I’m looking for a good single player RPG. I like the ones where you have a part of characters that you create. Genre doesn’t really matter.
Any suggestion would be greatly appreciated.
Hmm. For making your own party, Final Fantasy Tactics for the PlayStation offers a ton of customization. Hire party members, mess around with their jobs, and even using the abilities from one job as another, ie a White Mage can use a Thief’s ability to steal things.
There’s also Dragon Warrior 7 for the Playstation. The characters are fixed, but there’s a ton of paths and abilities to take there as well.
For the PS2, Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne is wonderful if you can find a copy. You capture a huge variety of demons to fight with you and you also customize your own stats and abilities as you level.
The Suikoden series for PlayStation 1 and 2 don’t let you customize the characters much, but there are 108 people to recruit in each game, most of whom can fight with you.
Nintendo has the Pokemons, you capture/trade for whatever party members you want, with 400+ possible choices.
Finally, its a bit of a stretch, but Romance of the Three Kingdoms 7, 8, and 10 offer quite a bit of an RP element, but at their core they’re strategy games. I’d only recommend those if you’re a fan of both genres.
Is that the kind of thing you were looking for?
(Now of course you could go the route of tabletop RPGs, which are about as customizable as they come. Of course those are kinda a different ballgame… 
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Fallout 2, Fallout 3, Mass Effect, Oblivion, Morrowind, Knights of the Old Republic, Knights of the Old Republic II (if you’re desperate for games), Baldur’s Gate I, Baldur’s Gate II.
Probably a few I’m forgetting.
Ogre Battle was just released on the Wii Virtual Console. It’s more of a strategy RPG than party based. But the characters (well over 20 story characters and even more generic playable characters) level and change classes.
I hear the upcoming Dragon Age is supposed to be the spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate.
Icewind Dale, Icewind Dale 2, Tomb of Elemental Evil are all very good D&D hack 'n slash. Not much roleplaying though.
Also, Jade Empire, and Neverwinter Nights 2 (esp. the epic expansion, Mask of the Betrayer)
To be honest, I was supremely unimpressed with Jade Empire. It’s highly linear, the combat is annoyingly done real-time, and the storyline is meh… and predictable.
Are you playing on the PC or a console?
Recent games I’ve played and and liked on my PC are:
Mass Effect - A sci-fi RPG similar to the Star Wars RPGs Knights of the Old Republic. You have a main char and can pick 2 NPC’s to join you from a pool of 8 or so. Pros: Nice graphics, interesting storyline, good (not great) customization. Cons: The side stuff, which you have to do pretty much most of to level up, can get slightly repetitive. Not that big of a deal. Great game. Also available on XBOX 360
The Witcher - Medieval fantasy RPG intended for more mature audiences (there’s a lot of sexual references and some strong language). You control a single character. Character customization is slim, you’ll eventually learn all or almost all the skills and combat styles, and there’s only a handful of weapon/armor upgrades. But the Witcher has one of the best storylines I’ve seen recently. Everything is shades of grey, choices you make are often morally ambiguous (there’s no clear “good” and “bad” options. It’s kind of dark in terms of story - you play a vampire-like character who’s sort of a badass, but not exactly beloved by the townspeople (Witchers are feared and sometimes hated). The dialogue and storyline is worthy of a graphic novel (which I think is what it’s based on). Very open ended. Weather effects are among the coolest I’ve seen in this type of game, when it rains, the townspeople scurry to the eaves of buildings and gossip. Pros: storyline, dialogue, realistic environments. Cons: Little character customization, few weapons and armor upgrades. PC only
Drakensang - This just came out, and I’m playing through it now. Sort of similar to the Witcher, but with much more customization options and not as dark and morally ambiguous. You control a party of up to 4, 1 main character and up to 3 NPCs you pick up along the way. I’m liking this game a lot, and the more I play it the better it gets. Combats are tough, but that’s a good thing as I’ve played a lot of games that were too easy. Pros: Good character customization, nice graphics, interesting storyline, challenging combat makes you really think and experiment with different strategies and skills. Cons: you don’t get access to most of the NPC’s until later on, I’d like to see more party member choices up front. Some aspects of the game are a little confusing - particularily how the skills work or how dice rolls are calculated. The game is a bit linear - there’s no “evil” path, but I’m having so much fun with it that I don’t care. Great game. PC only
