The Great In Depth RPG Poll or Geeks of the World, Unite!!

In My Humble Opinion
21

IMO, the second Fallout is better but Torment beats them both. True, the plot is more console-ish, but that results in a better story. Emergent narrative is cool and all, but it can’t replace actual narrative yet.

On the console front, it seems that virtually everything has already been praised and panned, so I’ll just throw out my opinions.

I don’t think FFVIII has been yet praised. I’ll take a stand for it then; I liked the story, character designs, and so forth. The battle system was not great but good enough, and I found that clever refining got me around the always-drawing problem.

FFIX was very worth it to me. It didn’t really have any exceptional features, just above-average and solid (gameplay, battles, graphics, story, minigames, etc), but they all came together wonderfully.

And before it starts sounding like I’m all new-school and should just be ignored with the rest of the young 'uns, my favorite FF is still FFVI. Yes, it was shorter than V, but it was concentrated goodness. And the battles didn’t have load time and endless panning, the main thing I disliked about the switch to 3D. I picked up Skies of Arcadia for the Dreamcast recently, and I’m surprised at how much needless panning there still is - I’d hoped the “cover up load time with camera work” stuff would go away with the original Playstation.

So the FF games, in order of my preference, come out to be 6, 9, 8, 4, 5, 7, 1, 2. I haven’t played enough of 3 (japanese) to rank it. And everything above 1 is still far above average overall, just low relative to the other FFs.

Favorite game no one’s heard of? Kartia. It’s more of a FF Tactics-ish strategy RPG, but it’s a good one. Simple, fresh, fun, nice plot. The battle system is basically about four different layers of rock-paper-scissors all played out at once, with equipment, type, height, and so forth all mattering, but it ends up remaining simpler than either Tactics game.

FF Tactics gets the award for “longest” from me, by the way. Although I get the feeling that Tactics Ogre was probably longer, I didn’t get a chance to finish it.

And it just wouldn’t be right to end a console RPG-praising post without mentioning the brilliance of Chrono Trigger. Of course, this would be my favorite overall.

22

Oh, forgot to mention.

Most difficult and most frustrating goes to 7th Saga, hands down. Related anecdote: One of my very determined friends kept trying to get Lejes, the demon, and Valsu, the priest, together as then all of the spells in the game would be at his disposal. They have the most inherent dislike for each other of any coupling of characters. His progress would be one of the first things I’d ask about every time I saw him for almost two weeks, and he’d always be a level or two higher but no closer to uniting them.

I think he finally gave up on it but managed it the next time he tried several months later.

23

Ah, I see someone has not been instructed in the great mystical art of pinning down a key with a weight. See, if you hold the X button continuously in a fight, each character will continue to repeat the last action you set until they can’t anymore, at which point the game buzzes at you to let you know. So you find a pansy enemy that can’t kill you (plenty of those around, it’s almost like fighting Nus from Chrono Trigger), have everyone draw, then pin down the button. You put down your book or return from the kitchen when you hear the buzz. Then you refine the pansy spells into something better and repeat. You can also refine really common items into tons of spells and refine them (it helps if you let Chocobo World sit and play itself a lot in the background).

I filled my characters from mostly dry to full of every worthwhile spell with only a couple of hours of actual sitting-at-the-computer gameplay, during which I also did other things. You only have to do it once, because casting spells is almost always a waste of time (with the exception of Demi, which is fabulously useful for weakening things to Card or Devour.)

Your character preferences are interesting; I liked Seifer, too, but I found Laguna incredibly annoying, and I rather liked Rinoa (she reminded of an ex of whom I have fond memories). Quistis has got to take home the “Most Annoying Character” award for FFVIII–mocking, conflicted, guilt-tripping to the extent of abandoning a mission to apologize to Rinoa…she needed to be in therapy, not out trying to save the world.

I enjoyed the game; my only really major gripe with it is that the threat just didn’t make sense, which hosed up the whole story for me. Just what was Ultimecia’s motivation, anyway?

