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What last gen RPGs are still "essential"
- Thread starter Petrie
- Start date
FrostuTheNinja
Member
Tsubaki said:
I can't stand this game at all...
I don't know what it is... But it bothers the hell out of me...
It almost seems as if the game can't make up it's mind what it wants to be...
An RPG or an ARPG... Oh well...
Them's the breaks...
SouthernDragon
Member
Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
What you are supposed to do with the few uber units early on is take off all their weapons, and have them tank while your other units build up experience.
Give it a go.
What you are supposed to do with the few uber units early on is take off all their weapons, and have them tank while your other units build up experience.
Give it a go.
Death_Born
Banned
FlightOfHeaven said:
I have to say that after playing Radiant Dawn, PoR seems like a horrible game. I mean, no battlesave was fine on the GBA, but it's much more annoying on the Wii where you have to sit down all the time. It also has battle animations that aren't a pain to sit through, and stat charts that show you when you max out, as well as BEXP that can't be abused and isn't 100 at a time. Anyway, I've permanently turned off animations for PoR.
What I disliked about RD was the sheer number of units, the fact that you had to split them into thirds for 1/4 of the game, and that you can only bring a few into the endgame where they actually matter.
jeremy1456
Junior Member
Feep said:
Well what game would you list as an 'essential' RPG?
If you say FFX or KOTOR, then same goes to you
Honestly, there weren't too many hits with me last-gen. Persona 3 and the Xenosaga series (or, Xenosaga III and an incredible willingness to read all kinds of backstory and summary before playing) were the highlights, Baten Kaitos was really good, FFX was average, FFXII sucked. Didn't play DQVIII, though I've heard good things for fans of the old-school.jeremy1456 said:Well what game would you list as an 'essential' RPG?
If you say FFX or KOTOR, then same goes to you
jeremy1456
Junior Member
Feep said:
Baten Kaitos I can almost agree with, Persona 3 too.
I'm glad we agree somewhat on FFX and FFXII.
Xenosaga though... phhhft.
jeremy1456
Junior Member
Bildi said:
Oh wow. :lol
Did you read my post beforehand?
B-Rad Lascelle
Banned
Somehow I don't see people making the distinction between "their personal favorites" and what they consider "essential" for someone looking to take in the best of last-gen console RPG offerings from scratch.
I'd have the essential list summed up as...
Final Fantasy X
Final Fantasy XII
Persona 3
Shadow Hearts: Covenant
Xenosaga 1-3
And for non-PS2 fare...
Skies of Arcadia
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Tales of Symphonia
That's it.
My personal fave is probably Digital Devil Saga and I'm not even including it as I don't consider it as essential must-play genre-redefining RPG fodder. Persona 3 kind of has its turf covered, anyhow.
Kingdom Hearts doesn't qualify as an RPG, IMO... and I'm not counting strat RPGs.
Golden Sun is still the best portable RPG series out there... bar none (at least until Crisis Core)... but doesn't rate as essential, either. If any GBA title gets the nod for me as "essential" it would be Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga for its brilliant script and gameplay.
I'd have the essential list summed up as...
Final Fantasy X
Final Fantasy XII
Persona 3
Shadow Hearts: Covenant
Xenosaga 1-3
And for non-PS2 fare...
Skies of Arcadia
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Tales of Symphonia
That's it.
My personal fave is probably Digital Devil Saga and I'm not even including it as I don't consider it as essential must-play genre-redefining RPG fodder. Persona 3 kind of has its turf covered, anyhow.
Kingdom Hearts doesn't qualify as an RPG, IMO... and I'm not counting strat RPGs.
Golden Sun is still the best portable RPG series out there... bar none (at least until Crisis Core)... but doesn't rate as essential, either. If any GBA title gets the nod for me as "essential" it would be Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga for its brilliant script and gameplay.
I AM JOHN!
Banned
SKIES OF ARCADIA, MOTHERFUCKAZ!
PillowKnight
Member
Aha, you just killed your entire reply with that one!Feep said:
Baten Kaitos was mediocre and bumbling , filled with worthless characters, a terrible storyline, with a failure for a battle system.
OP I recommend you skip Baten Kaitos I and proceed to the much superior sequel. Trust me on this, Baten Kaitos : Origions very very good, Baten Kaitos(something something) mediocre to terrible game.
