Good RPGs for PSX?

[jetsetradio4ever]

Can anyone think of any really memorable ones for Playstation besides the FF games? Thanks.

[Oobgarm]

http://www.digitpress.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=60793&highlight=psx+rpg

[jetsetradio4ever]

Oh... Thanks anyway. :P

[FantasiaWHT]

That's a bit indiscriminate :P Author wanted memorable ones, not all of them :)

For some recommendations I could say:

Tales of Destiny I & II
Valkyrie Profile
Suikoden I & II
Lunar I & II

all are some of the best games I've ever played!

[Lady Jaye]

Plus the Ogre Battle/Ogre Tactics games if you're into tactical RPG... And then there's Dragon Warrior VII.

[Xantan the Foul]

Azure Dreams
Monster Collecting, town upgrades, random dungeons. All in all a pretty fun game.

Breath of Fire 3
I think this was about a 40 hour game. I didn't like it as much as the second one, but collecting the different dragon crystals (or what ever they were) to make new forms was pretty neat.

Dragon Warrior VII
I spent about 120 hours on this one, just to beat it. Standard Dragon Warrior game. A ton of sidequests that could keep a completionist busy till the end of time.

Grandia
About a 30 hour game, I think. I don't remember a whole lot about it, but I enjoyed it.


Guardian's Crusade
About a 20 hour game, gets a little tedious, but I managed to play it through to the end.


Jade Cocoon: Story of the Tamamayu
12 hour game, collect and merge various monsters. I really liked the merging system in this game, the monsters actually look like a combination of the two.


Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete
25-30 hours. Nothing really special, but worth one play through.

Parasite Eve
15 hours. Great Cinematics, and an all around fun game. You could build up your weapons and armor, and power up spell like attacks.

Parasite Eve 2
More action than the first one, but every bit as fun. It feels alot more free than the first, with the ability to buy new weapons and ammo from the points you get by killing monsters.

Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure
Memorable to me because I hated it, but I only paid $30 for it new on Ebay, and now people pay 5 times that much, and will be dissapointed.

Star Ocean: The Second Story
About 40-50 hours, two seperate main characters, lots of different party choices, and a multitude of ending variations.

Suikoden
20 hour game. 108 different party members, standard RPG combat and an interesting war style combat. I'd highly recommend this one.

Suikoden 2
Everything the first one was, but better.

Valkyrie Profile
Probably my favorite PSX RPG. Side scrolling dungeon exploration, with turn based RPG combat. But the combat feels so fluid that it's really different from other RPGs. Every character has a button assigned to them, and hitting that button will make him attack. Timing it right will set up really long combos that allow super attacks.

[GobopopRevisited]

Chrono Cross... thats all you need.

[FantasiaWHT]

Chrono Cross... thats all you need.

ahhhhhhhh stay away!

Well, it's cheap, so if you do buy it you won't be out THAT much money ;)

I'd like to second Azure Dreams and add Chocobo's Dungeon, which is essentially the exact same game as AD except with different characters and settings.

[GizmoGC]

I have yet to ever play any RPGs on the PSX. I really should try one day. LOL

[Poofta!]

couple GREAT games no one else has mentioned here:

Wild Arms 1 (3 branching and interwinding stories, fantastic game)

Alundra (zelda esque action rpg, fantastic! part 2 was awful)

Xenogears (3d graphics look a bit ugly, but this game has the most complex and interesting story ive ever seen in a console rpg)

and a general rule of thumb, all the PSX final fantasies are great. some better than others, personally i think there are better RPGs than FF8 and FF9, but the rest you really should play.

[UrQuan]

No one ever mentions Persona. I haven't played it in years, but I loved it when it first came out. It's pretty cool, wish I had a copy of it myself.

[hezeuschrist]

Chrono Cross... thats all you need.

ahhhhhhhh stay away!

Well, it's cheap, so if you do buy it you won't be out THAT much money ;)

I'd like to second Azure Dreams and add Chocobo's Dungeon, which is essentially the exact same game as AD except with different characters and settings.

I have to agree with Gobopop, Chrono Cross was an absolutely fantastic game. The ONLY reason it gets such a bum wrap is that it really had next to nothing to do with Chrono Trigger, and even then it wasn't quite as good as it's forebearer so it gets panned. There's a reason it scores like this:

http://www.gamespot.com/ps/rpg/chronocross/index.html?q=chrono+cross

Seriously. One of 4 games to ever take a perfect 10 at GS, the other three being Tony Hawk PS 3, Ocarina of Time, and Soul Calibur. That's some hefty freakin company.

