Overall, Final Fantasy VIII. Gorgeous graphics for the time, a simply beautiful and well-woven plot, a serious attempt at actually injecting some new life into the series' aging ATB system, and one of the best damned minigame diversions ever, in the form of Triple Triad. On the gameplay front, though, I have to give it to Tales of Eternia (aka Tales of Destiny 2). It took the Linear Motion Battle system introduced in Tales of Phantasia and made it absolutely freakin' perfect. It's one of those games where random battles aren't annoying because you seriously want to get into as many freakin' fights as you can, the battle system is so fun. They did an amazing job of the game balance, making every fight a potential challenge, and yet not making them feel like a chore. The boss fights are simply amazing, with each unique boss having their own distinct fighting style, forcing you to develop new strategies on the fly, and simply marveling at how much substance the battle system can provide. To top it off, it's got a ridiculous amount of minigames, most of them good. It's probably the most "playable" RPG in existence. The only reason it's not the best ever is it's rather run-of-the-mill story. It's not overly cliched or anything, it's just not the epic weaving of plot that, say, Final Fantasy or Xenogears are.
Great deep plot, but the second disk drags it down for me, especially with that one stupidly powerful boss. She probably wouldn't have been so bad if there had been a dungeon or two to use to level up beforehand though. Mostly though the walls of text on the second disk keep it from being a favourite.
Knights of the Old Republic and Oblivion. Don't really play a lot of RPG's, and with those I have played, these two stand out for me.
In no particular order- Neverwinter Nights Final Fantasy IV & VI World of Warcraft Dragon Warrior Secret of Mana Oblivion As far as tabletop goes D&D 3.0/3.5 The Western one where you get to use cards&Poker Chips, the name eludes me.
Lunar is my all time Fav. Of cource the greats like Chrono Trigger, FF3, FF7, Breathe of Fire. Secret of Mana.
In no order: Pokemon: Red/Blue/Gold/Silver/Saphire/Ruby/Fire Red/Leaf Green/Emerald Chrono Trigger Final Fantasy IV Final Fantasy VI Final Fantasy VII Final Fantasy IX Final Fantasy X Secret of Mana
The entire Final Fantasy series, except XI. I think FF IV is my favorite. Xenogears Lunar Secret of Mana Chrono Trigger Breath of Fire 1 & 2 Suikoden 1 & 2 Earthbound Xenosaga, even though I have no idea what the hell happened in that series. Lufia King's Field 1 & 2 - I usually hate FP games Shining Force The Grandia series, especially 2 on the Dreamcast. Crystalis Some of the tales games (Symphonia, Legendia). Others that I remember enjoying, but don't really recall them well enough to say that they are good: Lagoon Legend of Gaia(sp?) Y's 3 Faxanadu RPG's I'm looking forward to or still need to play: Blue Dragon FF XII Rogue Galaxy Tales of the Abyss Unfortunate trend in RPGs today is that most of them now seem to take 3 to 5 hours before ANYTHING remotely interesting starts to happen. Too much wondering around doing lame crap to start games off.
Yeah, I know what you mean. What some of them could do with is a flash-forward or something to show an exciting part then an extended recap to explain how things got to that stage. I've played with an idea like that for Steelknight, though instead I just moved the timeline of some events a little to start you in the middle of a dungeon.
What computer and console RPG developers need to remember is that the gameplay needs to be at least as exciting as the story. A lot of modern RPG designers get caught up in trying to tell a great story, but a great game needs to be great with or without the plot. Otherwise, they might as well take up writing novels. If the story "development" takes away from the fun of the game, it's time to abridge the story.
That reminds me, they need to release Earthbound on the VC, and then actually bring the GBA version out too.
In no particular order: Final Fantasy VI Final Fantasy IV Evolution 1 and 2 Dragon Warrior Chrono Trigger and Cross Lunar Silver Star Story and I will probably get flamed for this one, but I played the hell out of some FFX
i only ever finished final fantasy 7 on the ps1. i loved that game. i played X on the ps2, but never quite finished it though. got quite near the end i think. also i loved that Wakka was voiced by Bender.