No, I hit reply to Feep and then went to another tab for a while before coming back to finish my reply. When I saw your post it was quite a "moment" :lol Nice to the FF hate squad is slowly but surely assembling. I feel like Voltron or something.jeremy1456 said:
I didn't mind Xenosaga but of course yeah, there were a lot of cutscenes. At least you could pause in them. I like Baten Kaitos a lot more, but never played Persona 3.Feep said:
Skies did have a lot of cliches perhaps, but I still found it extremely charming and loved the characters.
PillowKnight said:
Therefore, you're a failure of a person. With how cheap the game is, there is no reason at all to skip it - the battle system is even superior to Origins for many fans, myself included. The story is more than passable when you consider some of the garbage stories in games this last generation (FFX, VP2) and skipping this would just knock a bunch of the history of the game out of Origins.
vanguardian1
poor, homeless and tasteless
jeremy1456 said:
That's just freakin' scary. :lol
Anyways, I don't object to them trying different things in games, but I DO object when those changes are frustratingly tedious or downright broken (both apply to the FFXII battle system).
I have yet to play Xenosaga III (I just resumed an old savegame of Xenosaga II right before the personality switching boss, and I'm trying to remember how to use the ******** battle system), but here's my favs of "last gen jrpg's".
1) Skies of Arcadia (mediocre battle system is it's biggest flaw, but figure out how it works and you'll spend more time enjoying the rest of the game than you will the fights)
2) Suikoden V
3) Tales of Symphonia
4) Grandia II
5) Xenosaga
Metroidvania
People called Romanes they go the house?
Hmm...I would still say get Golden Sun and: Lost Age over Mario and Luigi, the ability to transfer over "everything" to the Lost Age without a loss in story, amnesia, etc....was a brilliant setup that I, for one, haven't seen before ever really working.
PillowKnight
Member
Yeah, you're wrong beyond words. There is not way that story is superior to FFX's. FFX wins if only by having some characters who the player gives a shit about. I mean really-- how dumb do you have to be to develop a story's characters after the game is almost over. I spent the entire game not caring about any of the characters(Because the writer did not spend any time developing them) and then, they're like "Oh here, they actually are more than just empty husks, which we could've gotten this to you when it actually mattered. "batbeg said:
Then there's the battle system. Holy shit. I should personally be ashamed of this, because I never realized the developers put a red herring in armor cards. Here I was actually trying to use the systems the developers put into the game, constantly having my hand filled with needless armor cards--being forced to dump cards one at a time while the boss goes crazy on the characters whom did not have armor cards in their hands. Then there's the poker number system which is counter intuitive when paired with the elemental canceling. Unfortunately, I also did not realize that you could pull off insane combos if you just ignore the elemental system and go apeshit crazy with ascending/decending combos.
B-Rad Lascelle said:
This is exactly what I was looking for. I do intend to try a few of the other highly praised titles here, but having it pared down to what would be considered essential.
The only thing is, I've heard such mixed things about Xenosaga, but as someone who enjoys games just as much for story as for gameplay, I imagine I could get some enjoyment from them. I'll have to at least give the first a shot.
Lionheart1827
Member
batbeg said:
Hell yes.
Suburban Cowboy
Member
and here we have a thread that lists every rpg of last gen. kudos
InvincibleAgent
Member
I personally had a lot of fun with LotR: The Third Age, but the must-haves are Tales of Symphonia and Paper Mario.
PillowKnight
Member
What types of stories do you enjoy though?Petrie said:
Breath of Fire V : DQ has a great story. Although, it's a very simple story. It is definitely and essential when it comes to story as the game is unique in it's storytelling. While the game is relitavely short you view different cutscenes when you A) Get a game over, B) Replay the game. The player is actually rewarded for how well they played through the game, and as you get better you get access to different sections of the game's world.
It also has very unique gameplay in terms of battle systems.
On a lot of the bosses with tons of HP you tend to get at least one character who has a glut of armor cards. This happens because armor cards are not used while attacking, and the bosses are limited in turns. Whenever this happens your character can only throw away one armor card at a time unless he is attacked. Because of this, it's much better to just ignore armor cards and pull off stronger chain combos, always ascending/descending , never same number combos. It's also useful to ignore elemental canceling when you can pull off a longer combo, so long as you don't cancel out the bosses' 'weakness' element.Fredescu said:
PillowKnight said:
I didn't say BK was superior, I said it was passable. FFX did nothing for me in either the characters or the story. BK similarly did nothing, and though I saw the plot twist coming a mile away, that they still did it wowed me like nothing else (temporarily, obviously). But it was passable enough for me to enjoy the gameplay, and the world was honestly nicely padded out with a lot of definition in small objects.
