When did you start playing RPGs (if ever)?

[danzibr]

tl;dr: I played far more RPGs than anything else from 10 to 30, but when I was young and now kinda old, I find myself pulled towards games with more action and less plot*

Disclaimer: I'm 32 and have been playing games pretty much my whole life.

And by RPGs I specifically mean... basically not ARPGs. Most Final Fantasies, Chrono Trigger, Suikoden, Dragon Quest/Warrior, Disgaea, the list goes on and on.

I remember being a kid and playing things like River City Ransom, Ranger X, NBA Jam, Blaster Master, etc. Maybe it's because I wasn't good at reading yet, or didn't have any patience, but I wasn't into RPGs at all. My family had a couple, but I just wasn't into them (actually, one that comes to mind is Landstalker, which is an ARPG).

But then, when I was 10 or 11, I got Phantasy Star IV, then got Final Fantasy VII, and was hooked. Throughout my years, I've played far more RPGs than any other type of game. Not a fan of sports games, racing games, shooters are okay, I like patformers, but RPGs, that's where it's at.

But then, in more recent years, I find myself preferring games with more action again, so to speak. When I think of the games I've gotten recently, not many RPGs. Maybe I'm growing impatient? Feel I don't have enough time for a big investment into a game? Not sure.

And you?

*not saying non-RPGs can't have good plot, or that RPGs do have a lot of plot

[T.G. Oskar]

When I was eight, maybe. That'd be...oh, about 26 or 27 years ago? (I think I was in 3rd grade by then. Wow, time sure flies!)

I remember it clearly, because I had chicken pox when that happened. By then, I got my own console (a Super Nintendo), and while I played (and loved) Zelda, I had only two other games - Super Mario World (because it came bundled in), and a soccer game (which is a cool story to tell - let's just say my mother tricked me into it. In fact, I remember exactly when and where she bought it, and I can still see exactly the booth in where that game was located).

Anyways, since I'd be at home for about 2 weeks (oh, hey...), I'd be doing little, since even though I'd get my homework through someone else, I'd be at home. Back then, the console was on the living room TV, since I didn't have a room of my own. So my elder cousin comes in, and he shows me this game: Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. Dubbed an "entry level RPG", since it had some elements similar to Zelda (you'll see what I mean), he figured I'd like it. So I spent the better part of that quarantine (hur hur hur!) playing it, and even some time after. To accompany me, my sister played it as well, and we basically helped each other out. Suffice to say she finished the game before I did. However, while she eventually stopped playing most video games (she's into smartphone games now, but as I got my niece a SNES Classic, she's been playing with her - never say I'm not a patron of video games within my own family!), I kept playing them, and thanks to...let's say Blockbuster Video, I got heavily into RPGs. I also got into other games (Mega Man X, Street Fighter II, Star Fox, etc.) but I began playing games such as Breath of Fire II, Lufia II, amongst others.

Eventually, after a few years, I got the chance to get another RPG - that'd be when I was 11 or 12. By then, I had several games, and I had a subscription to GamePro (yes, I'll admit it!), and there was one game that caught my attention. So, I asked my parents to get it, after renting it a LOT. The game? Final Fantasy 3. (Which should explain in detail a little quirk of mine to the guys at the FFRK thread, specifically about my platonic love interest.)

So yeah - now that we're quarantined at home for 2 weeks, possibly more, this thread couldn't come at a better moment. After that came the Nintendo 64 and its lack of RPGs, which eventually led to the PlayStation and its TON of RPGs, and ever since then, I've pretty much bought only RPGs. About the only game I have that's NOT an RPG in my collection is DOOM (the most recent one), and that's because the game is super-awesome.

[Man_Over_Game]

I was kind of spoiled, since my older brother was a gaming pirate and had a lot of refined taste.

From him, I started with Breath of Fire 3. I remember it distinctly, since I was learning to read at the time and had to ask what the word "random" meant.

Chrono Trigger was next, followed by Tales of Phantasia.

I kinda hit the ground running, and now I'm incredibly picky when it comes to my RPGs.

I'll b honest and say that I think the worst part about FFVII was the gameplay. The world, music, storytelling, all great. The combat was no better than it was in Chrono Trigger, a game made by the same company in the previous generation of consoles.

On that note, Chrono Cross is a masterpiece. Sure, it could have used some of the same detailing as Chrono Trigger and FFVII had, but its combat system is something that gets you hooked. I've never been more impressed with a combat mechanic system in the same way, and I'm still looking for something that comes close.

[Zevox]

Not sure, but judging by the release dates of the three games that might have been my first RPGs, seems like it was probably the late 90s or the year 2000, which would've made me a pre-teen at the time. Those three games being Quest 64, Ogre Battle 64, and the GBC release of Dragon Quest 1-2 (then known as Dragon Warrior in the US for copyright reasons).

