Round Table: Your favorite RPG

Welcome to the Round Table, where we try to stay on topic but usually fail.

Trying to keep it simple this week.
Let’s discuss your favorite RPG(s).

What makes a good RPG and why does your favorite stand above the others?

Brandon: Naturally I’m going to say something Final Fantasy related, but I want to hold back on that just a minute and instead talk about some non-Final Fantasy RPGs I’ve really enjoyed. First, to no surprise at all, is Chrono Trigger. I said before we started this discussion that I thought CT wouldn’t be seriously considered as the best/favorite RPG for someone because it’s clearly outclassed by the later Final Fantasy offerings. I still believe that to be true, but I think I short changed the game initially. I think it is the premier RPG of that generation, beating out other critically acclaimed titles like Final Fantasy VI or Secret of Mana or what have you. It has possibly the best score ever in a game, RPG or otherwise. I also really liked the battle system with its Line-of-Sight and Area-of-Effect attacks and dual- and tri-combos. Great story, great music, great combat, it’s really not any surprise why it is considered one of the all-time greats.

I have also enjoyed various other RPGs to greater or lesser degrees- Legend of Dragoon, which I have talked about before, Dark Cloud 2 and Dragon Quest VIII to name just a few. These all were great titles in my mind. LoD had one of the more unique approaches to combat in an RPG with the “Additions” attacks. I really liked the weapon building system of Dark Cloud. Not only do you progress your character in the game, but also advance his weapons through different trees ending up with a bunch of cool looking weapons that have unique effects. The invention system and taking pictures with the camera was also fun. It’s a more action-based RPG than the others, with only 1 character rather than a party, but I think it still fits well within the RPG genre. Dragon Quest I didn’t get to play as much, it’s Cam’s game and I only borrowed it and played for about half the game or so, but it had great visuals, more cartoonish like Dark Cloud, and another item-combination system that was interesting. While some may think it’s too kiddy-ish, I also really liked the Kingdom Hearts series. It’s another game with more action elements and I really had a fun time with the Lego-style spaceship-building minigame.

And I haven’t even mentioned traditional PC RPGs like Baldur’s Gate, Fallout, or Planescape. I’ll leave the praises for Black Isle to Beau, as I know he will do them Justice. Also I haven’t mentioned either of the Knights of the Old Republic games which surely deserve to be in the discussion. I also never played some of the other great second generation titles like Vagrant Story, Xenogears, and Star Ocean. This discussion could go on for days. I’m interested to hear everyone’s thoughts before I launch into my Final Fantasy fan boy slobber fest.

Justin: Ya, I was about to beat you down for short citing Chrono Trigger; I’m glad to see you came to your senses. I mean a game like that, so good, so compelling, the memorable characters, multiple endings, and as you said a great soundtrack, deserves much respect. Yes a lot of it is nostalgia but even when Square released it for the DS last year I still thought it was worth the $40.

It’s always a struggle for best RPG where CT could be first or second. But I think I’d have to say Final Fantasy VII and the reason I say this is because it has so much staying power. Not only that, but unlike other games in the series, VII has become a fully developed world. Crisis Core, VII, Advent Children really stand out as the best RPG to date. Whereas I think VI was a great game and I probably played X for over 50 hours, VII stands above the rest simply because of the universe Square created.

Now, depending on how Bioware plays their cards, Mass Effect could definitely trump it as we still have 2 more games to complete the trilogy. I never played KOTOR but Mass Effect is truly a sci-fi lover’s wet dream.

Brandon: That’s another good point about the variant endings in Chrono Trigger. Gives you great incentive to go back and replay the game. I think what Square has done with Final Fantasy VII is really interesting. They have always created each Final Fantasy as its own separate universe distinct from any previous game and linked them all with shared concepts and themes. Now with their expansion of the VII universe, creatively named Compilation of Final Fantasy VII (tats really all you have SquareEnix?), I think we are going to get even more great stories as they can expand on the background information of their main games with these expansions. They have already started doing this with some of their other universes. The Ivalice Alliance combines the worlds set in the Ivalice universe-mainly FF Tactics, FF Tactics Advance, and FFXII- and the upcoming FFXIII will have two additional titles creating the Fabula Novis Crystallis universe. It’s an interesting new direction for the franchise and it will be fun to watch it play out.

