Top 10 poll

[Scar]

I don't have a pm from you!

[SnowFire]

I figure my RPG Ratings post should be sufficient.  (Although I suppose I should double-check and update it.)

As a brief reply to earlier comments, friends of mine who enjoyed Fallout are also on board the New-Vegas-is-awesome, FO3 is lame bandwagon.  I think FO3 was marketed much better (and didn't have crippling bugs on release) such that a lot more people played FO3, though.  Polling the hardcore will see NV win out.

As a methodology comment, there isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to do this, but I'd prefer counting every entry on a top 10 list equally, or just making the weighting for front entries less potent, e.g. 4 points for being in the top 3, 3 points for 4-10.  Having the top entry be 10x more significant than the #10 entry (the result of a 10-9-8...2-1 scoring system) really rigs this toward a list of "people's absolute #1 favorite games", so games like Suikoden 2 (which will disproportionally be Suikosource types #1) will look really good even if it doesn't crack the top 10 for anyone else.  I compiled a similar list awhile back for game critic lists, and used 5 points for 1-5, 4 points for 6-15, 3 points for 16-25, and 2 points for 26-100.  It made "showing up on a bunch of people's lists" more important than "a few cultists agree this is the best game evar."  (Flip side, it also arguably punishes more niche titles which are inherently limited in how many people played them, even if those who did all thing the game was awesome.)   Here's the list on Wikipedia before it went to shit and I stopped maintaining it and it became "everybody add your favorite game here": https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_video_games_considered_the_best&oldid=628412488

EDIT: I should add that looking back at my current RPGRatings list, my own biases might come into play here a bit, as I don't see attempting to suss out differences between 9/10 games very interesting or meaningful for which game is #5 and which game is #15.  They're all pretty good and I like 'em!  So there shouldn't be much difference between 'em, for me at least.

[SnowFire]

Anyway, don't let me sound too negative, doing all the work to gather the poll entries is p. cool.  Neat stuff, definitely.

Also, if anyone is curious.  Top 96 where all appearances are equal, that is, appearing on a list is worth 1 point whether it's #1 or #10.  (Top 96 = in 9 lists or more.)  Suiko2 does indeed fall, but not by as much as hoped.

130   Chrono Trigger
112   FF6
82   FF Tactics
81   Persona 4
70   FF7
63   FF10
61   Suikoden 2
57   Pokemon
54   Mass Effect 2
50   TES: Skyrim
48   Persona 3
48   Baldurs Gate 2
47   Mario RPG
46   Planescape: Torment
43   Xenogears
43   FF9
43   KOTOR
41   FF4
41   Fallout: New Vegas
41   Dark Souls
38   TES: Morrowind
36   Xenoblade
33   Fallout 3
33   Vampire: TMB
32   Earthbound
31   Diablo 2
30   Shadow Hearts 2
30   Skies of Arcadia
30   Dragon Age: Origins
28   SMT: Nocturne
28   Paper Mario:TYD
27   Secret of Mana
25   Suikoden
25   Suikoden 5
25   Fallout 2
24   Chrono Cross
24   Mass Effect
24   Phantasy Star 4
24   Deus Ex
23   Star Ocean 2
23   FF5
22   Dragon Quest 8
22   Valkyrie Profile
21   Tales of Symphonia
21   FF12
20   Kingdom Hearts
20   BoF3
20   Fire Emblem
19   Suikoden 3
19   FF8
19   TWEWY
19   Kingdom Hearts 2
18   Tales of the Abyss
17   Witcher 2
16   TES: Oblivion
16   DQ5
16   Fallout
16   Alpha Protocol
16   SF2
15   FE:Awakening
15   FE:PoR
15   Tales of Vesperia
15   Demon Souls
15   Witcher 3
14   Wild Arms
14   Lunar 1
13   Lunar 2
13   Golden Sun
13   Bravely Default
13   WoW
12   Link to the Past
12   Lufia 2
12   Golden Sun 2
12   Legend of Dragoon
12   Deus Ex: HR
12   Radiant Historia
12   Neverwinter Nights 2
11   Star Ocean 3
11   Valkyria Chronicles
11   Grandia 2
11   KOTOR2
11   Arcanum:SMO
11   Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story
10   Vagrant Story
10   BoF4
10   Nier
10   Shining Force
10   Mother 3
10   Etrian Odyssey 4
10   Xenosaga 3
10   Seiken Densetsu 3
9   Tales of Graces f
9   CV:SotN
9   Disgaea
9   FE:RD
9   SMT4

I would ding some of these for being insufficiently RPG-y for a list of course, but that's just me.  (TWEWY / Link to the Past / SOTN are good games, but not RPGy enough for a list if I was in charge.)  WA4 is at 6 votes, so yeah, not carrying by this method either.

Also somebody voted for FF15.  Either a typo or a man truly ahead of his time.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Huh. That list looks a bit more like what I would have expected.

[AndrewRogue]

Wonder what happened to it. I definitely remember writing it. Pretty sure I sent it. But whatevs.

[SnowFire]

Also, Scar, did you poll a SMT fansite in there?  I'm guessing yes.  P4/P3 being so high up is part of it, sure, but the bigger weird part is *Nocturne* being so insanely high - I mean, even for people who think the game is awesome (aka not me), it's pretty unquestionably *obscure*, even more so than the likes of Shadow Hearts Covenant.

[Grefter]

Nocturne gets a big cross over from people that play P3 and P4 I think.  I know when I have dipped into SMT forums when binging on something it is always the first thing recommend to people that ask "I loved Persona 3 and 4, what should I play next?".

They would be wrong, but it is common (because it should be DDS which also normally gets a nod with much less frequency).

[Fenrir]

I think the DL is skewing your view, Persona games are huge and Nocturne is way way less obscure than SH2. It was also released in Europe and got a PSN release on the PS3.
I also voted for it and my points count more

[Scar]

I did not poll a smt site. And honestly, why does it matter?

If that's the person's favorite game, so be it.

I polled a fire emblem site and 4 games made the lust, but none were that high.

I polled a suikoden site and 4 people ranked s2 number 1, yet those 4 votes skewed the 350 others somehow?

Most of my list came from the something awful forums. They seemed like a more wrpg kind of group, yet those games didn't flood the poll either.

There were enough votes from various websites that no one game of series got a huge amount of unwarranted love.

[Reiska]

SMT3 got a fair bit of hype when it came out for being the first mothership SMT title to get localized; Atlus pointedly marketed the game to this end.  It gets a fair bit of further hype from arguably being the hardest JRPG of the PS2 generation, or at least in the ballpark of such, and that attracts its own demographic.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

I think the DL is skewing your view

Agreed, sites focused on a particular genre will tend to inflate the success of those games, and hearing everyone on a board talking about those games will make it seem like-

Persona games are huge

uhh

[Cmdr_King]

If you're looking at jRPGs made within the past decade?  I'm having trouble thinking of anything that's a bigger deal than Persona 3 and 4 except FFXIII, which is massively divisive and generally not recommended to people.  I mean if you're arguing that jRPGs as a genre stopped being culturally relevant in 2004, okay, but considering this is a list of RPGs we've already selected for people that would at least be likely to have P3/4 recommended to them even if that's not their style (same way people will invariably recommend something like The Witcher to me, even here).

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Well, we're talking about ways the results could skew, so yeah, that JRPGs stopped being more than a niche genre in the mid-00s is something worth mentioning.  If it's worth asking if poll respondents from a series fansite might overrate the popularity of games in their series (like Suikosource or No Mutants Allowed) then it's also worth saying that people here aren't completely unbiased arbiters of game goodness themselves.

[Dark Holy Elf]

There are plenty of bigger JRPGs released in the past decade, but most of them have the title Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Kingdom Hearts, or Pokemon. If you disqualify all of those for various reasons, there's also Fire Emblem: Awakening. Dark Souls is sometimes considered one as well, so obviously that too if you do.

I mean Persona is pretty big as far as "niche" JRPGs go (I'm sure both 3 and 4 outsold every Suikoden, Wild Arms, and N1 game released after 2005 for instance), and certainly has an extremely devoted fanbase, but we're talking about games which most likely aren't far into 6-digit sales figures in North America, so it's not hard to see where Rob is coming from in objecting to using the word "huge". Just depends on the definition you're using.

