Radiant History, Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor and Sands Of Destruction are my favorite RPGs, they remind me the PSX era RPGs and we all know that was the golden age of RPGs.
Actually, as somebody who has been playing RPGs since the NES, I'd personally say that the "golden age" for the genre was the PS2. That's when we could actually say we were getting most of the stuff that was actually fun from Japan (and kinda sorta mean it...
), and when localizations actually started really getting
good. Don't get me wrong; the PlayStation had its share of good RPGs, but if you compare the localization (not the story itself, just the translation and adaptation) of Final Fantasy VII with Final Fantasy X, or Revelations: Persona with Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3, you can clearly see a difference in quality.
I love the persona series and but for me PSX had a lot more higher quality jRPGs than the PS2 did.
And I'm not talking about the quality but the storyline, and yes they have improved in such a fast pace during one console generation.
This is my opinion on the PSX vs PS2 era of RPGs. Don't mean to offend anyone
PS2 era for me had a lot of generic jRPGs like .hack//G.U. which unlike the original and brilliant .hack// series of games became a generic piece of garbage.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying PS2 had horrible jRPGs, I love the MegaTen series especially on the PS2 and the first Xenosaga game is a masterpiece and who could forget Odin Sphere or Rouge Galaxy? But as I said before more generic games kept coming out. I love Star Ocean 1 and 2 but the PS2 era (and the 7th-gen era) ruined the series for me same for the Tales Of series even though I have to admit I only liked Phantasia. They kept getting more mediocre and I kept having high hopes for disappointing games.
But there are tons of amazing PSX games that don't disappoint in story or in gameplay, Legend Of The Dragoon, Final Fantasy 9, Xenogears and Wild Arms (Oh god, poor wild arms) to name a few.
The stories of these games were all very different and had interesting plots that led you to keep playing unlike these era of jRPGs which you know the bad guy from the start and you need try to kill him from the beginning but "stuff" (due to a very bad story design) keeps happening for example
.hack//G.U. - AIDA = Bad -> Find Source to destroy it -> Kill little pieces of AIDA -> -> Kill final (disc) boss ->Cliffhanger -> keep buying the games -> Spend 40$ to buy the second disc and repeat all the steps -> Spend 40$ on Disc Three to get a horrible "happy ending" even the fans knew who the bad guy was from the beginning .
These era are missing out the mystery element, without mystery you get a boring plot and in my opinion half of the PS2 jRPGs really needed that element.
Also I love Snes jRPGS here's how I list the jRPG era.
PSX -> Snes -> Xbox 360 (Yes I find Xbox 360's jRPGs to be more enjoyable than PS3 ones) = PS2 -> PS3
I grouped the Xbox 360 and PS2 together because even though the xbox lacks jRPGs they're still good i.e. Lost Odyssey.
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Materia_tofu:
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SylverReZ:
