RPG Community |OT| Take the Epoch to a New Era

Hi RPG thread! For me getting to disc 2 of FF7, and having to start over was the most I've lost in an RPG. Was digging it enough to play disc 1 again right away though.

My recommendation question, I love 90s anime, and I have a lot of nostalgia for that kind of vibe. Any good RPGs to scratch that itch?

I love DQ, have played Skies of Arcadia, Xenogears, Wild Arms, Grandia, Chrono, Tales of series, Star Ocean, and Lunar 2 is next on my to-play list.

GroovySnake said:

Hi RPG thread! For me getting to disc 2 of FF7, and having to start over was the most I've lost in an RPG. Was digging it enough to play disc 1 again right away though.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

That happened to me. I loaded my save up and the submarine had glitched into the land and couldn't move.

Back in the day when I was a one save slot guy I lost roughly 80 hours of progress in Final Fantasy 7. My brother heard that you can get a really cool item if you play the right notes on the piano or something during the flashback sequence you have at that village outside Midgar. It has been a while. Anyway I started a new game and rushed to that point to see if it was true. Long story short when my mom called me for dinner in my rush i saved over my 80 hour game. It was probably 12 years before I touched Final Fantasy 7 again and finally beat it.

Now days I keep as many saves as the game will let me, but it wasn't FF7 that finally taught me that. It was a one-two punch of that and Final Fantasy Tactics.

Yep yep I dig Suikoden, played it back in the day, and Musashi is a fun suggestion, thanks.

FiveSide said:

​

What is the most progress you've ever lost in an RPG? If it was something catastrophic like losing an entire save file, did you ever go back and beat the game?

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

At least 40 hours in pokemon red, my sister deleted that save. D:

And yes I replayed that game and caught all pokemon eventually.

Mine would be getting to the last disc in FFVIII and the memory card going kaput. I ended up borrowing a save from a friend cause I couldn't be bothered to start over again.

I kinda regretted it though. His save was impressive to say the least, every char was level 99 except a couple. The time counter was over 15 hours but in red, probably because the counter had gone over 99 hours. It made the rest of the game a breeze and didn't feel like my own progress.

Likely I've lost PS2 and GameCube memory cards with save files on them but my most recent progress loss was caused by not paying attention when cleaning up memory space on my PC Engine DUO R and I erased my Ys Book I save game (which I forgot I needed to continue with Ys Book II). Why didn't they at least implement an option or even a cheat code to start at the beginning of Book II without having a completed Book I save file?

I lost my end game FF VI save file. I'm pretty sure I had only a few things left to do before tackling the final dungeon. Because of that I only got to see the ending for myself a few years later.

Also, not really a case of lost save, but I keep replaying the first few hours of Xenogears over and over again because I always stop playing at some point and then when I get back to it I've already kinda lost track of the story so I start over. I must've seen that village burn like 4 or 5 times already... And I'll probably see it again whenever I decide to try going through the game one more time.

My PS1 memory card died out one day when I was a kid and I lost all my saves for FF7, 8, Grandia and Jade Cocoon.
I had finished FF7, was stuck against Ultimecia in FF8 and was almost at the end in Grandia and Jade Cocoon.

I didn't touch any of these games in like 5 years because I was pretty pissed off tbh.

I'm playing White Knight Chronicles 2, and I've reached a part of the story where some of the enemies mostly need to be killed by fire spells. Boy, am I lucky that I have given all of my characters said spells. Why? Because it seems that skills with fire damage aren't helpful.

I have also started Cosmic Star Heroine. Playing on Heroine difficulty and it is proving to be challenging, but in a fun way. Conbat system is a fun mix of Chrono Trigger and Grandia, yet not as good as any of them. Still very good. Not sure about the writing. The style and tone isn't my cup of tea. I don't love the character designs but enemy designs are cool. Overall, the game looks good and has some cool tracks.

I forgot Persona 3 Portable. While it is good, I wish that S. Links were done better. I don't like that you basically just tell most of them what they want. Still, mostly enjoyable characters. I have many S. Links maxed and I'm at about 160-170 levels up in Tartarus. Overall, I am really enjoying it, despite some cringe moments. I'm glad that I chose this version, because fully party control was a must for me. One last thing, music is great.

My save file for Dark Cloud 2 was corrupted by a power failure while saving just before the final boss. I was over 50 hours into the game. I have never finished Dark Cloud 2 as a result.