KOTOR is excellent and you definitely need to give it a try. I wonder what we ought to do with games that have an RPG feel to them, but may not fit into the framework of a classic RPG. The big one here for me would the Legend of Zelda. Clearly at least Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time would get serious contemplation for best or favorite RPG for many people, but while it definitely has role-playing elements, I’m not sure it’s an RPG like these others. Adventure game is probably a more appropriate description, but how do we make the distinction and where do we draw the line?

Justin: Yes LoZ is definitely an action/adventure series.

I think RPGs have specific staples to adhere to. Specifically the way character development and combat is handled. RPGs always have a more developed story (which I think Zelda lacks in certain ways), and definitely more number crunching (stats) either in the foreground or unbeknownst to the user.

Dustin: In the sense that you role-play a character and similar to Zelda in the sense of an action/adventure over and RPG, Shenmue 1 and 2 were pretty awesome. I beat Shenmue 1, but watched Brandon play through most of Shenmue 2 and loved the customization and leveling aspects of games like that. I am a huge fan of the traditional RPG, but like just about any game where you can progress a character through leveling and customization. That is why I’ve been addicted to MMOs like WoW and UO or Lotro. Progression is the key thing about RPGs that draw me in and likely most other gamers. Wild Arms, Suikoden, Dragon Warrior, Jade Empire (action/adventure) and the original Final Fantasy have hooked me. I’d also like to mention the incredible series of Phantasy Star. I got to play them more on the handhelds systems and enjoyed them a lot.

My short list of best RPGs ever will not look typical, but I did not own an SNES, so you won’t see games like Zelda, Secret of Mana or Chrono Trigger. Although I recently got an SNES and they are charging $70 for Chrono Trigger. Is it worth it?

My top RPGs are Wild Arms, Suikoden 2, Star Ocean and Final Fantasy 1. FF1 is and will always be my favorite RPG simply because I spent the most time playing it. What a fun game, despite such a linear story and limited customization. I would gladly start it up again right now if I had a copy lying around.

Brandon: Final Fantasy I was released on the Virtual Console a few days ago and you posted the damn news article!

And who is selling Chrono Trigger for 70$? You can get the DS direct port and the PS1 remake both for under 20 bucks. I can’t say it is worth paying 70$ to buy it, but I think it is worth paying a reasonable amount for some format of the game to experience it at least. As much as any other game it is a “must play” for just about everyone. What did those other games on your list offer that you felt exceeded other games that you played?

Andrew: Must I be the one to come right out and talk about Final Fantasy? Fine. My favorite RPG is, hands down and beyond a shadow of a doubt, Final Fantasy VIII. This was the first FF title I ever played and it opened my eyes to a world of RPG awesomeness. Never before have I felt myself so drawn into a game, so immersed in the story, characters, and settings. Squall was such an easy character for me to relate to – a teenager struggling to find his identity and place in life. I was a 14 year old kid struggling with puberty and just beginning to ask questions of myself around identity and purpose.

Not only was that my first (and favorite) RPG, but this was my first taste of what I believe to be the ultimate goal of video game development: crafting a game that provides the player with a truly immersing experience. In this way, Final Fantasy VIII shaped the fundamental way in which I view gaming.

Runners up who deserve mention include Fallout 3, Knights of the Old Republic. Worst RPG I’ve ever played? I don’t really know. Can’t think of one I truly hated, to be honest. I guess I stick to the known quantities when it comes to RPGs.

Brandon: I said I would get around to talking about Final Fantasy, but I wanted to highlight some non-FF games first. I think it’s pretty amazing to look at what Square and Square Enix have done with the RPG. Even their non-FF titles are among the very best the genre has to offer.

Justin: I totally forgot about Phantasy Star just because I only played bits and pieces. From what I could remember didn’t your characters grow up and you played multiple generations? I don’t think I ever completed one but at the time there were gorgeous to look at.

