We chat about videogames and videogame accessories.

I just realized I didn't mention the music in the Atelier games; it's great. I'm not sure offhand if there's a single composer or a sound team, I meant to look into that but couldn't find the information easily. I guess I could beat one of the games again and look at the credits carefully.

Anyways, I'll take a crack at this list. If I don't mention something, I haven't played it.

Arc The Lad Collection

I played through the first game and started on the second. The first game is short but fun (but would be super-disappointing if the sequel wasn't packed right in), nothing amazing though.

Second game's also good from what I played of it. Opinions from a friend of mine who's played more of it than I have: the battles are lacking in variety, and most attacks on both sides either miss or get guarded and do about 10% of expected damage.

Also it's super-breakable with the help of the included Arc Arena disc, which basically lets you transfer items from one save to another... or from one save to a copy of the same save.

Star Ocean: Second Story

This hasn't aged particularly well. It's most notable for being the first game to be released outside of Japan with an extensive item creation system, which is now pretty much a staple of RPGs. But the system isn't very exciting; basically you use a skill and you can get an item, but in general what item you get is random. (Not to the point of complete unpredictability, but it just doesn't work out well in general.)

Also notable for the fact that you can get any two characters together in an ending, though as I recall only male-female pairings had any actual romantic elements.

Tales Of Symphonia

I have this weird pattern with Tales games where I play them for a while and then stop and never get to the ending. The only one I've beaten is Phantasia, which I've actually done twice, even though I don't care for that particular game once. I think it has to do with the fact that the ones I played never seemed to have a good guide focused on getting as much as possible in one playthrough - not that I wanted to go for that in my first playthrough, but rather that it's something I'd like to have for replays. Maybe that's just me.
Anyways, I liked what I played of this, but the story wasn't particularly good - from what I saw it looked like a worse, less subtle version of FF10. I was kind of interested in seeing how it would end up differing, but I just ended up putting the game down after a while.

Final Fantasy Tactics

This was my all-time favorite game for years. I played through it more times than I can remember. The class system is incredibly flexible, the battles are challenging if you don't grind, but if you do feel like powergaming it's not too tough to do so. There's a lot of freedom to play the game the way you want to play it, and a lot you can do. I once did a run where I stole every item from every possible boss enemy, and it was a blast.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

I didn't play this as much. Thought it was fun, but not as good as the original. I think I felt intimidated by how much trouble it was to get everything and that was a bit of a turnoff. Also, much easier to break than the original (which already had lots of overpowered stuff if you knew what it was).

Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire Of The Rift

I liked this better than Tactics Advance, probably because the laws didn't feel as intrusive. They were basically an extra challenge; if you followed them, you'd get a bonus applied to your party, while if you disobeyed them, you wouldn't be able to revive characters.
Still didn't finish it, but I did like what I played. Again, pretty easy on the whole.

Riviera: The Promised Land

I only played this briefly. I had some fun working out how to S-Rank each battle to get the maximum points for navigating the maps, but found it kind of awkward in general. Might have enjoyed it if I got into it.

Yggdra Union: We'll Never Fight Alone

I tried the first few battles on this and mostly found it confusing. This was a while ago, so I don't remember much more than that.

The Shining Force series

I played the first game and a little of the second, and the GBA remake.
I like it! It's like a more polished Fire Emblem, without breakable weapons and with goofier classes. (There's an armadillo guy in a steamsuit, an old man in a wingsuit, and a flying squid, among others.) You can also explore towns and other areas outside of battles, which is pretty rare as strategy-RPGs go.

Nippon Ichi

This is interesting because it gets into something about strategy-RPGs as a genre. In theory, I like them, but they tend to fall into one of two categories:
-Really generic (Fire Emblem, various clones, Shining Force kind of but I like the flavor enough to go with it)
-Really weird gameplay systems (which is mainly Nippon Ichi, but also some niche stuff published by Atlus)
I'm not saying I wouldn't enjoy either of those, but I tend to find it hard to get into them and so I don't usually have an opinion. This applies to most Nippon Ichi stuff I played. I finished Disgaea, of course, and made it to the last battle of 2, but I've only briefly tried out their other games.

Knights in the Nightmare

Played the intro battle on this. Falls into the "really weird gameplay system" side of things I mentioned above, so I didn't play far enough to get an opinion beyond that.

Radiant Historia

I love this game.

The concept of jumping between the timelines (or going back in time to replay a section) is great, though they could have done more with it. A lot of the branches are just bad endings, and I feel like they could have done more with those in general (though I still liked the process of tracking them down). Still, lots of really good stuff and I enjoyed the story a lot.

Gameplay is solid, too. You have a three-by-three grid for the enemies, and they can move around on it; your characters also have lots of moves for pushing the enemies around on the grid (or into each other so your next attack can hit two or three or even more at once).

