The PS2 was a great console for RPGs. The Final Fantasy series was going strong, Atlus’ Persona franchise took off to a wider audience, and it seemed that no matter what a player was looking for, there was an RPG ready to serve those tastes. There were so many, in fact, that it’s easy to forget a lot of them.
Action RPGs were a big part of this avalanche of great titles, and several of them have been lost to time, whether that’s through a lack of a re-release or simply an absence from general discussion about the era. Anyone looking for something a little out of the usual titles might do well to give some of these games a try.
9 Virtua Quest
It’s not clear who wanted to turn the Virtua Fighter franchise into an RPG, but that’s what happened with Virtua Quest. Playing as Sei, the player enters a virtual world to find lost data, and soon discovers data known as Virtua Souls, each of which represents the moves of a fighter from Sega’s fighting game series.
It’s a strange little RPG, with a lot of the gameplay based around brawler-style combat, and a story involving virtual worlds and criminal organizations. Sadly, unlike the recent re-release of Virtua Fighter 5, this entry in the series has yet to see a return.
8 Radiata Stories
Square Enix has a wide catalog of classic JRPGs, but not all of them have managed to take off in the way the likes of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest have. Radiata Stories was an action RPG for the PS2 that pushed to do a number of things to stand out from similar titles.
Its main draw was its persistent world, where every NPC operated on a schedule and the passage of time played a big part in the progression of the game. This schedule was important to learn, as a huge number of these NPCs could be recruited to the party, bringing a range of skills and party compositions to the action. Sadly, it didn’t quite catch on at release and hasn’t seen a re-release since.
7 Eternal Ring
A launch title for the PS2, Eternal Ring was a first-person action RPG with a strong focus on its unique ring creation system. The player collects gems across the game’s island location and can piece these together in rings to create increasingly powerful magical effects, all of which can be enhanced to improve the player's chances in the game’s tough combat.
While Eternal Ring was a little clunky at times, it was a decent launch title, and an important step on developer FromSoft’s journey to creating the influential Dark Souls franchise and ultimately their recent, similarly named title Elden Ring.
6 Summoner
Another launch title for the PS2, Summoner saw the player thrown into a vast open world with a party seeking out the Rings of Summoning, allowing protagonist Joseph to help save the world from a tyrannical emperor. It boasted a unique hybrid combat system blending real-time and turn-based combat, and as the title suggests, monsters could be summoned to aid the party. However, this was risky as the party could lose control of the beasts if Joseph got knocked out.
While the game did get a sequel and has seen a release on GOG.com, it’s unlikely that Summoner will be revisited any time soon as developer Volition has since become busy with the Saints Row franchise instead.
5 Rogue Galaxy
While Level-5’s biggest success as an RPG developer in the PS2 era came with them taking charge of Dragon Quest 8, they had a good track record elsewhere in that generation. Rogue Galaxy was their attempt to make a sci-fi RPG with space exploration and a combat system that drew in elements of the hack and slash genre.
However, while the game was well received by critics at the time, it failed to capture a wide audience. This was a disappointment to publisher Sony, who wanted the game to challenge Final Fantasy’s dominance. The game is one of the limited retro options currently available with PlayStation Plus today, but even this has failed to draw wider attention.
4 Odin Sphere
Vanillaware has made a name for themselves as a developer consistently putting out great but underappreciated games, including the recent 13 Sentinels and the Wii’s Muramasa: The Demon Blade. Their first game, Odin Sphere, also fits into this category.
Preferring 2D graphics to 3D, the game adopted a visual style that made it look like a stage play and a combat system that took inspiration from side-scrolling beat-em-ups. It reviewed well, but its release was a troubled one, and while it was successful on launch, it’s not talked about as often as other games published by Atlus at the time.
3 Champions of Norrath
Complex PC RPGs of the 90s often had a hard time getting ported to consoles, but one of the most successful attempts to transfer this style of RPG to PlayStation was Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance. A game built for PS2 but based on the Baldur’s Gate series, it was a success and is still fondly remembered to this day.
Following this success, developer Snowblind worked with the developers of EverQuest to try and bring that world to PS2 in the form of Champions of Norrath. It featured the same hack and slash combat system and top-down perspective. While it was well received at launch, it seemed to struggle to escape the shadow of the Dark Alliance games and remains a hidden gem in comparison.
2 Drakengard
Drakengard is a real oddity in terms of PS2 RPGs. It had huge gameplay ambitions, aiming to pull together large-scale hack and slash battles from Dynasty Warriors with aerial combat from Ace Combat, and featured a complex storyline full of weird characters. It received mixed reviews at the time and remained an obscure curiosity for years.
However, its status as forgotten may not last, due to a strange connection with another series that’s received a lot more success in recent years – Nier. The world of Nier Replicant formed from the joke ending of Drakengard, and this bizarre link has exposed more people to this older RPG.
1 Dark Cloud Series
Before Rogue Galaxy, Level-5 produced another excellent action RPG with Sony as their publisher. The Dark Cloud series combined dungeon crawling action with city builder mechanics, as the protagonists gathered items from a destroyed world and rebuilt them back to their former glory.
The first game was simple by today’s standards, but the sequel, known as Dark Chronicle in Europe and Japan, improved on all its mechanics to become one of the best RPGs on PS2. Sadly, the series didn’t quite gain the popularity it deserved, although it’s definitely worth checking out both games for those with a PlayStation Plus subscription.