Your Top 5 RPGs (and why)

[Marcin]

1.) Final Fantasy Tactics (Great storyline)
2.) Xenogears (Great storyline)
3.) Vagrant Story (Great storyline, and I lost myself in the process of trying to get my weapons to be "Ultimate" 100s in everything.)
4.) Xenosaga Ep3 (Great storyline, powerful OST, memorable characters, etc. I played 1 and 2, as well.)
5.) Final Fantasy XII (Wasn't so much impressed with the story, granted good, seemed too short, but I did fall in love with all the hunts and trying to get Tournesol and the other weapons.)

I'm crazy over Ivalice.

[Groovebox]

1. Final Fantasy XI (PS2) - All I have to do is type /playtime. It's forced social gameplay made this the game for me. Met a lot of great friends since 2004.

2. Phantasy Star (SMS) - My Grandpa got it for me in '88 for the Sega Master System. RPGs became my favorite genre ever since.

3. Phantasy Star II (GEN) - I'll never forget spending hours with both of my brothers trying to figure out the dungeons and where to go next.

4. Ultima VII (PC) - Truly amazing game.

5. Secret of Mana (SNES) - I loved this 2 player action rpg.

Runner's up: Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy III (US SNES Version) and Diablo 2.

[Kaylia]

Star Ocean II: amazingly fun, I must have played this game like 20 times, and put in hundreds of hours of gameplay. It's that much fun. Good story, nothing outstanding but it flowed well, had interesting characters (ashton ) and great music. mentioning SO3 for the boost in gameplay, amazingly fun to play, story is amazing and excellent until a certain point. I don't think I have ever played a game with such an amazing build up to disaster, but that mood was ruined later on (up to, and on planet Styx was supurb). NOSTALGIA GOOGLED THE STORY

I beat StarOcean 2 again last week on emulator (wanted to do it with Rena this time), and I'm still not sure what to think. I loved the game and still do, but for every great scenes, there is one useless dungeon that kill the pacing. Rena can be really ackward, and Claude sound like an angry jealous guy on the first disk. They still had a lot of nice moment tho (my favorite scene is when Rena find about her). Other character didnt leave such a good impression on me after beating the game for a 2nd time in 6-7 years. Precis and Ashton had some funny PA, but they all lack development once they join.


Maybe I failled at taking my goggle off when I beat FF9 last year, but I always thought it was perfect. The story is really well done from the beginning to the end, with ton of plot twists, and little to no sidetracking

[Elcura]

Star Ocean II: amazingly fun, I must have played this game like 20 times, and put in hundreds of hours of gameplay. It's that much fun. Good story, nothing outstanding but it flowed well, had interesting characters (ashton ) and great music. mentioning SO3 for the boost in gameplay, amazingly fun to play, story is amazing and excellent until a certain point. I don't think I have ever played a game with such an amazing build up to disaster, but that mood was ruined later on (up to, and on planet Styx was supurb). NOSTALGIA GOOGLED THE STORY

I beat StarOcean 2 again last week on emulator (wanted to do it with Rena this time), and I'm still not sure what to think. I loved the game and still do, but for every great scenes, there is one useless dungeon that kill the pacing. Rena can be really ackward, and Claude sound like an angry jealous guy on the first disk. They still had a lot of nice moment tho (my favorite scene is when Rena find about her). Other character didnt leave such a good impression on me after beating the game for a 2nd time in 6-7 years. Precis and Ashton had some funny PA, but they all lack development once they join.


Maybe I failled at taking my goggle off when I beat FF9 last year, but I always thought it was perfect. The story is really well done from the beginning to the end, with ton of plot twists, and little to no sidetracking

Well, I did say I had the googles on in regards to the story when I wrote that (for SO2, didn't have them on for SO3), but I never said it had the greatest plot, I do agree about the best scenes being Rena finding out about herself, those were cool. Ashton and co, while not developed did make me laugh, I don't think every character in a RPG needs to be, well, uber developed, but I do think most characters reached their peak early. I can't remember many of the dungeons, I remember them being somewhat hard at times, but I found the gameplay way to fun to care about how useless/long a dungeon was. I thought it was known that SO stories weren't the best, but something about those games makes it so worth playing.