Quest 64 is probably actually the one I played first, since it released two years before the others, but I can't honestly be completely sure about that. It's fairly famously bad, but at the time I liked it - it let me play as a wizard and kill monsters with spells, and could be broken clean in half by focusing on the right elements, so that was fun to me at the time. Heck, I could still play it years later and enjoy it despite its many flaws, just out of nostalgia.

Ogre Battle 64 is a bit of an oddball, but you could call it a tactical RPG of sorts, and I certainly played the hell out of it back then. I enjoyed coming up with different unit compositions and seeing how strong they'd be, especially ones involving the game's various monsters or special classes.

Dragon Quest 1-2 is almost certainly what you'd call my first fully traditional-style RPG(s), though (given that even though Quest 64 is turn-based, it's combat is kind of odd in its own ways). Though I didn't actually replay those as much as Quest or Ogre Battle back at the time, because I also got the GBC remake of Dragon Quest 3 at the same time. I played through them in order, so 1-2 was my first, but 3 was the one that I replayed a number of times, not its predecessors. In fact, while I recall attempting to replay 2 at least once, I don't think I finished, and I'm not sure if I ever replayed 1.

RPGs certainly became one of my most heavily played genres for a while after that, at least when I could get ahold of new ones, which were a bit sparse on the N64 and Gamecube (I did play Tales of Symphonia an awful lot on the latter). It wasn't until the next generation was out that I started getting more than just Nintendo consoles, including picking up a PS2 that was cheap since its successor had come out, so that opened things up quite a bit in options for a while. Over time though, other genres have certainly started taking up more of my gaming time, especially the more I got into fighting games after trying BlazBlue back in 2010, and action games after seeing Dante and Trish in MvC3 made me decide to give Devil May Cry a try. Also hasn't been helped by one of my former favorite RPG developers, Bioware, moving away from what I liked about their games in the past to make more open-world style titles - plus Anthem, which isn't even an RPG, and I quickly wrote off as a game I was totally uninterested in. Still, RPGs remain one of my favorite genres, and my personal favorite games of all time are still RPGs (Persona 3 and 4).

[danzibr]

When I was eight, maybe. That'd be...oh, about 26 or 27 years ago? (I think I was in 3rd grade by then. Wow, time sure flies!)

I remember it clearly, because I had chicken pox when that happened. By then, I got my own console (a Super Nintendo), and while I played (and loved) Zelda, I had only two other games - Super Mario World (because it came bundled in), and a soccer game (which is a cool story to tell - let's just say my mother tricked me into it. In fact, I remember exactly when and where she bought it, and I can still see exactly the booth in where that game was located).

Anyways, since I'd be at home for about 2 weeks (oh, hey...), I'd be doing little, since even though I'd get my homework through someone else, I'd be at home. Back then, the console was on the living room TV, since I didn't have a room of my own. So my elder cousin comes in, and he shows me this game: Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. Dubbed an "entry level RPG", since it had some elements similar to Zelda (you'll see what I mean), he figured I'd like it. So I spent the better part of that quarantine (hur hur hur!) playing it, and even some time after. To accompany me, my sister played it as well, and we basically helped each other out. Suffice to say she finished the game before I did. However, while she eventually stopped playing most video games (she's into smartphone games now, but as I got my niece a SNES Classic, she's been playing with her - never say I'm not a patron of video games within my own family!), I kept playing them, and thanks to...let's say Blockbuster Video, I got heavily into RPGs. I also got into other games (Mega Man X, Street Fighter II, Star Fox, etc.) but I began playing games such as Breath of Fire II, Lufia II, amongst others.

Eventually, after a few years, I got the chance to get another RPG - that'd be when I was 11 or 12. By then, I had several games, and I had a subscription to GamePro (yes, I'll admit it!), and there was one game that caught my attention. So, I asked my parents to get it, after renting it a LOT. The game? Final Fantasy 3. (Which should explain in detail a little quirk of mine to the guys at the FFRK thread, specifically about my platonic love interest.)

So yeah - now that we're quarantined at home for 2 weeks, possibly more, this thread couldn't come at a better moment. After that came the Nintendo 64 and its lack of RPGs, which eventually led to the PlayStation and its TON of RPGs, and ever since then, I've pretty much bought only RPGs. About the only game I have that's NOT an RPG in my collection is DOOM (the most recent one), and that's because the game is super-awesome.

Huh, didn't know we were so close in age. I can see it though.

Yes, FF3! My brother had that on SNES. I didn't get the opportunity to play it until years later, as he sold his SNES.

And alas, I missed out on BoFII. More on this soon...

I was kind of spoiled, since my older brother was a gaming pirate and had a lot of refined taste.