Ash, Seventh Saga just isn’t worth it. I finally did get all the runes, but I was so burned out on the game by that point that I just quit–it’s the only game I have ever done that on. I’ve thought about picking it up again (I still have the cart, and my niece says that the battery is still live–she played my game for a bit this year before declaring that it sucked.), but I probably never will.

24

Planescape: Torment was a thing of beauty, although the constant map-loading got pretty old fast. I’d like to see a sequel done; Nameless (Name Regained?) starting high-level, in Hell.

I didn’t find the Draw system in FF8 to be any more annoying than other kinds of experience-farming. I didn’t mind Rinoa and Squall too much; Seifer should have had more screentime, but all in all the cast of characters as a whole was weaker than FF7’s, in the sense that all of their problems were much more personal and scaled-back than earth-shaking life-changing events. Squall was just a lonely kid who sunk into emotional armor and turned into a sort of jerk because of it. Quistis was just…a bossy neurotic little screw-up. (Yeah, I was swearing at the screen when she was going out of her way to fubar the entire mission to apologize for hurting someone’s feelings. This is why they didn’t want girls at the Citadel, you know. That and cooties. [sub]ducks and hides behind furniture[/sub])

I haven’t played FF9 yet, waiting for a PC port, unless I stumble across a cheap used psx copy sometime–my days of paying full price for playstation games are long past.

Unmentioned thus far: Xenogears. I loved the plot in that game, a crazy mishmash of kabbalah, vaguely gnostic themes, mecha, kung-fu, dark secrets in the characters that put Cloud Strife’s minor problems to shame, and a few plot twists and concepts that had me marvelling, all thrown into a blender and pureed. Tasty.

I also propose a new category: best endgame bits. Fallout 1 edges out number 2, because I have extremely fond memories of slaughtering the supermutant base in an absolutely grim rage–they’d killed Dogmeat on the perimeter, and that made it personal. Fallout 2 just had an electrified-floor locking-door puzzle that pissed me off beyond rational thought, and cast a pall over the rest of the events.

Cloud finally taking out Sephiroth in FF7 was glorious. I pumped my fast at the screen. Limit BREAK, baby! Die, die, DIE! Ahem.

Planescape: Torment again–you didn’t even have to engage in combat with the archfoe woozle if you set things up properly–literally talking the endgame to a close, and in a very moving way.

25

Ahem. Post 2.

That game pretty much destroyed two or three weeks of my life. Great stuff. The two jumping puzzles really pissed me off though and nearly made me quit.

26

Posted by furryman A.K.A. “Video game Idiot”

Longest game: Final Fantasy III (SNES) 70 hours! The strange thing is when I played it as part of the Final Fantasy Anthology it only took me 40 hours.
Best CGI’s: Final Fantasy Anthology
Best in game graphics: Tie between Final Fantasy 8 and Legend of Legia
Best ending: Final Fantasy 9
Best characters: Final Fantasy 7
Most original RPG: The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time

27

Yah, I’ll admit it. But here’s some obscure ones:

XenoGears, great trauma and overall great plot. Multiple levels. Its worth a second playing to see the stuff you missed the first time. My biggest problem was Disk 2 and the fact that the two leads spent way too much time apologizing to each other.

Final Fantasy 8. I never got the Archvillianess’ motivation either, but this was more enjoyable than most of the series recent entries. ITs the only FF that doesn’t have ultra-ultra-goofy looking characters. FF9 never engaed me in the least. FF7 at least had some great games and a good soundtrack.

Rings Of Power: Probably one of the least known RPG’s around. Control was a tad goofy, but it was rich tapestry of a world they made.

That AD&D game made for the TG-16: It was good, but once you got the bows for the fighters it might was well have been over. Unlimited ammo kinda imbalanced the game.

There’s plenty of bad ones, so I won’t go there.

28

Mind gamer, Final Fantasy VIII hasn’t been praised yet? I picked it as my fav. in the first post.

