Every GameCube RPG 

Speaking of Balder's Gate, it would probably be a big project, but I would love a review of the first two Balder's Gate games from you.

Would love to see a review of all the wii rpgs with a main emphasis on arc rise fantasia since other than its localization its really good game

Love hearing you talk about RPG’s would love to see more videos like this

Great video as always! was hoping to see metabots on here though one of my childhood games

Hey have you heard of voice of cards? Its on next Gen console

Same here, sadly I never owned my own copy

I don't know man, I thought the battles dragged really hard.

With Mega Man and X getting a duology collection and CAPCOM reviving a lot of their old IPs and doing well with them, Command Mission (and to the same exact length Battle Network and Star Force) might just have a chance.

@@Steve-Fiction I think it was latter half of the game the battles started to get longer? I know the boss battles would drag on for a bit if I remember correctly.

Too bad it wasn't included in the recent compilations for Switch, PC, PS4, etc... PS2 emulators are doing pretty good though

I have such good memories of that game! Growing up LOTR was my favorite thing (and still is one of my favorites) and I played it so much! One of the games I wish would be put on the backwards compatible list for Xbox or ported over to something! I just want to play it again!

Only complaint: That style of turn based combat comes from Grandia. FFX didn't invent it.

It was my first too! Had it on the PS2 and remember playing the beginning so many times cuz I had no memory card, but it was amazing and I wish I finished it

Was hoping he’d mention that it has a feature where you can play as the enemies.

I got the game one time when my mom saw my report card and surprised me by taking me to GameStop. One of the best days I can remember and also one of my favorite PS2 games based on one of my favorite movies

Omg baten Kaitos really needs a 3rd game, we still don't know anything about the dark brethren or the monsters from the different dimension and how they relate to spirits

It's one of my favorite RPGs on the Gamecube, I even bought the soundtrack for it. I like Origins too, though I do prefer the way the battle system is in the first game especially since each character has their own card deck. I wonder if there's any chance Monolith Soft would revive this series. It would be really cool to see a new game, and also re-releases of the first two for those that never got to play them.

My most vivid memory of that game is how the voice acting sounded like the characters were all standing in a tiny echo chamber filled with water at all times. It makes the Dark Souls 1 sound mixing seem completely normal in comparison.

@@Max-ui7yf they had a poll on twitter a few years ago to make a third game but like nobody voted for it

If I remember right, monolith has gone on record saying they would like to make a new entry in the series.

It's an amazing game. The setting is one of my all-time favorites. The Dreamcast original has way too many random battles, but still absolutely worth it, and the Gamecube version is supposed to be much better in this regard.

Love Skies of Arcadia. Criminally underrated. Such a great game

Playing it at 3am at my grandmas house finding some ancient tech discoveries somewhere on the borders of the large sky map was amazing!

Amazing game for sure. My friend gifted me a copy of Legends for my birthday in 2005. He claims he got it from a garage sale for $7 (it’s now like $200). Disc is perfect, box is clean, and manual is pristine. Absolutely amazing find and I still have it. I’ve been hoping for a sequel or remaster for ages now because the game still had so much world building and game rebalancing to flesh out the experience even further.

Same here, my favorite rpg of all time. Love it to death

Projared forgot that both symphonia games are alvaible on PS3.

The only really sad oversight in this one is that the camera only follows player 1

Radiata Stories is one of the best and most underrated titles! So rare to see it mentioned.

Suikoden 1 2 are masterpiece symphony and suikoden 3 4 5 are garbage

@@sinni800 You can change the camera settings manually to make it keep a better view of the entire battlefield at all times, though.

i rreally dont want to punch pro jared in the head , but cant some actually stop sitting on their ass and actually start doiing someting.

YES! The moment he mentioned that game and I saw the characters, I was like 'Someone on the VC team was a fan of this game and added them in'. I need to play Skies of Arcadia now

@@calikikitaru3519 And I need Jared to play Valykria Chronicles, whether it's 1,3 or 4 I don't care (Avoid 2 cause it's not bad, however, it is a GRINDFEST! 2 is the hardest VC because of that. If you want a good experience, 1 or 4 is your go, If you want the best story, 3 is the best one of all (Sadly only fantranslated))

@@MALEMization That is all true, I sadly didn't realize VC2 Was a grind fest until getting midway through. Though if were talking about best story, VC1 would best to play, not that VC4 is bad, I love VC4 its my first VC game, but VC1 just feels a bit more mature in some respects, so I'd love to see Jared play 1

I've been meaning to look into Valkyria Chronicles since it was made by the same team that did Wild Arms, and I love that game.

