Most overrated would probably be Call of Duty 4. I know, I'm trying not to look like a "I'm cool cause I hate popular things," guy, but I genuinely didn't like it. Auto-aim in multiplayer, cliche story (people from cold place sell nukes to people from hot place), obnoxious difficulty due to always being surrounded by super-sniper enemies with grenade launchers for arms, and the fact that it just played exactly like Call of Duty 2 in a new time zone just made me feel like I was playing the second one again.

Most underrated I've played would be Skies of Arcadia. I got tired of JRPG's on my SNES, so I was hesitant to pick it up. To this day it's my hands down favorite game because of its great characters, cool setting, air combat, and the fact that it was a pretty wide-open game for its time with the discovery system and all. Unfortunately, it was overlooked because it was released around the same time Grandia 2 and Phantasy Star Online released. And with the Dreamcast's popularity declining, it stood even less of a chance of getting out there. It's still the only JRPG I can play to this day, though.

erock462 wrote:

because the phrase jrpg exsists there must be non japanese rpgs. honestly i cant think of any off the top of my head. maybe kotor jade empire. they were ok i guess. they just didnt have the epic feel i like from " jrpgs". by the way how come other categories of games are not categorized by japanese and american? jplatformers sounds stupid.

JRPG's are kind of their own thing. They're typically just all similar to Final Fantasy, where you guide some anime-inspired characters through turn-based battles to collect upwards of up to six multi-colored crystals or some such thing. Western RPG's are typically more like things like Ultima, KOTOR, Elder Scrolls, etc. The only difference are minor style differences.

Syd Lexia wrote:

Greg the White wrote: JRPG's are kind of their own thing. They're typically just all similar to Final Fantasy, where you guide some anime-inspired characters through turn-based battles to collect upwards of up to six multi-colored crystals or some such thing. Western RPG's are typically more like things like Ultima, KOTOR, Elder Scrolls, etc. The only difference are minor style differences. I think it's unfair to refer to Final Fantasy as a JRPG. If you look at the early Final Fantasy games, they are firmly rooted in Western mythology. It isn't until FF6 and FF7 that the series truly starts to get Japanese-y. You want an NES JRPG? Play Destiny of an Emperor. Games don't get more Asian than that.

I need to retract and revise my previous statement, then. The "J" in JRPG doesn't really speak about a game's "Japanesiness," more than a style of RPG that has been adopted by a large number of Japanese RPG developers. Final Fantasy may have been rooted in Western D&D-style games, but many Japanese (and some American) companies pretty much just copied the games and the "J" was added to said descendants of the FF style.

Also, I wasn't really big on Grandia 2. I realize the combat system was pretty fun, but the game threw you a lot of brick walls with the boss battles. Mixed with the 10-minute, unskippable/unspeed-upable dialog sequences about the power of the human heart wore me pretty thin. It's not bad by any stretch (I especially loved Ryudo's dialog and aforementioned combat system), I just grew tired of it pretty quickly. Also, games with characters that will take control away from you when a character does a special move piss me off (Yes, even FF7, especially when Vincent used a fire attack on a fire-absorbing enemy).