Okay, so this is something I've been wondering. And since I prefer this forum over every single other forum I've ever used, I thought I'd pose a poll: Which RPG series is your favorite? And why? What makes it better than all the rest in your opinion. What would draw a veteran RPG player to this series rather than another series.

My personal favorite: Final Fantasy. It's honestly a tough choice nowadays though, because I've also fallen in love with Dragon Quest. But the Final Fantasy series is pretty much a part of me. Final Fantasy VII was the first RPG I ever liked. I still remember being a little kid content with just flying around in the Airship and (at the time) wondering what in the world Cait Sith was.

But it's not my favorite Final Fantasy game anymore. That is Final Fantasy X. The world felt so vibrant, so alive. The religion aspect was done incredibly well. The score was absolutely AMAZING! Nobuo did have help, but the man is a genius when it comes to composing music.

For the longest time, I couldn't even play another RPG series though. Final Fantasy had pretty much ruined every other series for me. It's only recently that I've expanded. But so far the only traditional RPG I've beaten outside of Final Fantasy is Dragon Quest 1. (I've played almost all the Dragon Quest games, and I swear I'll beat them all one of these days.)

So, now I had the mic to you all.

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Slava Ukraini!

Hah,

You know, when I see 'traditional RPGs', I think of Dungeons and Dragons, Paladium Games, White Wolf, Warhammer Fantasy, GURPS/Steve Jackson, HERO gaming, Talislanta, Marvel RPG, and all the other pen and paper, roll the dice and call your friends cheaters RPGs of my youth.

Really, most Japanese RPG games (JRPG in the lingo) have little resemblance to what I think of as roleplaying, but that's neither here nor there.

The DQ series is immensly popular, and vastly under rated, in my opinion.

The older FFs also, by the by, 5 and 6 to be particular, are amazingly well done, and if they're not as graphically immersive, I still find them to be better written than FF7+.

The Legend of Mana series is quite well done, and has some early actiony elements in some of the games, giving the combat a slightly more immediate feel than FF, where I used to set the control to remember my last menu choice, and just wandered around, and held down the button in combat.

Still, the best RPGs in my mind are all Bioware. From the old Republic games, to jade Empire, you got to see their conversation and 'morality' systems evolve. Mass Effect has been the best jedi story never to have the word 'jedi' written in it, the choices you have to make are interesting and gripping, and the world is huge and interesting to explore. The first dragon age was quite frankly one of the best PC RPGs in ages.. true, they don't come from japan, their combat system isn't turn based, and in Mass Effect 2, the lack of inventory and truncated skill set made it feel more like a shooter with RPG tacked on, than an RPG with a shooter tacked on.. but Bioware is putting out some of the best RPG stories on the market these days.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what they do with their Old Republic MMO.

But, I'm derailing a bit, so, in closing, let me say, FF is great, but some of the games are a bit over rated, DQ is wonderful, and usually not paid enough attention to, and Mana is a very fun experience.

I agree with the first 1.5 sentences, lol. KOTOR was great, but it was near the last in the line of "great" RPGs. The pinnacle of Western RPGs is almost certainly Baldur's Gate 2. Just in terms of sheer epicness. Hundreds of hours. Lost most of a semester at college to it. (A close 2nd is Torment. Not nearly as long, but probably my favorite story in any RPG).

Jade Empire was okay. Not great, but decent. I give them some slack for it being their first(?) really 3D title.

Mass Effect is "meh". Playable and fun for a bit but the consensus at my work is that it's just sort of boring gameplay wise after a while and there are a few immersion breaking plot holes. It's polished and the set pieces and voice acting are nice, but in the end it's just a really well garnished turd sandwich.

Dragon age is... terrible. I don't throw that word around a lot, but it just is. I tried playing it. I really did. Spent maybe 10 hours. But it's just not fun at all.

No, the title for "greatest western RPG developer" is clearly belonging to Bethesda right now. Morrowind? Solid. Oblivion? Solid. Fallout 3? Solid. Their games have a few issues I really take issue with (the lighting model makes everything look like plastic. Characters just sort of stare at you dumbly when you talk to em. Leveling is always weird in Bethesda games, with the possible exception of Fallout 3. Gravity is always super floaty and the physics is sorta weird), but at the end of the day I still lose 100s of hours of my life to Bethesda games. They're just fun. That is not true of any other modern RPG I can think of.

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1k KGS

Looks like everyone is mentioning some good series. Final Fantasy will always hold a place in my heart. To be different though, I will have to mention the Suikoden series. They were pretty good. I really liked the having your own base feature. And the large scale battles were kind of fun as well later on.

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I'm thinking...

I'm pretty sure I'm the only Asian in the entire Pacific NW who hasn't touched the FF series.

Anyways, regarding OP's question, I'll give it to Pokemon (R/B) .

The best RPG I ever played is with no doubt Phantasy Star 2. It's an old one now, old graphics, old battle system, but its story is certainly still among the best one. I'd really like the PS2 remix to be translated.

I think I'm older than most of you...

More commonly played comes Final Fantasy 6, the best from the episodes I played (I played from episode 4 to 8, this last bored me to death).

Nethack! It's almost a sandbox game in its openness and unpredictability, but that same randomness can lead to brutal difficulty. Just a few examples:

1) A cockatrice can turn you to stone of course, but if you kill it, you can put on a pair of gloves and wield it like a rubber chicken, turning everything you hit to stone. Just don't ever fall down the stairs...