Drastic, did you know you can play FFIX on the PC using the playstation discs? All you have to do is get a free PSX thing for your computer and go and buy the game in the store. FFIX is renowned for working wonderfuly on the PC.

By the way, Squaresoft decided not to release FFIX on the PC. Their reason? Too busy making the movie, FFX, and FFXI. So the only way you can play it is with those PSX discs.

29

Anyone else that was totally in love with the Phantasy Star series for the SEGA?

30

Hmmm. A brief google search didn’t turn up any freeware PSX emulators; I’m aware of Bleem! and may pick it up one of these days. (Did turn up a site that allegedly had it for free, but, er, it’s not supposed to be there.)

31

Guess I have to say BGI &II. Actually, I haven’t really tried any other computer games.

32

Final Fantasy VII was quite enjoyable, in a way that VIII and IX never quite managed to capture. They’ve been tweaking the mana system since the first game, and I still think they got it just right here. The materia system was the best, most interesting to tinker with and most thrilling to advance. I mean, VIII and IX are conceptually interesting, but not a lot of fun to mess with. Plus, the chocobo breeding and the chocobo racetrack were fantastic. What we get instead is collectable card games.

One of the things I didn’t like about Final Fantasy VII that was a lot worse in FFVIII was this paperback psychology bullshit. Flashbacks to recovered memories, identity crises, abandonment issues, blah blah.

Xenogears had a splendid epic plot, but ultimately I gave it up because the random encounters became extremely tedious.

Badtz Maru wrote:

I’m not sure what you mean by `consoley’ here. The interface was the smoothest, most polished of all the Infinity Engine games. The plot leads always to the same place in the end, but to the extent that this is a problem, every RPG has this problem. The way they make it possible for any kind of character you create to be able to finish the game is that inevitably, whatever you decide, the plot advances anyway. So the difference between the good path and the evil path is your own focus on your character. You still have a great many options with reguard to what kind of person your character is, the sequence of events, and what the outcome means to you.

Interplay now sells Fallout and Fallout 2 bundled with the manuals in .pdf form on the disks for $10.

33

…

The Materia system was the worst system, save Junction/Draw (which edges Materia out simply for by being so much more tedious to build.)

‘Gee, I get better at this without ever doing it… And I forget how to do it as soon as I put away this little peice of rock!’ The Magicite system and V’s Job system suffer from the first bit, but at least have the logic of allowing the characters to actually LEARN the skills they gain.

And let’s not forget the ‘birthing’ of materias.

34

I thought this would be about real RPGs as well, but I guess that’s a topic for another thread. I haven’t played too many of the latest and greatest CRPGs, at least none since they stopped making ones that ran on my Commdore. With the exception of FFVIII. I found it enjoyable for what it was, though some of the soap opera scenes that’d take 20 minutes to complete drove me batty. Rhinoa was annoying enough without having to watch her be neurotic in a spaceship for what seemed to be an eternity. Quistis had her issues as well, but she was much hotter than Rhinoa so at least she had that going for her. Selphie just made me want to hang laundry from her hair.

The rest of the FF series never saw my fingertips on the controllers, but I watched an ex playing them before and was less than impressed. As near as I could tell, the games consisted of running up to random people, watching inane comments appear above their heads and every once in a while you’d get into combat which involved everyone jumping out one at a time to swing their sword or cast their cheesy spell before jumping back into line. Ok, that’s a lot like FFVIII – but at least the graphics were better in VIII.

Anyway! I played most of the TSR CRPGs that came out prior to say… 1991 or so and my favorite was Curse of the Azure Bonds. It was a bit less linear than most of the others in that although you still had to kill off the five big bad guys, you at least could choose what order to do it in. Granted, there was a best way to do it, but you weren’t locked into it. That and the fact that you could hit those little side dungeons outside of each town made it feel like a new game each time you played it, provided you didn’t play it too often :smiley:

35

Best RPG is Planescape Torment, no game I played had ever had this RPG Flair (nearly as talking on a real game table)

Fallout I + II were great to, worthy sucsessors to Wastelands (does anyone remember that?)