Just finished Pillars of Eternity 2 yesterday. I'm now ready to move on with a new game. I realized I haven't finished a tactical RPG in my life, and I want to change that.

I have these 3 in my library. Fire Emblem Awakening (3DS), FF Tactics War of the Lions (PSP), and Tactics Ogre Let Us Cling Together (PSP).

Which would you think will be the most fun for a guy who is not well versed in the sub genre? Also, I have played the PS1 version of FF Tactics back in the day, but I got stuck because I couldn't beat one of the early fights. Maybe 4th or 5th fight in the game. I can't remember which part, but it was early in the game, and that made me quit.

Probably a niche question, but! Has anyone here played Wachenröder? I picked it up in Japan (because some of the sculptors/designers of Baroque's Nerve Tower did some work on it), and was planning to start it soon. About how long is it? HLTB has it at 12.5 hours (which is good - want something shorter to play while I go through Grandia), but that's with a single user reporting in.

lunarwhale said:

Probably a niche question, but! Has anyone here played Wachenröder? I picked it up in Japan (because some of the sculptors/designers of Baroque's Nerve Tower did some work on it), and was planning to start it soon. About how long is it? HLTB has it at 12.5 hours (which is good - want something shorter to play while I go through Grandia), but that's with a single user reporting in.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

I've played it, but honestly don't remember much about it other than it had a heavy steampunk aesthetic (with a lot of famous manga/anime artists involved) & that your weapons were all steam-powered and prone to overheating. I think I only played a few hours before binning it.

Wachenroder has a bit more in common with dieselpunk than any other steampunk-ish game I can think of, too. The game's more of a prestige collaboration than anything, but it looks good. It deserves a proper fan translation patch at some point since the English script up on GameFAQs is rudimentary.

boybrushdRED said:

Just finished Pillars of Eternity 2 yesterday. I'm now ready to move on with a new game. I realized I haven't finished a tactical RPG in my life, and I want to change that.

I have these 3 in my library. Fire Emblem Awakening (3DS), FF Tactics War of the Lions (PSP), and Tactics Ogre Let Us Cling Together (PSP).

Which would you think will be the most fun for a guy who is not well versed in the sub genre? Also, I have played the PS1 version of FF Tactics back in the day, but I got stuck because I couldn't beat one of the early fights. Maybe 4th or 5th fight in the game. I can't remember which part, but it was early in the game, and that made me quit.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

Tactics ogre

A friend surprised me with a copy of Pillars of Eternity & I managed to free up enough space on my SSD to install it. I'm torn on starting it though since Octopath Traveler comes out next week & I've been eagerly waiting for that. Plus, I'm still finishing Grandia 1 in the ERA RPG Club.

Now that D:OS2 and PoE are behind us, what is the next upcoming big isometric RPG(if any)?

JustSomeone said:

Now that D:OS2 and PoE are behind us, what is the next upcoming big isometric RPG(if any)?

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

I don't know if they are "big", but I can't wait to play Disco Elysium and Pathfinder: Kingmaker.

Labadal said:

I don't know if they are "big", but I can't wait to play Disco Elysium and Pathfinder: Kingmaker.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

Yea those and the UnderRail Expansion. Realms Beyond is looking promising too, assuming it ever comes out.

Sinatar said:

Yea those and the UnderRail Expansion. Realms Beyond is looking promising too, assuming it ever comes out.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

Realms Beyond is a game I am following, but I expect that and The New World to be 2020 and that's an optimistic guess.

boybrushdRED said:

Just finished Pillars of Eternity 2 yesterday. I'm now ready to move on with a new game. I realized I haven't finished a tactical RPG in my life, and I want to change that.

I have these 3 in my library. Fire Emblem Awakening (3DS), FF Tactics War of the Lions (PSP), and Tactics Ogre Let Us Cling Together (PSP).

Which would you think will be the most fun for a guy who is not well versed in the sub genre? Also, I have played the PS1 version of FF Tactics back in the day, but I got stuck because I couldn't beat one of the early fights. Maybe 4th or 5th fight in the game. I can't remember which part, but it was early in the game, and that made me quit.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

Play Tactics Ogre. It's great all around and it doesn't have insane difficulty spike. I always think the best way to get into a new genre is to experience the best stuff it can offer first.

Well I haven't posted in awhile, I've gotten through a fair few RPG's.

Phantasie - Classic party based CRPG that's notable for having dungeon exploration done from an overhead view that's essentially like playing directly on an automap. Has turn based combat influenced heavily by Wizardry as most 80's RPG's did and has a pretty fun quest that takes you across a large continent, through multiple towns and about 10 dungeons. All in all a good time.

Phantasie II - Basically the same game as the first one. In fact it's so similar it ships with Phantasie's manual and has a small reference card that mentions the very few differences. All in all still a pretty good game... until you get to the end. The final dungeon is at the end of a giant lava pit. There are invisible "safe" squares on the lava that you can follow, however there are about 10 squares of damaging lava you need to walk on inflicting massive damage on your party. Once you get to the dungeon (now depleted on resources from healing lava damage) you have to fight the hardest boss in the game. Then you have to go back across the lava to the nearest town, use the item the boss drops, then go back across the lava *again* so that you can get to the end of the dungeon and win the game. Needless to say, this sequence is pure unfiltered garbage and really brings the experience down. The fact that I went through all this, all to be unable to finish the game due to a bug really put a smile on my face.

Phantasie III: The Wrath of Nikademus - Hoo boy. So they made a third one, there are big improvements to the interface and visuals but apparently all the dev time went into that because the game is a mess. The dungeons are super short and uninvolved, it took me 5 whole hours to clear the whole game but the ending. The final dungeon is *insane* and requires a massive amount of level grinding to be able to proceed, levelling is of course painfully slow. The games other big addition is a limb damage system where characters can have limbs wounded, broken or removed entirely. This just boils down to forcing you to use far more healing spells then before (high level healing restores lost limbs) which makes the experience more aggravating, especially when trying to do said grinding. I tapped out on this one, I would have to spend more time grinding then it took me to do the other 95% of the game to be able to finish it. There's apparently a 4th one that was only released in Japan for Japanese PC's (PC88, MSX, etc) but it never got an english translation so I won't be able to try it.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption - The *other* Vampire the Masquerade RPG, the one nobody ever talks about. It plays like a diablo style action RPG gameplay wise, though it has a much larger focus on story and you get to travel with a coterie of 4 vamps total. All in all it's an OK game except for 1 critical flaw: The AI of your team is unbelievably bad. They are barely capable of navigating the environment, let alone actually doing anything useful in combat. You'll spend inordinate amounts of time carefully walking them through doors in every dungeon all the while wishing you could just play as a single character. If the AI were solid, this would be a really cool game.

Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land - A Japanese Wizardry game developed for the PS2. Plays more like a JRPG played from the first person perspective then a true blue Wizardry game, but all in all it's pretty good. It has your standard ridiculous saccharine plot that comes with being a JRPG and some irritatingly slow combat animations but all in all I had a good time with it.

Funny thing about Phantasie: the Japanese version of the game has a totally different presentation. I didn't realize that the two were the same game until just recently.

Battle screens from both:

A side scrolling combat screen, that's... interesting.

I started Wachenröder today. Really digging the aesthetic direction and the music - I'm having trouble finding a video of just the opening (none the less a high quality one - gotta get a capture card and start recording footage myself), but it's featured in the first few minutes of this:



The use of miniatures and models really struck me as unique. The story's... charmingly overwrought so far. Lord Lucian can go on and on at times. I dig the dieselpunk aesthetic and some of the worldbuilding. I'm supplementing my playthrough with the translation guide on GameFAQs whenever I run into some segments that I'm struggling to read, but as Pasokon mentioned, it's fairly basic. No real embellishments or sense of voice, but I've come far enough along in my studies to pick up some of that.

I'm enjoying the combat system so far. AP systems are fun to experiment with, and I enjoy the break from more typical movement phase->action phase SRPGs. I've only played one map, so part of this enjoyment is on the assumption that they come up with some more challenges for it. I've heard it's an easy game, but I'd be disappointed if every map can be finished by just baiting enemies into wasting AP on movement and then wailing on them for free. The way you charge up your Sledge by holding up on the d-pad's cute and adds to the atmosphere the game's going for.

So, what are the odds the kingdom hearts 3 ps4 pro comes stateside?

Hello all.

Some of you might remember a series of Essential RPG threads that I used to run on NeoGAF. There has been a decent amount of interest in getting an ERA version of the Essential RPG list up and running, and several of us are prepping to start the voting stage very soon. Hopefully within the week.

Along with a fresh start and hopefully enough new faces to shake up the typical rankings, the goal is to assemble a full top 100 this time around, with info and anecdotes for each game. Hopefully we get enough participation to do so!

