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[Manmademan]

I remember when I was buying some carts for my SNES a few years ago (like, games I've rented when I was a kid so I never owned them before), and I came across a cheap copy of 7th Saga along with a batch I decided to pay for. My boyfriend hates the NA version of 7th Saga with a passion. He tried his darndest to stop me from buying that one game even though he didn't have to play it. I don't like the NA version much either, but since it was cheap and I could probably throw it on to see what I think of it, I still bought it.

Seeing it listed in this thread multiple times made me feel rather amused, recalling the look of horror on his face.

.

Yes, it's very bizarre. i can't say i've run into anyone with any real love for the game personally. Perhaps your boyfriend paid nearly $80 US for it when it came out in 1993 like I did, and is still feeling that burn.

 

[Boss Doggie]

FFVIII demo*










*includes Brave Fencer Musashi

oh u

 

[Finalow]

this. ^

also

 

[Yoshichan]

oh u

You know it's the truth!

 

[massoluk]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcnBFfnkdIg

My cousin bought this game (or may be it was a pirate copy, I don't know). Since it was in Japanese, I have no clue what the fuck is going on. He was saying that the tiny sprite was Kenshiro he's trying to recruit or something.

Blew my fucking mind that Arale, Saint Seiya, Goku, Kenshiro were in the same game.

 

[saveweyard]

I'll second this.

Subscribed to this thread as I haven't played a lot of these games ever, and some of them seem like they would hold up pretty well.

 

[Sir Garbageman]

The old IE games. Arguably the best engine for RPGs ever.

Baldur's Gate I & II - Considered one of the best wrpgs franchises ever.

Icewind Dale I & II - Classic D&D dungeon crawlers

Planescape Torment - Arguably a visual novel masquerading as an RPG, but nevertheless tells one of the best video game stories ever. Look at this effing dialogue tree (slightly spoilerly)

 

[Buttons]

PoPoLoCrois. One of my favourite old-school JRPGs and severely underrated.

I know it's a PSP game but it was originally 2 PSOne games that were released in Japan only and got put together into the PSP version we have today.

 

[RPGCrazied]

As I said in another thread. I'd eat my socks for games like these. It pains me to know we will never see a Shadow Hearts, or Suikoden, Wild Arms, Xenosaga, Dark Cloud. I could list all day, but you get the point.

 

[RurouniZel]

LUNAR: Eternal Blue remains my favorite game to this day, and is probably one of the best examples of storytelling through gameplay (read: Lucia).

 

[Weltall Zero]

Oh god the nostalgia ;_;. I had even forgotten about some of these.

I'm slightly surprised nobody posted this; at least, not specifically (Japanese cover because the western one is kind of an eyesore and everyone has seen it):

I believe other than that everyone covered all my favorites already. Actually, wait; the SNES version was posted, but the (very different, yet equally good) Genesis one wasn't:

I've always much favored the SNES versus the Genesis/Megadrive, so it's kind of funny that my two picks are from the later.

 

[Rezae]

I've played thru 7th Saga more times than is healthy. I've completed it with every character completely solo. Screw dividing up experience.

Also I love the Lufia games. The first holds the most nostalgia, but the second is a better package.

 

[Currygan]

so many hours with those two

 

[Alucard]

Haters, walk out the door

This game had really great puzzles.

 

[Alucard]

Allow me to assist you in wallowing in your nostalgia:

Here's BOF in 3 minutes:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=asL6FWNZ0ao

and here's Suikoden in 3 minutes:

http://www.vgcuts.com/suikoden/

Oh, man...

 

[Bulzeeb]

I also have negative nostalgia for Panzer Dragoon Saga, does that count?

I remember being told how amazing it was, and it was just lame. The story was lame, and it dragged on for too long. That formula just did not work in the RPG sense.

I remember liking this a lot as a kid though. I liked it a lot more than Secret of Mana.

I think I dislike you now

 

[Son1x]

LUNAR: Eternal Blue remains my favorite game to this day, and is probably one of the best examples of storytelling through gameplay (read: Lucia).

