PS2 RPG's

[Polmon]

In BoF: Dragon Quarter, you are supposed to die and restart, it's part of the gameplay design, as your stats and so forth carry over.

[zektbach]

Shadow Hearts 1 and Shadow Hearts : Covenant are both fantastic...

Shadow Hearts 3 though?

Bit shite I thought, really quite short when compared to the other two games, and also the characters are nowhere near as enjoyable.

[SaintM]

Dark Chronicle.

[Mr.Jeff]

In BoF: Dragon Quarter, you are supposed to die and restart, it's part of the gameplay design, as your stats and so forth carry over.

I know, I know. But I still feel like a failure if I die. It's like the game is just telling me I suck.

[Kayin Amoh]

Shadow Hearts 3 though?

Bit shite I thought, really quite short when compared to the other two games, and also the characters are nowhere near as enjoyable.

I don't get this 'LOL Shadow Hearts 3' thing at all, and I'm not going to accept it just to fit in. The battle system was beter than the first two games and the characters were - in fact - excellent. Frank especially, and Shania and the rest of the company made for a great group. Even Johnny, while not up to the impossible standards set by Yuri, was far more likable than your average Squaresoft main character.

I mean, questioning his own sanity after being the only one in the group who doubts the plausability of a talking cat? That's special. About the only problem I had was that they didn't really interact too much with each other with the single exception of Johnny and Shania.

The humour in general was better than the previous game, and the length was certainly longer than in the original, not too far off SH2's running time with all the sidequests factored into both games.

So yeah, it was still great.

However, where it fell short compared to the original and the sequel was in several key points. First off, the tone of the series had taken a pretty drastic jump from violent to lighthearted. No Nemeton Monastery spookiness, or the place where Koudelka was being tortured. No village full of cannibals, or... well, you know.

The FMV was kinda disappointing too - though I'll admit that seeing Shania stripping off repeatedly wasn't the worst thing I've ever seen ( :( ), it's kind of a waste compared to SH2's epic story driven scenarios - especially ones like the birth of the Idar Flamme and Yuri/Amon goodness.

Finally, and this was kind of the real bummer, the story didn't come close to earlier games. SH1 had the best story I've ever seen in an RPG, and while this one didn't start off too badly, it really messed up by not going deeper into the Killer/Lady thing and the section in the middle where it went off the rails. That being the point in South America where there was suddenly far less story scenes, and far more button pressing, level flipping dungeons designed to irritate you. It was like suddenly playing Grandia 2 again - 'go collect all these bits and that's the story'.

Luckily, it managed to regain its footing after the Ice dungeon, but that section is memorable for hacking me off somewhat - three dungeons, no story and a lot of switch flipping. Ugh.

Even so, 3 was awesome. It's probably not as good a game as the others overall, but it had a better battle system and kept me highly entertained almost from start to end (disregarding the section mentioned above). To say it's shit? Not a fucking chance. 1up can wipe its arse with that braindead review they gave it.

Dragon Quest VIII gets mentioned a lot in reccomendation threads and I've got to say I don't see why. I spent a good 20hrs on the game and it was indeed beautifull, with a fantastic score and interesting enemy designs, topped off with good animation. BUT as an RPG it's battles were far too easy, in fact they didn't seem to get any harder then press attack when your turn came around, 20 hrs of that was plenty for me. Have I misjudged it? Does it improve in quality gameplay-wise?

I don't think it's really the gameplay or any of the battles that I liked about 8, it was the world and the inhabitants. There was nothing wrong with the gameplay other than being a bit standard, but it looked lovely, had charming characters and there was a lot to explore and do.

[Ed-E]

Have you played it through? I mean isn't that like saying that Vagrant Story wasn't a scratch on another game by a different company?

No, not at all. Have you played it through, and by that I mean to the end of EPISODE III? The number of allusions to Xenogears grows exponentially in the last game, to the point where a new character is introduced for all of ten minutes just because she looks like Maria from Xenogears. She's even got a pet robot that she thinks the spirit of her deceased father is piggybacking.

You've got to remember that the core staff of Xenosaga (or at least EPISODE I) were the core staff of Xenogears - director, (most of) the writers*, character designer, musician. I don't think it's an unfair comparison at all. Maybe if Takahashi had been in control of all of Xenosaga then it wouldn't have ended up so nudge-nudge wink-wink, but that's something we'll never know.

*although it should be pointed out that Masato Kato - who didn't defect along with the others but instead went on to write/direct Chrono Cross - wrote the Lahan sequence at the beginning, which was certainly one of the best bits.