While it's not an rpg I feel like before your eyes is a wonderful game that is insightful and wonderful.
If you want an rpg you should play divinity original sin 2! It's combat is super in-depth and it's characters well thought out, you'll definitely get alot of time out of it.
Eastward is a game I've barely started playing but the style is heavily inspired by earthbound, has loads of character which I think you'll enjoy.
You don't have to sub unless you want to. I hope you enjoy!
If you're fine with Tactics RPGs, the Fire Emblem series is a good place to start.
Fire Emblem Awakening and (from what I heard) the newest Fire Emblem Engage are good introductions to the series. If you want more focus/emphasis on the story, there's Fire Emblem Three Houses (with 3 lengthy story routes) and Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia (my personal favourite for the tragic story for one of its villains, but the maps/battles are not the most fun to get through).
There's also the classics like Tactics Ogre (which has a recent update: Reborn) and Final Fantasy Tactics, which people praise for their stories, but I ended up not completing them because I found the battles a little too hard and would have to grind a lot, which takes up a lot of time that I'm not willing to spend.
Also, no need a sub for me.
Hmm, one game that comes to mind would be Persona 5. I really liked the personalities and banter between the characters 
The story also has a lot of interesting elements to it, and the gameplay is pretty fun 
Oh, I also think Fire Emblem Conquest and Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia would be good since the story is pretty good and there are a lot of likable characters
Sub only if actually want to read my comic (I don't really do sub for sub, please feel no obligation).
Legend of Dragoons (a little silly at times, but fun to play) inspired a lot of my own stuff XD
I second FFVII, but having just played the first installment of FFVII Remake 1) has a major glitch late in the game that took tons of work and a FAN coding download to get around. I was livid. I need to get back to square about my gripe 2) relies a bit too much on our nostalgia and I feel kinda ruins the main villain and 3) Isn't even a complete game and is still like $50 Remember when you could buy a game and you had the whole game? Not anymore! Thank god for Dragon Quest XI! I'm actually getting my money's worth 4) Looks like it's going to change the story and possibly take a very important plot twist out (don't know, but it looks that way)...I was so bummed when I got done playing it, after being so hyped and finding it actually fun with pretty good banter and dialogue. Like they did so much right. I'll probably still play the next installment when they get it done, becuase I want to see where they're going. If you're new to it, it probably won't bother you...but some of it also may not make sense o_O
Arafel (just a cheap fun indie rpg in the style of Jrpgs)
Chrono Cross. I'm gonna take heat for this maybe, but I liked it. Different from Chrono Trigger, though same series. They aren't really related much from what I could tell.
FFIX. I loved this game. Dagger is great, Zydaine is great. Freya is great. Vivi adorable. Just a really fun game with great graphics and game play. The story is also really good. I should just add FFVI, too.
Shadow Hearts II (the first one hits kinda different playing it as an adult, and while it's probably better to play it first, the main character is kind of a jerk in the first game, and a lot less brash in the second. But it's a jrpg from an earlier time, soo...you're still gonna find some tropes XD I can play around it).
I also had fun with the two first Kingdom Hearts games. I didn't play the later ones or the ones that were on different systems cause I didn't have those systems. They are a little silly, but they are fun. I don't like Disney much these days, but I hear all my peers and younger kids still love them, so if that's you, this is gonna give you a ton of fun. Also lots of Final Fantasy crossovers.
It's been mentioned, but Dragon Quest XI. I'm well into the game and it is everything I expect from a jrpg.
Secret of Mana (and Legend of Mana is fun, too). It's a classic. Really fun game.
Last one. Edge of Eternity. Caveat: this was an indie project, and the game felt to me to end abruptly, but the indie Canadian company is planning on having more/sequel/etc. This is less excusable to me than Final Fantasy Remake, because they're not a massive company and I think, if I'm no mistaken, they ran a Kickstarter or some kind of crowdfunding in order to make this game. And I had a lot of fun playing this game. It's gorgeous, a bit funny, but also has some stakes. I like it.
All these games have, in my opinion, pretty good stories that in part inspires me when I'm demotivated. And like Legend of Dragoons legit was a major inspiration for making a comic, as was FFVII.
Good luck, and happy gaming!
I'm not really into RPGs, but some games that I personally find incredibly inspiring are:
the Stanley Parable: A satire of video games and an interrogation on the concept of choice, very good voice acting, sound design and art design.
INSIDE: a hauntingly beautiful game about a boy sinking further and further into the dystopia he lives in. It has so many different places in the world and all of them are beautiful and strange. It's also very morbid and a little gross.
Monolight: a game with cool lore, an interesting acromatic style. Really fun mechanics. You are a traveler looking for the last of a species in a world of a darkness that wants to kill you.
Purrgatory: you are an amnesiac in the cat-themed first circle of hell with a bunch of other weirdos, you help them though their different problems, learn about yourself and escape hell. Idk I just think it's a nice cozy experience, an interesting ms paint kinda style. It's good.