Cam: RPGs have always been my absolute favorite video games. I think it’s because they’re usually long length allows for the most character development. They remind me how much I enjoy reading books. Like the other guys, Chrono Trigger will always be very high up for me. It was one of the first I played, and I was just blown away by how attached I got to the characters. I had never experienced that in a video game before. The battle system was far and away one of my favorites to this day, and as has already been mentioned, the music was superb. Every now and then I still have Frog or Magus’ theme pop in to my head for absolutely no reason.

I’m going to go out on a limb here with you guys and say this: the original two Pokémon games (red and blue) were very good. I know these days it’s seen as perhaps for a younger audience, but those games were extremely fun. It was also the first time I remember any sort of real connectivity between two players, with the ability to trade as well as have head to head battles. It had all the elements of an RPG with an added twist to the combat. Loads of fun.

But my all time favorite RPG is definitely Final Fantasy VII. I have a theory that your favorite Final Fantasy is always the first one you play, and VII was my first. I was a late comer, only playing because when it came out I heard all my friends talking about constantly, so I finally picked it up. Like Chrono Trigger, I was totally absorbed into the story and characters. What astounded me about the game was the emotions and darkness involved. CT always had a bit of quirky humor injected into every situation, even when the going was rough. But FFVII was the first game I played that went to some dark places unapologetically. Add on a super fun traditional battle system, a huge world to explore, and loads of side quests, and I just could not put the game down. Since then I have become even more obsessed as they add on to this installment of the series.

Brandon: I agree with you about Pokémon, your theory on favorite FF titles, and also your comments about the darkness of VII. Previous games, both FF and otherwise, usually have similar structures to their story. Bad guy wants to control the world/have unlimited power, good guys want to stop him. FFVII introduced a completely dystopian setting filled with crime and all manner of seedy, corrupt people, and a villain who hated humanity so much that he wanted to destroy the entire planet. He didn’t want to gain power over the whole planet, he wanted to DESTROY it. End all life. There’s really no surprise that Sephiroth is consistently voted among the very top villains of all time or that his murder of Aerith is likewise continually voted among the most shocking moments in video game history.

Justin: Well to be honest, Kefka was pretty much an insane, maniacal, bad-ass who killed a whole town by poising their water supply only to actually destroy the world.

Brandon: Andrew, since your introduction to RPGs, have other games specifically in the Final Fantasy franchise captivated you the way VIII did? Everyone seems to have a favorite Final Fantasy, with VI and VII usually getting the most votes. What specifically puts VIII at the top for you?

Andrew: No FF title has captivated me as much as FFVIII. I think I’m with Cam’s theory that the first one you play is your favorite. FFVII was great, an amazing game no doubt – but it just doesn’t stack up to FFVIII for me. I would cite the storyline and characters in 8 edging out 7 – and that’s not a dig, it’s just the way I perceived the two games. I know I’m way in the minority on this and most will cry 7 over 8 but there is something intangible about that first FF experience that really stays with you.

Justin: I think FVIII while technically superior to VII wasn’t nearly as good. The draw system made it so anyone could become a magic class and it always made me rethink how I played a battle. Should I have attempted to draw from that boss or should I play it safe. I always hated that.

Brandon: Justin, I agree with your comments about the draw system. I remember the first time I played through the game being utterly dismayed that I had lost access to certain Guardian Forces because I didn’t realize they had to be drawn from certain bosses before you defeat them. On the other hand, VIII’s junction system was, in my mind, clearly superior to VII’s materia.

Cam: I know a lot of people love FFVI, for good reason, and think Kefka to be one of the best villains. My problem is that I don’t think it translated as well as Sephiroth did due to the graphical limitations (even though FFVII certainly had its own graphical limitations). Kefka was definitely crazy and wanted to destroy everything, but so did Lavos in CT. I think people can connect more when characters look more human. That’s not really a commentary on one game being better than the other (or even 3D being better than 2D!), but I think in the case of really feeling the darkness in a character, the more we can see the humanism in them, the scarier it is when they act like Sephiroth did. Kefka did have his creepy 16-bit laugh though.

