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Best JRPG's for PS2
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27-02-2012 11:51pm#1
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Sephiroth_dude wrote: »grandia,rogue galaxy a personal favourite of mine,shadow hearts trilogy,well the 2nd and 3rd ones anyway
I really like the first one
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ussjtrunks wrote: »Rogue galaxy is brand new on gameseek.co.uk for around 25 euro and around 15 euro used on Amazon it had quite a lot printed I remember seeing it everywhere for awhile I think it's a very good rpg one of my fab ps2 games too
I got stuck on a boss that has razor blade hands and couldn't get past him
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ussjtrunks wrote: »Rogue galaxy is brand new on gameseek.co.uk for around 25 euro and around 15 euro used on Amazon it had quite a lot printed I remember seeing it everywhere for awhile I think it's a very good rpg one of my fab ps2 games tooI'll sell you my copy if I can find it. I don't like the game. it was such a disappointment when I was expecting a follow up to dark chronicle.
I actually meant to say that its hard to find the "time".
I have two copies, one I bought up North which is scratched and won't play and another that is on loan from a fellow boardsie.0 -
Sephiroth_dude wrote:I got stuck on a boss that has razor blade hands and couldn't get past him
Better than me, I'm stuck on the first boss!
How about Kingdom Hearts, Odin Sphere and Suikoden III and V?0 -
Only played Kingdom Hearts on PSP and it`s overall quality/exhilarating battles/deep customization won me over - at first the really daft dialogue and the whole Disney thingy made me cringe. Looking forward to PS2 version, must be much easier playing with joypad.
Few others:
Digital Devil Saga - probably what I could call a favourite - but then on PS2 I have quite a few of these. Incredible mood, music and mindbogglingly good combat.
Speaking of which, Breath Of Fire: Dragon Quarter floored me recently with one of THE best battle systems ever...maybe even since GoldBox
The game itself is very good too, though totally different from the first three.
Dragon Quest VIII - another masterpiece. Think of it, it might even be ">" or at least "=" DDS
Also: Xenosaga, Kings Field, .hack series0 -
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Can't recommend that everyone stay the hell away from Xenosaga. First one started off good but the story got boring quickly and the battle system was a joke. Never finished the second one because it was so **** I gave up. I did however hear the third game is really good.
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lasersquad wrote: »...if you hate turn based combat, maybe :P
I only got into the story about halfway through, it is about as Japanese as you get. Weak translation doesn`t help. Overall though quite an epic, probably the last of its kind.
I love turn based combat and much prefer it to real time. Xenosaga has a god awful battle system, the worst thing about it is how long the battles drag on and absolutely kill the game.
As for the translation, I don't know where you are getting that it's a bad translation, it's one of the best ever done for a videogame, especially considering the amount of crazy references it dealt with. The problem is the source material, the story is just a mess that falls apart in the second half of the game. It is the last of it's kind, the last of the japanese games that rip off Evangelion and do it badly and thank god for that!
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"God awful" & "joke" - quite vague. I`d say ok for personal opinion but not enough for a very strong dismissal. I could argue how it`s as complex and rewarding - if not more - as Press Turn, what with all the boosts, position changes, Events, juggling etc - but your mind seems set so there`s little point.
The fact that combat "drags on" is only a bad thing when you dislike it - for me it was the best part of the game. Of course once you learn how to fight properly - that took me a while & a battle-specific FAQ I admit - it gets much swifter.
As for translation, don`t know where you getting the "one of the best done for videogame" since this is rather relative and hard to compare. I find it lacking, not the worst I`ve seen, but for a story so convoluted and in a full on J-mode it needed much more effort. Which may be the reason the story has "fallen apart" for you - it didn`t for me but it did require mental backtracking and general concentration. (Very lame voiceover is another matter but luckily it got undubbed)
I`d also be rather careful with statements regarding something ripping off Evangelion - this based on what, that it`s Japanese, Sci-Fi, features teens in mechas? Following this logic Evangelion "rips off" Patlabor and so on.
I`m not saying everybody has to love it - but this is a "recommended" thread, and shredding an acclaimed title (if it was really so bad, our jRpg-skeptical press would have had a field day with it) like you did ain`t helping much.
With such negative attitude from even fans of the genre no wonder jRpgs are a dying breed in the West. No need for bloggers, journos, PC folk and publishers slammin them on the daily - we clearly can take care of it ourselves
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Battle systems that drag on and take forever to finish, even for minor encounters are a bugbear of mine because it completely kills the pace of the game and Xenosaga 1 and 2 were the worst offenders in a very long time.Yes there's a lot of complexity to the combat system, but over complexity is a valid criticism to apply here. However the fact that a lot of the complexity adds nothing to the battle system and even is there to it's detriment by making battles last longer then there's a problem. I'm pretty sure the development team knew this as well since it took 3 games of improvements to get it right finally.
