Just thought I'd make another historical 'what rpgs are good, and what should I avoid?' thread. For the PS2. Why? Cause I don't want the pay to play crap on the comp, and I don't have any of those nintendo systems with the pretty colors and mamoth controllers. So yeah...
Out of all PS2 rpgs, which ones should I buy and play. And which should I avoid? Also, which of these rpgs is rediculously hard to find?
Right now I'm playing WildArms Alter Code F. It's a good game and, while I haven't played the first version of the game (WA1), it's definately taken what made WA3 pretty and made it ALOT easier/ less stressful/ more fun for me. Definately a wild west type rpg that I'd recommend for people to play in their life.
I've also played Rhapsody in the last 5 months. It's rabidly hard to find and a bit girly. I mean, Perfectly girly. But still perfect. Like an extra cute version of Legend of Mana, you run around and collect dolls to fight with you. At the same time it follows a coherant plot and best of all, the characters randomly break out into song at parts. Which I guess is why they call it the 'musical adventure'. The only two downsides to the game is that is't Obscenely short. And it's extremely hard to find. The dubbed singing voices are meh, but since it's obviously a game for younger teens and kids, that's not an issue.
FF7. PS1 game. I've been playing it and it's still as fun as the first time I did in 1998. Fact, I've been playing the PC version, which is not only FUN and Exciting, but extremely irritating. First off, the pc version was made for Windows 95. It might play on 98 with only a few problems. I... Had Windows XP. So after I found a patch, I only had to deal with the game crashing at every chocobo race, the submarine run, the fight under gold saucer, a handful of animations, winning anything in the battle arena, and fort condor. Oh, finding the chocobo patch adn learning that, to save my game from crashing at ft condor - I had to play the game in a quarter-sized screen was peanuts compaired to the fact that the game crashed after a huge deal of gameplay and animation at the beginning of disk 2. So if you want to replay FinalFantasy7, Please. For the Love of us all. Do it on the PS1 or 2. And NOT the computer.
The games I'd really like to know about are Atilier Iris, Makai Kingdom, Grandia 3 (when it comes out), and Breath of Fire 5 (dragon somethingoranother). But if anyone knows of some spiffy rpgs that I absolutely have to play or must avoid, please tell me.
While not all full blown RPG's I can recommend the following:
Kingdom Hearts 1 & 2 (Action RPG. Not sure if you already told me a while back if this envoked motion sickness for ya or not)
Disgaea (Strat RPG. FF:Tactics with demons and humor, humor, humor. Sorta hard to find though.)
Dragon Quest VIII. It's Dragon Quest. It's 3d cell shading. It's got humor here and there. It's old school gameplay.
Final Fantasy 11 (Gotcha! =P)
If you played any of the SNES Romancing SaGas then give the PS2 remake of the first Romancing SaGa a shot. It's roughly 97% non-linear, and fixed a couple of gameplay issues with the SNES version.
Since I unfortunately haven't played as many true RPGs for that thing as I'd like, I'll just run down the other members of the Final Fantasy series. I'd have to say that 7 was the best of the lot system-wise, even if its graphics were a bit on the low end of the curve. I never could figure out the blocky main-screen sprite thing.
FF8: Story has something to do with Sorceresses who spout magic, and mercenary squads, and wars between different countries in a vaguely 1950's style world with color TV. The story's okay, if a bit confusing, but the Junction system will drive you absolutely bonkers.
To use the junction system, you have to keep yourself from using magic much, if at all. You'll need it more for pumping your characters up than for killing enemies, with the exception of Cures and Esunas. If you enjoy number puzzles, and fighting the same monster for hours to fill your magic up, go ahead; you might enjoy it. Otherwise, I'd leave this title be.
FF9: My god, was this ever cutesy! And there are anthropomorphic animals everywhere -- I swear near the beginning you run into a hippomorph and a fish-man. I'm not kidding about the fishman.
Story-wise, there's another war thing, something about airships needing "mist" and there being one that flies without needing this stuff, which you'd need to cross continents at will. There's an evil empire sprawling across the world. You know, the usual fare. And in the middle of this is a young girl who can summon monsters, and your main character Zidane, who literally plays like Goku from DragonBallZ, if Goku were a blond thief. The only character I really felt any attachment to was Freya, the rat-morph Dragoon, and she isn't around long enough to keep my interest in the story.
The system is okay, but they changed the Limit system again; now it's not for low-health attacks, but connected to a bar like that in 7. The difference here is, you can't save the Limit; instead you go into "Trance" immediately after the bar fills, and you have to use it then or lose it forever. There is no option to save it, and it can make readying it for boss battles incredibly frustrating.
I was never able to finish FF9.
FFX: This was good. It was a bit on the simple side, and I found the sphere system downright weird, but it was good in its own way. The plot revolves entirely around the Summoner job type in that world, and I won't spoil it for you (since it's likely it's been spoiled enough times already).
The biggest change to this game from other FF titles was, items are rarely if ever unique. It's possible to mimic almost every kind of weapon in the game, if you find the right starting items and materials for synthesis. The exceptions are the ever-present ultimate weapons, of which only one exists per person. You can also trade out characters at any time in the middle of battle, so long as they aren't dead, and stopping at any save point will instantly heal you (no Tents in this one).
The only issue I can take with the main game is that it's too short, and the side-quests run out within a small number of hours. Gameplay is also incredibly linear until literally the moment before Endgame.
Blitzball is added in as a mini-game, and you need it to get the ultimate weapon for one of the characters. It's not really worth it, as it takes too many hours of crunching numbers in a sports game when I came here to play an RPG. Neither did I enjoy the butterfly game you have to play for another weapon, which is why I'll never have the ultimate lance.
And then there's the Arena. Dear gods, the Arena. That's the longest side quest of all, but it will chew you up and spit out your rotting bones every time. It takes a real obsessive to take out any of the critters in the Arena, and the last one is at least 20 times as tough as the first. Or so I'm told -- I left them alone.
It's a good game, but a bit quirky at times. Play as you will. Avoid the sequel unless you can stand the extreme J-pop girliness (as in, Yuna becoming a pop idol in a three-girl band. Who change job-types mid battle through magical-girl transformations. I'm not kidding).
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More games will come as I remember them. I need to dredge up memories of .hack//Infection one of these days.
actually I use epsxe to play ff7 on my computer using my original psx ffvii discs... it's like five million times better. The sound on the pc version is midi vs mp3/wav quality on the psx, and the backgrounds are much lower resolution on the pc version... either emulate or play it on a ps1 or 2. (if you emulate you get the lovely, full-quality-ness :P)