The RPG Completion Quest: Revised

[James]

Since I don't use Jamesman anymore, I can't edit my old posts to update everything. So this is the new thread for my quest.

Unfinished/Unplayed Games:

Final Fantasy 6
Final Fantasy Tactics
Final Fantasy 8
Final Fantasy 9
Final Fantasy X-2 (currently playing)
Bahamut Lagoon
Seiken Densetsu 3/Secret of Mana 2
Mother/Earthbound 0
Earthbound
Paper Mario
Legend of Dragoon


Finished Games:

Final Fantasy 1
Final Fantasy 2
Final Fantasy 3
Final Fantasy 4
Final Fantasy 5
Final Fantasy 7
Final Fantasy X
Kingdom Hearts
Secret of Mana
Super Mario RPG
Chrono Trigger (once)
Dragon Warrior 1
Dragon Warrior 2
Parasite Eve (will probably play again)
Dark Cloud
Dark Cloud 2
Illusion of Gaia
Secret of Evermore
Final Fantasy Adventure
Pokemon Blue


If anyone has any suggestions for other RPGs I should look into, once again I ask you make your recommendations. Do not include Dragon Warrior, 7th Saga, or any other game made by Enix because they suck. Keep in mind the games you suggest may not be readily available, though.

[James]

That said, I started Final Fantasy X-2 yesterday, and I'm getting into it VERY slowly. It's a bit overwhelming, because you're hit with a lot of the new changes right off the bat, including the fast-paced and frantic Active Time Battle system.

The Dressphere system is actually quite complicated, using Garment Spheres with limited slots to place Dresspheres, then equipping the Garment Grids to the characters. When you change jobs, you can only change to a job connected to your current one on the grid, and certain grids have "gates," where if you change a job to another one and a gate is between them, you will get a specified stat boost for the remainder of the battle. You also gain AB points during battle rather than after. All this encourages you to frequently change job classes to utilize the varying skills and learn new abilities. Surprisingly strategic.

And, a SLIGHT SPOILER (though it's about something that happens 3 minutes into the game), regarding some opinions on the game's themes:

The commercials and the rumors that circulated for this game kind of put a lot of people off. One thing in particular was the dance scene of Yuna doing a pop concert. This takes place at the very beginning of the game, and it turns out that the person is actually an imposter, who stole Yuna's Dressphere (allowing her to take on her appearance). You get it back, and this is how you end up with the Songstress class. It's not really explained WHY the sphere was stolen, and why the person decided to use it to put on a concert, but I think in the context, it might make some of you feel better about the tone of this game.

[Rongi]

Dressphere? Garment Sphere? That's the gayest thing I've ever heard of

Parisite Eve was awesome. I didn't really like the sequel because the gameplay is drastically different, but you might.

Also, I whole heartidly suggest the Wild Arms series. Except 3, which completely sucks. Oh and Disgea is pretty bitchen.

[eggyolk]

Titty Shlong Racing.

[executioneer]

what the fuck does that have to do with anything

[James]

Originally Posted by Rongi

Dressphere? Garment Sphere? That's the gayest thing I've ever heard of

It's not THE gayest and you know it. When you're on this message board, you've clearly heard things so gay, you need to get stitches for your own asshole.

But aside from the silly names, the gameplay is really great. Once you get familiar with the active battle system, things seem less frantic, and you can have more fun with your tactics in the fight. On top of which, character building is great. In FF5, you needed to spend hours upon hours getting the skills you needed to advance the game. For this, I just spent about 20 minutes learning Blizzara (as well as 10 other skills among my three characters), so I could use it against an upcoming boss, but the skills I already had would have been enough to handle him anyway.

PE2, I really am not sure if I'd be that interested in. I loved the first PE, but I heard PE2 was simply awful, which would explain why we've not heard or seen any hints of a PE3. And that kind of sucks, because once again, Parasite Eve ruled.

Wild Arms, I might look into if I can find them. I played a demo of WA3, and I have to agree with it being... not good. It wasn't bad, but it just felt fairly generic, and the battle system didn't seem to click. And Disgaea, I know absolutely nothing about.

