I’m not a big fan of Japanese RPGs, I generally find that the story line is very lineal, predictable and cheesy, the battles are generally quite easy and don’t require much thinking outside of knowing when to heal and weather or not to use magic or a sword.

Probable the only Japanese RPG that I like is Legend of Dragoon(LoD). Although it has the standard cliché story line, is completely lineal and has power ranger like characters (the character aligned with fire whares red armour, the water character whares blue etc) the combat is actually challenging.

The best thing about combat is the addition system. In LoD you don’t simply attack, you have combo system where you have to press “x” (or “o” if the enemy attempts to counter) in a fast sequence in order to successfully complete the combo. Each character has a fair number of additions that become available as you progress through the game, the most additions obtained later in the game being more power but hard to complete successfully.

This simple change of the standard Japanese RPG combat system keeps you entertained in combat that other wise becomes repetitive, trying to complete these additions require a lot of consternation so if you want to win you need to keep focus on the game.