[Kaylia]

Oh, I wasn't bashing the plot because I loved it, it's just the execution that sucked more than I remembered. It really hurt most old games imo.

By sidetracking, I meant Ashton's quest (2 dungeons), Celine's treasure hunt dungeon, bowman's dungeon. Almost every area were simply the result of a fetching quest that needed to be completed to progress further (go get your dragon, go get this mineral we need, go get this other ore we need). It's no big deal, but those kind of quest kinda annoy me.

And I perfectly agree that not every character need to be defined. Rena and Claude were the only characters I needed. Loved them

[Kaelan]

I'm not rating these in any order because they're all deserving of first place in my top 5. I couldn't pick one over the other.

1. Xenogears - Best storyline I've ever played, period. Sorry Final Fantasy, I love you too, but nothing even comes close to this.

1. Breath of Fire III - The best display I've ever seen of simple, yet fun, addicting and non-repetitive gameplay in an RPG

1. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - Just a really enjoyable game in general. An extremely well made 'different type' of RPG ( I don't even know what genre would it fall into...Action/RPG ?)

1. Final Fantasy Tactics - The game that, to me, set the bar for what a high-quality SRPG should be like. The storyline was nice, but much more importantly than that, the gameplay was just amazing. Very few other games ever really came anywhere close in terms of balancing and strategy to this day, as far as my opinion is concerned.

1. Pokemon Gold/Silver - I'm amazed nobody mentioned these yet. All pokemon games are fun, but the Gold/Silver era specifically made leaps and bounds of improvements on the already very solid foundation they established with Red/Blue/Yellow(And, I suppose, Green if you count that). They haven't really changed all that much since then, but this series remains one of the most balanced offline RPGs in terms of end-game.

[Elcura]

Oh, I wasn't bashing the plot because I loved it, it's just the execution that sucked more than I remembered. It really hurt most old games imo.

By sidetracking, I meant Ashton's quest (2 dungeons), Celine's treasure hunt dungeon, bowman's dungeon. Almost every area were simply the result of a fetching quest that needed to be completed to progress further (go get your dragon, go get this mineral we need, go get this other ore we need). It's no big deal, but those kind of quest kinda annoy me.

And I perfectly agree that not every character need to be defined. Rena and Claude were the only characters I needed. Loved them

lol, yeah. fetching quests is an age old technique to prolong a game, or just about anything really. but thinking about it, SO2 did have a lot of them... I mean... a lot. I can see why people would get annoyed at that, though as a kid it just seems like it's part of the story/flow so you don't really take into account those things.

Pokemon Gold/Silver - I'm amazed nobody mentioned these yet. All pokemon games are fun, but the Gold/Silver era specifically made leaps and bounds of improvements on the already very solid foundation they established with Red/Blue/Yellow(And, I suppose, Green if you count that). They haven't really changed all that much since then, but this series remains one of the most balanced offline RPGs in terms of end-game.

I agree, Gold/Silver was the best of the Pokemon series for me (surprised I forgot about it). At that time it had a good amount of Pokemon, who were identifiable, interesting and for the most part useful. I remember playing Red/Blue so much, I had pretty much every Pokemon leveled up to the point where I could bring any combo to a fight and put up a good match. Those were the good days.

also, you numbered all your games 1, lol.

[Kaelan]

That was intentional

[Elcura]

That was intentional

oh that's weird

[izembo]

I'm a real fan of turn-based strategy systems like FFT/TO/Shining Force. Just wish I could find more.

It's unfortunate that a lot of it is still JP only =/. And I wish SF went back to their turn base strat roots not this crap we have now ><;

honestly im gonna be happy when sf2 comes to the virtual console so i can play it on my big tv without worrying about cartridge erasing my save. =/

[Charismatic]

OK. For me, while story is important, it doesn't carry as much weight for me as other folks... because if I'm having fun playing the game and the story is shit, I will still be enjoying myself. (Can't say the same if the opposite is true.)
So this list has a lot to do with the gameplay of the games.

