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Adult casts in (J)RPGs, a list
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this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
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I enjoyed The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky, in large part because most of the party members are adults. Exceptions are the two protagonists, a princess (whose station more or less demands she act above her age), and a pre-teen girl whose main character trait is being an engineering assistant to an inventor in a factory town.
Meanwhile, the fun bits of the adult party members included seeing them get drunk at inopportune times, attempt to impart their adult wisdom on the two leads, hit on random strangers or each other, and occasionally be even more childish than the kids they're accompanying. It felt like a good group.
I played some of the games that came afterward, starting with the Crossbell games and continuing with Trails of Cold Steel, and a significant reason I stopped was that the WHOLE cast was school-age kids, to the point that it really started feeling like modern anime, and not in a good way.
The high school shift is certainly jarring coming from a team of professionals in the Crossbell games, though at least it does shift to a mixed focus in Cold Steel 3 and 4, and then back to professionals in Reverie.
Thank you! Indeed, Trails in the Sky has been on my backlog for a while and for good reason, from what I hear. I remember looking at screenshots for the subsequent series like Trails of Cold Steel and generally it was a turnoff starting from the art/design direction.
In this regard, I think that Persona 5's success in recent years is both a blessing and a curse: blessing, because it showed how JRPGs don't have to be action oriented to be beautiful; curse because Atlus surely realized, already back with Persona 4, that the high school setting somehow seemed successful, thus somehow suggesting to the industry that it is a good model to follow.
Oh, I just looked at a wiki for the upcoming game (already out in JP) Trails Through Daybreak and it seems like the cast is at least balanced between teenagers and adults! I'm more than okay with this if written nicely and without creepy/disturbing tropes.
I haven’t followed that one so much; seeing a blue-haired male lead using a sword, and no sign they were moving away from dedicated “relationship events”, overall didn’t seem like the direction I wanted. I’m not quite sure the age of characters was my only issue with the series.