Great PS1 games? My collection is lacking.

[Darth Marsden]

I haven't really played much of FFIX, just enough to et to the first save point, but from what I tried, it seemed like a fun game. Should probably try to get into it again one of these days.

I did, however, get much further with FFVIII, which I enjoyed very much. I think the point of summoning in that game is not so much to cause uber damage to your opponents, which it does, but to strengthen its bond with the character it's assigned to. As Cloral says, with the proper junctions your normal attacks become much more powerful, so it's interesting experimenting with that.

Also: Triple Triad. Hell of a fun game. There's a couple of fan-made replicas, notably this one. Be warned, you will become addicted.

[zeldapro]

The only game i have for ps1 is ff4 and it's a good game.

[DarkDragoonX]

Alundra - Adventures in Alundra
Medievil I, II

Seconded. Alundra in particular is a brilliant game.

Also, punkojunk, the fact that you already own the Lunar remakes preemptively negates my ability to plug them yet again. Jerk.

As for survival horror, the only games you don't got listed are the Resident Evil games

Wrong-o! Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare is a great survival horror game worth the attention of any fan of the genre!

Also, although it's more "survival sci-fi" then survival horror, Galerians is another awesome game worth your time if you're a survival horror fan. In Galerians, you use psionic abilities instead of guns. To "reload," you must inject yourself with psi-enhancing chemicals, with several different chemicals that give you different psi effects (such as pyrokinesis). Use your psionic powers TOO much, and your mind will start to "short out" and create a massive psionic storm that does major damage to surrounding enemies, but also drains your own health quite rapidly. The only way to escape certain death from this is to inject a certain chemical to reduce your psionic stress. It's a very fun game with some unique gameplay mechanics that make it stand out in the crowd.

Other games I can heartily recommend off the top of my head include:

Persona 2: Eternal Punishment
Wild Arms
Einhander
Vanguard Bandits
Arc the Lad Collection
Elemental Gearbolt
Silhouette Mirage
Thunder Force V
RayStorm
RayCrisis
Final Fantasy Origins (A *REAL* FF1 remake, as opposed to the easy mode GBA and PSP versions)
Tales of Destiny
Tales of Destiny 2
Soul Blade

... and that's all I can think of at the moment. Later I might dig through my collection and see what else I can recommend. Note that basically anything that has a "Working Designs" label on it is great, and must be acquired immediately.

[Warlock]

I haven't really played much of FFIX, just enough to et to the first save point, but from what I tried, it seemed like a fun game. Should probably try to get into it again one of these days.

I did, however, get much further with FFVIII, which I enjoyed very much. I think the point of summoning in that game is not so much to cause uber damage to your opponents, which it does, but to strengthen its bond with the character it's assigned to. As Cloral says, with the proper junctions your normal attacks become much more powerful, so it's interesting experimenting with that.

Also: Triple Triad. Hell of a fun game. There's a couple of fan-made replicas, notably this one. Be warned, you will become addicted.

Well it's not so much the summoning that bothered me. It's having to watch the 1 minute summon animation EVERY time. That got really tedious.

I also think the whole Draw system as a whole was stupid. The basic idea of it has you *not* killing monsters so you can sit there and endlessly draw all the magic you needed from them. That is tedious busywork. I want to kill crap, not play magical siphon all day. I was also not a fan of the leveling monsters. The game's easier at lvl 1 than lvl 99 - that's dumb. Granted, Oblivion used this same system... which I dislike... but at least it bothered to scale up the monsters so when you were fighting harder crap it wasn't a bunny rabbit hitting you for 5/6 of your life.

Also disliked Triple Triad as a general rule. On it's own, it's ok (though the rules are never really explained well enough - at least in any of the FF's I've seen that had it). But I think it takes away from the game too much. I'd rather they just stick to less in-depth minigames like the crap in FF7. I think it's all the card collecting that bothered me though. It's too intertwined with the regular game. I dunno, I can't exactly explain it but it just never sat easy with me.

[Glenn the Great]

I have to put in a good word for FF9. I loved this game, and I really think I enjoyed it more thoroughly than FF7. The characters and music were awesome, and I thought that the battle system worked remarkably well. The game felt very well-balanced, and the system of learning active and passive abilities was very addicting, rewarding, and not complicated at all.

The only real criticism I have of the game is the fact that it featured several missable items (you couldn't go back and buy some items after you moved to another disk). This meant that it was possible to entirely miss out on certain abilities (since they are tied to pieces of equipment.) The worst aspect of this flaw was that the end-game synthesis recipies required many of these items which were no longer obtainable. This required you to know in advance what you'd need, so that you could save it up and have enough stuff to outfit the characters with best possible gear.