Plus you can mess with the turn order. You can switch with another party member, or you can switch with an enemy, giving them an immediate turn but giving you a chance to set up for a big combo. Switching lowers that character's defense until they next take a turn, though. And you get a move that lets you remove an enemy from the turn order entirely.

If you don't grind, the game's challenging but generally fair. Really well-done overall and I highly recommend it.

Breath Of Fire III

Another game I played through a lot back in the day.

This is a pretty straightforward RPG as far as basic gameplay goes. But skill-hunting and the dragon transformation system are pretty fun, and there's quite a bit to do with the Fairy Village. I also liked the various tasks the Masters ask you to do in order to apprentice under them - they teach you skills and affect your stat growths on level up.

There's also some neat stuff where using certain attacks on enemies can make them use different skills (some of which are learnable) or drop different items, or give more Exp. That was expanded on in Breath of Fire 4, and the general gameplay was improved, but the overall atmosphere of the game felt weaker. Plus they took out the most fun parts of dragon transformation. If you only play one of the two, I'd recommend 3.

Threads Of Fate

This was a really fun little game, I really liked it. This and Brave Fencer Musashi are actually sort-of precursors to the first Kingdom Hearts, gameplay-wise; they're less similar to that game than they are to each other, but there are some subtler elements that are still present in KH.

The high point of this game is Mint, the female protagonist. She's a spoiled princess who was exiled by her sister, and her motivation for her quest is that she wants to take over the world. There are some particularly funny moments in her quest. Rue, the shapeshifting male protagonist, has a more generic quest and is much more boring on the whole. (Though turning into monsters is still pretty fun, if sadly limited - he can only hold transformations from the last four monsters he killed, as opposed to Mint who keeps all the magic she earns permanently, and even carries it over on a New Game+.)

Valkyrie Profile

I played the introductory scenario on the PSP version. Not long enough to form a strong opinion on it. I'm only mentioning this because I've played it at all.

Hexyz Force

I only played this a little, it felt pretty generic. Can't remember any unusual twists to the gameplay, although maybe I just didn't get far enough to. I wasn't particularly impressed by what I saw of the story, either. Well, okay, I kind of wanted to know what was up with the king on one character's quest, but I figured it was probably going to just be mind control.

That's about it; I have Gungnir lying around and could actually try that out, as well as maybe refresh my memory on some of the others that I barely remember.

While I'm at it, I may as well note some other RPGs I feel are noteworthy.

Tactics Ogre

Also of note is Tactics Ogre, the precursor to Final Fantasy Tactics (and the sequel to the game I got my nickname from). There are two versions: the original Super Famicom one (ported to PSX and translated by Atlus) and the more recent PSP/Playstation Network one, which is basically a total overhaul - story's mostly the same (there are new aspects to it, though!) and gameplay's had some significant changes, though the basics of actual battles aren't that different.

The original version is a lot like Final Fantasy Tactics, but without customization to the class system. You can change classes, but you can't really transfer anything between them other than stat gains on level-up. Worth noting, there are no equipment restrictions on classes; but some classes do better with certain weapons. I should note that, the last I checked, the PSX version was fairly rare and expensive; I was lucky enough to buy it when it came out.

The PSP remake is a little odd. You level up classes individually, and any character who you change into that class will be at that level. But they also have individual stats, which tend to matter more (at least later on). It also has a skill system, making characters more customizable than in the original - though there are now equipment restrictions on the classes, and you need to be at a high enough level to wear equipment, or use spells or skills.

The game has a branching story, and the PSP version lets you go back to replay the different branches once you've beaten the game, which is a neat feature. I find both versions to be good in different ways, but on the whole the PSP version is better.

Legend of Legaia

I don't know if this would be your kind of game specifically, but I thought it did a great job with the overall atmosphere of the setting. The basic plot: Humans rely on magical creatures called Seru. About ten years before the game began, a mist descended upon the world and it turned the Seru against humans.

The end result is a very bleak world, and there are some creepy moments later on. But there's also a lot of optimism in the towns that you free from the mist. (There's also a fairly wide variety of ways that towns deal with the mist, which is cool.) I replayed it a few years ago and was struck by just how depressing it is even at the beginning.

Graphics aren't that impressive, they're pretty blocky both in and out of battle. Still pretty stylistic within that framework, though. Also, the in-battle models actually change based on what armor you equip - which they managed by not having that much armor in the game.

The battles are turn-based but with a gimmick that you enter Up, Left, Right, Down for your attacks, and certain combinations produce special attacks. You also have a chance to gain spells by defeating Seru in random battles, though this is a bit annoying because all the spells are summon-style. (And this was before skipping animations became the norm.)

I thought you might at least be interested in the storytelling and atmosphere side of it, whatever you think of the other aspects. Maybe look at some early videos and see what you think.

Wow, that was a long post. Well, hopefully you (and other people) found it interesting and informative.