PillowKnight said:
I don't want to turn the thread into a huge debate about Baten Kaitos, but this really doesn't make sense. These complaints seem specified at Origins (the armor one, the dumping cards) more than Eternal Wings, though you recommended Origins. I don't entirely understand what your complaints here are?
Tyrannical
Banned
This thread needs less Japan
jeremy1456
Junior Member
Tyrannical said:
It could use a tiny bit more Fable, but beyond that...
PantherLotus
Professional Schmuck
I think this term essential needs to be clarified for some of you people. It means that one could not move forward to the next generation of RPG in good conscience w/o having played that game. RPGs that pushed the genre, introduced new themes, battle systems, and were the best games available for the RPG genre for the entire generation.
I can think of 3 worth talking about.
I can think of 3 worth talking about.
A Black Falcon
Member
Skies. It's almost certainly my favorite console RPG, and it's still an amazing game.
Oh yeah, and the GC version is worth it... it includes all of the extras that were downloadable on the DC version, puts in a new moonfish-finding system (that doesn't use a VMU), added several new sidequests (that are plot-relevant), added the extra bounty battles (much harder than almost all of the rest of the fights in the game!), and slightly upgraded some graphics... the only negatives really are that the VMU Pinta minigame is gone and some people say sound quality is slightly worse, but that's minor.
And definitely not Baten Kaitos (the first one). Very average game, battle system that isn't that great (those four numbers in the corners of the cards... so confusing... and even beyond that, the battle system is kind of annoying.), a pretty bad story, utterly unlikable cast (the main character is particularly awful), and the worst and most annoying voice acting ever... it's average at best. SoA at ToS are much better choices for GC RPGs... even the Lost Kingdoms games are more fun, though they're much more action-RPGs.
Oh yeah, and the GC version is worth it... it includes all of the extras that were downloadable on the DC version, puts in a new moonfish-finding system (that doesn't use a VMU), added several new sidequests (that are plot-relevant), added the extra bounty battles (much harder than almost all of the rest of the fights in the game!), and slightly upgraded some graphics... the only negatives really are that the VMU Pinta minigame is gone and some people say sound quality is slightly worse, but that's minor.
And definitely not Baten Kaitos (the first one). Very average game, battle system that isn't that great (those four numbers in the corners of the cards... so confusing... and even beyond that, the battle system is kind of annoying.), a pretty bad story, utterly unlikable cast (the main character is particularly awful), and the worst and most annoying voice acting ever... it's average at best. SoA at ToS are much better choices for GC RPGs... even the Lost Kingdoms games are more fun, though they're much more action-RPGs.
jeremy1456
Junior Member
PantherLotus said:
Not true, maybe for you it does.
For me (can't speak for the rest of you) it refers to high quality RPGs that really defined the genre during that specific time period.
Each person can take it their own way, seriously.
PantherLotus said:
It really depends what kind of depth you're wanting to look at it though.
Breath of Fire V introduced a new way of integrating gameplay and story together, and gave a unique way of playing through the game.
Final Fantasy XII moved the single-player series into a faux-multiplayer game with semi-realtime gameplay and the ability to instruct your party through very advanced AI.
Valkyrie Profile 2 created an incredible blend of turn-based, semi-strategy RPG like gameplay with real-time, co-ordinated skills (I started playing this Sunday, am now at sixty hours, addiction total).
Tales of Symphonia was the first Tales game to go into 3D, and an early fighter for strong cel-shaded visuals.
Baten Kaitos/Origins made a new battle system and even attempted to create a new link between player and character in new and interesting ways.
I mean, this could go on forever. There's only so many ways of looking at the RPGs - look at the metacritics, look at everybody's favorites, or look at a mixture of the both and general underground recognition. But it's all going to be very subjective. However, given the number of hardcore gamers on GAF, I think the number of people listing their favorites is perfectly okay, as those with the most mentions have obviously pleased the most hardcore gaffers :lol