People tell me I do too many negative reviews, and I can only agree.So I decided to make a list of ten games I liked in order to offset my Top Ten Worst RPGs of the Generation list.

10. Dragon Quest 8

Ah, the underdog series itself.I found myself addicted to the first one back in the day, plugging away at it for a few hours at a time until I finally got a high enough level to conquer the final dungeon.It wasn't until much later that I played 2, 3, 4, and 7, and aside from 2, none of them disappointed, offering lengthy quests, challenging puzzles and enemies and some pretty sweet music.

I was a little nonplussed when 8 was announced and suddenly all the Square fans who hated the series were suddenly jumping all over it; but then, slap Square's name on anything and it'll probably sell a trillion copies (see Unlimited SaGa if you don't believe me).Regardless, this may just be the best DQ yet; there's a whole ton to see and do in the game world, and the addition of celshaded graphics and voice acting only adds an extra punch to the package.You'll spend over a hundred hours on just the strictly required stuff, but it's an enjoyable time if you love old school RPGs as much as I do.

9. Grandia III

I haven't played a bad Grandia yet (aside from Xtreme), and the third is no exception.While the plot was a bit sloppy (notably because characters tend to appear out of nowhere or disappear entirely), it still had some great characterizations and one of the best combat systems in recent memory.Not only does it make the typical Grandia combat system a lot more fast-paced and frenetic, it adds in a new mechanic allowing enemies to be launched into the air with a well placed cancel attack.Once they're airborne, another character attacking them will result in a powerful combination attack that juggles them higher.Properly timed, you can continue said combo with all four characters and rack up massive damage.Canceling and Defending are also much more integral to this system, further adding to the tactical aspect of the game.A pity nobody played this one because Kingdom Hearts 2 came out shortly after it did.

8. Phantom Brave

I like the Nippon-Ichi strategy games; solid gameplay, plenty of sidequests and not afraid to have a sense of humor (while at the same time not overdoing it to the point of annoyance).A nice refresher from the doom-and-gloom stories that, ironically, seem to offer less and less gameplay with the advent of technology.

Anyway, of the ones I've played, Phantom Brave would have to be my favorite so far.Doing away with the grid-based gameplay of La Pucelle Tactics and Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, this game literally lets you roam freely across the board, with slippery and bouncy terrain factoring into how you travel across it; with a few short movements, one can move all the way across a slippery board, while in smaller arenas it can be easy to bounce right outof the board in areas with highly bouncy terrain.It also offers an interesting means of gaining new abilities for your characters - while they have an item equipped, they can use any skills that item offers.To keep them permanently, however, they must use a Fusionist to fuse with that item, and pay a Mana total to keep any skills on there they like.This also works in reverse, though - skills can be transferred to weapons by fusing a character into that weapon so that other characters can utilize it later.Weapons can also level up and learn new skills, though this requires a mana cost as well.

Other notable features include the Dungeon Monks, who generate random dungeons for you to tackle (handy for post-game level crunching), and Titles, which grant stat boosts and sometimes skills when equipped to characters; every character starts with a mundane one like "Plain" or "Lazy", but later on titles like "Great!" and "Love" appear, usually on items.If you bring these items back to your island, you can swap them over to other characters or items via a Titlist.So not only are leveling up your characters and weapons important, but affixing titles to them helps to make them even stronger.

Long story short, Phantom Brave seems to get a lot of undeserved flak for its slightly more serious story compared to other NIS games, which is a pity, as it's every bit as good as the other titles available.

7. Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door

The original N64 game wasn't an overly strong standing in the console's library, but man, what an improvement the Gamecube sequel is.Better puzzles, more humor, more complex combat mechanics, and much more challenge make it a lot of fun to play.Combat is driven largely by minigames, ranging from the simple timing-based hammer swings and jumps of Super Mario RPG to the highly amusing timing games of the Crystal Star powers you get; my personal favorite is one reminiscent of Scorched Earth, where small health and flower icons fall from the ceiling and you must throw stars at them to hit them; each one hit restores one HP or FP.Further adding to the fun are the "audience" system, which determines how much Star Power is restored each combat turn, and the "flair" attacks, which let you perform fancy maneuvers after an attack to appeal to the audience (and thus gain more Star Power).It's overly silly, but it's great fun.

6. Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean

Another one that's gotten much undeserved flak, Baten Kaitos even had me skeptical for a while.Once I sat down and played it, though, I found a unique and enjoyable experience.The card based combat system, unlike most games, isn't gimmicky or overly complex; it's easy to pick up and play, revolving
mainly around creating strings of matching or sequential numbers, but mastering its finer points in elements, card creation, status effects, and others is a challenge you can slowly ease into.

It also had some other unique facets.One of these was its time-based change system, in which key items and cards would change into other cards over time with varying effects.For instance, bananas (a healing item) would turn into rotten bananas (an attack item), a small flame would turn into a raging inferno (doing more damage) and later into burnt embers (useless), and a 'Fortune' item would randomly cycle between five different fortunes, each with varying effects.There were also some very creative dungeons, most especially the "mirror maze", where you must figure out your character's position and the position of the exit while the screen is broken up into several small "fragments", each with a different camera eye view of the room.

My only real qualm with the game was that it starts to drag near the end, especially when each combat turn can take upwards of thirty seconds once your characters gain the ability to do longer comboes.The plot also hits a bit of a slow point; it just seems like a few of the later dungeons were thrown in just to add more length. Aside from that though, it comes highly recommended.


5. Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne

Wow.Not only is this game Digital Devil Saga's polar opposite, it's even on the
same system.This statement bears a bit of explanation, though, so you know where I'm coming from on this.

For those not in the know, Megami Tensei's a long-running RPG series, generally revolving around demons (a blanket term for any mythological monster - angels, spirits, monsters, etc. are all called "demons") entering into our world, and the consequences of their appearances.Recruiting these demons is also an integral part of gameplay, as your human characters are relatively weak in comparison.However, the catch is that while your human characters can gradually power up throughout the game, demons cannot - their abilities and levels are fixed.You can, however, fuse them together via the Dark Cathedrals to get newer (and hopefully stronger) demon types.

Nocturne expands further on this gameplay formula by making demons not only able to level up (and transform into new forms at certain stages), but by allowing them to carry over spells or skills to other demons they fuse with.In short, demons are highly customizable in this game.Not content with just making it a cool feature for power-gaming, though, Atlus actually made it an important part of the game's strategy - it's almost mandatory that you fuse demons well to keep up with the game's highly challenging enemies and bosses, or you'll quickly get your ass handed to you.

More notable, however, is that the game puts you in the role of a demon!While you can't fuse with other demons, you can earn new abilities through the use of "Magatama", little insect-like demons which, when ingested, grant resistances, weaknesses or immunities to certain elements and status effects.When your character levels up with certain Magatama equipped, they may also grant him new spells or stat boosts.Again, another aspect of the game's high customizability - if you want a character who's strong with a particular element, go ahead and equip him with Magatama that boost magic and grant spells of that type.Want a physical powerhouse?Get HP and Strength-boosters.And so on, and so forth.There are countless ways to configure your character, which gives the game considerable replay value.Not to mention that there are six different endings.

So not only is the gameplay much deeper and more strategy oriented than DDS, it's also got a great demon system, multiple paths and endings, and an intriguing story comfortable enough in its dark setting that it doesn't have to stop every five minutes to point out how TWISTED and EDGY it is.There's also plenty of challenge to go around, which I'm seeing a lot less of in the genre these days.

4. Dark Cloud 2

Something of a cross between Zelda and Actraiser, Dark Cloud 2 has you dungeon-diving for various items you need to construct villages and cities, and then entering the Georama system to actually get to building them.As the towns get rebuilt, you can also hop 100 years into the future to see how they turn out, and collect items to power up your weapons and characters.

