Current-gen consoles in the DL.

[DjinnAndTonic]

It's been a topic we've touched on before, but I was thinking on the viability of the current-gen consoles in the DL. As of now, all of the DL's games are from NES, SNES, Gen, GBA, PSX, DC, PS2, GCN, and PC. Great systems, but RPGs are coming out pretty steadily in America for DS, PSP, 360, and even the Wii. How long does a system tend to be out before the DL starts ranking games from it? How long were the PS2 and GBA out before we saw FFX or Fire Emblem in the DL?

The handhelds are inarguably the strongest systems, as they've been around the longest.

RPGs on the DS:

Rankable
· Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings
· Pokémon Diamond/Pearl

Rankable, but low playership
· Luminous Arc
· Lunar: Dragon Song
· Hoshigami Remix
· Magical Starsign
· Heroes of Mana
· Etrian Odyssey

High playership, low rankability
· Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime
· Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker
· Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time
· Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords
· Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja
· Lost Magic
· Lunar Knights

Upcoming/Japan-only/Remakes
· Tales of the Tempest
· Blue Dragon DS
· Brave Story DS
· Luminous Arc 2
· Dragon Quest IV DS
· Dragon Quest V DS
· Dragon Quest VI DS
· Dragon Quest IX: Defender of the Stars
· Final Fantasy IV DS
· Final Fantasy Tactics A2
· Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fate
· Fire Emblem DS
· Infinite Frontier Super Robot Wars OG Saga
· Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days
· Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness
· Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time
· Sonic Chronicles: Dark Brotherhood
· Tales of Innocence

Wow, that's more than I was expecting... some of these are still JPN-only, and a few will probably remain that way. Still, not a bad start for the DS. I suspect FE:DS will be a big one for this system. Also, Blue Dragon DS and FFTA2. The DS remakes for FFIV and the DQ games are also pretty good draws. Lunar3 is kind of important thanks to the success of the the previous 2 Lunar games, and FF12:RW is a fun idea as well. Don't know what to think of Sonic RPG, KH DS, or the probably JPN-only Tales games here. There's also a fair number of SRPGs here. DS is looking to get a lot of titles, but not a lot of original stuff so far and only a few noteworthy games. The few that are, though, aren't exactly rankable (FF12RW, DQM, PuzzleQuest!)...


RPGs on the PSP:

Ports
· Breath of Fire III PSP
· Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness
· Final Fantasy I PSP
· Final Fantasy II PSP
· Riviera: The Promised Land PSP
· Suikoden I & II
· Tales of Destiny 2 PSP
· Tales of Eternia PSP
· Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth

Remakes
· Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions
· Xenosaga I & II (JPN-only)

Rankable, low playership
· Generation of Chaos PSP
· Aedis Eclipse: Generation of Chaos
· Legend of Heroes IV: Prophecy of the Moonlight Witch
· Legend of Heroes V
· Legend of Heroes VI
· Spectral Souls (II)
· Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology
· Ys Strategy
· Astonishia Story
· Blade Dancer: Lineage of Light
· Brave Story: New Traveler
· Dragoneer's Aria
· Jeanne d'Arc

High playership, low rankability
· Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords

Upcoming/JPN-only
· Astonishia Story 2
· Coded Soul (New RPG by Persona's dev team)
· Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII
· Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep
· Phantasy Star Portable
· Star Ocean: First Departure
· Star Ocean: Second Evolution
· Tales of Phantasia: Full Voice Edition
· Tales of Rebirth PSP
· Wild ARMS XF
· Yggdra Union: We'll Never Fight Alone

Wow, there's a lot of big names here, AND a decent number of original titles. Jeanne D'arc, Spectral Souls and Generation of Chaos look to be decent original titles. Lots of JPN-only ports (not just Tales this time, but Suikoden, Xenosaga, BoF, Disgaea, and VP), and a lot of remakes. FFT:WotL will probably be the biggest reason anyone buys this system, but there's a lot to look forward to: SO1 and SO2 remakes, original WA title, and FF7:CC for the casual fanboys. Upcoming Yggdra Union game and Coded Soul (by the developers of DDS) catches my attention as well... And more Puzzle Quest hype... >.>;;


