Give Battlechasers: Nightwar a try if you're looking for something a bit different. It's basically a wester-made JRPG so it's missing the weeby bits, but the core RPG systems are very similar.
I really enjoyed Battlechasers: Nightwar. The visuals were fantastic and I really liked the battle system.
It weirdly reminded me of Anachronox in a way, which was a similarly western RPG with a lot of JRPG gameplay loops.
XC2 voice work seems to be a massive improvement over the original (which I still think is some of the worst since Resident Evil 1). Still wish they'd just made XCX2 instead though. That I would buy a Switch for.
Currently playing through Ys VIII on my PS4, but stalled because it's a great game with a shit-tier localization that they've promised to fix early next year. And at some point I need to finally get back to Trails of Cold Steel on my Vita, along with its sequel. Really want to play FC Evolution too, but not sure I want to put in the time until it's guaranteed that SC and the 3rd Evolution will also be playable in English.
Picking up Xenoblade Chronicles 2 on Friday myself, really looking forward to it. Also with you on Trails games, the world building and characters are great. Hoping we hear something about a Cold Steel 3 localization soon.
Oh, also really enjoyed Ys VIII which came out earlier this year. It's getting a patch to fix up some of the translation/VA issues which is nice. A similar game, Tokyo Xanadu eX+ is coming out on the 8th. It mixes the Ys combat with Trails story telling, should be good.
I actually enjoyed that about Child of Light tbh, it's easily the best game that Ubisoft have put out in years.Oh before I forget, play Child of Light if you haven't already. Easily the best game I played in 2014, and the soundtrack rivals the best of the FF soundtracks.
Everyone speaking in rhymes rubs some people the wrong way, and it feels a bit silly at times, but the game is just great.
I actually enjoyed that about Child of Light tbh, it's easily the best game that Ubisoft have put out in years.
I really liked the partner system in Child of Light, it gave me serious Paper Mario vibes.
Tales of Berseria and Persona 5 have kept me busy this year. Super good and pretty deep.
Downside 3: EO5 was a huge disappointment and pretty much a straight downgrade from EO4.In the genre, Etrian Odyssey blows everything out of the water in my opinion, but it has 2 "downsides", the art is very anime and it's on 3DS only.
Jesus j didn't know people still played ffxi.Stranger of sword city is a dungeon rpg though which is a bit more niche than the general jrpg. I also was kinda meh about it, it was alright but some aspects I didn't like. Too few abilities per classes so it felt not deep enough, grindy and if you have perma death and instant death mechanics in your game you can go fuck right off, that's just annoying as fuck, I don't want to make a new character to replace the one I've been playing with for 20hours because RNG decided that a shuriken instantly killed me. You can work around it by removing the roleplaying aspect and selecting an arbitrary age value for your characters, but again, not a fan of this. Art was good though and the dungeons were pretty decent.
In the genre, Etrian Odyssey blows everything out of the water in my opinion, but it has 2 "downsides", the art is very anime and it's on 3DS only.
I still have a bunch of jrpgs to work through when I have time. I'm playing technically a jrpg now, although it's jmmorpg(FFXI) but the story has been pretty awesome so far, shit it might be better than every FF for the past many years(well not the vanilla story or zilart, but chains of promathia arc was really fucking good, goign through Aht Urghan which is cool and still have Wings of the Goddess and Rhapsody of Vanadiel which looked pretty great too). It obviously plays like shit though, I can't believe they've had the game for like 15years and they never thought about letting you keep your weapons unsheathed so you can fight something else after the mob dies without having to sheath then unsheathe again, shit's infuriating.
I have to get through trails, have to play personna 5, have to play some of the older FF I picked up on steam, play through some Ys including VIII, I was interested by the Valkyria 4 stuff they've shown(strategy rpg though), I'm looking forward to the new Vanillaware game, I should probably pick up Tales of Berseria at some point... yeah lots of stuff to do still. Fucking backlog.