That carries with it the brand new problem of playing the Golden version of the game, which sucks. Everything new they put in actively spits on any good they did in the original version, ESPECIALLY with Marie. Honestly, all Persona 4 media besides the original game and the fighting games if you NEVER, NEVER, EVER tough the story modes is disposable or outright insulting, and it’s looking like P5 is going to get the exact same treatment.
Huh, shit. I’ve been feeling the urge to replay P4 lately, and planned on picking up a Vita and a copy of Golden since my old PS2 is very much broken at this point. Is it bad enough that I ought to just find another PS2 on eBay instead?
Yes.
I could write a thesis paper on how god awful the P4 subseries ended up becoming, dead serious.
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I personally had a great deal of fun with Golden, but it was my first time playing anything P4 related. I’m assuming that most of my issues with it (mostly the handling of Kanji and Naoto, plus how gross Yosuke can be) were also present in the vanilla version. But I can also see where the added content and events may introduce more problematically heteronormative stuff that wasn’t in the main game.
A Vita is a big investment but I ended up loving mine and use it fairly often!
Mass Effect is real good and has all kind of romances.
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Seconding a few, adding a few:
The two last Shadowrun Return games for sure; Dragon Fall and Hong Kong. The first one is not bad, at all, it is just Not As Good ™.
Divine Divinity Original Sin 2 and it’s predecessor.
Wasteland 2.
Dragon Age Origins (stay away from DA2, and do as you want with Inquisiiton)
Pillars of Eternity
Arcanum Of Steamworks and Magic Obscura
Mass Effect 1-3
And of course the extended remastered versions of Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate II.
All of these have difficulty sliders you can turn way down.
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Not sure if the Original Sin games are a good idea since in my experience they can be a bit tough, although I haven’t played the casual mode, so maybe it’s fine. (They are great games, FWIW.)
Wanted to also recommend Ni No Kuni 2. No real romances to speak of but otherwise it meets your criteria and is a real joy.
I also think Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is pretty great (it makes me sad that we’ll never get another game in that world) but I know some people won’t agree with me.
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As far as I remember at least the second game (DOS2) has a mode which basically is “story only”, where you tear thru everything with one leg, no arms and your head in a bucket.
The best thing about this is that it actually sounds like something that could plausibly happen in that game. 
Hey, maybe this is a good place to ask this question:
I’m thinking about playing through the Trails series over the summer, starting with Trails in the Sky. How anime-ass are these games exactly? I don’t mind over-the-top bullshit but I could do without the rampant misogyny, etc that tends to go with some of thems. The games seem sort of cutesy at first glance so I’m hoping I won’t have to worry about that sort of thing but don’t want to commit dozens of hours if they go that route.
Please give me good news. I wanna JRPG.
They’re very much anime ass anime games but not really in the ways you’re worried about. The female characters are well-written and competent characters with varied roles (instead of just being stuck as the healer), and there’s not much fan service to speak of. It’s not like super woke but it’s better than most other anime ass animes.
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Exactly what I was hoping to hear. Thank you!
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I’ve always been interested in Pillars of Eternity, even more so now with Pillars of Eternity 2 on the horizon.
Can anyone recommend the first game, and maybe offer some lazy comparisons for it? For context, I loved Divinity Original Sin, Fallout, Spiderweb Software games, all kinds of party-based RPGs and JRPGs really.
Pillars is explicitly a throwback to old Infinity Engine games, so the Baldur’s Gates and Icewind Dales. Most modern comparison would be Dragon Age: Origins but much more complicated combat and character development, way less voice acting, much dryer and arguably darker story, etc. Got six-member parties, eleven character classes, and real-time-with-pause combat. It’s a great game, if you liked all those games you listed, there’s a good chance you’ll dig it.
That said, at this point I’d probably just skip straight to the sequel, which comes out tomorrow. By all accounts, and from what I’ve played in betas and seen in streams, it’s better in just about every way. Plus, all dialogue is fully voiced, if that matters to you.
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Pillars of Eternity leans HEAVILY on the heritage of the Baldur’s Gate games. If you liked those, there’s a fair chance you’ll like this one. I would say the caveats to that are that PoE is slower and yet feels like a smaller world, deserves a CW (e.g. sexual assault references in the main quest line), and IMO did not have nearly as memorable characters.
I would say if you haven’t already played Baldur’s Gate II, go play that first, as it’s a better realized and better written game.
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There’s a few anime ass things in Trails in the Sky that were a bit problematic, mostly when it comes to using sexuality as a punchline. It’s not particularly egregious or anything, but just gets a bit repetitive at times when one queer-coded male character hints at how cute he thinks another male character is and everyone else acts a bit grossed out. There’s also one woman who has a more sexualized design and is a bit of a dominatrix type character. But even with the tropey elements, they luckily have way more depth that make them really likable despite a few poor-taste jokes.
Overall, the series avoids a lot of the pitfalls that other anime-adjacent games fall into and has a good diverse cast of interesting female characters, with the main protagonist being particularly great. Definitely worth playing!
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Well, you have just finished Dragon Age 2 then I will suggest Path Of Exile and Baldur’s Gate II both are the Best RPG games.
