New RPG To Play

I'd recommend The Way. It's an RPG Maker game, but that is barely an issue in this case. The story is incredibly well written, the characters are varied and very interesting, the custom battle systems are inventive, and the minigames are excellent.

I'll second any of the Shin Megami Tensei games for the PS2, especially if you like anime. Nocturne in particular is very addicting and challenging, whereas Digital Devil Saga focuses more on the story.

I would uber-recommend Dragon Quest VIII. A lot of RPGs nowadays are finding new ways to often-times complicate things and tend to focus heavily on one aspect of the game instead of the game as a whole -- games like Grandia 3. While an excellent game no doubt, it obviously shifts its focus (and thus manpower) into making a great battle system while the rest of the game does suffer a bit.

DQ8 goes way back to tradition and drops all the new and complicated stuff by sticking to old-school combat and traditional gameplay. The story is bit cliche`, but immersive nonetheless. The characters are thoroughly enjoyable (one even spawned his own game), the NPCs make more than just minor impressions, and you'll feel incredible when you walk around the world, as it is the most visually stunning environment I've ever seen in any RPG -- ever.

I'd also recommend Fable: The Lost Chapters for either Xbox or PC. It's an RPG for the more "choose your own adventure" type. But it's got a lot of cool stuff in it and it hardly ever gets boring. Actually, it makes for a great distraction from longer RPGs like DQ8.

Don't forget about RPGs coming out soon, namely Rogue Galaxy. It's done by Level-5, a studio that not only has the superbly well-done Dark Cloud 2 under their belt (a game that every PS2 owner should own regardless of what type of gamer they are), but also Dragon Quest VIII, which will guarantee they continue making profits for quite a while thanks to the Japanese and they're crazy obsession with it. Anyway, I'm convinced anything Level-5 develops is sheer perfection, and Rogue Galaxy will be no exception.

I know you said PC and PS2 but these days you can find a SNES for next to nothing. My mate bought one from a St Vinnies (a charity in Australia) for $10. I'd 100% recommend Lufia 2 it's probably my favourite game ever. The ancient cave in that is probably one of the most daunting challenges I've faced in games. Then of course you have the classics like Chrono Trigger and some of the older Final Fantasy and Secret of Mana games. I guess you could just get the roms instead of trying to find everything though.

Or you could just download an emulator to play snes games. It opens a whole new window of games, since there were several 'A' quality titles that were in Japanese only that are translated and available via ROMs.

Anyone suggesting the Shin Megami titles to you - Nocturne and Digital Devil Saga 1 and 2 - has so far failed to mention a very important detail. These games are very strategy intensive and carry some heavy challenge with them. They aren't impossible games but you certainly cannot breeze through them. You haven't really given any sort of indication on your difficulty preference, just want you to have fair warning, though.

Well I finished Drakengard 2 and made it through like 80% of FFX but my memory card erased everything and had to restart it. Now i got to Yunalesca back again and i played her once and lost. Since then, i didn't have much time to play. But now since summer is around, i want to finish this and start something new.

And i also played around 50% of FFX-2, stopped it to play FFX (i didn't know FFX existed at the time!) and didn't continue it yet.