From him, I started with Breath of Fire 3. I remember it distinctly, since I was learning to read at the time and had to ask what the word "random" meant.

Chrono Trigger was next, followed by Tales of Phantasia.

I kinda hit the ground running, and now I'm incredibly picky when it comes to my RPGs.

I'll b honest and say that I think the worst part about FFVII was the gameplay. The world, music, storytelling, all great. The combat was no better than it was in Chrono Trigger, a game made by the same company in the previous generation of consoles.

On that note, Chrono Cross is a masterpiece. Sure, it could have used some of the same detailing as Chrono Trigger and FFVII had, but its combat system is something that gets you hooked. I've never been more impressed with a combat mechanic system in the same way, and I'm still looking for something that comes close.

BoFIII is one of my favorite RPGs of all time. Hands down, best transformation system in any game ever. Art incredible, music, combat, everything (well, almost everything, a few minor flaws come to mind). A delightful first RPG.

FFVII, yeah, looking at it objectively, I don't think it's that good. I have on some thick nostalgia glasses though.

Chrono Cross, I started that game, quit it because I didn't like it, then later picked it up again, forced myself through. Did not like it, not one bit. My apologies.

Not sure, but judging by the release dates of the three games that might have been my first RPGs, seems like it was probably the late 90s or the year 2000, which would've made me a pre-teen at the time. Those three games being Quest 64, Ogre Battle 64, and the GBC release of Dragon Quest 1-2 (then known as Dragon Warrior in the US for copyright reasons).

Quest 64 is probably actually the one I played first, since it released two years before the others, but I can't honestly be completely sure about that. It's fairly famously bad, but at the time I liked it - it let me play as a wizard and kill monsters with spells, and could be broken clean in half by focusing on the right elements, so that was fun to me at the time. Heck, I could still play it years later and enjoy it despite its many flaws, just out of nostalgia.

Ogre Battle 64 is a bit of an oddball, but you could call it a tactical RPG of sorts, and I certainly played the hell out of it back then. I enjoyed coming up with different unit compositions and seeing how strong they'd be, especially ones involving the game's various monsters or special classes.

Dragon Quest 1-2 is almost certainly what you'd call my first fully traditional-style RPG(s), though (given that even though Quest 64 is turn-based, it's combat is kind of odd in its own ways). Though I didn't actually replay those as much as Quest or Ogre Battle back at the time, because I also got the GBC remake of Dragon Quest 3 at the same time. I played through them in order, so 1-2 was my first, but 3 was the one that I replayed a number of times, not its predecessors. In fact, while I recall attempting to replay 2 at least once, I don't think I finished, and I'm not sure if I ever replayed 1.

RPGs certainly became one of my most heavily played genres for a while after that, at least when I could get ahold of new ones, which were a bit sparse on the N64 and Gamecube (I did play Tales of Symphonia an awful lot on the latter). It wasn't until the next generation was out that I started getting more than just Nintendo consoles, including picking up a PS2 that was cheap since its successor had come out, so that opened things up quite a bit in options for a while. Over time though, other genres have certainly started taking up more of my gaming time, especially the more I got into fighting games after trying BlazBlue back in 2010, and action games after seeing Dante and Trish in MvC3 made me decide to give Devil May Cry a try. Also hasn't been helped by one of my former favorite RPG developers, Bioware, moving away from what I liked about their games in the past to make more open-world style titles - plus Anthem, which isn't even an RPG, and I quickly wrote off as a game I was totally uninterested in. Still, RPGs remain one of my favorite genres, and my personal favorite games of all time are still RPGs (Persona 3 and 4).

Tales of Symphonia holds a special place to me, last game I really played with my brother. Great game. The sequel is... surprisingly okay.

My condolences about Bioware.

[Razade]

Obviously not a video game but I started playing Dungeons and Dragons when I was 8, so that was...1993? We got a Nintendo around that time but we only had Mario and Duckhunt. We got Final Fantasy once from the local rental movie shop, because those were a thing back then, and I kept renting it and renting it and never really understood how to make any progress in it. Didn't beat it until I was much much older, but that was still the first RPG I played on a gaming system and I've been a fan ever since.

[Zevox]

Tales of Symphonia holds a special place to me, last game I really played with my brother. Great game. The sequel is... surprisingly okay.

My condolences about Bioware.

Eh, I recall Dawn of the New World being a rather disappointing sequel myself - that's one I know I only ever played once. But the Tales franchise has produced much better games since anyway, including several that I think are better than Symphonia itself. Vesperia and Abyss are the two I've long rated the highest, closely followed I think by Berseria.

And yeah, Bioware's situation is unfortunate, but I'm kind of over it. If they ever happen to do something more up my alley again, cool, but if not, oh well, there's still plenty of other developers making games (RPG and otherwise) that I enjoy.