Justin: Well Lavos was a friggen shelled crabbed for most of the game and you really had no idea what it was or what was inside him, so you really just thought “bad guy, must kill”.

Kefka and his laugh are indeed what made him so interesting. I’m not disagreeing, I still think Seph was indeed the bigger badass but thought I’d take the time to give the clown his props. Speaking of which, he’s a freaking loony in FF: Dissidia as well.

Brandon: Kefka was merely insane (which I suppose could be argued for Sephiroth, but I would disagree). His actions were driven by a mad desire for power and a willingness to kill anyone and everyone who got in his way. The world wasn’t destroyed, just reshaped. His desire was to be a god and he took steps to make that happen. Sephiroth wanted to punish each and every human living on the planet by destroying it completely. In my opinion that makes him way more sinister.

Justin: Leave X alone, besides some weird voice acting I still think it was a great game. It was about time they got rid of a map, sometimes you got to spruce it up a bit and change the formula around a bit. Plus, I enjoyed fighting besides the summons rather than just calling them and being done with them after one pop.

X-2, now that was a disgrace and I think it was a cheap way of making some easy money.

Brandon: Sure X-2 was a way to make some money, just like any number of FF spin-offs Square has made in the past. It’s clearly distinct from the main line of the franchise.

Cam: Do you guys have a favorite battle system? FFVII (and the other FF before and after that were similar) has always been a favorite of mine, albeit very straightforward. Obviously Chrono Trigger is a good choice, what with the lack of random encounters and the other things mentioned earlier in regards to it (AoE, line of sight, etc.) I also enjoyed the hybrid battle system in FFXII, although I was skeptical at first. What about you guys? Any favorites?

Andrew: I’ve heard people decry the battle system in FFVIII – lots of people hated it. But I loved it. FFVII had a good system where different magic and buffers and whatnot were found almost like loot or treasures – but for some reason FFVIII’s convoluted system of drawing magic and junctioning it to specific statistics was pretty cool to me.

Cam: Yeah but I guess to me, FFVII and FFVIII had largely similar battle systems. They were sort of turn/time based and mainly involved a non-moving line of characters attacking one at a time against an enemy on the opposite side of the battlefield. They had some minor differences in the skills you could use in that system, but mostly they were the same.

Justin: I’m still more of a CT guy just because I could see my enemies (which will be in FF XIII). The dual and tri combos were also insanely addicting.

Brandon: Yeah I’m not sure how you could really say there is a qualitative difference between VII, VIII, IX, and really all of them pretty much. It’s all menu driven with largely similar menu options available. I would say materia, junctioning, and the sphere grid of X are all part of character development rather than combat.

Cam: Yeah I definitely loved the combo system. I was always excited to unlock new ones and see what they did.

Andrew: When you put it that way, Brandon, I’d agree with you.

From the recent FFXIII videos – the combat looks to be much changed. It looks very fast, could finally be the end of menu-driven combat. I love what the camera does in battles, it moves, swerves, zooms and pans all according to the action. Cam is bound to love that the summons will have a mode where they transform into shit that you can ride/use in a combo-style attack.

Justin: Well there’s still some menus but you can attach attacks/item use/ and magic into a single turn, which makes for some very interesting combos.

Brandon: I really am not a fan of the randomized battles, which is part of why I liked XII. I also warmed up to the gambit system pretty quickly and think it might be one of the best systems they’ve developed for an RPG.

One of my favorite additions in X was the ability to see the fight order on the scrolling bar to the right of the screen. It helped me determine my attack order to take out the enemies who were next up to attack and so forth. I want to say that VIII is my favorite, because of the aforementioned cherry-taking issue. I do still think it is a great game, but I’m not sure if it is my favorite or not. I liked the junction system for sure and think it is probably the best character development system of any FF game. I preferred the battle systems of X and XII over the standard VII, VIII systems though. X had the best minigame bar none- blitzball. It had less exploration than previous games due to the lack of a world map, which to my mind isn’t a big deal. It had fun gameplay, a good story, great graphics, and it’s pretty hard to beat in my opinion. Is it a little unfair to compare X and XII to games that couldn’t take advantage of the PS2′s hardware? Maybe, but I don’t know what to do about that. I think the story of VII was the best, but the game itself just wasn’t as good for me. I think VIII, X, and XII are all right up there for me, with X narrowly edging out the other 2.