While not my favorite game, it is definitely my favorite JRPG.


Seems like Grandia was mentioned quite a few times. Another amazing game.


GameArts really knew how to make great games. Unfortunately everything after Grandia II is pretty meh.


Seiken Densetsu 3 is better than Secret of Mana overall, but since I played both co-op, SoM > SD3, just because the whole game pauses for every magic -.-

 

[ponpo]

A few

Damn that PSP port for never coming to exist.

Really great game, and amazing music! Well, for the area of my brain stimulated by nostalgia anyway.

The last Tales game I actually enjoyed. Also contains my wife Philia.

 

[Corleth the Fey]

Allow me to go old school. Not that I don't agree with many of the choices of you fine ladies and gentlemen.

 

[Natetan]

I feel the same way about Mystic Ark. Everything about the game technically should be better than 7th Saga but there is a certain something missing. Nice music and visuals though.

Importing Elnard/7th Saga was great. When they released the game in the US they messed around with the stats of the monsters and characters and made it much harder. It wasn't till many years later that I found this out. While playing the US version back in the day I always though it was just the character I chose (Lux) not being as powerful as the one I chose in the import (the knight). I have come to appreciate that difficulty hike though.

It's a very interesting JRPG. You chose from one of eight different characters who must travel the world searching for these magical runes. Everyone starts out on equal terms, but as the game goes on the others will do whatever they can to get the runes. You ally with one character, but the rest I think you must kill to get their runes. It has a very nice, dream-like ost, and a rather realistic visual style. Kinda reminds me of Phantasy Star III. It's a neat mix of sci-fi and fantasy as well.

i love 7th saga, but when they take the runes from you half way through the game, it's near impossible

 

[Bassmastergeneral]

PoPoLoCrois. One of my favourite old-school JRPGs and severely underrated.

Awesome! Completely agree about this game. This and Lumines were my first PSP games. Even after playing the original first two Popolocrois games I think I prefer this as a nice clean combination of them.

Also, adorable soundtrack:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QxajTQ2fF4

 

[Lumpy Onion]

PoPoLoCrois. One of my favourite old-school JRPGs and severely underrated.

I know it's a PSP game but it was originally 2 PSOne games that were released in Japan only and got put together into the PSP version we have today.

Oh yeah! Popolocrois was my second PS1 import RPG and it was a great experience. The 2D art in it was very pleasant and full of charm. It gave me a sense of childhood nostalgia for something I had no reason to be nostalgic for...if that makes any sense. Great journey, and very easy to digest without knowing the language that well.

When I got around to playing the PSP version I had to do a double take because I thought my memory of the game was getting bad because parts I remembered were missing. Was pleasantly surprised to discover it was a combo mix and match of the original 2 PS1 games.

I think I had a Pietro avatar for like half a year around here. Might bring that back.

 

[BlueTsunami]

I dont' understand why the fantasy platforming scenario in Landstalker was never really built on. It was so damn fun.

 

[Darkmakaimura]

Then we can jump to the Lunar games which were also quite charming.

Actually had a poster of this long ago

This mofos! One of my favorite JRPGs in all of gaming history, especially the second game!

 

[Lumpy Onion]

I dont' understand why the fantasy platforming scenario in Landstalker was never really built on. It was so damn fun.

They went on to make Dark Savior for the Saturn. It's rather lacking in the fighting mechanics, but the isometric jumping is very much alive in the game...

 

[Darkmakaimura]

Also:

 

[Vamphuntr]

The best intro to an RPG ever? Just maybe. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeMfNbJDenk Characters that had charm, action RPG elements, and gorgeous visuals and music for its time. I loved this one.

I know many consider II to be the superior game, but this was the first one I played and fell in love with.

The first Wild Arms is probably my favorite game in the series. It fairly ugly during battles now but I really enjoyed the puzzles and the overall feel of the game. I really feel it's music is underrated.

I will never forget the Filgaia/World Map theme or the town themes <3

Story was kinda sad too and they more or less copy pasted the same twist with Rudy in the other entries in the series after.

Criminally underrated game.

