Favourite Video Game Evar!

[Alexander]

What about Star Ocean: The Second Story for the PS1? I thought that was the one of the best RPGs I ever played. I know I've gotten thousands of game play hours from that title alone. >>

Azure Dreams was a fun game. I own the Playstation and Gameboy color version. I was surprised how I ended up enjoying the Gameboy color version more. The Gameboy color version actually had more hours of game play in it than the Playstation one and more reason to play after you beat it.

Nippon Ichi makes some great video games too. If anyone has played Makai Kingdom, then you'd know I named myself after one of the characters in the story. What you may be surprised about though, is that I prefer Phantom Brave over all of the other Nippon Ichi games.

Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon always has the place in my heart for favorite game title. Memorable and catchy music, addictive game play, and a funny plot to boot. I've created a ritual now where I bring the N64 out of oblivion just to set it up and beat Goemon every year. It's the only reason I still keep that console around. I do the same thing with the Dreamcast to beat Grandia 2 occasionally.

[Jak Snide]

Nope.
I have not. Seen the entire television series though but have yet to get the new games. Not sure if I dig the 3D graphics for one but I was thinking on it. Most likely wait a bit then buy the Season package instead of it seperately.

Can always grab the demo for the first episode. Or second, really. Think there is/will be a demo for each episode that's actually the full game waiting to have an activation code punched into it.

Got the first two myself and they had me laughing out loud on a few occasions. For the pricing I'd say they're worth it. Oh, and you can buy the bundle now and download each episode as they come out.

*takes his money from Telltale marketing and pockets it*

[darkknight61189]

Anyone here played any of the .HACK// games? I've heard mixed reviews, most of them very polar. They either loved it, or hated it.

[Seethe]

I've played the first and second .HACK// games. I never finished either one, but I liked them well enough. Of course, I could think of a few changes that would improve the game for me, such as giving more detail to the areas outside the dungeons, allowing the player to select the main character's class, changing the spell names to actually reflect what the spells do, and making the towns bigger than just one row of buildings. On the other hand, I remember liking the combat system although I don't remember all that much about it, and I really liked the random dungeon raiding.

Actually, I tend to think that they should make a real MMORPG based on .HACK//. Basically, they could just make the improvements I mentioned and either open Data Draining up to all characters or get rid of it completely and they'd be pretty close to having something that ought to go over pretty well.

[Ganonfro]

*Resurrects thread!*

... I honestly don't remember giving myself that avatar of the lady on Kung Fu Hustle...

Anyways, I have gained a renewed interest in adventure games!

Phoenix Wright games are teh win. Seriously, if you haven't heard of them by now, smack yourself, then wiki it.

Another one that just came out is Hotel Dusk: Room 215. This game plays out in a very Noir fashion, even down to the fact the characters are drawn in greyscale pencil. And you're an ex-detective, who yells at little girls in the first bit of the game (Not really... but I've heard you can if you want to). ANYONE WHO PLAYS THESE TYPES OF GAMES, SIMILAR TO LOOM AND MONKEY ISLAND, INFORM ME OF MORE.

[Ark]

I made a post about one, not 8 posts up.

Touch Detective for the Nintendo DS released by Atlus
Link to main site

Its basically a Monkey Island game with the main character sharing her thoughts at the top of the screen. It's a little short honestly and I got stuck on one bit only because I couldn't find the item needed - plus the locations aren't all that varied - but I enjoyed it and I don't think its as bad as some reviewers made it out to be.

but then, when have I ever agreed to anything anyones said completely?
If you don't want to buy it I at least suggest renting it. But what one guy complained about,

Spoiler:

that he couldn't work out the microwave part

just made me roll my eyes. Sheesh. Some people don't think.

No.. that may not be the problem *sips tea*

[Idran1701]

... I honestly don't remember giving myself that avatar of the lady on Kung Fu Hustle...

