NeoGAF's Essential RPGs 2016 Edition - Voting open until January 15th-

JD_Lars said:
Final Fantasy X over IX? What a tragedy.
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X is better than IX at everything and IX is actually crucially objectively flawed in one big area; that would be the slowness of the battles and the loading time before battles. You can't say that about X.

IX shouldn't be on the list at all. Especially when a DQ isn't on the list.
 
It's taken me far longer than it should have, but I finally have write-ups for the whole Top 50 in the OP. Thanks for bearing with me.

I'm still missing soundtrack choices for a number of titles, so any suggestions for those would be great. Soon I hope to finish up the OP with entries for 51-100 (no write-ups or quotes for these), as well as adding all three category lists to the OP. And I'll have a last couple of other lists that I'll post back here, too once that's all finished up.
 
KuwabaraTheMan said:
It's taken me far longer than it should have, but I finally have write-ups for the whole Top 50 in the OP. Thanks for bearing with me.

I'm still missing soundtrack choices for a number of titles, so any suggestions for those would be great. Soon I hope to finish up the OP with entries for 51-100 (no write-ups or quotes for these), as well as adding all three category lists to the OP. And I'll have a last couple of other lists that I'll post back here, too once that's all finished up.
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Thanks for the work, so now I gotta stump for Pokrovsky, Sakimoto, and Mitsuda.

For #18:

Bittersweet Regrets

Mysterious Guest

Power of Innocence

Flutter of a Butterfly

For #21:

Difficult Battle

Hard Fight

Defensive Fight

Strategy Instructions

For #49:

Bonds of Sea and Fire

Flight

Fuse

Awakening
 
Wow great job! The list has some fantastic write-ups.

This is one of the few lists that I legitimately am okay with the rankings. While not perfect it actually manages to have a reasonable mix of genres. If you don't take the rankings too seriously (as you shouldn't as it is the rule of the thread) then it is a very solid and an absolutely go to list for anyone who is a little green with RPGs but wants to get in on the genre.
 
Lothar said:
X is better than IX at everything and IX is actually crucially objectively flawed in one big area; that would be the slowness of the battles and the loading time before battles. You can't say that about X.

IX shouldn't be on the list at all. Especially when a DQ isn't on the list.
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You can say that Final Fantasy X had a resurgence because of the HD Remasters, which probably explains it's change in position.

Now that the PC version is happening with sped up battles FFIX is a nearly perfect Final Fantasy game. You can't say that about X.
 
Makoto Yuki said:
You can say that Final Fantasy X had a resurgence because of the HD Remasters, which probably explains it's change in position.

Now that the PC version is happening with sped up battles FFIX is a nearly perfect Final Fantasy game. You can't say that about X.
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nah, it's OK, but it's nowhere near prefect, not even in top 5 of FF and yeah FFX>FF9, I can't think of a single thing that FF9 does better, except Chocobo treasure hunt, it's great in FF9.
 
I think FF IX is in the top three of FFs and could easily be tops if it weren't for the simple fact that as an RPG, it has an inexcusably awful battle system.
 
I prefer X personally, but IX is absolutely among the top 5 Final Fantasy games despite the battle system. It's truly a love letter to fans of the old installments in the series.
 
What's wrong with IX's battle system? Granted I've only played about 5-6 hours of it, but I didn't see anything particularly damning
 
Dad said:
What's wrong with IX's battle system? Granted I've only played about 5-6 hours of it, but I didn't see anything particularly damning
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It's slow.

Like slower than slow.

It takes like 8 frigging seconds after you hit a battle before you can even see what's happening. It's all trying to hide loading times as far as I remember.

It also doesn't have a pause-timer function like 4, 5, 6 and 7 so during long battles you can just sit there queuing up turns, making the animations take foreverrrrrr. Sometimes you can sit like 50-60+ seconds after selecting an action.

It's the worst.

FAKE EDIT: Here's an old post I have saved explaining some of the issues with it:

badcrumble said:
A lot of FFIX's decisions - especially the way Trance works - are semi-sensible reactions to the way that the Limit Break systems worked in FF7/8 - Trance is set up to discourage people from the common tactic of hoarding Limit Breaks and spamming them on bosses for an effortless kill (something that was also a problem for FFX). But it ends up just being a weird feature that never quite finds its role in things.