My favorite SNES game. It has many flaws like how your characters look in battle and how worthless were the capsule monsters but it's still one of the best RPG I played. I played it so much that I even found a way to make the game crash when I was a kid.

Ending is really sad, though. Even though I had played Lufia before playing part 2 and I knew what would happen in the ending, I couldn't help but feel really sad. The baby

Treasure of the Rudras. I think it's one of Squaresoft's best games, and it's another game I really urge people to try. It has a really high quality fan translation, too. I first played it a year or two after it was released and it's one of those games I fell in love with immediately. One of the things that really struck me about it was how beautiful it was, and coming after FF6, I was really impressed with the animations in battle as well. The music is also really fantastic, composed by Ryuji Sasai of FFMQ fame. It's one of the SNES's best RPGs as far as I'm concerned.

It's really beautiful but I always felt the balance was really weird in this game. Once you find a good bunch of spells to create the game gets much easier. I also tend to enjoy a lot stories where you play as different protagonists until they all join forces so I liked the game a lot. Plot was pretty crazy too, especially Surlen's(sp?) Chapter.

Lufia 2 has... uneven art direction. Everything outside of battle is amazing and wonderful (if sometimes repetitive) and then when you get into a battle... like... all the enemies look terrible.

I like Lufia 1 more than anyone should (it's my second favorite Lufia game, after The Legend Returns!), but I am firmly aware that it's because of my nostalgia for it.

Yeah, Lufia 2 is often really ugly during battles. Your party members look weird and so does humanoid bosses (sinistrals). I never couldn't get into the Legend Returns. It felt like such a step back that I had a hard time enjoying it. No puzzles, random generated dungeon and a really weird art style turned me off completely from it. Battle system was fairly original though with the flow system and having 9 characters take part in battles.

This thread's real easy for me since I never liked FF


Live A Live blew my mind. I remember thinking I was getting 7 games in one.
AND DAT MEGALOMANIA

This was a mixed bag for me. Some chapters are really awful while some are really amazing. As such it really feels uneven. It's still really rewarding to assemble your team in the end though.

7th saga was really a hell of a misstep for enix. hard for me to call it a good game, and I finished it twice.

edit: the TV tropes article for 7th saga is fucking hilarious.

Yeah, the balance is quite peculiar in that game. It's even harder if you chose the Elf girl since pretty much everything will kill you in 1-2 hits and as soon as you run out of magic you become useless. It's still fun to try to win though.

First time seeing the EU box and it doesn't look great :O . This is another really great game. The atmosphere in this game is really phenomenal. I always feel goosebumps while playing this. Especially during the underwater ruins part, or during your investigation in the desert. Really amazing soundtrack too.

The old IE games. Arguably the best engine for RPGs ever.

Baldur's Gate I & II - Considered one of the best wrpgs franchises ever.

Baldur's Gate II is probably my favorite game of all time. Probably beat that game over 10 times and I still discover new things and devise new strategies every time I start a new game.

 

[Lumpy Onion]

This one sure brings back memories. I never made it too far in the game though. For me it was more of a mapping simulator. The automap in this game was fantastic, especially being able to label every single thing I found. Reading about this one in Videogames and Computer Entertainment made me get a PC at the time.

 

[Darkmakaimura]

This one sure brings back memories. I never made it too far in the game though. For me it was more of a mapping simulator. The automap in this game was fantastic, especially being able to label every single thing I found. Reading about this one in Videogames and Computer Entertainment made me get a PC at the time.

GOG is your friend and both 1 & 2 together are only $2.99.

 

[Lumpy Onion]

GOG is your friend and both 1 & 2 together are only $2.99.

That's pretty much a steal for those two games. Thanks!

 

[gato_busta]

Loved this game as a kid and still replay it every once in a while.

 

[jeremy1456]

This version of the game blows the PS1 remake completely out of the water.

You haven't played Lunar: The Silver Star until you've played the Sega CD version. For me the difference between this, and the Complete version is very much like the difference between Complete and Legend.

Yeah, perhaps that was a little drastic, but I can't even go back to Lunar: The Silver Star Complete after completing the Sega CD version.

