’s hope for this series still.
Tactics Ogre Reborn is a remaster of the PSP remake of Let Us Cling Together, not of the SNES original.
God Eater was, at one point,Monster Hunter’s closest competitor. This action RPG series by Bandai Namco had faster, more arcade-like gameplay than its Capcom counterpart, and arguably a better story. Its attention-grabbing art style and anime adaptation courtesy of Ufotable meant it had an overlapping fanbase in both the anime and video game community.
After God Eater 3, though, the series all but disappeared. Though Code Vein and Scarlet Nexus are spiritual successors and carry on much of the gameplay conventions of God Eater, the world it built is gone. Bandai Namco should let us revisit this series and fight the Aragami once again.
7Breath Of Fire 6
In the 2010s, a lot of video game publishers made a misguided attempt to switch their series to mobile. This was fine for spin-offs andports of classics, but it quickly became apparent that many fans - especially in the West - were not willing to abandon their consoles and PCs just to play new entries in the series they loved.
An unfortunate casualty of this mistake was Capcom’s Breath of Fire series: the sixth game, launched in 2016, was never even localized. What makes it doubly frustrating for Breath of Fire fans is that BOF6 was, itself, a long-awaited sequel. The last console title, Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter, had launched in 2002 - 14 years before BOF6. With every passing year, interest in the series wanes: Capcom needs to revive Breath of Fire before it becomes the exclusive domain of nostalgia.
6Shining Resonance Refrain
The Shining series has always been in a struggle to reinvent itself: sometimes with little commercial success, sometimes with none. Many of its titles were never even localized, with Shining Resonance Refrain being its highest-profile international release in decades - and even that gamebarely made a splashoutside the hardcore JRPG fanbase.
Sales aren’t the sole index of quality, though: Shining Resonance Refrain hinted at a possible new direction for the series, one featuring breezy real-time combat, easily digestible plots, charming characters and dating sim elements. We’re not saying it would be an overnight success, but Shining has the potential to shine on yet.
In the halcyon days of the PS1, where great JRPGs just kept coming, Wild Arms was poised to be the PlayStation brand’s flagship role-playing series. It even warranted a product placement slot in the Great Teacher Onizuka anime series.
With its bluesy soundtrack and setting inspired by the American West, Wild Arms was a breath of fresh desert air in a landscape dominated by medieval JRPGs. After several respectable PS2 outings and a non-numbered PSP entry, though, the series came to a sudden stop. There’s nothing wrong with Wild Arms XF - it’s a perfectly serviceable tactical RPG with a compelling story. If sales are the problem, there’s more than enough nostalgia to go around for the series by now.
In 2022, a Kickstarter was launched for spiritual successors to Wild Arms and Shadow Hearts. The project, dubbed Armed Fantasia and Penny Blood, met its funding goal within a day.
Developer Game Arts may not be the most famous studio, but among JRPGs it is highly respected for its contributions to the genre - particularly the Lunar and Grandia games. The original Grandia is considered one of the fifth console generation’s best JRPGs, and though it wasn’t the Final Fantasy killer its publisher hoped for, it didn’t need to be.
Grandia 3 was the first - and only - Grandia title Game Arts produced for Square Enix, and you could tell it had a big budget. If there is such a thing as ‘Square Enix money’ in JRPGs, Grandia 3 had it. The game was glorious, with high production values spanning its two discs. Yet Square Enix lost interest in the series quickly: there was no Grandia 4.
Inspired by World War 2 and featuring a beautiful watercolour art style, Valkyria Chronicles is a unique JRPG series. After Valkyria Chronicles 3, many fans assumed the series was over: having gone through an invasion and a civil war not long after, the country of Gallia couldn’t handle any more conflict.
Valkyria Chronicles 4 circumvented that issue by bringing the Atlantic Federation into the mix, confirming that the entire continent of Europa was up for grabs in the series' storytelling. If that’s the case, then why not make Valkyria Chronicles 5? Justdon’t make Valkyria Revolution 2: no one wants that.
Chrono Cross seems like a standalone game until its halfway point, where it is revealed to be a sequel to Chrono Trigger. This was a divisive move, and the two games arguably have their own respective fanbases.
Here’s one thing you can agree on, regardless of whether you prefer Chrono Trigger or Chrono Cross: the games need a sequel. This series was at one point poised to be Square Enix’s dream team saga, with both titles bringing together some of the greatest minds in the video game industry. Even if it happens just once a generation, we want to see it happen.
In 2001, Square Enix registered a trademark for Chrono Break. Despite much speculation, the game never surfaced, and the trademark has long since expired.
Unlike most other JRPGs that have fans clamouring for a sequel, Final Fantasy has no trouble with commercial success or market appeal: the name sells itself. It isn’t like we have a dearth of Final Fantasy games either: you’respoiled for choicewhen it comes to this series.
What makes a Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy 7 sequel necessary is that the story ends on a cliffhanger. Until we learn what Genesis was up to in the post-credits scene, the Compilation of Final Fantasy 7 will remain incomplete. With so much prestige behind its name, it’s odd that this sub-series hasn’t already been concluded.