The problem with FF9's ATB actually isn't that it's slow - though it is, and that's annoying early in the game - it's that it doesn't have a pause-timer function.

FF4 and 5 pause the timer anytime an action takes place, even normal attacks (you can see this by watching the ATB bar).

FFVI sped things up a tiny bit by not having the timer pause during regular attacks and simpler spell animations, and introduced something that's essentially an animation queue - if several inputs are bunched together, they'll just play out in sequence, not right when your command is entered.

The pause-timer function, in turn, allowed for more elaborate animations in FF7 and 8 - limit breaks and summons pause the ATB while they're playing out so they don't cause issues in the animation/turn queue.

FF9's problem is that the timer never pauses during any animation ever - so during longer battles or following any particularly long animation, you're still queuing up more turns (which further delay the animation queue, ad infinitum). This is why FF9 alone suffers from the problem of having your actual turns play out sometimes over 60 seconds after selecting an action, often when the action is no longer context-appropriate (hello, Heat status effect). This is also why auto-Regen is so overpowered in FF9: you keep regenerating every second even during immensely long summons, so simply deliberately slowing the battle by bringing in the longest animations possible will keep you at full health basically all of the time.

It's an objectively bad design decision and speeding up the ATB speed doesn't fix it.
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Arthea said:
nah, it's OK, but it's nowhere near prefect, not even in top 5 of FF and yeah FFX>FF9, I can't think of a single thing that FF9 does better, except Chocobo treasure hunt, it's great in FF9.
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I said it's a nearly perfect Final Fantasy game. Let me say that again a nearly perfect Final Fantasy game. It's the culmination of everything nostalgic and new. It respects its legacy while also developing something contemporary. I'm not saying it's a perfect game, don't put words in my mouth.

FFIX is superior to FFX in almost every aspect except combat. Then again, characters, music, and story are subjective, you can make an argument for either. I'll take the cast of FFIX over FFX any day. Some were nowhere near as fleshed out, but they were endearing. Wakka automatically makes FFX have a worse cast.

As a whole FFIX is better than FFX.
 
Morrigan Stark said:
Holy shit, I had no idea. That sounds honestly broken.
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It's terrible. Playing it on max speed can't save how broken the fundamental design is. Which is a shame because everything else is top-tier.

It's shocking going from a battle system in something like FF8 to 9.
Makoto Yuki said:
I said it's a nearly perfect Final Fantasy game. Let me say that again a nearly perfect Final Fantasy game. It's the culmination of everything nostalgic and new. It respects its legacy while also developing something contemporary. I'm not saying it's a perfect game, don't put words in my mouth.

FFIX is superior to FFX in almost every aspect except combat. Then again, characters, music, and story are subjective, you can make an argument for either. I'll take the cast of FFIX over FFX any day. Some were nowhere near as fleshed out, but they were endearing. Wakka automatically makes FFX have a worse cast.

As a whole FFIX is better than FFX.
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The problem is, even with what feels to me like a better cast, OST and story in IX, I'd still rather play X because it doesn't make me want to hit my head against a wall during combat. In fact, it has what is my favorite combat in the series.
 
orthodoxy1095 said:
It's terrible. Playing it on max speed can't save how broken the fundamental design is. Which is a shame because everything else is top-tier.

It's shocking going from a battle system in something like FF8 to 9.

The problem is, even with what feels to me like a better cast, OST and story in IX, I'd still rather play X because it doesn't make me want to hit my head against a wall during combat. In fact, it has what is my favorite combat in the series.
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Yes the combat in IX isn't anything amazing, but I loved the fact that every character was unique and had their own abilities during combat. Even if the combat was slow and tedious, just having using a four party team who had different skills was more interesting then how many Final Fantasy games make every character everything. The only real differences being stats and Limits.

While I love FFX's combat, one of the best in the series, it falls into this homogenized character pool once you max out everyone's Sphere Grid. Only real discernible differences are Overdrives and Celestial Weapons, Yuna can Summon, and Tidus, Wakka, and Riku can fight underwater.