XBOX360 RPGs: Not very many!
Rankable:
Eternal Sonata
Blue Dragon
Lost Odyssey

Upcoming:
Infinite Undiscovery
Magna Carta 2
Puzzle Quest: Galactrix
Spectral Force 3
The Last Remnant
Tales of Vesperia

Mistwalker rules the current games available, but upcoming tri-Ace release, Tales exclusive, and some SquareEnix round things out. Spectral Force 3 confirmed by Atlus, which seems like an interesting choice while the RPG selection is still small on this system. And still more Puzzle Quest hype.


Wii RPGs:
Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn

Upcoming:
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Crystal Bearers
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King
Sword of Legendia
Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World

Well, the Wii still has a long way to go. Even their PaperMario installment wasn't really an RPG this time around... Surprisingly, no Puzzle Quest to hype. You could always hype Lloyd's Soul Calibur Legends form!

And PS3, for when FFXIII hype kicks in...

Disgaea 3
Final Fantasy XIII
Final Fantasy Versus XIII
Shin Megami Tensei RPG
The Last Remnant
Valkyria Chronicles

An interesting looking bunch of RPGs, apart from the FF13s... It scares me to think that the DL will probably default to this as the primary next-gen system... (Was Suikoden 6 confirmed for PS3? That could be a big turning point for a lot of voters.)

My assessment is leaning towards PSP in terms of RPGs, but since the DS sells better, both handhelds might end up being big contributors. Despite Wii being the better-selling system and with a few big names backing its RPG selection, the 360 has more titles available currently and the PS3 has the really big flagship series confirmed for it.

-Djinn

EDIT: Reorganized lists coherently.

[Grefter]

You missed Enchanted Arms.  On two consoles >_>

[Yakumo]

First of all, the size of the lists you have there is misleading at first glance as quite a few of those games aren't even out in the states yet.  Also, quite a few of the other games just aren't really rankable.  Rocket Slime?  Fun little game, but I really don't see any reasonable interp that makes anything from that game rankable in the DL.

Once you trim down to RPGs that are the sort the DL might rank, you have to take playership into account, both internal and external.  Internal because the DL needs enough writers for a game it ranks to make sure that every dueller and match get a writeup every week they're in.  For example, you mention several PSP games that might be rankable... but only myself, Niu, and Hunter Sopko that I know of have played Spectral Souls, and maybe one or two past us have played Generation of Chaos, and even Soppy hasn't played Aedis Eclipse yet.  Of those three, the only one that does writeups consistantly is Soppy.  I do them very rarely, and I don't remember the last time I saw Niu do one(though I don't always pay attention, I don't know if he does or not, but I don't think so).  If we can't guarantee that the duellists will get writeups, it doesn't matter how popular the game is outside of the site, we won't rank it.  We'll probably be whipping people into playing it to rank it, but that's another story.  A lot of us just don't have these systems yet, or only have one and a handheld or something.  This limits the rankability of games for them, but over time this will certainly change.

External playership is harder to judge, but it's just as important.  We don't want to feature games that nobody's ever heard of, it turns people off of the site when they show up and can vote on like two matches in the whole field.  We take a look at how well games have sold to try and get a rough estimate on this.  I really don't know the numbers on the games up there that are out yet, but I mention it because it's important.  Games that can't get a solid vote draw hurt the site more than help it.

I guess basically what I'm getting at is there's a lot of factors that determine when we consider a game a good rank, and right now the new generation systems just aren't ready yet.  There's no set timeline for it, really, it depends on when the staff decide to get the systems, when the games get played, how well the games are received by the general public, and things of that nature. 

[Cmdr_King]

Hell, why not.  Item-by-item breakdown.  Underlining anything I have more than three words about just for readability.

