Help me out here . . .

I was wondering if you guys could give me some suggestions on some turn-based RPGs for the PS2. I mean, ones that you guys really like, and say, you believe are comparable to Final Fantasy in greatness. I haven’t played any new games for a long time, and I want a new story!

Final Fantasy X is turn-based and comparable to Final Fantasy in greatness.

Dragon Quest 8. The Personas are popular too.

Shadow Hearts Covenant–With some epic battles, good jokes, emotional moments and good cut scenes, it definitely has a good story. I find the battles less repetitive than most thanks to the judgment ring. A cool thing about the game is each character has their own side quest that allows them to get stronger. For example, the wolf has find and defeat other wolfs in order to learn new special moves. Karen has to find sword masters around the world to learn new moves. Yuri has to fight his inner demons to gain new forms, etc. Also, this game makes grinding for the final boss fun! After you reach the final level, you can unlock secret levels for every character except one. Besides adding extra character storyline and something powerful for each character, by the time you beat all the levels, you will be strong enough to face the final boss.

Grandias II & III have excellent battle systems, but don’t expect the writing be literary works of art or even half decent.

I’ve heard good things about Romancing SaGa and Dragon Quarter but I haven’t played them yet.

There’s also the Wild ARMs and Suikoden series but so far I’ve only played the third Suikoden game which was an alright game.

I’ve also heard good things about Tales of the Abyss but once again I have yet to play it.

(Man, there are a lot of PS2 games in my backlog.)

Personas 3 and 4 are good, but also complex. If you want something a bit simpler, give Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana a shot.

I like complex :slight_smile: I really like a good in depth story along with interesting character skills/combat systems.

Shadow Hearts Covenant I already played . . . anyone know if the third one is any good?

Perhaps I’ll try Personas . . .

The Persona games are a must-play in my opinion. Although they eat a large amount time, it’s worth it. Nocturne is also pretty good, but it’s crazy difficult. DQ 8 is pretty good too, but again, eats up a lot of time.

Tales of the Abyss is good, but it’s not turn-based. And I’ve heard decent things about the Shadow Hearts series, but I haven’t played 'em.

If you’ve played Shadow Hearts Covenant, try the original one. The third one is okay, I guess…

Let me join the chorus of Persona admirers here.

If you like Sci-Fi RPGs, try Xenosaga series. Just be ready to do more watching than playing on many stages of the game(s)–there is an overload of cutscenes (and I have to admit that I like to “watch” my games as much, if not more, as I like to play them).
Also, the game contains a multitude of references to the Bible and Kabbalah – some might find this off-putting, others uber cool. I didn’t like the second episode of XS as much as the other two, but the game has one of my favorite RPG mano a mano fight scenes–I have a certain penchant for VG bad guys with scars and trench coats. :wink:

Double post, scusa
I just saw your post on the other thread. So you already played XS. Cool.
Then what about Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga and DDS2?
Try it.

Edit: DDS and DDS2 aren’t new though.

If you decide to get a Persona game, I would recommend P4 over P3. The reason is P3 doesn’t have much of a main storyline while P4 does. What I mean is I played P3 for 18 hours and there was only a storyline level about every 8 hours. I haven’t gotten far into P4, but it already has a lot more storyline than P3.

Also, both Persona 3 and 4 have great battle systems. Instead of many RPGs where you just hit the attack button, you have to carefully figure out each of your enemies’ weakness and attack them with it. If you hit an enemy with a spell that he is weak against, he will be knocked down and you get another turn. Knock down every enemy and you can do a powerful combo attack with your team and probably beat the enemy in one turn. What spells you have depends on what Persona’s you have caught or made. And you can only have a limited number of Personas at a time. You can scan enemies to possibly see their elemental weakness. You can decide to gain an extra turn to heal instead of using a combo attack. As you probably can see, there is a lot of strategy in P3 and P4 and I’ve only been talking about the battles. You also have to decide how many battles you will fight because SP is limited, decide if you’ll go to a dungeon or increase your social status. Talking about social status, you can increase your charisma, intelligence, courage, etc by doing different things like studying, eating out late at night, etc. Depending on your social status, you can hang out with different people and develop a social link (friendship) with them. Social links boost your created persona’s power and thus make you stronger in battle. Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to show you how deep Persona 3 and 4’s battle system is. It may sound too complicated, but it really isn’t. Even though I earlier complained about P3’s storyline, I still played it for 18 hours and I normally find turn based rpgs too repetitive to do that when I’m not into the story. Anyway, I highly recommend P4 since it does have a good story.