You didn't; that was me, because of your "no avatar army" thing or whatever in another thread. :D

[Nick Shogun]

Did anyone mention Skies of Arcadia? Great plot, great fighting system, plenty of sidequests and puzzles, but not too hard for the easy-going gamer like me.

I played the Gamecube version, though, which had extra stuff, so maybe the Dreamcast one wasn't as good.

[Endesu]

Did anyone mention Skies of Arcadia? Great plot, great fighting system, plenty of sidequests and puzzles, but not too hard for the easy-going gamer like me.

I played the Gamecube version, though, which had extra stuff, so maybe the Dreamcast one wasn't as good.

Yes, fine game. Shame about that ridiciulously high encounter rate, eh?

[Jak Snide]

Quite so. Which is why, when you got a ship capable of avoiding said encounter rate it was a joyous thing indeed! And I'm pretty sure there was an item that dropped the rate of it as well (white map?).

[Nick Shogun]

Quite so. Which is why, when you got a ship capable of avoiding said encounter rate it was a joyous thing indeed! And I'm pretty sure there was an item that dropped the rate of it as well (white map?).

You hit it dead on, Jak. White Map was a godsend. In the Gamecube game, they dramatically reduced the encounter rate, but you still had a lot of monsters to battle. The Delphinus could go above and below clouds to avoid the monsters... Thank God.

[Jak Snide]

The first 5 seconds of the generic battle music became synonymous for "OH GOD, NOT AGAIN" for me. :[

Which leads me to a question: random encounters are still in games these days. What's up with that?

[Justice Augustus]

Because some people actually like it when a game says "OVER 60 HOURS OF GAMEPLAY GUARENTEED INSIDE!" without wondering how much of that time will be spent watching your screen swirl around while the console roars at the effort of generating a random encounter indistiguishable from other encounters.

Plus: it means that the game can still be exciting the second time you play it through. Check out Diablo if you don't believe me.

[Archmage]

Yeah, but Diablo is just a huge string of random encounters separated by fixed-point boss fights.

I mean, it's an entertaining way to turn thousands of mouse clicks into digitized carnage, but I wouldn't say it's the epitome of "random done well."

[Nick Shogun]

Nothing says fun like a Nercomancer with six skeleton warriors and a fire golem, killing Satan in a realm of hellfire.

[Deeum]

Which leads me to a question: random encounters are still in games these days. What's up with that?

I actually like random encounters better than being able to see enemies on the map.

[Ark]

I like both, though when I can see the enemy before hand I actually tend to get in more fights then I ever do with Random encounters, because I'm all like "Chaaaaaarge"

[Deeum]

IT's actually the otherway around with me. If I can see them, I tend to want to edge around them to avoid the fight.

[Nick Shogun]

But random battles are great for making you WAY too powerful. It's like if Goku trained way too hard and went Super Saiyan on Raditz. [/dragonballzreference]

[The Duelist]

Live a Live. For SNES. Translation found on the internet.

Ranger X, for Genesis.

Conker's Bad Fur Day for N64

Super Smash Bros. Melee for Gamecube

Megaman 2 for NES

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance for GBA

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, for DS

[Ark]

I Highly recommend any and all of the games found in this here link

Cute shrine maidens, witches and maids flying around shooting any and everything that gets in there path, with thousand upon thousands of bullets making the prettiest of patterns everywhere. With some nice music too.

On the shoot em up side I also recommend Gunbird 1 and 2 as I have spent much time on it and I love the silly characters, as well as the stupid amount of bullets. The amount of endings is nice too, with one for each character and if you get another person to play with you, one for each different team up.

I really recommend the Mario & Luigi RPGs as well. Theres The Superstar Saga (GBA) and Partners in Time (Nintendo DS), both are filled with more fun and frolics then two of your average RPGs fun and frolics combined together. Deep story with a highly involved plotline need not apply.