@@MALEMization Bullshit. Not only vc 3 has the worst story, its also the hardest and all for the wrong reason. Especially torwards the end, its just heavy troopers shitfest. And not only whose troopers have ridiculuos armor, devastating machine guns, they also have high evasion as well, because why the hell not! VC2 story might not be the best, but its side characters sure are, mostly because they actually give every singe one their own story

Yeah I love that game, actually currently doing a play-through of the steam version. I own several games from that series and Symphonia is really the only one I truly liked. I don't know what it is about Symphonia, but I really like it, and the other games in the series are lacking "it".

@@MistyKathrine Hmmm maybe its because that Symphonia has that "Classic JRPG Aura" around it?! Well who knows?! XD!! If you want another game of the series with a "Close" vive to Tales of Symphonia, I recomend Tales of the Abyss (PS2/ 3DS) 😉

@@RedMageR90 I have Abyss, never finished it, quit like half way through and never was interested in picking it up again. Only other Tales game I played all of the way through was Xillia and it was probably because was kind of short, but I was definitely ready for it to be over when I was nearing the end.

@@MistyKathrine I'd argue Vesperia and Abyss have it as well. But all these games imo hold up better now on the content they have vs most modern games ngl. Graphics aren't everything and most of them are pretty fun and run pretty smooth while just being...fun you know?

@@nah4467 I have Vesperia and Abyss, I've never finished either of them. Symphonia I'm working on my 6th? playthrough I think.

He looks like he's way too old to still be playing videogames. :)

@@schadenfreude6274 you look like a cheap excuse for a troll, so it cancels out.

@@schadenfreude6274 Typical outdated garbage that belongs with then stubborn soccer parents of yester-decade. Grow up :)

@@schadenfreude6274 ……so we have to stop having fun when we get old….

@@schadenfreude6274 Well bucko, you're too old to be alive, but here we are

Oh my god yes

Probably not going to happen due to miyamotos strange obsession with Mario not having any plot.

Yeah, never happening, Nintendo kinda wants people to forget about it so they stop asking for a sequel to it every time a new paper Mario releases. Re-releasing it would only ignite that flame again.

We definitely do

No

Baten Kaitos really wasn't that good. They were so focused on making the cards make sense in-world, they forgot to write up any reason for why the characters had to fight with decks which they would shuffle in the middle of combat rather than just keeping hold of the same good cards over and over (which was totally a thing they could have done in terms of the story, but chose not to because the game HAD to be a card-based combat system). They actively punished you for advancing and trying to be tactical by shortening the time you got to think about your turns the more you advanced in the game and the bigger decks you were expected to make. They also did this horrible thing where you got to name your character, but rather than doing what Final Fantasy X did and making sure to write the dialog in a way where the characters never said Tidus' name while still making it sound natural, they just had the voice actors awkwardly pause whenever they said your name in the middle of a sentence and hope you would imagine them saying whatever name you entered.

Arcadia was a Dreamcast port so it doesn't count.

@@ImsorryAnakin I know it's a port of a Dreamcast game, but I still effectively consider it a Gamecube RPG (because the "Legends" port is one of the games I grew up with).

FE Path of Radiance is the best RPG on the gamecube, by far

I loved baten kaitos and would easily recommend it

Gladius has a small but very active modding community too! Gladius is probably my favorite game of all time, it was EVERYTHING I have ever wanted out of a strategy rpg

I thought I was the only person who knew about this game! Do you know if there’s any other way to play it?

Honestly, it was such a good game

I have never heard or met anyone who played Gladius and didn't love it. It still holds up incredibly well today, and I only just learned that it's on the XBox store for $10.