[Lemmy Kilmister]

Chrono Cross may not have had the largest budget, but it has the largest heart.

LOL

Like hell it didn't. The game was produced by freakin' Square and released in america with the help of Electronic Arts. I mean.. how big can you get? You're having two of the biggest game developers in the world releasing it.

No wonder Gamestop gave the game a perfect score. They're all smoking crack.:P

[slip81]

I really liked the Wild ARMs series

[DragonMaster Sam]

Can't forget a good strategy RPG like Vandal Hearts.

[Haoie]

Here's my 2 cents. Front Mission 3 is without a doubt the best in the entire FM series, and the best overall mech simulation/tactical RPG for the PS. Wanzers are cool.

[unbroken]

XENOGEARS

anyone that is into rpg's at all should experience xenogears at least one, after all, it changed my life.

[hezeuschrist]

Chrono Cross may not have had the largest budget, but it has the largest heart.

LOL

Like hell it didn't. The game was produced by freakin' Square and released in america with the help of Electronic Arts. I mean.. how big can you get? You're having two of the biggest game developers in the world releasing it.

No wonder Gamestop gave the game a perfect score. They're all smoking crack.:P

That was obviously a direct shot at the budget that FFVII had at the time. And Gamespot certainly wasn't the only publication to give it intense praise. IGN gave it a 9.7 and it's holding a 93% at gamerankings.com.

I highly question the amount of people that have actually played the game through to it's end that bitch about it so much. Just because it's completely different from Chrono Trigger doesn't mean it's a bad game. Had they named it differently and taken out one scene (which showed Chrono, Marle, and Luca) which didn't make much sense anyways, it'd be right on everyones list with Xenogears and any other Square produced game that doesn't begin with "F" and end with "antasy."

[PDorr3]

Breath for fire 4 was very enjoyable, legend of dragoon is another rpg not mentioned yet, despite its harsh reviews I found this game very fun, along with a great battle system. While i havent played much of it, threads of fate seems like a charming simplistic rpg as well.

[hezeuschrist]

legend of dragoon is another rpg not mentioned yet, despite its harsh reviews I found this game very fun, along with a great battle system. While i havent played much of it, threads of fate seems like a charming simplistic rpg as well.

I don't really think that by todays standards that LoD would even come close to holding up. I purchased it (GH) for $15 and I intended to play through it, and when I did (sometime after the PS2 release, probably 2002) I couldn't tollerate it. It had some beautiful CG and the story and battle system seemed intruiging, but the pace of the game was numbing. Speaking of horrid translation, it's got some of the most worthless dialog in a game, ever.

*girl trips*
Girl: Ow!
Guy: Are you alright?
Girl: I'm fine, let us continue

... that was the whole scripted scene. Double U Tee Eff.

The battle system had promise, but it too was horrendously slow. Far too much focus on the battle intro and the visual representation of the attacks.

[FantasiaWHT]

I played through the whole of Chrono Cross and still thought it was awful. As a matter of fact, although I read plenty of reviews that loved it, I never talked to a person I knew that gave it better than an "all right".

And just being different from Trigger had little to do with my opinion. I hated the levelling up system, I hated that even though you had 40 characters all but a few of them were just clones of each other, and I really hated that you had all these characters and only a few of them had anything resembling a real story behind them. The fact that it had the most generic "plot twist" ever didn't help :P

Most overhyped and overreviewed RPG I've ever seen.

[PDorr3]

I played through the whole of Chrono Cross and still thought it was awful. As a matter of fact, although I read plenty of reviews that loved it, I never talked to a person I knew that gave it better than an "all right".

And just being different from Trigger had little to do with my opinion. I hated the levelling up system, I hated that even though you had 40 characters all but a few of them were just clones of each other, and I really hated that you had all these characters and only a few of them had anything resembling a real story behind them. The fact that it had the most generic "plot twist" ever didn't help :P

Most overhyped and overreviewed RPG I've ever seen.

Agreed, I liked CC when I first played it but later on I realized that all of those characters were not needed at all. In fact I like RPG's that give you maybe 6-8 characters to chose from, that way you get to know them more and it deelops a better understanding of the stories and personalities behind each character. In CC its like this:

Guy1: yea I just sit in this house all day.
Guy2: Cool, why not join my party of 40 other weird people and creatures.

