Looking for Bishoujo games

[Narutofreak1412]

I'm searching for pretty looking bishoujo games for preferably PS4 (but PS3 is okay too), that are not too hard to plat.

 

To avoid everyone posting VNs, please only mention games, that have at least some form of gameplay.

A few examples are RPGs, like the neptunia games or blue reflection, action games like god eater or the gal gun rail shooters.

But I don't mind the genre, it could also be a strategy game, a fighter or pretty much anything.

VNs, that also feature a handful of minigames are fine, too.

 

It's just important, that the plat is not too hard. Like, some of the Atelier games are pretty harsh with their time limits and their bosses. I don't mind games that take 100+ hours to finish, tho.

 

Anyone got some nice recommendations for me?

[FrenchDevil54]

The Senran Kagura series (Estival vs, Peach Beach Splash, etc) have pretty easy plats and the games are fun to play 

[Redgrave]

Danganronpa though a VN has clue finding and mystery solving. The only one among them that I guess could be considered hard is the third one mainly because of one of the mini-games being RNG heavy.

 

The only other one I can think of is Onechanbara Z2: Chaos. I haven't really played it myself but if you like action games then that one seems up your alley. The Platinum doesn't seem really difficult either. Here's the trophy guide if you want to take a look.

 

Edit: I'm actually not sure if Danganronpa would count. My thinking when posting this was since there is a mode where you interact with both girls and boys it counts.

Edited November 29, 2018 by Redgrave

[Lava_Yuki]

I can think of the Atelier series, Hatsune Miku rhythm games, Nights of Azure, Blue Reflection, Nitroplus Blasterz, Galgun 2 and Dead or Alive Xtreme 3.

 

There seems to be a ton of them on the Vita compared to the PS4. The Atelier games are like a regular turn based rpg just with alchemy in it. 

[eigen-space]

Can you explain what you mean by "bishoujo" games? When I think about shojo anime, I think of magical girl genres or highschool-aged female protagonists. The key thing that comes to mind, though, is a lighter story. Like, Noir and Claymore have female protagonists but are a bit darker with plot, so I wouldn't consider them "shojo".

Also, you said that you don't mind what genre it is, but you list J-style games; are you only interested in J-style?

[Narutofreak1412]

18 hours ago, FrenchDevil54 said:

The Senran Kagura series (Estival vs, Peach Beach Splash, etc) have pretty easy plats and the games are fun to play 

 

Oh, thanks for these, they really look like fun  Seems like they are also pretty fanservicey, are the PS4 ones uncensored?

 

16 hours ago, Redgrave said:

Danganronpa though a VN has clue finding and mystery solving. The only one among them that I guess could be considered hard is the third one mainly because of one of the mini-games being RNG heavy.

 

The only other one I can think of is Onechanbara Z2: Chaos. I haven't really played it myself but if you like action games then that one seems up your alley. The Platinum doesn't seem really difficult either. Here's the trophy guide if you want to take a look.

 

Edit: I'm actually not sure if Danganronpa would count. My thinking when posting this was since there is a mode where you interact with both girls and boys it counts.

 

Thanks! I almost forgot that all the danganronpa games got released on PS4. I already played the first one on PSP and I liked it alot. 100% it even without there being trophies. these should be fun!

Don't worry about danganronpa counting or not, I even mentioned God Eater in my original post, although it also isn't really a bishoujo game.

 

Never heard of Onechanbara, but at the first glance it seems like what I look for. Noted.

 

4 hours ago, Lava_Yuki said:

I can think of the Atelier series, Hatsune Miku rhythm games, Nights of Azure, Blue Reflection, Nitroplus Blasterz, Galgun 2 and Dead or Alive Xtreme 3.

 

There seems to be a ton of them on the Vita compared to the PS4. The Atelier games are like a regular turn based rpg just with alchemy in it. 

 

Already played Blue Reflection, it really was pretty! The atelier games have the same character and artwork designer, but I'm a bit hesistant since the issues I had with the Arland saga on PS3. For example Rorona Plus has a platinum trophy difficulty rating of around 7/10 to 9/10. Any particular saga with easier plats you would recommend?

 

How skill-based are the Vocaloid rythm games? I'm a bit scared of those, same like with the bullet hell touhou games I got recommended somewhere else. The difficulty rating on the trophy sites I checked don't seem too bad, but when watching gameplay of them, they look pretty challenging for someone, who never played games like these before.

 

4 hours ago, eigen-space said:

Can you explain what you mean by "bishoujo" games? When I think about shojo anime, I think of magical girl genres or highschool-aged female protagonists. The key thing that comes to mind, though, is a lighter story. Like, Noir and Claymore have female protagonists but are a bit darker with plot, so I wouldn't consider them "shojo".

Also, you said that you don't mind what genre it is, but you list J-style games; are you only interested in J-style?