@@murdockberk8888 Honestly, it's not surprising it has a modding community considering how unfinished the game actually was. There's 2 immediate things I can think of that people probably wanted to finish/restore/properly implement, which is a playable galdr and the death bow that, tmk, no one has ever managed to legitimately find despite supposedly being in the pool of equipment for high level archers. (Known about pretty much entirely from looking through the game files) It's one of those games I honestly really wish someone would buy the rights to purely to release on steam so we could have a native PC version that could be much more easily modded. Like how certain 3DO IPs ended up being bought by fans and continued.

That Black Zero kicked ass!

Seriously. He said "it's a slog to play through" as I look up from my 50th+ playthrough. What is this heresy in my RU-vid feed?

I'm guessing you guys haven't played too many TRPGs outside of the Fire Emblem series...

@@TenchiHawkwing Actually I've played a lot of them, I just like the fire emblem series much more than other TRPGs because it's the best balance of streamlined mechanics and tactical decision making for my tastes. I find that most other "hardcore" TRPGs get way too up themselves about how "challenging" they are, resulting in them adding far too many mechanics claiming that it gives them a "more in depth tactical experience" when all it really does is make turns take far too long because of all the shit you have to faff about with each turn, or serve as a "noob filter" because they don't explain these mechanics so new players get curbstomped, frequently both.

@Caiman Troup it kinda is. The animations are clunky and move like molasses, even if you turn them off. It's also poorly balanced. It's pretty clear that it was a more story/character driven game, much like FE4, another game in the series with okayish gameplay. I think Path of Radiance has a damn good story.

@@cultreader9751 I heavily disagree. I do feel that a small portion of the animations are a bit slow but for most of them I feel like the animation speed is perfect. While that part can be chalked up to personal preference the game has 2 ways of dealing with that, turning off animations, and holding a button to speed up the full animations while they're being played. Putting that aside some of the animations can be a little stiff but none are clunky save the heavily armored dudes who are supposed to be slow and clunky because they have a bunch of heavy armor on. Even so the game is nearly 20 years old and there is only one game that's that old with animations that hold up to modern standards and thats Jak and Daxter because they hired disney animators to do the animations. PoR/RD have the best fire emblem animations in the series in my opinion. As for poorly balanced I have no idea where you got that. It's the only western released fire emblem that has both limited resources and a cast where every member is viable without coliseum and roaming bandit grinding shenanigans. Yeah it's base difficulty is on the easy side but that's the point of multiple difficulty settings, to use the one that offers the right amount of challenge for you. And if they're all too easy for you, congrats you're a "hardcore" gamer, but that doesn't make it not properly balanced if you're used to harder games of that genre

IMO, path of radiance has some of the best ideas in the series, but is heavily held back by slow and clunky gameplay and bad graphics. Tellius is one of the most fleshed out FE worlds along with Fodlan and I absolutely love the base camp and bonus EXP systems, but both Tellius games are far too long for their own good (especially Radiant Dawn) with very poor balancing, infuriating maps, and some of the most clunky gameplay in the series. FE1 was arguably less clunky besides that game's bizzare trading system! I just really wish the base camp came back instead of IS going forward with the terrible monastery system from three houses. I hate having to explore a large area and talk to EVERYONE between every chapter + do sidequests and minigames. I just want to get on to the next chapter while having a set area to rest and prepare like with Tellius. One of my problems with GBA FE is that there's no down time. It's just chapter to chapter with no time to settle down, organize your units, view supports, manage your inventory, do side missions, etc like you can in Tellius and Fates. (and to a lesser extent Awakening and Three Houses, but for different reasons)

Path of Radiance also has one of the best supports in the series. I don''t know where Jared find dialogues exhausting, because it's interesting to read due to the plot, lore and characters. And it's better than dialogues in 3DS Fire Emblems (at least Awakening and Fates). The biggest problem with the game is that it is a bit slow, but gameplay is still great and fun.

The only problems with Path of Radiance are how slow it is and how ugly the graphics and animations are. Other than that it's one of the best FE games for sure.

Path of Radiance is great. Yeah, visually it looks like an N64 game, but everything else is awesome. I’d say its better than Awakening, Fates, and Three Houses.

