The Shrine

http://www.ign.com/top/rpgs

I think it's interesting since Wild ARMs is on #51 and I was just talking about how that was just a game released at the right time. It's basically the first decent RPG on the PSX and apparently that gets you #51 of all time in a somewhat reputable source.

I think such lists really need to adapt ESPN's NBARank thing. Pick out say 125 RPGs ahead of time for the top 100 candidate and rank every one of them on a scale of 1-10 and average the result of say 100 guys. The only qualification should be that you finished at least 10 games in the list and know about at least 25 of them, because honestly you review games for a living it's pretty hard to imagine actually playing all the RPGs that ever came out. If you never heard of the game or had no interest in the game that should be an automatic 0, and if you only had some passing interest you can't rate it higher than a 7. You don't actually have to play the game if you're really interested in it, though it's hard to imagine why anyone would rate a game higher than a 7 if you never actually played it unless it's like your roommate who showed you this game on a system you do not own.

Not going to go over about the list (it's up to 20), but I think Mario RPG and PSO around #20 is well deserved. There's a ton of 'life achievement awards' for games that were never good that nobody ever played, and I'm guessing Square is going to have at least 5 out of the top 20 (FF4, 6, 7, Secret of Mana, and Chrono Trigger). Skies of Arcadia and Kingdom Hearts is ranked too low.

Looks like #20 to #1 came out. I don't know why they pretend to give useless games the equivlaent of lifetime achievement awards and yet WoW and Diablo 2 didn't come #1 and #2. It's pretty hard to beat a 'lifetime accomplishment' for these two games. I assume 'top X of all times' doesn't mean 'top X relative to their era' because otherwise this list is almost impossible to even attempt and you seriously say people would rather play Diablo 1 right now? Even Diablo 2 is arguably inferior to Torchlight 1 or Shining Force Neo looking from a modern point of view. Again that's why I advocate a pure number scale and you'd have to evaluate the game as if you're going to play it now, not when you were 10 and polygons was the latest thing.

The only top 20 games that I would rank on a list of my own are Earthbound, Chrono Trigger, FF6, and FF7. Final Fantasy Tactics... Conceivably; but there are many deserving candidates. Secret of Mana is only fun with 2-3 players, it's one of the worst games Square ever released in single player; and it's very buggy.

Most of the top 20 RPGs on the list seem to the sort of "RPGs" that non-RPG fans like (Baldur's Gate, Pokemon, Starwars, Skyrim).

Earthbound is too out there to be ranked in the top 20. There's a reason why people have to petition to get the sequel coming which never did.

I don't remember any bugs with Secret of Mana. Maybe if you do the weapon swap with another controller plugged in you get weird stuff like being able to do level 8 attacks without having them but other than that it works fine. The difficulty is kind of hit and miss though once you have enough MP to just spam magic your way to defeat everything, but if you're going to let stuff like FF6 come in because it was good for its time then Secret of Mana is definitely ahead of its time too for the same reason.

Earthbound would have been on my personal top 20 list. It's one of those games that I enjoy now as much as ever. I find it is also one of the easiest RPGs to replay and enjoy; although I feel that most RPGs like this are from this era.

On Secret of Mana bugs - it had damage tracking and feedback issues; you could hit enemies directly and sometimes it would take 1-2 seconds to give feedback, and sometimes no damage would be done and no feedback given - it is like the attack never occurred. There were also locations where you could get stuck and have to restart the game; especially in the final fortress.

Aside from those bugs were terrible design decisions like broken character AI and pathing which became a frequent problem if playing with under 3 players; the whole charge-attack system; and the broken magic system.

From a personal level I have no problem with Earthbound up here but I assume these lists are compiled with multiple people and with a game like Earthbound, if you take a poll of 100 'experts' (whatever that means) there's a pretty good chance you'll have a few guys who has never played or even never heard of Earthbound while it's pretty hard to imagine this happening to Chrono Trigger. In the end I feel if you're doing a top X of all time then those games people at least have to know them too or you can always argue some game nobody has ever heard of is really the #1.

