Reccomendation for Playstation 2 games?

For one reason or another, I got myself a Playstatioin 2. Can you guys recommend me good games for it? The criterias are: I'm always a sucker for stylish game that's kinda different than other games. I admit I'm kinda a style over substance guy. And they must be console exclusive, no point of having it if I can just play the game in my PC.

Games I've played in the past and enjoyed very much are:

- Okami
- God Hand
- Viewtiful Joe
- Katamari Damacy

Thanks for your recommendation!

And, oh, while we're at it, can you guys recommend a good two player coop game too?

The Ratchet and Clank games, all of them. Great gameplay, solid humor, good story, and the graphics still hold up reasonably well. I can recommend the Jak series of games as well, although I have caveats about Jak 3, for roughly the same reasons.

If you're an RPG fan, Persona 3 (I'd spring for FES since it's superior in pretty much every way to the original and has an extra epilogue) and Persona 4 are considered some of the best games released on the PS2. They've got an interesting mix of socializing and RPG goodness that I haven't found anywhere else yet, and pretty fun mechanics. If you're not familiar with the Shin Megami Tensei series, they could be a good gateway to the series, which is fairly solid as a whole; if you've played 'em before, you probably know, at least partially, what to expect.

I can also say that they are fairly long games, which you will get a long playtime out of if you finish them; Persona 4 has 55 hours logged on my save file... but doesn't count a few extra hours I lost from game overs and retries on boss fights.

Yeah, I'd second Persona 3 and 4. They're very stylish on top of being well-written and having very solid gameplay. Really, other than Okami, they were the first two games my mind jumped to for stylishness.

Persona 3 FES and Persona 4, absolutely. Unless you just can't stand JRPGs, they are my top recommendation period.

The first three Sly games are all PS2, and are worth checking out if you like platformers. They have a pretty distinct style, basically being based on saturday morning cartoons, and are overall quite fun. I'd say Sly 2 is the best, but they're all good, if a bit short.

There's also Disgaea 1 and 2, very comedic tactical RPGs where you play as demons. Disgaea 1 has the better characters and story, but 2 refined the gameplay. Just be aware that they're designed with grinding in mind as a feature, so if you dislike grinding, they may well not be for you. You can finish the main story with comparably little grinding, but anything beyond that is another story.

Dragon Quest 8 is a very good one if you like more old-school JRPGs. It has a pretty distinct cartoony look to it, and while the story isn't anything too special, it is very well executed. The game itself is just a personal favorite for being basically the perfect way to do an old-school JRPG in a modern, 3D game era.

Oh, and on the action game front, Devil May Cry. Very gothic style to it, with over-the-top action and characters. The first game for unintentional so-bad-its-good writing (and the origins of the action game combat style prevalent today), the third game for completely intentional action-movie style cheesiness all over. Just don't bother with the second game.

Aww, you can't recommend Ratchet and Clank without recommending Jak and Daxter! The first one's basically "Crash Bandicoot meets Spyro", but the series didn't figure out what it really was until Jak 2. One of the few times that Darker And Edgier's been successfully pulled off.

ICO, Shadow of the Colossus and Onimusha 2 and Dawn of Dreams are the only games that come to mind right now.

I've heard good things about Digital Devil Saga and Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne, which are all in the same over-series as Persona - related concepts, but no real crossover between sub-series.

Don't worry too much about beating the Persona games in order - 1 and 2 are linked (and available on PSP/PSN), but there's only references to earlier games in 3 and 4. Persona 4 is much better than 3 FES in my opinion, and each has another expanded remake on Vita (4) and PSP (3) - Persona 4 Golden has everything that 4 had and more, but Persona 3 Portable is very different in the non-dungeon crawling parts of the game, and doesn't have the epilogue (the Answer) that FES has.

* The first Devil May Cry
* Ico
* Shadow of the Colossus
* Zone of the Enders 1 & 2
* Shadow Hearts (maybe 2 as well)

All of the Shin Megami Tensei games on the platform were really good. The only ones that I haven't seen mentioned are the action RPG Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha games. The second never made it to PAL regions:smallfrown:, but Soulless Army, while lacking in polish, was a lot of fun and oozes style.

Lessee, aside from that:

Dark Chronicle aka Dark Cloud 2: Action RPG/Town Building.

X-Men Legends 2: Diablo-like with teams of superheroes/villains. Co-op friendly.

Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2: You've probably heard of these. Action RPG with Disney and Final Fantasy characters.

Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter: Turn-based RPG with real-time movement out of combat. Grid based battles. Short (8-ish hours on my first playthough,IIRC), but interesting and with replay mechanics built in. Not your average RPG at all.

Champions of Norrath/Return to Arms. Solid diablo-likes. Co-op friendly

The Bards Tale: Action RPG. Good enough mechanically, but relies on humor and song (and good voice work) to stand out.

I'll also echo Dragon Quest 8 (journey of the cursed king). Very old school mechanically, very pretty, big on exploration. If you can stand battle mechanics that would be at home in an NES game it's well worth a look.

Metal Gear Solid 2 & 3. Now days, both can be found for other consoles too but you'll be doing yourself a disfavor if you have a PS2 and don't play these games. Way different from other games. Both style and Substance. And Subsistence.

God of War 1 & 2. Style. No substance. And blood. Definitely console exclusive. Sony will die before they let other consoles have God of War... probably!

Tales of the Abyss, if you like JRPGs, is, in my opinion, the best one of the PS2 generation (FFX can go hang). It also has two player co-op combat.

I also deeply enjoyed Odin Sphere, but some people don't "get it" and find it too grindy. (Read: are doing it wrong.)

The Ratchet&Clank series, Persona 3 and 4, Kingdom Hearts 2, Zone of the Enders 2, and Final Fantasy XII are among my top recommendations. Dark chronicle, aka Dark Cloud 2 is an intersting title with tons of interesting (if a little repetative) stuff to do. If your looking for something a little different, I'd say take a look into Steambot Chronicles, and don't let the cheery exterior fool you. And if you're just looking for some party-games, I'd say Digimon Rumble Arena 2 and War of the Monsters.

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Originally Posted by Airk

Tales of the Abyss, if you like JRPGs, is, in my opinion, the best one of the PS2 generation (FFX can go hang). It also has two player co-op combat.

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It IS extremely good. However it has more crashes than any other JRPG I've played on the PS2. Still the storyline and gameplay are top notch.

As is Star Ocean 3. This and Dragon Quest 8 are my favorite JRPGs on the PS2.

And of course no PS2 collection is complete without Metal Gear Solid 3. Seriously. The whole reason I bought a PS2 in the first place was to play
this game.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Stuff that hasn't been mentioned yet:

Indigo Prophecy is by the same studio who made Heavy Rain and is basically it's spiritual predecessor. There has also never been a finer example of a game where the money just ran straight out halfway through development. The 3/5 of a game that are there, however, are really fun, and you can pick it up for like five dollars nowadays.

Black is an enormously fun FPS. I can't even remember anything about the excuse of a plot, but you have a bunch of big, satisfying guns, and the environment is quite destructible. Everything goes boom in an entirely satisfactory manner It's made by the same people who did the Burnout series and takes a fairly similar philosophy to it's chosen genre.

Speaking of which, Burnout 3 is amazing. If you like racing games and you enjoy blowing things up, you'll like it.

Spider-Man 2 is still one of the hallmarks in the open-world genre, in my opinion. Games like Prototype (if you've played that) owe a lot to it and it's still quite fun.

The Warriors is a really fun 3D beat-em-up with all of the awesome late '70s cheese that the title implies.

Viewtiful Joe is made by the same studio that did Okami, and is pretty hard to describe. It's a 2D beat-em-up where you play as, uh, Joe, whose girlfriend is abducted by a monster from a movie screen. Joe jumps in too, and is given a watch that transforms him into a henshin hero with movie-editing powers. Yeah, it's that kind of game. Really fun, though.

Beyond Good and Evil is also pretty hard to describe! You play a photographer living on a planet that has been occupied by the EVIL OVERLORDS who claim to be protecting you from the EVILER OVERLORDS. You have to find out the truth. It's sort of a action-adventure-stealth-platforming thing with, obviously, some photography stuff, and a really good plot. It's quite good.

Sly Cooper is a platform/stealth game where you play as, um, Sly Cooper, a racoon gentleman thief. Something got taken from you, you have to steal it back. Really, really fun. The sequel is just as good.

The Prince of Persia series is still amazing. The second one is fun, but is probably the most embarrassingly dorky grimmification to ever grace the halls of gaming.

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Originally Posted by pendell

It IS extremely good. However it has more crashes than any other JRPG I've played on the PS2. Still the storyline and gameplay are top notch.

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This makes me wonder if there isn't something wrong with your PS2, because I've never experienced a crash. There are a couple of known glitches where weird things happen if you do very specific things, but none of them, to my knowledge, cause crashes.

Echoing Ratchet and Clank and Jak and Daxter. All of their games are amazing.

Spider-Man 2 was also really good, as was said... Um... I really enjoyed Marvel Ultimate Alliance, especially with co-op. I also liked Metal Gear Solid 3.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Airk

This makes me wonder if there isn't something wrong with your PS2, because I've never experienced a crash. There are a couple of known glitches where weird things happen if you do very specific things, but none of them, to my knowledge, cause crashes.

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It happens when I'm fighting the superbosses such as

Spoiler

Show

That big monster in the swamp and Professor Nebilim

It seems to happen most frequently with the "Dying Moon" mystic arte. A mystic arte (or Hi-ougi in the Japanese version) is a character's Super Saiyan ultra-beatdown attack which works reeeallly well on bosses.

I can't tell you how annoying it is, having spent more than a half hour beating down the bad guy, to launch dying moon, have Anise hit about 15 times, make the big super hit, then do the launch into the air and hit 15 more times ...

... and the game freezes. Right there. Never moves again. I have to fight the boss over AGAIN.

It seems to only happen on the attacks on the second playthrough or later.

Another annoying thing is when the "rhythm" skill interferes with the launching of a mystic arte, since both are keyed to the x button. So instead of either casting or blasting, the character just stands there locked in the charge animation, like a statue , for close to a full minute of game time. Meanwhile, the superboss is killing all my characters.

This seems to be avoidable by turning off the "rhythm" skill, making it useless.


All of which is NOT to say that it's a bad game. Storywise, it's close to my favorite. The game mechanics and things to do and the Albiore and the SF aspect all combine to make it a really, really cool experience. So good I played it straight through again after playing it the first time. But , alas, it's still just a smidge flawed.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by pendell

It seems to happen most frequently with the "Dying Moon" mystic arte. A mystic arte (or Hi-ougi in the Japanese version) is a character's Super Saiyan ultra-beatdown attack which works reeeallly well on bosses.

I can't tell you how annoying it is, having spent more than a half hour beating down the bad guy, to launch dying moon, have Anise hit about 15 times, make the big super hit, then do the launch into the air and hit 15 more times ...

... and the game freezes. Right there. Never moves again. I have to fight the boss over AGAIN.

It seems to only happen on the attacks on the second playthrough or later.

Another annoying thing is when the "rhythm" skill interferes with the launching of a mystic arte, since both are keyed to the x button. So instead of either casting or blasting, the character just stands there locked in the charge animation, like a statue , for close to a full minute of game time. Meanwhile, the superboss is killing all my characters.

This seems to be avoidable by turning off the "rhythm" skill, making it useless.

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Like I said. Never encountered either of these. Have done 2 "New Game+" playthroughs. (Though I never used Anise for the bonus boss fight.) Never turned off Rhythm. No idea what you are doing that causes this. Also not sure how the heck Rhythm can "interfere" with doing MAs, since one is a tap and one is a hold. And one can only occur during overlimit, where you're probably not casting all that many "normal spells" anyway. o.o

Crazy fringe stuff here, truthfully. I've literally had my PS3 crash more than I've ever had issues with Abyss on the PS2.