I agree that FFIX's combat is flawed and slow, but at least it made each character feel unique outside of Limit Breaks and Stats.
 
Bumping because I've finished adding all entries to the op. The final post now has 51-100, along with the three extra category lists. These remaining lists are a bit bare at the moment, but I'd like to add a little extra stuff to them when I finish things up in a few days.

And for another little list, here are the top vote getters by franchise.
1. Final Fantasy
2. Persona
3. Fallout
4. Chrono
5. Souls
6. The Witcher
7. Fire Emblem
8. Mario
9(tie). Mass Effect
9(tie). Pokemon
11. Xenoblade Chronicles
12. Earthbound/Mother
13. Dragon Quest
14. Shin Megami Tensei
15. Baldur's Gate

If you added in all other SMT spinoffs (eg, Devil Survivor, Devil Summoner, etc) along with the main series, it would bump up above Xenobalde. But even adding all of them together with Persona wouldn't be enough to surpass Final Fantasy.

I'll be back with another final list that I've been working on in a few days (this one is taking some time to put together), and will do some additional work to fill out the op at the same time.
 
Nice work!

Just personal observations comparing my own list to the top 100:
15 of my top 30 ended up in the top 100. Guess that's okay? But I get the impression the vote count is low once we hit that tied 95th area because P2:IS is there and it really didn't get that many votes. The few votes it did get people seemed to give it an essential distinction (only two of my personal essentials made it to the top 100, one of those being P2:IS barely-and my list will have to factor in P2:EP next year) so that certainly helped it to place in the top 100 overall. Butt still seems like the votes are disproportionately in the front end. Which makes sense but I guess it just makes the whole list seem less varied overall. Conversely the sheer amount of ties somewhat argues against the theory that the list is less varied because people had to have voted for them enough to be tied at least. So, eh.
 
KuwabaraTheMan said:
Bumping because I've finished adding all entries to the op. The final post now has 51-100, along with the three extra category lists. These remaining lists are a bit bare at the moment, but I'd like to add a little extra stuff to them when I finish things up in a few days.

And for another little list, here are the top vote getters by franchise.
1. Final Fantasy
2. Persona
3. Fallout
4. Chrono
5. Souls
6. The Witcher
7. Fire Emblem
8. Mario
9(tie). Mass Effect
9(tie). Pokemon
11. Xenoblade Chronicles
12. Earthbound/Mother
13. Dragon Quest
14. Shin Megami Tensei
15. Baldur's Gate

If you added in all other SMT spinoffs (eg, Devil Survivor, Devil Summoner, etc) along with the main series, it would bump up above Xenobalde. But even adding all of them together with Persona wouldn't be enough to surpass Final Fantasy.

I'll be back with another final list that I've been working on in a few days (this one is taking some time to put together), and will do some additional work to fill out the op at the same time.
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Wow, we really love JRPGs, huh?
 
Mcdohl said:
Q: Is there still something in progress?

I feel like thread title missed an update :)
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I have been intending to put together one final update, but it's really gotten sidetracked due to various other factors in my life seeming to get in my way, for which I apologize. I do have some additional work done, but I was hoping to complete the rest of it before doing a final update, and I've just gotten hopelessly behind on that. I should have things wrapped up during May.
 
Well, this has taken me a lot longer than I had originally hoped for, so for that you all have my sincere apologies.

I had gotten delayed on some stuff, and then my original planned update had to be scrapped after my old computer died, but a lot of this just comes down to time. Perhaps when I signed up to do this I just hadn't realized how different my time management was compared to when I was in my early 20s. So I've been quite frustrated with myself for not having this done before now, but at long last I've gotten things together. I've updated the final post in the OP with the essential lists now having links to songs and combat demonstrations for their respective titles.

And for the final thing I've been working on putting together, I wanted to do a special list.

Since a lot of people wonder about how much things change from one year to another with regards to the rankings, and there's always a question of how well titles will hold up in the long term, I thought it would be neat to have a list that reflects all six years of the rankings. So I've created this new list which tallies up a title's ranking in every year of the Essential RPGs threads, and added them up to see what RPGs fare the best over the whole stretch of time. Since some games weren't out at the beginning, and not every title reaches the list every time, I treated anything that didn't rank as finishing one slot outside of the rankings, which isn't perfect, but it works for this simple purpose.