CC is a good game dont get me wrong, but it is indeed way overrated, but I guess people have different opinions.

[tritium]

I liked chrono cross quite a bit. It wasn't as epic as Final Fantasy 7, but it was nice. I liked the fact that each of the characters had his or her own subplot., and there were lots of characters.

Still most memorable, crappy graphics and all is final fantasy 7. Something about the atmosphere... makes it wonderful

[hezeuschrist]

I don't buy that "useless character" arguement, because it's a flaw that EVERY RPG nowadays falls victim to. The most notable of all in recent times was FFVI. Seriously, this game gets so much head from the RPG community and it's secondary characters were just as, if not more useless than a large portion of the cast of CC.

There's a reason why FFIV is my favorite game, and it's strictly because of character development the idea that you're forced to use certain parties for certain situations, that you don't have an army of characters on the sidelines (which every FF since V has fallen victim to). It didn't bother me for a while (during the time I played CC) but now it's starting to get to me because it's so incredibly commonplace.

[FantasiaWHT]

I agree, hezeus, which is why I'm playing fewer and fewer modern RPGs ;)

The more characters you throw into an RPG, the harder it is to tell a cohesive, efficient story. Whenever you get to a plot point, you either need to write something inane for each of the 40 characters to say just in case you have them in your party, or they can't really be part of the plot.

And then there's the whole annoyance of trying to repeat every point with every character in your party JUST IN CASE having one of them in your party changes something.

I like games that give you no choice as to party members. If it's done WELL, I'll enjoy a game that gives you at MOST twice as many characters available as the max you can have in your party. Anything over that gets very unwieldy.

[hezeuschrist]

Heh, at any rate he should try out CC on his own. It's certainly garnered enough critical praise to warrant a shot from any real RPG fan.

[Snapple]

Personally, I love Chrono Cross. It seems that everyone I know who's played it either loves it or hates it. People usually have strong criticism either way.

So I guess the final verdict is that it's worth trying out. You might like it a lot. But, don't get your hopes up. You might hate it also.

I've played through the game six times now, the last time as recently as last year, and it still holds up for me.

My favorite non-Final Fantasy RPG for PSX is still easily Star Ocean 2 though. In my opinion, it's vastly superior to both its predecessor and its sequel. Of every video game I've ever played, the one I've beaten the most times is SO2. It's just that good.

SO2, like *every* RPG, has its critics, but I honestly don't understand where it comes from. There are only two downsides to SO2. First, the beginning of the game is a bit heavy on the dialogue and light on action, although that changes. Secondly, the music sucks. Everything else about the game is phenomenal, in my opinion.

The battle system, which combines 2D and 3D with action-based button mashing and a little bit of turn-based goodness, is both original and addictive.

12 characters, most of whom are completely optional and you won't have them all in the same playthrough, all have fleshed-out and memorable characters (well, except for Ernest).

The Item Creation system is absolutely brilliant. There are literally almost 1000 things you can make, from risotto to bombs to forged checks.

Over 100 endings

And on top of that, they throw in a super hard secret dungeon that takes around 8 hours to finish and has no save point, for the truly hardcore.

Every character is very unique and different to play, so playing multiple times is a must, if just so you get a feel for how they all operate in combat, but also for the jillion endings.

[Red Hedgehog]

Personally, I love Chrono Cross. It seems that everyone I know who's played it either loves it or hates it. People usually have strong criticism either way.

Throw me in the third category. I thought it was a rather average RPG. The battle system was unique and interesting. The story was slightly above average (held my interest, anyway). The fact that there were so many characters with no background was annoying. Finally, it got a little boring toward the end.

I admit, I was disappointed that it didn't live up to my possibly favorite RPG, Chrono Trigger (and that I couldn't look up Kid's skirt :D ), but it did keep me interested enough to beat it (but not to try to beat it again to get all the characters/endings).

Back to the original topic, the only other PSX RPG I have played is Dragon Warrior VII. That I thought was very good - keeps much of the traditional DW style, good story that kept me coming back and lots of side games for the completionist in me. The graphics can be annoying (2D sprites on 3D backgrounds? Ugh - should have stuck with 2D), but that's probably my only criticism.