Your Top 10 RPG's of the 0's

The Core Video Games Forum
1

Here’s my top 10 list for the decade.

10.Final Fantasy IX (PSX) - one of my least favorite of the series, but I enjoyed playing through, despite having a difficult time caring about any of the characters. This being on here is a testament to me not playing many post-2000 RPGs.

9. Baldur’s Gate II (PC) - I enjoyed the first Baldur’s Gate much more, because it was all new to me; things got a bit tedius in II. Much improved over the first game with a lot more depth, and a great online following.

8. Skies of Arcadia (Dreamcast) - did a lot of interesting things I hadn’t seen before in an rpg, such as facial expressions, music that changed based on your progress in battle, music that changed as you travelled through the overworld, and the ship battles were fun. Good game.

7. Suikoden V (PS2): After the travesties that were SIII and IV, Suikoden went back to its roots with a charming title more similar to the first two Suikoden classics. It was a fun game, and I enjoyed using Lorelai, my favorite pickup character.

6. Xenosaga I: Der Wille zur Macht (PS2): - promising start to what I thought would be a great series, but they spent two and a half years redoing the graphics and dumbing down the battle system, which lead to failure and cancellation. One of my biggest disapointments as a gamer.

5. Final Fantasy X-2 (PS2): - I found this game to be a lot of fun, and I enjoyed the job system. Wasn’t a huge FFX fan so I didn’t care for the ‘blasphemy’, as some people put it. The job system was a riot and made for some interesting challenges. Optional dungeon was great.

4. Grandia II (Dreamcast): - The first RPG I played with what I considered good voice acting that was actually entertaining. Good cast of characters, great battle system, solid game. And Millenia.

3. World of Warcraft (PC): - beautiful world and I loved playing the battlegrounds. Didn’t do enough arena to get good at PVP. I didn’t care for running instances, found the PVE boring (I played Rogue exclusively, so I guess that’s my fault). Loved playing defense in WSG (taking out the flag carrier), and ninja-ing towers in AV. Some of the questing was interesting. I had no interest in scheduled raids, which limited my progress. 25,000 honorable kills.

2. Final Fantasy XII (PS2): - helped me get over my FFXI withdrawal when I quit. Cool battle system, mark hunts were a great challenge at the lower levels, and I enjoyed hunting for weapons and gearing up / customizing my characters.

1. Final Fantasy XI (PC): - my first shot at an MMO, and it probably consumed about two years of my life. Still trying to decide if I regret it. I did have a lot of fun, met some cool people, ran a guild for a few months, and played the hell out of my Thief. Was Dynamis puller for my guild for a year, which was probably (hopefully?) the peak of my gaming “career”.

2

In no order:
FF X
Skies of Arcadia
Shadow Hearts Covenant
Tales of Vesperia
Tales of Symphonia
.hack (all one collective)
Rogue Galaxy
Disgaea
Xenosaga I
Suikoden III

3

Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter
Barkley: Shut Up And Jam:Gaiden
Growlanser 3
Shadow Hearts
The World Ends With You
Okage: Shadow King
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
My World, My Way
Skies of Arcadia Legends
Suikoden 5

4

FFX
.hack
MegaTen: Nocturne
KH
KH2
Lost Odyssey
The World Ends With You
Mass Effect
Fallout 3
Paper Mario

5

10. Final Fantasy XII
While I didn’t like this much at first, I grew to appreciate the openness of the world. As much as I hated Vaan and Penelo and wish they were written out of the story entirely, the rest of the cast was cool.

9. Tales of the Abyss
This probably won’t show up on anyone else’s list, but Abyss was probably my favorite Tales game. It starts off leading you to think it’ll be predictable as hell and… kinda does become a bit predictable, but it succeeded in throwing me a couple of curveballs. I really like the cast, Jade is such a delightful asshole, and even Luke grows throughout the game in a believable way.

8. Dragon Quest VIII
A solid RPG that suffers from dragging in some parts. The story, while as basic as most Dragon Quest games, was good enough to keep things going, and the cast was great. For the most part I loved the english localization, and for every annoying voice (King Trode) there were awesome ones (Yangus).

7. Xenosaga III
I looked forward to the Xenosaga games, but they ultimately didn’t deliver what I (or most people) expected them to. I still stuck with the series and enjoyed them all, yes even Episode II, but Episode III at least managed to end the series in a satisfying way while also having the best gameplay of the lot.

6. Kingdom Hearts II
I’ve sort of fallen out of Kingdom Hearts fandom, when it became apparent that the series would only be about anime prettyboys and less about Disney characters. But Kingdom Hearts II had some good moments once the game got going. I especially liked the Tron world and Timeless River.

5. Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door
One of the best Mario RPGs, and a damn good RPG all around, PMTTYD improved on the original Paper Mario and sent Mario on yet another predictable quest which had a couple of surprises at the end. Plus it had possibly the first time you could play as Bowser directly for brief periods, and those segments were always awesome.

4. Dragon Quest V DS
A game we originally missed out on in its SNES release, we finally got this title early this year, and it was well worth it. Probably having the best overall story of the entire DQ franchise, certainly the most beloved in Japan at least, DQV sends you on a journey through the hero’s entire life, from childhood to fatherhood. Plus it introduced the concept of catching monsters to fight other monsters years before Pokemon came out.

3. Persona 4
I never played a Persona game, nor any MegaTen game, before picking up P4 this fall. It turned out to be a really solid RPG title with an appealing style, and pretty catchy music. A bit more difficult than your average fare (unless you wuss out and select Easy mode) it got quite addicting once I got into the meat of things. Plus abusing the fusion systems to make custom Personas (Personae?) got pretty rewarding too. It has a rather slow start (like, Kingdom Hearts II slow start) but it gets good once it gets going. I sunk 90 hours into this, and I don’t regret it.

2. Mario & Luigi - Bowser’s Inside Story
This might seem odd to have so high up on the list, but I haven’t enjoyed an RPG like I have M&L-BIS in a long time. If my entry on PMTTYD was any indication I’m a fan of Bowser, so getting to play half this game as the big lug made it quite appealing. It’s short, especially compared to P4’s mammoth size, but that’s alright too, since there really isn’t any dull moment in this game, it keeps you going from start to finish, but there’s plenty of optional stuff too if you want to break from the story’s path and dick around. It’s fun, it’s pleasant, it’s funny, and it has a pretty fantastic Final Boss theme.

1. World of Warcraft (+all expansions)
I might get some flack for putting this at number one, but really, aside from still playing it myself and enjoying the new content with my guild, the game itself is really significant. It defined with an MMORPG should be, and you just have to look at all the clones out there that try to ape its style to see that. Yellow exclamation marks and question marks to facilitate the questing process are now as integral a part of a MMORPG system as jumping is to platformers. With Cataclysm set to launch next year and a enormous playerbase this is a behemoth of a game that’s probably not going anywhere until Blizzard says so.

6

In no particular order:

Persona 3 FES
Baldur’s Gate II
Neverwinter Nights
Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines
Mass Effect
The Witcher
Knights of the Old Republic
Fallout 3
Jade Empire
Barkley, Shut up and Jam: Gaiden

Just wanted to note: Wow. I played 9 of these on the PC. Why the fuck do I get consoles ever?

7

10. Final Fantasy X: (PS2) Pretty decent game. I didn’t particularly enjoy Yuna’s story too much, but the other storys about Jecht, Tidus, and Auron I really enjoyed. “To Zanarkand” is a very beautiful pieace and stood out to help set the mood of the game in the beginning.

9. inFAMOUS: (PS3) An all around fun game. Only slightly above-par story due to either completely evil or completely heroic character choices and endings. I really enjoyed the environment and powers.

8. Fallout 3: (360) I really enjoyed the versatility of the character development. One of the best, if not the best, sandbox environments I’ve seen. I didn’t like the art style or music at all, but the gameplay itself was very fun. The Karma system was really neat to tinker with on different characters - experimenting to see just what you could get away with when everyone loves you.

7. Grand Theft Auto IV: (360) A really great sandbox environment RPG without most of the dawbacks of Fallout 3 or inFamous. The police AIs could be pretty dull after a point - there are more than a couple spots on the maps that you could sit and the AIs wouldn’t know what to do. The story was very entertaining.

6. Final Fantasy IX: (PS1) Fun game, good story, great music.

5. Metal Gear Solid 4: (PS3) This was the first time I’d played an MGS game. I watched a friend of mine play through the first 3 in order to remember everything that had happened before he played it, so I knew what was going on. The camo, health, and psych systems were really well done. I really enjoyed exploring entire areas while attempting to not be detected. A really good story with twists and more than a few tasteful references to the previous games story, characters, and music.

4. Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga: (PS2) Super fun game. Playing as the Star Wars characters as legos was interesting. The cutscences were fun to watch as the characters didn’t speak. One of the few games I tried to complete 100% just for the fun of it.

3. Fable: The Lost Chapters (PC) Great music and overall feel to the game. The story was a little predictable, but the fact that it was still fun and exciting to speaks of how well the game was made. The little quirks of the game that made it unique, like the Heroic Titles (ie. Chicken Chaser) and ability to keep scars, were neat to experience and added a realistic element to an otherwise completely unrealistic game. The leveling system was well done.