[Warlock]

Sadly missables are half the reason I almost never finish Final Fantasy games. That and all the secret extra crap. I always want to do all of it before I beat the game. I think the only FFs I've *actually* beaten are FF6 (many, many times) and finally Final Fantasy IV on the GBA. Which is a little depressing I could have beaten FF7 though. Most of the others I got sidetracked somewhere in the middle and it's too hard to re-start in the middle of the damn game when you haven't played it for a year or more

[Glenn the Great]

I know how that is. With FFX and FFX-2, I'd get sidetracked, do something else for awhile, and when I come back to the game, I've totally forgotten what has happened. That speaks a lot for the forgettableness of the FFX stories, for one thing. Those were a failure. Too many annoying characters and annoying situations in those games.

[punkonjunk1024]

glenn can you please not derail my thread? We're discussing PS1 games. That's a PS2 game. kthx.

Also, haven't played it but I heard a lot of bad things about MMX6. Mott probably knows.. I think I read that the series was supposed to end with MMX5 and then Capcom forced them to make more games that make no sense in the storyline and ended up sucking. Also I think this was the one with the Maverick that throws its poop at you.

Lulz, I know what your talking about. I realized a few months ago that I am an absolutely rediculous megaman fanatic. I haven't played all of the original megaman games because they bore me, but everything after that... The entire X series besides the PS2 games, The entire battle network series, the zero series, and a bunch of others... and they're pretty much my favorite games ever. I spent about 4 hours reading wikipedia info about the series and ties together and ect, and yeah, I read about the X6 thing, and I can totally see how 5 was supposed to be the end. I didn't mind x6 though. The thing I thought was the funniest is that zero was originally supposed to be the main character in the entire series, and it was changed because it they thought he wouldn't be well recieved, so they swapped X and Zero as support and lead.

But yeah. The PS1 X games were awesome, 5 being about the best. God damnit was that hard in the end.


Anyhow. Yeah, I don't like resident evil that much, I've only played the first and it didn't really do much justice to the survival horror genre. It's not scary, and the controls are unusually clunky, even for a survival horror.

As for FF games, 6 and 8 are my absolute favorites. I don't know why 8 gets such a bad rap... I wish square would have released it as it's own unique RPG. It's missing many final fantasy elements - which I find refreshing and exciting.

And I will bet you anything it would have been better recieved had it had a non-FF name.
9 I almost finished. Maybe I did finish it. I don't know. It wasn't much of a follow-up to 8, imho.
And 7 kinda blew, considering all the hype surrounding it. It's not super well translated. Some of the language is pretty capcom-esque. And besides that it's pretty bland as far as RPG's go. *shrug*

[vegeta1215]

The only real criticism I have of the game is the fact that it featured several missable items (you couldn't go back and buy some items after you moved to another disk). This meant that it was possible to entirely miss out on certain abilities (since they are tied to pieces of equipment.) The worst aspect of this flaw was that the end-game synthesis recipies required many of these items which were no longer obtainable. This required you to know in advance what you'd need, so that you could save it up and have enough stuff to outfit the characters with best possible gear.

Yeah, tell me about it. I'm a completionist many times when it comes to games, so I don't like to miss things. Last time I tried playing through FFVII I sat with a list in hand of "never again" items that I couldn't go back for later. It certainly detracts from the experience, but it is my fault for worrying about it.

That's one thing I like about Zelda games - you can pretty much get everything at any point in the game. The only exceptions I can recall are in OoT and The Minish Cap. In OoT, one of the deku stick capacity upgrades you get from showing a mask (skull mask?) to the Deku theatre in the Lost Woods is misable once you become adult link for the first time (I think it's a glitch). In TMC, if you don't save the sick old man surrounded by the ghost in the tower in the clouds, you can miss golden arrows. (I think that's what he gives you)

[erm2003]

That's one thing I like about Zelda games - you can pretty much get everything at any point in the game. The only exceptions I can recall are in OoT and The Minish Cap. In OoT, one of the deku stick capacity upgrades you get from showing a mask (skull mask?) to the Deku theatre in the Lost Woods is misable once you become adult link for the first time (I think it's a glitch). In TMC, if you don't save the sick old man surrounded by the ghost in the tower in the clouds, you can miss golden arrows. (I think that's what he gives you)

I think I was still able to get the deku upgrades later in the game. I just went back as a kid, borrowed the mask again, and the upgrade was available. That is definitely right about the golden arrows in TMC though.