[Razade]

I enjoyed Vesperia's cast and story more than I enjoyed Symphonia's but the changes to the combat system made it hard for me be thrilled with the game over all. Just beat it on Switch, gearing up for the extra content. I dislike how one vs team battles just revert to pushing them in a corner and comboing them into oblivion though. I never felt, on Normal, that I had to have much strategy. As long as I had Estelle to heal the party make up didn't matter at all and even though I was 6ish-10ish levels behind everything I fought the only two battles that gave me trouble were the wolf monster in the forest early on the game (which apparently isn't just me) and the second form of Duke. The latter only gave me trouble because I was too lazy to nip back to a town and stock up on items. The only thing that made him difficult was his Mystic Arte and that's because attacks that just bring your whole party to 1HP is a lazy, boring artificial difficulty move.

[Kitten Champion]

My father collected video games since he was 20-something and had most games and most consoles from Japan and NA from the years 1983-1998 - Famicom, Turbografx, Neo-Geo, Genesis, etc - but the first RPG I can recall actually playing from his stuff was Dragon Warrior 1-2 for the GBC.

I don't know why it was the American version I had, but whatever.

I spent a lot of time travelling in my early life due to vacations, parents work, and so on. So I was keen on the handhelds and it was one of the first games I picked up from the pile 'cause it's got great art on the box and cartridge. I recall also trying Final Fantasy Legend earlier but I got frustrated with it quickly and stopped playing, while I played through DQ in its entirety in one sitting and my go at DQ II wasn't that much longer. I particularly liked DQ II for having a party with a girl hero in it, also the whole idea of having a party at all with different roles rather than amassing power into a single hero appealed to me.

The next big one for me was Chrono Trigger, it was just beyond the pale. At the time I didn't realize there was so many endings, but I knew immediately upon beating it my first time I was going back through the game and reviving Crono to beat Lavos with him, having chosen to defeat him with a Magus-led party before. Chrono Trigger moved the idea of a RPG from being about grinding levels, powering up, and problem solving with generic adventure stories into the realm of a whole production with actual characters and awesome art and visual effects that seemed implausibly awesome for the SNES.

Though my lengthy phase of really getting into JRPGs was Final Fantasy, starting with the PS2 and FFX. I played through FFV all the way through IX systematically after getting them all for the PSOne. I did leave VII to last because it was near-impossible to find at the time, and this was before cheap digital copies. I think my best experience RPG-wise has been on the NDS though. Between DQ and FF games with its own assorted original titles, it represented so much of my time.

Anyways, I reached a point from the PS2 onward where I just have amassed more jRPGs than time to actually play them. I've been jumping between titles across my consoles and focusing on actually completing them for the last 4-5 years. I'm currently working through Tales of Berseria and hope to have it done before whenever I obtain the FF7 Remake. Which, given current conditions, I can't see why I wouldn't.

[Hunter Noventa]

IT was very early for me, as we had an NES with Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior in my house. I fell off a little bit in the 16-bit era since we had a Genesis, but once I got a PS1 games like Wild Arms, FF7, FFTactics and Front Mission 3 were my lifeblood.

[Driderman]

First real computer RPGs for me was probably Phantasie III and the Gold Box Krynn games on the Amiga, which me and my best friend played religiously. Anything Krynn-related was awesome back then, we went through all the books we could find, got the AD&D boxset, even did a Council of Wyrms game set in Krynn (I was a Red Dragon of course).

[Man_Over_Game]

Chrono Cross, I started that game, quit it because I didn't like it, then later picked it up again, forced myself through. Did not like it, not one bit. My apologies.

I play it with the mindset that it's a strategy game. You play a strategy game for the strategy, and the game, not necessarily the story. It's a different thought-process than most JRPGs, but most of them have pretty boring gameplay.

Chrono Cross doesn't have a great story, but the combat is something akin to a puzzle game. You have to take a credit's worth of a college course to understand it completely, but it feels incredibly powerful and responsive once you do.

From the allies you pick, to the spells you equip them with, to the enemies you expect to be facing, each fight can be difficult or easily manipulated. Most people who play the game spend it spamming the Attack button, since they don't really understand how the elemental system works. They see a circle with a bunch of random colors, and it changes whenever someone casts spells, and life goes on.

But that little circle does so much. It surprises me that nobody has tried to do something similar.

Chrono Cross, Grandia 2, FF Lightning Returns, maybe the original Puzzle Quest (if you consider it as being a valid RPG). That's about all of the RPGs I've played who's RPG combat system impressed me. They're all incredibly versatile and robust, while being practically impossible to perfect.

If you are an avid RPG player, and you haven't played through one of those, you're doing yourself a disservice.

[Tvtyrant]

FF3 (now 6) and Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars when I was a kid. I played FF through 10, Mario RPGs through Thousand Year Door, then moved away from RPGs. I don't have the patience anymore, and when I play open world RPGs I end up just exploring the woods until I get bored and quit.

[Clertar]

I was in my tweens when my parents got me Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos for my birthday or for christmas. A brilliant RPG.

[LibraryOgre]

1989 or so, with the release of Hero's Quest/Quest for Glory.

[T.G. Oskar]

I play it with the mindset that it's a strategy game. You play a strategy game for the strategy, and the game, not necessarily the story. It's a different thought-process than most JRPGs, but most of them have pretty boring gameplay.

Chrono Cross doesn't have a great story, but the combat is something akin to a puzzle game. You have to take a credit's worth of a college course to understand it completely, but it feels incredibly powerful and responsive once you do.

From the allies you pick, to the spells you equip them with, to the enemies you expect to be facing, each fight can be difficult or easily manipulated. Most people who play the game spend it spamming the Attack button, since they don't really understand how the elemental system works. They see a circle with a bunch of random colors, and it changes whenever someone casts spells, and life goes on.

But that little circle does so much. It surprises me that nobody has tried to do something similar.

The Field Effect? Well, it can be a pain to work out, but much like the Zodiac alignment system in FF Tactics, it's something I didn't really pay too much importance, other than one LIIIIITTLE thing at the end.

To be honest, the only battles I found inherently tough were the ones against Garai (darn Willbreaker! Darn it all to heck!), and the secret boss fight against Dario (and even then, I had a good team for it - I recall using Riddel, of all people!), mostly because fighting against Light-aligned enemies who suddenly hit with another element (IIRC, Garai had weakness to Dark, used a lot of Light moves, but then surprised you with Wind) can be a pain. But by the end, it was smooth sailing, to the point I rotated between the characters. (Though I tended to favor Kid, Glenn, Grobyc, Fargo, sometimes Nikki, Radius + Viper just for their combo move, and Sprigg/whatever's the name of the shapeshifter specifically for Flea).

That said, I never played Chrono Trigger before playing Chrono Cross (I got the Anthology afterwards, so I played it, finished it, and began doing the alternate endings as I could), and even then, I liked the story. It was pretty unique, and if you played it to the end, you saw a lot of things that tied it to Chrono Trigger. You don't get the fate of most of the characters from the first one (you get only Lucca's, specifically), and it can be overloaded with characters (but not as much as pretty much any Suikoden game), but it's an enjoyable experience. And the combat system is nice, but not something that requires a ton of thought.

If I were to deal with complicated (I'd say complex, but YMMV), look no further than the SaGa series. Characters' attributes increase independently, the way you learn techniques is based on a RNG that you can only moderately manipulate, and the way Monsters progress is downright impossible to understand. And SaGa is one of these games that doesn't hold you by the hand - if you don't know its trappings (Sparking, Enemy Level, Technique/Magic Crown), you'll be lost. It's the reason why the game isn't any more popular, but Romancing SaGa 3, SaGa Frontier and Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song are amazingly complex games. (And Unlimited Saga is just needlessly complicated.)

If I were to look for games with great battle systems, I'd definitely put Grandia (the first one kinda does everything better, IMO), Star Ocean (you can move and reposition your characters around, plus the way techniques level up), the SaGa series (the way techniques develop and improve, and the combo system that makes everything nice; sadly, SaGa's magic system is downright weak, to the point techniques are vastly more powerful) and Valkyrie Profile (again, combos, button pressing to enable those combos, doing it with the right timing to get more XP and charge your bar, and then look at how pretty are the PWS/Soul Crushes and Great Magic spells).

[tonberrian]

My first RPG would have been Pokemon Red, which means about when I was 9 or 10. So about 20 years now. After that it was Dragon Warrior 3, the Gameboy Color version, and I was hooked on the genre.

[Yora]

Baldur's Gate. Summer 1999. I remember quite well being super bored on a saturday and decided to buy a new videogame. Since we didn't have internet back then I flipped through old game magazines to look for something that got rated very highly and might look interesting enough to get me over the weekend. Baldur's Gate was rated very high and showered in praise as the most amazing, must-have RPG, and I happened to have two different magazines from the month that it had come out.
I had no idea what RPGs are and never read the reviews in the RPG sections, and I also didn't really know anything about fantasy other than having read The Lord of the Rings a few years before. But with that much praise it seems worth giving a shot. So I hopped on my bike for a quick ride into town.

Since that day fantasy is about the only fiction I care for, and most of my videogames are to some extend RPGs. As my personal interests, preferences in entertainment, and my own creative activities go, that was the most important day in my life.

I replayed Baldur's Gate this winter, and I have to say after 21 years, it really isn't that fun to play anymore. But back then it was the greatest thing ever.

