Xenosaga III, Zone of the Enders 2, Rogue Galaxy, Tales of the Abyss

[Maxico]

Words

You fail to mention that you can cut giant spaceships in half with your enormous laser.

I cannot stress that enough.

[JKTrix]

I'm a huge ZOE fan. You really don't need to buy the first game, because you can watch the ZOE1 story cutscenes in "The Second Runner". I own the 2nd game and a Japanese special edition I got for 1000 yen, plus the GBA SRPG and the entire anime series.

ZOE 2 is definitely the best on that list, and my top pick.

If you're gonna go with Xenosaga (hint: Don't) you have to get all 3 of them. You can't really just jump in at the end and expect to 'get' everything. I say skip it entirely, and if you're at all interested in the crazy story read it up on Wikipedia.

Haven't played Tales of the Abyss yet, but I've played a few of the previous Tales games. Tales series has one of the more interesting combat systems in any RPG I've played, so I'm sure it would be a good buy.

Rogue Galaxy is just fine. Nothing particularly special about it, but it's not bad at all.

Still, you have ZOE2--which I agree with Ookami as being a Generation Classic--against other less-than-outstanding games. If I had to rank them 'in order' to buy them:

1: ZOE2
2: Tales of the Abyss
3: Rogue Galaxy
4: ????
999*:Xenosaga III

I don't like Xenosaga :P

[Crossblades]

Out of all those games, I only played Tales of the Abyss and I found that game to be fun. It has a great battle system and a good story

[Azure Chrysanthemum]

ZOE2. Hands. Down. One of my absolute favorite top 5 games I think everyone should play. It's all kinds of amazing. What other game has hundreds of on-screen enemies for you to take down while trying to defend a bunch of your own units? Or lets you do an aerial combat run against 5 huge battleships that are armed to the teeth or chase after a train trying to blast your way to the front before it reaches the end of the tunnel?

[Madame Adequate]

I've not played Tales of the Abyss, but when has a Tales game not been pretty classy?

ZoE is huge amounts of fun. Can't recommend it enough.

Rogue Galaxy is ridiculously good. Sure, the story's cheesy, but there are some great characters (Steve ftw!) and the gameplay itself is some of the most solid I've seen in a long time. There is something of a dependance on items, but that's about the only criticism of note.

Xenosaga, well, I couldn't really get into the first one and never played the second. I doubt it's bad in any way, just not my cup of tea.

[JKTrix]

What other game has hundreds of on-screen enemies for you to take down while trying to defend a bunch of your own units?

Kingdom Hearts 2 tried this, it was nowhere near as grand. That scene in ZOE2 was probably the most epic in any game I've played. Vic Viper FTW. I played it again last night, though I'm pretty rusty :P Too many LEVs died.

I spoke to one of my co-workers yesterday about it, and he said he'd never even heard of ZOE2. Sacrilege! (Well, not really. It's easy to miss stuff in Bermuda.) I gave him the game today to check it out. He's one of those 'GTA/Madden/FIFA' players who I'm trying to get to expand his interests, will be interesting to see how he takes to it.