Phantasy Star II & IV (on the Sega Genesis Collection): Two of the best RPGs ever made. PSII has such delightful old school difficulty -- the player can quite literally get killed at any time. The story and setting are very original, and it was one of the first console RPGs to offer real depth in its story and characters. PSIV is just fantastic; one of the definitive classic RPGs of the 16-bit era, and it easily stands side by side with some of the more lauded SNES games like Chrono Trigger and FFVI.
Valkyrie Profile: Beautiful artwork and sprite-based graphics, beautiful Motoi Sakuraba music, original story, original and often challenging gameplay, and extremely well designed dungeons. The game was a gem on the PSX and still is on the PSP.
Astonishia Story: Horrible, horrible game. So very bad that it warranted its own
depreciation thread.
Legend of Heroes: Considerably below average games. They are bland, generic, and unoriginal, marked by obnoxious (in the first game) and completely forgettable (in the second game) characters. The stories never go anywhere, and the games are aimlessly driven strictly by tedious fetch quests even fifteen hours into the games. The writing/dialogue is
awful, littered with terrible Engrish -- bad spelling, bad grammar, bad punctuation, bad syntax. All of this would be somewhat okay if the games compensated with good gameplay, but they don't. The battle system is generic, the ability system is generic, the games are brainlessly easy, and you just wander through repetitive, poorly designed dungeons. Music's great, though. Additional comments
here.
Blade Dancer: Not that bad. It's got some very nice graphics on the whole, and there's a lot of area to explore. The combat system is a fun Final Fantasy-like ATB. Game isn't too hard, and the story/characters are pretty forgettable, but it's really not a bad game. Kinda average.
Dungeon Siege: Haven't had a chance to try it yet, though I bought it.
PoPoLoCrois: Very, very... cute. And while I don't usually judge games too much strictly on their technical merits or production values, it's hard not to in this case -- the load times are so obscene that battles drag out forever... and it's a pretty tedious battle system to begin with, combining traditional RPG mechanics (AKA random) with a gridded movement system. Music is blah.
Lord of the Rings Tactics: Along with Lord of the Rings: The Third Age Advance and Vandal-Hearts II, this is definitively one of the worst SRPGs ever made.
Kingdom of Paradise: Blah. Below average. Long been a fan of Climax's games (Shining in the Darkness, Shining Force, and Landstalker were fantastic), but unfortunately they've been on a steady decline quality-wise since the Genesis. It started with Dark Savior, continued with Time Stalkers, and sadly they hit their lowest point with Kingdom of Paradise. Terrible battle system, and in a game like this, that's a breaking point.
Generation of Chaos: Here's what I
posted at the time the game came out. I stand by that. No one else in the official thread liked it, either.
Tales of Eternia: Really good game, and on the middle-to-high end of the Tales series. Great battle system and fun dungeons.
So yeah, aside from the awesome Genesis/PSX games, it's not a very bright landscape right now.
However, I'm generally optimistic about some of the games coming up (a lot of the ones Matix posted) -- specifically, Gurumin, Monster Kingdom, Valhalla Knights, D&D Tactics, and Jeane d'Arc.
Canadian Psycho said:
I already own Phantasy Star II and IV (in original cart form and on the Sega Genesis Collection), Valkyrie Profile (PS) and Tales of Eternia/Destiny II (PS).
Excellent choices.
Canadian Psycho said:
Still, the ones I am mostly interested in are Riviera, Popolocrois, Final Fantasy I and II (even though I own Dawn of Souls, I very much prefer this new look - also, any chance of a 2D Final Fantasy III being released for the PSP), Jeanne D'Arc (need to know more about this one though - trad. or strat.?) and... the Legend of Heroes games! I really am a sucker for 2D sprites (and don't really mind bad localizations as I enjoyed Breath of Fire II).
I don't know about the FF1 and FF2 games coming... hopefully they'll turn out well.
If Riviera comes out in the US on the PSP, and if you don't have the already-released GBA version, then you should definitely snag it. It's a fantastic game; one of the best RPGs on the GBA. Sting is a really talented, underrated team that takes a lot of cool risks with their gameplay/story, and the final product (in the case of Riviera and Yggdra Union in particular) is very unique, very innovative, and very fun.
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