@ Evnglion

:: pats him on the head :: You can just admit that you dont understand the juntioning system and the GFs :wink: =Þ

36

I think the computer game that comes closest to a true RPG is ironically one that would normally be called an adventure game: Blade Runner by Westwood Studios. You don’t have stats, but all your actions and inactions throughout the game affect the ending. My friend and I played it about 4 times between us, and reached a different ending each time. One time, the last several scenes were in a completely new area. According to one of the strategy guides I downloaded, it has at least 20 different endings. It also captures the atmosphere of the movie very well, and even has some of the same actors.

Other CRPGs I liked:
Fallout 1 and 2, for the same reasons as the rest, plus the post nuclear war thing is way cool. Fallout 1 is a little better, except 2 has better martial arts.

Might and Magic VII, 'cause it’s huge and the story branches depending on if you become good or evil. Not as many choices as in Fallout, but still a lot of fun.

Wizardry 7(?): Crusaders of the Dark Savant. Kind of your standard old school dungeon crawl, except it was largely outdoors. It had the most advanced engine for 1992, and it had a tiny install size. One of the cool things was that you could improve skills just by using them, something I’ve rarely seen in any RPG.

As for real pen and paper RPGs:
I used to play AD&D 2nd Ed, but then I discovered the White Wolf games. The rules are much less complicated, but still allow for a broader range of skills and other abilities. I haven’t played 3rd Ed yet, but they finally got rid of the bass ackwards THAC0 combat system so I might give it a try one of these days. My favorite of the White Wolf bunch is Mage. I love the freeform magick system. I also play Werewolf and Changeling sometimes.

In my experience, D&D players have a greater tendency to want to kill monsters and loot them, rather than try to create an interesting story. Rules lawyers seem to be more common also, since there are more rules to nitpick about. On the other hand, one of the best games I was ever in was a D&D game at a convention.

I also have the rulebooks for Fading Suns (kind of a bastard child of Dune and Star Wars, written by some of the White Wolf people who went off on their own), Toon, and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying, but I haven’t convinced enough people to try them out yet. They all look pretty cool though.

37

Best Plot Final Fantasy VI (FF3 USA)

Best Gameplay Undecided

Most Difficult Final Fantasy I. Given it was limited and all, this game definitely took time and effort to gain EXP/LVL/GP.

Easiest Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. I know most people would say this doesn’t count as a RPG.

Best Characters Final Fantasy VI.

Longest Final Fantasy I.

Shortest Final Fantasy Mystic Quest.

Best Overall Game Final Fantasy IV. It’s been my favorite ever since I got my hands on the Super Famicom version way back when. I was ticked off that the cool Dark Blade ability wasn’t kept in the US translation, other than in the Dark Knight vs. Paladin battle.

38

DON’T spend money on Bleem! It’s amazingly buggy, never gets updated (two years and counting), has horrible compatibility and a terribly annoying user interface. If you have to buy an emulator, get Connectix’s VGS. I’ve been using it for over a year and have no complaints. Very compatible, fast, stable. Recommended–best PSX emulator currently, hands down.

If you want a freeware emulator, ePSXe is currently the best, IMO. Still nowhere near VGS, but better than Bleem. It also gets updated frequently, so there’s hope it will eventually be the emulator to use.

39

Final Fantasy VIII gets my vote for the best CRPG ever. I loved everything about it–the characters, the Guardians, even the draw system, which I liked better than having to worry about magic points. I thought Irvine was the coolest character. I really enjoyed that game.

I’ve played all the FF games that have been released in the States, back to FFI on the original Nintendo. It’s my favorite series.

I liked all the Phantasy Star games, even number one on the original Sega Master System. But I can’t justify buying a Dreamcast just to play PS online.

I also liked Lunar Blue, all the Link games, Xenogears, Parasite Eve (which probably isn’t really an RPG), Chrono Trigger and CronoCross, The Secret of Mana, the list goes on and on.

It becomes apparent as I write this that I have more time and money than sense. Oh well.