I think it's a modern perspective that really puts path of radiance down as slow or clunky. Coming from someone who started with the fire emblem series on the gameboy (in the US so only 7 and 8) on real hardware I would honestly say that path of radiance didn't feel slow to me. I had a fleshed out world, an intriguing story with a variety of characters to work with, its home base system (though in some ways mechanically similar to 8) was a major step forward towards what we now see as typical aspects of modern fire emblem games. But most people who play fire emblem nowadays likely started with something like awakening or fates, and if they have played the older games they've likely played on an emulator where the speed up button makes the pace much easier to deal with. TL;DR By modern standards Path of Radiance is slow and clunky, by standards of the time it was great and added many new mechanics and aspects to the series

Anyone who says the story isn't very interesting, didn't make it that far, sadly.

Yeah, while I think it is was only an average game overall it gets major props for the most unexpected plot twists in gaming history in my opinion. Just for that twist it will always be one of my favorite games.

I remember playing the game and thinking to myself that a twist like that shouldn't even be possible but it is and it made total sense.

@@ronb7189 exactly! I remember when I thought "No this is unfair, you cant do this", I really got played by the game and not the other way around.

I think the best part is that it's not even one plot twist. It's MULTIPLE plot twists all entangled in each other. The fact that SHE KNEW the entire time is literally a plot twist on top of the already insane plot twist, and completely flips the entire story on it's head.

Apparently I played like 75% of them. Including the very few that weren't included in the video lol (there's a few really obscure games that suffer massively from being advertised as being... not what they actually are. Or that really are RPGs, but that PJ's just.. for some reason not counting as one despite including other games that play nearly identically and have similar story designs.) ...in fact, even Gladius is a game that suffered from bad advertising. Go read the back of it's case and then look at the actual game sometime, lol.

Glad to see more people loved these games besides me. :)

I love them too

I went to GOG thinking something had stealth released. Nope, that ol' PS2 era game was still there, the original. :)

Summoner 1 wasn't purely turn-based: it had a system that was partly both real-time and turn-based.

Summoner definitely was overlooked. The dead ale wives skit is still hilarious.

Summoner 1 is as turn based as Final Fantasy XII.

Absolutely agreed here. When I picked up my PS2 around launch I got Orphen:Scion of Sorcery, SSX, and Summoner. Orphen was a disappointment, I admittedly played the fuck out of SSX for the first few days, but man when I finally dove into Summoner, I was hooked, it's a great game that doesn't get the credit it deserves. I unfortunately have never played the second.

Xbox just backwards compatible too

I got to rent Gladius from a local video store and it absolutely enraptured me for a good week or two! I still remember some of the soundtrack as well. Unfortunately, the next time I went back to rent it, it had either been outright sold or otherwise removed. :( Got stuck on one mission where you had to rescue... What was it... Sigi the Gauldr or something? Would march straight into the woods and get blasted every time, haha

I really loved the swing meter on Gladius, just the perfect amount of engaging button mashing in the middle of turn based tactics.

Agreed. One of the most underrated games ever

Lost Kingdoms and EverGrace are among FromSoftware’s most underrated titles. So fucking good.

I spend an ungodly amount of hours trying to collect all the cards. So much fun.

Hey, I remember that! If memory serves, it covered stuff between books 1 and 2. Spent a lot of time on it, it was pretty cool

I've _never_ even heard of that!

that one was more a Beat em up with a leveling system if im not mistaken.

Yeah true, but you could still level up, take on quests find equipment, the usual tropes of an RPG.

I only played the Gameboy Advanced game. But from what you said it seems much better than the console one, it was more akin to Zelda with puzzle solving

yeah, I miss it too. Could be good to bring back to help people who ski-.. er, I mean, totally watch the sponsored section, and have it play right after it concludes... uh, you know, to enhance the sponsorship or whatever.

There was a 2?

Honestly, as someone who played LK2 ages ago, but owns LK1, I actually liked LK2 more in almost every way... it just had so much more work required to find all the fun stuff. I especially love the fact LK2 allows you to use LK1's final boss towards the end of the game. IMHO, LK1's biggest issue is the fact it's secret bosses require you to literally just get lucky, as they're barely accessible without getting certain cards from certain levels, which you can't just replay the levels in order to get. LK1 with a simple mod that allowed you to replay levels AND get the final boss card select reward again would improve the game like 10 fold.

Emulate it

Yeah. I was gonna' say. Custom Robo is an action RPG. Reminds me A LOT of Pokemon Colosseum.

Evolution Worlds was one of the first RPGs I ever played. Rented it from blockbuster as a kid. Good memories.

