sRPG: Phantom Brave, Soul Nomad & The World Eaters, Disgaea 1, Disgaea 2, Makai Kingdom
RPG: Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana, Atelier Iris 2: The Azoth of Destiny, Atelier Iris 3: Grand Phantasm, Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne
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The first two Atelier Iris games were good, not great, but above mediocre. The reason for this was the alchemy and customization. The third game, well, terrible, repetetive dungeons, fetch quests, and nothing at all good about the game except for decent turn-based combat and a lot of charm. SMT: Nocturne could go both ways, depends on whether or not you like the encounter rate. X_X Anyway, AI 1, 2, and 3 simply ARE NOT some of the best PS2 RPGs.
About the Dragon Quest VII comment... How can an RPG gamer go without it? Easy, play a better RPG. >.> DQ8 was too terribly slow for a lot of people, even the most devout RPG lovers like myself.
Shadow Hearts games are good, albeit a bit too linear for the tastes of many. Star Ocean 3 has good combat and deep customization, but a terrible story and and an abundance of jargon that's never used in anything story-related or is just completely superfluous.
Anyway, I'll recommend a few RPGs to you based on sub-genre.
Standard JRPG (Turn-based combat, not super-open-ended): Suikoden series. Why? This series gets turn-based combat done right. There's a large amount of customization through Runes, weapons, skills that increase your stats, etc. The stories are also very well presented and politcally charged.
Action RPGs: Level-5 games. They're all excellent (except for DQ8) and certainly worth your money. These games are Dark Cloud, Dark Cloud 2, and Rogue Galaxy. Dark Cloud 1 was good, 2 improves upon it, and Rogue Galaxy feels like the biggest improvement/overhaul in a Level-5 game. There's a series I'll recommend that I strongly believe is considerably better than these games (or any games, for that matter) but I'll go on to that in a second.
Strategy RPGs: The NIS games, mentioned in above posts.
Overall: The Tales series. There's so much to love about these games, and next to nothing to dislike. Better, more rewarding, deeper customization than most RPGs, best combat in any RPG, oodles of character interaction, well done stories, a jaw-dropping amount of replay value, extras, tons of sidequests, etc. On the PS2, you should get Tales of Legendia and Tales of the Abyss. You MAY not like Legendia, but fear not, it was developed by a different team than the rest of the Tales games (Legendia was made by the Soul Calibur team). Abyss was a lot better, and I strongly believe it's the best PS2 RPG, if not best PS2 game.
Most of all... We have a STICKIED thread about RPG recommendations, GO THERE. There are some extremely detailed posts in that thread (like one of mine, for example) that will help you choose RPGs to buy.
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