On that end, I think that it could be useful to have 2-3 finished voting lists ready to go as soon as the thread launches (ideally this weekend). If you have participated in the Essential RPG lists in the past, enjoy doing full write ups for your lists, and are able to get something together in the next few days to serve as an early example to others participating, please PM me. I can give you an early set of the voting rules, and will keep in touch with you as we prep the thread launch.

I hope that the rest of you participate when the thread goes live. Having members who are well versed in the genre voting will lead to a better end product all around. Thanks!

Hmmmm....I wonder what I'll vote this time.

Haven't made as much progress this year as I wanted since last thread but I've still played some games that'll shake up my ballot plus I've had some more time to digest other games.

I'm curious to see how things stack up this time, especially since last years got blown apart by the whole...thing...last year.

Are we still playing Xanadu Next for July? I mean I haven't finished my play through of Grandia yet but that explains the backlog.

Never got around to Grandia myself, which is a pity as I wanted to play it and voted for it in a previous vote myself :P.

Didn't finish the two club games before that either (yet) and wasn't really playing RPGs when it came around. Ended up getting back in through my back-catalog, though. Maybe I'll jump in the next month again but idk, I've been pretty flaky about games for the better part of the year.

I do feel the way I attacked Infinite Space and Strange Journey speaks to the hunger and drive returning to form :P, but who knows.

Probably also going to play Octopath at launch this coming month so there is that for me to consider.

iclash said:

Are we still playing Xanadu Next for July? I mean I haven't finished my play through of Grandia yet but that explains the backlog.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

Yup!

Next month will go back to normal with a theme and voting process. FiveSide will have the thread up in the next week or so I believe.

Luminaire said:

Yup!

Next month will go back to normal with a theme and voting process. FiveSide will have the thread up in the next week or so I believe.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

Ok cool. I purchased Xanadu Next from the most recent GOG sale, but this will give me time to finish up God of War before I get started with that.

Getting my thoughts in order for the essentials thread really makes me appreciate having replayed DQ 4 and 5 last year. I wish I had played more of the titles I'm considering for my ballot recently and had more complete thoughts to write out about them. Probably just going to use edited versions of some of my write-ups from last time but I was able to redo DQIV and V and hopefully get closer to what makes them special imo.

SMTI&II are also going to make my ballot and will be new to it, so that's exciting.

Writing out my ballot also makes me realize how little I've actually expanded my horizons since the last ballot :(.

RPGs I've played since the last thread, i.e. since the death of GAF (iirc):

• TitS FC (beat)
• Etrian Odyssey V (unfinished)
• Phantasy Star IV (unfinished)
• Dragon Quest VI (beat, replay)
• Dragon Quest IV (beat, replay)
• Dragon Quest V (beat, replay)
• Ys VIII (beat)
• Tokyo Xanadu eX+ (unfinished)
• Xenoblade 2 (beat)
• Shin Megami Tensei (beat)
• Glory of Heracles III (beat)
• Soul Hackers (unfinished)
• Final Fantasy IV DS (beat)
• Shin Megami Tensei II (beat)
• Raidou Kuzunoha vs. the Soulless Army (beat)
• Ultima VII (unfinished)
• Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon (unfinished)
• Infinite Space (finished)
• Strange Journey (currently playing, on final boss)

I've done pretty well at deepening my experience of certain core (to me) franchises, namely SMT and DQ. I also reconnected somewhat with FF and finally played FFIV to the end, which is something I've wanted to do for a while. Haven't picked up FFXII yet, which I also want to play at some point. I did also want to get back into playing the remaining FEs this year, which I've failed to do. EOV being left unfinished is also disappointing.

But I haven't broadened my experience too much. I'm glad I've played TitS FC, GoHIII, and IS but leaving PSIV and Ultima VII unfinished is disappointing, PSIV being my first "I'm going to play this" coming out of the essentials thread and Ultima VII being a classic CRPG, which would do much to broaden my experience.

Also, I played a lot of RPGs from last November through February (up to SMTII) and not many since then :P. Listing them really puts that into perspective.

Yeah, I've had...

(beaten)

Etrian V
Zwei II
Zwei I
Stonekeep

(shelved)

Vaporum
Tales of Bursera

EOV has a chance (I mean, it's REALLY GOOD).

Picked up Phantasy Star IV again, thinking to start mopping up these unfinished playthroughs there and/or with EOV. I think I mostly remember where I was now and finished the next dungeon.

Then tragedy struck; it was a bit of an awkward time to pick the game back up as I my memories of the relevant character weren't particularly fresh.
I've also got to re-orient myself with the map :P. I remember what the general area around where I have to go next looks like but I don't remember where it is in relation to other places. At least I have the Landrover to get around easily and conserve hp/tp.

Yeah I realized I was being kind of ridiculous about part way through writing out the list :P. I guess I just feel the end of my time off creeping up on me and wish I'd gotten through some more, when, really, it is something you've got to take as it comes and not force it (because then it stops being fun, which is the point).

Still, it would be nice if I balanced my ambitions wrt this a bit better. I tend to very much get obsessed with one thing and just follow that line of gaming, when I also want to open up new avenues for myself (so that I can get obsessed with them :P).

Listing RPG's I've played since ERA started... oh god.

Might and Magic: World of Xeen (beat/replay)
Might and Magic VI: Mandate of Heaven (beat/replay)
Might and Magic III: Isles of Terra (beat/replay)
Curse of the Azure Bonds (beat/replay)
Pool of Radiance (beat/replay)
Gothic (beat/first time play)
Wizards & Warriors (beat/replay)
Betrayal at Krondor (beat/replay)
Might and Magic II: Gates to Another World (beat/replay)
Champions of Krynn (beat/replay)
Death Knights of Krynn (beat/replay)
Might and Magic VIII: Day of the Destroyer (beat/replay)
Might and Magic VII: For Blood and Honor (beat/replay)
Albion (beat/first time play)
Quest for Glory IV: Shadows of Darkness (beat/replay)
Quest for Glory: So you want to be a hero? (beat/replay)
Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon (beat/replay)
Eye of the Beholder (beat/replay)
Pools of Darkness (beat/replay)
Secret of the Silver Blades (beat/replay)
Might & Magic X: Legacy (beat/replay)
Freedom Force (beat/replay)
Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos (beat/replay)
Dark Sun: Shattered Lands (beat/replay)
Phantasie (beat/first time play)
Temple of Elemental Evil (beat/replay)
Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire (beat/first time play)
Vaporum (beat/first time play)
Quest for Glory III: Wages of War (beat/replay)
Ravenloft Stone Prophet (beat/replay)
Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land (beat/first time play)
Kingdom Come: Deliverance (beat/first time play)
Superhero League of Hoboken (beat/first time play)
Menzoberranzan (beat/replay)
Etherlords II (beat/first time play)
Ravenloft Strahd's Possession (beat/replay)
Quest for Glory V: Dragon Fire (beat/first time play)
Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire (beat/first time play)
Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday (beat/replay)
Buck Rogers: Matrix Cubed (beat/replay)
Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny (beat/first time play)
The Shadows of Sergoth (beat/first time play)
Dark Sun: Wake of the Ravager (beat/replay)
Hyakki Castle (beat/first time play)
Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption (beat/replay)
Battle Chasers Nightwar (beat/first time play)
Nox (flushed)
Al-Qadim The Genie's Curse (beat/first time play)
Dungeon Hack (beat/first time play)
The Dark Queen of Krynn (beat/replay)
Phantasie II (beat/first time play)
The Summoning (flushed)
Phantasie III: The Wrath of Nikademus (flushed)
Lands of Lore II: Guardians of Destiny (flushed)
Conan the Cimmerian (flushed)
Realms of Arkania: Star Trail (flushed)
Might and Magic IX (flushed)

That's in order of how much I liked them. I keep a ranking list and rank them on stream :p

Quite a few :)

Yeah I always wonder about actually ranking the games I play.

I don't know how I'd go about it though.

I'd also feel the urge to rank games I played long ago, say as a child, which would mean I'd feel the urge to replay them so I could properly rank them :P.

This is part of the difficulty of assembling my essentials ballot lol but also why I'm glad it is just tiers, where the exact numerical ranking doesn't matter much.

...

But to have a database of what I thought about various games...that would be nice.

It is a method of making explicit what you felt about a game, which helps you remember it and also gives you something solid to muse about and keep with you as you continue to play games. I think conversation or even just writing out or speaking aloud (with no one answering) can definitely enhance and inform your appreciation and enjoyment of the content.