Overlord - control a Dark Lord and subjugate the civvies with your army of minions. You don’t do much direct combat, 95% of the game revolves around collecting and controlling different types of little imps to do your bidding. They fight for you, push levers or move stuff to solve puzzles, etc. The “Dark Lord” stuff is very tongue in cheek, there’s a lot of humor and silliness throughout. Pros: How can you not like playing a Dark Lord? Puzzles are pretty interesting, figuring out how to use which minions to solve a particular task is fun (but can be slightly frustrating at times). You get a Dark Lord Tower which can be decorated with various items. Cons: Minions can be hard to control, which gets a little frustrating at times. The game does get slightly repetitive. The Dark Lord Tower doesn’t have any real purpose, the decorations are mostly cosmetic and you’re not going to be spending a lot of time sitting there staring at them anyway. Also available on XBOX 360
Fallout 3 - The (sort of) sequel to everyone’s favorite post-apocalyptic wasteland game! I say sort of because it was made by a different company than the previous games. It does remain very true to the originals in a lot of ways though. Extremely non-linear, do what you want, when you want. Side with the slavers, side with the slaves, or stay out of it entirely. Be a goody two shoes or the scourge of the wasteland, it’s up to you. Pros: Great customization, extremely non-linear (do the quests in pretty much any order you feel like). Great graphics. Downloadable content, mods, and a SDK to make up your own stuff. Think you need more ammo? Download a mod! There’s a lot out already, mostly tinkering with items or various game mechanics, but some will come that offer new content. Cons: Everything in the wasteland is the same shades of drab grey and brown. Come on, it’s been over 200 years! Why isn’t anyone working on colors any more? I actually thought I’d switched to monochrome mode several times. The game is very “sandbox”, and the non-linearity means you can miss entire swaths of the wasteland. Of course you can always replay it and look for stuff you missed. The “evil” ending sucks. Actually there really isn’t one, the end of the game pretty much forces you to save humanity even if you’ve a known habit of depopulating entire towns. Also available on XBOX 360
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Chrono Cross for the PSOne
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Planescape: Torment for the PC
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Persona 3 for PS2
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Tales of Symphonia for Gamecube
That’s my main recomendations for various systems.
Just wanted to add that The Witcher is coming out for the Xbox 360. I think it will contain the extra content included in the PC “enhanced edition”.
Sacred Gold isn’t bad if you don’t mind a lot of repetitive hack n’ slash stuff. It’s sort of like a cross between Baldur’s Gate and Diablo.
Thank you for putting in the time and effort to give so detailed an answer. I apreciate it. You’ve sold me on Witcher
Finn Again Thank you for suggesting KOTOR. I’m so out of touch with games today I’d never even heard of it. It sounds cool.
I’m gooing to bookmark this for future reference because there are too many suggestions to remember lol. Thanks all:)
If you enjoyed Final Fantasy Tactics- you could also look into Disgaea 1 and 2 for the PS2 (There may be a 3rd one out for the PS3 I hear…)
Also, if you just happen to like the tactical aspect of the games but not so much the storylines of these sorts of games (basically the opposite of what your OP is about :D), you might want to look into the FireEmblem Series- I just played through the Radiant Dawn one and it was quick and simple, but def. fun to just simply PLAY even if I didn’t really have much of a major role in developing the characters.
It’s more of “can you beat this level?”
“How about this one?”
“This one?”
“Damn. You got me again. Fine. Here’s a REALLY tough one for you, you bastard. Who’s laughing now? That’s right… go restart the level again, you whiny bitch.”
And then Repeat the cycle.
That’s why the Fire Emblem games make me cry. We have a love hate relationship. 
