I only see one in that group of rpgs that is likely to get an 8.5 from IGN.

Congratulations on your well developed own opinion!

 IGN's reviews are fast becoming a laughing stock, we all know they "Bottled" it and gave resistance 2 the same score as gears 2 in fear of alieniting some of their fans, And since when was IGN the "gospel" of gaming reviews?

The max payne franchise is legendary and just because the film isn't good it doesn't all of a sudden mean that Alan wake will not live up to the hype.

Rocket: robots on wheels? Sly cooper? ha ha ha, i'll give credit where credits due to platformers like ratchet and clank, but sly cooper? gimme a break, they also made fahrenheit and for me personally max payne is far better than fahrenheit.

Crackdown is a top TOP game, ok, maybe you didn't like it but i bet theres over a million people who would disagree with you.

I like jrpgs, so I decided to go check out the games you mentioned in youtube videos:

I thought Monster Hunter 3 looked like a possible 9 or better if it plays as well as it looks .

I was talking about Muramasa when I said I expected only one of them to get an 8.5 or better from IGN, and I had mixed feelings about that one after watching the video. I have Odin's Sphere for PS2, and Muramasa seemed to be doing an excellent job at the same type of side scrolling action (as does Castle Crashers on the 360 to an extent). The action seemed much faster and exciting in Muramasa than in Odin Sphere, but the graphics didn't seem much better than those in the PS2 game to be honest. They seemed more kinetic of course, but not much better. I'll still say it is an 8.5 to 9.0, but I'm not as impressed as I was hoping to be.

A Tales game. I rewatched the trailer for Dawn of the New World and it seemed good enough; however, it only received a 6.8 from IGN earlier this year. I also watched a trailer for FF: Crystal Chronicles, and it seems to me that Square is definitely trying to gear it for a younger audience or for those that prefer lighter content in such games.


I watched two trailers for Arc Fantasia Rise. They definitely seem to be going for a high fantasy tone in that game like some of the great jrpgs of the past like Lunar and some of the classic Final Fantasy games, but in a way it looked decidedly last gen in a way. And, I don't think it will give FFXIII much of a run for its money for being the high fantasy JRPG of this gen. I watched and favorited Nivek0991's first look at Kizuna because I liked the game's art work that was featured in the video and the song is one of my favorites.

I thought the worst of the games whose trailer that I watched was Valhalla Knights because it seemed to be a more hardcore type of rpg with customizations, etc, and I'm not really into that. I like to lose myself in the worlds and enjoy epic stories, but customization and hardcore level grinding gets a bit boring to me after awhile which is also one of my problems with Bioware type games.

Anyway, I thought they looked like some good little rpgs with the majority being in the 8 to 9 range and maybe a couple that could get review scores between 9 and 9.5. I do plan to purchase a Wii sometime, so I'm sure I will enjoy them when I can.

However, I'm not going to say they are hands down and away the best rpg lineup of 2009. SO4 is looking really good on the 360. I've heard that Blue Dragon II might also be coming out soon. I still think FFXIII will come out in the summer of '09 in Japan and be available in the West by Christmas '09 which would definitely give the edge to the hd consoles.

Additionally, throw in some story driven western rpgs like Bioware's Dragon's Age which I've heard is coming to both 360 and PS3 in '09. And another potentially to be announced hardcore western rpg in the Oblivion or Fallout 3 mode, the western action rpg The Witcher: Rise of the Wolf on 360 and PS3, and a strategy action rpg like the new Kingdom Under Fire on the 360 which I think is scheduled for an '09 release and is a game I'm hoping 360 gamers will give proper respect to and take to heart the way they have some other games, and that I'm very much looking forward to, and I think the hd consoles will take the best overall rpgs of '09 crown by a large margin.

What's your problem with the IGN scores? Do you really need a justification of what you like from Matt and the boys? Like someone else already posted above: IGN has been terrible lately.

Have you actually seen the graphics for Muramasa? It's one of the best looking games for this gen. Besides it's the spiritual successor to Odin Sphere, that alone should be enough.

Tales: Dawn of the New World is a spin-off. The new Tales will be mothership, and according to Namco it will be close to Vesperia

Arc Rise Fantasia: Looks very promising old school fantasy JRPG. What's wrong with decidedly last gen? You also hate DS RPGs for being decidedly SNES/PS1 quality (which is still the golden era for RPGs)? 

I'm glad that there's variation in the RPG line-up, so if one is a hardcore grinder that's a good thing, yes?

FF13 won't come in 2009, but even if FF is not automatically the best RPG around, let alone make the HD line-up better than the 7 or so RPGs on Wii as a whole. XII wasn't that good anyway and we haven't seen ANYTHING from XIII that suggests it will be great. FF is not the holy gospel of RPGs.
And I really don't get how you seem to be able to find negatives about every Wii RPG that's announced, yet think that the sequel to Blue Dragon is one of the games that will cary the HD RPG line-up.