 

[Sinople]

Yep. It's my favorite of the Heracles games. It's really too bad that the only game that ever got officially released in English, the DS one, just doesn't stack up even a little bit.

I've never played the DS one more than 1 hour thanks to those horribly slow-paced battles
A shame because I was really happy to see this series rise from its grave.

No, not really.
There are... What? Four non-japanese games listed out of dozens?

Beside, I wasn't exactly asking for anyone's head, just observing a fact.

But you seem upset. It just happens JRPG were more popular back in the day, for various reasons.

PoPoLoCrois. One of my favourite old-school JRPGs and severely underrated.

A good choice
The 2nd game is still in my backlog though...

Some other choices:

Tengai Makyou ZIRIA / Far East of Eden Ziria
Such a good looking game at the time, with voiced and

Spoiler

crudely

animated cut-scenes and

Spoiler

some

orchestral music!
The sequel is objectively the better game by a good margin but I have a soft spot for this one, probably due to it being my first PC-Engine CD game and the fact it was just easier overall. I'd like to try the XBox360 remake.

It appears the SaGa series is not well liked here but Romancing SaGa 3 remains in my top 3 favorite Super Famicom games. The music, the liberty, the "hirameki" system, the boss fights, the many PC... so many memories.

 

[vagabondarts]

Final Fantasy is disqualified from this discussion as it would surely dominate. This is for the other the ones you loved the heck out of. Here are my "Siiiigh, those were the days" RPGs...

The best intro to an RPG ever? Just maybe. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeMfNbJDenk Characters that had charm, action RPG elements, and gorgeous visuals and music for its time. I loved this one.

Just started replaying this on my psp. I love this thread!!

JRPG drought = delve back into the classics.

We are fortunate today that many of these games are available digitally, whereas before you had to track down hardcopies.

 

[poisonelf]

While I started really old school, with the first Bard's Tales and Dungeon Master, I'll have to be honest and say I was too young to really enjoy them, having fond memories but being mostly helped through them by older gaming mentors of ancient times.

Personal fondest memories that drown me in sudden torrents of nostalgia would be:

Eye of the Beholder 2. Must have finished it 5-6 times, and played it before EoB 1.

Black Crypt. Fell in love with it and will still never forget how a single save game required an entire disc, and I saved instead of loading just before dying...

Stonekeep, so insanely beautiful graphics for its time

Might and Magic 6 had me wandering around towns and exploring maps for weeks. I loved how unforgiving it was, no ridiculous level scaling (which was normal at the time, but now, after the Elder Scrolls' baby-sitting I really appreciate it).
You got in the Titans' area before being of sufficient level? Too bad, one-shot kill, don't come back here peasant.

Greetings and Salutations !

And later on, as others already mentioned, at the peak of RPG creation:

 

[Wyndstryker]

I will always remember this town theme.

Moment I clicked that link, this song came back to me and is now stuck in my head =/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKVjP9jEqK0

 

[darkside31337]

I was going to post Xenogears, but since someone already did it I'm going to go with this one. This game got a lot of flak for being a very unorthodox sequel of CT, perhaps rightly so. But personally, I played it before and loved everything about the game: the cast of characters (dat Harle), the story, with some twists that blew my mind back then, the colorful backgrounds, the combat system, and above all the godlike OST, only surpassed by the aforementioned Xenogears (both by courtesy of Yasunori Mitsuda).

Truly a game I treasure in memory.

Have pretty similar feelings. Chrono Cross was the first JRPG love of my life and was such an amazing game in every way. Really enjoyed this game so much more than CT, and its right up there for my favorite PS1 JRPG.

And this was my favorite on the PS2 (although with the way I'm enjoying P4G I guess in a roundabout way maybe not). Absolutely fond memories of this game a tragedy there will never be another SH game, hence the nostalgia feel to this game even though its not that old. The first was pretty mediocre and the last one wasn't nearly as good as Covenant but this is one game I'll always pine for.

