PS2 RPGs

PS2 RPGs
I've been playing PS1 RPGs a lot lately and feel like finally taking the jump to the next console. What are some good hidden Gems for 6th gen RPGs? Some must play image list would help too.

Fuck, I love SO2. Game is a masterpiece.

Here's a chart I picked up from the last rec thread. As for my PS2 RPG recs:

Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter - get past the B.S. difficulty ceiling and there's a beautiful game to be played.

Rogue Galaxy - Awesome ARPG combat alongside a pretty standard story. Voice acting is stellar nonetheless.

Okage: Shadow King - May sound generic but it's actually a quirky and fun little RPG. Art style is like Tim Burton meets Miyazaki.

Use the catalog newfag. There's a PlayStation thread up already

I'm asking for 6th gen RPGs specifically that are either PS2 exclusive or multiplat and on the PS2

Like I said: catalog, PlayStation thread. There's plenty of room to post and get responses. Please learn to use catalog and not clutter the board.

get SMT Nocturne
Digital Devil Saga too and Persona 3 and 4

It's a sin to tell lies user

Didn't mean to sage

You need to fucking kill yourself, preferably today.

Sure they're not like actual SMT games but they're not terrible

This chart is a bit old but still has plenty of games to try out. I also recommend Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land if you enjoy dungeon crawlers as well as Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter if you're okay with it being very different from the previous BoF games. There's also a Kings Field game for the PS2 if you've played those on the PS1. All the .hack games are also pretty good.

I personally find the Shadow Hearts series to be really good. Starts on the PS1 with a game called Koudelka though.

Also really like the Wild Arms games, but the ones after 3 are a bit hit or miss with fans. I still found them to be enjoyable though.


Current one is here.


Considering how many issues I've seen people bring up about what's on there (also not sure when half/vg/ made it, but from what I'd seen tastes had perhaps changed a bit) I've been considering making a new version, but JRPG discussion here on the whole doesn't seem to happen that much, nor is there a JRPG general on /vg/ here (/jrpg/ the board has also been dead for about a year).

I'll never stop shilling Radiata Stories (though just the undub).

Fun, light-hearted (gets darker towards the end), good art style, nice soundtrack (not made by Motoi Sakuraba, which is a miracle for a tri-Ace game. It's made by Noriyuki Iwadare). The town folk all have their daily routines, which makes the city feel more alive. There's a lot of recruitable party members. Armor changes your look, which wasn't all that common for a PS2 JRPG. About halfway or 2/3 into the story, what you do puts you into one of two possible paths, so there's some replay value.

My favorite part of the game is just when you're in the mercenary guild doing relatively minor tasks with minimal story progression. That's just such a comfy time in the game.

You need to leave newfag and kill yourself, preferably today. Catalog.

God fucking damnit, OP, why'd you have to open with what is arguably the best JRPG of all time?
There's nowhere to go but down.

obvious choices are dark cloud 2 and rogue galaxy
chan favorites tend to be less obvious or shit upon by "the public" like Dragon Quarter or the later Kings Fields, 3 is the last PS and 4 is the PS2 one

Human side is really shitty. Non-human side is decently written and there's far more to it. This isn't really a grind heavy RPG either, not unless you count the secret dungeon and kind of the end of the game as you'll want to increase your level at least. Kind of wish Jack weren't such a jack of all trades and had more to him but well whatever. Most of the weapons are fun and the interchangeable weapon skills and skills to add to you were decent. I only liked six skills overall honestly so meh.

I don't know if you'd could exactly call Steambot Chronicles an RPG, but it does have a lot of RPG elements. One of the five best games on the PS2 in my opinion.

...

Does it emulate well?

Okay, is it just me who can't stand Star Ocean: TtEoT? I tried playing like 2 hours of the thing and couldn't hang. VA was awful, had crazy weird hack and slash/RPG elements, story was pretty trite and the characters were flat and boring.

Am I hallucinating? Does it get better?

I'm not sure, but I doubt it. The game even had trouble running smoothly on actual PS2s, so can't imagine it would run well on any current emulator.

I've heard in the past it has issues, but according to the PCSX2 compatibility list was playable from start to finish last I checked. Whether it runs well beyond that I suppose is another question, and to my knowledge even on the PS2 has some slowdown issues or something.

I didn't recommend Radiata Stories because it's my #1 favorite game (and was in the chart anyway.) Most probably find it shallow and basic. I've played through it 10+ times (both Human and Non-Human paths.)

Just let me be content with my autism.


I was kinda puzzled on finding the JRPG general on /vg/. Even for a board notorious for hosting over 3,000 threads about crippled anime girls, such a broad subject doesn't really deserve its own regular general.

Video games are shit and JRPGs even moreso.


Oh no, SO3 is only good for the gameplay. Last Hope is even worse. SO5 was received poorly over there IIRC.

If you don't know SO3's plot twist, it is one of the dumbest in gaming. I don't how the Japs thought it was alright to pull that shit out of their asses.

Fucking casuals.

The twist in Star Ocean 3 is the only time I've ever quit a game purely because of how stupid it's story got. I actually knew a guy who liked it, and used to say that anyone who didn't "Just didn't get it." He also thought the Groundhog's Day thing in Bravely Default was a good idea too, IIRC. I guess the people who write all of these stupid plot twists really do have an audience.

Seen plenty of regular anons be rather divided on Dragon Quarter as well. Granted, I won't personally claim it good or bad until I finally get around to playing it, but it seems like a game that had a bit too much change for a main series entry (given that it's outright called Breath of Fire V in Japan) and wound up polarizing the fanbase. I do wonder what Japanese fans thought of it though, beyond it doing poorly enough in sales that Capcom stuffed the series into the back of the freezer until they needed mobile stuff to shit out (hence Breath of Fire 6).


Might be remembering wrong, but I think part of it was that back in the day on half/v/, JRPGs wound up getting rather hard to discuss without there being a lot of shitposting against them (faggots like Ruggarel using images from ones like Atelier to spam "why do you hate games with anime art styles" template threads likely didn't help matters), and only a few franchises seemed to escape the trend. Makes me think that might have been the prompt for some people to opt to start a recurring thread on /vg/ for better discussion ("better" perhaps being subjective). Granted, that's not to say that JRPG general didn't have it's own issues (stuff such as annoying tripfags and one autist stalking an XSEED employee, though I wasn't around there when the latter happened), but the ability to discuss JRPGs at anytime and always have someone to talk with about them was a pretty nice perk. Stopped going there when some moonspeaking anons, claiming "the west doesn't deserve good games like these," started mass spoiler campaigns for upcoming western releases like Tales of Xillia 2 in the hopes to remove reason for people to buy and play them. That was a few years back.

At the very least I got a lot of decent recommendations from the posters there back in the day, and while I haven't played nearly everything at this point, their suggestions have yet to let me down.