 

Bishoujo means "pretty girl" and it describes games, that have a lot of pretty girls, usually in anime style, and it often revolves around interacting with them. It has nothing to do with the shojo genre, aimed at girls. For example almost all visual novels aimed at males are bishoujo games. But I think something like the Idolmaster Rythm games, RPGs like the Neptunia series or even something like Dead or Alive can be considered bishoujo games aswell.

Edited November 30, 2018 by Narutofreak1412

[eigen-space]

If it's just games where you play as or interact with pretty girls...

And I'm only going to mention ones that I didn't notice mentioned before (lots of good suggestions)...

 

Dungeon Crawlers (these are only Vita to my knowledge):

Mary Skelter -- medium difficulty and length

Dungeon Travelers 2 - higher degree of difficulty

Sorcery Saga - medium length and annoyingly RNG-dependent platinum (I don't actually recommend the game but some people like it)

 

JRPG (all of these have their gender mixes at about half-half):

Tales Of series -- longer length, medium difficulty 

Shining Resonance -- medium length, medium difficulty

Trails of Cold Steel - longer length, medium difficulty - these are getting released on the PS4 in the next couple months

The Mysterious Trilogy of the Atelier series -- they did away with the time limits that they had in Arland, though I don't think the story was as good

 

Puzzle:

Zero Escape games - these are visual novel-esque with plenty of playability... cast is balanced - shorter length, easy if you use a guide

 

Other:

Life is Strange -- Kind of a point-and-click game with a really good story... not J-Style

 

[bladesoframen]

Not sure if you're willing to play games that aren't translated yet, but you can definitely play everything else that Compile Heart has made (Fairy Fencer F, Genkai Tokki series, Mary Skelter 1/2, Death End Re;quest, Varnir of the Witch,  etc)

Besides that, you already mentioned all the Gust ones besides Ar tonelico / Nosurge games.

You have a few other games by the makers of Senran Kagura that aren't Neptunia games, Valkyrie Drive and Drive Girls (Drive Girls is a particularly bad game, but the choice is yours)

 

Other games/series/Franchisees:

Akiba's Strip

Akiba's Beat

Love Live games

Girls und Panzer games

Saki games

Shining Series

Caladrius Blaze

Omega Labyrinth

Guided Fate Paradox

Awakened Fate Ultimatum

The Asterisk War: Phoenix Festa

 

I can probably name more, but it'll help if you narrow down your genre choice by a bit since you can cater any genre of game to any group through some graphical changes.

 

As for Atelier games, I don't know why anyone would put them at a difficulty beyond 5. Anything that is turn based that isn't dependent on luck means you could easily look up a guide on what to do at every moment in the game and bring the difficulty effectively down to the level of a VN. Follow directions, and you win. 

[Redgrave]

1 hour ago, Narutofreak1412 said:

 

Thanks! I almost forgot that all the danganronpa games got released on PS4. I already played the first one on PSP and I liked it alot. 100% it even without there being trophies. these should be fun!

Don't worry about danganronpa counting or not, I even mentioned God Eater in my original post, although it also isn't really a bishoujo game.

 

Never heard of Onechanbara, but at the first glance it seems like what I look for. Noted.

 

Bishoujo means "pretty girl" and it describes games, that have a lot of pretty girls, usually in anime style, and it often revolves around interacting with them. It has nothing to do with the shojo genre, aimed at girls. For example almost all visual novels aimed at males are bishoujo games. But I think something like the Idolmaster Rythm games, RPGs like the Neptunia series or even something like Dead or Alive can be considered bishoujo games aswell.

 

Okay, just making sure There's also the third-person shooter like one called Ultra Despair Girls.

 

Otherwise with stuff not already mentioned, there's Persona 4 and 5. Those games are known for having waifu wars among the fanbase I really want to recommend Steins;Gate and Steins;Gate 0 especially since the first game is supposed to have its remastered version coming soon. But the second game (Steins;Gate 0) doesn't really have much in the way of gameplay compared to Danganronpa. Apparently the first one has a bit more gameplay or at least interactive stuff in it. But I wouldn't really want to say to play one without playing the other either way.

 

In terms of a strategy game there's Valkyria Chronicles. It's a turn-based strategy game that takes place in a sort of World War II like setting. I can't really speak of the difficulty though since I haven't played them but guides list them as a 3-4/10 in difficulty I believe.

 

And I guess depending on how you look at it, I can also recommend Bayonetta. It's more on the challenging side though and I know you said you want easy Platinums but as far as PlatinumGames games go Bayonetta is probably on the more easier side if you ask me at least compared to something like Vanquish or Metal Gear Rising. There definitely is a learning curve though, but you are allowed to get away with using a cheat item if you are willing to grind for it as well as a certain glitch that I figure was never patched.