Glad to see others who feel Custom Robo deserves to make the list. I remember the game being fun as hell, and the story was very good!

Custom Robo is kind of hard to call an RPG. Every battle and all of the progression is story-gated, there's no way to prepare for the next battle other than changing your part loadout, the closest thing it has to 'secret' parts are the things you can only earn in the post-game, it has none of the typical RPG elements other than the story. Still a damn good game though. I'd be interested in a more RPG take on Custom Robo.

You can't level up in Custom Robo though, no ? In the Gamecube one, there's no levels and it's linear. You go from story battle to story battle.

I count it as one, especially if the X-Men Legends game and LOTR counts here for his list

Yeah I thought it fit, but I can see where it'd be borderline

I been thinking the same thing about that game, I always wanted to play it, ever since I saw it's advertise on one of the Nintendo Power Magazines, where it shows four people holding their Gamecube controllers.

@@aztn19 As soon as I saw X-Men Legends, I thought of Dark Legacy. The original game that it's based on (Gauntlet Legends) is a lot more arcadey and I don't believe you can save items between levels like in the Gamecube version, so maybe that factored into his decision. Or he just forgot about it. Either way, I think it's one of the best co-op games on the Gamecube. Lots of fun and an underrated soundtrack too!

I loved that game! Still do actually. It's super fun and a great successor to Legends.

I really hate the term "gameplay loop". But I agree with this entire post haha

@@IzraelGraves yet that's what it's called lol

Another thing that makes it great, IMHO, is the fact that despite BK2 being a prequel, they DID include the same boss you fight repeatedly. I just absolutely love the fact that Giacamo is just this completely crazy dude that refuses to give up despite losing like 20 times throughout both games lol.

It aint just the nostalgia. Game's solid. I had that and the one on DS, Custom Robo Arena. Played a ton of both but mostly the GCN as it was easier to gather a group of people and play on the couch.

Maybe he doesn’t own it, since it’s crazy expensive to find these days. It’s my personal favorite on GameCube that isn’t 1000yr Door

Custom Robo is more like a fighting game with character customization than an RPG. Still a fantastic game though

I was curious if this was considered an rpg. Maybe it is more of an action game

@@aztn19 Sealed and/or complete copies can run up to near the $100-$250 range. So yeah, it's one of the more rarer Gamecube titles to get your hands on.

Best Zero theme hands down

Not as high as the rent.

This was one of mine as well. That and Sonic Adventure 2 battle and AC.

Same though. Enough that I went scrolling through the comments until I found one saying this haha.

Eragon GBA is by far the biggest hidden gem on the GBA. It's an excellent RPG with very unique mechanics and is very faithful to the book, unlike the crappy movie it's supposedly based on. If you like Golden Sun, you'll probably like Eragon GBA even more.

I whole heartedly agree with this. If they actually improved upon the formula they had, and added a fleshed out story and characters... as well as actual game length, they could have a really good game on their hands. Heck... they could actually make a Dark Souls esque type game out of it. The core mechanics are there, they just need to improve a bunch of the other aspects.

I am also a shameless LK fan. I want more.

I pine for a sequel to the Lost Kingdoms games. I get why Jared wasn't too impressed, but his biggest complaint of their length is more a plus for me, since the games had very little padding and constant gameplay changes in the form of new cards, they're so easy to replay. I have my own criticisms of the games, but the core system of an action rpg based around a deck of monsters you summon to fight for you is very original and has so much potential in the hands of what current FromSoftware could do.

Yeah man, if they did a remaster of 1 + 2 as a combo game, then made a shiny sequel with even more cards using everything they know how to do now as a company, it would be a total hit.

I mean, he has animations enabled and speed set to normal, so no wonder it feels like a slog.

But it's too slow and clanky.

​@@stellarkymthis is your first time playing Turn based or JRPGs?

@@nah4467 Nope. It's just that Path of Radiance is WAY TOO slow compared to other TRPGs

If from actually went back to this game today, they could totally improve upon it! I want me card game back!

Heck, LK 1 had way more than 4 hours. Its all about how you play the games I guess.

I know it's shallow and stupid, but I avoided it because it has XD in the title. I actually loved Coloseum!

