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[Vice]

Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne: Arguably the best JRPG of the PS2 era. Great combat. Interesting world.

I think Dead Rising deserves a mention.

 

[TheExodu5]

Nocturne is awesome, but it's hardly ambitious.

 

[blanco21]

You need to play Shadow of the Colossus.

 

[meta4]

The Last of Us is now being considered ambitious?

So I Am Alive with Uncharted production values with escorting is ambitious?

Riiiiight.

The most idiotic comment I have heard all day. n4g level drivel.

 

[tearsofash]

Can you explain why you mentioned Heavy Rain? Someone else did it, and having watched someone play it at length, I'm having a very hard time understanding what makes it ambitious.

It's certainly not the shit-poor story, and other people have done choice and consequence better, so what is it?

I felt the ambition was contained in the overall direction. While poorly executed, its scope just reeked of ambition that went ultimately unrealized.

I feel that it's the way it did the choice/consequence. I play VNs all the time that did a better job, but few have really made the attempt to present that mechanic in the way that they did. Ignoring all the negatives, I still think it did have ambition.

 

[geebee]

Nocturne is awesome, but it's hardly ambitious.

When you compare it to other RPGs of the time.. I think it is. At least, in terms of story/theme.

 

[sn00zer]

Having a lot of fun with Darksiders 2...game is surprisingly huge for its genre

 

[Jawmuncher]

Resonance of Fate is the most ambitious JRPG this gen (unless you include Demon's/Dark Souls).

This ones sitting in my backlog.
Looks like a lot of fun just havent sat down with it yet.

 

[Finaika]

This ones sitting in my backlog.
Looks like a lot of fun just havent sat down with it yet.

Dude, its the best RPG this gen.

 

[finalhour]

Here's a few more suggestions. Two of them were already mentioned but I felt like it might be worth elaborating.

1. Monster Hunter Tri (Wii) or Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (psp) - I have always felt like the Monster Hunter games were the best part time jobs I've ever had. While these games might not have the flexible systems you seem to be craving, it is very open in how you approach it in that there are many weapon styles to try out, many different goals to aim for, and lots of DIY strategy and figuring things out. You spend time growing/crafting items and materials, building weapons, harvesting, and of course hunting monsters. All of the different gameplay systems feed into eachother and it becomes incredibly addicting. It also has a great sense of atmosphere and nails that "I'm living in this world" feeling.

2. Disgaea (any of them) (psp/ps2/vita) - If you are a tinkerer looking for a systems game with lots of bits to play with and see what you can do, this is probably the best one to go for. It's a game that is designed to be broken and then broken again. The only catch is the time commitment required. It can feel really grindy sometimes, but that is what makes you want to break it and blow the doors off of all of the different systems in the game.

Alternatively, Final Fantasy Tactics (psp, ps1, iOS) is another good one and has a very freeform system for building your characters that rivals or outdoes most PC RPGs. The story however is pretty linear.

3. Shiren the Wanderer (DS) - As a PC gamer you have no shortage of roguelikes so I don't know if this would be comparable, but I've tried more than a few and this is the only one I've ever become addicted to. It has a very minimalist style to it, but has plenty of "depth of interaction" as you put it, where you are constantly striving to come up with new inventive ways to use the simple tools at your disposal. You can probably find it for dirt cheap (I think my copy was $8 or something).

 

[pantsmith]

Doc, just going off of your tastes, which I know from your posts on Kotaku, you will absolutely loathe Xenoblade. Its a great game but you will not enjoy your time with it.

Have you ever played Final Fantasy Tactics? Thats way more up your alley, and a game I think everyone should play at least once. Deeply customizable, endlessly replayable and one of the most mature and intelligent narratives in gaming.

Matsuno's other games are wildly complex/ambitious console rpgs in different genres, so consider Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy XII (which is a classier version of Xenoblade anyways) while you're at it. They're more mechanically driven at the cost of having little influence over the plot, but thats enjoyable in moderation.

God Hand, which was already mentioned, is indeed a game about punching people. Imagine if you fused Resident Evil 4's (have you played Resident Evil 4? If not I'm recommending that too) level of satisfaction found in its combat, and fused it with an old-school beat em up. Its one of the most outrageously enjoyable games ever, and features game design that people worship to this day as some of the best available anywhere.\

Oh, and Super Metroid + the Metroid Prime Trilogy are right up your alley, too. Check those out.