RPGs on the DS:

· Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings- sounds rankable in theory, moreso than FFXII anyway.  However, FFXII's widely-acknowledged suck has kept people away, so no players/writers.
· Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime- This is rankable?
· Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker- Pokemon style.  You can get those ranked, but it's an unholy shitstorm and I don't think DQM has raw players to make that work.
· Lunar: Dragon Song- This'll get ranked right after BtB.
· Magical Starsign- I know too little about this game.
· Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time- M&L/Paper Mario are pretty hard to rank due to the limited PCs as-is.  The series never really took off here either, so no writers to boot.
· Heroes of Mana- Don't know enough.
· Tales of the Tempest- This isn't out yet >.>
· Hoshigami Remix- This'll be ranked when RC takes over the DL.  ie never.
· Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja- Isn't this a single-PC diablo-style game?  Those don't really work for the DL usually.
· Lost Magic- Don't know enough.
· Lunar Knights- Same.  Although Baktai never took off here, so it doesn't look good.
· Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords- Not interperable.
· Blue Dragon DS- Isn't out.
· Brave Story DS- ...?  I've never heard of this.
· Dragon Quest IV DS- DWIV is already ranked.  DQIV DS might KEEP it ranked, though.
· Dragon Quest V DS- Isn't this job-based ala FFV?
· Dragon Quest VI DS- See above.
· Dragon Quest IX: Defender of the Stars- Not out yet.
· Etrian Odyssey- Don't know enough.
· Final Fantasy IV DS- FFIV is already ranked.  I wouldn't be surprised if a few people start voting off it if there's significant changes though.
· Final Fantasy Tactics A2- Isn't out yet.
· Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fate- Stop putting unreleased games up!
· Fire Emblem DS- Isn't out yet.  That said, I expect this to get a lot of attention.  And bitching.
· Infinite Frontier Super Robot Wars OG Saga- ... dude!  They're making this?!
· Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days- Show me KH1 ranked, then we'll talk.  Also, isn't out.
· Luminous Arc- Don't know enough.
· Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness- Unrankably spun-off.
· Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time- Same.
· Sonic Chronicles: Dark Brotherhood- Isn't out.
· Tales of Innocence- Isn't out.

 All that and you neglected Diamond and Pearl?  How silly.


RPGs on the PSP:

· Breath of Fire III PSP- Already ranked.
· Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness- Already ranked.  Anyone voting off Adell/Rozy superboss forms shall be shot.
· Final Fantasy I PSP- Already ranked.
· Final Fantasy II PSP- Unless they completely changed the system, not sanely rankable.
· Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions- Already ranked.  The new PCs are cameo forms that most people wouldn't vote on.  The new bosses are... well, good luck getting FFT bosses in, let alone FFT remake bosses.
· Generation of Chaos PSP- Sounds rankable, but poor playership kills it.  Actually, you'd need 100% of DL PSP players to rank any PSP game at the moment.
· Aedis Eclipse: Generation of Chaos- Rank GoC first.
· Legend of Heroes IV: Prophecy of the Moonlight Witch- Dunno how rankable this is.
· Legend of Heroes V- Same.
· Legend of Heroes VI- Same.
· Riviera: The Promised Land PSP- Assuming they didn't change anything, barely rankable as-is.
· Spectral Souls (II)- Dunno.
· Suikoden I & II- Already ranked.
· Tales of Destiny 2 PSP-  They ported ToD2 to the PSP?
· Tales of Eternia PSP- Already ranked.
· Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology- 50/50 cameos, which on average won't get ranked.  Were the native PCs costume/class-based like the other TotW games?  If so, it'd be... kinda like FFX-2, but with even fewer players.
· Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth- Already ranked.  Stop that.
· Xenosaga I & II- Dunno what all they changed here, but it never came stateside.
· Ys Strategy- Dunno
· Astonishia Story- Dunno.
· Blade Dancer: Lineage of Light- No idea.
· Brave Story: New Traveler- Dunno.
· Dragoneer's Aria- Dunno.
· Jeanne d'Arc- Rankable enough.  Step B: Writers.
· Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords- Not interperable.
· Astonishia Story 2- No idea.
· Coded Soul- No idea.
· Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII- Isn't out yet.
· Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep- Same.
· Phantasy Star Portable- ?  Never hearda it.
· Star Ocean: First Departure- Isn't out yet.
· Star Ocean: Second Evolution- Isn't this an SO2 remake?
· Tales of Phantasia: Full Voice Edition- Already ranked, 'cept Suzu.
· Tales of Rebirth PSP- Hadn't heard of this.
· Wild ARMS XF- Isn't out yet.
· Yggdra Union: We'll Never Fight Alone- no idea.