If you still own it you can sell it for a couple hundred $/£ these days

I can’t get it to work anymore, but even if I could I wouldn’t sell it

I can't *not* read the title as someone laughing condescendingly at the word Pokémon.

Similarly, I played Colosseum before any mainline game (that would have been Sapphire), although my first game was Stadium. I like XD more though, I must have played it through 30+ times by now

Hook a brother up?

@@SolarFlairIsBestPony Dunno if I can do direct links but if you search "How To Play FFCC Online (Dolphin & VBA Emulators)" should take you directly to the Reddit post for his guide and discord.

Unless you're a doctor or lawyer, you won't be collecting GC games for very long. I remember when I tried to be a GC collector...

@@aortaplatinum oh, trust me, I won't be getting everything. I'm about halfway to where I want to be though

@@heyitsretrostation fuckin nice. I'm mostly only getting the true exclusives, not available on any other console at all, and only ones I REALLY wanna play. I was super lucky to find F-Zero GX and Ikaruga a few years ago for only like $40 each

@@aortaplatinum nice! I wanted to go the route of "only ones I will want to play" as well. Definitely some cheap filler in there by some standards, but worth trying for me

@@heyitsretrostation b-grade 3D platformers on the console like Ty are really great for their low prices if you're into the genre. They're certainly not common to find in retro stores but eBay prices are usually never over $25

Another The Third Age connoisseur 😎

No rpg and GameCube are different things

Man, also has the best forge in the series imo Naming weapons and coloring them was pretty cool.

Yeah, seconding this! It's the only FE I've really played (still looking to remedy that), but I'd definitely consider it one of the best games on the GC. I also felt the dialogue/characters were a strong point and was surprised by that comment - I'm guessing maybe it's just the sheer *volume* of it that can be overwhelming to some, and might cause them to skip over it.

@@smonkponk Though if you're playing an rpg you should be here for the dialogue at least partially.

I think Path of Radiance is the best Fire Emblem game after Genealogy of the Holy War. Genealogy's story is just unbeatable, though PoR is a close second

@@king_pigeon Genealogy's story may be solid, but it shows its age in gameplay. Enemy turns take forever because there are so many units and the AI thinks slowly, most of the non-magic animations lack impact, etc. PoR definitely plays better.

I know this was 8 months ago but I’ve came across this video and thought the same thing!! Future Tactics is one of my fav games of all time, admittedly the game is far far far from perfect but I’d love for a big RU-vidr to tackle this game, give it some spotlight and maybe one day it can get a sequel, I feel out of many games I came across from in my life Future Tactics NEEDS a sequel. Anyhooooo back to Projared, he didn’t cover this as this was on ps2 is my guess, you could also argue the game fits into a WORMS 3D style. Or he just forgot, as most have.

I remember kicking the soccer ball around and the lobby chat with online people i never knew face to face, this game was fantastic till servers went down. I somehow got a mag that was a cat tail from online. XD Or angel wings, that was interesting. But i got my friends hooked to it so most of my time was grinding up my level with them offline. The games soundtrack is also amazing. I could just leave the TV on and listen to it.

Lost Kingdoms 1 is stupidly easy when you finally obtain Whip Worms and spam them. So strong, that Katia uses them In Lost Kingdoms 2 as a Secret Boss in that game. In Lost Kingdoms 2, To break the game, either use the 2 Rheebus and Golden Phoenix Trick to become inmortal or if you want a more practical And non-gamebreaking Technique, Use the Banshee card to feed EXP to all your cards by giving Banshee the final blow against a ton of enemies. I love both of these games to death and they are so fun. I wish FromSoftware would remake them, seeing how they are remaking some of their old series, I have hope

@@chillstoneblakeblast3172 my only memory of it being difficult was running out of cards almost instsntly. I see them recharging in the video but I recall them just disappearing after use, I remember beating the 2nd zone or something and had literally no cards left

@@TheLastComa yeah, I hear that complait a lot, and the only real way to restore them without Cards that restore cards is running to blue fairies, but in LK1, They can also summon monsters. The game was expected for you to play the game and equip cards you find in the chest to add to your deck, but doing so once makes it so you don't gain cards from Blue fairies anymore. In Lost Kingdoms 2, you change your deck on the fly, only for that level, so you don't "Throw away" your best cards throughout the level.