Anyone have some other games they enjoyed? How about some of the earlier PC RPGs? What parts of the game are the most important to you? For me I’m all about story, so things like FMV are more important than just a nice “oooh” moment to show off flashy graphics. I think that is why the more linear track of FFX didn’t bother me. Baldur’s Gate completely overwhelmed me because they just threw it all out there and said here are 50 quests to choose from, knock you out.

Cam: The story and the characters are by far the most important thing to me, so yeah FMV’s are great. I remember I used to keep save points right before FMV’s I really liked, so I ended up having a memory card completely taken up by one or two games (this was pre-YouTube). I like a good amount of characters to pick from, if only because it adds depth to the story (not always, sometimes they feel like an afterthought), but not too many (like Chrono Cross). I can do fine with a linear track if the story is compelling enough, but I really appreciate an open world that I can roam around in and find hidden treasures. Those are the things that keep me playing RPG’s. Honestly, for me, battles and bosses are usually a secondary thing to other stuff.

Beau: Yeah the Baldur’s Gate series were a couple of my all-time favorite RPGs because of the customization and huge scope of the games. BG2 was especially great in the latter respect. Even though the FF series is good and is undoubtedly a RPG, I was always disappointed that it seemed more like you were acting out a pre-written script than really shaping your character’s personality and choices. But then again I didn’t play them that much, so maybe I just missed that.

The only downside to the open world idea in RPGs, for me, came in Morrowind, which was ridiculously large, but I felt gave you absolutely no clue wtf you were supposed to do. I felt like I was just wandering around with no objectives, and travel took so long that I quickly became bored and gave up. I liked that in the BG series (as well as Neverwinter Nights, another great RPG) you always have a pretty clear-cut set of quests you can follow.

Finally, I agree with Dustin that Suikoden was a great and unappreciated RPG. It had some awesome features that were pretty unique, like being able to add to your castle and recruit TONS of party members. That alone was really fun, but it also had an interesting paper-rock-scissors type of huge army battle. It was pretty primitive in retrospect, but even to this day the “big army battle” mechanic is pretty unique outside of the Total War games. You’d think that any game wherein something super evil was trying to take over a whole kingdom, there eventually hasto be a huge battle like in Lord of the Rings. Suikoden is one of the only games that actually let you play that part, as simple as it might have been.

Justin: FMVs are das bomb and all but I would like to point out Lost Odyssey. It was a pretty good game but what I found more involving were the 1000 years of dreams. These were short stories you found within the game. They were unlocked memories of the main character (an immortal that has lived for 1000 years). You basically read them off the screen but I found them incredibly powerful and moving. I normally don’t read a whole lot but some of these stories really provided a connection to the character.

And how could I forget NWN! That’s probably my favorite PC RPG. The 1st and 2nd ones had me totally addicted and it also provided me with endless entertainment when I made and participated in user created quests.

I never played Morrowind but I did clock in about 100 hours of Oblivion and you’re correct Cam having such an open world is great but it definitely detracts from the engagement of the main storyline. You sort of forget what’s going on and lose a bit of interest to the world and the characters.

Beau: Somehow I never got NWN 2 even though I absolutely loved the first one. If I had more time on my hands, I’d go out and buy it today. As it is, I should probably finish Bioshock, Batman, and about 10 other games before I go get a new extremely long game.

Justin: It’s one of the reasons I’m looking forward to Dragon Age: Origins

But now that we’ve all creamed ourselves with a good amount of Final Fantasy talk, does anyone else want to add anything?

Cam: Sonic still loves Tails even though he’s gay.

I couldn’t have ended it better. So what do you think? What’s your favorite RPG, is it something old school, western or eastern influenced, or one of the new heavy hitters like Fallout 3 or Mass Effect? Let us know in the comments below and come back every Friday for some more Cerebellum sizzling discussion.

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