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For me it's Breath of Fire 4. No one talks about this game ever but it's amazing. The dual story is very compelling and has a lot of twists and turns and is quite complicated and emotional. The score is good, battle is fun. It has a sense of place, you stay in areas for a while, they stick in your head. Not sure why this game always falls under the radar. One of my top ten.
Breath of Fire in general never gets much attention, though among the fan community, IV is ranked rather highly with only BoFIII standing in its way for being considered the most popular. Honestly I would say Dragon Quarter is more deserving in that fandom, since it is a very good game but is largely reviled by most of the fanbase and considered the game that killed the franchise.
In terms of personal favorites for me, Persona 2 is starting to become like this. I'll concede that Persona1 is kind of an experimental clustersmurf that's more enjoyable as a train wreck than as its intended purpose of entertainment, and I'll concede that Persona 3 took the franchise in an exciting new direction for the franchise and P4 improved on it, but it just seems to me like no one ever talks about Persona 2 or acknowledges what it did for the series, especially egregious when you see how much P4 and now P5 are copy/pasting ideas and concepts from that game. Most who have played it even say its a good game, so its not like the gameplay is detrimental.
Dragon Quest VI often gets overshadowed by the games before and after it (ESPECIALLY DQ V), but it;s actually a very good game in its own right with a very interesting plot and job system. Easily my favorite Dragon Quest up to that point.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel
Gosh I got sucked up in this game. Exceeded all expectations. It's not original or unique, it doesn't shake things up, but it takes many of the things I love in RPG's and put them together in a way that just feels great. It has good character interactions, bonding events, NPC's with stories, cooking, mini-games, over 60 hours of gameplay if you do more than the basics, outfits, classic RPG turn-based battle system, difficulty settings, sidequests galore, an interesting story, a large cast, great locations, some nice, more subtle story telling elements, good voice acting usually, a sense of humour, customization. It's just... awesome.
I am mega-pumped for part 2 this fall
...Oh god. This is a hard one.
Mana Khemia, just the first one.
If only for having one of the greatest finale boss fights of all time in terms of the narrative build to it.
Either of the FF Tactics Advance games although people are finally starting to accept their amazingness
For me I think......Skies of Arcadia.
It certainly has it's dedicated fans, but there's simply too many fans of jrpgs that haven't tried this one.
When you play it, feels like your catching up with an old friend but that both of you have some much new stuff to catch up on that there's still plenty of fun new things to keep you interested.
It's just charming, fun, and other than the encounter rate, I think most jrpg fans would like it a good bit.
I actually started playing that one, but couldn't finish it because it was my room-mate's GameCube. I've researched this, and found that the GameCube is not worth buying for the sake of RPGs because, apparently it barely released any. I did get chance to play part of another one called Pokemon:Colosseum and had to put up with the entire student house slamming it, I actually thought the part of it i played was good.Quote:
Originally Posted by sharkythesharkdogg
In terms of one I completed, I think that Grandia is too underrated. Its got an innovative gameplay including lots of cool magic combinations, a good story and it featured voice acting (long before SE thought to do it).
Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean.
Great list of games everyone, there are several games on there I haven't played.
Even though it's talked about quite a bit, Suikoden 2 is a masterpiece and could always use more love.
Also Psychonauts and The Longest Journey series.
Probably Chrono Cross. That game barely even gets mentioned nowadays. With the amount of old games Square port to new platforms, you'd think they'd at least have talked about it once or twice.
Nearly everyone in the audience prefers Trigger so never brings up either. I personally like them both about equally.
I only play the first part of it. But i think bahamut lagoon is pretty cool. I think thats what its called. The strategy one like FF tactics.
"Tales Of Phantasia" for the Super Famicom - basically it is the spiritual precursor to the Star Ocean series, and the random battles have some Street Fighter elements to them.
There are actually tons of similarities between this game and Star Ocean - both of them start out with the main character and his best friend running back and forth on fetch quests (and they run through a mountain region that's close to home), both of them throw in time travel very early, at which point you end up in the past and explore the places from the beginning of the game one more time (AND at this point the main character's best friend leaves the party) and both of them have special attacks that can be improved into even better versions of themselves.
Oh and yeah, Cless, Chester and Mint are basically Ratix, Dorn and Milly.