 

There's also NieR and NieR: Automata. Probably not the most anime looking game compared to a lot of others mentioned though, but I figure it's worth a mention anyway because they are really good.

 

And lastly there's Gravity Rush 1 and 2. They are both excellent games and are pretty easy overall. So out of everything I recommended Bayonetta is the most challenging but like I said it lets you get away with a cheat item and a glitch to make the harder difficulties and the combat challenges easier. I mainly recommend it because it's a good game with a pretty banger soundtrack and great action.

[MPRHWBMHSEL]

There’s the Touhou games, Ar tonelico Qoga(III) for PS3, Dream Club(import), Omega Quintet, Shining series, Little Witch Academia, Hatsune Miku, Senran Kagura, Super Heroine Chronicle(import), Omega Labyrinth(import), Arcana Heart, Trinity Universe, Girls und Panzer(import), Utawarerumono, Record Of Agarest War, Conception, Akiba’s Trip, Drive Girls, Nitroplus Blasterz, Skullgirls, Gal Gun, Fairy Fencer F, Madoka Magica, Phantom Breaker(both the fighting game import and the Beat ‘em Up game), Dungeon Travelers 2, Dengeki Bunko Fighting Climax, To Love-Ru(import), and many others.

Edited November 30, 2018 by MPRHWBMHSEL

[Narutofreak1412]

2 hours ago, bladesoframen said:

As for Atelier games, I don't know why anyone would put them at a difficulty beyond 5. Anything that is turn based that isn't dependent on luck means you could easily look up a guide on what to do at every moment in the game and bring the difficulty effectively down to the level of a VN. Follow directions, and you win. 

 

It's mostly because almost everything you do consumes time and you need to at certain places at certain times in order not to miss events + you need to fulfill requests by certain dates. At the same time, you need to get certain items and recipes in order to be powerful enough to beat enemies. And also, you need to clear enough character requests and villager requests in order to get enough popularity and affinity. Especially the Rorona game was very strict with the limits, you couldn't even properly explore an area and had to rush through.

 

From what I saw, there are only step-by.step guides for a few Atelier games, for example for Rorona Plus there are none. And it's not easy to make one, because the items you find are RNG and everyone will end up with different material. Every playthrough, you will end up in slightly different situations. So you have to plan ahead a lot and there are tiny things you only notice later, that can mess up your playthrough.

I tried following a guide, that told you roughly what to focus on in which chapter, but I usually ended up not being able to clear everything on the checklist by the end of each chapter.

Also, even with a step by step youtube video I wasn't able to make the same gear and items, because I had slightly different RNG stats on my stuff and after combining everything, these differences affected the outcome too much.

 

A friend had to help me with two of the bosses by replaying the last year of the main story and even now, I'm still missing the overtime boss trophies because crafting endgame gear gives me headaches.

 

I really liked the visual designs, the slice of life stories and how simple and straight forward the battles were, but the time limits really stressed me out.

Without the limits and less RNG, I would agree, that everyone could just follow a guide to create stuff that's good enough to beat the bosses.

 

I haven't played the other sagas, but I heard there are some with very lax or even no time limits at all. Maybe those would be worth a try.

 

 

@ all Thanks a lot in advance for all the mentioned titles, will check them all later when I'm home.

[FrenchDevil54]

On 11/30/2018 at 5:44 AM, Narutofreak1412 said:

Oh, thanks for these, they really look like fun  Seems like they are also pretty fanservicey, are the PS4 ones uncensored?

You can't be any more fanservice than these  and yes they are uncensored on PS4 except for the western version of Burst Renewal that is yet to be released

[Narutofreak1412]

Finally finished checking out all your suggestions. I watched trailers and gameplay, went through different sites about trophy difficulty, checked prices and availability and more.

Sadly there were quite a few interesting games I can't play due to them being exclusively released on Vita. But most of them were fine.

 

Definitely wanna play in the future:

 

Gal Gun 2 (already own his one)
Senran Kagura: Estival Versus
Senran Kagura Burst Re:Newal
Senran Kagura: Peach Beach Splash
Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization (already have this too)
Accel World VS Sword Art Online
Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet
Persona 4 Golden
Persona 5
Punch Line
Akiba's Trip Undead & Undressed
Onechanbara Z2: Chaos
Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 (I'm waiting for the import price to drop a bit more)
Tales of Xillia 
Tales of Xillia 2
Tales of Berseria
Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward (never heard of those zero escape games before, they look really interesting!)
Zero Escape: The Nonary Games
Megadimension Neptunia VII
Cyberdimension Neptunia: 4 Goddesses Online
Fairy Fencer F
Ar nosurge: Ode to an Unborn Star
Girls und Panzer: Dream Tank Match (not much info about difficulty, but the trophies look like it just requires normal playing and some collecting/grinding)
The Awakened Fate Ultimatum
Steins;Gate
Steins;Gate 0 (these VNs were on my plan-to-play list anyways, I really liked the anime and I also played Robotics;Notes by the same studio, that also had some interactive elements)
Valkyria Revolution
Valkyria Chronicles 4
Dream Club (this one looks like it gives out its 100% trophies for free xD)
Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception
Utawarerumono: Mask of Truth
Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds

 

Maybe:

 

BlazBlue: Cross Tag battle (I usually suck at 2D fighters, like I had many issues with the score trophy of Dengeki Bunko Fighting Climax, but this trophy list looks pretty easy)
Touhou Kobuto V: Burst Battle (There are mixed opinions about the plat, especially people having issues with the controls in general)
Bullet Girls Phantasia (not much info out there about difficulty, because not many people played this)
School Girl/Zombie Hunter (trophies seem challenging, like clearing all missions with a SSS rank on all difficulties, it looks like something I would enjoy tho, I may play this on my second account)
Croixleur Sigma (Mixed opinions about difficulty, most people tend to lean towards it being hard, may play this on my side account too)
Atelier Dusk Trilogy (Since the trouble I had with the Arland trilogy, I'm not sure about these. I heard they got easier with less harsh timelimits, so they may be worth another try)
Atelier Mysterious Trilogy (see above)
Hatsune Miku: Project Diva Future Tone (Most people say it's easy, but rythm games look pretty intimidating to me. I failed to clear the more difficult songs on the K-On game and I usually only beat beatmaps up to normal difficulty on OSU. May try on another acount first to see if I'm decent enough for the game)
Nights of Azure (Mixed difficulty opinions, but very pretty looking game!)
Nitroplus Blasterz: Heroines Infinite Duel (This one seems doable, even for a 2D fighter noob like me)
Tales of Zestiria (mixed difficulty opinions and seems dependend on RNG, but I guess if I can beat Xillia 2, I can do this one too)
Shining Resonance Refrain (couldn't find much info regarding diffculty, but the trophies by description don't look that hard)
Trails of Cold Steel (It seems to be a RPG on the more difficult side with a bunch of missables, but I also read that some DLCs can make the bossfights easier)
Mary Skelter 2 (couldn't really find infos about this one. Am I right that the first game is Vita only and the second game for PS4 includes the first one, but there are only trophies regarding the second one?)
Death End Re;quest (comes to west in 2019, will wait until then)
Varnir of the Witch (Same with this one, will wait till it gets released in west 2019)
Ar tonelico Qoga (average difficulty, requires a lot of planning regarding saves)
Akiba's Beat (trophies seem not that hard, but the plat rate is pretty low for some reason)
Valkyria Chronicles Remastered (difficulty seems okay-ish with some hard parts, but there are guides for those)
Touhou Genso Rondo: Bullet Ballet (I have a lot of respect for the difficulty of bullet hell games and I'm not sure if this is for me, even with seemingly not too hard trophies)
Touhou Genso Wanderer (Same as above + I hardly found any infos about the difficulty of this one)
Little Witch Academia (I found not enough info regarding difficulty, but I really liked the anime!)
Trinity Universe (difficulty seems challenging, but not too hard, but the trophies themselves seem to be no fun. It's almost all pure grinding stuff)
Conception Plus (Remaster of the first Conception game, will come out next year)
Phantom Breaker extra (not many infos about difficulty, I'm extra careful about 2D fighters since the issues I had with Fighting Climax)

 

Most likely too hard for me:

 

Hatsune Miku: Project Diva X (Very hard and skill-dependent platinum. But the game looks fun. If I liked Project Diva Future Tone, I may play this on my second acc)
Caladrius Blaze
Guided Fate Paradox
Omega Quintet
Arcana Heart (very hard plat for someone, who's not an experienced 2D fighter player)
Record Of Agarest War
Skullgirls (very mixed opinions about difficulty, but it being a 2D fighter will probably make it pretty challenging for me)
Skullgirls 2nd Encore (one of the hardest 2D fighter plats out there)

 

Not bishoujo games, but I wanna play those too:

 

God Eater 3 (since I loved GE1 & GE2, this one is a given, already preordered)
Danganrona 1-2 Reload (already 100% the first one on PSP, so I know that I will love it)
Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls
Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony
Life is Strange (I have my eyes on this since a while now)
Bayonetta (I watched some trailers/gameplay and it reminds me a lot of devil may cry. I have to agree with the soundtrack, it sounds really amazing. I wanna play this on my second account, so I don't have to worry about trophies)
Nier (I may skip this one as I read that this one is not as good as Automata + more than half of the process towards platinum is very boring material grind) 
Nier Automata
The Seven Deadly Sins: Knights of Britannia
Gravity Rush
Gravity Rush 2

 

Thanks again for all the lists and recommendations! There were a lot of niche games I didn't know about and I think all these games will keep me busy for a long time
 

[Tranquilmelody7]

They are only on PS3 and Vita, but I'd recommend Project Diva F and F 2nd.