 

[Ultratech]

I'm posting a couple of Japan-only games I'm nostalgic for because I figure the stuff that came out in the west will be pretty well-covered by others.

Radia Senki. This game is amazing considering it's for NES. It's created by several of the same people who worked on Ninja Gaiden, and the influence shows in the game's NG-style cutscenes. The battle system is also very unique. I believe GhaleonQ once called it FF12 for NES, and while it's not quite the same, it's not a bad comparison. The game really was ahead of its time.

Check out HG101's article on the game.

Think I'm gonna start on this come January. Been wanting to play it for a while, but hadn't had much time to do a lot lately with the Holidays and work.

I've watched some videos of it, and it really is pretty interesting. I got the battle tune stuck in my head for a solid month once.

And I can understand the the "FF12 for NES" statement, in how it plays out a bit.

 

[Sentenza]

This one sure brings back memories. I never made it too far in the game though. For me it was more of a mapping simulator. The automap in this game was fantastic, especially being able to label every single thing I found. Reading about this one in Videogames and Computer Entertainment made me get a PC at the time.

Ultima Underworld 1 and 2 still are unmatched in many ways as first person dungeon crawlers, especially in terms of level design.

On a negative note, the archaic control system is quite clumsy to get into for today's standards.

 

[Lactose_Intolerant]

OgreBattle - RTS with rpg fights. Super awesome and long.

Tactics Ogre (snes, psx, remake on psp) - SRPG, made by the same people that did FFT
A handful of characters from the 1st game show up in this, great story.

Ogrebattle 64 - same system as the original with some unit formations and new upgrades. Has a lot of characters from the previous games. Has another good story.

 

[Conan-san]

A few

Really great game, and amazing music! Well, for the area of my brain stimulated by nostalgia anyway.

Soleil as it was known in the PAL region was the first game to make me pause and think about what had happened. Sure it was done in the most hyaked of way

Spoiler

Have a bunch of cultists kill a girl and go on about how it's good because she was diffrent

but my 10 year old mind paused at that.

 

[Xevren]

Since my favorites have been mentioned (Valkyrie Profile, so much love for that game) I'll throw in one that I haven't seen. Or I may have missed it, whatever.

Always had a lot of fun with this one.

 

[IceCold]

I was wondering why no one was posting pics of Mother 3 then realized it was released in 2006. Feels like an older game.

 

[D3RANG3D]

First Person RPG by a South American Dev was recommended by GAF, was surprised by this one.

Zelda Clone pretty awesome at the time, need to replay it to see how it holds up.

My first cRPG, was obsessed with competitive FPSes at the time.

 

[Taruranto]

Did anyone mention Anachronox yet?

So criminally underrated.

 

[Douche McBaggins The 3rd]

There's rarely anyone who agrees with me, but I really love Granstream Saga.

It was developed by Shade, which was formed by former Quintet members, and to be completely honest, I like it a lot more than the Soul Blazer trilogy. When it came out, it got lambasted for its simple graphics and complete lack of face textures on any of the characters, but it has a neat/somewhat unique story, cool bust art, a really fun one-on-one action combat system, and super awesome music composed by several beloved composers, including Kohei Tanaka and Masanori Hikichi (Terranigma).

I feel a twinge of feeling in my soul. What is that? IT IS SHAME. Because I played this game and it has crushed my heart, spirit and soul.

 

[Aeana]

I feel a twinge of feeling in my soul. What is that? IT IS SHAME. Because I played this game and it has crushed my heart, spirit and soul.

Why?

 

[Lumpy Onion]

I remember being so excited about Granstream before it's release. Imported it and found it to be very underwhelming. It mostly came from the 1 on 1 battle system. Something about that just felt very rigid and cumbersome to control. The dungeon and world design had a blandness to them as well.

I did like the soundtrack and quality of the anime scenes though. And the "choice".

I read somewhere that you can get a sword that absolutely breaks the game early-on. Pretty sure it was something people weren't supposed to find in their first playthrough.

 

[Aeana]

I think the battle system is really fun, honestly. Certainly more fun than "stand in front of monster portal and spam attack" Soul Blazer, ugh.