Why list so many remakes?  I don't think most of them had any significant changes TO rank.

XBOX360 RPGs: All these have the same problem.  The DL has... 5?  360 owners, which isn't enough for writers, period.
Eternal Sonata
Blue Dragon
Lost Odyssey

Infinite Undiscovery
Magna Carta 2
Puzzle Quest: Galactrix
Spectral Force 3
The Last Remnant
Tales of Vesperia



Wii RPGs: Similarly, there's less than 10 Wii owners currently.  I expect it to pick up, but at the moment these don't have a prayer.  Although the Wii seems more likely to pick up than anything else.
Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn-

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Crystal Bearers
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King
Sword of Legendia
Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World


And PS3: I don't expect Final fantasy to save the PS3 at the DL.  Give it a Wild ARMs, now...

Disgaea 3
Final Fantasy XIII
Final Fantasy Versus XIII
Shin Megami Tensei RPG
The Last Remnant
Valkyria Chronicles

 

[superaielman]

The DL's never actually done a console changeover. The RPGP did the PSX-->PS2 era. We've been lucky to have existed during the best era for RPG's on a console that had nearly complete market domination for RPG's in general.


Next gen system? Probably DS will be the 'winner', though there's like two games I consider straight up rankable. Some of the biggest games on the console are flat out unrankable (FF3!) and it's mostly ports.  The DL's slowness to adopt the PS3/Wii/360 won't change until there's a major game that catches's the group's attention and prices go down.

And as your list showed, in large part what's been released are ports/remakes. Very little new RPG content so far besides for niche games that don't have a prayer in the DL. (Generations of Chaos!)

[Talaysen]

· Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja- Isn't this a single-PC diablo-style game?  Those don't really work for the DL usually.

Single PC roguelike, yes.  PC has no skillset unless you give her items, in which case she gets gravity damage and... uh... status, I guess.  Accurate status, at least.  Kind of iffy on the status stuff, I forget if they were storebought or not.  Easy enough to find anyways.  Also, no weapons/armor are storebought, but they drop often enough (and have random stats...).

Though, we can get 0.5% HP/turn regen hype as well as 0.5% POIZN (yes, 0.5%, as in 1/200) hype.

Also, bosses have like 20HKO damage or something, though the final gets 50% cHP gravity.

Yeah, probably will never be ranked, for good reason.

Also, Etrian Odyssey is a bunch of generics, but ones that are actually interesting.  Fun duelling cast and not too hard to interpret, but playership kills it.  ;_;

[DjinnAndTonic]

Sorry about the weird selection on the lists. I was pretty tired as I started writing it, and I wasn't sure whether to list games that would make people -buy- the consoles or just list rankable games... the DS list is especially disorganized...

I was trying to make sure I didn't forget anything... >.>;;

-Djinn

[Grefter]

We are still only 2 years into the console war thing and the libraries still aren't big enough to really decide upon and most DL staff members (even those that aren't active) are fairly conservative in their purchases.  I would say no current list is going to really indicate any direction things will push definitively and unless there is some kind of big (horrible) push to get people kitted out with the systems they "need" I think it is going to be a much longer slower process in ranking newer games.

That said, well the Wii is pretty much exactly the kind of console DL staff tend to like for the non-RPG stuff (and FE for the wankers), soooooo even if it ends up with a piss poor library it might get easier access to rankings...

[Pyro]

I can say quite flatly that none of these games are ready (or are already ranked and are just remakes). But it might be interesting to go over the ones I've played and talk about rankability.

FF12RW: Haven't played, but its probably still better than FF12 proper. Unless you want Balthier to be a Godlike of course.