It's an interesting gameplay system in itself, but there's a whole lot more to the game too.There are a slew of minigames for you to partake in; Spheeda (golf, basically), fishing, meeting time goals on each dungeon floor, and customizing a ridable steampunk robot for taking out bosses and other tough enemies are all major features, and all are fun to play; there's just as much to do on the optional side as on the strictly required side, if not moreso.Plus hell, it's all just plain fun.The only things I dislike are the voice acting (it's terrible) and the fact that if you die in a dungeon, you lose all progress made since your last save (usually a while in my case), which was not the case in Dark Cloud 1.Though they did fix the aggrivating system of having broken weapons disappear forever in this game, so I guess that's a fair tradeoff.Like Dragon Quest (which it bears a strong resemblance to visually) it's an extremely long game, but you'll enjoy every minute of it.

3. Shadow Hearts: Covenant

The first Shadow HEarts game surprised me: I'd all but given up on there being any quality RPG titles on the Playstation 2, but it turned out to have some decent characters, story, and gameplay; it was no masterpiece, but it was definitely a lot better than the RPGs that preceded it.

Covenant is where the series stands its strongest, though.Using a Final Fantasy 6-styled method of character abilities, each character has their own unique skills, and can equip varying amounts of "Crests" that grant them spells.Unique skills are also gathered through varying means for each character - Yuri's fusion forms are gained by gathering "Malice" of the six elements and activating gravestones in the Graveyard of Souls, Anastasia's Summons are earned by snapping pictures of certain monsters, Blanca's Manifestations are earned by beating wolves in the Wolf Bout, and so on.

A couple other features of note are the game's numerous sidequests, which range from mini-games to optional dungeons to said skill-gathering ventures.There's almost always something new to do after every major story event, so it pays to backtrack and explore around town for any new happenings.The game also allows free travel; there are almost no instances of areas that become closed off once you leave them (and even the few that exist don't have any deathly important Crests or skills).The plot is also a well-integrated continuation of the first game's, though it's unfortunate that they decided to continue it from the "bad" ending of the first title.

2. Final Fantasy XII

A pleasant surprise, to say the least; this was far and away the best of the series since VII.A great story, well written believable characters, a huge and very explorable game world, and plenty of sidequests all contributed to making it a highly enjoyable game.The gambit system was also a lot less gimmicky than the last few attempts at implementing twists on the old leveling scheme; it couldn't be easily abused to max out your stats and blaze through the game in six hours.Last but not least, the customizable Gambit system also made combat management a lot more efficient than having to cycle through menus constantly, and also negated my fears of awful party AI (something I find Square to be infamous for - see the first Kingdom Hearts or any of the Mana games).Just a solid, well-done game in every respect; the only thing I didn't like was its rather dull and repetitive soundtrack.

1. Suikoden V

I'll be the first to admit I didn't like 3; the gameplay just deviated from the formula too much and made way too many unnecessary changes to the combat system.Not to mention that the story had some pretty bad pacing problems.4 also suffered from being overly dry and lacking in challenge, and Tactics, while good, was just too short.

Suikoden 5, however, sets the series back on track.The pacing is much better, the overall plot has a surprising amount of depth and some great twists, and the gameplay returns to the formula set by Suikoden 2, adding in some of the better features of 3 (notably Formations) and some new ones of its own (getting special abilities from characters
in your convoy).Not to mention that the characterizations are some of the best I've seen in any game; each contributes something to the overall story in their own way, and few fall into the typical RPG archetypes; for each one of those there's three more colorful personalities.It's a great war epic, and it's easily my favorite RPG of the generation.

- Spoony Spoonicus <- 12:55:37 am, wednesday, october 24th, 2007 pdt <- (updated 10:34:31 pm, fri, jun 27th, 2008 pdt)
- Shyna El Mensajero <- 10:58:18 pm, wednesday, may 14th, 2008 pdt
- Spoony Spoonicus <- 11:12:13 pm, wednesday, may 14th, 2008 pdt
- Spoony Spoonicus <- 10:23:39 pm, friday, june 27th, 2008 pdt <- (updated 10:29:13 pm, fri, jun 27th, 2008 pdt)