I think the story was deep, and it made good sense too. The characters, some of them might have been a bit… random, but it adds to the fun (take Minsc for example) and the AI was terrible. BG2 increased the AI but got rid of all the cooler characters. Bah.
Yeah, but the FF minigames suck. I mean, it goes beyond suckage and into the realm of absolute suckage. Your point still stands in my opinion (because I’ve played both ToD and ToD2, which ARE very fun…just tend to get boring after a while, especially ToD2 because in the end, it’s all OMEGA DEMON HAMMER! or such shit), but the comparison fails :P.
Anyway, it’s just that menu-based games tends to be more “strategic” than more combat-oriented battle systems, if only because you can’t be as aggressive.
Oh, so you like your virtual world to have choices, just like the Architect, huh? 
Anyways, to actually reply on topic, I hafta say that if I approach a game with the resolute intention of enjoying it, then nine times out of ten I will. (The exception is with fatally bad games like MMX6, but at least the translation is hilariously bad in some places. 
Yeah bad translation is also something i look for in a game, thats the reason LoD and Bangi-o were so much fun
Unfortunatly some poorly translated games just creap me out. An example would be Breath of Fire II, I got to the part where you visit the house that sells “whale cakes”, and was eternaly creeped out, and couldn’t play the game anymore.
Whew, it’s a good thing FF7+ had better everything than any game preceeding them, otherwise they might’ve been bad, what with their amazing graphics and all.
(Accusing FF7+ of having bad story, characters, and battle system only leads me to believe you’ve either never played them, or hate FF for the sake of hating FF.)
FFVI and Xenogears are my two favorites, because I loved the stories and characters, although they lacked challenge. Obviously, both titles were enhanced by the music. Suikoden 2 had horrid graphics, no challenge, and a poor battle system…but the story and characters were amazing and it’s easily one of my favorites.
Wow, I hope it’s not opposite day and I’m just making a fool of myself, but if you reverse every comment you just made you’d have something that resembles the truth.
Suikoden II having bad graphics and a bad battle system? FFVII+ having bad stories and FFVI having a good story? Bad battle systems? Bad characters? I’ve never seen such a high degree of untruth and hypocrisy.
And saying Suikoden 2 had deep characters is just like, wow. It MUST be opposite day. When you spread the same amount of character developement across 150 characters that most games spread across 10, the result is obvious.
Oh yeah, AND, shakes his head at Yar
MMX6 was totally awesome.
I’m a huge fan of Suikoden II, but lets face it. The graphics weretn it strong point at all. When it came out the same time as MGS, FFVIII, etc the graphics were extremely dated even back then. The only characters that really mattered in that were 10 and it was the brilliant story and how those characters developed that make it one of the best RPGs of all time. The other ones were just there for you to collect. Nothing more. The battle system was pretty simplistic. Not to say it wasnt enjoyable. Just simplistic.
I’m pretty late and the whole situation seems to have resolved itself, but Hades, if you keep it up I think you’re probably gonna get banned again.
Anyway, story is definitly the most important part of any game to me. I hate that ToP battle system though, it’s so unneccessary ;p
I’m gonna have to disagree. Suikoden II’s graphics were done in a style that flatters 2d rendering, and sorry but MGS has some of the most HORRIBLE graphics I’ve ever seen. It’s jaggy city.
And by the way, every game you claimed didn’t have a good story has a better one than Suiko2.
PREACH IT BROTHER! Um yeah when it comes to story Suikoden II’s was kinda flat. As for the graphics, at the time it came out they were good. Not stupendous but good. MGS never appealed to me. Although I admit I’ve never even tried it so I can’t say I don’t like it.
EDIT: Corected Speling:P
Sim Matrix will be created soon enough. Then we can all govern our own little worlds. Hahaha AHAHAHAHA! :mwahaha:
To me, music is a part of an RPG that should be good. I mean, I don’t want to spend the whole game listening to annoying music. I want music that’ll absorb be into all kinds of battles when they happen. I want fast paced music for the final couple of battles of a game. I want music that’s nice to listen to while doing some part of a game.
Flexibility.
“Okay, but what the hell does that mean?”
Can mean a lot of things. Could mean a plot that is non-linear in large parts if not all the way through, like the second half of FF6. It could mean actual ROLEPLAYING, in the sense that you can make dialogue/action choices that actually affect the outcome of the game, either in major or minor ways, instead of just entering into an unending spiral of “But Thou MUST!” until you break down and finally answer “yes” like you’re supposed to. It could mean a good job/class switching system. It could mean multiple endings/different endings based on how you win or progress through the game.
I guess flexibility is another way of saying Replay Value, because I think all these things allow you to have a different gaming experience each time through, thus, there’s a reason to play it a second or third time (well, a reason other than “OMG i n33d t0 get all 100% of itmz!!!1” or something obsessive compulsive like that… although I’ve done that sometimes, too.)