Okay, this one is a doozy, but if you want the single best videogame franchise of all time, my recommendation goes to the 'Kiseki' or 'Trails' series, depending on how weebish you want to be about your naming conventions.
It's a tough one to recommend to newcomers considering it is currently 11 games long with the 12th slated to release sometime this year, and every single entry is a 40+ hour full length JRPG, but I can not recommend a better series for JRPG fans, especially if you enjoy good worldbuilding.
Honestly, though, just start with 'The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky', which is available on Steam for 20 bucks. If you play the first few hours and enjoy it, I would HIGHLY recommend going ahead and buying Trails in the Sky Second Chapter: They were originally supposed to be just one game but it grew so big over development that they had to split it into 2, and the first one leaves off on a big cliffhanger.
Those two games together make for a really solid story all on their own, and can be played entirely independently of everything else.
If you don't like them very much, you can just leave off here and ignore the essay I've written below without any trouble.
If, however, you really like those games, then you can continue with Trails in the Sky the 3rd, which acts as a sort of epilogue to the first 2 games while also setting up a ton of things for the future of the franchise.
After that, Trails from Zero and Trails to Azure form a duology that CAN be played independently, but a lot of characters and plot points from the first 3 games come up and add extra weight to everything. Then there's Trails of Cold Steel 1-4, which are all one ongoing storyline that is pretty independent and standalone for the first 2 games, but then 3 and 4 culminate EVERYTHING from the entire franchise together and lose a lot of impact if you play them independently.
Finally there's Trails into Reverie, which hasn't officially released in english yet but will be out by the time you play the rest of the series, which acts as an epilogue to the whole Cold Steel arc in the same way Sky 3rd did for the first two games.
And if you finish playing all of those (which I haven't even done yet), then there's the as-of-yet-unnamed-in-english Kuro no Kiseki, which starts a whole new story arc in a new part of the continent that hasn't been explored very much yet, with Kuro no Kiseki 2 coming out soon.
Overall, the games are pretty slow burns: It's like 30 hours of chill, fairly low-key adventure/slice-of-life story that just lets you get to know the world and sets up this massive chain of dominoes in the background, then 10 hours of explosive action as everything all comes together in one enormous avalanche. If you don't mind how slow-paced the first 2/3rds to 3/4ths of the games are, then the last 1/3rd to 1/4th is an absolutely incredible payoff to that buildup.
The truly awe-inspiring thing about them is that all of those games listed above take place in the same world, with each arc being set in a different country on the same continent, over the course of about a decade so far: the political relationships, magical conspiracy plots, and technological advancements introduced in each game affect subsequent ones. There are moments in the Cold Steel games where they reference 'the orbal shutdown event' in Liberl as an offhanded 'oh yeah I saw a news story about that a few years back', but if you've played Trails in the Sky, then you know that 'the orbal shutdown event' was actually [big spoilers] that acted as the main climax of that series.
The amount of moving parts and different parties/factions that are active, remain consistent, and get thoroughly fleshed out from game to game is truly astounding and has made me more invested in the world of the Kiseki franchise than in any other game series I've ever played.
Oh that's a good question because there are so many types of JRPGs out there.
I think Final Fantasy 10 is a solid winner, my favorite Final Fantasy, actually. The music is great, the plot is kinda weird but not so odd it loses you, it's got one of the better motivated villains in a Final Fantasy. I liked this one a lot. My second favorite Final Fantasy is 8 actually, because it was trying to reach this scope that could have nailed it if it were made in a different time with better video game tech, IMO. Hoping one day they'll give 8 the FF7 remake treatment.
I also recommend the Xenoblade series, I'm currently going through 3 and it has been wonderful. It really fixed problems the gameplay had in earlier xeno-gmes, it has a ton of storylines going through it, it's complicated, but not so complicated you feel like wtf is going on. Like, it's been a really great time.
And ones that time forgot but look like they were pretty good (although very 90's, so expect that type of gameplay) is Parasite Eve, which is like a horror game with some wild twists. and if you want something younger, Super Mario RPG and Megaman Legends, which is just a fun time and isn't a brilliantly deep plot or anything, but so many artists were inspired by the art styles of both of these, I feel like I need to bring them up.
Adding onto this, as a long-time Fire Emblem fan, there's a distinct 'split' from before and after Awakening.
I'm personally a bigger fan of the old games, which are extremely low-fantasy: there's magic and dragons and stuff omnipresent throughout the whole story, but they're very mundane: Mages shoot fireballs in the same way archers shoot arrows, it's very pragmatic and down to earth. The Pegasi and Wyverns are animals to be tamed and ridden into battle the same way horses are. Very little about the world is truly fantastical, and the majority of the actual plot you experience is political in nature: Dukes and Nobles vying over territory, assassinations setting off wars between rival nations, etc. etc., with a heavy dose of 'D&D campaign finale' coming out near the end, usually a necromancer or some such trying to resurrect an ancient evil to take over the world, and it's revealed the political plot was due to their machinations behind the scenes this whole time.