In Secret of Mana a lot of time your move gets canceled if you get hit first but the animation persists so you can do a level 6-8 move that takes a while to animate while hitting nothing because you already got hit, or the enemy is in his invulnerabilty frame, though this works in reverse sometimes too. There's some serious balance issues in that magic makes things too easy when you just chain cast them and without it the game is probably too hard (you do take massive amount of damage from some bosses). But overall I feel it is as good as the average Square RPG on SNES because it has a pretty fluid system and its relatively short length means you don't get into a case where the game is not easily replayable, which to me is a big concern when ranking these games. For example I like Final Fantasy 6 but I'm not going to replay it again because it's just not that exciting the second time around and it takes a pretty long time, unless I do it on an emulator where I can fast forward everything in 5X speed, so I'd hesitate to rate a game highly in a top X list if I won't even play it now. I do play Chrono Trigger again on my emulator even on normal speed because the game is shorter and doesn't waste as much time leveling up, so I'd rate Chrono Trigger highly even using today's standards.

If I were to tank games based on what I enjoy, most often replay, or often contemplate replaying - My current top 20 would probably look something like this, but not necessarily in this exact order and I am likely forgetting a few:

1. Skies of Arcadia (Legends)
2. Final Fantasy 8
3. Xenogears
4. Earthbound
5. Dragon Quest 5 (DS remake)
6. Chrono Trigger
6. Final Fantasy 6 (tie, no way can I decide here)
8. Dragon Quest 9
9. Fire Emblem Advance
10. Rune Factory Frontier
11. Xenoblade
12. Suikoden 2
13. Final Fantasy Legend 2
14. Lunar 2 - Eternal Blue (PSX version)
15. Final Fantasy 7
16. Xenosaga Episode 3
17. Radiant Historia
18. Ogre Battle 64: PoLC
19. Dragon Quest 4 (kind of a combination of both DS and NES versions)
20. The World Ends With You

But, Earthbound, I can see ranking highly on many RPG fan lists - if it were a list for a non-RPG fan, I could see RPGs like Pokemon and Skyrim dominating. It seems like IGN went for a mix, and as a result sacrificed some really deserving games; but I can see most gamers agreeing with at least a few of their top 20.

Earthbound tends to rank high for people who want to have their nerd cred but that's kind of why you've stuff like World of Warcraft or Diablo 1 in the same list too. I don't see Earthbound ranking very high on any list that's compiled with a relatively large number of normal gamers just because there's a good chance quite a few of the guys have never played/heard of the game.

Trying to rank #1 versus #2 is pretty hard. I'd go with what ESPN did and just rated it on a scale of 0-10. A game you've never heard of/no interest should get an automatic 0 which will bring titles like Skies of Arcadia down, but otherwise you'll either be asking people to rank games they've never heard of, or your top game is probably going to be something really obscure like Ys where all 5 guys who has played the game ranked a 10 while the other guys have never heard of it.

For me it'd look like:

10 - Skies of Arcadia and Chrono Trigger
9 - FFT, Grandia 2, Kingdom Hearts, FF7, FF6, Diablo 2.
And probably a whole mess of stuff at 8.

Fuck Top 100 lists. They are never ever accurate.

I actually like ESPN's version of the top 100 list that they're doing in NBARank. It's about as objective on something that is inherently subjective. I don't like the list that seems to be just opinions because then you might as well ask me what's the top 100 and it's just as a good an opinion as any random collection of opinions. I think if you do it like I suggested, you'd see for example Chrono Trigger consistently above Skies of Arcadia even though almost everyone who play either game would rank it a 10, but assuming a random sampling of the gamer population is your review base, then you're going to get a lot of 0s from the guys who never played Skies of Arcadia whereas I'm pretty sure everyone has at least heard of Chrono Trigger. And games like World of Warcraft should be pretty high up too, just because everyone must have heard of the game so it shouldn't get any 0s. And of course you'd have to rank them as if they're a brand new game coming out now, because otherwise you just end up with a list dominated by nostaglia (which is the case of this one and virtually every top 100 games). Yes that means Diablo 1 might not even make top 100, but ask yourself, would you play Diablo 1 if it came out now? Probably not, so why should it be top 100 RPG of all time measured by today's standards? If you want to have a list for top 100 most influential RPG of all times sure I can see Diablo 1 at #1 (not really, but at least I understand), but how can a game be top X of all time if you won't even play it now?