1.) Valkyrie Profile, I don't get tired of the gameplay here and throwing out those PWS combos makes me feel like a real man.
2.) Star Ocean:TTEoT (Didn't think you'd be seeing this on someone's top 5 without mention of 2, did ya?)
3.) Final Fantasy 12, with minimal (read: almost none) gambits set up in active mode, plus I love doing quickenings.
4.) Vandal Hearts, so simple, yet so awesome.
5.) Xenogears for pretty much all the reasons others have stated.

[Imitarate]

I feel wierd, all but two of mine are PC games.

5) Might and Magic: Xeen (Clouds/Darkside). Some of you might be too young to remember Might and Magic before 3D0 fucked it all up, back when it was done by New World Computing. The first two were very basic (thought Might and Magic II was, for what it was, an incredibly HUGE game, very bizarre but with hundreds of secrets to do, just not much story). The third was where they started to get it right, but it was severely flawed. When Clouds of Xeen came around, the game had been perfected -- still almost no central story to speak of for the first 3/4ths of the game, but the system was beautiful. The main thing M&M had going for it was the sheer variety of Stuff you could do and discover, and when Darkside of Xeen came out, and the two worlds COMBINED, so you could switch between them and unlock extra Stuff and make a cohesive overarcing plot, it was an amazing experience.

4) Chrono Trigger. It might seem odd that it's so low, but it's because I never experienced it on the SNES, only later once I got the PSX remake. I don't need to explain, the game was just exceptional.

3) Ultima VII (parts I and II, including the expansions). While Ultima had been making its mark (and 4, 5, and 6 were good solid games), 7 was where it really shined. Expansive world, an incredible story (or, stories), solid system set in an internally-consistant if often bizarre world. Also, once you've played the game once or twice, and get more confident, you can find tiny little secrets that are just neat. Also, and for me this is a big deal, Ultima 7 had one of the most comprehensive developer debug systems I've ever seen. Look down on cheating as you wish, it makes Ultima 7 an entirely different game. It's just a shame they followed it with the utter travesty that was Ultima 8 (and the utter mass of bugs and beta-level development that was Ultima 9). Then EA took it over, screwed Richard Garriot, and Ultima died.

2) FF4/6. I consider them both part of the same experience. It might be cheating a little, but these two games represent the SNES era to me in all its splendor.

1) Planescape: Torment. A game I rarely see mentioned, and it's a DAMNED shame. It is, without a doubt, the best RPG I've ever played. Once you get past some of the innanities of the AD&D2nd system (harder nowadays if you're accustomed to 3/3.5), and into the game, it is an experience like no other. The myriad paths you can take, the compelling story, the fascinating concept, the diversity of settings, the humor, the philosophy even (if you don't mind some occasional heavyhandedness, it's appropriate for a setting where belief shapes reality, literally), and the thousands and thousands of lines of dialogue are too great for words. I'll take P:T over your Baldur's Gates any day. This game was the pinnacle of Black Isle, and Bioware's main division still hasn't surpassed it.

[Eaglestrike]

Final Fantasy Tactics - The game that, to me, set the bar for what a high-quality SRPG should be like. The storyline was nice, but much more importantly than that, the gameplay was just amazing. Very few other games ever really came anywhere close in terms of balancing and strategy to this day, as far as my opinion is concerned.

Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together was made by the same team and the battle system is better, IMO. I've never noticed stats being different on characters (at least not much) depending on what you level with them. In TO, if you keep a guy as a Ninja for a while and switch to another job he'll be very fast and very accurate, even if you switch him to the slowest job in the game. You should really find it and play. The storyline is great too, as there are different storylines to choose from depending on what choices you make.

Anyone who loved FFT's system should play TO, the only thing it doesn't have over FFT is the FF-standard characters/creatures/items/etc.

