Summary
There’s nothing better than sitting down with a buddy or two and going to town on an action RPG.Diablo 4is a recent example wherein players can go on adventures together to farm for loot and EXP. There are Japanese games that do co-op well too, but there’s more than one way to engage in a game than just co-op.
Multiplayer modes can include versusmodes with mini-games, building opportunities, trading systems, and on it goes. Let’s take a look at some great Japanese RPGs on a plethora of consoles that have well-known and more obscure multiplayer mechanics including but not limited to co-op.
Boktai: The Sun is in Your Handis one of the wildest games on the GBA.Players hunt vampiresby charging their solar-powered gun with the actual sun via a solar panel on the back of the cartridge. It’s a top-down action game mixed with some stealth and RPG elements that increase as the series goes on.
There are two multiplayer components to the game too. Players can trade items or they can battle up to four in arenas wherein they have to get the most points. It’s kind of likeBombermanwhich makes sense since Konami eventually absorbed Hudson as a company.
Castlevania: Portrait of Ruinwas the second game on the DS in the series which twisted the gameplay ever so slightly. Instead of controlling one character, players could swap between Jonathan and Charlotte on the fly to attack enemies or solve puzzles. There were also two multiplayer features added to the game the first of which was a shop to buy and sell items from another player. In Boss Rush, players could co-op with a friend on bosses in the game which was not as good as true campaign co-op but it was still a nice touch.
Final Fantasy 15is one of the entries in the seriesthat has the most tie-ins close to its initial release. There was a CG movie, anime shorts, mobile games, a VR fishing game, DLC, and constant updates. One update included a multiplayer mode calledComrades. Players could create their own heroes and go on small missions with friends to fight hordes of enemies or big bosses.
It was like a more bite-sizedMonster Hunterexperience but it’s not as hard. Eventually, Square Enix splitComradesfrom the main game menu and made it a free-to-play game that anyone could download which was a smart decision.
Tales of the Abysswas one of the many entries in the seriesthat hit the PS2. The game stars Luke and a plucky band of misfits all trying to help save the world in a standard RPG plot. The Tales of series was forward-thinking when it came to the action-based battle system but the first few entries still included random encounters.
In this PS2 era, players could see enemies in dungeons and on the world map. In teams of four, players could swap between characters and duke it out in mini arenas during combat. Also, players can assign manual control to their AI party members and allow a friend to join for co-op but in battles only. This is how co-op works in mostTales ofgames, which is odd but the option is appreciated.
Dragon Quest Builders 2improved a lot over the original like the progression system not resetting levels all of the time. It also featured a multiplayer mode wherein players could travel to a specific island outside of the story area and build structures with friends. It was themostMinecraft-heavy thingin the game besides the overall look of everything.
It was a welcomed addition so that players could see what others were building too similar to theAnimal Crossinggames. The only trouble was that it took a while to unlock this island and some fans would have liked co-op during the story, but it was a nice gesture.
The Last Storywas an action RPG made by Mistwalker which was started by thecreator ofFinal Fantasy, Hironobu Sakaguchi, that he formed after leaving Square Enix. It was one of the last big RPGs released on the Wii and it had two impressive multiplayer modes detached from the main campaign. Players could compete online with teams formed with characters from the game.
The winning team could get rewards to take back into the campaign and the other multiplayer feature was cooler as it was set up to like a Boss Rush mode. Players could co-op with others online to defeat bosses and win rewards. Both modes were fun but they were held back by the Wii which didn’t have the best online functionality even compared to its portable contemporary, the DS.
Samurai Warriors 2was the second game in the series featuring hack-and-slash gameplay across a wide variety of maps in feudal Japan. Players could play co-op with a partner to get through missions faster which is one of the more iconic things in all of the Musou games.
Besides co-op, there was also a mini-game that fans got wildly addicted to: Sugoroku. Sugoroku was like Monopoly wherein up to four players could compete in a board game to capture flags, property, and money. Landing on certain spaces would result in challenges which led to some versus matches. It may seem silly, but it was a really good mode that fans have wanted to see return to the series for quite some time.
Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Dayswas a prequel that bridged the gap betweenKingdom Hearts: Chain of MemoriesandKingdom Hearts 2. It starred Roxas, Sora’s Nobody, when he was at his peakin Organization 13. Players controlled him as he visited various Disney worlds, carrying on smaller missions for his brethren. Enemies appeared in real-time which could be dealt with or ignored if players wanted to run.
Online or in wireless mode, players could team up with three other people for a four-player co-op session. In this mode, they could inhabit other characters like Axel and Larxene which varied up the action-based gameplay a bit thanks to their distinct weapons. The main game is fine, but the multiplayer is where this game sang or it did at least for Organization 13 fans.
