So salty that I missed this discussion
Shawn did a great job representing actually good games though
Fire Emblem and Persona 3 shout outs did me proud!!! He seems to have the number 3 confused with 4 though as BOTH Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 and Persona 4 are vastly superior to their 3rd version counterparts
Shawn you and your wife should try Silent Hill Shattered Memories. I used to be in the 2 was the best camp until I played that one. So amazing!
Getting into the PS2 -
I don't remember making a big deal out of picking up my first PS2. I think I may have picked it up specifically to play Final Fantasy X after finishing up some of the FF games on the PS and then Kingdom Hearts shortly after finishing FFX so I probably got it early 2002. I remember picking up Kingdom Hearts from a Future Shop while on a road trip with some high school friends and just ignoring everything/one around me for the remainder of the trip while I read the manual/box and imagined the world I was going to get into. Was a very special game for me and definitely that moment where I really was excited and loved owning a PS2.
Top 10:
10. Devil May Cry - God of War fell flat with me too (Shawn representing again!). This was the action game that really pulled me in. Put so much time into trying to get the best rank of each area and one of the first 3D games I played with such a dark atmosphere that I really hadn't experienced yet. Had a big inpact on me. Such a shame that the sequels weren't quite as good.
9. Onimusha 1/2/3 - Another amazing Capcom experience. After playing a ton of Resident Evil 2 and 3 I was looking for something comparable on the PS2. Onimusha hooked me right away as a great substitute. While not quite a survival horror game it really filled that void for me anyway. Super amazing atmosphere and story. Very tense the whole way through. And unlike Devil May Cry they kept getting better. As unusual as the 3rd one is with having control of two different characters in two different settings/time periods/stories they made it work. Such a cool series and one I'd like to see return.
8. Disgaea: Hour of Darkness - A very cool blend of strategy and humor. Most strategy games I've played were very intense story and character-wise. Big military endeavors with dark themes of loyalty and patriotism. Disgaea was such a departure from that idea that I was hooked right away. You play a prince of hell and are just trying to build your strength to become supreme ruler. The voice acting was hilarious and so comical. Prinny's and Laharl I just couldn't believe existed as characters. So inappropriate and non-sensical. I think this short video sums up my love for the game nicely:
7. Castlevania Lament of Innocence - Still one of my favorite Castlevania games in the entire series. The first thing that hooked me was the soundtrack. Amazing levels like the Anti-Soul Mystery Lab and its music pulled me in immediately. There are only a few games that have story twists that have stuck with me over the years. Like less than 5. And this is definitely one of them. At the time it was the earliest game in the series chronologically (havn't kept up to know if that still holds true), and they touch on the creation of the famous whip from the series, the vampire killer, which just blew my mind that they were even aloud to be as dark and sinister as they were in the forging of that weapon. I stand by that this is still the greatest 3D Castlevania game yet/ever.
6. Kingdom Hearts - Unlike Bil I find Kingdom Hearts II unplayable. Just can't do it. The first one holds a very special place in my library though. Besides the amazing amount of nostalgia that I was attacked with I got pulled into the story very early too. Such a perfect blend of the Square and Disney franchises that I loved. One of the earlier games I felt the need to 100%. Remember spending a ton of time building up so I could defeat a titan from Hercules and then Sephiroth from FFVII. My only dislike was the gummy ships, but I eventually realized I could finish the entire game without spending a second building a new ship so that kind of got rid of that complaint
5. Odin Sphere - Like Duke mentioned it can be very easy to get pulled into a world of mythology like he did with God of War. I had that experience getting pulled into the amazing world of Norse Mythology with Odin Sphere. I also hold this as the pinnacle of visual in a video game. The game is getting close to a decade old now and I've yet to see any other game look as good. The crafting and battle systems were intensely addictive too. You play a large overarcing story with several different characters such as a Valkyrie, a Rabbit Knight, a Fairy, a Demonic Knight and a Witch. Was so cool seeing how different each character and their stories were, but how they eventually all tied together.
4. Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance I&II - After playing a ton of Diablo and Diablo II I thought the genre was stuck solely on the PC. Blew my mind when a friend invited me over to play Dark Alliance for the first time. I immediately ran out and purcahsed both of them and played each to completion. And then again with a friend and a new character. And then again with the rest of the characters. And then again with the secret characters. And then again with my brother and my favorite character builds. It doesn't have quite the depth in terms of customization as Diablo, but that has never bothered me. It has an amazing D&D style story and each characters play so different that each run felt like a new game. One of the best co-op PS2 games I've ever come across
3. Xenosaga 1/2/3 - As much as I enjoyed a few other RPGs on the system I was still craving that "special" RPG series that really spoke to me. FFX was great, FFXI and XII fell flat with me. Kingdom Hearts was great, KHII stunk. Disgaea was amazing, D2 got much more complex in it's systems and started to lose me. Having played and loved Xenogears I was suprised I didn't know about the Xenosaga series until shortly after the 2nd one came out. My girlfriend at the time purchased the first game for me and it was exactly what I needed. It was one of those games that just pulled me in and I ended up being a pretty crappy friend for a bit basically ditching life for a week so I could keep playing. Most other RPGs I've played were very fantasy based. To find one that was Sci-Fi was just amazing to me. The characters were all amazing too. It didn't have that super lame/cheesy main character and the supporting case was super diverse from a battle ready android (KOS-MOS), to a Cyborg (Ziggy) sworn to protect a Realian (MOMO) to a childish looking gunslinger/director of a major intergalactic organization (Jr) to a mysterious spiritualist (Chaos) to a young Scientist (Shion) I found myself bouncing around with my team selection rather than just picking my favorite three as I do in most games. I kept having to experiment with teamates as I couldn't decide who to keep going with!
