I can firmly second Dragon Quarter, but suggest renting Suikoden III before buying. (Unless you get it for $5 off Ebay.) I played an hour of it, was thoroughly disgusted with everything about it, and Ebay'd it.

Aside from being perhaps overly-meticulous and a bit slow in the beginning, there really isn't too much wrong with it. It's no slower than Suikoden V during the first five hours.

The music was my biggest qualm with it, I could just never get into it somehow, but it did become less of an issue the more you played. Combat is same 'ol same 'ol turn-based, but the game mixes it up with large-scale strategy battles from time-to-time. The story and character interaction really made up for it's shortcomings, though.

Dragon Quarter was a fun experience. I love the Breath of Fire series to death, and this one was pretty good despite being a complete 180 from the rest of the series. Still say BoFIII was the best of the lot, but if you're not willing to jump back that far, DQ is pretty good. It's kinda like Dead Rising, what with the scenario overlay system and all. Just don't get discouraged if you think it's too hard, the game *wants* you to play areas several times to get anywhere.

I actually thought DQ wasn't that hard, I managed to make it through the whole game without starting over. =\

(Though due to the total lame saving system I lost three hours of playtime one night so I haven't touched it since. :()

Dragon Quarter seemed much more straight forward compared to Suikoden V, though I never really got past those first five hours. Still there isn't anything wrong with Dragon Quarter. It's incredibly to the point and that's one of the strongest traits I feel an RPG can have. Just need to breakthrough those first few areas.

I meant Suikoden III when I posted that, which was what the Suikoden V comparison was for.

You of all people know my undying love for Dragon Quarter would not allow me to speak of anything bad about it.

If your idea of a fun RPG is one where it's stacked so against you that it punishes for just about sneezing (god help you if you actauly want to both move and attack on the same turn) then go nuts.

Me? There's a reason why there's no BOF 6, that's all I have to say on the matter.

You mean a tough game that doesn't reward you for pussyfooting your way towards the conclusion. Just charge forth.

That's fine with me if there's no Breath of Fire VI. They'll have ended the series on a high note that I don't think they'll ever match again.

If your idea of pussyfooting meens that I'm not able to attack an enemy because I had to move to said enemy because my party member doesn't have the range to do otherwise and thus when you move you don't have the Action Pts avalible to attack said enemy, then sure. Pussyfooting for me.

Also, I don't like the idea of limited saves, it's just something that doesn't sit well with me. Saves that are limited to areas, sure, but Limited Saves just makes things ludicrous.

Then what the hell did you move forward for? Sit or move back and let the stupid mob be the one to waste its AP on moving while you collect bonus AP to pummel the shit out of it when it gets there. I don't see how it's the game's fault just because you want to run and gun in a strategy-heavy RPG.

Yes, because clearly, the way to win BOFV is to get malled by slimies and the like, cuz, and I clearly remember this, they noramly have more than enough AP to move, attack, and then attack again just to prove that clearly, this game is designed for thouse who like the idea of an uphill struggle that only rewards you with the same dragon skill from BOF's 1-4 only it punishes you for using that too.

And if i'm wrong, where is BOF VI?

Also, the SOL idea was ruined by fored use, It worked a lot better in Dead Rising

They have enough if you're standing close to them, sure. You're supposed to get behind obstacles, create some with Nina's traps, and stay further back. You only run up to them and hit hard if you know you're going to kill them first.

The game forces you to keep moving towards the final boss and the ending, and discourages you from fighting frivolously (either by grinding or by not thinking when you fight battles). It's hardly an uphill battle if you get into the right pace and time your D-Dive usage properly.

Haha, I love Dragon Quarter too (took me the second or third playthrough to actually get the whole "using-strategy-and-items" aspect), so I have nothing but love for a game that's actually strategic and sill challenging, even after a ton of playthroughs.

The first Shadow Hearts used a minimum of voice-acting. There's some during events, but, if you just play the game without many side-quests, there's only three, I think. Otherwise, the characters "talk" a little during battles.

=/ Even with the small amount, it's still pretty noticable (Halley and Margaret, for example) I really enjoyed it, and I think it's a better story than the sequel, although SH2's battle system is glorious <3

Is there any particular reason you don't want any PSX games included? I think there's a few in the first generation...

I think it has more to do with the fact PSX games mutualy exclude themselves from the "does not have Voice acting" catagory insomuch as they have no meens to voice act.

I managed to beat the game without using SOL once.* Got into every battle I possibly could, as well. Even at that point where you have two bosses two choose from to fight, I fought both and then had to kill their combined version which is apparently supposed to be difficult on the second play through as well. The trick was just to use a little bit of strategy in battles instead of just tapping A like every other RPG out there.**

*Actually I used it once after about 30 minutes of playing because I was curious as to what it did.

**Grandia Xtreme not included.

Well, whatever, Got it with Psyconaughts and realy, didn't look back the second I was selecting to create a new game on a giant brain.

Funny you should say that, since I always considered Dragon Quarter to be the Grandia series on hard mode. You have to move around in battles, but the game doesn't do it for you automatically and you have to take your movement and attack range into consideration before you can accomplish anything.

The game was frustrating to me at first, since it was just so different from everything else, the Breath of Fire series included. Closest thing I could equate it to was Majora's Mask, what with the whole running timer theme throughout the whole game, but the odds are much more against you. It's an RPG that encourages you to play through the story than stop and explore and level, unless you *want* to play several times, which has its perks in the SOL system. Dragon Quarter game was a big gambit for Capcom, but I'm glad they did it, if only to give the series, which is about as white-bread of an RPG as there can be, a shot in the arm. The music's really nice, too.

I actually love PS1 games, most of my favorite games of all time are on the old Playstation. But as Conan said, pretty much every PS1 rpg had no voice acting, and I already have a large collection of PS1 rpgs.

So long as he's played Vagrant Story, that's fine.

Granted, quite an amount of PS1 RPGs had voices (Legend of Dragoon, Koudelka, Xenogears, SO2, Grandia etc).

It's certainly not a game for everyone, I've spoken to quite a few people who didn't like it at all because it was so different. I personally loved it, it was just so different from anything you've seen before. The whole SOL restore/restart system was interesting, and more importantly the dragon quarter rating you get, you started at err..8192 and it got halved for each thing you accomplished after you finished the game, forgot what it was exactly, but things like number of saves, areas explored, chests opened all had a factor, now the great thing about this is when you started a new game with a certain rank, you could see new areas and scenes that you didn't get to see before.

The whole Dragon powers that Ryu gets is great as well, you're constantly worried if you are going to make it to the end or not, and because of it you are being very careful not to abuse the power too much. It's also certainly not a easy game either. Right from the start it's hard, you're expected to get through a relatively large area with nothing more then 10 healing potions, but that's what made it so great. I remember those minotaurs that were a nightmare, it was so funny each time you thought "oh shit!"

As much as I loved BoF3, if there ever was a new BoF game I truly wish it would have the same system as DQ, but I know they will never do it again, because no doubt it had more complaints then compliments from players.

Ok, I haven't read the thread thoroughly, so I don't know if these have been mentioned, but seemingly in all RPGs (that I know of) from Nippon Ichi you can turn the voice acting off (games like Atelier Iris, Disgaea 1/2, Makai Kingdom, Phantom Brave and so on), and you can even change the VA-language to Japanese which is 520234023.764 times better. And they are really good games too overall, so I advise you to check em out.

I've read that Persona 3 can have the voices turned off. Is this true?
I think it looks great so I'll probably still buy it anyway, but it would be a bonus for me.

Edit:
Nervermind, I found out the answer...