If you really like JRPGs as you say, you wouldn't be complaining about what's coming to Wii, you would be extremely happy that next year looks like an awesome JRPG year.

Oh and BTW: another awesome looking Wii RPG: Fragile.

"IGN's reviews are fast becoming a laughing stock, we all know they "Bottled" it and gave resistance 2 the same score as gears 2 in fear of alieniting some of their fans, And since when was IGN the "gospel" of gaming reviews?"

They probably gave them the same score because Resistance 2 improved on Resistance I in the same way while Gears 2 was pretty much the same hide, shoot, hide game as the first one with a new story tacked on and a new game play mechanic that was standard fare on the old Unreal engine games beginning with Splinter Cell being able to grab the enemy and use them as a shield you could do that Christmas '02 and maybe earlier.


I give credence to IGN reviews because their scores have been on the internet for over ten years which is longer than most and that makes it easier to see what they have thought of certain games over time.

"Rocket: robots on wheels? Sly cooper? ha ha ha, i'll give credit where credits due to platformers like ratchet and clank, but sly cooper? gimme a break, they also made fahrenheit and for me personally max payne is far better than fahrenheit."

Here are the Game Rankings scores for the titles in question:
Sly 2: Band of Thieves 87.783 PS2 -- (IGN Score = 92)
Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoones 85.132 -- PS2 -- (IGN Score =
Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves 83.979 -- PS2 -- (IGN Score = 81)
The Crackdown 83.428 -- 360 --(IGN Score = 80)
Rocket Robot on Wheels 82.371 --N64 -- (IGN Score = 90. What is significant about this score is that this is the exact same score that IGN N64 gave such highley regarded games as the N64 version of Rayman 2: The Great Escape widely considered to be the best modern platformer and Rare's Donkey Kong 64. You say The Crackdown is a top top game, yet it pails in its scores in comparison to other "top top" games on the 360 which have aggregate review scores about 11-14 points higher. Yet Rocket ranks with some of the greatest games of all times.)

Now for some reason, you decided to bring Quantum Dream and Rendition into this paragraph. Because I think you are talking about Indigo Prophecy when you are mentioning Fahrenheit which was developed by Quantum Dream the developers that are working on Heavy Rain for the PS3. This really wasn't the proper place of the post to mention these two games. However, if you look up the Game Ranking scores for the PC versions of Max Payne, you see that they both scored higher than the PC version of Indigo Prophecy. However on the original XBOX Indigo Prophecy scores higher than both Max Payne games and Indigo Prophecy also fairs better than the PS2 versions of the Max Payne games.

The big questions in regards to Alan Wake by Rendition on the 360 and Heavy Rain by Quantum Dream on the PS3 though is the delays that have taken place in the development of Alan Wake. Alan Wake was originally set to come out in January of 2007 and Rendition hasn't released a game to my knowledge since 2003. Usually, when there is a two year delay in a game that should be simple to develop like a survival horror title it is indicative that for some reason the game was just failing to meet exepctations for some reason which I suspect was the case with Alan Wake.

Now, Quantum Dream's last game was released in 2005. And their new game seems to be meeting all early expectations. It has beautiful cinemas that aren't capable of being rendered in 360 games due to the space limitations of dvds which really prevents the 360 in my estimation from being the best place for cinema driven games and Heavy Rain seems to have incredible influences as the motorcycle scenes seem to be right out of Shenmue.

Speaking of Sega and Shenmue, Sega seems to be bringing all of their best cinema driven games exclusively to the PS3 these days. Kenshan!, the Yakuza series, Shenmue 3 and 4 if those are successful. Anyway, you say in our estimation that Max Payne is far better than Fahrenheit / Indigo Prophecy. Well, in my estimation, Max Payne couldn't even begin to even dream of being in the same league with Shenmue and Kenshan! And I have numbers to back that up. Shenmue IGN Dreamcast review score = 9.7 and Play Magzine's Play Japan section gave Kenshan! a 10 out 10 earlier this year and said that it was along with MGS4 the best mature audiences game to be developed in Japan so far in this generation.

"Crackdown is a top TOP game, ok, maybe you didn't like it but i bet theres over a million people who would disagree with you."

As pointed out above if it is a top Top game then why doesn't it have review scores comarable to other top Top games?

i'm Shenmues and Segas number 1 fan, i know Shenmue is better than Crackdown, then again, in my opinion there are no better 2 games on earth than Shenmue 1 & 2.

Yakuza? Nope, Crackdown? Nope, any sony, nintendo, capcom, square game? Nope...... no game touches Shenmue in my eyes.

