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Best RPG ever?

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For consoles, my favorites are FF6/3, Earthbound, Secret of Mana, Secret of Evermore, Shining Force II (on the genesis).

PC, it's Baldur's Gate II. End of story. FF7 is a distant 2nd.
 
Really, I have to say that console and pc rpg's can never possibly hold a candle to a table top game with a good dm/gm. I never got past ADD before leaving total dorkhood, though. Beyond table top is live action. An old roommate of mine played Vampire live action, and all the stuff that went into it really makes me think that it is the best possible rpg out there, cause you are the character, you can hold positions of power (prince, harpie, etc.) and you can manipulate other characters who you see and role play with. If I had been a sufficient dorko I would have gone with my roommate to game, but i had better things to do with my friday nights...

p.s. for the console my favorite is Xenosaga cause the story is fantastic.
 
Everquest 🙂

Oh, and Ultima Online, Baldur's Gate 2, Icewind Dale 1, FFVII, Loom, Might and Magic VI

hmm what else...

You guys are making me want to start begging my wife (again) to let me buy a console. So many awesome RPGs to play. Are the others really as good as FFVII?
 
So many to choose from. Personally, I've played every Final Fantasy since 1, and it seems to me they've gotten repetetive: "Hero is lame unknown average joe from little town looted by representatives of enemy X. Falls in love with ditzy large-breasted character through some random event, who has humongous unknown power Y, and always has to be captured by enemy X. Epic final battle between enemy X and Hero usually consists of the last hour of the game, as enemy X has about 5 different lives/phases/whatever, and takes obscene amounts of damage to defeat."
Trace from that stencil, change character names, slight game engine tweaks, reprint, and you have basically every FF game. I stopped playing after 8 because of that. 🙂

I liked the Ultima series, Secret of Mana is good, but for the consoles, I'd say for overall simplicity and newness, I would have to go with Zelda.

On the PC, I would say NWN.

Tabletop, I'd say AD&D (Not 2nd or 3rd edition, but AD&D, which was when Gygax still had a hand in it). It was a good system that had less emphasis on rules, and more on having fun. 3rd ed seems to be a lot more like Rolemaster (AKA ROLLmaster) in its rules lawyering and complexity.
 
Originally posted by: BigPoppa
Chrono Trigger - Game is just beautiful. Combat system is unique, the music is perfect.

Secret of Mana - One of my first RPGs. I put sooooo many hours into this game. Also fun to have a friend grab a controller and get in on the action with you.

Final Fantasy 3(6) - You cared about every character in the game, even though there were a metric f*ckton of em. The Opera Scene? Nuff said.

Xenogears - Prolly my true favorite. Elegantly dealed with theology, human nature, philosophy. The combat system is the best yet, imo. The story was perfectly pieced together. Plenty of side quests to do. The boss battle was creative in the way you could weaken him. The cast of characters really awed me. Who didn't want to be Grahf or Id when they played?

Damn man, you pretty much summed up my thoughts. 🙂 FF2/4 was great too. FF7 was good, although it was the beginning of the downward spiral into crap that the FF series took IMO. You didn't care about the characters like you did in the SNES games, but you still did somewhat. In FF8 and beyond, I actually DISliked the characters. They were all annoying whiners.

I like some weird games too, not so much favorites, but games that are still great in their own ways. Saga Frontier II had this really oddball, hard to follow story, and sometimes hard gameplay, but the graphics and music were *awesome*, and I just loved the vibe of the game. Same thing with Legend of Mana. Awesome graphics, awesome music, awesome vibe, OK gameplay, no story. FF Tactics was great, though the story was also hard to follow. Playing FFT Advance now, and although the story is stupid (little kids.. ugh), they did a good job with the gameplay, just like the original FFT. Can't wait till Sword of Mana. 😀

Originally posted by: chsh1ca
So many to choose from. Personally, I've played every Final Fantasy since 1,
Not sure if you know, but FF2 in the US on SNES was actually FF4, and FF3 was FF6. The "real" FF2/3/5 never came out here on SNES. 5 did later come here in FF Chronicles on Playstation, and weren't 2 and 3 released in some combo pack at some point recently? (not sure bout those two)

and it seems to me they've gotten repetetive: "Hero is lame unknown average joe from little town looted by representatives of enemy X. Falls in love with ditzy large-breasted character through some random event, who has humongous unknown power Y, and always has to be captured by enemy X. Epic final battle between enemy X and Hero usually consists of the last hour of the game, as enemy X has about 5 different lives/phases/whatever, and takes obscene amounts of damage to defeat."
Trace from that stencil, change character names, slight game engine tweaks, reprint, and you have basically every FF game. I stopped playing after 8 because of that.

Yep, I agree. I played a bit of the "real" 3 translated unofficially, and it was actually decently fun. FF2/4 was awesome, it was one of the first RPGs I ever got into, and I've played it so many times now. Never got that damn pink tail though! :| I actually didn't like 5, but I never played very far into it. The story just didn't feel compelling like 4 and 6. 6 was _awesome_. One of the best games ever IMO. I could go on forever about that game. Dumped hundreds of hours into it. 7 was the beginning of this cliche, cookie cutter, whiney woe-is-me crap that they seem to have been pumping out since. Although it still had lots of great elements and I still like the game overall. The story was really good. 8 was ... weird. The gameplay was what really hooked me, and it did a good job, I played it a lot. But I realized that I never really cared about the story or any of the characters. The story was interesting, but not really emotionally engaging. And the characters were actually annoying; I *disliked* them. FF9 was crap. I really liked the graphics and stuff and I thought they made some really neat environments, but the characters were awful and the story was worthless. I probably got through it about 1/3 of the way and just stopped playing. Haven't played any newer ones.

The GBA was the perfect thing for me since Square started making games for it, because I like their games, but I don't like how they changed when they went 3d. It became all about graphics and going ooh and aah and the gameplay was just more gimmicky. 2d forever! 😀
 
Oddly I got out my Might & Magic III disks (5-1/4") and reinstalled that game on my DOS gaming machine just the other day. It doesn't have a good story, really, but it's a lot of fun. Mostly I just like making my characters get better and better.
 
I `ve played most of them like BG series,IWD series,Might and Magic series,Divine Divinty,Mistmare,Diablo,Morrowind,Neverwinter Nights etc but the best for me was Planescape Torment ,that should be in the RPG history of fame 🙂.

I also like Gothic and Gothic 2 quite a lot as well.
 
I'm a Morrowind fan, myself. The DQ/FF-style console RPGs are just too rigid and linear, with predictable storylines. The Bioware-style PC RPGs are just cheesy and cliché IMHO, I don't understand the appeal myself. Pen & dice tabletop RPGs would be very cool, except they require other people, and the type of people they attract I usually can't stand. Morrowind (and the other TES games, I assume) is really one of the only CRPGs I've played that truly lets you role-play, and the fact that the main storyline isn't that strong is a strength rather than a weakness in my book. The game doesn't force you to be or do any one particular thing.
 
Originally posted by: Demon-Xanth
Final Fantasy 6/3. It had a magic system that worked.

YESH. Along with FF6, I think Chrono Trigger, Earthbound, and Mario RPG were all the best in different ways.
 
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