Xenosaga Ep.1 and FF5 are both pretty fantastic.
I'm like the only guy that likes Ziggy, but I'm pretty sure there are other Galuf fans.
There better be.
Xenosaga Ep.1 and FF5 are both pretty fantastic.
I'm like the only guy that likes Ziggy, but I'm pretty sure there are other Galuf fans.
There better be.
Ziggy is a cool guy.
Not a Ziggy fan. But also not really a Momo fan so
But FFV!!!!
I'm discussing my 108, er, 111 favorite games of all time in THIS THREAD so go check it out and join the conversation!
21. Final Fantasy Tactics
We're getting in to my top spots which means more Final Fantasy's!
Final Fantasy Tactics is a political drama about... ummm... Remember how I said I was bad at political stories? I don't remember much about the overarching plot except for there's like a war over the successor of the throne I think? And some noble houses are supporting one side or the other? But I know much more about the smaller details of the story, like those in poverty who hate the nobles and the Ramza family drama llama, and of course the whole Delita thing. So basically what I'm saying is I know more about the smaller character plots within the major plot.
This is a strategy RPG with job classes! You get in to fights along the map between story events, and there you can move your characters and have them attack or use skills. Some skills or magic have a wait time, so it's important to check turn order and make sure your enemy won't move before the execution of the action! There's a wide variety of job classes, most of which are unlocked by using other job classes. Acting and such gives you JP to spend towards learning abilities for the jobs you're using. There are story mandatory characters but you can also get generic soldiers for a small fee. I personally gave each character two jobs to master.
General impressions:
I've always loved this game and it's job class system, although it is sadly on the harder side since I suck at tactics games. I'm actually pretty sure that I get worse at it as time goes on. But that doesn't stop me from playing it and getting excited everytime. I will say that when going through my top games list, this game did go down quite a few spots when I stopped to look at it more, but it's still an awesome game, it's one of my favourite strategy game ever, and it has some amazing moments and great atmosphere.
Story:
As I mentioned above, I do have a hard tome following the overarching storyline, instead focusing on the smaller stories within the story. Those I did find very interesting and the game does a good job of making the world feel very real and making you feel like a small part in a bigger event. It was well written and lots of moments really gave the feels. It also had some good shades of grey in there, which I could appreciate, making morality more complicated than the typical right vs wrong.
Gameplay:
It's really fun to play but really hard as well. Like you should grind but you shouldn't grind too much because then the enemies will level with you but you'll be stuck with more basic equipment since you haven't progressed the story yet. So finding the right balance can be tricky. And there's some very complicated and difficult bosses. But I loved the job class system and all the different combinations you could come up with and I liked having to think about my environment and my turns and such. It wasn't a game to just mash the X button with, I actually had to put thought in to my actions, and I like that.
World:
The world is kind of drab and largely unexplorable other than battles and moving along little dots on the map. But there were some interesting maps that added some strategy to the fights. Overall though not really great at all.
Characters:
A strong point for this game. There's so much going on and so many people, but they make you care about them and they're written very well so you really get immersed in their stories. The characters really do make the whole story and it's am experience watching them go through the war and how they're affected and what actions they take.
Favourite character: Alma ld9pDsC.jpg
Honourable mention: Ovelia cXmGaqn.gif
I liked both these ladies because they kind of get swept up in things and Ovelia especially gets used a lot, but they still stay strong and kind and don't let it break their spirit. I also enjoyed Alma being more of a background than a central character because it felt more genuine to not have everyone at the center of everything like you get in a lot of RPGs.
Overall a good game with really strong characters and awesome gameplay. A great example of the job system and a lot of fun for fans of Strategy RPG's. Heavy political story with shades of grey for those who enjoy those types of things.
Great to see FFV so high on the list. I keep forgetting to put my PSP back in my bag so I've not made progress on FFT recently, but I'll try to remember and that way I can keep doing my 1-2 battles per tram journey home like I was before.
Bow before the mighty Javoo!
20. Dark Cloud
Oh look, we are at the top 20!!Less than a week left on this list
At the start of Dark Cloud, some evil rich dude revives the dark genie and commands it to destroy the world. But the King of fairies is having none of that (I'm not making any of this up) and at the last minute manages to trap people and buildings and such in to floating balls called Atla, which are conveniently spread across the dungeons of the land. Our hero, Toan, after witnessing his village get destroyed, is contacted by the fairy King and given a gemstone called the Atlamilia, which will allow him to open the Atla and restore the world.
