The all encompassing "Suggest a game!" thread.

[Milady]

Star Ocean is probably more stomachable if you haven't played the previous ones. Also if you don't happen to have high standards about your RPGs. But in a toss up, I'd probably recommend Eternal Sonata long, long before Star Ocean for numerous reasons. But then again, I'm rather down on SO4 and was a bit of a star ocean fan. I also like it when an RPG doesn't try leeching off the stuff that came before it. So that could just be the bile talking.

3D Dot Game Heroes is good, aside from the fact it's a BLATANT 2D Zelda clone with a shitload of classic gaming references. Although I have a copy myself that's been collecting dust after I cleared a dungeon or two, so take that for whatever that means.

I have an incredibly hard time recommending Disgaea to anyone. There's very little strategy in that strategy RPG. And the bulk of the game requires excessive grinding and stat maintenance. The series takes the crap part of an RPG and attempts to make it a major part if it's gameplay.

There is more to Valkyria than the alternate history setting. There's also a fantasy styled backstory. The setting is pretty much a fantasy world that moved ahead in time and somehow created a situation very similar to WWII. If you can get past the Darcsens=Jewsand their occasional attempts to remind you that THIS IS ABOUT WORLD WAR TWO it's a decent war story featuring some pretty memorable characters. It also features a gameplay style that I highly enjoyed, so there's that too. The game may be horribly broken, but there's something strangely satisfying about shooting someone in the face from a mile away, then blowing up all their tanks before finally sending in a scout to capture their base.

And as someone who played Drakengard you should consider Nier. While it's rather...adult and trying a bit too hard at being so, it's also a damn fine game. The development team speaks for itself.

I was previously under the impression that I had played a couple of Star Ocean games, but then I realized that I was mistaking Star Ocean for Phantasy Star. I know next to nothing about Star Ocean, and I haven't really done much research into the series yet. From the very brief video I watched on The Last Hope, it seemed interesting, but it's not something I'm going to rush out and buy if I can only pick up one or two titles. And as you would be much more eager to recommend Eternal Sonata over Star Ocean, I would be much more excited to pick it up.

I've watched a little bit more about 3D Dot Game Heroes, and I probably think it's charming simply because it's a blatant 2D Zelda clone. The graphics and music are cute, and it seems like something I could sit down and enjoy for varying periods of time, depending on what's going on with school at any given moment. It's too bad I'm not Prude, or I would totally persuade you to send me your dusty, unloved copy.

I never got very far into Disgaea, and I eventually stopped playing it to get into some other things like Eternal Poison instead. It never really grabbed my attention but, like I said, if I ever want to give it another chance I'll go for the game(s) on the PS2.

From what I've seen, I think Valkyria Chronicles certainly has its merits. It merely suffers from being a little further back in the line of games that I'm more excited about/interested in. I'm sure I'll pick it up someday, but like Star Ocean, it's not the game I want to buy in the event that my funds are rather limited.

Looking a bit further into Nier (did somebody mention Drakengard? ), it seems significantly more interesting than I had originally thought. Also, I noticed that Grimoire Weiss shares his voice with Lezard Valeth, and that's just cool. I can forgive a bit of the profanity and such if it's coming from Lezard. And it's not that I'm particularly opposed to profanity, it's just that it kind of prevents me from feeling immersed in anything outside of a trashy, dirty Grand Theft Auto experience.

I had originally noted that I was planning to do a bit more research on the recommendations so far, even if I didn't find them terribly intriguing. This, however, is one of the points that got lost with my original post.

Edit: Oh, and I finally got to play the Uncharted 2 demo. Although I was absolutely terrible at the shooting portions and getting the camera and controls to feel just right, I had fun with jumping around on signs, climbing up on destroyed buildings, etc. in a Prince of Persia-esque style of gameplay. It was really short, so I'm not exactly sure how I feel about playing an entire game like that, but I'd be willing to pick it up sometime in the future.