2. Kingdom Hearts: (PS2) The music probably made this game for me. Almost every piece was beautiful and fit the game’s situations perfectly. I enjoyed the story and the mix of Square and Disney characters. I wish that there had been some more Square game references in it, but what they had was enough to satisfy my desire to see the two worlds together enough to keep me playing. The camera angles were a little strange at times, but nothing troublesome enough to prevent game play. I enojyed playing through the story, the classic tale of finding and saving a loved on was no less compelling for me in this environment as it has been in others.

1. Valkyria Chronicles: (PS3) Everything in this game appealed to me. The whole premise of it being a history book was very neat, the hand drawn comicbook style of art was wonderful, and the music was soothing. I really enjoy tactic-based games like this one. Customizing soldiers and vehicles, having mission objectives and unforseen tactical elements, and the way that certain soldiers would act when close to each other in battle really added an element of realism to the game and helped add to each character’s story. Each and every character had a story that you could see. The story is clearly an alternate-reality of World War 2 in Poland, so the war themes of racism and torture are touched on from the History book author’s point of view. Such a good game!

8

I thought for sure the Columbine RPG would be in your top 10.

9

What, are you kidding? I gave that game a pretty awful review…

10

In no particular order:

Tales of Destiny: Director’s Cut (PS2)
Soma Bringer
Tales of Symphonia
Skies of Arcadia Legends
Diablo II
The World Ends With You
Final Fantasy X
World of Warcraft
Persona 3/4
Kingdom Hearts

11

yes

12

ghadfjghlsdfjklgndfklsngjkldfshgjksdflhgjdfklghdflsgjk

13

aimfeajaemluiarefamfsj? emafefameqkqqfmzxfgasgvkmajvcafkajwelj! :chupon:

14

In no particular order

World of Warcraft needs to be mentioned because of how it revolutionized MMOs and PC gaming. It is without a doubt an amazing piece of work.

GTA IV and expansions - the breadth of the city, the quality of the voice acting and the writing. The story and characters are unlike anything else in video games.

Half Life 2 and expansions - top notch storytelling, gameplay, beautiful graphics, release fucking episode 3 already. I am also biased because I like games that make science look cool.

The world ends with you - best DS games, hands down. Amazing RPG, one of the most original stories I’ve ever seen in a game.

Portal - Incredible gameplay design concept combined with top notch voice acting / writing and progression. Has the best video game song of the decade with Still Alive.

Forza 3 - best racing game I have ever played. Not a lot of people play those here, but Forza 3 is amazing.

Halo and sequels - some people bitch at halo for being generic - that’s because everyone tried to emulate them, like WoW. By the time we got to Halo 3, Bungie had the formula down. Awesome co-op fun. Something needs to be said about a game being so well made and approachable that my gf plays it more than me.

Mass Effect - This would tie with Borderlands as an FPS / RPG hybrid had Borderlands just had a better story. Mass Effect wins because of the VA, writing and story. I can’t get enough of the scene where you have a conversation with Sovereign. He wins the point as the best villain only because of this scene http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvrIFIjTGt0 . Spoiler Alert! Something that’s interesting that’s probably unique to me is that I have an amazing sound system. His voice vibrates in my living room through my subwoofer. Its very cool.

Final Fantasy X - Best of the series

Ninja Gaiden II Xbox 360 - Best action game I have ever played. It has its flaws, but there are so many things it does right. The B-movie-ness to the female characters and the way you fly into the sunset while hooked onto a scythe stabbed into a helicopter to when you land on a flying aircraft carrier using nothing more than a katana, it was just too awesome. It was meant to be stupidly over the top. I loved the precision of the controls and the combat and the lack of QTEs.

Honorable mentions:

Prototype, Uncharted 2, Mirror’s Edge, Dead Space Extraction, Madworld, Super Mario Galaxy, Little Big Planet, Tales of Vesperia, Shadow Complex, Castle Crashers, Borderlands

We should do a meta list to see how many games recur. I’m seeing a pattern with WoW, FFX, Mass Effect, TWEWY.

15

I’m pretty sure none of you want me to hear me rant about how WoW is destroying both console/PC and tabletop roleplaying games again. :expressionless:

16

QFT!!!

17

This is rather touch… may not seek out ten, but here goes.

Dragon Age: Origns
I know, it just came out, but this is by far one of the best games I played. The Characters are believable, and I like they are pretty much your morality system. The morale choices are tough, indeed, especially when you learn all of the background.

