Summary

• Relax with tranquil adventures in JRPGs focused on farming, crafting, and exploration, free from epic stakes.
• Rune Factory 4 Special offers fantasy farming with deep crafting and dungeon diving in a low-pressure environment.
• Dive into soothing journeys with charming characters in games like Atelier Sophie 2 and Trails in the Sky: First Chapter/Second Chapter.

There are dozens of JRPGs out there that either eschew epic stakes and deadly consequences altogether, or keep to the tradition, but provide so much tranquil breathing room that you can relax a bunch along the way. Whether they feature memorably soothing respites or they're built entirely around a premise of chill, smaller-scale adventure, we've assembled a tidy list of JRPGs for you to unwind with.

These games won't fill you with existential dread or ask deep-rooted philosophical questions while cities are aflame due to the wrath of some unsealed god. Or, if they do, they'll at least have the decency to let you zone out and plant a few flowers along the way.

1 Rune Factory 4 Special 🔜

There's a pretty good reason one could just as easily make the case for a number of Harvest Moon entries as for Rune Factory — they share largely identical creative DNA.

When the rights to Harvest Moon left the original developers' hands, they devised the ingenious plan to launch a spiritual successor series, Story of Seasons, and most will agree these games have maintained far more of what made Harvest Moon so popular than the modern Harvest Moons themselves. Rune Factory is itself a spinoff of Story of Seasons, so everything's neatly connected in one big farm sim sphere.

So, why Rune Factory 4 Special in particular? Simply put, it's the greatest realization of its subgenre. The Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons franchise has always touted its slice-of-life aspects above all. You inherit a farm, you raise livestock, you adventure in the surrounding area, help townsfolk with their troubles, and eventually settle down with a spouse.

Rune Factory tacks on a distinct fantasy flavor, including deep crafting systems and dungeon-diving. Battle monsters with your beloved, lead your town to greatness... but do it all with the low-pressure and melancholy vibe that's made Stardew Valley such a household name. Rune Factory 4 Special is the ultimate realization of the fourth installment, and eclipses even its terrific peers in quality all-around.

2 ꦗAtelie♉r Sophie 2

Like a few other entries on this list, it's tough to choose just one game in a series known for its chillness. Gust's long-running Atelier catalog of JRPGs is iconic for its intricate crafting systems mimicking fantasy-based spell-making to a tee. This "alchemy" system is the delightful gameplay focus of most Ateliers, and the titular ateliers themselves are the rooms in which heroines spend much of their time.

There's plenty else going on, like characterization-centric sidequests and (mostly) turn-based battle systems that have evolved with time. Atelier Ryza and its sequel have taken the series to new heights in popularity, finally breaking through the barrier in the West to deliver solid numbers for a niche Japanese role-playing series.

But it's Atelier Sophie 2 that we love the most when it comes to just soaking in the scenery and having a sweet time. Sophie herself is almost impossibly charming, and her interactions with friends and rivals alike always bring a sense of genuine tenderness.

3 𝐆 Trails In The Sky: F𓆉irst Chapter/Second Chapter

Falcom's Trails series, known natively in Japan as Kiseki, has perhaps the loudest fandom among every relatively obscure JRPG franchise around. For well over a decade, Trails' small but serious player base has sung the series' praises, celebrating the believable and intoxicatingly upbeat Estelle Bright and her misadventures across the realm of Liberl.

To be clear, there are a lot of Kiseki games. Trails in the Sky FC and SC — First Chapter and Second Chapter, but truly one incredibly long journey split in two — kickstarted Kiseki in 2004. It didn't make its way to the West for a further seven years, and its quaint looks and slow start did not garner heaps of interest at the time.

Trails has since expanded into multiple groups of games all set in the same world🔯, with an overarching plot that has continued for a whopping 11 entries and counting. Probably more familiar to🍎 the casual JRPG enthusiast, if still only modestly so, is the Trails of Cold Steel quadrology starring Rean Schwarzer.

But back to Trails in the Sky. What makes it so relaxing? Estelle's bright-eyed optimism, her chemistry with a growing list of allies, and the first game's mostly laid-back prose. Once Second Chapter kicks up, things get quite serious, and you may find your eyes watering many times throughout, but the vibrantly approachable land of Liberl and Estelle's amazing sense of determination keeps everything utterly grin-worthy.

