With Fairy Tail having recently come out to surprisingly decent reviews, alongside Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot getting the same thing, anime RPGs have done pretty well for themselves lately. Typically, we’ve seen anime games lean more in the direction of musou titles or fighting games, but that doesn’t mean anime is new to the realm of RPGs. No, there have been almost as many RPGs for anime series as there have been fighting games, going back across multiple systems and generations.
For this list, we’re looking at anime which people either didn’t know had J-RPGs at all, or J-RPGs which have been long forgotten, never to be found except for people who spend too much time researching anime on wikis.
10 SAILOR MOON
Sailor Moon: Another Story launched on the Super Famicom in 1995. The game allowed players to pick between either the Inner Senshi or the Outer Senshi, and had a complete story where players were protecting the city from recently revived villains that came back courtesy of the sorceress Apsu.
Particularly notable about this game is that it had two completely different endings based on whether players were capable of beating the final boss or not.
9 FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST
The original Fullmetal Alchemist anime series actually got a full trilogy of video games for the PlayStation 2. The three games were action RPGs, and began with a game where the protagonists wind up meeting a young woman in a strange land and learning where chimeras come from.
The first two games saw the player only control Ed while Al worked as a companion. But because of the first two games’ poor sales, the third title never got translated.
8 DRAGON BALL Z
Everyone’s aware of Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, but this wasn’t the first time Dragon Ball Z leaned in the direction of being an RPG. It’s been developed with strong RPG elements on multiple systems. There’s the Legacy of Goku series releasing on the Game Boy Advance, the Attack of the Saiyans game on the Nintendo DS, and more.
In the early 90’s, Bandai also created a trilogy of RPGs that covered the first three sagas of the Dragon Ball Z storyline, mixing RPG mechanics with card based systems.
7 MAGIC KNIGHT RAYEARTH
Developed by Sega, this game based on the popular 90’s fantasy-mecha anime was the last title made for the Sega Saturn in America. The storyline loosely adapts the first story arc of the anime, seeing the main characters pulled into a new world and told they have to save the world’s Pillar to return home.
Magic Knight Rayearth is an action-RPG that allowed the player to swap between characters at any time, with all three girls having their own skills to make them unique.
6 INUYASHA
Inuyasha wound up with a pair of RPGs developed for it. In 2004, we got Inuyasha: Secret of the Cursed Mask, which was basically a game where the player could go back in time like Kagome and wind up working with the Inuyasha crew.
Then later, an English-only RPG known as Inuyasha: Secret of the Divine Jewel was developed for the DS. This game featured a friend of Kagome’s traveling back in time and absorbing a jewel which gives her powers.
5 ZOIDS
A party-based RPG known as Zoids Saga came out for the Game Boy Advance back in 2001. The first game is set in between the two major anime series, Chaotic Century and New Century Zero. The player collects and builds Zoids in the game, using their abilities to defeat enemies.
The players hop around through time, getting to appear in different points in Zoids history. There are two other games as well, one set during Zoids Saga, and another within the Zoids: Fuzors world.
4 BLEACH
Bleach got a role-playing game on the Nintendo DS known as Bleach: The 3rd Phantom. A strategy RPG, the game featured sixty playable characters including multiple Shinigami Captain and even a few Visored members like Shinji and Hiyori.
The story involved playing as a young character in the Soul Society that’s already a Shinigami, and a quest to reunite with their family.
3 TENCHI MUYO
Tenchi Muyo’s game was...literally Tenchi Muyo: The Game. A turn-based title, Tenchi Muyo: The Game features all the main characters of the OVA universe (which means no Kiyone), allowing the player to control four of them at a time while battling monsters.
The storyline sees the cast track Sasami around from planet to planet after she gets kidnapped by a woman named Shitsuki, who seeks to test their strength.
2 YU YU HAKUSHO
In 2005, Yu Yu Hakusho: Tournament Tactics released for the Game Boy Advance. It was a tactical RPG where the player could control five different characters and have them fight against enemies.
Players were given access to Team Urameshi as well as some of the characters befriended during the tournament. Interestingly, there were also a number of different mission objectives in the game, which was meant to add some kind of variety to the story.
1 MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM
A turn-based RPG was introduced to the world of Mobile Suit Gundam when MS Saga: A New Dawn, launched in 2005 for the PS2. The lead was a character who’s life was ruined by mobile suits, and over the game he builds up a friend group to help him take down the army that attacked his home.
What was different about this game is it allowed the player to customize any one base mobile suit with the parts of other mecha from both Universal Century and some of it’s spin-off universes, offering dozens of mobile suits.