[Command Prompt]

I'm seriously going to make a reality show where each week I hook James up with a incredibly hot model and follow him around with a camera.

[James]

But... girls are yucky.

[Perndog]

Robotrek was made by Enix and it doesn't suck. Play that. And:

Crystalis
Brain Lord (well..maybe)
Arcana
Soul Blazer
Tales of Phantasia (there is an excellent English ROM translation available)
Terranigma (ditto)
Mario and Luigi
Final Fantasy Mystic Quest (I don't care if it's simple and the story sucks, I like the game)
Chrono Cross
The entire Breath of Fire series
The entire Star Ocean
The entire Suikoden series
The entire Ultima series
The entire Lunar series
The entire Lufia series
The entire Ys series, most of which should be available in ROM form (various old systems)
All the Game Boy Final Fantasy (actually SaGa) games, plus Final Fantasy Adventure aka Seiken Densetsu 1.
Secret of Evermore
Parasite Eve 2
Panzer Dragoon Saga if you can find it
Star Ocean
Kartia: The Word of Fate
Ogre Battle
Tactics Ogre
Alundra
Grandia 1 and 2
Xenogears
Xenosaga
Pokemon (no, really)
Legend of Legaia
Vagrant Story
Brave Fencer Musashi
Jade Cocoon
Legend of Mana
Valkyrie Profile

I've finished a third of these, played another third, and heard good testimonials about the rest. If you manage to find all of them, they should last you a few decades (plus a bunch of them have sequels or will have sequels by the time you get around to them).

[Nerd]

Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter. It's currently the best RPG for the PS2. At least, it should be.

[Rongi]

Disgea is sort of like Tactics but with a few differences here and there. Fire Emblem, the GBA version, is a kind of game in the same vein of that kind of strategic rpg gameplay and it's not half bad once you get into it.

And I whole heartidly secound the BOF(Breath Of Fire) series. BOF2 is one of my favorite RPGs.

[James]

Originally Posted by Nerd

Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter. It's currently the best RPG for the PS2. At least, it should be.

Yeah, I'm not gonna bother with that one.

Perndog, I updated my completed list with a few games you mentioned, though I don't consider Pokemon really as an RPG. I also don't see myself picking up the GBA ones, because I've heard it's just more of the same.

The GB Final Fantasy games... Eh, I have Final Fantasy Legend 3, and I hated it. I played it for about an hour total, and I won't touch it again. I can't imagine the first two being improvements. Ultima is more tedious than fun, if I'm recalling the same Ultima. And is Panzer Dragoon even an RPG? I thought you flew around on a dragon and shot things. :/

Everything else might be considered.

[DamnthatDavid]

Jade Cocoon...

Damn, I forgot I had that.

[Nerd]

Originally Posted by James

Yeah, I'm not gonna bother with that one.

Why? Some of the new stuff in the game might sound intimidating at first (the save token system, the D-counter, sol system), but it's really not. Throughout the game you get more than enough save tokens (there's almost always one in each dungeon; and there's a soft save option that you can use at any time), the game would have to be FIVE TIMES longer for the D-counter to be a problem (If you show some restraint with the dragon powers), and the SOL system is only there to help you. Furthermore, it's the first RPG with an actual challenge that leveling up wouldn't immediately solve. It also had great music and story line. And if that's not good enough, it's only $15.

Unless, of course, you don't like dungeon crawlers. In which case, never mind.

[executioneer]

fallout, fallout 2, and wasteland

[Helm]

Ultima Underworld 1 and 2. Battletech 1. Magic Candle 1. Some assorted roguelikes like Adom, Nethack Zangband and maybe Alphaman and Omega too. Gearhead also. System Shock 1. Dragon Wars. The Bard's Tale 1 to 3. Wizardry 1 to 7.

I second Wasteland and the two fallouts too.

