I haven't played many JRPG's but I've heard that most of then lack a story and just go into combat, is that the case with FFXIII and FFXIII-2.

Is this true?

I really enjoyed the story in Persona 4 and the stories in the Persona series are great and the SMT games so I think they got that going for them.

My personal favorite is Final Fantasy IX for Story/Plot and Characters.

Also I will be honest a large percentage of JRPG are really cliche and bland, and I say this as a JRPG fan, However I didn't ever hear about lack of story unless you mean Dungeon Crawlers.

Title and thread are talking about different things... but anyways...

Best one story-wise is Xenogears.

FFXIII and XIII-2 have both a dislexic storyline and a boring combat, so im not sure what you are talking about. A better example for that would maybe be Star Ocean 4. It had an awesome combat but a somewhat weak storyline. I guess Tales of Xillia applies aswell.

Final Fantasy IX probably has the best story

Persona 4 Golden probably the best characters and writing. The story itself is fairly silly

But I am very forgiving with jRPGs, their stories need to be slightly crazy for me to like them

Newer rpgs would be Tales of Vesperia, Tales of Graces, Nino Kuni, Xenoblade Cronicles, Lost Odyessy was decent. I wouldn't touch any Final Fantasy after 10...but everything before is excellent. There is a boat load of wicked jrpgs from the snes/ps1 era if you want to go a little further back.

It's hard to quantify what "most" means. From what I've played last gen, I would say JRPGs that had really storylines include Lost Odyssey, Ni no Kuni, Persona 4 Golden, Xenoblade, and Fire Emblem: Awakening.

My all-time favorite JRPG storyline though is probably a tie between FFVI and Xenogears.

Xenoblade, Xenogears, Trails in the Sky come to mind.

Story in JRPG's tend to be cliched and kinda crappy. I think it's the characters that drive the story forward.

For me the Persona games are a good contender for best story or the xeno games. I never played the xeno games though but they say the story is really good.

I enjoyed Chrono Trigger a great deal. At the time it blew my mind a bit.

Lately I'd say Persona 3 and 4 were most impressive story wise in terms of mixing it up.

I'll go with Lost odyssey, although I haven't played many rpgs before the PS2/xbox era.