I haven't played this yet but it's Mister Adequate's favorite game of all time!Quote:
Originally Posted by The Last Ancient
Definitely Chrono Cross. The people who prefer Trigger have ranted against it so throughly that most people won't even try it. It is an awesome game in its own right though and in some ways I like it more than Trigger.Quote:
Originally Posted by Randy
I'll give a second mention to Shining Force 2, which is one of my favorite classic SRPGs.
Another one I thought of was Brave Fencer Musashi. Yes it suffers from being a semi-early 3D Platform/Action-RPG so it controls terribly at times and seems to have dungeons and puzzles designed around those problems, but it was also funny as hell, had some really cool ideas like stealing enemy abilities, and a really fun world design/cast. I sometimes feel like I was the only person who picked up the game for its own sake instead of just for the FFVIII Demo.
Lufia 2 is another one, while Lufia 2 is probably the holy grail of the series among the fanbase, it is largely unknown within the JRPG community. Graphically, it looks pretty unimpressive considering Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG had already come out by this point but it had a pretty solid cast and great gameplay, with a heavy focus on puzzles. You can tell that at least some people cared because both Wild ARMs and Golden Sun show influences from this series.
Battletech: The Crescent Hawk's Inception is another one I love but mostly lost in the annuls of time. It was an old PC game from back in the 80s with ugly graphics and some borked game mechanics, but it was super fun to go through it. I especially found it interesting that the game didn't bother with a big showdown with some boss, instead the final section of the game is trying to solve a huge puzzle to access to a cache of mechwarrior tech to help the rebels retake the planet, it may have been light on plot/characterization but it was back in the day when games asked more of the player to fill in the blanks and so my own version of that story is still epic in my head.
I second this!Quote:
Originally Posted by Forsaken Lover
Great point, Chrono Cross is a terrific game. And quite unique.Quote:
Originally Posted by Randy
SaGa Frontier 1 & 2. Especially number 2.
Can I just nominate the SaGa series as a whole? :'(
Secret of Evermore was a great game and very original. Loved playing through that game. It was difficult yet straight forward, plus having to find your ingredients to make magic happen was a rather new concept of the time. Worth a look for those who never played it.
Phantom Brave, it's my favorite NIS game. But it's not Disgaea and everyone seems to overlook it. The story and characters were really good and I loved the music. They don't even get that many cameos in other games. Castille shows up in Makai Kingdom, which is another overlooked game. And Ash and Marona show up in D2 as DLC and I think that's it.
I bought Phantom Brave way back without knowing what it was, and it is one of the few PS2 games I still own a hard copy of. :D Soul Nomad was really great too. :)
To give this suggestion some meat for those who haven't had the pleasure. Shining Force is a strategy RPG very similar to Fire Emblem in play style, with it's own weird and awesome story-book art style with anthropomorphic characters that don't embue your typical furry stylization.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ffamran mied Bunansa
The big draw for me was the fact that you could walk around towns and talk to NPCs and potentially do little side quests once in a while. Like in a real RPG
The sequel even goes so far as to let you traverse and overworld and enter towns and talk to NPCs and do little side quests once in a while. Like in a real RPG
No other SRPG series I'm aware of let you walk around and talk to NPCs like in a real RPG. That taken with the fact that the SRPG element is easy and fun. It's a really rewarding couple of games to dabble in
You may want to give the first three Arc the Lad games a spin if that's your thing. It was an early PlayStation SRPG series but didn't see release overseas until Working Design brought it over. I think it should be on PSN for cheap.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vyk
W~POST!!!
On further reflection, and also partly because I picked it up again recently, Terra Battle is another really cool RPG I've been playing. What makes it unique is that it's a cell phone game yet, I can't think of another game where most of the elements are actually engaging and it doesn't quickly devolve into meta-game bulltrout like most other games I've tried. They added so many features since it first came out that's its turned into a more robust title than it's humble beginnings. Probably the closest I'll experience what an MMO must feel like after a few years of patches/expansions.
It's not a story/character driven masterpiece, but the cast are colorful and the story is interesting if a bit long-winded at times. The music is amazing thanks to Nobuo Uematsu and the battle system is pretty damn unique. It will be interesting to see how the console version will turn out.