There are two main sections of this game. The first is going through dungeons, collecting Atla, defeating enemies, and beating bosses. In dungeons, on top of keeping track of your own HP, you must also watch out for your weapon HP and your thirst meter. If your thirst meter is depleted your HP will begin to drain. This can be restored with items or in a healing fountain. Your weapon loses HP through use and if depleted your weapon will break. Weapons can also be customized and evolved in to stronger weapons, so it's important not to break them. The second aspect of the game is town building. Each Atla you find in the dungeons will contain anything from a house to a person to a lamp. The items fit in specific houses and the houses can be placed anywhere in the village you're rebuilding, along with roads and trees and such. The villagers will also make requests as to where they'd like their houses because just saving their lives isn't enough, although a lot of the requests are optional to fulfill and just give you an extra prize if you complete the requests for the whole village.
General impressions:
This is one of the first games I had for the PS2 (along with Jak and Daxter) and I played it non-stop for a good while. I loved it. I loved the town building, the weapon evolving, some of the characters. Something to note about this game is it's a rare case of a game getting much easier the further in you go. The beginning of the game is the hardest part because you don't have a shop, have limited resources, have low HP, WHP, and thirst, little money, and weak weapons. The first dungeon is incredibly frustrating for those reasons but the game gets much easier after that and once you build up your thirst bar enough, it's never even an issue anymore.
Story:
I really like the story although it's not the deepest. I think it's very well told, especially in the beginning when you really feel the lonely desperation of poor Toan and the mayor, being two of the only people left. It's not a character driven story, but it's still very sweet and has some incredibly touching moments, and it did surprise me towards the end when things shifted around a bit. This isn't the deepest or best told of games, but the story is charming and kept me interested.
Gameplay:
It's a lot of fun when you get past that initial difficult bump I mentioned. There's a good amount of characters with different play styles so you can find someone who matches yours (although don't neglect the others or you'll regret it!) and I always got super excited when it came time to evolve my weapons to see what new thing would come up. Town building was excellent and I liked being able to play over and over and never have a town be the same.
World:
The world is excellent, there's a great diversity in areas and I liked most of them, especially the starting town, the forest village, and the town by the ocean. What's more is you pretty much decide where the roads, trees, houses, shops, all of that stuff goes so they towns are highly customizable. Complaint would be that they're small and I would have loved to see them be bigger with more to customize.
Characters:
This is not a character driven story and the characters beyond their introduction parts get very little in the way of scenes or dialogue. Really they're all pretty disposable. But they were still charming and fun to use and as an added bonus the NPC's were all different and had their own personalities and felt like real people. As did some of the villains.
Favourite character: Xiao 02sYQ2J.png
Honourable mentions: Ruby, Steve vVS0Me3.jpgkE7Hxad.png
Xiao was an adorable cat girl (for once in the non-perverted sense) who made cute slingshot shooting noises and had an adorable run. She was also very fast, which I liked. Ruby was fun to use because I like long distance magic attacks. Steve is a talking slingshot who makes smart-ass remarks and stupid jokes while you fight. Really what's not to love? Also, according to him Xiao has huge eyes53LYR31.jpg
Overall this is a cute game with a charming story and fun gameplay. You can customize the towns, the world is excellent, and even though the characters don't get much time in the sun they're still fun to use.
You're 1000% right about the difficulty barrier. I didn't beat the game for a very long time because I couldn't beat the first boss! But once I eventually did, I was totally engrossed and the rest of it was very diverse and fun. I like the randomness to the dungeons and the way you were sort of forced to use other characters. It had a really neat mix of gameplay elements.
I'm discussing my 108, er, 111 favorite games of all time in THIS THREAD so go check it out and join the conversation!
Ah nostalgic feelings coming up. My brother and I borrowed this game from a friend for like a month and we had a blast playing through it. It had a lot of interesting concepts and I remember actually liking the Quick Time Event parts. Don't remember much of the overall story, but I do remember that it was just really fun to play. Don't recall if we ever beat the final boss.
We never did figure out how fishing works.
Master of the Fork
Cid's Knight
No really, someone said it earlier but now I know if I need advice on JRPGs, Pumpkin is now my go to girl! Heck I may just go back through this thread if I have a question on a game, I'm sure i'll see it in here.
19. Suikoden III
Thanks for the positive feedbacks guys!
Suikoden III mostly takes place in Zexen and the Grasslands. Zexen is full of knights and brick buildings, and the Grasslands consists of several tribes of people who largely live with nature. These two nations are bumping heads and it seems like war is imminent. We get to experience the story through three heroes: a young man named Hugo, son of one of the Grassland chiefs, Chris, a famous knight of Zexen, and Geddoe, a mercenary and his group. As we watch the situation deteriorate between the two places they soon discover that they may share a common foe.
This game is largely similar to most Suikoden games with a few differences. In this game, you will experience most of the story through the eyes of the three main characters. The game is divided in to 5 chapters and you will play 3 chapters with the main 3 in any order you choose. From there, you will choose a hero among the three to continue the adventure in chapters 4 and 5. There are also a few side stories you can experience. While that part differs from the series, the rest is very much the same. You recruit as many of the 108 Stars of Destiny as you can, magic takes the form of Runes that you equip on characters, and you have battle parties of 6. You build up an headquarters and can play mini-games and such depending on who you have recruited. There's also rock paper scissor inspired duels and war battles that are played sort of like a board game. There are a total of 78 playable characters in this game including non-stars of destiny and guests.