Julius Seeker wrote:Secret of Mana is only fun with 2-3 players, it's one of the worst games Square ever released in single player; and it's very buggy.

Disagree strongly, hit max level on all 3 chars and farmed the upgrades for every single weapon and level 8 solo. lol.

Eric wrote:

Julius Seeker wrote:Secret of Mana is only fun with 2-3 players, it's one of the worst games Square ever released in single player; and it's very buggy.

Disagree strongly, hit max level on all 3 chars and farmed the upgrades for every single weapon and level 8 solo. lol.

I'm pretty sure you can't get Mana Sword (Sword level 9) no matter how long you farmed. I had problem getting some of the orbs that drop from the earlier enemies in the Mana Fortress since I usually just run past them. I have a full set of faerie gear though you can never have enough defense to not take damage from Mana Beast's attack without using Defender (and it seems like even very low level of defense makes you immune with Defender). I beat the Mana Beast without using the Sword, took like 4 cycles and you pretty much need Acid Rain on him to do any damage (he's immune to magic damage but the status effect still hurts him) even with completely maxed characters.

The AI in Secret of Mana is really random. One time I had Mana Beast do 3 Lucent Beams in a row for like 600 damage and that'd probably be instant kill with a level appropriate character. Most of the time he doesn't even do anything after he casts Wall on himself.

Aside from the PC titles and Pokemon (never played any of em), that top ten is a-ok with me. I don't know where Suikoden 3 is on the list, but that would be top ten as well.

Suikoden 3 isn't on the list. Only Suikoden 2 is somewhere in the top 100. They got a list of all the games in the top 100 at the beginning I think.

Phantasy Star and Luna Eternal Blue barely making the list? Stupid, especially with the former which was easily the best RPG of the 8-bit era. Significantly better than FF, which was #73 or Dragon Warrior, up in the 20s. And FF7 was far too high on the list IMO.

FF6 and Chrono Trigger are my personal favs. To be ranked 1 and 2 is probably more nostalgia than anything now but I'm OK with that. I woulda preferred Chrono Cross get a little more love but I tend to like it more than most.

Earthbound to me was one of the best RPGs I've ever played, I'm OK with it being that high. It's a phenomenal game. And I'm happy they gave Mario & Luigi some love (Partners in Time was the best one). It's very easy to overlook Nintendo's RPGs (Zelda is not an RPG) since there's so few of them but a few of them are very good.

Note: Shadowrun on the Genesis was a better game than on the SNES yet they only list it as being on the SNES (#86).

Sadly, I own 80 of those 100 games. Of the 20 I don't own, only 2 have been released on consoles. And both of those (Skyrim and Witcher 2) I'm just waiting on price drops / GOTY editions, so I'll be getting them soon enough.

Planescape Torment at #13 is some fucking bullshit. There are six or seven games between it and #1 that I would unseat that I have thoroughly poured hours into. Fallout 3 before it? Are you shitting me? That game had almost no ACTUAL roleplaying. Fallout 2 deserves to be listed before 3 on such a list. Hell, Fallout 2 could arguably be better than Planescape Torment.. But, fuck, that far behind 3?

I think the problem with these list is a lot of games turns into lifetime achievement awards which is why you often see stuff like Tetris or Pong show up in similar lists even though I sure don't see people playing these games at all. But if you start handing out lifetime achievement awards you should just give WoW #1 because it's pretty hard to beat that in terms of impact to the gaming industry.