[whoreable]

phantasy stars

[thebiggameover]

Ogre Battle and Tactics Ogre: these games are hard as fuck to find. i want to play them so bad...

tales of destiny 2 is really good. cant wait for the gc one to come out...

[slain]

Golden Sun1 and 2 and whenever they feel like releasing 3

[Schimid]

E . V . O .

[James]

Just a note, it'd kind of help if you listed what platforms these games were on. And also, you don't need to name every known RPG ever made.

More on FFX-2: I'm loving it. I've gotten more Garment Grids, and each one has different stat bonuses attached to them. Some have more slots for dresspheres than others, some give the user the ability to cast magic, and others give protection from different status affects. Using these natural abilities, and combine them with certain dresspheres (using a grid that will allow you to cast Thunder spells regardless of job class can be very helpful when you're not going to use a Black Mage, for example) really does provide a great amount of skill and strategy to be put into your equipping of grids and spheres.

And as I said before, learning skills is actually quite fast. You can select what skill you want to learn (some are available right at the start, while others requires certain skills to be learned). You gain 1AP (on average) every time an enemy is killed. On top of that, you gain AP when each character performs an action attributed to their job class. If Rikku's a Theif, and she uses Steal, she gets 1AP. So learning abilities isn't based on how much you fights so much as it is how much you do in those fights. Rikku's a white mage right now, and I've only got two more skills to learn before completing the class. It's very fast and easy, so you're not spending hours upon hours just to learn one or two abilities.

The only downside is the mission-based gameplay. Many of the missions are optional, but do flesh out the story and provide the feel of the other FF games. It's like if you took any FF game, broke it down into every quest, and you were told "OK, you can CHOOSE which of these quests you want to do." So it's all connected and does play out very much like the other games. But the fact that there's missions and segments and such almost makes you feel compelled to play just for a little bit instead of a long time. I'll pick up the game, go through an area, complete a mission or two, and then feel like turning it off. It's not boring, by any means. It's just... It kind of feels like the game's telling you "OK, turn me off now. You did enough for the day." It's both good and bad, depending how you look at it (if you don't have a lot of time to play games, it's nice to know you can do a little at a time and feel like to accomplished something).

I guess the only REALLY bad thing is the music. A lot of it sounds like it came straight from a 70's blacksploitation film. The rest is either passable piano tunes, or annoying looped musical diddies. But all of it is forgetable. Really disappointing, given that the music has been one of the best things about the FF games.

Long story short: ANY fears you had about the changes made in ths game, or ANYTHING you had heard about it that made you think it was really lighthearted or un-FFish, forget them. It's definitely Final Fantasy, complete with an involving story and interesting characters. At least rent it if you're unsure. But... umm... I will tell you the first 10-15 minutes of the game won't change your mind (all your fears and things you heard are pretty much condensed right into the beginning of the game), so just keep pressing past that.

[Perndog]

Panzer Dragoon Saga was a four-disc RPG for the Sega Saturn that is apparently pretty hard to come by these days but is known as one of the best 32-bit RPGs in existence. The game you're thinking of is Panzer Dragoon Orta, the Xbox shooter set in the same world.

Ultima is pretty tedious...I just played through as a sort of nerdy cultural experience. Same with Zork, for that matter. However, a few sequels in, the Ultima series started to get pretty good.

[ArrowX]

Parasite Eve 2 If its gameplay were closer to its presecessor it would be amazing because it has an exellent tory line. Jade cocoon is the BEST PSX rpg out there IMO

I found Parasite eve 1 on the ground in a back alley and it works....but its a bit smelly. But it doesnt come with the xenogears demo

[Helm]

PC: Ultima Underworld 1 and 2. Magic Candle 1. Adom, Nethack, Zangband, Alphaman, Omega, Gearhead, System Shock 1, Dragon Quest, The bards tale, Wizardry 5 and 7.

Snes: Wizardry 1 to 4 in one rom remake (get in from the underdogs)

[ItalianStereotype]

I noticed that Perndog mentioned Tales of Phantasia, but you didn't add it. you should REALLY consider finding it, I liked it just as much as Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy 6.