2) Credit cards can be used to open locked doors; the Platinum Yendorian Express Card can also be used to charge wands. (in other puns, a cursed potion of gain level teleports you up a level in the dungeon).

3) You can dip things into potions (e.g. dip an arrow into a potion of poison for poison-tipped arrows). If you try to dip a potion into itself, you get "This is a potion bottle, not a Klein Bottle!" Mixing acid and water causes a chemical reaction, mixing water with other potions dilutes the potions, and there's also sorts of alchemy to create potions.

Not to mention the unique challenges from battling leprechauns, nymphs, wumpuses, unicorns, quantum mechanics, jabberwocks, Medusa, Balrogs, Kraken, succubi...

Well, it may sound odd, but western RPGs have never held my interest for long. And I have tried them. They just feel bland to me. I don't like the majority of western art style.

Then again, this is coming from someone whose favorite gaming company is Nintendo. I grew up with Nintendo and Sega. And Playstation. And, at least in terms of RPGs, I grew up around the Japanese style of games.

Games like: Fallout, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, ect. don't interest me at all. I'd be much more enticed by games like: Pokemon Black and White, The Last Story, Dragon Quest X, Pandora's Tower, etc.

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Slava Ukraini!

Have you player Fallout?

Second both of these. The first Baldur's Gate is also good but somehow didn't feel quite as focused to me. More wandering around in wilderness maps hoping to stumble across the one or two interesting spots. Bioware then lost the plot somewhat with Neverwinter Nights as far as I was concerned.

Recently, I've picked up The Witcher (the first part) from http://gog.com and rather enjoyed that. Hadn't heard of it before the hype for its sequel, but it turned out to be a hidden gem. I'd rate it somewhere in between Baldur's Gate I and II.

Yes, I tried it. It's not for me. I've seen/tried all the games I listed, and I didn't enjoy them very much.

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Slava Ukraini!

The original, 1997, Fallout?

Yes. And it just wasn't for me. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. But me growing up, especially in 1997, I was too busy enjoying Final Fantasy VII. As a 7 year old at the time, it was a bit too complicated for me, but I enjoyed flying around in the airship on my uncle's saved file.

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Slava Ukraini!

While I grew up with turnbased JRPGs, I really can't stand them anymore (well, maybe in very small doses).

I much prefer action RPGs. Phantasy Star Online Episode 1 & 2 (for the Gamecube) is my absolute favorite RPG ever, and is probably the reason I can't stand turnbased games as much anymore.

But, looking back at some of my favorite classics:

FF 2,3,5,6 (all Japanese numbering, and preferably not the watered down remakes)
Chrono Trigger (still haven't tried Crosss)
Star Ocean 1-2 (I haven't played 3 [no ps2, and my ps3 sadly is not backwards compatible], and 4, while fun to play, has absolutely horrible characters and story--it actually makes me want to lobotomize myself)
I'm glad someone mentioned Nethack--roguelikes are so amazing! My favorite roguelike is ToME (Troubles of Middle Earth).

For me, Fallout comes a clear first and Baldur's Gate II a clear second, as benchmark's for the genre. I've really enjoyed plenty of "good" ones (inc. Fallout 2, Baldur's Gate I, KotOR, KotOR 2, NWN, Icewind Dale etc), and plenty of FP/RPG games (Oblivion, Fallout 3 etc), but I've never really played DQ, FF, nor had the time recently for Dragon Age or Mass Effect, so I can't comment on the last ones.

When I do play, I tend to play roguelikes (Angband, ADOM, Nethack, Crawl etc) or Hack'n'Slashes (Diablo II, Dungeon Siege II etc) as I can pick up and drop them without feeling like I had to "get back into them" somewhere in the middle.

Actually, a lot of my spare time when it appears these days goes on Minecraft and Terraria, but they aren't really RPGs of any sort

Ya know, I think I'm gonna give Fallout another chance. I'm not really playing anything at the moment anyway. Except trying to convince myself to finally beat DQ8. I have 50+ hours in that game, after all. But I think I got burnt out on it after playing it for 10 hours straight on three different occasions.

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Slava Ukraini!

+1 to Nethack. Liked all the FFs I've played but find the stories kind of lacking. Fire Emblem games are good and HARD for a turn based JRPG (main feature: when a character dies, that's it for him. No Phoenix Down here, people).

Played at lot of D&D and wanted to play a lot of GURPS, but the timing didn't pan out. Just finished my 1st round in Valkyrie Profile for DS. I need to try more endings though (encouraged in this game...).

But obviously I don't spend much time with these things...


Bruce "Yet Another Stupid Dungeon" Young

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Currently reading: Plutarch, Cerebus, and D&Q 25th Anniversary

I was a huge Final Fantasy fan. I played 1 and 7 a dozen times each and then everything through 9 (I never owned or finished 9, sadly). Ever since, I've wanted to buy a PS2 or PS3 and play the more recent editions.

Dragon Warrior, I played but found to be a real grind, at least for the first three or four editions.

I'm a terrible RPG fan: I played Baldur's gate at a friend's house, played Fallout but never got into it.

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Occupy Babel!

I forgot Xenogears, a strange, but sometimes really enjoyable thing...

I worked through that game over 10 years. I loved it, and it's a shame they couldn't really finish it.