Best RPG ever??

I specifically remember watching the FFVII opening cutscene and thinking to myself, "Man, graphics can never get better than this."

I never replay RPGs, but if they remade FFVII for the PS3 with just updated graphics, I would play it again.
 
Xrave said:
I specifically remember watching the FFVII opening cutscene and thinking to myself, "Man, graphics can never get better than this."

I never replay RPGs, but if they remade FFVII for the PS3 with just updated graphics, I would play it again.
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I would pay $100 for an all out PS3 bawls remake of FFVII. I would pay $200 for FF VI.
 
The intro was redone to show off the graphics of the ps3, but there aren't any plans on remaking it right now. At least, that's what I learned from this video. http://www.gametrailers.com/player/23449.html

I went through all of them about 2 weeks ago. Reminded me of some of the great moments in the earlier ones that I had regrettably forgotten and some of the disappointments in the newer ones I had forcefully forgotten.
 
Crono Trigger is the best RPG ever. Nothing else even comes close IMO (and yes, I've played FFVII, and I wasn't that impressed).
 
Zero82z said:
Crono Trigger is the best RPG ever. Nothing else even comes close IMO (and yes, I've played FFVII, and I wasn't that impressed).
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The one major problem I have with Chrono Trigger (and in effect, all Enix and Square RPGs), is the random battle system. Now, I realize Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest are practically the offspring of the union of Ultima and Wizardry, but the later Ultima's and Wizardry's evolved away from the random battle system in their later incarnations, whereas the latest Final Fantasy is practically the first Final Fantasy, only with better graphics, sound, and CGI. In fact, they evolved away from the random battle system practically around the time Final Fantasy came out.

All Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 7 have in game play is 2 hours of story, and 98 hours of random battle filler. Ultima (as well as many other RPGs) have side quests that involve playing the game that can be solved without battle. (I believe Planescape Torment could be beaten with fewer than 20 battles total). I'm not talking Golden Saucer mini games. I'm talking actual side quests that help the story move along, and actually make sense.

This also goes into a problem of the linearity of the game. Square games in effect go:

Fight monster2 500x to level up
Enter Town 1
Buy Equipment
Enter Dungeon 1 to fight monsters to level up
Enter Town 2
Buy Better Equipment
Enter Dungeon 2 to fight monsters to level up
Repeat ad nauseam until
Enter Final Dungeon
Beat game

You can't enter dungeon 2 before you enter dungeon 1. 90% of the townsfolk give absolutely no worthwhile feedback when talking to them. And half the time, you're blocked by the stupidest things. "My uncle won't talk to you until nightfall. Why not go to the dungeon to fight the Dungeon Boss?" Great, you're telling me it won't turn to night until I kill him?

Now, I realize Wizardry is very similar to Final Fantasy in playing style, but at least it doesn't hide the fact that it's a hardcore dungeon crawl with CGI movies throughout. People play it for the fighting, and to brag that they can beat Wizardry. It's known as a very, very difficult and unforgiving RPG series. Think of the difficulty of Wizardry to Final Fantasy as trying to beat Ruby and Emerald Weapon in Final Fantasy VII vs beating Final Fantasy Mystic Quest.

Now, I'm not stating that games like Oblivion or Morrowind are better, as they're just as bad, only on the other end of the spectrum. But I just personally feel FFVII is heavily overrated.
 
Nytegard said:
The one major problem I have with Chrono Trigger (and in effect, all Enix and Square RPGs), is the random battle system.
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Crono Trigger doesn't have a random battle system. Every single enemy in the game is placed in a specific location, and most of them can be avoided if you don't want to fight them. That's actually one of the things I really like about the game; if you want to go into an area and grind then you can fight all the enemies, but if you just want to get through an area quickly, you can avoid the enemies and get through certain areas without fighting at all.
 
Zero82z said:
Crono Trigger doesn't have a random battle system. Every single enemy in the game is placed in a specific location, and most of them can be avoided if you don't want to fight them. That's actually one of the things I really like about the game; if you want to go into an area and grind then you can fight all the enemies, but if you just want to get through an area quickly, you can avoid the enemies and get through certain areas without fighting at all.
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Well, mostly basing it off FF, but you're still forced to fight. What's the lowest level you've ever beaten Lavos at?

With the D&D games such as Baldur's Gate, Planescape Torment, etc, you're stuck at level 6 or 7 most times (although you can reach an amazing level 23 in BG2). With Ultima, you're stuck to 8 levels. While in Wizardry you can get to an astounding level 255 or greater, but most likely you'll beat the game at level 12-15.

And while there are many fights required, often times, you can level without picking a single fight. In Wizardry IV, you don't even gain levels via fighting, and often, you want to avoid as many fights as possible.
 