Talking of RPGs I've found myself loving the Ys series. With the red head adol going around saving folks all the time and having every female in exsistence want him, not that he cares because he's Adol! Ys 1 and 2 Eternal can be found somewhere on the net with a complete English translation and I hear someones translated Oath of Felghana as well but isn't letting it be generally released because of certain issues. I doubt the games have ever been classed as the best of the best but I like them all the more for it. Ys Ark of Napishtim for the PS2 is totally awsome! Almost all the music is great too.

Valkyrie Profile 1 and 2 are two RPGs I recommend too.

[Deeum]

But random battles are great for making you WAY too powerful. It's like if Goku trained way too hard and went Super Saiyan on Raditz. [/dragonballzreference]

This is why I like random battles!

[Ark]

IT's actually the otherway around with me. If I can see them, I tend to want to edge around them to avoid the fight.

I can't stand seeing any badguys left on the map, so I just can't sneak past them. And for games like the later Tales Of where they randomally appear but you can see them I charge as well. If theres an enemy there is must die! DIE DIE DIE!!!!!

With random encounter dungeons I tend to try and make it to whatever I'm doing As Fast As Possible and normally get a little annoyed if encounters keep popping up when I'm in the middle of trying to do something, like a puzzle or something.

[BrainWalker]

I like the way Earthbound did things. You could see enemies on the map, but if they saw you, they would charge. And if you're good, you can bust out some ninja shit and gank baddies from behind for initiative. Those were good times.

Also, Yoshi's Island.

[Endesu]

Live a Live. For SNES. Translation found on the internet.

Ranger X, for Genesis.

Both of the above titles were pretty good, yeah.

Also, I would be amiss in not pointing out the X Days series as some of the best point-and-click adventures ever made for the PC. A constantly twisting storyline, some genuinely malevolent adversaries, some interesting player characters, and generally good music.

And they're free. So no one has an excuse to not play these games.

[glu-glu]

random encounters suck, because they won't happend when you want 'em to happen.

thats what made Chrono trigger the best RPG on the snes, Also, the earthbound approach, as mentioned, is awesome, specially when you're too strong and the enemies RUN FROM YOU.
Also, seen enemies is more motivating, i swear i kill everything that moves on SMRPG.

Also: House of dead, the first one, good times with weapons.

[PriamNevhausten]

I may be the only person around who was not bothered by Skies of Arcadia's random encounters. This may be because I was warned about it ahead of time, and knew what to expect. In this light, it made the enounter rate seem pretty normal, and even anticlimactic, as people were joking about encounters every five steps and I went clearly twenty footfalls before an encounter most times.

Also, SoA's battle system was not all that great. Pretty? Sure. Good ideas? Not gonna argue that. But any battle system that compels me to fall asleep while my characters are fighting loses big points. It's the same problem I have with Legend of Legaia, which is the flashiest, coolest-looking battle system I have ever seen =(

[Nick Shogun]

I may be the only person around who was not bothered by Skies of Arcadia's random encounters. This may be because I was warned about it ahead of time, and knew what to expect. In this light, it made the enounter rate seem pretty normal, and even anticlimactic, as people were joking about encounters every five steps and I went clearly twenty footfalls before an encounter most times.

Also, SoA's battle system was not all that great. Pretty? Sure. Good ideas? Not gonna argue that. But any battle system that compels me to fall asleep while my characters are fighting loses big points. It's the same problem I have with Legend of Legaia, which is the flashiest, coolest-looking battle system I have ever seen =(

Are you talking about the special moves, because you can skip them. Those battles weren't so long. The tougher ones couldn't have been more than ten minutes. The ship battles took forever though, so I can see your point there (especially ship battles against the giants).

What about spirit points? Self regenerating action points that can be increased dramatically using Focus? That was a good point. It wasn't a revolutionary fighting system, but it was a good one.

[Jak Snide]

The one good thing about the random battles for SoA was, when you were playing on a Dreamcast, you could hear the disc whir and begin to load up an encounter, giving you time to dive into the menu and prepare.