Here's the Top 100 by this measurement:
1. Chrono Trigger
2. Final Fantasy VI
3. Persona 4
4. Final Fantasy VII
5. Planescape: Torment
6. Baldur's Gate II
7. Mass Effect
8. Demon's Souls
9. Final Fantasy Tactics
10. Final Fantasy IX
11. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
12. Earthbound
13. Suikoden II
14. Valkyria Chronicles
15. Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne
16. Final Fantasy XII
17. Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines
18. Final Fantasy X
19. Persona 3
20. Mass Effect 2
21. Xenogears
22. Pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal/Heart Gold/Soul Silver
23. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
24. Deus Ex
25. Fallout 3
26. Diablo II
27. Skies of Arcadia
28. Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door
29. The World Ends With You
30. Mother 3
31. Fallout New Vegas
32. Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride
33. Xenoblade Chronicles
34. Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King
35. Dark Souls
36. World of Warcraft
37. Fallout 2
38. Dragon Age: Origins
39. Pokemon Red/Green/Blue/Yellow/Fire Red/Leaf Green
40. The Witcher
41. Chrono Cross
42. Final Fantasy IV
43. The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings
44. Valkyrie Profile
45. Nier
46. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
47. Final Fantasy VIII
48. Grandia
49. Paper Mario
50. Tales of Symphonia
51. Fallout
52. Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars
53. Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
54. Vagrant Story
55. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
56. Secret of Mana
57. Alpha Protocol
58. Tales of Vesperia
59. Final Fantasy V
60. Fire Emblem 7: Blazing Sword
61. Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together
62. Ultima VII
63. Golden Sun
64. Deus Ex: Human Revolution
65. Lunar: The Silver Star
66. Kingdom Hearts
67. The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky
68. Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer
69. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords
70. Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millenium
71. System Shock 2
72. Mario & Luigi: Suuperstar Saga
73. Dragon's Dogma
74. Panzer Dragoon Saga
75. Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn
76. Baldur's Gate
77. The Last Remnant
78. Terranigma
79. Bloodborne
80. Baten Kaitos Origins
81. Shining Force II
82. Radiant Historia
83. Mario and Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story
84. Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura
85. Kingdom Hearts II
86. Fire Emblem: Awakening
87. Shadow Hearts: Covenant
88. Dark Cloud 2
89. Divinity Original Sin
90. Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga
91. Lunar 2: Eternal Blue
92. Star Ocean: Second Story
93. Breath of Fire V: Dragon Quarter
94. Xenosaga Episode III: Also Sprach Zarathustra
95. Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen
96. Suikoden
97. Lufia 2: Rise of the Sinistrals
98. Pokemon Black/White
99. Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean
100. Mount and Blade: Warband

You can see that some titles that haven't been around as long fall by this ranking as they haven't proven their longevity yet, but other titles rise up higher than they were in the most recent list, giving you sort of a snapshot of how people have viewed these games over a longer period of time. This year's two big new debuts, The Witcher III and Undertale, just missed out on the Top 100 based on just a single year, to give something of a frame of reference for what the bottom of the list represents.
 
KuwabaraTheMan did a great job on this thread, but I'm guessing from his comments in the months following the voting period that one shot at this was enough for him.

I have been thinking of taking back the reins. Would people be interested in a 2017 thread, with the caveat that I would run it in the spring or early summer of next year instead of this coming month?

A May or June thread would give people a chance to play Final Fantasy XV, Persona 5, Mass Effect Andromeda, Nioh, Tales of Berseria, and a few others. Perhaps Tides of Numenera, Original Sin 2, and Nier Automata depending on when they are scheduled to drop.

I feel like we have been waiting forever to see Persona 5 in particular shake up this list, so it makes little sense to run a thread when only J-GAF and a few importers have had a chance to play it. It would also give me a chance to do some of the prep work at my own pace in the coming months.
 
kswiston said:
KuwabaraTheMan did a great job on this thread, but I'm guessing from his comments in the months following the voting period that one shot at this was enough for him.