TRex said:
If you do play Planescape Torment make sure to download the widescreen mod. It allows you to set the resolution to virtually anything you want. If you play the game without the mod you are stuck at 640x480 which looks horrible on most monitors today.
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Thank you so much for telling me this. The game is virtually unplayable on my 22inch Widescreen. I can't see shit :(.
 
Nytegard said:
And while there are many fights required, often times, you can level without picking a single fight. In Wizardry IV, you don't even gain levels via fighting, and often, you want to avoid as many fights as possible.
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One of the greatest things about Fallout is that one can finish the game without ever killing a single thing. On the other hand, you could kill every single living thing in the wasteland and still accomplish the primary objectives of the game, if one were so inclined. More games (not just RPGs) should have such diversity methinks.
 
Nytegard said:
The one major problem I have with Chrono Trigger (and in effect, all Enix and Square RPGs), is the random battle system. Now, I realize Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest are practically the offspring of the union of Ultima and Wizardry, but the later Ultima's and Wizardry's evolved away from the random battle system in their later incarnations, whereas the latest Final Fantasy is practically the first Final Fantasy, only with better graphics, sound, and CGI. In fact, they evolved away from the random battle system practically around the time Final Fantasy came out.

All Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 7 have in game play is 2 hours of story, and 98 hours of random battle filler. Ultima (as well as many other RPGs) have side quests that involve playing the game that can be solved without battle. (I believe Planescape Torment could be beaten with fewer than 20 battles total). I'm not talking Golden Saucer mini games. I'm talking actual side quests that help the story move along, and actually make sense.

This also goes into a problem of the linearity of the game. Square games in effect go:

Fight monster2 500x to level up
Enter Town 1
Buy Equipment
Enter Dungeon 1 to fight monsters to level up
Enter Town 2
Buy Better Equipment
Enter Dungeon 2 to fight monsters to level up
Repeat ad nauseam until
Enter Final Dungeon
Beat game

You can't enter dungeon 2 before you enter dungeon 1. 90% of the townsfolk give absolutely no worthwhile feedback when talking to them. And half the time, you're blocked by the stupidest things. "My uncle won't talk to you until nightfall. Why not go to the dungeon to fight the Dungeon Boss?" Great, you're telling me it won't turn to night until I kill him?

Now, I realize Wizardry is very similar to Final Fantasy in playing style, but at least it doesn't hide the fact that it's a hardcore dungeon crawl with CGI movies throughout. People play it for the fighting, and to brag that they can beat Wizardry. It's known as a very, very difficult and unforgiving RPG series. Think of the difficulty of Wizardry to Final Fantasy as trying to beat Ruby and Emerald Weapon in Final Fantasy VII vs beating Final Fantasy Mystic Quest.

Now, I'm not stating that games like Oblivion or Morrowind are better, as they're just as bad, only on the other end of the spectrum. But I just personally feel FFVII is heavily overrated.
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hahhaha your stupid generalization of an rpg is hilarious. What do you push X as fast as you can to skip past all Dialog the most important part of an RPG. There is a part in FF7 with about 30 minuets of dialog were your schema of rpg's doesn't fit in at all. Also if you played Xenogears and READ the dialog and followed the storyline I'm sure you would realize just how redick you sound.

It's like me saying I hate all FPS becuase the entire game is

Point
Shoot
reload
repeat
endgame
 
I don't think Nyteguard has played any of the game's he's referencing.

Final Fantasy VI, VII, and Chrono Trigger had a tonne of sidequests that revealed very important information about the story. In fact, you could not even understand the basics behind the FF VII story without doing the sidequests (mostly relating to Cloud/Zack's past, Jenova's motives, etc...).

Final Fantasies are pretty damn far from dungeon crawls. The earlier games might have been that, but ever since Final Fantasy VII, there hasn't been a single bit of dungeon crawling in these games at all. The closest thing might be a 15 minute treck through those mines in Final Fantasy XII...but I can't really remember anything else that closely resembles a dungeon crawl.

Also, the games have turn based battles, but the battle/magic system is very different in each of the games. Half of the fun/strategy is learning to exploit these systems. Of course, you wouldn't know that if you played the games by grinding to all levels of overpowered. You could do some pretty insane stuff with the Gambit system in FF XII.

Fumarole said:
One of the greatest things about Fallout is that one can finish the game without ever killing a single thing. On the other hand, you could kill every single living thing in the wasteland and still accomplish the primary objectives of the game, if one were so inclined. More games (not just RPGs) should have such diversity methinks.
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This doesn't really work well though with JRPGs. Much of the fun and addiction with JRPGs comes with making your character stronger throughout the flow of the game. It was very addicting leveling up to insane levels in Disgaea 2 and dishing out millions of damage with a single attack. WRPGs and JRPGs play very differently, and both fill their respective niches. I don't think anything has to change.