 

They are very easy to platinum, and the first one is quick too.

 

You don't need to touch extreme and you only need to clear all songs on hard with the lowest rating.

 

The games are wayyyyyyyy easier to play than Future Tone, and way easier to plat than X.

 

Those games ramp up the difficulty / platinum requirements quite a bit

Edited December 3, 2018 by Tranquilmelody7

[eigen-space]

1 hour ago, Narutofreak1412 said:

Tales of Xillia 

Tales of Xillia 2
Tales of Berseria
Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward (never heard of those zero escape games before, they look really interesting!)
Zero Escape: The Nonary Games
 

 

Atelier Dusk Trilogy (Since the trouble I had with the Arland trilogy, I'm not sure about these. I heard they got easier with less harsh timelimits, so they may be worth another try)
Atelier Mysterious Trilogy (see above)
Tales of Zestiria (mixed difficulty opinions and seems dependend on RNG, but I guess if I can beat Xillia 2, I can do this one too)
Shining Resonance Refrain (couldn't find much info regarding diffculty, but the trophies by description don't look that hard)
Trails of Cold Steel (It seems to be a RPG on the more difficult side with a bunch of missables, but I also read that some DLCs can make the bossfights easier)

 

 

My thoughts on these:

 

Very glad you're giving the Tales games a try! Xillia is definitely the easiest to plat of the ones you've picked out (and is, IMO, second best only to Berseria). Zestiria definitely requires a bit more skill for the plat, and the grind can be tedious, but I actually think it's easier than Xillia 2. Also, if you enjoy these, Vesperia Remastered is coming out in 2019 for  PS4! Mind if I ask why Tales of Graces didn't make the cut?

 

I also hadn't heard of the Zero Escape games before I bought them... I just saw them on sale one day and decided to give them a go. Literally the only game I've ever called out sick from work to play because I just couldn't put them down! Hopefully you'll like them just as much

One thing to keep in mind: The Nonary Games is a bundle that has both 999 and Virtue's Last Reward in it. The third game, Zero Time Dilemma, is only available solo. Virtue's Last Reward is also available solo.

 

I'll personally vouch for the fact that Mysterious is easier than Dusk, which is easier than Arland when it comes to Atelier game difficulty. But I also think that order goes from worst to best as far as story, plot, and cute girl factors go 

 

Shining Resonance is actually pretty easy so long as you're used to JRPGs. My only issue with it is that it got very repetitive toward the end when you're trying for all the character endings, raising to level 100, and going for all the tunings. I personally played through this without a complete guide (just some helpful forum posts), but I took a look at the one that was recently made for it and it seems that you'll be fine if you follow it.

 

Trails of Cold Steel looks daunting at first, but the guides on here for the games are REALLY good. You are in no danger of missing any collectibles if you follow them explicitly. The battle also isn't that bad; the first game requires a second playthrough, so you can get used to the battle by playing on easy your first time around. By your second go, you'll be familiar enough with battle to play on expert-- not to mention that you get to carry over a lot of things from your first game into your NG+.

Edited December 3, 2018 by eigen-space

[AffectatiousDonk]

I wasn't familiar with this term " bishoujo " either so I looked it up and my favourite definition that came up   " Bishoujo games are usually "hentai games" that are like a "virtual interactive storybook". It seems in the west Bishoujo is also associated with girls under the age of adolescences.      So .............. anyway.

 

Death Mark 

Black Clover Quartet Knights (if you have someone to play the MP with)

Edited December 3, 2018 by Cjshai

[Narutofreak1412]

3 hours ago, Cjshai said:

I wasn't familiar with this term " bishoujo " either so I looked it up and my favourite definition that came up   " Bishoujo games are usually "hentai games" that are like a "virtual interactive storybook". It seems in the west Bishoujo is also associated with girls under the age of adolescences.      So .............. anyway.

 

Death Mark 

Black Clover Quartet Knights (if you have someone to play the MP with)

 

If you are refering to the wiki page: Yeah, that entry seems a bit confusing. At first it makes it seem like it describes hentai games, then it says it describes VNs, along half way through the page it shows a loli pic as an example and in the end it also lists rail shooters like Gal Gun and other types of games as bishoujo games.

The majority of the JRPGs on my list aren't real bishoujo games if they don't have some kind of affection system where you can get a girl-related ending or a side-story line or something similar. That's just me pushing the boundries a bit, because these often also feature the aesthetics I adore so much in bishoujo games.

 

It's true that a few dozens of years ago the very first bishoujo games were hentai VNs, but nowadays not many people would think that VNs are always hentai games. And like this, there are also a lot of bishoujo games, that are not adult games. Bishoujo games in erotic nature are rather called "eroge" from what I've seen.