Renaming characters is nice, too, although I don’t use that so much anymore.
Basically, I like an active experience, not a passive one. So I also don’t like long FMVs or other story sequences that drag ON and ON and leave you there watching the game instead of playing it, and no ammount of button pressing is going to skip through that long windedness any faster. (shakes his fist at FFX)
As for the freshness of this topic. Yeah, it’s been done before. A long time ago. We’ve got a lot of new people who’ve never discussed it here before, because they all came in after “the debate was settled.” We’ve had a lot of comings and goings since then. You know what that means? The debate isn’t settled anymore! This is one of those topics that will – and should – come up every now and then. It’s one of those core elements. This probably should come up once every year or so. You know, new people = new ideas and shit like that. Oh, and new games have come out, too, since the last time this thread came up. New features, etc. That also changes the dynamic.
So, since we shun the dark art of necroposting, and we don’t have an archive/hall of fame forum in which these core/fundamental topics are preserved for all time for newcomers to stand on the shoulders of giants and add a couple lines to an ongoing historical dialogue to them…
…Then we should ready and willing to accept a new “whats your favorite RPG” and “what are the most important elements in an RPG to you?” thread every now and then. If it comes up once a year or so I figure we’re good. Maybe six months if we have enough turnover/population growth/new faces to justify it. Anymore than that and it would become tiresome because there wouldn’t be enough new things to say.
I mean, this is an RPG information and/or discussion site. It wouldn’t hurt us to pay at least occasional lip service to RPG discussion every now and then. And I mean out in the open, rather than mod-only discussions hidden inside a closed thread entitled “porn” 
I’ll just say that I prefer saying things like “I like FFW better than FFZ” instead of “FFW is better than FFZ” so that peoples’ personal views are less offended. Also, I like clever enemy positioning and design better than “fill up the screen with bad stuff, or making an enemy or enemies with a nigh-impossible to hit weak spot or that CAN’T BE DEFEATED, so that it’s almost impossible to win unless you abuse savestates in an emulator, as if the developers are saying ‘suck on THIS’”, and I take exception to an enemy who can ONLY be defeated using two particular acquired weapons, but it is possible get stuck fighting him before you acquire said weapons. But that’s just me, so …
Gameplay, plot, and character are the 3 most imporatant features.
Gameplay: Secret of Mana, the plot was all but lost in the translation and the character have very few lines so you didn’t get much feel for them, but gameplay-wise it’s one of the best games I’ve seen to this day. I had wanted it for 9 years before I finally got it, it remains one of my favotire games.
Plot: I now turn your attentiion to Chrono Trigger, O.K. They also had good characters and gameplay, but thier plot is one of the best ever, not to complicated but just a nice, easy to understand plot with twists and plenty of timetravel.
characaters: Now for a third SNES game produced by square. FFVI, best characters, plot was good, gameplay was O.K. (standard Final Fantasy with a couple innovations) but the characters made the game unforgetable, at least to me anyway.
As long as at least one of these elements is really strong the others can be lacking somewhat, but the only element that can stand on it’s own is gameplay. good gameplay and almost character/plot can still be a good game (Diablo, Diablo II, ect.) yet if you found yourself playing a game with a greate plot but you hated the main character and you hated al the mechanics about the game your not likely to keep playing.
music and graphics can help, they give the game it’s feel, but the best graphics and music does not make a great game so these elements are not essential.
Edit: oh yeah, SO2 the first time you play it is hard at points (especially the last boss and bonus dungeon). However try playing it on the harder settings, Universal mode is increadible, I played it once and I couldn’t beat the boss at the end of the bonus dungeon (gabrie celesta) or the last boss after I removed his limiter, and I know everything in that game, I mean I can produce the eternal sphere on the first disk!
I would say that.
I reguralry change from style of games even style of FF. Some times it’s just hit (X) as fast you can to win, Other time slightly Tactical, some time a Secret of Mana/Sword of mana aproach.
Hey, what the Word of the Square-Enix Dragon game just relised? (= Do get Saga istead and wait.)
I think its a combination of them all that is neessarry. You can have loads of nice graphics with no real good gameplay, or vice versa, great gameplay with horrible graphics, and I probably won’t enjoy either one. Though by ‘horrible graphics’, I don’t necessarrily mean whether it is, say, not pushing as many polygons as the others so much as I mean that its nice to look at. I consider various SNES games to ‘look better’ than various recent games. Like, I prefer ff6 to neverwinter nights. Ah, I guess you guys can figure out what I mean.
Its not just graphics, but the sound and music need to fit in as well. And all must work together, not just be ‘good’. I love xenosaga and ff6’s soundtracks, but if the two were mixed with their’ respective games (running ff6 with XS music) it just wouldn’t fit with the themes. Get what I mean?
In summarized form: I prefer my stuff to be in ‘harmony’, with each element of a game complementing the other.