Enemies you can see = avoidable and quantifiable. You know how much stuff there is in an area. Random battles, as Cho said, just make you rush through areas as quickly as possible to avoid getting bogged down.

As for grinding levels, respawns ftw.

[PriamNevhausten]

No, I agree that the SoA mechanics were great. Spirit points was an awesome idea. What I'm talking about is that most times I just mashed the A button eighty times and just sat back as my characters did their thing, which took some time in doing the exact same thing they did for the last twenty battles. Fights in that game were not quick.

[Justice Augustus]

I much prefer being able to see my foes rather than random battles. I just like the power of picking my battles. I'm thinking WoW where sometimes I just want to get to the one mob/place for a quest and don't want to have to fight twenty things along the way to get there....and yet sometimes I do! Choice is a good thing.

[PriamNevhausten]

The issue with most CRPGs is that the ability to see your battles beforehand doesn't actually exempt you from having to fight them most times. Whether it's an enemy in a narrow corridor, enemies that have extremely good senses to detect you, or any other such thing, you are often forced to face battles along the way anyway.

What that system really does is to allow the player to backtrack in that area without having to fight those encounters AGAIN (in a system with sufficient RAM, anyway; Earthbound did not work this way). In that way, sometimes it also allowed the player to know whether he/she was going in the right direction--a path with enemies was a path untrod.

You know what I liked? Wild Arms style. Well, the newer WA games, anyway. You could see the random encounters building up in level, but you could send 'em away with the push of a button at a slight cost. This made a lot of battles truly optional, but you couldn't see the contents of the opposing side before you decided whether to allow them in or send them away. A little give, a little take.

What's even better, I think, are action RPGs, with no 'battle screen.' Brave Fencer Musashi comes to mind, as do the Ys games, Crystalis, and the Legend of Zelda series. You could see precisely what you were fighting before you fought it, and if you weren't reckless about it you could avoid most enemies without much incident.

All that said, I will always think Earthbound's scheme was totally awesome. Not only would enemies run away from you after you'd demolished their strongest, but if the game figured you would beat the enemy in one turn without the significant possibility of taking damage, the battle never actually happened--you just approached the enemy, and then immediately gain experience. Why in the world has no other game done this? (Except possibly the Mario & Luigi games, I think.)

[Endesu]

What's even better, I think, are action RPGs, with no 'battle screen.' Brave Fencer Musashi comes to mind, as do the Ys games, Crystalis, and the Legend of Zelda series. You could see precisely what you were fighting before you fought it, and if you weren't reckless about it you could avoid most enemies without much incident.

Personally, I vastly prefer this more active approach to battle, as opposed to the age-old turn-based battle screen. A fine example that I can think of is Parasite Eve 2, wherein not only did your map warn you ahead of time of enemy presence in a particular area, but also allowed you to easily skip battles by running past them into another area. You lost out on BP in the process, yes, but you are given the choice to skip battles, and you can take advantage of that choice if you wish.

Far better than being forced into yet another random battle where, even if you wish to bypass it, you must spend at least a minute or so attempting to flee from battle or cast "Exit" magic.

All that said, I will always think Earthbound's scheme was totally awesome. Not only would enemies run away from you after you'd demolished their strongest, but if the game figured you would beat the enemy in one turn without the significant possibility of taking damage, the battle never actually happened--you just approached the enemy, and then immediately gain experience. Why in the world has no other game done this? (Except possibly the Mario & Luigi games, I think.)

Agreed, I liked how quickly that expedited the process.

[Nick Shogun]

This has turned into a very nice and well-thought out discussion on RPG random encounters. Query, though: what about on-screen actions?

For example, Earthbound and RPG Maker do not show their characters fighting, they only show FX and Sound FX. At the other end of the spectrum, there are games like Dragonquest VIII and Final Fantasy with gratuitous on-screen actions, such as summoning a GF for five minutes. However, both ends of the spectrum, as well as the middle-muddle, have their fans. How do you like it?

