10 JRPGs that were Way Too Ambitious for their Original Hardware

JRPGs were the kings of the early era of 2D and 3D gaming, and while their renaissance is currently in full swing, it took some years to get there as the genre went rather cold amidst the mid 2000s all the way until the mid 2010s. These games were the original blockbusters that would come out yearly and usually were the games that set the review charts on fire as well.

But certain games in the genre really stretched above what the actual consoles they released on were capable of. These games often had crazy ambitions and were 50-plus hours long, delivering stories that no other genre in the gaming world was really capable of.

We're going to check out some of these games that were too ambitious for the systems they were released on.

10 The Legend of Dragoon

Two More Years to Cook

The Legend of Dragoon was a direct response by SONY to the Final Fantasy craze that was taking over the majority of the 1990s gaming boom. They wanted their own iconic JRPG franchise, and while this game is no doubt a classic, I think it was a bit too ambitious for the original PlayStation. The graphics were modest at best, and while the pre-rendered backgrounds were nice, the character models were leagues behind Final Fantasy at the time.

If they had given this game just another year or two to cook and wait for the PS2 to release, we could've had a much smoother-looking game that wasn't hampered by bad animations in combat (look at Shana's bow attack, for example) and Dragoon transformations that looked truly as special as they were supposed to. It's a big what-if, as the series could've really hit in a whole different way if it came out in the first wave of next-gen systems.

9 Fire Emblem: Three Houses

A War On a Small Scale

Depicting wars in video games is awfully difficult, and while Fire Emblem: Three Houses does an admirable job, it's clear this is a game that badly deserved a larger release on multiple systems that were simply much more powerful than the notoriously modest Nintendo Switch. The battlefields just felt very, very small, and this was something the Fire Emblem Warriors games looked to mitigate, but seeing as Three Houses is the star of the franchise, it's a bit of a shame that those moments that do in fact feel big are limited to brief cutscenes mid-battle.

While the game pushed the Nintendo Switch to the limit, everything from the scale of the school to the way battlefields looked, and even how some character animations looked, felt incredibly limited. It was a game that deserved better textures, larger-feeling attacks, and bigger and better battlefields, but the Nintendo Switch was just not capable of such feats. The Nintendo Switch 2 looks a bit more up to snuff in that regard, so hopefully the upcoming Fire Emblem can make good use of it.

8 Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne

A Desolate World You Can't Explore

Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne is a game about the end of the world, but the problem is that on PS2, where it was originally released, we really never got the gravity of the situation. We get to explore small portions of the world, sure, but even the city itself feels like we would've had a much bigger impact on the apocalypse if we could've really explored it like another system might've allowed.

Of course, that would be proven with Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance, where we actually got to feel how desolate and hopeless everything felt. That treatment could've happened for what I consider the best game in the series, but seeing as the game only got a remaster and not the remake it truly deserved, it appears my dreams for what this game could've been will remain dreams.

7 Xenoblade Chronicles

Beyond the Wii

Xenoblade Chronicles is a very important game, as to me at least, it signaled the coming second golden age of JRPGs. It was a massive game with a unique combat system, great characters, and a really interesting story. However, it was ugly as sin. I mean it, and while the art style was very cool and the scale of the world was amazing, it was this disgusting mess of greenish grey with dull colors and overall, a vibe that it was pushing for beyond the means of the incredibly modest ability of the Nintendo Wii.

If we waited a few years with this one to get it to the Nintendo Switch, this game would've got the treatment the other two titles in the series received and been looked at as the big-budget JRPG masterpiece it really should've been viewed as. I think a lot of the MMO elements that were in the game would've been fixed up a bit, too, as the actual mission design that you would see in later titles seemed to be something limited by the Nintendo Wii as well.

6 Wild Arms 2

The Basic West

Wild Arms 2 is an awfully ugly-looking game, and you might think that's a result of the time. The problem is that it was released in the year 2000. That's an issue because games were already looking pretty good at this point, and the JRPG genre in particular had some impressive lookers already, such as Chrono Cross right around the same time. Wild Arms was a lesser-known series, but the sequel was supposed to have a bit of a higher production quality due to the solid success of the first game.