XenoSaga is actually based off of Gnosticism, though many elements are similar to Kabbalah.

I do not recommend the first Shadow Hearts, as I found it amateurish and badly implemented. Haven’t tried the third one yet.

Wild ARMs games are generally a good idea. WA3 is the most solid offering, but both 4 and 5 have their fans (I like 5 better than 4, Sinistral likes the opposite).

Dragon Quest 8 is good, but about 20 hours longer than it needs to be, and requires some patience if you’re used to being able to do certain things, like save, quickly.

Dragon Quest 8 is really good. It’s long, though, and slightly grindier than your average PS2 Final Fantasy (though not unreasonably so, and FAR less than other entries in the same series).

I really enjoyed Tales of the Abyss, but it might not be your cup of tea as it’s not turn-based, it’s more action oriented.

Xenosaga is… well… while I enjoyed the series I fully acknowledge its flaws (and there are quite a few). Also the three games are pretty different from each other in terms of system. The third game by far has the best combat system of the trilogy, but since it’s such a story-heavy series it’d be hard to just jump into the third. The first one takes awhile (there’s a 30+ minute cutscene near the end of that game, other cutscenes are pretty damn long too). The second one a lot of people seem to hate, and while I’m not so hard on it, it’s my least favorite of the bunch. If you can pick up the first one for cheap (and it probably is cheap) maybe give it a go, but be prepared to possibly not like it.

The Suikoden series… avoid 4 like the plague. 3 and 5 are alright.

Wild Arms 3 and Wild Arms Alter Code F are both pretty good. I’ve never played 4 or 5, so I can’t say one way or another, but I’ve heard they’re both inferior.

-Xenosaga is best not played unless you really need a very long and story-heavy series with awful gameplay until the third, and even then the whole thing falls apart heavily in the second game. They tried with all their heart to fix it in the third, but it was just impossible to make it fully satisfying (This is what happens when you fire your director, scriptwriter, and shorten a six-game series to three).

-Suikoden as a series is pretty good. The first two are decent and very good respectively, but those are for PS1. If you’re going to jump right into the series, I recomend going straight to 5. 4 is lacklustre in every aspect and 3 is just a gigantic mess of poor design choices.

-Megami Tensei games are usually very good, with varying degrees of ass-raping difficulty. Persona 3 and 4 are probably the easiest to ease into.

FF I wasn’t completely huge on, but if you’re asking for a recommended game for PS2, if you liked Donkey Kong Country, which I really did for Snes, I’d suggest Odin Sphere, one of the few 2D games to my knowledge for PS2. It was suppose to be the last PS2 game before they realize there still was a market. More so if you’re a female gamer, I know that sounds sexist, but I’d still recommend Odin Sphere, it has like 5 interwoven stories and it’s just a beautiful Donkey Kong Maze game. Btw if anyone figures out how to eat food really fast in Odin Sphere let me know, I quit because the bunny’s annoyed me.

That’s an odd comparison… The only thing the two have in common is that they’re both side scrollers.

well i might not know much about ps2 because i took an ill advised hiatus from sony for awhile and played xbox only but in my opinion you cant go wrong with suikoden no matter which one you choose and while ff12 isn’t turn based per se its story is epic and i would strongly suggest that that one:hahaha;

Ooo Ps2 thats a good question … I have it alot for Ps1 rpgs but I’ve heard alot of good things about Rogue Galaxy and Disgaia I & II (:hint:May not be the exact spelling on the last one)

Re: Xenosaga and the author of this thread –

http://agora.rpgclassics.com/showpost.php?p=637638&postcount=65
Case closed. Next…:wink: