Overrated.

Jon

I always thought of Secret of Mana as the bastard child of zelda and chrono trigger. However, it was never as good as its predecessors.

I like Jon's angry vagina avatar.  

 Hahahah *golf clap*

Many good RPGs and many good characters. As long as that silly of Sephirot is kept very far away, I'm fine. One of my favourites ever:

rotflmao!!

without quoting anyone

Beware... it's watching you!

Jon

That is actually incredibly creepy...

Anyone else find it funny that middle earth was almost destroyed twice by some lackie?

YOU SIR ARE WRONG! The story plays out extremely well. It does require a lot of time and effort without a doubt but there are so many interesting stories and characters involved. It has everything! I love how they did the story and tied it all in. I love the fighting system, the robots, the in game graphics. Man please!

don't you get fed up trying to collect characters and the like in those games? practically asking to play in front of a walkthrough.

The fighting system is without a doubt really well done. The amount of control one has over their characters is amazing and the various scale makes for some fun times. However, the story is dragged out for almost no good reason and the characters are a bizarre mix of deeply meaning full individuals and cartoon-ish teddy bears. Hell, the first 10 hours are so mind numbingly boring that I always want to shoot myself while wandering through that incredibly tedious sand dungeon, and for the last 10 hours, the game basically plays itself, since all your characters are so wildly OP that taking on god seems like walk in the park. *SPOILER ALERT* Even during the final boss fight, there is no reason to even attack the little satellites as the final boss's attacks are not even remotely as amazing as Fei and his crew in their super gears. *SPOILER ALERT*

Well  if we talk about good game with deep character, for myself, I really like the Ar tonelico game. I think it's pretty original and the gameplay is refreshing. Diving into someone to gain his trust is simply brilliant. Really love it.

Well, I disagree. I think the story is excellent and really plays out well. I was quite shocked many times my first time playing at various points in the game. I know the second cd was a lot of story and not a lot of playing but it was still awesome. The various theological and philosophical ideas that were put in the game also made it quite interesting. I think the entire game plays out well and was never bored nor found the game too easy. Maybe you just leveled up your characters well. Even still, if all your complaining about is the first 10 hours and the last few hours, that is still only a small percentage of the game, which took me over 100 hours to finish. Most RPGs I finish in 20-40 hours. The only RPGs that have ever lasted me this long were Xenogears, Dragon quest 7 and final fantasy 7. Some were 60-80 hours but I can't remember all of the RPG's I have played honestly heh.

I have played hundreds of RPG's in my life, most of the RPG's ever made that is. I have owned and still own all of these systems: nintendo, super nintendo, nintendo 64, gameboy, gameboy advance, gameboy color, nintendo DS, Nintendo gamecube, nintendo wii, Sega genesis, sega cd, sega dream cast, sega saturn, playstation, playstation 2, playstation 3, xbox, xbox 360, atari, intellivision, Links, turbo grafx 16 and of course the PC. Man, now that I think about it, that's just sad, but at least I was young then heh. Started playing games when I was 5, had me an atari and an intellivision at that time. There are some games I missed but I have played even most of the obscure RPG's. Sadly, I don't have nearly the time I used to being married and all Not like they make all that many RPG's these days anyway, except for nintendo DS.

The last time I played Xenogears  it was a 50-60 hour adventure, and while it is not the worst RPG ever made, it has some very significant downsides. Namely, poor translation, graphic oddities, really bad level design, and simply poor directions. Honestly, what really screwed the pooch for me was that the game tries to be heavily philosophic in nature, but fails to truly understand the concepts that it is addressing. In my last play through, what really made the game even remotely worth playing was that my friends and I took turns hitting 'x' while having philosophical conversations about the ideas being presented.

Video games are for nerds.

they don't make Suikoden figures!  plus, note the FF figures are there too.  FF6 is still my fav RPG of all time, however, Chrono Trigger and Suikoden 1 and 2 are up there as well.

I don't know, I kind of feel like RPG evaluation needs to be done on a generational level, there is too much change in style and feel to compare cross platform.  For instance, my fav PS1 era RPGs were Suikoden 1 and 2, Final Fantasy 9, Tales of Destiny and probably Xenogears.  But I don't know that I could compare them aptly to FF6 and Chrono Trigger...  let alone FFX or FFXII or something.  I should post an image of some of my RPG collection sometime, need to find a better camera tho.

metal max!

though... the browser/flash one is a bit... meh.. 

I just can't agree with you Kenata, I think the story is excellent and it has a lot of great, albeit wrong, philosophical ideas. Perhaps you are unable to appreciate the games approach with them. Oh well, to each their own. I just can't see any story of any other RPG being better, don't get me wrong, there are so many great RPGs. I love dragon quest 7 and 8, final fantasy 4, 6, 7, 9, 10 and 12, all of the suikoden games, all of the Tales games, chrono trigger, earthbound, breath of fire series, etc. The list goes on. I own more RPGs than I can count on basically every platform. I still have a dozen or so I haven't even beaten yet. Also the persona games, etc, etc. 

Which is sad.  I enjoyed the Suikoden series far better than most of Square's games, the second one being my favorite.  I would really, really like to see a story and characters as strong as 2, with the tactical battles of 3.  Could such a thing be done, I'd declare it the best game ever made in a heartbeat.

Favorite game of all time: Chrono Trigger wins for me hands down.  Being able to beat the game without the main character = Freaking ingenious.

I think a cross-generational list is possible, for the simple reason that I don't think FFX (which looked great) held a candle to anything before it (and I think many of the current gen console RPGs are boooooooring).  The characters of X were "woe is me" taken to the extreme.  I think a cross-generational list would lean heavy towards old school.  What I don't think can be accurately compared is the PC RPG market versus the console RPG market. 

On Xenogears:  Combat = awesome.  The story needed a good editor to chop, chop away.