Making things explicit does, I think, also create opinions, so my turn of phrase isn't entirely apt, imo and sometimes I worry about that. I'm thinking that sometimes you have an impression that doesn't quite make sense or isn't quite articulate and when articulating it, you make it make sense and then come to think "ah that is what I thought" when it wasn't necessarily what you thought until that moment at all, which perhaps doesn't matter but perhaps something is lost :P.

My ranking method is pretty simple. I just go up the list and ask myself "did I like this more then X" and keep going up the list until the answer is no, bam ranked.

Sinatar said:

My ranking method is pretty simple. I just go up the list and ask myself "did I like this more then X" and keep going up the list until the answer is no, bam ranked.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

Makes sense. I imagine it helps that it is a running list rather than drawing on far-flung (from each other) and distant (from now) experiences.

Personally, I have some difficulty with this sort of thing though. Haven't tried making a master list for games--the closest I've come is a single GotY ballot and these essentials ballots--but I have for some other things as a child and I always ended up not liking the result :P. I wasn't good at assessing the direct head-to-heads.

Sinatar is an RPG monster!

That list is daunting...I've finished maybe 5 games since ERA started.

I'm playing more Persona 3 Portable. I reached November. Some things have played out and it was interesting to see. I have maxed out quite a few S. Links and upgraded the persona of some companions. So far, I'd rate it higher than P4G, but I know it's a very subjective thing. In general, I like the P3 characters more than the P4 characters.

I don't know if others care about things like this, but I like it when I see some new creature/persona and look it up online, to see from which region/history/myth it is from. It's cool to see.

Labadal said:

I don't know if others care about things like this, but I like it when I see some new creature/persona and look it up online, to see from which region/history/myth it is from. It's cool to see.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

Yeah that stuff is neat. Some of the games also have little blurbs on that stuff in-game you can read.

It is also cool with demons you recognize, e.g. Gabriel. I was always confused by that one, because Gabriel is a male name, but the demon is female in the MT super-franchise. I thought the games were just confusing the name for a female name. So I looked it up and apparently in some ancient Christian sects in the Middle East Gabriel is actually depict that angel as female.

...

Persona 4 is weird for me. On paper, the casts of Persona 3 and Persona 5 are more appealing to me in terms of archetypes, but as a whole I think the Persona 4 cast comes together better and it over-performs for me. And this is despite Persona 4 also having the most (quantitatively and qualitatively) awful 'anime' content within (although I have a somewhat idiosyncratic take on some of that as to where it fails, e.g. I don't think it is at the homophobia so much as at the failure to complete Naoto and Kanji's narratives in such a way as to situate said homophobia properly within the narrative: I think it would've been valuable to actually deal with the homophobia but they failed to do so, repeatedly pulling back from doing so when they came close). Inaba helps a lot. I feel it is their best realized setting. It is the closest to my own hometown, that is true, but I don't think it is only that. I feel the whole town and cast is just better situated, e.g. the "real" teen approach--childish, silly, and kind of dumb--goes well with both Inaba and the high school simulation in general.

P3 does has more of a super-kids thing going on and the school is similarly fantastical, which doesn't appeal to me as much as a simulation setting. I do really like having Mitsuru and Akihiko as older students and Persona veterans. Always tended to associate with older people more myself and it is also nice to be less the magical one who changes everyone and more part of an ongoing thing.

Persona 3 does develop its characters better than Persona 4, in my opinion. They have stories and histories that are much more engaged by the core narrative. Persona 5 attempted similar stuff, particularly with Makoto and Futaba but Persona 3 is still the most successful of the three along these lines, imo: P5 kind of trails off with its narratives.

Another interesting thing about Persona 3 is it retains the Persona-user underbelly of pre-Hashino Persona, which is appealing. I don't think it does enough with it but I really like that aspect of Persona 3.

...

Struggling right now with ranking Persona games on my ballot :P. They don't really match up squarely against the other games at the top of my ballot...

Since the death of the forum that shall not be named I played:

• Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition (for the 4th time)
• Cosmic Star Heroine
• Pillars of Eternity
  
• Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
• Fallout 1
• Tower of Time
• Divinity: Original Sin
• Xenoblade 2
• Shin Megami Tensei: Lucifer's Call
• Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen
• Kingdom Hearts 0.2 Birth by Sleep
• Ara Fell
• Tales of Berseria
• Tyranny

I only played a little bit of Tyranny, Xenoblade 2 and Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen. Currently I'm playing Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire.
Besides that I finished the remaning games.
2018 turned into a CRPG year for me, espically with D:OS2 coming to PS4 soon.