Games

Why not try out Western CRPGs?

I gather from what you're writing, that you're trying to get into JRPGs.

If you want action-laden fights without random encounters, I suggest the "old" BioWare RPGs:

• Mass Effect Trilogy
• Knights of the old Republic 1 + 2
• Dragon Age Origins (never played the sequels)

They're old but gold and still one of the best.

And there are still:

• The Witcher 3 and
• Cyberpunk 2077

I couldn't see anyone mentioning so I would add Disco Elysium

Not your typical RPG by any measure, but one of my top favorite games of all time, more focused on exploration and talking/decisions rather than fighting. Also has a unique mechanic where "stats" are connected to mental attributes that talk with the character by offering advice, insight, or just poor suggestions depending on your level :D

CrossCode

I didn't hear about it when it released, only got it on sale earlier this year. Apparently all this time the perfect game for me had already been out there just existing slightly outside the range of my awareness.

It is a high quality pixel art narrative RPG with a single character class that can branch any way they like, in a pseudo-MMO(single player game where the game is lore-wise an MMO that you are one character in, rest of the characters in the game are "other players" but are of course just narrative to us the real world player, but to our in-game player they are their real life friends and you know them separate from their characters). The pseudo-MMO has 5 classes, but your character is the jack of all trades class. So your various party members will be better than you at their one specialty, but if you are extremely selective, you can nearly match them at the same level if you pick only stuff for that one path. The trade off is that this class is supposed to be much harder to play.

But anyway, enough about that, the actual story of the game is awesome and I don't want to spoil anything specific. Your character starts out unable to talk due to a malfunction of the "game", but slowly gains more words, it's not a gameplay mechanic, just a narrative mechanic, but it's crazy endearing. Kind of like a "little mermaid" type scenario. She still has full control of her facial expressions and body language, and speaking of, there must be thousands of facial expressions. They did not skip out on any work in the pixel art department.

The exploration parts of the game are kind of zelda style platforming puzzles with more of an agility focus. Combat is real-time but somewhat easy, with more of a focus on stringing fights together and trying to survive as many back to back in quick succession as possible. The longer you stay in combat and string fights together, the less overall monsters you have to kill to get all the loot from a zone. Though the max monsters you need to kill at the worst is pretty low. Like 50-100 per zone. And even then it's optional, but better.

They also have dungeons, these are also pretty similar to old school zelda, but quicker and tighter. Speaking of, character movement/control is very agile for a pixel art game. I'm not generally great at it in other games, but I love it in this game.

Ok, well I should probably stop now. I could probably go on for hours, it's an amazing game that I'm sad I didn't hear about til recently, but at least I did eventually hear of it. Now I feel I have to make sure other people don't miss out on it like I almost did.

Edit: bah one more thing, character development is pretty robust. I built my entire character around thorns damage and blocking. It's entirely possible to go through the game this way, in fact it makes some fights kind of silly. But it's also entirely possible to never have any thorns and even to never block a single hit. But the thorns mechanic alone is pretty deep. There are several components that affect how much damage you will reflect when blocking a hit, how much the hit would have been, how much you lowered it by blocking it, how much baseline "pin body"(thorns) you have and how much defense the monster has. So a boss hitting you for 100 that you reduce down to 50 is gonna hit them back pretty hard, but so is a monster hitting you for what would have been a string of 10 hits of 3 damage, but you reduced them all to 0. Since there is a baseline, those 10 hits trigger pretty close to your minimum amount, but it's probably alot more than 3, and certainly more than the 0 they actually did to you. There is also perfect guarding, completely unnecessary, but since my character is all about blocking, I decided to practice perfect guarding, and I got pretty good at it. Also when I perfect block a melee hit, it stuns them for 2 seconds. And perfect blocks inherently double thorns damage, like as if it was a crit.

All the mechanics seem as deep and well planned out as that too. And there are alot of mechanics. The 4 main disciplines are tank, ranged damage, melee damage and caster. Though caster is mostly just using more skills instead of auto attacks while still being either melee or ranged. Just get way more mana regen. And of course the idea is to blend and not just specialize in one, but you can also specialize. Ranged damage is done by way of shooting "spheres", it's also a pretty important aspect of alot of puzzle solving, but you don't need any points in ranged damage to solve puzzles with it. I have no points in any type of damage other than thorns. My character has more than double defense versus attack. Hehe.

There is a relatively limited selection of gear, but you will likely always find something you want. Kind of similar to a final fantasy game, no unnecessary gear, just a bunch of stuff that "isn't for you this play through", but your party members might like what you don't. They of course have their own money and choose when and what new gear they buy. Though bringing them to a shop that has what they want will prompt it, otherwise they'll go shopping on their own time when not in your party.

Golden Sun is probably one of my favorite RPGs, very deep combat system where in the lategame you will be modifying your character class in the middle of battles to change your movesets and other cool mechanics. Fairly interesting story as well. It has great GBA pixel art and it does have random encounters.

Persona 5 is a turn-based RPG that lots of people who aren't usually into turn-based RPGs tend to like. Simple but satisfying battles, and a story that would have seemed mediocre if it wasn't for great music and some cool moments which make it really stand out. No pixel art and also no random encounters.

