20 May 2026·7 min read·By Zoe Hartwell

8 SNES JRPGs to Avoid, According to a 250-JRPG Veteran

8 SNES JRPGs to skip, per a 250-JRPG veteran. Paladin's Quest, The 7th Saga, and more made the cut – here's why.

8 SNES JRPGs a Veteran Says to Avoid

Murillo Zerbinatto has played more than 250 JRPGs. He has earned over 100 platinum trophies. He knows the genre's progression systems, its side content, its hidden collectibles, and its completionist challenges inside and out. So when he flags certain games as not worth your time, the warning carries real weight.

The SNES era was a golden age. Final Fantasy VI. Chrono Trigger. Dragon Quest. The console birthed Star Ocean and Tales of, two franchises that splintered from the same creative concept before going their separate ways. But the catalog was not all masterpieces. Some titles never captured the spotlight. And there is a reason for that. These 8 SNES JRPGs sit at the bottom of the pile, and according to Zerbinatto's firsthand experience, they belong there.

When the Catalog Hides Landmines

The SNES JRPG library is rightly celebrated. Yet tucked behind the genre-defining classics are games that ranged from forgettable to genuinely frustrating. Zerbinatto has sifted through them. What he found was not just bad games. He found games that were aggressively average, bafflingly complex, or broken by their own ambition. Let's break this down.

Blandness Is the Greater Sin

Paladin's Quest is exactly what you would expect from an SNES JRPG. Fixed story. Fixed cast. Linear narrative. Random turn-based combat. You earn money, buy stronger items, and repeat the loop. There is a bottle mechanic for healing. There are optional party members. That is about as adventurous as it gets.

It's aggressively average, which isn't a problem per se in life, but it can be if you're deciding which JRPG you're going to spend hours and hours on.

If Paladin's Quest was your first ever JRPG, you would probably have a blast. But for anyone with a backlog, aiming for the stars makes more sense than settling for the middle. The same logic applies to Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. Marketed as a simplified role-playing game, it was Final Fantasy for newbies. The Japanese title, Final Fantasy USA: Mystic Quest, says plenty about who those newbies were supposed to be. Zerbinatto calls it a game so forgettable and so un-Final Fantasy-like that you are better off investing time in any other spin-off in the series.

The Beginner's Trap

Both Paladin's Quest and Mystic Quest share a common flaw. They are not broken. They are not offensive. They simply offer nothing worth remembering, and in a world where handling a backlog has become an exact science, that is enough reason to skip them entirely.

When Ambition Outruns Execution

Inindo: Way of the Ninja begins innocently enough. A top-down view. Towns to visit. Items to buy. Party members to recruit. Turn-based battles. Then the second half arrives. Suddenly you are participating in full-scale tactical battles and negotiating with feudal lords to turn them against Oda. It sounds good on paper. It is clunky and tedious in practice. There is one detail worth pausing on: the game was so confusing that it made the case for why old games came with printed manuals.

Laplace no Ma never left Japan. The horror-tinged JRPG draws on Capcom's Sweet Home and sends a group of adventurers through the Weathertop mansion. Each class has a distinct mechanic. The Journalist uses a camera to photograph monsters and sell the pictures for money. The Detective wields firearms effective against corporeal enemies. The Medium uses magic against ghosts. The Scientist burns through batteries for tools. But the game does not explain any of this. You learn the hard way. Party members can only be swapped at the town Inn. Inventory space is severely limited. The ideas are genuinely creative. The execution is buried in bureaucracy.

Lost in Localization

Secret of the Stars brings up the rear of this group. Tecmo's offering features a dual-party progression system, a town management mechanic, and some of the most baffling design decisions Zerbinatto has encountered. The biggest offender was the localization, which was so hilariously bad that you almost cannot help but love it. Your fearless group, the Aqutallion, faces off against villains named Cat Boo and Badbad. You read that right. To be fair, the battle graphics were pretty good. That is the one thing to cherish here.

Repetition Wears Down the Player

Zerbinatto played The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang for the first time this year at a friend's request. He almost broke his controller. One boss fight featured a hitbox so miserable that he was left seething. The gameplay revolves around spinning a cape and throwing a hat to defeat enemies, earning experience and leveling up along the way. A magic and item system driven by expensive cards demands a bit of a grind. But the gameplay fails to motivate. It quickly becomes repetitive and uninteresting. Sometimes even the most sincere friendships come at too high a cost.

The Difficulty Spike Nobody Asked For

If you search for the hardest JRPGs out there, The 7th Saga will appear on the list. Zerbinatto got a game over in the first five battles. He had no clue how to avoid it other than restarting and trying again. The reason was simple: the US version received a major artificial bump in difficulty. Enemies hit much harder. Stat gains per level-up were reduced. Rival heroes, who scale with your progress, became inherently overpowered.

But that framing misses something. Zerbinatto does not actually think The 7th Saga is a bad game. Quite the contrary. The core design is ingenious. Seven heroes compete in what amounts to a battle royale for seven runes. You can ally with one rival while facing off against the others. A radar system helps you anticipate enemy encounters. The challenge is real, but it was never meant to be this punishing. He suggests seeking out a hacked version that restores the balance of the original Japanese release. That way you get the clever mechanics without the artificial frustration.

When a Remake Renders the Original Obsolete

Zerbinatto played Romancing SaGa 2 on his PS4. Even glued to a walkthrough and armed with experience from recent SaGa entries like Scarlet Grace and Emerald Beyond, he had a rough time. The game was extremely ambitious for its era. Your protagonist spawns across countless generations. You decide whether to save an entire race or unlock forbidden dark magic. Branching paths abound. But getting into the original release is genuinely hard, and the chances of ending up frustrated are sky-high. Now for the awkward part: a full-fledged remake exists. Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven is a fantastic turn-based JRPG, one you definitely should not avoid. The enhanced port and the remake have made the original entirely skippable.

What 250 Games Can Teach You

After hundreds of JRPGs, patterns emerge. The 8 SNES JRPGs Zerbinatto warns against share a few recurring flaws:

Aggressive averageness that wastes your time more than any bad game ever could
Ambitious mechanics buried under poor tutorials and clunky execution
Localization decisions that either dumb down the challenge or crank it past the breaking point
Original versions that no longer justify their existence once a remake or enhanced port arrives

None of these games are entirely without merit. Some, like The 7th Saga and Romancing SaGa 2, are genuinely clever beneath the frustration. But with a backlog that demands ruthless curation, knowing what to skip is just as valuable as knowing what to play. These 8 SNES JRPGs taught Zerbinatto that lesson the hard way. You can learn it the easy way instead.