I Need a New RPG

[Hollycat]

warriors orochi 2

[black orb]

>>> Valkyrie Profile..

[magemasher]

[/IMG]Shadow Hearts 1 on PS2 is a gooden. It has a final fantasy battle system with a skill meter to decide strength and accuracy of attacks. You also visit real places like Paris London etc. It also has a take on summons aswell. Could probably buy it for a few £ or $ nowadays.

There is also a shadow hearts 2 which iliked but never got near to completion.

It also has a lottery mini game where you can win great items or soggy used tissues.

They're good games and well worth a try.

[/IMG]

[Laddy]

I suggest Xenogears and Xeonsaga. They have verry deep philosophical plots and great combat systems.

[Slothy]

Xeonsaga... great combat systems.

Huh?

Don't listen to this guy, at least not about Xenosaga which is the only one I've played. Combat was an utter bore.

[Laddy]

It was really complex, with a combo system, "boosting" system, a cool if somewhat unnecessary giant mech system, and AP system, it was very complex and engaging.

[Slothy]

It was really complex, with a combo system, "boosting" system, a cool if somewhat unnecessary giant mech system, and AP system, it was very complex and engaging.

From what I recall, it really wasn't as complex as you're making it out to be. In fact, I seem to remember most battles being a fairly straight forward afair. I don't remember making a whole lot of meaningful decisions in battle. It generally amounted to spam an enemies weakness until you win.

Sadly it's been years since I played it so I'm foggy on details, but it was easily one of the worse battle systems I've played. Very slow, low difficulty (except for a few battles I recall that were difficult solely because my levels weren't nearly high enough on the first attempt), and not a whole lot of real meaningful choices to be made in battle. The fact that it also made giant mechs not only pointless but boring didn't win me over either.

Not that I haven't enjoyed a lot of RPG's with mediocre battle systems before (I'm looking at you FFVI), but the glacial pace of Xenosaga's, as well as the poor pace of the story as a whole really wore on me more than others. Frankly, I wouldn't recommend the series unless someone comes in and tells you the later entries are orders of magnitude better and recap the story so that playing the first is unnecessary.

[Wolf Kanno]

Actually there was quite a bit of strategy in Xenosaga 1's system. There was a special bar that fluctuated between special effects for each characters turn (including bad guys) and you used the Boost system to keep enemies from getting stuff like Critical hit bonuses or you could use boost to makes sure you land on the turn that gave XP/AP/Money bonuses. The combat system itself is not a far cry from Chrono Cross and Xenogears system, where you built up action points with small attacks in a skill tree to eventually utilize powerful deathblows you equip on your characters.

Random encounter combat was pretty straightforward but not as slow as you are making it out to be (that would be Episode 2) and boss fights got pretty chaotic. Hell, Xenosaga had much harder fights than most JRPGs at the time (Cathedral Ship and Ecephalon Dive Bosses anyone?) and it had a pretty rich customization system where you can use points to raise stats, teach accessory skills to characters, and learn ether(magic) skills and eventually teach them to other characters.

The AGWS system is useless for all but the early parts of the game and some later boss fights but it was still fun tinkering and customizing them. Technically they would be useful throughout if the game didn't have some bad exploitation elements in the customization system. Still, they are excellent damage dealers and more importantly, they can take a hit far better than your party would so they still work as temp shields.

I can agree the plot is definetly slow but I feel Eps.1 did better with building atmosphere and narrative than its direct sequel did, which pretty much stripped away everything from Eps 1, replaced combat with a lousy early predecessor to some mechanics SE will steal and use for FFXIII and created a story that has not only been mostly retconned but often felt like you needed a story cheat sheet to make sense of everything.

Episode 3 is easily the best entry in the series because it brought back some elements from Episode 1and for your benefit it does contain a huge summary of the first two games and most of the supplement titles so you can understand the whole Xenosaga universe. It even through in more blatant nods to Xenogears such as the optional super boss in the game being Id's Red Gear.

[Freya]

The "Tales of" games are pretty fun!

[Slothy]

Fair enough Wolf. I haven't played it since it came out which was what? About eight years ago? Never could bring myself to touch it again after I completed it, largely because I'm a lot less forgiving of ridiculously long cut scenes now than I was then. I do remember finding combat to be not that difficult, and really slow though. I can't for the life of me say why, though I have the vague feeling that a lot of battles dragged on longer than I felt was necessary. Perhaps I'm just remembering some of the worse boss battles or something though.

And I'll fully admit that I rarely find games in general to be legitimately difficult, and there are maybe a handful of RPG's I'd say could be described as such without being difficult just because they were grind heavy or had sudden spikes in enemy power levels. So me finding Xenosaga pretty easy wouldn't really be a surprise. I think it was mainly the overall pace of the game that turned me off of the experience as a whole.