Fast forward to August 2006. I had just recently moved in with my wife to be and Xenosaga III was about to come out. I prepped her well in advance and basically said "There is this game coming out that I've pre ordered and I've book a few days off of work to play it. I'm gonna be spending a lot of time on it". She knew I was a big gamer and she didn't think too much of it. Big mistake. I got home and immediately put the game into my PS2 and dug in. Several hours later she apparently asked me to eat dinner with her and I declined (I have no memory of that). Then at 5am she came out of our bedroom and pleaded for me to come to bed and get a little rest since I had been playing for nearly 20 straight hours. I left the system on and came reluctantly went to bed.......only to wake up one hour later with no alarm set and continued to play again. I ended up finishing the game in about 42 hours of nearly straight playing other than that one hour of sleep and I assume a bathroom break or two. My wife was obviously relieved for it to be over and I spent then next couple days catching up on eating and sleeping and reflecting on the series. I've lost myself in games since then, but never quite to the same extent.
2. Guitar Hero/II/80s - It's like someone stole my dreams and developed a game based on them!! As a long time air/electric guitar player and lover of metal/hard rock I was immediately drawn to this game. I worked at a Roger's Video at the time and we hooked it up after work every day for weeks. I started getting better and better and by the time II came out I went from trying to beat the songs on Hard to trying to beat them on Expert. After that I had to 5 star each song. I spent endless nights during my graveyard shifts studying star power charts and uploading scores to scorehero.com comparing my scores against others online before I had ever heard of an online leaderboard. We argued about the best use of star power and the best spots to squeeze and extra 1-3 notes into a path in order to maximize scores once getting 100% just wasn't enough anymore. Spent weeks trying to 5 star songs like Jordon, Six, Hanger 18 and Free Bird.
The game started picking up steam in the general public and some contests started popping up around town. I competed in each and every one I was able to, always placing in the top 3. A couple short weeks ago a customer at my store was interested in buying a PS2 with a couple guitars and Guitar Hero Rocks the 80s and a few others. He was from out of town so asked if we could set everything up and test it with him so he could be confident that they worked before he left. We booted it up and started some No One Like You by the Scorpions. I selected Expert and he played Medium. After not playing in a couple years I was still able to nail the slightly tricky opening solo and we started to draw a little crowd in the store. It was so much fun to pick up those plastic guitars again that I've been craving it ever since.
1. SMT Persona 3&4 - After getting a little burnt out from long RPGs I had taken about a year off from playing them and just really struggled to get excited about one. I kept hearing good things about Persona 3 and the 4th one had just come out. Niether really peaked my interest though. Went to someones house to pick up some cheap PS2 games from a kijiji ad and picked up the 3rd one as well as a few other games one day. Brought them to work that night to test out. When I put Persona 3 into the system I didn't even get around to testing out the rest of the games. The intro alone hooked me and I ended up putting about 5 hours into it that night. The next night I got my work done asap so that I could sink as much time as possible into it once more. Just kept going back to it night after night. Typically when a game gets to the 30 hour mark I'm looking forward to it winding down and moving over to something new. That was definitely not the case with Persona 3. Every one of the characters was so fleshed out and they were all growing and changing with me. The humor and real life problems/situations were enthralling. The dungeon crawling parts where challenging and thoughtful. The social links were unique and added so much to the each of the game's social and RPG aspects. Spending time in the velvet room fusing personas into more powerful ones was surprisingly addictive. The story kept having interesting twists and kept me on my toes.
After finishing it around 75 hours I immediately started hunting for a copy of Persona 4. I was fortunate enough to find one withing a few short weeks of finishing 3 and started playing 4 the same day I picked it up. Even after putting in 75 hours into 3 I was so eager to spend another 70+ hours on 4. I had everything I loved about the 3rd one, but also had improved the battle mechanics, added entirely new characters, new story, new setting, and tons of new social links and places to visit and spend time. Characters like Yukiko, Kanji and Teddy really resonated with me.
Even after finishing both of them I was hungry for more and picked up Persona 4 Arena, Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, Persona Q and Persona Dancing All Night as they came out. I thought initially that they would be simple place holders to tide me over until the next main series game came out, but they instead were ways to spend more time with these characters that I had grown to love.
Honorable Mentions:
Adventures of Cookies and Cream
Amplitude
Castle Shikigami 2
Dark Cloud 1&2
Final Fantasy X&X-2
Godhand
Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus
ICO/Shadow of the Colossus
Katamary Damacy
King of Fighters Orochi Saga
Marvel vs Capcom 2
Mega Man Anniversary/X Collection
Neo Contra
Okami
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time
Resident Evil Outbreak
Shin Megami Tensei Nocture
Silent Hill 2&3
Star Wars Jedi Starfighter
Can't wait to play:
Haunting Ground
Blood Will Tell
.Hack
Gungrave
Rule of Rose
Wild Arms
Author