I think you have to at least start with the SNES era because games in the NES era are just too outdated there's no way any evaluation of them relative to even SNES era game can be anything meaningful. I'm actually pretty interested if you get say 100 guys and just ranked the game from 0-10 like ESPN does with NBARank, and if you enforce rules like 'games you have never heard of gets 0' then I think the result would actually be pretty interesting. I mean, people probably already factor popularity anyway, since Wild ARMS is #51 and if that was released on N64 or Saturn it would be lucky to be #151 even if it's the exact same game, but obviously these lists take stuff like popularity/nostaglia with no way to quantify it. I think you should have an overall top 100, and then top 100 by only people who played the game. And no I don't think the latter is a better indicator because to be a top X game of all time one of the prerequisite is that people have to have played this game in the first place, though it'd be interesting to see what games are rated highly by people who played it.

FF and Phantasy Star are landmark games, as was Wizardry. You always have to judge games based on when they're released and those certainly paved the way for everything after them

Zeus wrote:FF and Phantasy Star are landmark games, as was Wizardry. You always have to judge games based on when they're released and those certainly paved the way for everything after them

If you go by like that you'd always have games like Tetris or Pong up there and honestly nothing would be remotely close to World of Warcraft in terms of 'landmark' games.

Don wrote:

Zeus wrote:FF and Phantasy Star are landmark games, as was Wizardry. You always have to judge games based on when they're released and those certainly paved the way for everything after them

If you go by like that you'd always have games like Tetris or Pong up there and honestly nothing would be remotely close to World of Warcraft in terms of 'landmark' games.

Tetris and Pong ain't RPGs and Warcrack is in the top 20

Zeus wrote:

Don wrote:

Zeus wrote:FF and Phantasy Star are landmark games, as was Wizardry. You always have to judge games based on when they're released and those certainly paved the way for everything after them

If you go by like that you'd always have games like Tetris or Pong up there and honestly nothing would be remotely close to World of Warcraft in terms of 'landmark' games.

Tetris and Pong ain't RPGs and Warcrack is in the top 20

I'm just saying in general, and World of Warcraft would always be #1 in anything it's remotely related to because it pretty much defined a genre for over 5 years and is also the most profitable single game ever. Objectively speaking it should never be anywhere near top 20 because there are quite a few games that are better at WoW's own game than WoW itself now before even considering about games that aren't MMORPGs, but if you put historical context nothing is even close. It's kind of like how people always talk about Ultima Online for being the first MMORPG even though it was a very bad game which is why it got obliterated by EverQuest, which has its own share of problems too (but wasn't apparent until WoW came along).

Again I'm thinking of Top X games as in the 'best X games ever' not the top X most influential games in gaming. Civilization 1 is a landmark game but it is no way as good as Civilization 2. And honestly the video gaming industry has been around so long that you can run out of a top 100 list by just going by landmarks since you have a lot of time to build new landmarks in a 30 year+ industry.

Ive never played Earthbound, and i dislike that fact. I wish you could find one for under $100 used, thats just insane. So, i will probably never play it.

Flip wrote:Ive never played Earthbound, and i dislike that fact. I wish you could find one for under $100 used, thats just insane. So, i will probably never play it.

There is someone who's figured out how to emulate it properly so it doesn't fuck you at the end. Do yourself a favour and try it. It's a very unique RPG and it's quite good....if you're OK with the graphics

Shrinweck wrote:Fallout 3 before it? Are you shitting me? That game had almost no ACTUAL roleplaying. Fallout 2 deserves to be listed before 3 on such a list. Hell, Fallout 2 could arguably be better than Planescape Torment.. But, fuck, that far behind 3?

Errr...Fallout 3 was very much a RPG. Just because it was a FPS RPG doesn't make it any less an RPG. No actual roleplaying? What the fuck are you smoking?