4 💜 ꦿ Dragon Quest 4: Chapters of the Chosen

In Japan, Dragon Quest is an unrivaled gaming phenomenon. Final Fantasy's a big deal, Kingdom Hearts only somewhat less so, but Square Enix's simpler-times swords-and-sorcery series (with fabulous Akira Toriyama artwork!) reigns supreme.

Dragon Quest 4's phenomenal 2008 DS remake packs in all the winking cuteness and charismatic majesty of its many splendid peers, but it's unique in that it goes the extra mile when taking the time to build its main cast by giving each of the hero or heroine's party members an entire chapter all their own before everyone comes together for the final (and by far the longest) chapter to defeat the evil poisoning the planet.

We challenge you, well and truly, not💝 to fall in love with awkwardly insightful tomboy Princess Alena and heavyset middle-aged merchant Torneko Taloon.

If you can, grab the mobile version of Dragon Quest 4 instead of the DS one. The DS' English localization entirely omitted party chat, a system in which players can check in on their team and enjoy fabulous banter.

Why, you may ask? Because the banter's so bountiful, it's two-thirds of the script. The iOS and Android controls are pretty good, all things considered, and the developers finally gave Western audiences the true reason to check out this pleasantly serene piece of software by translating party chat at long last.

5 Pokemon HeartGold & SoulSilver 🐠

It was inevitable, really. Pokemon is the hottest brand in JRPGs, if not gaming far and wide. It's so absurdly successful as not just a collection of monster-training video games but a multmedia empire that we'd be willing to bet over half its fans don't fancy themselves JRPG fans at all. They just play Pokemon, because who doesn't?

Pokemon is the icon of easygoing adventure. The player character is always a youth on a thinly-veiled coming-of-age odyssey across an island or compact landmass. They'll learn what it takes to catch and raise the eponymous critters whilst important NPCs harp on about friendship and all that jazz.

Pokemon is an attractive proposition to folks in the single digits to veteran gamers in their fifties and above because it's a soothing trek through towns and wilderness evocative of the spunky and vigorous kid inside us all.

There's also the competitive battling scene, which is, you know, anything but soothing. But that part's for all those other lists.

And what makes HeartGold & SoulSilver so particularly precious? One could cite the uniquely multi-island expedition, the sublime species roster, the multitude of side content, the breathtaking Johto region, the unforgettable soundtrack and𒉰 more. The point is, these games are great.

6 🙈 Xenoblade 🦄Chronicles X

Monolith Soft is no stranger to handcrafted and gorgeous open worlds. Tetsuya Takahashi's earlier projects, Squaresoft's Xenogears and especially Namco's Xenosaga trilogy, were all rather linear affairs with the type of pacing that will either enthrall you or alienate you, depending on how much talking you want to sit through in your video games.

When Takahashi founded Monolith Soft and created the first Xenoblade Chronicles for Nintendo, the JRPG community was stunned by its massive scale. Every inch of every biome on the kaiju that the characters call home (we're not kidding) was clearly designed to awe.

All four Xenoblade Chronicles games (and counting) have cemented Monolith Soft's first-class world-constructing wonders, and depending on what you're looking for, each of the games is an easy recommendation. But Xenoblade Chronicles X takes the crown for most imaginative and exploration-fulfilling world of them all.

The sci-fi planet Mira is covered in memorable details from start to finish, and the ability to seek out stunning vistas whilst piloting mecha makes it all the more engrossing. It's too bad X is the least financially successful title in the series. But then, that's what happens when you are fated to debut on that most tragic of Big N home consoles, the Wii U.

7 Persona 5 Royal 🥃 🐬

Persona 5 Royal is so deliciously atmospheric that we barely know where to start. Whether you're chilling to the dulcet tunes in Leblanc, the coffee-and-curry cafe that the protagonist lives in throughout the game, or hanging out with an ever-growing cast of friends, it's sublime.

The anime-infused art style suits the setting to a tee, and it's bursting with personality on every major character's face. The story gets pretty serious, to be sure, but it's never lacking in cast chemistry that makes hanging out with this ensemble so great.

Side activities galore help to sell the immersion while easing our minds with a good time. Solving crossword puzzles, playing darts or billiards with the whole gang, practicing your baseball prowess, chilling in a jazz club, eating a massive cheeseburger (yep), attending a hilariously awkward maid cafe (yep...), Persona 5 Royal's got it all.

Even Mementos, a game-long side dungeon that eventually takes center-stage, has gone from "kind of tedious" to "oddly relaxing" in the Royal version. After all, what's not to love about ramming into enemies to auto-kill them while you drive around an underground railroad? Look, it's calmer than it sounds.