I knew exactly what was going on in the games story, it wasn't the translations fault at all. A lot of fans of games with poor source material blame the translator, just look at the amount of flak Audry Kakou got for her superb translation of MGS2. it wasn't her bad translation it was just a poor story. Xenosaga is translated wonderfully, the story is just a mess and the fact that you need countless codexes to get a sense of everything is just bad storytelling, you can learn that in any amateur storytelling workshop.
Yes the story did fall apart in the second half and don't know how you can't argue against that. The really exciting action scenes and interesting premise vanished and was replaced by really boring dialogue filled cutscenes. These bombarded you with vague religious symbolism and philosophical mumbo jumbo, references made for the sake of references to try and seem clever but with no substance behind them. It really did die on its arse and the final dungeon appearing out of nowhere was a development team desperately trying to cut short a trainwreck of a storyline.
As for ripping of Evangelion, can you really argue against that? Sure teens in robots has been done a thousand times but teens in robots and vague religious and philosophical reference bombardment is pure evangelion and if you know your japanese culture you'd know that a lot of japanese culture after evangelion jumped on that gravy train, including Xenosaga's spiritual predecessor Xenogears. Xenosaga and Xenogears really are trying desperately to be evangelion but without any of the depth.
As for the JRPG loving press not ripping into it, it reviewed well but not spectacularly, and a lot of that was because it was a sequel to the much loved Xenogears, I know I was dying to play it myself. However I've heard lots of retrospectiveson the Xenosaga series on 1up's retronauts and Kat Bailey's Roleplayers Realm and they all say it was over rated with a bad story and terrible combat. You can't get better JRPG experts than the guys on those shows. Kat Bailey has said she loves the third game though.
Just giving my opinion, I didn't like and I know some people do. i think it's a lot healthier that people can look at these games retrospectively and shred them to pieces that everybody being sheep and only having the same opinion.
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Well, we can split hairs until a negative review for ME3 appears (i.e. forever) but in the end it is all just a matter of opinion, and given the subject - a sprawling jRpg saga- a very relative one.
I can`t agree on the combat because like I said your argument is flawed at the core - if you fight properly, which is boosting, watching the Events and monster attributes it all makes perfect sense. Otherwise yes - it`ll drag on with your basic/mismatched attacks hitting for nothing etc. But the same can be said for DD series - if you don`t pay attention the encounters will go on and on, you`ll often die and even if not your resources will get depleted significantly forcing backtracking to Terminals. Sorry but I can`t blame a game with complex turn based combat - a delight - for being just that.
Sure, it`s not as swift as DQ/FF affairs but it`s a completely different style - not everybody`s cup of tea - but not a bad thing either. As for breaking the pace, well, back to square one - if you don`t like tactical combat then it`ll perhaps happen. For me the fault in pacing was much more with cut scenes that dragged on, not the battles.
I`m not gonna argue about story falling apart because it`s too relative a subject - but it quite often happens with trilogies that the middle one is bit of treading water. Hence lower review scores perhaps - but still 75% average on Meta (with 80+ for part 1/3) is not a bad thing for a game from outside the sacred FF/DQ/Persona club. It`s also rather short compared to 1/3.
As for Evangelion, again it`s the way of looking at it. For you it might be "jumping on the gravy train", for me it`s just riffing on themes. I`m not that big fan/expert of anime in general to get too exercised about it - I did find it entertaining enough thou. At the beginning I was also extra skeptical about the philosophical "mumbo-jumbo" and bandin ol`Nietsche about - but this is (again) something that can be leveled at countless Japanese productions, I`ve heard it used (quite insanely) against the likes of Ghost In The Shell too.
I`m not a big fan of retrospectives to be honest, especially from "experts" - given the current climate of gah-how-could-we`ve-ever-played-this-garbage prevalent across the media. I`ve even seen negative reviews of Chrono Trigger recently
I`d like to think I`m usually the black sheep in the herd - not very keen on going with the majority of opinion, but this is not a current affair like ME (sorry, cant` help) but an old game that will either cost you nothing (well, it IS out of print) or like I said, under a tenner, so really don`t see why folks shouldn`t find out for themselves. All I`m saying is while it maybe not for everyone it is not such a complete train-wreck as painted above. There really is a lot going for this game, even if we just stick with superb graphics and music.0 -
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Well Xenosaga definitely isn't the worst JRPG but it just does seems to do everything that people hate about JRPGs. I distinctly remember playing the first game and getting to the bit where you first controlled Jr. and thinking to myself, 'I'm really not enjoying this at all' but stuck with it since the start was so good. It never got any better.
Episode 2 was a real rush job, the first game absolutely bombed in japan but did really well in the states so they rushed out an unexpected sequel when Monolith were planning on scrapping the series.
As for the philosophical mumbo jumbo, I'm all for it if it's done in an intelligent manner, such as in Ghost in the Shell. It's when it's done badly like in Xenosaga where it's just references that are poorly thought out and are only there to seem pretensious that it gets on my nerves. Xenosaga references a lot of religion and philosophy but it has absolutely no reason to be there except to seem deep when in fact there's very little depth to the story.
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