The 8 JRPGs Where Your Choices Really Matter

Summary

JRPGs offer player choice through customizing strategies & impacting storylines – choose wisely!
Some JRPGs like Triangle Strategy and Persona 5 Royal emphasize major decisions affecting multiple endings.
Games like Tactics Ogre and Shin Megami Tensei 3 challenge players with pivotal decisions shaping outcomes.

The JRPG genre is all about player choice. As characters level up and gain new equipment, players are often able to influence their strategy and playstyle, customizing their party as they see fit. Some strategies and loadouts will be particularly effective against certain foes, while others will lead to a tragic demise.

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Some JRPGs take this idea of player choice to new extremes, by giving fans major decisions throughout the narrative. These decisions can have far-reaching consequences, and often impact the ending of the game itself. Here are eight JRPGs where player decisions carry a lot of weight.

8

Triangle Strategy

Democracy In Action

Systems

Released: March 4, 2022
ESRB: t

Triangle Strategy, one of the many Square Enix games benefiting from the developer’s distinct “HD-2D” style, is a challenging tactical RPG set in a country torn apart by a three-way war. During the player’s journey, the protagonist, Serenoa, will have to constantly make decisions that could impact the fate of all three nations, weighing the opinions of his three main companions on their journey.

Major decision points are delivered through visits to the Scales of Conviction, where players must weigh their options, consult with their allies, and perhaps even try to sway their party members to their point of view. The game has four main endings, and the New Game Plus mode even allows fans to view how different decisions affect the narrative in new ways.

Quest For The Crown

RPG

JRPG

Action

Adventure

Released: October 11, 2024
ESRB: T For Teen // Blood, Language, Mild Suggestive Themes, Use of Alcohol, Violence

Metaphor: ReFantazio represents a pretty radical departure from Atlus’ usual SMT trappings, but the premise still has more than a few similarities to the developer’s better-established Persona franchise. Most prominent is the time management angle. Fans have a limited number of days in which to complete a given dungeon, and during that time, they also need to manage improving their skills and strengthening bonds with allies; time-consuming tasks in their own right. Deciding how to spend one’s time can be invaluable in shaping a player’s strategy and guiding them toward the endgame.

The protagonist’s regular interactions with the main antagonist, Louis Guiabern, also represent major decision points. Fans must choose their words carefully in order to refute Guiabern’s nihilistic worldview and prove themselves worthy of the crown.

6

Chrono Trigger

The Butterfly Effect

Released: March 11, 1995
ESRB: T for Teen: Fantasy Violence, Mild Blood

Chrono Trigger is one of the most iconic JRPGs on the market, and for good reason. The game’s expansive time-travel storyline opens up a vast array of realms for adventure and exploration, bound together by a deeply affecting narrative about saving the world from total destruction.

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Since Chrono Trigger takes place across a vast timescale, which players leap across freely, there’s ample opportunity to see how decisions will affect the narrative. Some outcomes are relatively minor, such as the decisions players make at the fair in the game’s prologue, while others can have sweeping consequences that could impact the fate of the world.

5

Persona 5 Royal

Changing Hearts

Released: March 31, 2020
ESRB: M for Mature: Blood, Drug Reference, Partial Nudity, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Violence

Persona 5 was a major, mainstream success for Atlus’ beloved social sim/JRPG hybrid franchise. The expanded version, Persona 5 Royal, expanded the story in a major way, adding a whole new final act with a major main antagonist, as well as a variety of new characters to interact with throughout the game.

The new content in this version of Persona 5 can play out in wildly different ways, depending on how and to what extent players interact with these new characters. The ideology represented by the new antagonist is deeply insidious, and players will have to work hard to combat it both in and out of combat.

4

Fire Emblem: Three Houses

Choosing A Side

Fire Emblem: Three Houses Tag Page Cover Art

Systems

Released: July 26, 2019
ESRB: T for Teen: Blood, Suggestive Themes, Violence

Nintendo’s iconic tactical RPG franchise goes to school in Fire Emblem: Three Houses, where players must choose one of three student houses to educate and lead through a sweeping tale of warfare and betrayal. This, in itself, is a major decision point, as each house will go on to serve a much different role in the major war to come.

Along the way, however, players will be presented with several other decisions that will shape the way the world looks after the game’s major time skip. This is especially true for characters who choose the Black Eagles, whose associated nation, the Adrestian Empire, is central to the conflict to come.

3

Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne

A World Of Demons

Released: October 12, 2004
ESRB: M For Mature 17+ due to Blood, Partial Nudity, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Violence

The most prominent game in Atlus’ Shin Megami Tensei franchise takes place in the aftermath of an apocalyptic event that transforms Tokyo into a twisted, spiritual realm populated by demons and monsters. The protagonist, a surviving human transformed into the mysterious Demi-Fiend, must navigate this strange new world and help guide the philosophies that will shape its future.

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Throughout Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne, the protagonist will have to make a lot of very important decisions as they meet with various demons and learn more about this twisted realm. The choices they make in dialogue will impact the ending they receive and the fates of the other characters still alive in this dark, sinister realm.

2

Chrono Cross

Traveling The World(s)

Released: August 15, 2000
ESRB: T For Teen due to Animated Violence, Mild Language

Chrono Cross takes place in the same realm as its predecessor, Chrono Trigger, but where that game sent the player on a journey through time, this one sends them between two parallel worlds as protagonist Serge seeks answers for his untimely death in an alternate world. These realms are inextricably linked, and actions taken in one world will often have a major impact on the other.

In addition to physical choices and their parallel consequences, players will often have major decisions to make in dialogue. These can have a wide array of consequences, from unlocking new items and special moves to which of the 45 different recruitable companion characters join the player’s quest. Of course, player decisions will also impact the course of the plot, helping to decide the fate of both worlds.

1

Tactics Ogre

A Strategic Choice

Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together (1995) Tag Page Cover Art

Released: October 6, 1995
ESRB: T For Teen // Mild Animated Violence, Mild Language

Tactics Ogre is an undisputed classic of the tactical RPG genre. The game’s sprawling plot and dozens of recruitable characters make it a deeply immersive game, and its multiple endings give it considerable replayability as well. Tactics Ogre uses an alignment system similar to Dungeons & Dragons, letting protagonist Denim Powell navigate the game’s major conflicts according to his own personal values.

Decisions made throughout the story impact which characters join Powell’s quest and how the ending of the war plays out. Players will have to keep on their toes and stay true to their values if they want to see the story through.