Top 10 Lists: The Top 10 Post-SNES RPGs That Aren't On Playstation Consoles

After the RPG-giant that was the SNES, most RPG developers choose to go to Sony's Playstation console, due to the fact that it offered the highly advanced CD format, as opposed to Nintendo's old N64 format. It also offered a more reasonable price, as opposed to Sega's consoles. Due to this, the PS1, PS2, and (hopefully) PS3 had many RPG hits, such as Final Fantasy VII and Kingdom Hearts. However, that's not to say there aren't great RPGs on other consoles that aren't worth playing.

Phantasy Star Online was a medicore single-player RPG with an amazing and innovative online mode. The single-player mode was about a cookie-cutter as you can get, with a boring story and slow gameplay. But the online has taken away many, many hours of my life. While many PC games these days, such as World of Warcraft, have superior online options, this game began the phrase. Also, ten years later, there's still not a console MMO that has as much depth as this game. If it wasn't for the medicore single-player, this game would have placed higher.

Of all of the 360 WRPGs this genneration, this is probably the most overlooked one. By some of the best RPG developers on the market right now (Bioware), Mass Effect combines shooting elements with the standard RPG elements. While the shooting elements are rather light, I feel they suit the game well. Mass Effect also has a very nonlinear story which allows gamers to pick their own story. A nice length and replay value rounds out the package to make this one of the best RPGs I've played.

Skies of Arcadia takes several diffrent cliches often used in RPGs (Air Ships, Pirates), and combines them into something completely new. As one of the most innovative JRPGs of the past genneration, Skies of Arcadia is one of Sega's very best games ever for their ill-fated Dreamcast. The characters are surprisingly deep, and the ship battle system works incredibly well. There's also a decent amount of stuff to do. Skies of Arcadia is easily one of the best games on the Dreamcast, and you should really consider picking it up if you have one.

The Elder Scrolls III is the first game in, what is quite possibly the best WRPG franchise of all-time, to be released on a console. . It did so much right. The game has a massive scope, lots of quest, and an amazing sense of freedom that paved the way for many others to come. So why is it only number 7 on this list? Shouldn't something that innovative be placed higher on this list? Well, I have one word for you: bugs. Notice that the version of this game is the Game of the Year edition. That's because the original release of Morrowind on the Xbox was very, very buggy. Because of this, it's hard to consider is sucessful when it was so buggy at launch. It was panned by critics at first. While you can easily look past this for a great game, it is worth noting that Elder Scrolls III originally fell into the same trap that a lot of PC-to-Console ports still, to this day, fall into.

The most recent game on this list, this game was actually not originally going to be in this list. It was originally going to be Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga, but I recently just finished this a few days ago and I have to admit that I like it quite a bit more than Superstar Saga. Believe it or not, I actually like Bowser's Inside Story more than any of the Paper Mario games, Mario RPG, or either of the other Mario and Luigi games. Fawful, the villian in the game, is quite possibly the most awesome villian in any RPG, and the battle system feels quite improved from the past two games. The pacing feels wonderful, and the game is overall one of my top-three DS games. Kudos Nintendo, for making one of the best games of the year!

Panzer Dragoon Saga is a shinning diamond in the muck of garbage Saturn games. Hailed as the best game for the Sega Saturn, Panzer Dragoon Saga takes the formula of the original Panzer Dragoon game, and reworks it into a masterpiece of an RPG. The result is abosultely incredible. With an amazing real-time battle system that requires lots of stratagy, cutting-edge graphics (for its time), and a story line that builds upon the increasingly complex Panzer Dragoon series, it's surprising that we haven't had a sequel to this game since early in the Original Xbox's lifecycle.

Oblivion improved on what Morrowind originally set out to do, which is create a true Elder Scrolls game for a console. While it's heavily debated over the internet if Elder Scrolls III or IV is the larger game, it is still obvious that Oblivion is a huge game. There are tons of quests to do, and it makes minor improvements to just about everything in Morrowind. Considered one of the 360's best games in its first year of release, Oblivion still holds up very well as something more than just a 360 title released near launch, unlike most of the other early Xbox 360 titles.

Pokemon Gold was, and still is, a very special title to many gamers. Of all the games on the list, this is probably the one I've spent the most time with. Often considered the fan favorite by the Pokemon community, Pokemon Gold added several Pokemon onto the already exsisting Pokemon from the earlier games, but at this point, more was good (unlike now, were we have fans who are begging for Nintendo to take the series back to its humble beginnings). But the real selling point of this game, was that after you cleared all eight of the gym leaders, you got to go to a new land from the old games, where you got to see how the land had evolved since Red Version. You don't see that now in Pokemon games, do you?!

Fallout 3 is probably the most limitless RPG yet. Fallout 3 takes the formula originally created with Oblivion, adds guns, puts it in a science fiction wasteland, and then makes it three times the sizes. The result is endless. You can do just about anything in Fallout 3. The gunplay is great, and the Vats system adds a lot of depth to it. Fallout 3 was easily one of my top five games of last year, and it's probably one of my top three Xbox 360 games. A must-have for all RPG fans.

Look around at some of the top-reviewed console games of this genneration. What do you see? Well, first, you'll probably see FPS games. But what's the second genre you'll see? RPGs? What kind of RPGs? That's right, Western Role Playing games. If it wasn't because of this game, WRPGs wouldn't be anywhere near as popular on consoles as they are now. KotOR brought WRPGs to consoles. This was the first game to ever achive such a thought. With a very non-cliche storyline that fits perfectly into the Star Wars universe (but, at the same time, the Star Wars universe doesn't require you to play this game in order to understand its story line), a non-linear world, and that Bioware touch to it, it's no surprise that Star Wars: Knight of the Old Republic is number one on this list. In this writter's humble opinion, it puts every PlayStation RPG to shame, and that's coming from someone who like JRPGs as well as WRPGs.

So, that wraps up my list. While I do think it's worth noting that I love me some PlayStation, I do dislike it when someone says that the Xbox had no good RPGs. It had a lot of great RPGs, and so did several other non-Playstation consoles. While many people will tell you that the PlayStation consoles dominate the RPG genre, I say otherwise.

List by Blue_Mage12 (10/12/2009)