[MalsvirT]

I think my first ever RPG was Blue Dragon on the Xbox 360 when i was 11. I liked that game, i'd love to play it again if i hadn't sold it, and it's probably the reason i like robots in fantasy settings. I haven't really been an RPG videogame player though, i still prefer pen and paper tabletop i started playing at 17.

[danzibr]

@Razade: I didn't mention it in the OP, but my family too rented the original FF and didn't know what the heck was going on.

@Zevox: I just thought it was alright. I liked seeing the original cast again, especially getting them on the party (though locked at level 50, wtf). Plot was kinda weird, departed from the original a lot, but overall... okay.

@Kitten Champion: I actually didn't get Magus my first playthrough. Whoops.

Also, quitting gaming a month before FFVII Remake comes out... I might have to renege.

IT was very early for me, as we had an NES with Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior in my house. I fell off a little bit in the 16-bit era since we had a Genesis, but once I got a PS1 games like Wild Arms, FF7, FFTactics and Front Mission 3 were my lifeblood.

Nice. Interesting, how similar (but Genesis had some bomb RPGs).

First real computer RPGs for me was probably Phantasie III and the Gold Box Krynn games on the Amiga, which me and my best friend played religiously. Anything Krynn-related was awesome back then, we went through all the books we could find, got the AD&D boxset, even did a Council of Wyrms game set in Krynn (I was a Red Dragon of course).

*googles Phantasie III* nice. And here I tell the whippersnappers about gaming back in my day...

I play it with the mindset that it's a strategy game. You play a strategy game for the strategy, and the game, not necessarily the story. It's a different thought-process than most JRPGs, but most of them have pretty boring gameplay.

Chrono Cross doesn't have a great story, but the combat is something akin to a puzzle game. You have to take a credit's worth of a college course to understand it completely, but it feels incredibly powerful and responsive once you do.

From the allies you pick, to the spells you equip them with, to the enemies you expect to be facing, each fight can be difficult or easily manipulated. Most people who play the game spend it spamming the Attack button, since they don't really understand how the elemental system works. They see a circle with a bunch of random colors, and it changes whenever someone casts spells, and life goes on.

But that little circle does so much. It surprises me that nobody has tried to do something similar.

Chrono Cross, Grandia 2, FF Lightning Returns, maybe the original Puzzle Quest (if you consider it as being a valid RPG). That's about all of the RPGs I've played who's RPG combat system impressed me. They're all incredibly versatile and robust, while being practically impossible to perfect.

If you are an avid RPG player, and you haven't played through one of those, you're doing yourself a disservice.

I missed out on Grandia 2, but loved the hell outta Lightning Returns.

Chrono Cross though, man, I dunno, just didn't like it. Any of it. Janky graphics, didn't like the 2-world business, forgettable characters (a few memorable... admittedly, it'd be hard to make everyone memorable in such a huge cast). Combat I don't remember too well.

I think my main issue is I liked Chrono Trigger so much, and was hoping for more of the same.

FF3 (now 6) and Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars when I was a kid. I played FF through 10, Mario RPGs through Thousand Year Door, then moved away from RPGs. I don't have the patience anymore, and when I play open world RPGs I end up just exploring the woods until I get bored and quit.

I have the same dilemma for open world RPGs. Spend hours and hours exploring and getting OP, haven't scratched the main quest, quit.

I was in my tweens when my parents got me Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos for my birthday or for christmas. A brilliant RPG.

*googles Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos* hmm, looks good. Reminds me of, say, Dungeon Magic (and others).

1989 or so, with the release of Hero's Quest/Quest for Glory.

Still need to play these. Well, we'll see when that happens.

The Field Effect? Well, it can be a pain to work out, but much like the Zodiac alignment system in FF Tactics, it's something I didn't really pay too much importance, other than one LIIIIITTLE thing at the end.

To be honest, the only battles I found inherently tough were the ones against Garai (darn Willbreaker! Darn it all to heck!), and the secret boss fight against Dario (and even then, I had a good team for it - I recall using Riddel, of all people!), mostly because fighting against Light-aligned enemies who suddenly hit with another element (IIRC, Garai had weakness to Dark, used a lot of Light moves, but then surprised you with Wind) can be a pain. But by the end, it was smooth sailing, to the point I rotated between the characters. (Though I tended to favor Kid, Glenn, Grobyc, Fargo, sometimes Nikki, Radius + Viper just for their combo move, and Sprigg/whatever's the name of the shapeshifter specifically for Flea).

That said, I never played Chrono Trigger before playing Chrono Cross (I got the Anthology afterwards, so I played it, finished it, and began doing the alternate endings as I could), and even then, I liked the story. It was pretty unique, and if you played it to the end, you saw a lot of things that tied it to Chrono Trigger. You don't get the fate of most of the characters from the first one (you get only Lucca's, specifically), and it can be overloaded with characters (but not as much as pretty much any Suikoden game), but it's an enjoyable experience. And the combat system is nice, but not something that requires a ton of thought.