Well, we're talking about ways the results could skew, so yeah, that JRPGs stopped being more than a niche genre in the mid-00s is something worth mentioning.  If it's worth asking if poll respondents from a series fansite might overrate the popularity of games in their series (like Suikosource or No Mutants Allowed) then it's also worth saying that people here aren't completely unbiased arbiters of game goodness themselves.

Well yeah, everywhere's going to have its biases. I mean, the results made notably more sense to me as soon as Scar revealed that the biggest source was Something Awful.

[Cmdr_King]

Sure, sure.  It's just odd to single out the Persona statement to me, by most measures that aren't "compare them straight up to a Final Fantasy/Bioware/Bethesda game" they're quite successful as RPGs go.  Two games that between them have had five releases, three spinoffs (with another on the way) and adaptations of all sorts since their original release.

There are plenty of bigger JRPGs released in the past decade, but most of them have the title Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Kingdom Hearts, or Pokemon. If you disqualify all of those for various reasons, there's also Fire Emblem: Awakening. Dark Souls is sometimes considered one as well, so obviously that too if you do.

I would honestly expect that, again limiting ourselves to "the entries in the series released after 2005", Persona 4 actually has outsold each of the four Kingdom Hearts games individually, and most likely FE13 although that's closer.  DQIX vs Persona 4 would be a number I'm interested in, I imagine DQIX is weaker than any game previously mentioned here but I could definitely be wrong.  Two FF games have been released in that time frame (omitting FFXIV, it's a different genre), both are sufficiently divisive that whether they could make the list is debatable, although obviously they are more widely played.
I kinda mentally omit Pokémon from these discussions, though, couldn't tell you why.  Although from Scar's comments apparently this is common.

e: For reference, I'm guessing worldwide sales for the various games here as 300k for KH:reCoded, 500k for FE13 and KH:DDD, 700k for DQIX, ~1M for KH:358 Days and BbS, ~1.3M for Persona 4, 5-6M for the Final Fantasies.  And like 3M per version of Pokemon of course.  If P4 didn't get a European release though you're probably right and it'd be more like 8-900K.

[Fenrir]

it's also worth saying that people here aren't completely unbiased arbiters of game goodness themselves.

Rob your post is really stupid.


Anyway P3 & 4 still (probably) sold more than any Suikoden or these other PSX JRPG darlings. They got remakes and extensions and some fighting game sequels and that dungeon crawler sequel thing. And Catherine, whatever that is.

They are also pretty damn old now, and they got released when JRPGs were "waning", not "completely dead with one occasional super popular one, once in a while, like Xenoblade or Bravely Default.

[SnowFire]

Scar, wasn't meant as an attack or anything!  The more data, the better; if you didn't poll an SMT fansite, arguably the ideal poll WOULD have, because it'd have polled everywhere.  Just seemed like a strange bubble in the results and was curious to learn more.

I should add that I'm not as shocked as some as P3/P4 being high up there, they were huge successes.  They're maybe a little higher than I'd expect but no big deal.  Nocturne is just the one that surprised me, but perhaps it was marketed more / better in Europe per Fenrir's comments, as it's in the same area of popularity as the likes of P1/P2 to my rough impressions - niche title purchased by <100K people, except with some random Dante crossover hype.  And it never struck me as having the hardcore "OMG this is the best ever" vibe that the likes of Suiko2 / SHC cults have.  (You count so much that you don't count, Fenrir.)  But I may be swayed by both of my IRL friends who tried Nocturne quitting in disgust less than halfway through, of course.  (People who enjoyed P3/P4/DDS as well, so it's not like they stumbled into SMT by accident.)

Anyway, neat stuff, I guess Fenrir & NotMiki actually have secret companions at the SMT3 cult services.  Who knew.

[Dark Holy Elf]

FE13 is 1.8 million worldwide, Birth by Sleep is 1.3M from its first few months, Persona 4 is 700k, Persona 3 I didn't see exact figures beyond "200k in its first year in Japan" which suggests something somewhat lower than P4. (See Wikipedia for all figures.) 700k is admittedly somewhat higher than I'd have pegged P4, but yeah there are certainly many bigger games.