The result is a game way too ugly for what it's going for. It's hard to get a gritty kind of Wild West-styled adventure when your graphics look worse than games that came out three years prior. The combat was also just stuck with awful animations in a world where Final Fantasy 9 was available. It clearly should've cooked a little bit longer until the PS2 came out so these characters could look as cool as they did on the cover art, but unfortunately, we never got to see that come to fruition.

5 Final Fantasy 12

Open World Ambition Stuck on the PS2

Final Fantasy 12, to me, felt like it should've been held back until the PS3 came out. I know that would've given the PS2 just a single mainline Final Fantasy release, but honestly, it would've been the right call. It was clear Final Fantasy 12 had MMO-style open world ambition that would go beyond what they did with Final Fantasy 11; however, the limitations of the hardware at the time didn't really allow that, and instead, we got a large, interconnected world that was separated into little explorable zones.

This didn't hurt the game a ton in my mind, but it was clear they wanted to do something that felt much more open. That open feeling could've been achieved on next-gen consoles, as that is where the open-world genre really started to take off, and Final Fantasy 12 could've been well served on those systems. However, the next entry in the series didn't exactly capitalize on that new technology with a great open world either, so it's fair to say it wouldn't have mattered much in the long run.

4 Xenogears

Too Cute For Existentialism

Xenogears is a game famously limited by its budget, with that being most clearly demonstrated with the infamous Disc 2 limitations, but I think it was also a game limited badly by the original PlayStation. The ambition of Xenogears is really one of a kind, as it sought to tell a story thousands of years in the making, which is something that had never really been attempted before or even since. However, due to budget and system limitations, the look of the game was a bit more modest than I think the creators would've liked.

I imagine a story of this weight and magnitude would've been better served with characters that appear to be real people, rather than the sprites they were limited to in this era. Imagine Xenogears but with the Xenosaga graphics to back it up. The result could've been much more potent, and the series may never have ended after one game. It had next-gen ambition on one of the original consoles capable of 3D gaming, and it was considered ahead of its time for a reason.

3 Nier

A Victim of the Edgy Era

Nier is as ambitious as they come, and being a relatively new series, it didn't get the budget or, in my opinion, the right system for its initial release. Nier should've been a huge game in the vein of NieR: Automata, but it was limited by the PS3 and Xbox 360's graphics, and most of all, its color. I'm not sure what was with those consoles, but we got so many grey, green, and brown-looking games in that era that it made games that should've been bursting with color into muddled messes.

Nier was one of those games. It was so ambitious with its story and game structure, but honestly, it was too darn ugly to really get off the ground. Look at the main character, for god's sake. There is a reason they remade this one with a new-looking main character. The game would've been far better served on the PS4 era of gaming because the things it wanted to do were apparent, but clearly, they weren't able to reach that level until the breakout hit sequel.

2 Shadow Hearts

The Dark and the Ugly

Shadow Hearts is one of the more unique JRPGs out there, but in terms of ambition, it's a game series that I believe was badly held back by the PS2. Sadly, that is where this series would end, and it all started with the first game, which is a dark and dreary journey that feels big in its scope but small in its execution. It's a game with Final Fantasy ambition, but stuck on a platform that, unless you had Square Enix's budget, you weren't going to get the most juice out of it.

Shadow Hearts felt distinctly in that spot. It felt like a PS1 game in many ways, from the graphics to the size of the environments. It felt constrained. The PS3 was honestly starved for JRPGs, and Shadow Hearts could've really flourished with a more powerful system to let the unique and creepy world really feel like something as big and terrifying as it was meant to be.

1 Final Fantasy VII Remake

Before the True Next Gen

Final Fantasy VII Remake was an amazing achievement for the series, but the fact that it was limited to the PS4 technology during development is felt in some pretty big ways. Namely, the scale of Midgar. While it's expanded on here compared to the original, of course, it felt like it should've been packed with way more to do and made to feel much more lively than it was. It's easy to see the ambition realized here with what became of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, as the scale of the two games is pretty much night and day.

But with Final Fantasy VII Remake, it felt like their ambition couldn't possibly be realized on the PS4, especially with the level of graphics they decided to go with. The result was just something that felt really small, being stretched as thinly as possible instead of something that should've felt more like, say, Cyberpunk 2077's Night City instead.