According to MikeB, one of this site's most prominent Sony fans, the yardstick for Japanese games is Famitsu, not Metacritic which is overwhelmingly Western-site based. With this in mind, LO and BD are AAA titles, and ES is extremely good. The Xbox 360 will also get Infinite Undiscovery and Tales, with no evidence currently existing that Tales will go to the PS3, and the ES port having dropped off the map.

As for Western RPG's? It's Mass Effect, Fable 2, Two Worlds and Oblivion for the Xbox 360 vs Oblivion for the PS3. And this, with NO interesting exclusive WRPG's on the horizon for the PS3, and Mass Effect 2 a dead-cert for the Xbox 360 next year.

 Well if you chose not to name those before, then obviously that's "not" where you want to be gaming xD FF11? PSU?

Really? 

PS3 RPG's you say waiting and still waiting. 2009 will be the year when we see FFXIII and versus, White Knight Chronicles, Valkyrie Chronicles.

I agree. I think people are overstating how many RPGs the 360 has with the word "most". PSP and DS has more than enough.

Lost Odyssey and Eternal Sonata are the only JRPGs that are really good. While Blue Dragon was ok, and the rest were pretty terrible.

There will come more JRPG`s in 2009. I'm still hoping for Disgaea 3 around March 2009. But tbh, the PS3 could have had some more JRPG`s, if MS didn't show their bags of money around with their idea of conquering Japan. Which really failed hard). I mean Eternal Sonata was expected to come to PS3 too, but where is it? Same story goes for Tales of Vesperia. I wonder if it will be timed exclusive or just exclusive.

Than again, I hope the Japanse developers are not stubborn and keep exclusively developing for Xbox 360 since big Mistwalker releases like Blue Dragon/Lost Odyssey didn't really move the figures of the 360 sales in Japan. I think they can earn much more with a good exclusive on PS3. Even without the extra bag of money from MS.

It's probably a stupid comment which I can not really proove but by looking around on multiplatform websites I never really have the feeling that the audience of Xbox 360 is really waiting for RPG's. (low comments or comments like I'm not interested or great for those who like this etcetera) Since the titles that really draw a lot of attention are mainly action-orientated games.

@ Rock_on_2008: I think that Square-Enix will only release FF XIII. Versus will come but later. Maybe 2010, allthough I'd rather see it the other way around.

I've never talked to anyone who beat it and said it wasn't great.

Actually, I compare this game a lot to FFX. It has a major plot twist towards the end of the first disc.

At the risk of my credibility, I suggest putting at least 15 hours in it before putting it down. If it doesn't have you by then, might be time to sell it.

...but yeah, it's a masterpiece, imo. 

Also, I hate to correct you, but your talking about the overall story, not character development.

Character development is the little inner monologues/external dialogues/foibles and conversations/good times your characters have while on the journey. It is how well the character is developed. FFXII, for instance, has a sucky overall story score because it has little or no character development for the first 40 hours.

The storyline is the overall plot of the game that you mentioned. It usually means nothing as long as its not focused on too heavily. FFVIII, my favorite RPG, has one of the worst storylines ever. However, the character development is amazing. Same with Tales of Symphonia.

I agree with your assessment, the FF series is indeed greater than all of those games, but also, I think your selling them short. If I compared every RPG to Final Fantasy then I would never have a good time.

Metacritic doesn't prove your opinion.

I am a PS3 owner, and I agree with him, if I was a PS3 owner exclusively, the best RPG you have to play is...well not much. Name them if you can. Nothing at the level of ME, LO, ES, or even BD. You better hope your PS3 is backwards compatible. A fantastic game you would probably hate is Persona 3: FES on the PS2. It's not as great as Final Fantasy, but it's still an amazing game, like Lost Odyssey.

I sincerely hope you aren't trying to marginalize great games to make the PS3's non-RPG case seem a little less pathetic.

@ChronotriggerJM

You have a very narrow minded view if you think the hardware a RPG is being ran on has anything to do with its quality. IMO, I think you are just a fanboy for making statemtents like that about the DS.

If I named 10 games you would marginalize them for not being good enough and when I name a super quality franchise, "OMG I just hate that series lol," making it so your opinion marginalizes the undeniably must play rpg for the system.

Yes, you are a Sony fanboy, or at least that it what seems apparent from your post. If you lost your bias, you would be able to enjoy some of the excellent JRPG's released in the last couple of years, none of which fall on the PS3.

It's unfortunate that a JRPG fan would get stuck with a PS3 only, so I hope you have diversified your hardware despite your bias. 

@Zen, I have no doubts about the "quality" of the titles on the DS, it's just frankly "not my cup of tea." I thought Final Fantasy 7 was absolutely BREATHTAKING for it's time, I REALLY do enjoy sprite based RPG's, but there was something about the CGI that I felt REALLY added to the genre, I think it was it's ability to give me that classic Japanese "epic'ness" so to speak. My taste's in general for the JRPG genre shot up to that larger scale type of gameplay. Which I really don't mean offensively, I just don't feel the DS is cut out for, in terms of data storage, cpu power, screen size, etc etc etc.

I don't think the DS is a horrible console, just so far to be brutally honest, out of it's whole library, I've been interested in 3 titles :/ 2 of which are Brain Training, and now that recent RPG from Squaresoft, something about the world ending :P

But like I said earlier, I don't care how many series's that you could name off, I'd tell you I don't care for them because the hardware it'self, not the series, I just don't feel the DS can do them justice. And as for Dragon Quest... god don't even get me started >< That's a series that feels to be living 4 generations in the past. I played one a looooong time ago, and felt it to be the most generic playing JRPG I've ever seen, then my friend picked up whatever the most recent one was on the PS2, and I figured, hell why not, let's see why the series is so hyped in Japan, and well, much to my dismay, it played... exactly like the one I played before x.x This series never F#$^#$ changes >< It plays like any RPG on the NES and I can't stand that about it. DQ#Whatever can stay the hell away from any system I'm interested in xD I do NOT like that particular series. I just don't like the way they play.

Infinite Undiscovery got a September release date today while Disgaea 3 is still TBA... This is going beyond ridiculous. I don't know what Sony can do to speed up these releases but they need to do something. The 360 is going to have Eternal Sonata, Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, Tales of Vesperia, and Infinite Undiscovery out before the PS3 gets its first legitimate JRPG.

Ouch.