 

The term "bishoujo" is pretty much the opposite of "bishonen" and no one would associate that with little boys. I have no idea where the whole "underaged girls" thing comes from, but my guess is that it's because games in anime style usually feature girls around high school age and there are some controversies when it comes to fanservicey depictions in the west every now and then.

 

I checked your recommendations, the first one seems pretty interesting. Am I right that it is a kind of horror point and click adventure in anime style?

I especially like how the trophy icons together form bigger pictures of the characters

 

And I already know about Black Clover and was planning to get sooner or later, as I also really like shounen 3D fighting games.

 

3 hours ago, eigen-space said:

 

My thoughts on these:

 

Very glad you're giving the Tales games a try! Xillia is definitely the easiest to plat of the ones you've picked out (and is, IMO, second best only to Berseria). Zestiria definitely requires a bit more skill for the plat, and the grind can be tedious, but I actually think it's easier than Xillia 2. Also, if you enjoy these, Vesperia Remastered is coming out in 2019 for  PS4! Mind if I ask why Tales of Graces didn't make the cut?

 

I also hadn't heard of the Zero Escape games before I bought them... I just saw them on sale one day and decided to give them a go. Literally the only game I've ever called out sick from work to play because I just couldn't put them down! Hopefully you'll like them just as much

One thing to keep in mind: The Nonary Games is a bundle that has both 999 and Virtue's Last Reward in it. The third game, Zero Time Dilemma, is only available solo. Virtue's Last Reward is also available solo.

 

I'll personally vouch for the fact that Mysterious is easier than Dusk, which is easier than Arland when it comes to Atelier game difficulty. But I also think that order goes from worst to best as far as story, plot, and cute girl factors go 

 

Shining Resonance is actually pretty easy so long as you're used to JRPGs. My only issue with it is that it got very repetitive toward the end when you're trying for all the character endings, raising to level 100, and going for all the tunings. I personally played through this without a complete guide (just some helpful forum posts), but I took a look at the one that was recently made for it and it seems that you'll be fine if you follow it.

 

Trails of Cold Steel looks daunting at first, but the guides on here for the games are REALLY good. You are in no danger of missing any collectibles if you follow them explicitly. The battle also isn't that bad; the first game requires a second playthrough, so you can get used to the battle by playing on easy your first time around. By your second go, you'll be familiar enough with battle to play on expert-- not to mention that you get to carry over a lot of things from your first game into your NG+.

 

Oh, thanks for the additional infos, really appreciate that!

I noted Vesperia Remastered in my "look out for" list  

 

One question, as you seem to know a lot about the Tales of series: How is the story connected? I know that it's a multimedia franchise, having other stuff like manga, audiobooks and more alongside the actual games. Will I be able to follow everything if I only play the games in order of their release?

 

Btw. Graces is not on the list, because I simply overlooked it when I looked up a list of "Tales of" games  Just checked it and it seems to be not easy, but doable. I will add it to the "maybe" section, because I think I should first get some more experience with classic jrpgs before I attempt games around difficulty 5-7/10.

 

Actually anime 3D fighters got me into gaming back then, like the Dragonball Z Budokai Tenkaichi games or the Naruto Ultimate Ninja games. And I only played games like that during my school years, so aside from playing hundreds of hours of Pokemon, I had no experience with JRPGs until the recent years. I think the Digimon Adventure psp game was my first more classic turn based jrpg. It got pretty challenging midway, but I pushed through by re-adjusting my startegies and skills. And after trying out a lot of different strats and attempting many many times, I even managed to beat the hardest endgame boss by myself.

After that came Digimon Cybersleuth, which felt just the right difficulty if you're not playing on easy. I failed a boss battle every now and then, but always managed to beat them after changing my team and/or doing some leveling. To my surprise I also managed to beat the strongest challenge in the game first try, although was a bit of a fluke as I had just the right ability in my team to counter the boss, who did like 8 strong attacks in a row and usually wipes out everything on max level every time it was his turn.

Aside from those, I played things like Sword Art Online, Blue Reflection, the first Neptunia games and Xenoblade Chronicles X on Wii U, but all those didn't feel hard at all. The first SAO one was incredibly grindy and Xenoblade had some challenging additional bosses, but nothing that can't be beaten when you look up a good endgame set and copy that.

 

So based on that, I thought I can handle a JRPG with ingame time limits and average difficulty and started Atelier Rorona Plus, but you heard how that went. So now, I'm a bit more careful with difficulty in jrpgs. But I think if a game has no ingame time limits and I can just take my time to grind levels or get better gear and then attempt it again, that already lowers the difficulty by a lot.

I think what's most important for me in JRPGs is freedom, like that I can choose where to go and explore dungeons and maps however I like.