[Ark]

Depends, some animations are damn nice the first few times you see them and I enjoy there presence. However eventually all animations tend to grate on your nerves, even the swining of a sword or a slash effect, espically when your grinding.

However doing an awsome uber move on a boss character is a feel good experience I enjoy immensly.
Even in Disgaea the move animations tend to make me cringe after a while but then again at times I laugh with Laharl as he smacks a meator on someones head once again.

Things need a fast forward button so you can skip frames of animation - this would be handy when needing to reload things because of death and all that. Or just a turn animations off animation.

Battle can get boring if all you see is numbers and stuff though. *Shrugs*

Of course for things like Secret of Mana and Zelda this doesn't apply as on screen action is on screen action.

[Jak Snide]

Eye-pleasing (not necesarily OMG BUMP MAPPING POLYGONS BLOOM LOL; see M&L: Partners in Time) and quick. QUICK battle transitions, moves come off like a snap, when the battle is over you get back to what you were doing before. Random encounters bothered me alot less in FF5 than they do in general simply due to the speed at which you could deal with them.

[PriamNevhausten]

My opinion is that the higher the overall rate of flashiness for everything, the lower the impressiveness level of anything. The whole thing about if you highlight everything, you have effectively highlighted nothing.

In this way, Legend of Legaia is awesome. Your basic attacks are punches and kicks, and your magical spells (which you don't see very often at all, barring healing spells) are very flashy. God forbid, the Ra-seru spells. Man.

And that's another part, too. If you can spam something that's impressive-looking, quickly it will turn droll. But if you can only do it once or twice for long periods of time, then it will be that much more appealing when you do use it.

For an example of this, see fighting games. Take a look at a fighter like Melty Blood or Guilty Gear, where shit is over the top like that's its job. Supers in that game are just a little flashier, and nobody is terribly impressed when they come out.

Compare that to something like KoF XI or Street Fighter 3: Third Strike or Garou: Mark of the Wolves. Sure, there's little bits here and there that are flashy, but a lot of what's going on is punches and kicks, and small variants thereof. So when Marco busts out with a Haoh Sho Kou Ken, which in all respects is just a big fireball, you FEEL it. You never know how much you can feel sudden fear in a game as when you approach Gouki/Akuma in SF3.3 and see the superflash that lets you know a Kongou Kokuretsu Zan is headed straight for your ass--and there's little in a fighting game to give you the same joy as hearing an experienced, seasoned fighting game player yell "SHIT!!" when they see that happen to them.

Actually, the KKZ is a great example of flashiness done right. KKZ costs Gouki two full super bars, which in a game like SF3.3 is pretty hard to get without building it up for more than one round. It doesn't come out very fast unless the opponent is right next to Gouki, but the damage is worth it if you can land it either in a counter-hit sort of way or as anti-air. Even if it's blocked, it does loads of tick damage. And it's *pretty.* And not a lot of people use it, so it doesn't get seen very often even in situations where people have the capacity to pull it out.

That's really what it's all about, I think. The more effect it has and the more flashy it is in comparison to its context, and the less frequently it is seen and the less likely it is to occur, the more impressive it is. And that applies to a great many things.

[Ark]

I still protest, you pronounce it Goukith!
Or Akuma.

[Endesu]

Yet again why Parasite Eve 2's battle system worked well; battles tended to move fairly quickly and spells didn't rquire five minute cut scenes to operate.

Oh, and regardless of the (justified, in my opinion) bitching about encounter rates in games, none can ever be worse than the Dragon Ball Z: Legend of the Super Saiyan RPG released on the SNES. Random battle almost every five steps, guaranteed. God forbid you try to fly quickly, as the random battles then begin to quickly pile up.

[Archmage]

But it's a DBZ game. What are you going to do besides train to increase your power level?