[Steveon]

Much like others have stated, I really can't decide which would be my top 5 so in no specific order:

-Chrono Trigger: From memorable. Was the first RPG I ever played and I used to play Zelda before playing it so I didn't mind Chrono being a silent protagonist. You could pretty much tell what he was thinking.

-Valkyrie Profile II: VP I, though great in its own right, felt more like a story than a game. VP II had a good balance of both and I find myself still replaying the scene when Rufus and Alicia face Odin for the first time and many others scenes. Probably takes up half of one of my PS2 memory cards.

-Final Fantasy Tactics: I never really liked games structured like this but after playing just the first few scenarios, I was addicted. Like FFXI addicted!!

-Shadow Hearts II: To the New World: A lot of memorable scenes in this game. I think the game had a great idea of allowing us to replay scenes after beating the game so we didn't have to waste a memory card.

1. Pokemon Gold/Silver - I'm amazed nobody mentioned these yet. All pokemon games are fun, but the Gold/Silver era specifically made leaps and bounds of improvements on the already very solid foundation they established with Red/Blue/Yellow(And, I suppose, Green if you count that). They haven't really changed all that much since then, but this series remains one of the most balanced offline RPGs in terms of end-game.

-Can't agree anymore. The best of the Pokemon games to this day. A large world, not too little but also not too many Pokemon. Allowed you to actually go back to the old region and see how things had changed. I always bought the next generation of games, hoping they would allow us to do that again. I always regret losing my copy of Silver.

-Final Fantasy VIII: Not the first of the Final Fantasy games I played but the one I replay the most. I always thought Lionheart > Omnislash. I didn't look into the storyline as profoundly as a lot of people here did and reading the thread on it here, just made me like the story even more than before!

Final Fantasy Tactics - The game that, to me, set the bar for what a high-quality SRPG should be like. The storyline was nice, but much more importantly than that, the gameplay was just amazing. Very few other games ever really came anywhere close in terms of balancing and strategy to this day, as far as my opinion is concerned.

Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together was made by the same team and the battle system is better, IMO. I've never noticed stats being different on characters (at least not much) depending on what you level with them. In TO, if you keep a guy as a Ninja for a while and switch to another job he'll be very fast and very accurate, even if you switch him to the slowest job in the game. You should really find it and play. The storyline is great too, as there are different storylines to choose from depending on what choices you make.

Anyone who loved FFT's system should play TO, the only thing it doesn't have over FFT is the FF-standard characters/creatures/items/etc.

Is it a PS1 game? Have to Ebay for it?

[Maxxthepenguin]

1. FFXII because it was so fun to play, had a plot that WASN'T insanely bombastic, Balthier
i. FFVI because it rocks my world every time I play it and find something new to love
pi. Chrono Trigger because duh
A. Star Wars KOTOR because it's the best star wars plot since empire strikes back (and the gameplay rocks too)
Weiner Dog. Baldur's Gate II for having a ginormous scope but never lacking focus on good story, cool scripted events, and great characters (cough Oblivion cough)

Honorable Mentions:
Dark Cloud II for being an action RPG to get pretty much everything right
Chains of Promathia because the plot was awesome, the challenges were hard (because of the level caps, fuck you haters), and it pisses people off to say it
Pokemans (All grouped together, though G/S are the best)
Diablo II for being a purely awesome addictive clickfest

[Exoduso]

Honorable Mentions:
Dark Cloud II for being an action RPG to get pretty much everything right.

Gotta agree. Even though I sorta like DC1's story better, 2 was a great rpg.

[Maxxthepenguin]

Honorable Mentions:
Dark Cloud II for being an action RPG to get pretty much everything right.

Gotta agree. Even though I sorta like DC1's story better, 2 was a great rpg.

Seriously, the problem was DC1 was a bit too much of a grind without a focus. DC2 had a much more focused plot and a more richly realized world. I was really shocked by how much I loved DC2 after DC1 made me go 'eh'.

[Zetah]

1. Chrono Trigger

Chrono Trigger is an amazing game. The fact that it was never released for GBA, never released for Virtual Console (yet), never remade in any shape or form...is a crime. Why must such a great game be left behind, while FFIV gets yet another version? It's just things like that in our world that doesn't make sense.

