Looking for some Ps2 RPGS.

[Panella]

SO3: Like the others said, it starts out a bit slow and the plot towards the end is kind of... stupid. If you mainly play rpgs for the story it may not be your cup of tea. That said, the gameplay was fun and more than made up for it. Even if it didn't have a story at all I would still suggest getting it.

Rogue Galaxy: Going to have to disagree with the others on this one. The game was fun to an extent but I would place it pretty firmly towards the bottom of the games listed. The battle system reminded me of SO3's(sort of), except SO3 did it much, much better. Sans that final boss fight(Seriously, fuck that shit.) the rest of the game was... well, to put it bluntly, if aoe skills hurt it the fights required zero thinking. Definitely play this game on a high difficulty setting, or try to limit the aoe skills... they make the game far to easy. That or the fights were ungodly annoying, having to fight several monsters that require jumping over and over and over and over in order to damage them gets old very quickly. First time I've ever played a game that drove me to looking up strategy guides on how to obtain the most overpowered weapon available, all for the sole purpose of making those damned jumping fights end as quickly as possible.

If you're a completionist type of gamer just fair warning the game might annoy you to death. Some of the hunting records were horribly obnoxious to complete. Spending hours(unless you are very lucky, HOURS no joke) running in a circle praying to run into some bullshit rare monster 30 times is not my idea of fun. Upgrading the good weapons got rather tedious and repetitive. Not to mention how fun it is to try and unlock all the skills. Nothing like needing a drop off a rare monster that almost never drops what you're looking for. And to top it off, once you finally get said item your moment of triumph is dampered by the fact you just outleveled where you are in the story and now the next several areas are stupidly easy. Oh but wait, you get to repeat the cycle in the next area!

Sorry if I ranted a bit. I was really looking forward to the game before it came out and ended up a little dissapointed with it. I did like how it looked though. Then again, this is an ffxi forum so the mindless repetition might not be such a downer.

[Bingbong]

Yeah, Shadow Hearts goodness.

It's funny if you watch the progression of that series.
I: dark storyline, gameplay is very rough, but a very solid story with an incredible sort of melancholy throughout.

II: better gameplay, a lighter storyline, lost a bit of what made SH:I different.

III: gameplay was very good, almost disney-channel like storyline (if you take away the pervy moments) and felt nothing like the first 2.

Of course, if I remember correctly, all 3 games had that sort of pervy-undertones in them to begin with. I just remember feeling embarrassed if my then GF at the time happened to be watching whenever the wrestler was doing any of his specials. Or the puppeteer for that matter.

[Gregorio]

The Suikoden series is my all time favorite series of RPGs. Definitely get 5 regardless, but like others said, try to play 1 and 2 first. 3 is good and shares a good amount of references to the other games, but to me it just didn't feel like a Suikoden game. 4 was trash, but I played through it anyway just for the series sake...although Suikoden Tactics (which uses save data from S4) was pretty fun.

[Kaylia]

Xenosaga 1-3: (play 2 too, even if most people dont like it). great story and cutscene
Star ocean 3: great gameplay and story
Shadow Heart 1-2: Decent gameplay, story is well done and original (shadow heart 3 is fine I guess, but the story blows)

[Charismatic]

I can't forgive you for recommending Xenosaga Ep.II.
That's just wrong.

[Lucean]

Suikoden V -

Great entry to the Suikoden series best one out for the PS2 in my opinion. I've been a fan of this series for quite some time and being a die hard fan I can say this is the best one since Suikoden II which is revered as one of the best games for the PS1. Suikoden V is a great game if you love customization and lots of characters, the Suikoden series has team based combo attacks and an arsenal of 108 characters to build up into your own party. It definately will keep you busy for a while.

Shadow Hearts: Covenant
Shadow Hearts: From the New World

As far as Shadow Hearts goes I LOVE the first two, they were amazing games but the first one is definately a love/hate thing. It has a good plot and great characters, but the battle system is very lacking. The sequen Covenant is AMAZING, it took what was wrong with the first and made it 10x better, especially combat. It has a very intuitive ring system that makes battle very fun and you can customize your types of attacks on a ring based grid where you have different strike patterns to determine the damage and critical rate of your abilities. I really love the alternate World War History here, it's really well done and fun to play, but you may be a bit lost on the plot by not playing the first one, which I suggest to do if you want to enjoy this to it's fullest. I have yet to play the third one but haven't heard nice things about it....

Honorable mention goes out to Star Ocean, great game, just very very slow at first, great story and concept that unfortunately only gets started too late in my opinion, by time it gets rolling I feel you're too bored to finish, which is what happened to me.

[Khrno]

Rogue Galaxy

Shadow Hearts: Covenant
Shadow Hearts: From the New World

Rogue Galaxy is great, I liked a lot, the game is somewhat a mix of DQ8 and Darck Chronicles, taking the best from both games and adding it's own flavor, however imo doesn't surpass DQ8 but might at the level or better than DC. Combat is fun, and crafting system is very good too.

About Shadow Hearts, probably my second favorite series of rpg on PS2 (even starting on PS1 from Koudelka), I would recommend the original Shadow Hearts if you haven't played and Covenant, those are really great games if you can dig the Judgment ring system, I did and I had great fun. Check about the system first you might not like, but if you feel interested they won't disappoint you.

About From the New World, only recommended if you really liked the other 2 SH, imo it wasn't at the same level as the previous 2 versions, and altho i played it, I didn't really liked much, I just completed for the sake of it, because storywise was still interesting.

[Lucean]

Hey Khrno,

Is Koudelka anyway related to Shadow Hearts? I've managed to never had played this game at all, know nothing about it and found it on Craigslist for like $25 so I might pick it up at that price.

[Khrno]

Shadow Hearts is like the spiritual sucesor of Koudelka on PS2. I bought it on ebay when I looked more into Shadow Hearts after playing it, saw it was from the same people and that SH was based on the same universe, and had some places and characters from it.

System is no way as good as SH, but as SH fan, it was worth. Remember it is a PS1 game so know what to expect, cutscenes are probably just second to Square for RPGs in PS1 tho.

Edit: 4 discs game too.

[Mugmug]

Star Ocean 3
Persona 3: FES
Xenosaga 1-3

All worth checking out. The Battle System alone in Star Ocean makes it worth picking up ASAP. It's just fun to run around and collect shit. As someone said above me, if you're into building up your characters to kill optional bosses/dungeons then this game is for you.