 

[Error]

It's hard to top something like Human Revolution.

 

[Canis lupus]

You need to play Shadow of the Colossus.

Yep.

 

[subversus]

you should look for japanese games if you want ambitious console games. All western console games feel more or less like a safe bet even if there is some hint of ambition.

 

[Finaika]

you should look for japanese games if you want ambitious console games. All western console games feel more or less like a safe bet even if there is some hint of ambition.

Yep.

 

[DSix]

Final Fantasy XII (ambitious, brilliant, beautiful).

Resident Evil 4 (this game has the word ambitious written all over it, perfect design all around).

Shadow of the Colossus.

Perfect Dark, get the XBLA HD remake (oldie but hot damn, this game was fantastic, the mission design and weapon design are still the best, far better than your run of the mill linear dumb fps).

 

[RedSwirl]

Any particular game I should pick up? I'd rather not buy the entire series only to find out that it isn't my thing.

Concerning Yakuza, I would just get 4, the latest one to be released in English. It only has one city (unlike the last two games) but in my opinion feels like it has the most variety out of the games.

If you want depth, interactivity, and especially authenticity of the world from a Japanese game, you're probably never going to find anything similar to the Looking Glass lineage, but Yakuza does accomplish its own feeling of depth and authenticity.

It's not really a systemic game where you can pick up and investigate everything, but Sega went to huge lengths to make the world feel authentic. The games basically take one specific district of Tokyo (or other Japanese cities) and reproduce as much of it as the PS3 can handle. You can walk into a shop that actually exists at that location in Japan, and buy its real products as health items or whatever. It really tries to get you to "know" the city as the game progresses. It weaves all this into a classic-style gangster storyline.

In this game there is a shitload to do between gambling, dating characters based on real Japanese models and porn stars, fighting in pits, training fighters, running a bar, or just getting a drink at a real bar.

I've only played fighting games for a few minutes at a time before, so I've never really had the chance to get into them. My nature as a gamer, however, is to fiddle with the gamey systems and see how far I can stretch them. In a way, that's what I'm trying to get at with this thread: I want games that, when I push them, seeing how far I can go, they've got a lot for me to mess with. The mark of a good shooter is ultimately how far you can push it--how encounters can change based on your weapon loadout, movement, and enemy AI. It's why games like FEAR and Halo are excellent; they've got a nice variation of weapons, level spaces, and AI, so the experience can be different every time.

Instead of learning 'how' to play, and then playing that way, and only that way, as you progress, a good shooter is one that's ultimately a blank canvas for the art of combat.

Fighting games in general tend to be good at this, just with a smaller set of tools. In my personal opinion Soul Calibur nails the best balance between depth and accessibility, with each character having hundreds of moves that all work in a somewhat understandable system. I've been told that Virtua Fighter is similar, but I haven't had time to get into it. Street Fighter is also seen as very deep despite its relatively small move pool.

May I also suggest Marvel vs Capcom? It's a very unbalanced game, but if you want combat that you can mess around with and stretch, then MvC arguably excels at this more than most other fighters. It's almost deliberately made so that you can break the fuck out of it.

If you want balance, I personally suggest Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike.

I see the Souls games have been covered. Good times.

Friend, let me welcome you to the glory of Lord Matsuno.

Final Fantasy Tactics was a landmark title, filled with secrets, nuance, and brutal painful difficulty to be mastered by cunning (till chapter 4). Dozens of classes, over a dozen stats, with terrain, gear layout, skill choice, placement, gender, class, even zodiacal signs of the combatants having an influence on every move. It's on PS1 if you have a PS2.

Vagrant Story is his magnum opus. Dark, deep, difficult...with masterful cinematics, a magnificient soundtrack, a plot that doesn't assume you read Image in the 90s, and an oppressive, exhilirating atmosphere of danger, adventure, and empowerment that never leaves. Oh right, the ambition:

The best thing about this is once you draw it within your mind and master it, you can focus to your liking on a few strengths to carve your way beyond obstacles. I rocked 2-handed maces thru the last 2/3 of the game, which some say is suicide. I made it work by working the systems. Elegant and purposeful, the way complex game systems should be.