I have been thinking of taking back the reigns. Would people be interested in a 2017 thread, with the caveat that I would run it in the spring or early summer of next year instead of this coming month?

A May or June thread would give people a chance to play Final Fantasy XV, Persona 5, Mass Effect Andromeda, Nioh, Tales of Berseria, and a few others. Perhaps Tides of Numenera, Original Sin 2, and Nier Automata depending on when they are scheduled to drop.

I feel like we have been waiting forever to see Persona 5 in particular shake up this list, so it makes little sense to run a thread when only J-GAF and a few importers have had a chance to play it. It would also give me a chance to do some of the prep work at my own pace in the coming months.
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I think you can push it back a little further. For all we know the later half of next year is not nearly as packed as the first in terms of RPGs, so that would give people more time to not only finish, but also cool down and think about those games releasing early next year.
 
I would definitely be interested in that, and the timing sounds good to me. An early summer thread would let people have time to play some of the big early year RPGs, and there aren't normally a lot of big releases in the June - August period

I did enjoy running things this past year, but I definitely wasn't going to be able to commit to doing another go this year due to how hectic a lot of other stuff in my life has turned out to be these days. But it was a lot of fun doing it in spite of all the work involved, and I'm really glad that I did it.
 
I think moving to summer would be an excellent idea. It gets you away from the GOTY/Most Anticipated voting and it puts a nice buffer so that it's not quite a yearly thread.
 
Having all the voting threads clumped together at the end of the year exhausts me enough to either put up a barebones list or not bother posting at all, so I'd definitely be interested in a Spring/Summer thread
 
kswiston said:
KuwabaraTheMan did a great job on this thread, but I'm guessing from his comments in the months following the voting period that one shot at this was enough for him.

I have been thinking of taking back the reins. Would people be interested in a 2017 thread, with the caveat that I would run it in the spring or early summer of next year instead of this coming month?

A May or June thread would give people a chance to play Final Fantasy XV, Persona 5, Mass Effect Andromeda, Nioh, Tales of Berseria, and a few others. Perhaps Tides of Numenera, Original Sin 2, and Nier Automata depending on when they are scheduled to drop.

I feel like we have been waiting forever to see Persona 5 in particular shake up this list, so it makes little sense to run a thread when only J-GAF and a few importers have had a chance to play it. It would also give me a chance to do some of the prep work at my own pace in the coming months.
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The problem with including recent releases is that the critical consensus hasn't really set in and that there is usually a lack of perspective when it comes to assessing new highly marketed releases. So I don't think necessarily that delaying a potential poll is a good thing in itself.
 
Lime said:
The problem with including recent releases is that the critical consensus hasn't really set in and that there is usually a lack of perspective when it comes to assessing new highly marketed releases. So I don't think necessarily that delaying a potential poll is a good thing in itself.
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People include new releases regardless of when the voting goes up. I think the strength of having 6 years worth of threads is that you can go back and see how GAF perception/mindshare changes as we get further from release.

I will have to see what my schedule looks like next year and go from there, but I will tentatively aim for at least 2 months post Persona 5. It doesn't matter to us members of old-GAF, but at least half the forum also has more idle time in the summer when they aren't in college.

My larger plan is to at least do the mid 2017 thread, and then a 10th anniversary thread in 2020. I don't know if we need anything between those, but that is a discussion for later. I know some of our regulars were getting burnt out by yearly votes. Especially in periods where there weren't many significant releases.
 
hey all....

I am looking for recommendations for action rpgs to play. Preferably on Steam but I also have xbox one and ps4.

I like the combat style of realtime fighting vs turn based, if that helps.

Thanks so much!


PS... No bloodborne or dark souls games. I dont like them at all.
 
VeteranGamer said:
hey all....

I am looking for recommendations for action rpgs to play. Preferably on Steam but I also have xbox one and ps4.

I like the combat style of realtime fighting vs turn based, if that helps.

Thanks so much!


PS... No bloodborne or dark souls games. I dont like them at all.
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Dragon's Dogma is on steam.
 
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