If I were to deal with complicated (I'd say complex, but YMMV), look no further than the SaGa series. Characters' attributes increase independently, the way you learn techniques is based on a RNG that you can only moderately manipulate, and the way Monsters progress is downright impossible to understand. And SaGa is one of these games that doesn't hold you by the hand - if you don't know its trappings (Sparking, Enemy Level, Technique/Magic Crown), you'll be lost. It's the reason why the game isn't any more popular, but Romancing SaGa 3, SaGa Frontier and Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song are amazingly complex games. (And Unlimited Saga is just needlessly complicated.)

If I were to look for games with great battle systems, I'd definitely put Grandia (the first one kinda does everything better, IMO), Star Ocean (you can move and reposition your characters around, plus the way techniques level up), the SaGa series (the way techniques develop and improve, and the combo system that makes everything nice; sadly, SaGa's magic system is downright weak, to the point techniques are vastly more powerful) and Valkyrie Profile (again, combos, button pressing to enable those combos, doing it with the right timing to get more XP and charge your bar, and then look at how pretty are the PWS/Soul Crushes and Great Magic spells).

Man you remember Chrono Cross way better than I do.

Seconding SaGa. Frontier is one of my favorite games (didn't like its sequel though). And seconding Star Ocean (2, not 3).

My first RPG would have been Pokemon Red, which means about when I was 9 or 10. So about 20 years now. After that it was Dragon Warrior 3, the Gameboy Color version, and I was hooked on the genre.

Ya know, I grew up in the right time to be a Pokemon fan, but never played a Pokemon game until Ruby Red a couple years ago.

Baldur's Gate. Summer 1999. I remember quite well being super bored on a saturday and decided to buy a new videogame. Since we didn't have internet back then I flipped through old game magazines to look for something that got rated very highly and might look interesting enough to get me over the weekend. Baldur's Gate was rated very high and showered in praise as the most amazing, must-have RPG, and I happened to have two different magazines from the month that it had come out.
I had no idea what RPGs are and never read the reviews in the RPG sections, and I also didn't really know anything about fantasy other than having read The Lord of the Rings a few years before. But with that much praise it seems worth giving a shot. So I hopped on my bike for a quick ride into town.

Since that day fantasy is about the only fiction I care for, and most of my videogames are to some extend RPGs. As my personal interests, preferences in entertainment, and my own creative activities go, that was the most important day in my life.

I replayed Baldur's Gate this winter, and I have to say after 21 years, it really isn't that fun to play anymore. But back then it was the greatest thing ever.

I had a similar experience. Played a looooooooooot of BG (specifically BG II with tons of mods) back in the day, mid '90s I guess), then played the original again recently... it was okay.

I think my first ever RPG was Blue Dragon on the Xbox 360 when i was 11. I liked that game, i'd love to play it again if i hadn't sold it, and it's probably the reason i like robots in fantasy settings. I haven't really been an RPG videogame player though, i still prefer pen and paper tabletop i started playing at 17.

*googles Blue Dragon* aww what the heck, 360 exclusive? This game looks awesome. Reminds me of Legend of Legaia.

[LibraryOgre]

Still need to play these. Well, we'll see when that happens.

$6.49 on GOG for all 5... 6, if you count the VGA version.

[Clertar]

*googles Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos* hmm, looks good. Reminds me of, say, Dungeon Magic (and others).

With Patrick Stewart voicing King Richard!

Spoiler

Show

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZexNaFzL0YA

[JadedDM]

My first was Secret of Mana for the SNES; I was around 11, I think. I had rented pretty much everything else that interested me in the local video rental, and I had vaguely remembered it was given a good review in one of my gaming magazines, so I figured I'd try it out. I rented again the following weekend, and the weekend after that, until I finally beat it. That started a lifelong love of RPGs, which eventually led to D&D itself later on.

[houlio]

I was trying to remember what my first rpg was, and it took another person mentioning Pokemon for me to remember that one. Otherwise I did pen and paper before anything else. My two older brothers and I shared a GBC and an old school brick Gameboy and one cartridge each of red and blue version. Naturally, my oldest brother got to play his own cartridge himself, and then my other brother played one that I got to mess around with occasionally. After that, the next thing like a crpg I really got into was Harvest Moon for the N64, which was the first game I ever bought with my own money.

[T.G. Oskar]

Seconding SaGa. Frontier is one of my favorite games (didn't like its sequel though). And seconding Star Ocean (2, not 3).