Final Fantasy XII Flawed, as it was taken from under his and his crew's control midway, but the intelligent, subtle, epic scope of his design still shines thru.

Boom. Right here. I guess you could also add Tactics Ogre here. The best version of that though is for the PSP. The best version of FFTactics is for the PSP or iPad.

Specifically concerning the Tactics games, they're probably some of the best strategy/wargames on consoles. The most similar PC equivalent might be XCOM or King's Bounty. Turn-based, square grid. The party management is where it get's addictive. Each character can be cycled through a bunch of classes called "jobs" in which they learn different abilities. It starts to legitimately feel like managing an army or at least a large unit, soldier-by-soldier. On top of that, as the previous poster said, the game also has a nice, thick, mature storyline. The PSP/iOS version of FFT has improved translation over the PS1 original.

Vanquish Story is mostly deep for its combat. It's a very weird semi-real time system with stuff based on risk factors, location-based damage, combo chains, and what have you. The game's combat centers around weapon crafting. All this is put into the structure of a one-character isometric dungeon crawl. The story is similar to FFT in its town. You can get it on PSN.

Generally, Matsuno's style is oddly "western" compared to other JRPGs. I'm not sure how much of that really comes from WRPG influence though. He's admitted that he still regularly logs into Ultima Online though. The stories he writes in his games are much more The Witcher and much less... well... Final Fantasy.

On the subject of that western influence, about Dark Souls and Demon's Souls...

Those games aren't really deep in terms of their worlds, more in terms of their mechanics. Compared to other Japanese games they are surprisingly objective and systemic when it comes to the action combat. Checking the Wikis just shows you how many strategies people think up for defeating each boss. You can permanently kill almost any NPC in Demon's Souls, no matter how important they are to the running of the game. The guy running the blacksmith shop in the main hub that you kinda need to sell you health items and repair your armor? You can kill him outright or just make him hostile towards you for the whole game. It doesn't care.

Both games also feel surprisingly compete for how little "assets" they use. They truly feel like every mechanic and character is there because they need to be there. They really do feel like efficiently made low-budget games.

Lastly, how familiar are you with Metal Gear?

If you want something with depth and interactivity I would mainly suggest you Metal Gear Solid 3 and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. The latter is the MSX game, not the NES game.

MG2 is fucking incredible for a console game that came out in 1990. If you played MGS1, the game is basically MGS1 eight years before MGS1 and rendered in pixels. In my opinion, it get's the same mechanics across better and ends up feeling a bit more free-form for it. The tools and solutions you use in order to solve problems in that game feel... less video gamey and more authentic to the world.

MGS3 is where Kojima really tried to switch up Metal Gear and make it more like a real, open stealth game. I still haven't played Thief but I imagine MGS3 brought things slightly closer to that game. In it you can sense an attempt to create a dynamic world where bases and guards worked systematically. If a guard spots you and you shoot his radio, he can't call in an alarm. If he goes missing for around 30 seconds a search party comes looking for him. If you blow up all the food storage in the game, the guards start complaining about their hunger and will greedily gobble up any food you throw out.

 

[AbandonedTrolley]

This was ambitious

 

[RedSwirl]

You need to play Shadow of the Colossus.

Honestly, I feel like Colossus would be a deep disappointment for the OP. Both it and Ico are very minimalistic games.

Colossus one of my favorite games, but if the OP is looking for a big and deep world to delve into, it might bait him and then slap him in the face. It feels like the skeleton frame of a Zelda game.

Basically, you're given a massive open world, 16 bosses, and THAT'S IT. Colossus provides an extraordinary sense of place, like you're actually on a journey through plains and caves and forests, but it's pure atmosphere. It's a world that begs to be explored but has almost nothing to find.

 

[DSix]

The most idiotic comment I have heard all day. n4g level drivel.

So, GAF is now okay for direct personal assaults/insults on other people? I wasn't aware of that. If so I'll be sure to use that tactic too if someone is offering an opinion I don't like (not the first time I'm seeing that sort of thing)...

 

[Durante]

Nocturne is awesome, but it's hardly ambitious.

I think it's certainly more ambitious than Xenoblade. That is an incremental improvement on FF12.

 

[RedSwirl]

Maybe this is a bit of a necrobump, but I'd like to know if the OP actually decided on anything and bought some games.