What are your favourite PS2 games? (Not shmups)

[D]

Battle Gear 2 (Tokyo Street Race)
Battle Gear 3
Outrun2SP
Initial D
Ferrari F355
Sega Ages games.

[Jockel]

haha had enough yet jockel?

Well, i have already played a lot of the mentioned games.
Some good recommendations so far, i'll try them.

[Dragoforce]

GTA: SA (just for the feeling of freedom)
Katamari games
FFXII (only good game in the series)

Aside from the it's just the shmups and various arcade collections that I enjoy on the PS2.

[dcharlie]

transformers - the atari one, not the god awful fighting game. semi-open mayhem , great graphics too. A real surprise.

Disgaea series - goodbye life....

Monster Hunter 1/2 - doubt its worth playing now, but both are excellent if you can get online and play in good parties

AKira Psychoball - awesome akira based pinball action.

Rez - again, best to get the X360 version if you can but an amazing experience.

Sky Gunner - yeah, this is pretty awesome and i can see why it's price is rising and rising.

Gatcharok - fun mini game craziness

Minna no golf series - I much prefer the last mingol on ps2 to the ps3, but i suspect that's just because the ps3 version adds very little

Underwater Unit - surprising 3d sub shooter from Irem - fun little game

Guitaru man - absolutely fanastic music game from Koei

Breath OF Fire V : Dragon Quarter - VERY harsh but a fantastic RPG

Maximo series - criminally under-rated 3d platform action. Yes, it's not 2d GnG but it's damned good.

Gundam: 1 year war - ace combat teams 3 hour long Gundam game. NOT a 6800 yen buy, but at the 500 yen bargain bucket price? a Gundam game which is fun, pretty and incredibly enjoyable.... just too damned short and the platrorming stuff near the end is a bit annoying.

[ratlhead]

actually tons of them but here's some of my favorites

Shinobi (3D action game perfection)
Altered Beast (Good reimagination in veins of a Zelda title, i think it's very underrated)
Shadow Hearts (My favorite turn based rpg ever, sequels are almost as good too)
Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando (Best of the series, soundtrack worths alone)
Psychonauts (One of the best games ever. Very creative, wonderful game)

[Rob]

Someone mentioned them last page and I forgot to list 'em- the Yakuza games. If you ever liked Shenmue, it's kind of like that with more retarded 16-bit beat 'em up style combat. First is a little better than the second, but the second has Yakuza bowling.

[Enhasa]

pretty funny that people are always fast enought to shit on Sony and their consoles yet looking at this thread its pretty evident they do carry some of the best titles and reach out to a large crowd, cant think of any other console where recomendations would pour in like this (except maybe PS1)

The thing is, the recommendations so far in this thread have had a surprising amount of overlap, a lot more than what I figure two pages worth of users would come up with. At this rate we could be going for 10 pages and still get good new examples. I mean, really really popular series like Prince of Persia and Sly Cooper haven't even been mentioned, Jak and Ratchet and Clank have barely been touched, many of the common cult mentions like Beyond Good and Evil, Mark of Kri, Sky Odyssey, Disaster Report, Michigan, EyeToy: Play haven't been mentioned either, games that people liked at the time but have been sort of forgotten like XIII, Frequency/Amplitude, Legacy of Kain, Tenchu haven't either, the playable runners-up from overrepresented genres like Primal, Project Snowblind, Indigo Prophecy and so on. (You don't want to know how many titles got deleted after finding out that yeah, someone did mention it.)

PS2 is seriously my favorite console. It's the depth more than anything else. There's just an incredible number of playable games and makes me think only casual gamers (those that only compare so-called AAA titles) or system fanboys (Nintendo4L) could have preferred the GC or Xbox. Even if you don't like some games that people recommend (personally I don't like almost all of the RPGs listed so far, and yes I really have played every one in this thread so far, most to completion), there are others out there that you would like. On the GC, if you don't like the limited list of popular and cult titles available, that's it.


