Covering my bases — Favorite 5 RPGs

I said I wanted to write more about games, and write more I shall.

It’s no secret that I’m fond of RPG video games. From my very first, The Bard’s Tale on the NES, to my endless trek through Dragon’s Quest IX and hoping on the Operation Rainfall wagon, this genre has been a driving force in which consoles (and sometimes handhelds) I prioritized buying.

Listed in this post are five of my most favorite RPGs. Some have been very fun to play, some have been well crafted, some have had poignant stories and others had the right blend of special stuff at the right point in my life to worm their way on to my good side.

For variety’s sake, I am banning Pokemon and Final Fantasy games from this list due to my belief I have paid too little attention to RPGs that are not of those series. I will also not include tactical, adventure- and action-RPGs as well as games touted for “RPG elements.”

… though I may find myself replaying Final Fantasy VII thanks to Joseph’s tweets about his current trek through the game. I might grab the PC version and tool around with its many mods to bring something fresh to the experience.

In any case, we’ll start this off fresh with a system I’ve rarely — if ever — mentioned on this blog: the Sega Genesis.

5. Phantasy Star IV — Sega Genesis

This game has some of my favorite RPG music outside of Nobuo Uematsu. It doesn’t hold it back, either, shoving out one of the soundtrack’s most bitchin’ tunes right on the title screen.

There are few RPGs of note on the Genesis. I tried playing Phantasy Star II long before I found the final not-Online entry in the series, but at the time I played it, II‘s edges were far to rough to enjoy. IV has aged fare more gracefully and I can continue to recommend it to this day.

One of the reasons why it has aged well is the simple difference in intra-generation technology. Phantasy Star IV could take advantage of improved memory, better color pallets and sound simply by being one of the later comers to the Sega party instead of one of the first. The graphical superiority plays out well in the game’s cutscenes, which progress with pop-up window after pop-up window of manga-like images, allowing for a far more dramatic presentation than what the in-game sprites were capable of. It served as a precursor of the cgi-laden RPGs that would come in the PlayStation era.

The story keeps you moving and wastes little time getting started (a sin that nowadays even the best RPGs feels is mandatory). There’s little filler to be found, and the adventure takes your intrepid hero to a wide variety of locations with some wildly different party members. The music and story stay sharp throughout, and by the end of the game you’ll have seen so many cutscene panels you’ll wonder how they could all fit within the bounds of an old cartridge.

4. (tie) Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete/Eternal Blue Complete — PlayStation

While Working Designs’ amazing bonus packaging does not count for the purposes of this list, know that I wore the pendant included with Lunar 2 for nearly a decade.

While I gushed about Studio Alex’s hopeful and endearing takes on RPGs when mentioning Grandia 3 in the PlayStation 2 retrospective, Lunar was my first introduction to their uplifting style, and the PlayStation re-releases of the Sega CD classics remain close to my heart.

At a time when my teenage existentialism was at its height, the Lunar games helped ground me in less needy and more optimistic worldviews. Fantastic (yet somehow natural-feeling) love stories with the fate of the world hanging in the balance, only to be saved by the scrappy young warrior who never seemed like a natural hero and had to work hard to do it. The Lunar stories, when distilled to their most basic details, sound like generic RPG dreck. And yet, even with gratuitous references to Wheaties, the story rises above such simple ideas without compromising their simplicity.

It really is the feel of the game and the story that connects me with the first game. The sequel refines the sometimes overly punishing difficulty and clunky mechanics of the first.

Lunar was a gulp of fresh air after the angsty buckets that were Final Fantasy VII and Chrono Cross (and man, you’ve NEVER played an angsty RPG until you’ve played, and beat, Chrono Cross). The simple, yet powerful mythology, fantasy setting, idealized story and musical numbers (more expertly used than in Rhapsody, which managed to wear out its own joke very quickly) was just the shot of hope an impressionable stupid teenager needed to get over a slight case of misanthropy.

3. Persona 3: FES — PlayStation 2

While I don’t normally get excited for dungeon-crawls, Persona 3’s strange triple identity (RPG, monster collector, sim) hooked me to the point I kept on playing it late into the night. It was the first time I had ever kept a GameFly rental for weeks before realizing I could just go out and buy my own copy to have forever and ever and just be sent a new game already.

I must admit, most of the addictive properties came from the gameplay’s similarity to a zillion flash games of ill repute I saw on Newgrounds. You’re welcome for that thought. However, Persona 3‘s RPG/Monster collecting wrapper made the sim experience much more rewarding by tying it into the other two parts of the game. Upgrading my Social Links only encouraged frenzied persona “breeding” with the fruits of that labor bearing out in the game’s tall dungeon.

While I hear Persona 4 iterated and improved on just about every aspect of this game, I did not list it because I have yet to sit down and start playing it.

2. Earthbound — SNES

Earthbound is a very special RPG, and a very special game in general. No other game, expect for its predecessor and successor, is quite like it.

Earthbound can be difficult to explain to those who rarely get behind a cult classic. Even its fans find it difficult to explain just what it is that makes the Mother series the Mother series.

A lot of people take the easy road out and just say it’s funny. But there’s nothing funny about the nature of Giygas, the creepiest final boss ever created, or the lengths our young heroes go to stop him.

Earthbound‘s a cutesy graphics style and constant joking is simply the dressing of a rather desperate and mournful story where even its slapstick has dire consequences. If you have heartstrings to pull, they’ll be given an expert yank as soon as you catch on. The game’s amazingly atmospheric and evocative soundtrack will do its best to help you get there even when the story is trying to play coy.

As an RPG, the presentation is rather simplistic for its time, but works capably and has a few special tricks up its sleeves, like the way the visible enemies will queue for a battle.

The game likes to use its mechanics lampshade various RPG tropes and a lot of attention has been paid to all its fine details, including the most evil copy protection bug ever devised.

1. Chrono Trigger — DS

While Persona 3 had boundless clever mechanics, while Earthbound had and amazing and unique heart, while Phantasy Star IV had it’s many twist and turns and groundbreaking ways to move the story along, all of these games fall short of the most memorable and best balanced RPG ever created.

The dream team of Squaresoft, Enix and Dragonball Z produced something both legendary and timeless, the (tradional RPG’s) high water mark and basic template all future games should look back to.

Chrono Trigger Had the right mix of playable characters. It had the player make decisions that could impact the course of the game, and not just through the story’s time travel. Its way of dealing with “random” encounters was revolutionary for its day, and the simple tweak of the dual and triple techs made the battle system feel far deeper tan it really was.

Everybody complained about Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XIII being linear. Chrono Trigger to (ironically), but you spend so much time jumping from setting to setting and opening up new areas in old settings, you forget that there is no way to deviate from the story at all until the game gives you a handful of sidequests at the very end.

Chrono Trigger brought us the New Game+. It brought us a dozen endings long before advanced Western-style RPGs championed offering both a “nice guy” and “mean guy” ending.

In all ways, this game establishes the “Goldilocks Zone” of RPGs. After spending 120 hours on Final Fantasy XII, I wondered if I would ever play it again due to its time investment. Chrono Trigger I have played through at least three times since then, as it only requires 20-30 hours a playthrough with nary a wasted second.

Honorable Mentions: Suikoden 1 & 2, Xenogears, Dragon Quest III, Dragon Quest IX, Grandia 1-3