[Wolf Kanno]

Fair enough Wolf. I haven't played it since it came out which was what? About eight years ago? Never could bring myself to touch it again after I completed it, largely because I'm a lot less forgiving of ridiculously long cut scenes now than I was then. I do remember finding combat to be not that difficult, and really slow though. I can't for the life of me say why, though I have the vague feeling that a lot of battles dragged on longer than I felt was necessary. Perhaps I'm just remembering some of the worse boss battles or something though.

And I'll fully admit that I rarely find games in general to be legitimately difficult, and there are maybe a handful of RPG's I'd say could be described as such without being difficult just because they were grind heavy or had sudden spikes in enemy power levels. So me finding Xenosaga pretty easy wouldn't really be a surprise. I think it was mainly the overall pace of the game that turned me off of the experience as a whole.

I'm just trying to jog your memory. Random fights are not that difficult, especially once you get the Tech attacks that hit everything making random combat ridiculously fast. Besides the boss battles, the rest of the game is pretty easy which is a bit off putting at times cause the difficulty would fluctuate as you strolled through a dungeon only to get curbed stomp by the boss, but I've come to learn I tend to like this model so its not like I'm not bias.

My other issue here is that Episode 2 was such a bad game that any complaints I may have had about Episode 1 quickly disappeared because they were nothing compared to the sequels problems which is why I usually tell people to skip Episode 2 (especially since a chunk of it got retcon anyway)and just go straight to Episode 3, which is very good game that was ruined by its lukewarm previous installments making everyone lose interest.

[Larahl]

Shadow Hearts 1 on PS2 is a gooden

Also; Shadow Hearts: Covenant, it's sequel.

[Iceglow]

I'll third the Breath Of Fire games and definitely third the Vagrant Story suggestion. For the record. Vagrant Story was the first game I ever got properly, properly stuck on. The fact that weapons develop affinities for their targets but can only have certain affinities or they lose comparability with other targets means you find yourself using a variety of different weapons from spears to crossbows to swords. You can also upgrade Ashley's equipment and combine your equipment so that you can keep some of the affinity that you've earned with a weapon as it becomes stronger. All in all it was the first game in Japan to be given a maximum rating by the top Japanese Gaming magazine which at 5am I can't remember the name of. Still slightly pissed at Square for not doing Vagrant Story 2 yet.

I'll also mention Dark Cloud and it's sequel Dark Crystal. They're action RPGs for the ps2 with a dungeon crawler theme where every time you play the dungeon even if it's a re-run will be different due to the random dungeon generation. I recommend playing them in order, of Dark Cloud first because Crystal is better and will ruin playing Cloud (which was a very good game)

Front Mission 3, this is a strategy rpg for the ps1. Imagine an alternative ending to ww2, the outcome of which means that by the year 2000 humans have walking bi-pedal mechs 50ft tall called Wanzers which can be used in battle as well as in heavy lifting roles. Now, the game provides 2 different main story lines to play through either the Emir (Emma) or the Aliana (Alice) story and the way you differentiate between them can be missed in the blink of an eye. I wish I was kidding but it's one of those if you didn't know it was there, you might never discover the other story line in the game moments. In combat you control just 4 pilots at once, and each pilot will learn skills and abilities depending on what weapon type they have equipped and what body parts their Wanzer is made of. That being said by purchasing or else by forcing enemies to surrender (or by killing the pilot without completely destroying their machine) in combat you can obtain new Wanzers allowing you to shake up your party some. One of the coolest parts of Front Mission 3 is that you can completely customize the Wanzers by giving them new body parts, new legs/hover units etc and all these changes however slight are reflected on the unit. This leads to being able to create many, many new combinations (I am sure considering how many different Wanzers there are in the game, not all combinations have been tried out even now) and for levelling up between fights (which can prove essential since it becomes insanely hard towards the end when you sometimes fight 6 - 12 enemies with just 4 pilots) you have a simulator which can get new levels from an in game internet complete with in game hacking to access hidden areas of the net which can provide either new parts/programs/story information. All in all if you like SRPGs you'd seriously be going wrong without this on your collection shelf.

[Carl the Llama]

[/IMG]Shadow Hearts 1 on PS2 is a gooden. It has a final fantasy battle system with a skill meter to decide strength and accuracy of attacks. You also visit real places like Paris London etc. It also has a take on summons aswell. Could probably buy it for a few £ or $ nowadays.

There is also a shadow hearts 2 which iliked but never got near to completion.

It also has a lottery mini game where you can win great items or soggy used tissues.

They're good games and well worth a try.

[/IMG]

Shadow Hearts 1 on PS2 is a gooden

Also; Shadow Hearts: Covenant, it's sequel.

Shadow Hearts 2 = Shadow Hearts: Covenant.

Also the Tissues are not soggy, and they are actually essential to get Seraphic Radiance, why? because without them you will never get the Air Grave stone, no Air Grave stone no level 3 Air Fusion no SR.

[Hollycat]

monster hunter