Don wrote:If you go by like that you'd always have games like Tetris or Pong up there and honestly nothing would be remotely close to World of Warcraft in terms of 'landmark' games.

Tetris and Pong aren't RPGs. And MMORPGs are pretty much a different category that deserves a totally separate list.

My issues with Fallout 3 have nothing to do with the perspective and everything to do with how shallow the role playing was. Just because there are stats and levels doesn't mean it's a decent RPG. It had next to no memorable characters and the vanilla version of the game was incredibly disappointing at the end. It was a good game but does not belong that well ranked on a list like that.

Also the game had a very skewed view of either comitting good or evil acts with no shades of grey which is complete bullshit in the Fallout universe. New Vegas is so much better in just about every regard.. although I did like exploring the burned out husk of DC more than the strip for the most part. Exploring New Vegas as a whole was better in the long run.

Shrinweck wrote:My issues with Fallout 3 have nothing to do with the perspective and everything to do with how shallow the role playing was. Just because there are stats and levels doesn't mean it's a decent RPG. It had next to no memorable characters and the vanilla version of the game was incredibly disappointing at the end. It was a good game but does not belong that well ranked on a list like that.

I think you're focusing too much on the main story and not the side stories. There was an incredible amount of depth with the exploration OUTSIDE of the main plot. Hell, as I heard, Morrowind was similar, especially since it was made by the same guys. Yet people gush about how great an RPG that game was.

Shrinweck wrote:Also the game had a very skewed view of either comitting good or evil acts with no shades of grey which is complete bullshit in the Fallout universe. New Vegas is so much better in just about every regard.. although I did like exploring the burned out husk of DC more than the strip for the most part. Exploring New Vegas as a whole was better in the long run.

No game is great with shades of grey. Fable can't do it. Mass Effect can't do it. KotOR can't do it. Bioshock can't do it. (Bioshock 2 sort of did it, but it still wasn't a lot.) Really, what game is actually good with shades of grey?

Also, F:NV did focus a lot more on the main plot, but frankly, I missed exploring the Vaults. Fallout 3 had a lot more and better vaults to explore, with some crazy scary experiments. The Vaults in F:NV, save one or two of them (Vault 11 & maybe 22), were kinda boring and didn't have the impact as the ones in Fallout 3 (pretty much all of them were worth exploring).

I still haven't actually entered New Vegas, oddly enough.

SineSwiper wrote: I still haven't actually entered New Vegas, oddly enough.

Haha, so funny how you can play this game in completely different ways. I pretty much made a bee-line right to the city with the thought that I wanted to be king of New Vegas, but that didnt exactly work out.

I need to replay FO:NV. It was my first Bethesda experience, so i didnt really know too much of what to do and how to do it. I played the crap out of Skyrim, so i bet NV would be more appealing now. Or even FO:3 since it takes place in my hometown.

Flip wrote:Haha, so funny how you can play this game in completely different ways. I pretty much made a bee-line right to the city with the thought that I wanted to be king of New Vegas, but that didnt exactly work out.

My experience with F3 colored what I wanted to do in F:NV. Of course, I tend to play that way, anyway, since I know that my internal "replay value" is going to drop severely for almost any game that I actually beat.

Flip wrote:I need to replay FO:NV. It was my first Bethesda experience, so i didnt really know too much of what to do and how to do it. I played the crap out of Skyrim, so i bet NV would be more appealing now. Or even FA:3 since it takes place in my hometown.

I want to play some more of F:NV, since they are up to 4-5 DLCs now, but I think I'm going to be spending the next couple of months on Borderlands 2 now. (That and I'm almost finished with ME3 and barely started with Dead Space 2.)

F:NV will never be a great title for me given what a bug-ridden mess I found it to be. I think I enjoyed most of it up until the end until the very last mission (dam) froze up several times. And a mission on the dam before that (stop an assassination?) would erroneously alert the assassin of my interference as soon as I took a step on mission start. I can't remember how I circumvented that bug, but it was very frustrating.