Searching for non standard, non generic fantasy setting games, has led  to JRPGs eventually as there arfe only so many non medieval generic fantasy RPGs out there.  I have played tabletop pen and paper RPGs and CRPGs for  over 25 years and the fantasy medeival generic standard setting nd tropes have become tired and unintersting unfortonately mostly.  There are exceptions of course, an origianl, well developed unique take on the setting is always cool, lie the one int he RPGs Inquisitor, Morrowind was a great example, Arx Fatalis etc. 

But JRPGs always have unique origianl settings, and they are almost always interesting.  The only thing is, as fully developed RPGS, I think they are not as complete as most of the great western ones, like Fallout, Arcanum, KOTOR, and even Deus Ex.  The ones I played, Final Fantasy 10, Zelda 1 or 2! (lol), Xenogears were about it, were mostly story/cutscenes, and tactical combat non-stop.  There was a bit of dialogue, but not interactive.  And a puzzle or two.  I am searching for more gameplay elements, more interesting quests then fetch quests and take out this boss or that bad dude.  Multiple approaches and sloutions to quests, dialogue solutions, some puzzles things like what is in Fallout 1&2, Arcanum, KOTOR games like that.  It appears JRPGs, JRPG/Advenutre games are built like that though.  This might not be a game that there are many examples of. 

I started playing Earthbound, it appears it might be more like the game I would like to play.

I have played a bit of Sega Genesis Shadowrun, it was pretty cool, but to much grinding combat I think.

The SNES version of SHadowrun might be better it appears?

What about Snatcher, it appears to be mostly an adventure game, does it have any RPG elements?  Intersting mission/quests, multiple solutions?

So if anyone has ideas/advice on  JRPGs or JRPG/Adventure games that sound like they would be meet that criteria, that would be really cool.

Some games I am wondering about as well are:

Chrono Trigger

Septerra Core

Any other Final Fantasies that meet the criteria listed?

I'm not a big JRPG fan, I find them to almost always drag on, fitting 20h worth of story & gameplay variety into a 50h+ game. That being said, Chrono Trigger is a good game. It offers quite a lot of variety in environments, combat, story and characters, and it is charming. 

Septerra Core is not a game that I have played, but everyone I've heard mention it have also mentioned that it is far too long for its own good, and just gets tedious after a while.

The SNES Shadowrun is really different from the Mega Drive one. Where the Mega Drive Shadowrun is mostly about doing those randomly generated sidequests, the SNES version has a good story and everything in it is handcrafted. Be warned though that if you don't know what to do, then chances are that you will be forced to do some grind.

(minor spoilers in regards to what to do:
When you get to the arena, keep on fighting in it until you can't beat the opponent, then buy the most expensive pistol that you can buy in the nearby store, and keep on playing through the arena. Then don't buy anything for a while, just go with the story until you can afford the shotgun (you might possibly want to buy a body armour). Then once again don't buy anything until you can buy the wired reflexes (you might after this also want to pick up the other cybernetics). You don't need the most expensive gun in the game to beat it (I got it on my first playthrough, but it was a lot of grind involved. On my second playthrough I skipped it, and still managed to beat the game without much of an issue), but it is recommended that you get the best body armour 

Exception: There are some items that you need to progress with the story. You should buy those when needed.

Also, grenades are not worth the money, and those runners that you can hire are, for the most part, not worth it. 

One western JRPG (that is not an oxymoron!) that I quite enjoyed was Anachronox. While you don't have a lot of room for finding different solutions to the games problems, it does have an entertaining story and some fun characters. 

Snatcher is a great game. It's not really a jrpg, it's much more of an adventure game. Lots of things to investigate, clues to find, dialogue and a few puzzles. There are some shooting elements from time to time though too.

Snatcher is from Hideo Kojima (creator of the Metal Gear series) and it borrows a lot from Blade Runner. If you like Blade Runner and adventure games i'd highly suggest it.

Als you may want to check out Septerra Core. It's a western-developed rpg that was made to be a bit like a jrpg mechanic wise.

http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/septerra_core_legacy_of_the_creator

Yeah, and i just want to mention that although Chrono Trigger is pretty old, it does have multiple outcomes, so it should fit your criteria in that regard.

A cool one I've played recently was Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Unfortunatley it IS an fps but it is also unique in that it gives rpg elements like leveling up, talent points, and dialog choices that lead to one of several endings for the game. It's a really interesting twist on the classic fantasy RPG as this one is futuristic almost like Shadowrun. You can choose to go in guns blazing but risk getting the hostages killed or you can be a silent hacker and use stealth to save them all and avoid all opponents. Those are but two options you can use from many

Played all the Deus Ex games, yes they are great.  It woukd be cool if more developers used these games as inspiration and foundations.

I have been looking at some older Deus Ex-like games and they have been reviewed to be good as well:

Cybermage: Darklight Awakening

Strife

Also another one by Eidos I started which is cool is Porject Eden, a Action/Adventure/platformer with some RPGish  mechanics to.

Originally Posted By Deckard (26 SEP 2012 10:48pm)

I have been looking at some older Deus Ex-like games and they have been reviewed to be good as well:

System Shock 1 & 2 (2 more than 1). They might be a bit on the expensive side these days, but System Shock 2 is one of my favourite games of all time. It is dripping with atmosphere and has a slightly deeper CRPG element than Deus Ex, but the basic gameplay is similar. Also, it has a very memorable bad guy. 

Anachronox is superb and it too has a section that can be played three ways, i am still saving one of them as a treat, a superb really well made wonderful game.

It works fine on XP just look for my threads and i have a fix pack in my game fix archive.