And also I usually like to play the first playthrough blind in order to not get spoilers through guides or hidden trophies and I really don't like if you can get stuck with that, like standing before a boss, not being able to beat it due to having the wrong gear or having skilled in the wrong stats and there's no way to go back and prepare before retrying.

Edited December 3, 2018 by Narutofreak1412

[eigen-space]

2 hours ago, Narutofreak1412 said:

One question, as you seem to know a lot about the Tales of series: How is the story connected? I know that it's a multimedia franchise, having other stuff like manga, audiobooks and more alongside the actual games. Will I be able to follow everything if I only play the games in order of their release?

 

The story isn't connected between games unless you're playing a direct sequel, little Xillia 2 or Symphonia: DotNW. Even Berseria, which is a prequel to Zestiria, doesn't necessarily need Zestiria to be complete on it's own. Basically what you'd gain by playing other games or buying into the additional content are fun easter eggs and additional backstory/lore.

It's very similar to something like Final Fantasy where you have similar thematic elements, recurring names for weapons/armor/skills, and some recurring NPCs & monsters.

 

As far as Graces go, I thought it was actually on par with Xillia in terms of difficulty, just different things you had to focus on. Then again, I played it well before I got into trophy hunting (same with the PS3 Atelier games) so I knew the mechanics very well by the time I decided that trophies mattered

 

2 hours ago, Narutofreak1412 said:

I think what's most important for me in JRPGs is freedom, like that I can choose where to go and explore dungeons and maps however I like.

And also I usually like to play the first playthrough blind in order to not get spoilers through guides or hidden trophies and I really don't like if you can get stuck with that, like standing before a boss, not being able to beat it due to having the wrong gear or having skilled in the wrong stats and there's no way to go back and prepare before retrying.

 

I think Shining Resonance would work out nicely based on this explanation. The Mysterious Atelier trilogy would also work. I say this because in all four of these games, I got the plats before there were guides or even really any information at all on them. I think for Shining there may only be a small handful of missables, there are zero in Atelier Sophie, and maybe a couple in the other two Mysterious games.

Trails... well... you could always do a blind first playthrough and then hope you did enough to clean up the remaining in the second, but that's unlikely. I don't think you'd get stuck anywhere if you played on easy or normal difficulty... but the collectibles, relationships, and quests are rather strict.

Edited December 3, 2018 by eigen-space

[AndresLionheart]

I wanted to add a bit more on the Tales of games.

Tales of Zestiria is not difficult, at all, but the skill system requires a little bit of thought. From your comments about Atelier Rorona it seems you don't want to put much effort into the systems, so I'd say you should avoid that one. Plus, it hasn't much in terms of bishoujo. Edna is pretty as fuck, and Lailah is nice, too, but that's about it. You don't spend much time with Alisha.

ToX, ToX2 and ToB are fairly easy to complete. ToG has a bit more missables with all its titles.

 

I see Conception 1 mentioned but not 2. Dunno how the trophies are because I played that one on 3DS, but it is a bit of a visual novel and a dungeon crawler. The girls are very pretty.

 

The first 2 Hatsune Miku games are pretty easy, too.

 

And about Dead or Alive Xtreme 3's price... it has been high since forever. Dunno if it will ever go down. I can see it going out of stock before ever getting a price drop. Plus, there is a new version coming out soon with some censorship, which means you shouldn't support it! Never buy censored shit.

The same goes for Senran Kagura Burst Renewal. Buy the others, not that one.

[Narutofreak1412]

1 hour ago, AndresLionheart said:

I wanted to add a bit more on the Tales of games.

Tales of Zestiria is not difficult, at all, but the skill system requires a little bit of thought. From your comments about Atelier Rorona it seems you don't want to put much effort into the systems, so I'd say you should avoid that one.

 

I don't think effort is the problem here. I finished Persona 1 on PSP before, which also required thought and effort to understand how it works and what to look out for. Otherwise even random encounters will kill you. It's really just the timelimit in Rorona that gave me no room for grinding, leveling and retrying bosses multiple times with different strategies.

Can you explain how in particular the skill system in Zestiria may be difficult to get into?

 

1 hour ago, AndresLionheart said:

I see Conception 1 mentioned but not 2. Dunno how the trophies are because I played that one on 3DS, but it is a bit of a visual novel and a dungeon crawler. The girls are very pretty.

 

Oh, I didn't add that one to my list, because it's Vita only. The upcoming remaster of the first Conception will be for PS4 too.

[mako-heart]

i am probably a weirdo for this, but i usually look at other peoples game lists to find titles id be interested in lmao

ive also started making use of the dev tag search ex https://psnprofiles.com/games?developer=1217-spike-chunsoft

 

i have a ton of anime games on backlog, so not on profile or hidden

i know bishoujo, but to me it sounds like youre mostly looking for cute anime games (instead of shonen type games)

 

from my visible id suggest the gravity rush games and dragon's crown/vanillaware games. and the tales series. so basically stuff youve already considered

[AndresLionheart]

1 hour ago, Narutofreak1412 said:

I don't think effort is the problem here. I finished Persona 1 on PSP before, which also required thought and effort to understand how it works and what to look out for. Otherwise even random encounters will kill you. It's really just the timelimit in Rorona that gave me no room for grinding, leveling and retrying bosses multiple times with different strategies.