Romancing SaGa 3 is amazing as well. It has a pretty long cast, but it has so many good mechanics: the Merchant Battles (hoo boy, those were so good!), the battle against the Zweiger machine (the music was meant to pump you up, and you had the other Zweiger as a third "party member" of sorts, the quirks with the Four Fiends (or, based on the new translation, Four "Sinistrals" - like we didn't saw that in Lufia before, aye?), the way the graphics looked, the quests...the QUESTS!

Indeed, such an amazing game, so underrated. So good that it came for the Switch. In fact...I actually got into the mobile game based on SaGa (it's on closed beta, but it's pretty polished - only needs the Data Link and the Guilds). The story's meh, but you can't expect much from SaGa. However...the battles? Sheesh, they're challenging! Right up that SaGa level of difficulty.

Definitely playing the heck outta it.

That said: I loved SaGa Frontier to death. I actually finished the entire game, including a T260G all-Mec party, a Red team with both IRPO and Gradius members (that is: Fuse, Doll, Cotton, Silence and Rabbit for IRPO, and Emelia, Liza, Annie and Roufas for Gradius), an all-Mystic Asellus team (with Rei, Silence, Mesarthim and Ildon using the trick to swap Mystic for Realm Magic but still learn the spells, so he had the ability to use both Realm and Mystic Magic), and even an all-Monster party with Riki. I'll do an all-Monster playthrough with Riki to the extent of fighting Virgil with only monsters, AND MasterRing after using Revolution9 (which makes it arguably the most difficult of the final bosses). That's how much I like the series.

Heck, I even have SaGa Frontier II (which I finished, BTW - no Pocketstation, tho) AND Unlimited Saga (of which I only finished Kurt's quest, and I basically stumbled into it).

*googles Blue Dragon* aww what the heck, 360 exclusive? This game looks awesome. Reminds me of Legend of Legaia.

X-Box 360 had some super-nice RPGs. Fable II is pretty nice, but Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey is where they are. Also Operation: Darkness, though...sheesh, that battle in France with the tanks AND the vampires was a pain in the bum!

But...wow, Legend of Legaia. PSX had some awesome first-party RPGs: Legaia, Legend of Dragoon and Wild ARMS 1 & 2 (I think the series fell down after 3 or 4, though) Wild Arms was more about the fusion of Western and Fantasy, and LoDragoon had an amazing combat system with the Additions (and gorram that 7-Hit Addition from Albert! The timing was so difficult to pull!)

...Yeah, I played my RPGs.

[Hunter Noventa]

Nice. Interesting, how similar (but Genesis had some bomb RPGs).

It did, but I never owned any. I rented the Shining Force Games and Phantasy Star 4 quite a few times though.

[Balain]

First computer rpg I played with a friend on his Apple IIe was UltimaIII. First I played on my on, was Ultima IV, on my C64. About 36 years ago give or take a year or two

[Lord Raziere]

earliest one I remember, that I owned myself...? Pokemon gold/Paper Mario myself. around that kind of time.

[Anonymouswizard]

Baldur's Gate in like, 2002-4? I'm actually not quite sure when, I was 8-10, it was the one game my dad owned that didn't feature reflex challenges. I enjoyed it but never really got that into the story, the ability to pretend to be a wizard was amazing (even if I didn't learn how to actually play it until years later).

It took years for me to get into other CRPGs due to lack of access, I eventually picked up Morrowind years after Oblivion came out because I found a secondhand copy, and found quite a few Bioware games that way (although I got Dragon Age: Origins as a birthday present when I got my laptop). Picked up a few Final Fantasys as well, but I never managed to like them enough to grind to the point where I could finish them.

Probably the game that cermented them as my favourite genre was Planescape: Torment, which not only had the sweeping semi-interactive story I expected from the genre, if on a much more personal scale, but was the furthest any game I'd played got to Roleplaying. Forget the entire Fighter/Mage/Thief picking your role thing, character cusomisation might have been limited to stats and class but I have seen only one other game give you so much control over your character's personality. Many roleplaying games have got to the point where if you can say more than yes or no your choices boil down to 'agree' or 'sarcastically disagree'. Torment not only included the old standbyes of 'yes', 'no', and 'what will you give me for it', but also options such as '[lie] yes', '[lie] no', 'no, because...', 'incredibly vindictive evil thing', and many more. It felt like I was really creating a character as the story went along, rather than just being 'gewneric hero C'.

So yeah, I don't play 'Eastern' RPGs anymore, except for the MegaTen games (for different reasons than I play WRPGs), just because I find the lack of ability to create a personality to be the opposite of 'roleplaying', and not being overly fond of grinding. Ideally the more dialogue focused the better, I've become bored of the 'RPGs equal combat' idea and wish they'd focus more around talking instead.

[Clertar]

Forget the entire Fighter/Mage/Thief picking your role thing, character cusomisation might have been limited to stats and class but I have seen only one other game give you so much control over your character's personality.

I'm curious, which one is it?