Brave Story (PSP): Perfectly rankable in terms of characters and brings some cool duelers. The only problem is that uhh... one person has played it. And it will drive Catgirl haters into a killing rage.

Jeanne D'Arc: Rankable enough. Kind of sucks though.

FFTLW: Don't think we'll be ranking cameos from it.

Eternal Sonata: Rankable enough but a bit of a pain to take in the DL courtesy of its system. Luckily some dumb bastard already handled the annoying stat topic.

Blue Dragon: Rankable, working off of the assumption that the characters continue down their default classes. Nobody has played it.

Lost Odyssey: Doesn't work terribly well as a rank under traditional views thanks to the Immortals being either batshit good or horrible (and from what I've seen any casual who has played the game should kneejerk Immortals=awesome on raw versatility). Blah blah no players either blah blah.

[VySaika]

Just picked up a 360 myself today, so add me to the list of 360 owners. I'll pick up Eternal Sonata, Blue Dragon, Lost Oddesy and other RPGs eventually, of course.

On topic though, eh, I agree that it's gonna be awhile before we really try to rank any of the new systems. Not much else to say, really.

[Lady Ashe]

Three unmentioned DS RPGs.

SomaBringer - Action RPG from the guys behind Xenosaga. Just came out two days ago in Japan, so it will be a long time before anything happens with it. (If it even comes out in NA)
Etrian Odyssey 2 - Same thing as Etrian Odyssey, but more classes/balance.
The World Ends With You - I don't know much about this at all so this may not work, but it exists, is Squenix, and is coming to North America.

A shame about the lack of R4 ownership here. =/

[Grefter]

Oh and of course stupid me, there is no Mass Effect on there either, which is kind of huge for the 360 and has very rankable non-mains.  None of the class changing headaches with KotOR 2 or anything.

[Niu]

XS1+2 is DS.
Trusty Bell is also getting a PSD3 version.
And... meh whatever, they aren't getting ported anyway.

The World Ends With You - I don't know much about this at all so this may not work, but it exists, is Squenix, and is coming to North America.

Perfectly Rankable. As long as you ignore Neku, who happens to be Bluelike.
Speaking of which, I really should hype this thing.....

[hinode]

CK: DQ5 is entirely level-up learned skills/spells, ala DQ4.  It's fully rankable if it ever manages to get enough playership numbers.

DQ6 (and 7) is the job-based one.  There are a few natural/plot gained spells, but not enough to save the cast from being mostly dull, admittedly.  The shitty mage with Nara-esque HP and speed in-game gets Magic Burst for OHKO damage in the DL though!  And the mostly pointless latejoiner gets 2HKO damage off good speed!  Yay!  </sarcasm>

XS1&2, Tales of the Tempest, and the various PSP Tales ports have basically 0% chance at getting an NA release by now.

For all the random RPGs the DS has gotten, the only things that feel semi-realistic are FF3 (which is boss only at best, and they have art issues), Pokemon Diamond/Pearl (has Pokemon issues), FE, and the DQ games.

Wii I suspect will get the best playership of this generation due to price and non-RPG games (i.e. Brawl), at least for the immediate future.

[dude789]

The problem with the current gen systems is that while all of them do have rpgs that could be rankable, they all have different weaknesses and none which cause none of them to be frontrunners.

DS: The DS has a lot of rpgs and similar games out and on the way, but most of them are remakes or wouldn't translate to the DL.
PSP: The PSP has probably the best spread of games that would translate, but very few DLers have a PSP and the ones that do have one don't really have an RPG that all of them have played.
XBOX 360: The XBOX started strong, but nothing really exciting has will be coming out for a while. As a result, most RPGers won't have an incintive to buy one.
PS3: There are a couple possibilities coming for the PSP, but the biggest weakness is that none of them are out yet and won't be out for a while.
Wii: The Wii has probably the best eventual rank out right now (FE10), but not nearly enough people have played it and there isn't much to look forward to yet besides another Tales game.

I don't think we should worry that much yet. The PS2 took awhile to establish itself as the RPG console, and I suspect that one of the consoles will eventually take the lead.