Going back in time just a bit here. Which should I start first?
Suikoden V
SMT: Nocturne
Star Ocean: Till The End of Time
Radiata Stories
Odin Sphere
Odin Sphere, no question.
SMT: Nocturne?
No clue where to start since I’ve only played one game in that list, and that’s SO3.
Nocturne ftw.
Odin Sphere will be the quickest of these, so I’d start with it.
Radiata Stories is really short if you want it to be, like 15 hours.
SO3 is good, but don’t play it expecting a good story.
The rest I’ve never heard of or never played. What the fuck is Odin Sphere?
Originally Posted by Hades Shinigami
What the fuck is Odin Sphere?
A 2D Action RPG where you get to grow your own sheep plants and then harvest the sheep for food which nets you HP experience.
There’s also some stuff about Ragnarok, five characters to choose from, good story presentation, and frame rate issues, but really the only thing that matters is the plants that bare sheep.
And while the game is short enough, to get the best ending you’ll have to go through the game at least five times (plus a boss rush mode at the end).
But seriously, sheep plants.
Otherwise my suggestion is to go for [STRIKE]the sheep plants[/STRIKE] Nocturne.
Killmore: You only go through the game ONCE. You play as five different characters in different scenarios. THEN you do the painfully stupid boss mode. 
Are you looking to play the worst game first or the best? That being said, the only one of those games I’ve played through is Odin Sphere, and I’d have to say it’s one of the worst RPGs I’ve ever played in my life. So, if you find that you don’t agree with anything I say, that’ll be a good one to go with, I guess. …but it still sucks.
You also said it was based on fairy tales, when it’s clearly based on Norse mythology. OHHHH! Or something. Yeah. My feet itch.
WAIT WHAT !? SHEEP PLANTS?!?
Which you fertlize with souls of your slain enemies. And then kill and eat to increase HP.
I liked Odin Sphere. The slowdown only really became an issue when fighting Odette and even then I could put up with it. I liked the characters and the story was good enough.
Star Ocean will piss you off more than anything. Radiata Stories starts out amazing, but it ends up in one of the most tragic and massive trainwrecks of wasted potential in gaming history. Standard tri-Ace deal, basically.
Nocturne is great, but will rape you in the ass if you’re not prepared or are only used to modern walk-you-by-the-hand RPGs. If you are prepared… it’ll use lube at least, but you’ll still get a beating.
I loved Suikoden V. That said, it’s the longest game in the series by far, which in itself is famous for long-ass games. We’re talking upwards from 50 hours. It’s not DQVII stuff in that there’ll be plenty of stuff to keep you busy, but it’s still LONG.
As cool as Nocturne is, once you get into it it’s going to sink a lot of time. Keep that in mind.
And these people are not kidding about its difficulty level. curls into a ball, rocking back and forth and muttering about Matador
Yeah. You will get your ass pounded more than once.
The only things that bothered me about Radiata Stories were how small the world was (it seems vast at first, but you can walk across it in like 3 minutes + load times) and how unbelievably retarded and unrealistic some of the characters’ personalities were (Cross, for one. This is a guy who would get absolutely killed very early into the story if it was real life, but manages to last until the very end. Yes, that kind of character.). If you take the game for the light-hearted character recruitment fantasy romp that it is, you’ll love it.
I did that. Then the whole racial massacre, epidemic and major character deaths kicked in, the humor evaporated, voice acting stopped, plot became inconsistent as humanly possible, and I went “wat”.
So you hated it because you chose to focus on everything I just told you not to focus on? The story blows, for sure. It’s not supposed to be FFVIII.
Of course not, the characters are likeable.
OH SNAP.
Seriously though, what the hell would you have me focus on? The few characters who’ve actually got a glimpse of a reason to be with you yet never have any involvement in the plot whatsoever and therefore don’t even talk? I liked the characters. I liked the humor. I liked the interaction.
When the characters stopped being funny or likeable, started being killed off, the story suddenly became dark as shit while still not making any sense whatsoever, cut scenes were reduced drastically in favor of dungeon crawling and the recruitment itself stopped since you got locked into either side of the fighting, what was left? Gameplay? The shittied down version of Star Ocean 3? Yeah, that’ll keep me busy.
You’re asking me what part of the story you should focus on instead of realizing that you shouldn’t focus on the story. The characters, plots, and cutscenes don’t matter at all. The enjoyment of RS comes from figuring out how to recruit characters, and no, it doesn’t stop once you choose a side. It only opens up once you choose a side, and the ultimate goal is to fill your friends list with all 177 characters, but you need New Game + to do it. The recruitment IS the gameplay; it’s a puzzle game. The fighting is filler. You won’t be able to enjoy it as long as you’re locked into the traditional definition of an RPG where story and battles are what matter. They’re the side-material here, and only exist minimally, to drive the recruitment angle.
You cannot possibly be serious.
The recruiting methods aren’t “Puzzles”, they’re standard Suikoden-style fetch-quests and follow-x-and-see-what-you-need-to-do, many of which are undecipherable without a guide and get you filler dudes that do and say nothing ever. It’s also amazingly clumsy and tedious because of the fucking clock. If you’re telling me to focus on ONLY that, the game sucks so much more it’s hard to fathom.
And yes, it does close up grotesquely, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. ESPECIALLY if you chose the nonhuman side.
And fuck, so story, character, dialogue, humor, style, etc are irrelvant? Who gets to decide that, you? The game is clearly not intended or marketed to be anything like that. The thing had amazing characters and humor to start off, and it shitted all over it. A really shitty and pointless character hunt for guys of which I only like three won’t make up for that.