All I want to see from some WRPGs now, is an RPG Shooter with shooting mechanics as good as CoD4 or Unreal Tournament. An GW styled MMO with instances would be perfect for this kind of game style, as latency probably wouldn't be too much of an issue with most 8 man P2P teams.
 
stevedave said:
hahhaha your stupid generalization of an rpg is hilarious. What do you push X as fast as you can to skip past all Dialog the most important part of an RPG. There is a part in FF7 with about 30 minuets of dialog were your schema of rpg's doesn't fit in at all. Also if you played Xenogears and READ the dialog and followed the storyline I'm sure you would realize just how redick you sound.

It's like me saying I hate all FPS becuase the entire game is

Point
Shoot
reload
repeat
endgame
Click to expand...

So how does the addition of dialog break my overall generalization of the gameplay in Final Fantasy/Dragon Quest series? And I never stated all RPGs, as this obviously is not the case. But if you wanted to bring your generalization of FPS's to a series such as Quake, which is one of the more popular FPS's, I'd say that your generalization is pretty much correct.

ex0du5 said:
I don't think Nytegard has played any of the game's he's referencing.

Final Fantasy VI, VII, and Chrono Trigger had a tonne of sidequests that revealed very important information about the story. In fact, you could not even understand the basics behind the FF VII story without doing the sidequests (mostly relating to Cloud/Zack's past, Jenova's motives, etc...).

Final Fantasies are pretty damn far from dungeon crawls. The earlier games might have been that, but ever since Final Fantasy VII, there hasn't been a single bit of dungeon crawling in these games at all. The closest thing might be a 15 minute treck through those mines in Final Fantasy XII...but I can't really remember anything else that closely resembles a dungeon crawl.

Also, the games have turn based battles, but the battle/magic system is very different in each of the games. Half of the fun/strategy is learning to exploit these systems. Of course, you wouldn't know that if you played the games by grinding to all levels of overpowered. You could do some pretty insane stuff with the Gambit system in FF XII.

...

This doesn't really work well though with JRPGs. Much of the fun and addiction with JRPGs comes with making your character stronger throughout the flow of the game. It was very addicting leveling up to insane levels in Disgaea 2 and dishing out millions of damage with a single attack. WRPGs and JRPGs play very differently, and both fill their respective niches. I don't think anything has to change.
Click to expand...

I have played and defeated every RPG mentioned here. I own almost every RPG mentioned here outside of Shining Force 3 and Panzer Dragoon Saga (and if you don't believe me, when I get back from work, I can post a picture of games). Outside of Final Fantasy XI, I've beated every Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy that has been released in the USA (and have beaten Xenogears. I have, but have beaten, the Xenosaga games).

So as I mentioned, how many Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy sidequests can be beaten without a single battle? I realize many of the Ultimate Weapon and materia quests are just mini games, but you stated that many side quests are required for the story. Now, how many of those can be beaten without a single battle? I'm talking legimately. Not through a New Game+, and not through hacking your game to avoid battles.

Just because you're not in a dungeon and there is text and CGI thrown about does not make it any less of a dungeon crawl. The later Wizardry's don't involve going through dungeons, and they have movies and text throughout the game, but they're still considered dungeon crawls, because the main focus of the gameplay is on battles. The dungeon is considered the overall world between towns.

And how are the battle systems vastly different? I can attack. I can use magic. I can use items. I can run away. I can summon. These are all performed by a few simple button presses. Where does strategy come into the battles? Oh, I have to use Phoenix materia when when fighting Emerald Weapon. Or some monsters are affected by Fire magic only. Or I can cast Vanish and X-Zone to instantly kill a boss. That's not exactly what I consider strategy to learn how to exploit the individual systems or vast differences in the system.

I'm not going to disagree with you on whether or the battles make it fun or addicting for fans of these types of games. World of Warcraft is also a very addictive game and uses the same type of gameplay (albeit, to a much more complicated scale) as Final Fantasy. I honestly won't go into an arguement about Western vs Eastern RPGs, as this type of gameplay has existed since Wizardry 1, which is a Western game. And that game came out in 1981 vs 1986 for Dragon Quest or late 1987 for Final Fantasy. And many other RPGs of the Wizardry/Ultima Era also had similar gameplay. The difference is they've evolved since 1981 in gameplay whereas Final Fantasy/Dragon Quest and it's ilk have stayed the same almost 30 years later.
 