[b]Persona 3[b]
This game was just fun. It kept you hooked with the sim sections, and the story was interesting. And more kudos to the characters, from your NPCs to the social links.

World Ends with you
This game really made the DS shine for me. The story kept me hooked, and while the world was small in theory, the details behind it made it seem like a much larger world.

Fallout 3
Ok, Ok. I know the story on this was lacking, but it was still a fun game, and even if it ran on the Oblivion Engine, it was still Fallout to me. Got to love a game that destroyed DC, after all :slight_smile:

The Witcher
Not too much to say about this one, but another game with grey morality. Yeah, voice-acting kinda ruined it, but still a good ride, and loved the little twist at the ending.

World of Warcraft
I play it, yes. And, enjoy it. The last patch FINALLY got something good with the lore, and while it still is an equipment grind, its still fun raiding with your friends… of course, I may be bias because I actually LIKE the people I play with, which makes or break a MMO in my opinion.

The Secret of Monkey Island Remake.
I know, its a complete remake of a classic game, and Guybrush’s hair was off, but damn, its fricking MONKEY ISLAND! You can’t argue with Monkey Island!

Persona 4
I haven’t finished this one, thanks to a boss and other interests, but it has all the hallmarks of P3, with better graphics. Need to get back into this.

Devil Survivor
Another Shin Megami game, turn-based for the DS. Again, I haven’t finished it… yet, but this game is just a lot of fun. Will get back to it, and hope the good times roll

Mass Effect
A good game. Interesting story, and a great world. I was dissappointed the planets were cut and paste, but the aliens and the lore was enough for a MMO.

Here is my humble opinion, with the later ones shortened due to a lack of ideas to type.

18

What, no love for Shadow of the Colossus? I am disappointed :frowning:

19

10: Dragon Quest 8: This game showed that the only thing the Dragon Quest games needed to really catch on in America was good graphics. The game was beautiful and it worked really well to keep the charm that has made the dragon quest games so popular in Japan. Gameplay was typical Dragon Quest gameplay, but I like Dragon Quest gameplay so it worked well for me.

9: The World Ends with You: This game made really bold decisions that could have ended up very poorly, but they made sure to make the game good enough so that even people who didn’t like the style would like it. Great gameplay and story and I have to give Square credit for trying to create something so different.

8: Wild Arms 3: This was the game were WA gameplay started to shift from the norm and I think the series is better for it. I also loved the graphics and the music is some of the best in a series filled with great music.

7: Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn: The game had its weaknesses (mainly graphics), but it made up for them with interesting maps and a great plot, especially during part 3. Fire Emblem gameplay is almost always a good thing and skills added an extra element to it.

6: Mario and Luigi SSS: The first and best of the Mario and Luigi games. Bowser’s inside story was close, but it didn’t have the sense of exploration that this game had. Fun gameplay and a great sense of humor make this game just too much fun.

5: Persona 3: When you think about it, this game was actually the perfect way for Atlus to really put SMT games and the persona series as a whole on the map. Get peoples attention by having the characters shoot themselves in the head to attack, and draw them in by making it a really good game. This was my first experience with either a SMT or Persona game and now I’m extremely interested in the series. Combines great gameplay with an interesting story and one of the most epic final boss fights ever.

  1. Breath of Fire 5: To be honest, when I first played this game I hated it and stopped at about the second dungeon or so. However, over the summer I had some free time so I started a new game and now it’s one of my favorites. Once you get all three characters the game becomes a blast to play and the pacing was outstanding. There wasn’t much too the plot, but what was there was interesting and the game used the facial expressions of characters really well to ge the point across.

  2. Mother 3: One of the best if not the best plot in an rpg. Just filled with memorable and powerful moments especially at the beginning and end. Awesome music really helps too. Graphics were charming and fit pretty well with the game. The gameplay wasn’t that exciting, but it worked with the game.

  3. Persona 4: Took everything Persona 3 did well and made it even better. Gameplay was awesome, music was awesome, plot was interesting and character interaction and voice acting are the best I’ve seen in rpgs. Also, some of the best boss designs in any game.

  4. Shadow Hearts Covenant: An rpg that truly did everything well. Graphics, music, story, gameplay and pacing were all above average to great and it even had some neat extra stuff thrown in like item art. It truly is a game with almost no weaknesses. Could it be better? Sure, SH3 had better graphics and gameplay, and SH1 had a slightly better story. However, SH3 also had less character development than Shania had clothes and SH1 had hideous graphics and unexciting gameplay. Just a great game overall and I recommend it to anyone.

20

That’s not really an RPG, though.