"What's your problem with the IGN scores? Do you really need a justification of what you like from Matt and the boys? Like someone else already posted above: IGN has been terrible lately."

Just because they give better review scores to games you don't like and worse review scores to ones you do, doesn't make them terrible. It just makes them honest. I think in many ways they are following in Dave Halverson and co.'s footsteps and they've been the best in this industry since Diehard Gamefan over fifteen years ago.


"Have you actually seen the graphics for Muramasa? It's one of the best looking games for this gen. Besides it's the spiritual successor to Odin Sphere, that alone should be enough."

I've seen them. They are not that much better than Odin Sphere's and they don't hold a candle to what I've seen of FFXIII or Star Ocean 4.



"Tales: Dawn of the New World is a spin-off. The new Tales will be mothership, and according to Namco it will be close to Vesperia"

Vesperia didn't fare that well in the reviews either did it? It's not an 8.5 at either IGN or Game Rankings.



"Arc Rise Fantasia: Looks very promising old school fantasy JRPG. What's wrong with decidedly last gen? You also hate DS RPGs for being decidedly SNES/PS1 quality (which is still the golden era for RPGs)?"

It is the fact that it isn't that much better graphically than Persona 4. I like my new gen games to look like new gen games and I prefer the art style in PS2 games like FFX and FFXII.



"I'm glad that there's variation in the RPG line-up, so if one is a hardcore grinder that's a good thing, yes?"

Yes, it would be a good thing.



"FF13 won't come in 2009, but even if FF is not automatically the best RPG around, let alone make the HD line-up better than the 7 or so RPGs on Wii as a whole. XII wasn't that good"

I'm looking for a 10 from IGN for FFXIII. Also, FFXII was great. It received a 10 from Play magazine and a 9.5 out of 10 from IGN. IGN named it their Playstation 2 game of the year for 2006 over Okami and Guitar Hero.



"anyway and we haven't seen ANYTHING from XIII that suggests it will be great. FF is not the holy gospel of RPGs."


FF Origins 9.0 -- the originals.

FF Chronicles 9.4 -- IV and Chrono Trigger

FF Anthology 9.0 -- V and VI

FFVII -- 9.5 from IGN the only two rpgs of the 32 bit era that scored higher were Chrono Cross and Vagrant Story both from Square.  And Xenogears yet another Square game scored as high.

Final Fantasy Tactics 8.5 (Reader average -- 9.3)

FFVIII -- 9.0 (sure Grandia and Suikoden II in the same time period scored just as high, but then again how many jrpgs have ever been as good as Suikoden II and Grandia anyway?)

FFIX -- 9.2

FFX -- 9.5

FFX-2 --9.5

FFXI -- 8.7

FFXII -- 9.5

Show me another series that has had a track record like that across multiple consoles and in so many installments.

(In the PS1 era out of the 13 PS1 rpgs to score 9.0 or higher at IGN 7 of them were FF games and three more of the ones that received this score were also Square games. There were 3 Dreamcast rpgs that received 9.0 or higher -- though none was a 9.5, and here were no N64 rpgs in the 9.0 range. In the PS2 era out of the 6 rpgs and 1 strategy rpg to receive 9 or higher scores on PS2 3 of them were FF games; only 4 xbox rpgs received 9 or higher, and no Gamecube rpgs received 9 or higher during that gen.)



"And I really don't get how you seem to be able to find negatives about every Wii RPG that's announced, yet think that the sequel to Blue Dragon is one of the games that will cary the HD RPG line-up."

I was actually being complementary. You're the one that it seems to me thinks that if they're only 8 to 9 range games that they're bad.


"If you really like JRPGs as you say, you wouldn't be complaining about what's coming to Wii, you would be extremely happy that next year looks like an awesome JRPG year."

It looks pretty good. It might not look like 1997, 1999, or 2000; but it looks pretty good. And if FFXIII is released next December it will be much better.



"Oh and BTW: another awesome looking Wii RPG: Fragile."

I guess that I'll have to check it out.

"Yakuza? Nope, Crackdown? Nope, any sony, nintendo, capcom, square game? Nope...... no game touches Shenmue in my eyes."

Well, it is nice to be able to agree on something. :)

 Well since you said that, I think its between the Wii and PS3. The 360's line-up is great in all with Star Ocean and Halo: ODST but Sony will be releasing some monster exclusives like Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier,Uncharted 2, Killzone 2 and God of War III. Nintendo is also coming out with some hot games like Sin and Punishment 2, No More Heroes 2, New Zedla title and Mario title, The Conduit and not to mention the fact that will see the return of the Punch Out series and a possible Luigi's Mansion Wii. Overall, its really hard to tell who's going tohave the best because they all have good exclusives. I think it will be just a great year for gaming.