Chrono Trigger had an amazing development team, resulting in the most memorable characters and worlds I've ever experienced. I played this game as an 8 year old child from start to finish. The replay value of this game is staggering, which I believe is the very first implementation of a New Game + feature, letting you carry over levels and several other things for new, unique endings, giving you reasons to play through the game that many times. The Tech system is all sorts of badass, too.

One of the most remarkable things about the game, however, is the music. The music for the game is incredible and truly gets me in the mood to play the game. There's a reason OCRemix has at least 80 remixed songs up there -- it's because Chrono Trigger has a fucking amazing soundtrack.

2. Fire Emblem

My most played handheld game by far. Hell, even out of all my DS games, this occupies most of my playtime on it. This game is fucking awesome. I was first introduced to Fire Emblem by Super Smash Bros. Melee, and wanted to learn more about the series. Once I saw Fire Emblem in the stores, I picked it up, and it quickly became one of my favorite games of all time. The amount of content in this game is staggering, the story is moving, the battle animations are just badass, and the characters (most of them) are unique. Fire Emblem is longer than most console RPGs, and it's definately a lot harder than most of them. In other games, you can just cast Life/Life2/Raise/Phoenix Down and that character's back, but not Fire Emblem. Just one character death and you've lost that character for good; this causes you to make sure that absolutely nobody dies, increasing the challenge so much.

After beating the game, you also get the options of playing in Hard Mode, or playing with Hector as the main character, which allows more chapters and more characters. And even after that's done, you can begin playing Hector's story in Hard Mode, which is without a doubt one of the most difficult things I've ever played through. There's just no mercy.

3. Final Fantasy VII

My first true introduction to the Final Fantasy series. Even during the times where my memory card would keep being corrupted, I would keep on going with the game (ok, that's a lie, one time I busted my discs because I was pissed off, but I rebought the game). Once I finally got past Disc1, I was hooked. The game confused the hell out of me because I was younger, but after playing through it a 2nd and 3rd time I grew to love it more. I've never even obtained KoTR, or beat Emerald Weapon, but it's still one of my favorite games.

4. Final Fantasy VI

The characters, setting, and gameplay are all highly addicting in this game, and it's 2nd place for me in terms of music. The things that keep this game further down are replay value, and the fact that at the end of the game, all of the characters seem to lose their combat originality due to the espers. But, this is still one of my most played games, probably #2 on this list in terms of consistent playtime.

5. Final Fantasy IX

The story and characters did it for me, particularly Vivi. The gameplay is laughable now that I look back on it, because it's without a doubt the easiest FF game in the series, including Ozma Weapon and Library boss, but that doesn't stop the game from having a great storyline. Hell, out of all of these listed, I probably have the most attachment to this game's storyline over the others.

[Exoduso]

Alot of people seem to be attached to FF9 more than the others.. The music has a lot to do with it. Uematsu's best IMO.

[Arnwulf]

5. Star Ocean 3 - Loved the battle system, made the game feel like less of a grind. The characters were great, Albel was almost broken even before you crafted the +5billion attack power weapons for everyone.

4. Chrono Cross - Because the final boss had an "automatic win" move you can use against him. And it was an overall solid game. I enjoyed Chrono Trigger as well, but Cross sticks out in my mind as the better of the 2 for some reason.

3. Final Fantasy X - I really enjoyed the battle system, the summoning and the way you could swap characters in the middle of a fight. Capturing creatures to fight supermonsters and getting all the ultimate weapons were a nice challenge in an otherwise easy game.

2. Shin Megami Tensai:Nocturne - Freaking amazing game with excellent storyline. Breeding and crossbreeding your own demons was awesome, plus you can get Dante to fight with you.

1. Shadow Hearts 1, 2, and 3 - While 3 wasn't connected to the first 2, it still enjoyed the same type of storytelling that I really enjoyed in this series. The first one was very dark and the 2nd one followed a similar tone although a little bit lighter. Yuri is the freaking man.