OMORI is pretty good and has a really good art style. The story is also very good with some very memorable characters and moments, and pretty good music. The combat is simple and probably best described as "not bad". The biggest downside of the game imo is that despite not being very long (<20 hours) it felt like it dragged on close to the end. It might have random encounters? I don't really remember.

Overall I recommend Golden Sun if you are able to emulate it or something (not on steam or switch)

RPGs are such a board term nowadays that anything can be an rpg if you market it as such. But that’s not the time for it.

If you like Undertale, you might enjoy its deranged post apocalyptic cousin released near the same time, Lisa the Painful. A turn base rpg with plenty of tangible choices.

If you like more narrative stuff, play Disco Elysium or Planescape Torment.

Its only a week old, but I would strongly recommend Baldur's Gate 3. I would warn you, it might spoil a lot of future games for you, by setting the bar so high.

And if you want an equally emersive but MUCH older game,look up ADOM.

Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2, Mass Effect, Guardians of the Galaxy (not a real RPG, but has RPG elements).

Super Mario RPG and Chrono Trigger, I think strike a good balance regarding random encounters.

On the other end of the spectrum would be something like the Front Mission or Final Fantasy Tactics series - where the narrative is all handled through set battles.

It might not tick all your boxes but Chained Echos might be worth a try.

Earthbound

Also known as Mother 2. Up to you if you want to try English fan translations of Mother 1 and 3 as well. 2 is the only one with an official English translation. It does a good job as a stand alone game, I played it long before I knew any of that. Back when renting a snes game from a physical store was a thing.

But I have since played part of Mother 1/earthbound 0, and all of Mother 3/earthbound 2. Mother 3 is worth it in my opinion, the fan translation is very good and fits the style of the Mother 2 official translation. I should try Mother 1 again, but after playing Mother 2, it felt like an earlier lower quality version of the same thing. I didn't get more than an hour in, so it might be worth it further in.

If you haven't heard of earthbound, well that sucks. Everyone should hear about it. Definitely a must play at least once in any gamers life. It is the very definition of a traditional non-traditional RPG. It uses as well as breaks every convention. It's exactly what you expect, except totally not what you expected.

Basically, it's a type of parody of the genre, while also being one of the best games of the genre.

If you’re looking for a good JRPG, I can’t recommend the Persona series enough. I hate traditional JRPG’s but I love Persona and have dumped literally hundreds of hours into P5/ P5 Royal. I know it’s not pixel art, but the art style is very unique and fun to look at.

pixel-art

• Chrono Trigger
• Octopath Traveller
• Final Fantasy VI

Mass Effect trilogy. It has amazing characters, get stories, and the gameplay gets better with each game. Though the first in the series is still my favorite, and one of my favorite games of all time, 2 is considered to be one of the best character driven RPGs in recent memory. Bonus, you can get all three remastered via the Legendary Edition.

Random encounters are a staple of Japanese rpgs, not rpgs in general (and also not all jrpgs have them). There are a plethora of rpgs without them! You will more likely see enemies on screen, and good rpgs allow you options to resolve things without combat (with some exceptions, like certain monsters).

@wtry

Do people not like Octopath Travler (1 & 2)??? I rarely see it mentioned but it's one of my absolute favorites. Fantastic pixel art and music. I love the combat and job system too. Being able to bridge level deficits with items/gear and strategy meant it wasn't grindy either.

Prey's currently on sale and one of the most memorable gaming experiences I've had in recent years.

You'll be hooked within the first 10 minutes of playing, I guarantee it:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/480490/Prey/

Secrets of Grindea

Yes, the title has grind right in it, and yes it's for that reason. But, the way grinding works is handled pretty well. The longer you stay in a combat area, the faster the enemies keep respawning on kill, until there is almost no delay and you are just murdering hundreds of them per minute. Of course when you first get to a new zone, you won't be able to handle grinding it like that.

But yeah, grinding mechanic aside, the game is also a pretty good narrative and has a really good sense of humor and is well-made. I recommend looking it up despite grind being right in the name, lol.

Fear & hunger will surprise you. It looks like an RPG and it seemingly plays like one, but it's actually an entire different beast. Lots to understand and to uncover, both gameplay-wise and lore-wise. If you decide to give it a shot, be sure that the game it's not unbalanced, it just need to be understood.

If you want something less dark and hard, the Mario & Luigi series for GBA/NDS/3DS is crazy fun. The same applies for the Paper mario series, very original and super fun RPGs that don't really play by the rules

Witcher 3 is perhaps a good option. The combat style is relatively complex I’d say, and quite fun. The story is very engaging and super well written. And it’s available on both Steam and in fact on Switch too. I’ve played the whole game on Switch, and it runs well.

The World Ends With You (or the sequel, Neo: The World Ends With You) is an action RPG that does away with random encounters. Battles are initiated by you scanning for enemies and picking fights in your own, you can even lower your level or string multiple fights together for more rewards. The original is 2D (and best played in a DS/2DS/3DS but if you don't have one there's also a single-screen version on Switch) and the sequel is 3D on Switch and Steam.

Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark

It doesn't fit all your requirements but I think you may like it.

Captivating narrative and in-depth combat system? Final Fantasy 7.

Does Stardew Valley count?