Get Dragon Quarter. One of the best RPGs in years, and by the same team that went on to make Dead Rising.
-You’ll loathe DQ8 because it’s a quintessential JRPG.
-You’ll loathe Kingdom Hearts anything if you have testicles. Pre-pubescent human characters paired with a fully-voiced Donald Duck, Goofy, and other I-can’t-believe-they’re-trying-to-be-dramatic Disney characters. If you’re a pedo-furry, maybe – but I think slitting your wrists would be more fun and productive in that case.
-Fire Emblem is a strategy game, not an RPG. You can get it, but don’t expect it to scratch your RPG itch.
-Good luck caring about Final Fantasy 12’s plot after 20-30 hours of “isn’t this just Star Wars?” Also, the combat sort of sucks.
Disgaea is pretty good, but it’s not a standard RPG. Expect to spend alot of time power leveling your team and grinding to insane levels for some of the end game challenges. Of the Nippon Ichi rpgs released in the US Disgaea 2 is the easiest ( so far the only one that I got thru the main storyline). DQ8 is classic rpg style thru and thru. Huge world to explore, tough bosses, and you will have to spend some time grinding out to deal with some of the later bosses. On the subject of finding Disgaea 1, EB online has it used for $40.
Fire Emblem is still on my backlog pile so I have no info there. FF12 and Rogue Galaxy are both good for different reasons. FF12’s storyline is pretty good, and the game will allow you to set up your characters to handle just about anything. There are probably dozens of sidequests so obscure that I haven’t even heard about in the game.
Rogue’s storyline so far is decent, but the gameplay is better and more diverse then FF12 imo. I’m 13 hours in I have 2 huge side games opened up to explore. Combat is fast and the load times (for a ps2 title) are pretty low.
Heh I completely forgot about BOF. I found the combat style to be pretty good, storyline is interesting, but you will have to play thru the game numerous times to see it all.
If it helps you decide, you can find Fire Emblem for $15 or less at Circuit City, IIRC. If you actually enjoyed the GBA game, that seems like a nice safe pick.
Lots of very worthy games have been mentioned in this thread, but I’ll mention some ones I really liked that nobody else has touched on.
Front Mission 4. It’s an RPG with all the traditional level up progressions of equipment and skills for your party, but instead of a fantasy setting it’s a very neato near-future war setting. With GIANT FUCKING ROBOTS!!! If cliche fantasy settings bug you, or you just love giant robots with huge guns like I do, this game is worth checking out.
Digital Devil Saga (1 and 2). Creepy theme, good gameplay, and weird enough that they avoid most of the annoying RPG cliches and get a few genuine plot surprises going on there.
Also Nocturne, great dark rpgs. The only thing is that they are really hard. I stopped playing DDS2 at the final dungeon. I don’t think nocturne or DDS 1 is going to be easy to find anymore. I haven’t seen either of them since I ran to the mall near me 1 day when they had them both in.
I never recommend Nocturne to people, it bugs the living hell out of me. The art and plot and so forth are creepy and fantastic but the actual gameplay mechanics are an annoying attempt to rip off the pokemon games.
I like the SRPGs just as much as the standard RPGs as some of the metagamey stuff is a cool distraction.
I never got into the whole Final Fantasy series. I forgot which one came out that was the first big blockbuster FF, 7 or 8, I think. I played a couple of days and was bored. It was the one in the city where the main character played some air soccer game or something before the city blew up…?..? maybe. In fact, I have ignored FFXII as a result even with all the good reviews as all the damn things get good reviews regardless. Blah, blah, blah Final Fantasy [insert roman numeral] gets 9 to 10 grapefruits.
Front Mission III was fun, but the linearity killed me along with the dialog click-through-fest. I played the FM IV demo resulting in meh.
Damn, I had wanted to chat more, but I actually have to work at work. Hmm, I think I have at least narrowed it down to
Fire Emblem: PoR
Dragon Quarter
Disagea 2
FFXII (as I am now intrigued by the “this one I reeeeally like” responses)
Lemme finish my hot pocket and then I am off.
EDIT: But now that I think about it, I remember the factory and blue print dealie in RG intrigued me as well as the rest of people’s thoughts. CRAP!
Well except the first Shin Megami Tensei predates Pokémon.
I juste saved you from a hundred lines of Kitsune anger.
Digital Devil Saga is a very good game, more polished than Nocturne, I would recommend it if you love turn based combat. It’s one of the better combat system I’ve ever seen. Of course if you want more than just dungeons and random encounters, you might be disappointed.
DQ VIII is absolutely wonderful in its way. It’s like a 16 bits RPG with today’s production values, and an astonishing flair.
In fact all the games you listed are must play if you like the genre, it just depends what you expect from your RPG. Except maybe Path Of Radiance. I don’t think it’s the best Fire Emblem. And Phantom Brave, it’s a messy Nippon Ichi game, and their games tend to be messes in the first place…
Dragon Quest VIII cannot be spoiled by anything. Tyjenks, it’s like the old RPGs, you know Might & Magic, Wizardry, except in glorious modern PS2-o-vision. There is a tendency to de-emphasize story and focus on wonderful, crunchy, deep gameplay.
Rogue Galaxy is of course, awesome, and comes highly recommended, as do any of the Shin Megami Tensei games, because they all have awesome everything.
The other one people haven’t been mentioning that I would bring up is Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria. Completely different from anything you are expecting from storyline (two spirits occupy same body in Viking myth-inspired world) to battle system (which is like nothing you’ve ever played before). It’s also incredibly gorgeous and very compelling from start to finish.
Oh! Oh! Oh! You have a Gamecube! Baten Kaitos! Baten Kaitos! Baten Kaitos! Preferably, the sequel Baten Kaitos II. It’s a card-based RPG that’s fantastic. And the sequel has similar gameplay to the great original, but with better execution in most other places. Baten Kaitos!
I like the Shin Megami Tensei games a lot (although Devil Summoner seemed wack - I only rented it and was not a fan of the poor arcade combat), but they are punishingly difficult. And while I don’t hate random encounters the way others seem to, they still push the envelope a bit far in that regard.
Digital Devil Saga 1 & 2 are much more forgiving than Nocturne in this regard, but there’s still a fair amount of trial and error involved.
However, if you can struggle past that, they’re fascinatingly strange games, unlike any other RPG I’ve played. I might never grow tired of the art style.