All 6 of the first games in the series were Japan only (though fan-patches exist), while Fire Emblem 7, 8, 9 and 10 were properly released in the US, and fall more into this category (first two are GBA titles, while 9 is Gamecube and 10 is Wii), with 8 being the most 'fantasy' of them by virtue of the fact that the main story revolves around the mystery of monsters attacking human towns in a decidedly monster-less medieval world.
11 and 12 were remakes of old games and don't get talked about much, and then 13 (Awakening) happened
Awakening is a pretty good game on its own, but it focused very heavily on the pairings between your units: you've always been able to get 'support' conversations between units who spend time on the battlefield together, and this often resulted in romantic pairings that would get mentioned at the end of the game.
Awakening enhanced this element to the point that your units would pair up and create children together who would then join in your army.
Via time travel.
Ever since Awakening, the games have been significantly more high-fantasy, with time travel, pocket dimensions, crazy monsters all over the place, and a bajillion different kinds of magic swords and legendary weapons. They've also gotten a little more... uh... how do you say... Anime? Three Houses introduces a persona-esque school setting, the character designs are more elaborate and flashy, and there's just generally more 'power of friendship saves the world' vibes from the franchise.
Neither of these 'eras' of fire emblem are better or worse, it all comes down to personal preference. Like I said above, I prefer the old games, but Awakening brought in a MASSIVE new fanbase who specifically prefer the stylistic trappings of the newer ones. Also there's some variance: Three Houses is slightly more grounded than Awakening, Fates, or Engage, and Shadows of Valentia is another remake of an old game that is far more grounded and realistic than its contemporaries, so it's not a HARD divide between 'old fire emblem' and 'new fire emblem', but a general trend ever since Awakening blew up.
I mostly wanted to bring it up because in the context of getting inspiration for stories, there's very, VERY different things to get from different fire emblem games, and one might serve better than the other depending on your tastes and what kind of stories you like to create.
I think all my favorite Final Fantasy were recommended, I saw Persona 3 and 5 being recommended, so I will add Persona 4 to this list for sure. Also Breath of Fire III and IV 
@DNoble Appreciate what you added for Fire Emblem! You said it better than I ever could!
Just to add my experience with Fire Emblem, Awakening was my introduction to the franchise, and it prompted me to try FE 7 & 8 for the GBA and then the rest was history with me playing the subsequent games (after Awakening) and the mobile gacha game (which I still play to this day). I hope that the earlier games get remakes so that I get to experience them without having to rely on emulation.
But yeah, I recommend Fire Emblem to anyone who's curious to try it out!
High five to fellow Trails fans in this thread! 
From the same company, there's also the Ys series which , while not generally as plot driven as the Trails series, I'd still recommend. They're also a bit more standalone, and you don't really have to play them in order (except Ys II, which needs to be played after Ys I to make sense :P) But if you don't wanna go through the whole series, my top recommendations would be Ys Origins (my fav story) and Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana (my fav worldbuilding, and would probably be my fav story if the beginning wasn't so darned slow (and not in a good way like Trails in the Sky FC XD))
Not technically made in Japan, but OMORI is also a game I like and recommend that's in a JRPG style 
EDIT: Also, Nayuta no Kiseki! Not technically part of the Trails/Kiseki continuity despite its name, but again, I liked the worldbuilding
No sub needed. I recommend The World Ends with You and (Neo). I also recommend the Persona, and YS series. Okami there is also Okami Den, Tales of Series I haven't played some of the newer ones.
I'm just here for the recs, no need for you to sub to me unless you want to. My top JRPG recommendations are:
Final Fantasy 7
Final Fantasy 9
Earthbound
Chrono Trigger
And do not, I repeat do not play the FF7 Remake before you play the original. You NEED the context of the original to appreciate the remake fully.
Also just here to recommend 
Persona series: I've only played 3 and 4, but heard 5 is good too, definitely loved the story and building Social Links.
Ys series: Memories of Celceta is pretty good. Pretty memorable world-building and the story's got a bit of a twist near the end.
Shin Megami Tensei V: From the same developer as the Persona series--story is somewhat more serious and gritty, also much more combat-focused.
Fire Emblem: Three Houses: More strategy-focused, story-wise they can branch out to multiple endings depending on the choices you make. Definitely recommend.
NieR: Haven't played it yet, but I have heard plenty of positive things about it from my friends, particularly about their impressive worldbuilding and lore.
Tales of...(Abyss, Bezeria, Xilia, Arise, symphonia)
Persona 5
Dragon ball (Xenoverse, kakorot)
Final Fantasy 15
Nier automota
Xenoblade (1, 2, 3)
closed Mar 4, '23