Can you explain how in particular the skill system in Zestiria may be difficult to get into?

 

Oh, I didn't add that one to my list, because it's Vita only. The upcoming remaster of the first Conception will be for PS4 too.

Ok, sorry then. I thought it was about not wanting to get into convoluted systems.

I also dislike time limits. Atelier Totori was my first Atelier, but the times were fairly lenient in that one (I remember having to waste like a whole year because I was done with all I had to do to get to the next section). I wouldn't even touch Rorona if the times are that strict.

 

Zestiria's skill system isn't THAT bad once you understand the easy way to get the skills that you want where you want them (and that's not something you would care about while still playing through the story). But it is not just the skills. The battle system has a lot of little rules you have to learn and keep in mind, and your party members have the worst AI ever (they never block anything. Good thing is that there is an easy, free way to ressurrect and they use it right away every time).

 

One main point that gets annoying is that there is a skill grid of 5x10 and you can get bonus skills for stacking, lining at least 2 adjacent skills or completing a whole column of 5. But since gear has 1 skill specific to it and up to 3 random ones, it is not the easiest thing to keep a bonus skill whenever you get new gear. So the simple act of finding a new, statwise better, piece of gear most of the time doesn't result in just equipping it. So whenever you want to change something you have to look around how you can keep the bonus skills or how to replace it with something new that you can get with those new 3 pieces of gear you found. For example, I had a few characters with the first column completed, which gave them +20 all stats (and that's a lot in the beginning), so when I found something new I couldn't equip it because losing that +20 to everything was a net loss. For that reasom I didn't get to change equipment for like half the game, lol.

 

The skill grid lets you easily find if you have a piece of gear with a certain skill, but you still need to play around with it to make new combinations that will overall improve what you had.

A lot of people simply ignore everything and just go with whatever happens, but I'm incapable of that. I always need to understand the systems I'm working with and take advantage of them, that's how I enjoy my RPGs.

 

On Conception 2: I forgot you said PS3 and PS4. My bad.

Edited December 3, 2018 by AndresLionheart

[Sigma999]

For bishoujo choices you have the Neptunia series , Senran Kagura series , Criminal Girls (Vita) , Atelier series , Onechanbara Z2 Chaos , Blue Reflection , Nights of Azure , Dead or Alive 5 Last Round or Xtreme 3 , Xblaze Code Embryo or Lost Memories , Nier Automata , Gal* Gun Double Peace and 2 , Gravity Rush 1 and 2 , Hatsune Miku games , Nurse Love Addiction (Vita) , Odin Sphere Leifthrasir , Persona 5 and the dancing spin-offs of Persona 3 and 5 . Shining Resonance Refrain . All those have a couple of pretty girls in anime style ^^

[Lava_Yuki]

On 30/11/2018 at 1:44 AM, Narutofreak1412 said:

Already played Blue Reflection, it really was pretty! The atelier games have the same character and artwork designer, but I'm a bit hesistant since the issues I had with the Arland saga on PS3. For example Rorona Plus has a platinum trophy difficulty rating of around 7/10 to 9/10. Any particular saga with easier plats you would recommend?

 

How skill-based are the Vocaloid rythm games? I'm a bit scared of those, same like with the bullet hell touhou games I got recommended somewhere else. The difficulty rating on the trophy sites I checked don't seem too bad, but when watching gameplay of them, they look pretty challenging for someone, who never played games like these before.

For Atelier, it's very variable. Atelier Sophie is the easiest, it has only two missable trophies and no time restricted events or anything so you play at your own pace, is a 3/10 difficulty and a great one for first timers. It's also the start of the Mysterious saga, so there's no need for trying to catch up story wise either. I would recommend the Mysterious saga if you want an easy time with trophies, the next game is Atelier Firis which is also a 3/10 and then Atelier Lydie & Suelle.

 

Vocaloid games are heavily skilled based unfortunately. I had Hatsune Miku Diva F for the vita which was a 3/10 trophy difficulty and meaning to take 30 hours, but to me it felt like a 10/10 as I suck as rhythm games and barely managed easy mode, so couldn't get most of the trophies. Some people are really good at them though, but they take a lot of practice and patience

[Kurorac]

Just wanted to say that I got the plat for every Atelier game except Rorona using the guides on gamefaqs. I would really recommend at least the second trilogy, because these are really easy.

 

I would also recommend Odins Sphere, which is one of the most beautiful games.