I second the Disgaea suggestion. One of my great regrets in gaming is that I sold my copy to buy a DS. I then learned that my parents were planning on getting me one for X-Mas. :smack:
Apolcolypso, you just sold me on The Witcher too. I am so bookmarking this thread.
I just bought a gaming computer about a month ago and would definitely recommend Oblivion. The level of customization you have and control over what your character does is immense, and the universe is mind-bendingly vast. I’ve played about twenty hours of the game just doing sidequests and basically screwing around, and I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface. The graphics are already amazing, but you can mod them up into spectacular. I’m not crazy about the fighting engine, though, and you can google ‘‘Oblivion leveling system’’ if you want an earful about that.
Another one I’m having fun with is Fable: The Lost Chapters which is also highly customizable and contains a repercussion for every bad or good action… affects your character’s appearance, how others treat you, and allows you to interact with NPCs in a very Simsish way… you can even buy a house, have sex and get married (and abuse your spouse if you feel so inclined.) You can change your hair style, add tattoos that affect your personality attributes, and there seem to be a lot of variation in weapons and armor. Surprisingly even with all of that interpersonal detail, the game is very melee-heavy and there are parts of it that I might even refer to as hack-n-slash. There are a ton of optional quests. IMHO the fighting engine is vastly superior to that of Oblivion. I actually hit what I’m trying to hit most of the time. I’m going to come right out and say that so far I like it better. I love killing things in this game. I love the shiny glint of my axe blade and hurling giant fireballs immensely long distances. I love watching my character visibly become stronger, and seeing the subtle changes in how people regard him.
For Playstation 2, you can’t go wrong with Champions of Norrath and its very excellent sequel, Champions: Return to Arms (better than the Baldur’s Gate games everyone raves about, though those aren’t half bad either.) My college room-mates affectionately refered to it as ‘‘Champions of Olives’’ because it’s the first game I ever got truly addicted to. I played it for hours a day, my record being 18 straight hours. You aren’t going to get the complexity of Oblivion or Fable, but it’s really excellent for what it is, and some of the weapons you can get are awesome. IMO it has just the right mix of ‘‘holy crap I’m getting my ass kicked’’ and ‘‘yay I’m a badass!’’ There are IIRC seven character types to choose from and then in the sequel you can import an old character and start the game on Hard, or you can create a new one with 3 more character options. It’s also a game for one to four players and the replay value is extremely high as it’s a lot of fun to discover each character. I’ve easily put in 500 hours on that game.
Also for PS2 is Final Fantasy XIII which I luuurve. Plenty of sidequests to keep you busy and they did away with that annoying random encounter bullshit and created a seamless gambit system. Some diehard FF players I know hated the gambit system, but I loved it and so did my husband. I’ve played 120 hours and I still haven’t completed all the sidequests and hunts, so you will get excellent value for your $50.
Another one that’s worthwhile on PS2 is, believe it or not, Lord of the Rings: The Third Age. Yeah, I know what they say about video games based on movies, but it’s actually a pretty good RPG. It’s for one or two players and my husband and I have played through it twice together. Time to complete IIRC is 80 hours.
Also, God of War. Not a typical fantasy RPG but it is pretty customizable in terms of abilities and weapons. The fighting engine is spectacular, and the story, graphics, all solid, I definitely consider it superior.
I of course meant Final Fantasy XII. Either that or I’m psychic. :smack:
Awesome, it’s a great game and I had a lot of fun with it. One other thing, there is an “enhanced edition” available. This is the original game with some of the voices redone, some of the dialogue restored from the original (Polish) version that was cut for the English release, some combat tweaks, and a few other things. The content in the enhanced version is available as a free download to users of the standard version. So get whatever version is cheaper, then go to their web site and download the extra content (and patch it if you’re not on the latest version).
Use lots and lots of different saves, and go back and try some of the quests different ways. I think nearly every quest can be resolved at least 2 different ways. Have fun!
Also, If you do get KOTOR and like it, Mass Effect is basically a sequel in all but name. It doesn’t have a Star Wars license, but the party system is the same, the dialogue system is very similar, it plays very similar, and many people consider it an unofficial sequel to KOTOR/KOTOR II.