The late ’90s were the era when RPGs finally gained mainstream attention, but plenty of amazing games slipped under the radar. Despite some games, like Bahamut Lagoon, being near-perfect titles, it would take time for the audience to appreciate them.
Games like Final Fantasy 7 on the PS1 and Pokémon Red & Blue on the Game Boy proved JRPGs could be a hit on consoles, and Baldur’s Gate was the first truly great Dungeons & Dragons adaptation on PC. Even though many ’90s RPGs were mainstream, there was only so much of the audience’s attention to go around, and titles with the potential to be classics failed to leave a mark.
Planescape: Torment Stood in Baldur’s Gate’s Shadow
The original Baldur’s Gate was a landmark title for adapting the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules to a computer game, leading to Baldur’s Gate 2: Shadows of Amn, one of the all-time greats of the genre. Developer Black Isle Studios worked on more games than just the Baldur’s Gate franchise, including Planescape: Torment, another Dungeons & Dragons title that became a beloved cult classic.
Planescape: Torment is set in the Planescape Dungeons & Dragons setting, which acts as the connecting tissue of the multiverse, all centered around Sigil, the city at the center of reality. The protagonist of Planescape: Torment is The Nameless One, an immortal amnesiac who wakes up on a slab in a morgue. They must navigate the strange city of Sigil to reclaim their memories.
It’s likely that the strange setting of Planescape: Torment put a lot of people off, as it’s not the standard fantasy fare that Dungeons & Dragons fans were used to. Those willing to explore Sigil and chat with its inhabitants would experience one of the best stories ever put in a CRPG, with a game that’s in dire need of a remake.
Bahamut Lagoon Was Robbed of the Final Fantasy Name
The SNES had many incredible JRPGs that never launched outside of Japan, thanks to the belief that they wouldn’t sell well in Europe and North America. One title that fell victim to this line of thinking was Bahamut Lagoon, which has yet to receive a remake or remaster and remains locked to the SNES.
Originally planned to be called Final Fantasy Tactics, Bahamut Lagoon is a strategy RPG set in a world consisting of sky islands above an endless abyss. The islands have their own nations, with the Granbelos Empire invading the other lands in a bid to control the known world. The player controls the rebellion, which is aided by powerful dragons that fight alongside them in combat.
Bahamut Lagoon has gorgeous artwork, an amazing soundtrack, an engaging story, and one of the best combat systems in a strategy RPG. The best aspect of the game is the ability to change the dragons via feeding them items, evolving them into more powerful or grotesque forms, and unleashing them upon the enemy, a feature that hit the market a few weeks before the launch of Pokémon Red & Green.
Dragon Warrior Monsters Was Defeated By Pokémon
Enix had concerns with bringing Dragon Quest games overseas, after the disastrous release of the first four entries on the NES. The popularity of Pokémon couldn’t be ignored, however, and Enix decided to use its own roster of Akira Toriyama-designed creatures as the basis for a monster-collecting RPG of its own, even releasing it in Europe and North America.
Dragon Warrior Monsters stars Terry and Milly from Dragon Quest 6: Realms of Revelation, as they go on an adventure into a realm of dreams. Milly is captured, and to free her, Terry has to gather a squad of creatures and win the Monster Trainer’s Starry Night Tournament, using their powers to overcome enemies in battle.
There’s a strong argument to be made for Dragon Warrior Monsters being a better RPG than Pokémon Red & Blue. The randomized dungeons mean there’s way more content for multiple playthroughs, while the hub town of Great Tree expands over the course of the story, opening up secret monster lairs to explore. Dragon Quest Monsters would spin off into its own franchise, but the first entry still holds up to this day, as even the Game Boy’s weak hardware couldn’t diminish the quality of Toriyama’s monster designs.
Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers Finally Got Its Due On the Nintendo 3DS
Atlus earned an international fanbase during the PlayStation 2 era, but it also attempted to win over American gamers on the original PlayStation with localizations of Revelations: Persona and Persona 2: Eternal Punishment. It’s a shame these titles didn’t become hits, as some of the other amazing Atlus games of the ’90s didn’t make it over, like Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers.
Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers mixes ’90s cyberpunk visions of the Internet with gods and monsters from mythology, as the player gains the ability to bind spirits to their will, like in the Shin Megami Tensei games. The protagonist is a member of a hacking group investigating a VR Internet system that has become the home of a cult known as the Phantom Society, which wants to use the Internet to steal the souls of those who enter it, kind of like Twitter/X does now.
Thankfully, Atlus fans would get to experience an English version of Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers in the 2010s, as it received a remaster on the Nintendo 3DS, improving the visuals and adding new story content. This is considered the definitive way to play the game and is one of the best Nintendo 3DS RPGs ever made.
Breath of Fire 3 Is the Unsung Classic of the PS1 JRPG Library
The PlayStation had many incredible JRPGs developed by Squaresoft, to the point where anything that lacked the Final Fantasy name struggled to get attention. This is a huge shame, as companies like Enix, Atlus, Konami, and Capcom were producing bangers during the ’90s, none more so than Breath of Fire 3.
The protagonist of Breath of Fire 3 starts as a baby dragon, who transforms into a human upon being knocked unconscious. They’re soon drafted into a ragtag group of thieves, using their draconic powers to aid the group in their robberies. As this is a ’90s JRPG, the story soon becomes one of angelic goddesses and the encroaching apocalypse, with the player developing even more powerful dragon forms on the way.
Like Final Fantasy 7, Breath of Fire 3 is packed with side activities and minigames to complete, which can distract from its epic, world-spanning storyline. The roster of party members is full of unforgettable characters with awesome designs, filling the player with a desire to see whether they can earn a happy ending in a world where the divine is working against them.
Shadowrun Captured Cyberpunk Long Before CD Projekt Red
The SNES had a killer row of classic JRPGs, but the same isn’t true for RPGs made elsewhere in the world. In the ’90s, the PC and home computer market was the home of the RPG, meaning consoles were either ignored or received inferior ports when it came to bringing fantasy or sci-fi adventures to the systems.
Shadowrun on the SNES was a major exception to the rule, being an adaptation of the tabletop game of the same name, where fantasy creatures appear in a cyberpunk world, meaning magic-using elves battled orcs with shotguns. The story of Shadowrun follows Jake Armitage, who wakes up in the morgue with a bomb installed in his head, and quickly gets caught up in the machinations of a dragon.
Shadowrun can be a brutally difficult game at times, even more so for the people who played it back in the ’90s and didn’t have a guide to help them. Those who get to grips with its systems will find a rewarding RPG with a massive world to explore and an epic story to tell, especially for the console it appears on. Anyone bumping their head during the opening hours should grit it out with a guide, as once the player unlocks party members, the experience becomes much smoother.
Moon: Remix RPG Adventure Was Undertale’s Inspiration
The PlayStation was a time of experimentation for the video game medium, as the greater storage capacity and relatively cheap cost of CD-ROMs meant that many of the barriers of the cartridge era were gone. Japan was especially fond of its weird games during this time period, with LSD: Dream Emulator and Baroque finding infamy years later, when word of their strangeness hit the Internet.
One PlayStation earned itself the attention of the gaming world in 2017, when Undertale/Deltarune creator Toby Fox tweeted about a title called Moon: Remix RPG Adventure. Fox called Moon a direct inspiration for Undertale, as it was an RPG where the player fixed a world that a traditional JRPG hero was breaking. Moon was a meta commentary on video games and the violence players gleefully engage in, with a concept that put it decades ahead of its time.
Moon: Remix RPG Adventure never received an English localization in its day, but the attention the game received from Toby Fox led to a modern remaster on PC, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch in the 2020s. This means that modern gamers can finally play Moon for themselves in English and experience one of the PlayStation’s best titles, which was ignored for too long.
Planescape: Torment
- Released
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December 12, 1999
- ESRB
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t
- Developer(s)
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Black Isle Studios
- Publisher(s)
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Interplay
- Engine
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Infinity Engine