General impressions:
This was my first game in the series, and I'd say on the whole it's a good introduction. The character recruitment in Suikoden III is easier than most of the other games in the series, it's well explained, it's intuitive, and it has an interesting and easy to follow story, making it good for newcomers to the series. So if you haven't played a Suikoden game then I'd say this is a very good starting point. It also has my favourite headquarters and some of my favourite mini-games, like the plays. It was funny casting some people in the role of Romeo and Juliet for example who didn't suit the part at all.
Story:
It's got some politics in there but it's overall easy to follow and the politics kind of act as background noise anyway. I like how the game kind of snowballs so what you start with is nothing like what you end with and I really liked that about it because it got more and more investing and less predictable. Your enemies are no longer enemies and some friends are no longer friends. It was also a neat touch to watch the conflict happen from different points of view, although I never enjoyed playing Geddoe and his story felt very disconnected from the others.
Gameplay:
Very good and a great example of the series. It was fun, easy to get in to, and improved on a few things. I liked the new skill thing where you could increase your characters attributes and add more to increase, it added a bit of customization. The war type battles were quite interesting in this one although I found them harder than the other games. And the mini-games were some of the best in the series. The game was also pretty easy and character recruitment was also easy for the series, which could be refreshing. It's also one of the only ones I bothered with trading.
World:
The world travel is a bit odd, like they didn't know how to incorporate a world map, but still there managed to be a lot of diversity in the areas and a lot of really interesting places. I really liked the Duck Clan village and Chisha Village (despite not going there often) but there were a lot of great areas and Budehuc Castle was gorgeous and an awesome headquarters to have.
Characters:
Lot's of great characters, which is bound to happen when you have such a large cast. Surprisingly, I liked the main cast less than the main casts in the rest of the series and much preferred a lot of the side characters.
Favourite character: Iku FGFD2XK.png
Honourable mentions: Percival, Yumi, Fubar, Sarah 7Cwhh1o.pnglH4vKDc.png0eMsniI.pngFcKsd3U.png
Iku, although not usable in battle, was just an awesomely sweet and adorable woman and I've always loved her hairstyle. She has one of my favourite love stories. Percival was just amusing and Suave. Yumi showed a lot of strength despite not being in the limelight much and I loved using her in battle. Fubar because I mean come on. And Sarah because I felt for her in a weird way and I really appreciated her sense of loyalty. Plus she was badass in battle.
Overall a great example of the series and awesome for newcomers. I have very little complaints, the game was fun and engaging and I'm excited to play it again.
I should go back and play more Dark Cloud sometime, but I've been spoiled by Dark Cloud 2. I played them both pretty close together, and the difficulty of the first one made it less approachable.
Suikoden III is my favorite Suikoden, and I still enjoy going back to play it occasionally. I really liked the "Wheel of Destiny" or whatever it was called, and found the rest of the game to also be a good blend of solid gameplay and innovative ideas.
That's really cool and I wonder why more games don't feature stuff like this. Aside from the very brief Locke/Sabin/Terra split in FFVI, Square has never incorporated branched gameplay like that. Imagine how much cooler XIII would be if you could partially choose the chapter sequence in the first half of the game.Originally Posted by Pumpkin
I "wrote" a mock Final Fantasy game (in massive detail) when I was 15, and after one of the disc changes, half your party went to one continent and half went to another, and you got to choose which order to play them in before reconvening for the final disc.
I'm discussing my 108, er, 111 favorite games of all time in THIS THREAD so go check it out and join the conversation!
It occurs to me that I haven't ranted on about how bad Final Fantasy Tactics is recently. I'll need to correct that some time, especially with it blighting so many of these "best games" lists.
My friend Delzethin is currently running a GoFundMe account to pay for some extended medical troubles he's had. He's had chronic issues and lifetime troubles that have really crippled his career opportunities, and he's trying to get enough funding to get back to a stable medical situation. If you like his content, please support his GoFundMe, or even just contribute to his Patreon.
He can really use a hand with this, and any support you can offer is appreciated.
I don't like it either, but the difference is shion is actually explaining why she likes stuff from a personal perspective and talking about stuff like her favorite characters and all that. Plus she admits the thing has faults, which is a refreshing breeze from a Tactics fan!
PS Suikoden III fourth-best Suikoden (which still puts it as one of the best games ever)
Woah woah woah.
You get to play as a Griffon?
I need Suikoden III.
Also, I played Dark Cloud back when I first got the PS2. I was so excited, but then I just couldn't get into it at all. It was so hard and I was terrible at games. I wish I could find my copy again as I've been wanting to attempt it again. I have a bad feeling that I gave it to someone or sold it, though.
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