Chrono Trigger
FF VII
Phantasy Star II - Coming home and finding a new character to play was awesome
 
Nytegard said:
So as I mentioned, how many Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy sidequests can be beaten without a single battle? I realize many of the Ultimate Weapon and materia quests are just mini games, but you stated that many side quests are required for the story. Now, how many of those can be beaten without a single battle? I'm talking legimately. Not through a New Game+, and not through hacking your game to avoid battles.
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All of the story related sidequests in Final Fantasy VII are completed without required battles, as far as I remember. They were related to exploration.

And why does the option of not battling even matter? If you want to play for the story alone, why not just read a book, if not battling is so important to you.

Final Fantasies are not difficulty games, and generally don't require much strategy unless you don't level up on purpose, but because of this they are very approachable games. Also, they have presentation, visuals, soundtrack, and pollish way above and beyond any WRPG we've seen so far. Also, the main cast of characters is usually far more personable and developped compared to most traditional WRPG counterparts. People raved about Neverwinter nights, but the characters had no personality or backstory to them whatsoever. They felt very...computerized. Some of those reasons are why I love some JRPGs, and why Final Fantasy VI is my favorite game (wicked characters, best villain ever in a game, and the best soundtrack in a game). Those aspects, to me, are just as important as gameplay, exploration, scale, and approachability. I don't need an RPG to kick my ass for me to enjoy it, as I enjoy the whole experience more than the challenge of the game.

I'm currently playing Suikoden V, and it hasn't challenged me one bit so far, but I'm loving it nonetheless.
 
chameleoneel said:
The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind
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QFT.

I wish they would remake that game with the Oblivion engine's graphics, fix the bugs, and make the point allocation system so that you dont have a "chance" of hitting something more at sword lvl 50 than sword lvl 12. I would buy it and play the shit out of it, again, and again, and again...
 
BladeVenom said:
Baldur's Gate, and Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines would be my second choice.
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Vampire bloodlines is excellent! I actually just picked it up recently just from the cult following of it and I was floored by it.

Even with the unofficial patches the game is still pretty buggy and the third person forced swimming view pissed me off. Those qualms aside it was fantastic, the game had a ton of charm.
 
tyguy said:
Vampire bloodlines is excellent! I actually just picked it up recently just from the cult following of it and I was floored by it.

Even with the unofficial patches the game is still pretty buggy and the third person forced swimming view pissed me off. Those qualms aside it was fantastic, the game had a ton of charm.
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Yea, I thght it seemed really cool but I can't play it, so many bugs... it really turned me off.
 
My favorite JRPG's would be Lunar The Silver Star and Eternal Blue.

My favorite WRPG would be Knights of the Old Republic.

Ones I am sorry I missed are Grandia and Panzer Dragoon Saga. They are legendary it seems.
 
i am really suprised that nobody mentioned one of the best RPG's of all time for playstation 1 (until the last page of this post):

Xenogears

awesome awesome awesome. good luck trying to get it, if you can find it, it still sells for ~$50 cuz it was so god damn amazing.

then there were these two which are the popular obvious ones.

Zelda: Ocarina of Time
FF7
 
Seiken Densetsu 3
Tales of Phantasia
Morrowind
Cronos trigger
Secret of mana
FF6

Those were the days ...

P.S.: Is harvest moon a rpg ??
 
I'm surprised to see lot's of console RPGs mentioned. I have played 90% of the RPGs mentioned here and there is no way console RPGs come even close to games like Baldurs Gate 2 or Planescape: Torment. Chrono Trigger and FF7 were great games and had good stories too but none of their stories were as detailed or even close to that of Planescape:Torment. The story also had meaning to it unlike all other RPGs.

But for the best I'd say-

PC:
Baldurs Gate series
Planescape: Torment
KOTR

Console:
Chrono Trigger
Phantasy Star 4
FF3
 
I tend to think of games like Torment as being true to the spirit of real RPGs. Console RPG is a very distinct genre, and yet seems to have nothing to actually do with roleplaying. Hack and slash games are more or less pure combat and yet have always been considered RPGs. I guess all of these evolve from more or less the same roots.

Anyways, I'd go with Baldur's Gate, FF3, and Diablo, respectively. :D

Neverwinter Nights was an outstanding concept that fell short. Still a great game, but the official campaign just didn't deliver to the lofty expectations.
 
Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 7, Xenogears, Tales of Phantasia. Star Ocean 2 was pretty good also. I'm an RPG junkie but those 4 were the classics that really brought me into the genre.

I'm actually replaying FF7, Xenogears, and Tales of Phantasia on my PSP right now. It's going to take a while with work and school but hey.. maybe by the time I'm done with them SquareEnix will decide to announce a release date for a FF7 remake. :) *crosses fingers
 
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