With respect , I'm not the only one with this problem .

Still, Anise is excellent against bosses. She can cast and fight. Also, the ant lion man doll makes her nearly invulnerable with periodic 8% recovery of hit points and tech points. She can switch dolls in mid battle to use the X-form laser, or resurrection. She's good at everything, though excellent at nothing. My favorite character, as far as crunch goes.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Out of the blue question. Are you using a Sony Memory Card, or an off brand?

I ask because I had a very similar issue with Final Fantasy Tactics on the PS1, where if I was using an off-brand card, it would freeze itself early in the game during a cutscene. I could get around it by saving and then moving it to a Sony Mem Card, then saving back on my normal card after the scene. Happened with two different discs.

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Originally Posted by Triaxx

Out of the blue question. Are you using a Sony Memory Card, or an off brand?

I ask because I had a very similar issue with Final Fantasy Tactics on the PS1, where if I was using an off-brand card, it would freeze itself early in the game during a cutscene. I could get around it by saving and then moving it to a Sony Mem Card, then saving back on my normal card after the scene. Happened with two different discs.

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I'm not sure. It's probably an off brand. I had no idea it made a difference to the running of the system.

At any rate, here's a guy fighting the exhibition team solo. Have a look . It IS a fun game.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Another vote for Persona 3 FES and Persona 4.

Thanks guys. I'll take your recommendation in my mind.

Are there any other games like the "rachet and clank" and "Jak and Daxter" serieses? I like the slightly cartoony aspect of those games, but it is not a requirement. Mostly I want games with similar control schemes and the option of either whacking things or shooting them (with both being useful at least some of the time). Physics defying jumping preferred, but not required.

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Originally Posted by Rockphed

Are there any other games like the "rachet and clank" and "Jak and Daxter" serieses? I like the slightly cartoony aspect of those games, but it is not a requirement. Mostly I want games with similar control schemes and the option of either whacking things or shooting them (with both being useful at least some of the time). Physics defying jumping preferred, but not required.

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Uh... I was never much into those sorts of games, but one game I had as a kid was Ty the Tasmanian Tiger 2. Your main weapon was boomerangs, and you could use them ranged or melee, if I remember correctly.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rockphed

Are there any other games like the "rachet and clank" and "Jak and Daxter" serieses? I like the slightly cartoony aspect of those games, but it is not a requirement. Mostly I want games with similar control schemes and the option of either whacking things or shooting them (with both being useful at least some of the time). Physics defying jumping preferred, but not required.

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Hm. I haven't actually played either of those series, but as far as cartoony platformers go, there's the Sly Cooper series. I've recently played through the first three, and am now playing the fourth (which was actually just released this year), and they're pretty fun. Not much shooting, though. Only some mini-games, and from the second game on one of your teammates, Bentley, can shoot sleep darts from his first-person mode.

In the fourth there's been a bit more, but again in the form of other teammates - Bentley can now fire other dart types (explosive, electric, confusion, one more I haven't unlocked), a level-specific character has some gunslinging ability, as does another character that I think is going to be more permanent, but am not sure of yet.

Otherwise, yeah, Sly himself is a sneaky type that fights entirely in melee with his cane when he has to, and his other partner, Murray, is a fist-fighter.

I really liked Ar Tonelico

Rogue Galaxy, done by the same people who made Dark Cloud and loads of fun.

Odin Sphere, beat 'em up/hackinslash with RPG elements and Gorgeous scenery. Never finished it due to the difficutly, but enjoyed what I did play of it.



Anything by NIS (Nippon Ichi Software) is worth a look, some tend to be on the grindier side of games, but are still loads of fun. Personal favorites: Phantom Brave, Soul Nomad, and La Pucelle Tactics. I enjoyed the Disgea games, they just didn't stick with me as much as some of the others.