It would take me all day to list the PS2 games I like, so I'm just going to stick to top100 games (all games, not PS2, lol) for me. Also, no arcade ports (Metal Slug, Initial D, Time Crisis, GG Accent Core, etc) or collections (ridiculously good ones available like Genesis collection, CCC 1-2, Taito Legends 1-2, etc) or this would bloat like hell. Games released also on other then-current consoles are ok.

top10: Valkyrie Profile 2, Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter, Star Ocean 3
top25: God Hand, Adventures of Cookie and Cream, Radiata Stories
top50: Rez, Devil May Cry 3, Devil May Cry
top100: Ico, Super Monkey Ball, Contra: Shattered Soldier, Maximo, Maximo vs Army of Zin, Shadow of the Colossus, killer7, Steambot Chronicles, Viewtiful Joe, Mercury Meltdown, Grand Theft Auto 3, Resident Evil 4, Space Channel 5

Wrote too much already, too lazy to write out descriptions, ask if you want them though.

[Shatterhand]

The PS2 indeed is an amazing console. Even I don't liking sony too much, I have to give in and say it's probably the best console ever. It's library of games is amazing, you have good games on every genre for any kind of player.

[lgb]

the PS2 is a piece of work: Gran Turismo 3 was great for its time (I still play it regardless), DOA2 Hardcore /was/ the best port available, and Virtua Fighter 4 of course; the Kingdom Hearts games are okay, I found FFX, FFX2, and FFXII alright, and Dynasty Warriors is fun every now and then

Fantavision looked kinda neat but I didn't really sit down with it for long

[Nei First]

Tales of Destiny Remake
Tales of Rebirth
Tales of Destiny 2
Simple 2000 series vol. 81: Earth Defence Force 2
King of Fighters 2002 Unlimited Match
Klonoa 2 Lunatea’s veil
Fate/Unlimited Codes
Devil may cry 3
Godhand
Valkyrie Profile 2 Silmeria
Phantasy Star Complete Collection
Hokuto no ken
Arcana Heart 1
Fatal Fury Battle Archives Vol. 2
Burnout 3/4
Zone of the Enders 2nd Runner: SE

[Xexyz]

Well now, what can I recommend that hasn't been mentioned yet?

Neo Contra: Play Contra in a top down Commando style. Rather easy, and pretty short, but the game is bad ass. Uses a dual stick setup for movement/firing and also features Shattered Soldiers stage % completion ranking.

Ys: Ark of Napishtim: Best action RPG on the system. Rather short (8-9 hours) but features no fluff or artificial padding to lengthen the game and make you lose interest. Avoid the PSP port!

Shining Tears, Shining Force Neo, Shining Force EXA: Yes, the latter two aren't real Force games, but all three are decent hack 'n slash dungeon crawlers. Shining Tears is the weakest of the three, but I had to mention it because the 2D visuals (other two are 3D) are pleasing to look at.

Rygar: The Legendary Adventure: Might be hard to get into if you've gone through the God of War titles, but this 3D action adventure title is one of the better early releases. The game features some disturbing boss designs.

Taito Legends 2: Lots of variety to be had on this compilation. Emulation is good (Taito developed it in-house) and the selection is huge! Avoid the original Taito Legends if you hate shoddy ports.

[ZOM]

Ys: Ark of Napishtim: Best action RPG on the system. Rather short (8-9 hours) but features no fluff or artificial padding to lengthen the game and make you lose interest. Avoid the PSP port!

Avoid ANY port: that thing has to be played on PC. EOS

[damakable]

I spent most of today starting a new game of SSX 3. It's as "open world" as a snowboarding game could get. I love the stages where you try to keep a combo going for over 30 minutes down the whole mountain. Since I'd played before I managed to complete all the races and score events in one afternoon. This is one of those games that really sucks me in and makes me want to complete and collect everything, but even afterwards it's fun and relaxing just to cruise down the mountain. It reminds me of what We <3 Katamari tried to do with the "zen" stages (snow man, roses), but without being boring. It's a huge improvement over SSX Tricky, exercising a bit more restraint with the look and feel -- it looks less wacky, more "realistic" but the physics still make me feel like I'm on the moon.

Another game I'm thinking about re-playing is FFXII. I really liked that one for some reason, I guess I figure that if an RPG is going to be about grinding levels I might as well be able to automate the process a bit. It's fun to initiate a battle and just sip a drink while it unfolds.