The fact that it gets remakes/spinoffs and say, Suikoden 3 (which had similar sales despite no Europe) does not says more about the state of gaming now versus a decade ago, as well as how dedicated the Persona fanbase is.

[Cmdr_King]

*skim* Mmm.  The 700k number is worldwide for the Vita rerelease.  I suspect that number is lower than the PS2 release by a meaningful margin.  And yeah I've been assuming P4>P3 in sales, but in discussing Persona as a thing they're sufficiently similar, and so much of their expanded media is tied together, that it's best to mention both at once. Still, these numbers* are within a reasonable margin for my blind guesses so that's good to know.

*That number for FE13 is astounding though, I can only assume I misread a regional number as its worldwide number at some point.

[NotMiki]

as well as how dedicated the Persona fanbase is.

I'd buy it

[Dark Holy Elf]

*skim* Mmm.  The 700k number is worldwide for the Vita rerelease.  I suspect that number is lower than the PS2 release by a meaningful margin.  And yeah I've been assuming P4>P3 in sales, but in discussing Persona as a thing they're sufficiently similar, and so much of their expanded media is tied together, that it's best to mention both at once. Still, these numbers* are within a reasonable margin for my blind guesses so that's good to know.

*That number for FE13 is astounding though, I can only assume I misread a regional number as its worldwide number at some point.

Oh, you're right, my bad. Checking again... the only figure for PS2 P4 is 200k in its first week in Japan, which is pretty good but not as high as the opening weeks of BBS or FE13. So while it's entirely possible that the PS2 version did sell more, I would guess not that much more.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

It's just odd to single out the Persona statement

Because it made for an amusing juxtaposition, of course.  When you say "your biases are showing!" and then "persona is super-popular!" I'm gonna cut a slice off that cake you left on the counter.

[Reiska]

AFAIK P4 PS2 sold something like 150-200k in the US?  It's been a long time since I read the number but the source was an old Siliconera article talking about Atlus sales and noting that P4 outsold Atlus' expectations somewhat notably (as did P3, which sold closer to 100k in the US between both its PS2 versions).

DQ9 sold just barely over a million between NA and EU combined (source: Nintendo's earnings reports, via Siliconera, http://www.siliconera.com/2011/01/27/heres-how-much-dragon-quest-ix-sold-overseas/ ).  I was actually a little surprised that it didn't make the list when other DQ games did but DQ9 is a mildly divisive game among the Western fanbase as far as I can tell and the majority of Western DQ9 players probably never really got to experience its most defining features in full due to the lack of population density.  (Despite the low amount of time that has passed, DQ9 would badly benefit from a 3DS remake that takes advantage of StreetPass functionality, especially since half of DQ9's postgame content can no longer be played without cheating/emulation/save editors and flash carts/etc. due to the DS wi-fi shutdown a couple years back.)

As for Persona's overall popularity in the general RPG market... honestly I feel like it's probably the #2 JRPG franchise in the US now (behind FF)?  It's either Persona or Tales, for sure.  It's definitely not Dragon Quest, DQ8 and DQ9 are both massive outliers compared to the rest of the franchise in this country.  DQ8 likely both sold a lot of copies on the back of the FF12 demo (I *do* know at least a couple people online who bought it for that alone), and probably sold a lot of its copies deeply discounted (there was a period of time when it wasn't especially hard to find sealed copies of DQ8 for $15 at Gamestop).  DQ9 probably somehow picked up a *lot* of sales from people who didn't normally otherwise buy RPGs, and/or fans buying multiple copies because of the game only having a single save slot.  The DS itself can't explain it, because DQ4-6 on DS all struggled to break just 100k, so whatever traction DQ9 had definitely didn't carry to the remakes that came after it, and of course S-E has largely stopped localizing the franchise now again.

As for Shadow Hearts 2, I'd bet money that its sales (and recognition in general) suffered from the fact that the first two games' publisher was generally not known for RPGs, especially JRPGs, and the first game didn't review especially well either (73 on metacritic).  SH2 did reportedly barely breach 100k in the US though, so it wasn't an abject failure or anything.

[jsh357]

DQ9 sold well because of its marketing, I'm guessing.  There were a lot of commercials and celebrity endorsement of the game.