the sony playstation 2

[Angel]

Despite how long it's been since this consoles end of life, and how much work people have done to preserve favorites and spread their gospel, the ps2 library is still a huge blind spot for me. I feel like every time I dip into it I'm surprised by how consistently interesting most games are. I tend to look back more fondly on RPGs than anything, but there's gotta be a billion games on there begging to be played. Any hidden gems you recommend/are interested in playing? Any extremely visible gems you just wanna talk about? Post it here so we can broaden our horizons

[Tristi]

I've been working on this myself! I came to the PS2 pretty late as a kid so I only really got into the Big Hits back then. Here's what I've really liked so far:


Drakengard and God Hand really don't need any introduction as some of the best known "cult classics" on the system. But they're both must-plays to me. Pure artistry, uncompromising vision.


I will never be able to shut up about SkyGunner. I've been thinking lately about how there's no Star Fox game that really hits the kind of "cartoon dogfighting" highs of Star Fox 64 but SkyGunner actually does it. It's like a playable banger one-off OVA. Ghibli sensibilities but with an indie soul. And there's a little bit of that Armored Core resource management mixed in too. Every missile and bullet costs money and you're fighting not just to win the battle but make the most dough. There's definitely a learning period in grappling with the controls and the game's internal logic, but once it clicks it feels amazing.


Sakura Wars 5 is exactly the kind of goofy dumb haremslop that hits for me. I love an ensemble cast of insane girlies teaming up to take the piss out of a short king! I love when there's a new monster every week! There's nothing groundbreaking about it but it's a big-time comfort game to me. They ported this to the Wii too, but you can only play it with the Japanese dub (and lip sync (and original character names)) on the PS2.


Flipnic is completely bonkers. If you like pinball, you need to play this. And even if you don't you might still want to? I really don't want to say too much about this because I feel like it's better to come into it without expectations. It's one of the funniest games I've ever played.


Ar Tonelico II I haven't played myself, but it's my girlfriend's absolute #1 favorite game. It shipped with a really shoddy translation, then got a better fan translation, and now there's supposedly an even better fan translation in the works. ...which is why I haven't played it yet lol. Anyway those girls in the back seem really close, don't they? Interesting.


The PS2 got a lot of Densha de Go games that range from good to great, but Densha de Go: Ryojou-hen is my favorite of them all, and my favorite in the series at large. This entry shifts the focus from driving commuter trains to instead driving streetcars and light rail, moving at lower speeds and contending with pedestrian and car traffic. But at the same time it also places a great emphasis on the aesthetic experience of its locales. The four lines correspond to the four seasons--Matsuyama in spring, Enoshima in summer, Kyoto in autumn, and Hakodate in winter--and you can pick what time of day you'd like to drive between morning, noon, evening, and night. It's tranquil and meditative, but with enough plates to keep spinning to never be boring. And the music is just sublime. Someday if I have more money I want to splurge for this game's special controller, but it plays just fine on a gamepad too.

[Angel]

Skygunner and Ar Tonelico have been on my list for a long time now but I haven't actually gotten around to playing either of them... I think I set up Skygunner on my (modded ) PS2 to play on a crt but never actually touched it before I ended up putting the tv in storage. I DO love to be surprised, so I'll try out flipnic without looking anything up first. Also I managed to play Densha De Go on an actual cabinet running both the original and a recent version at a gamecenter just outside Seattle earlier this year... Incredibly fun game that I wanted to experience without needing an arcade card to save progress, so I'll happily check out a vibes-based home version.

Re: Ar Tonelico specifically though, it seems to me like a big part of the ps2's mystique is just how many multimedia projects were centered around that console... I've played a wee bit of .hack (which admittedly may have a little more interest in blurring formal boundaries between mediums than similar contemporary projects) and seen a bit of the anime, and I found it totally spellbinding... It's a relatively common practice now I suppose, and the commercial drive is undeniable, but I guess from the perspective of being an english-speaking future tourist looking 20+ years into the past there's a (not entirely false) air of artistic 'legitimacy', if only because .hacks footprint is nowhere near as prominent as like, FNAF. It's kind of interesting that the amount of weird art games on the playstation 1/2 kind of mirrors the indie landscape now, except those people had like. a salary.

[shelter]

i've cooled a little on the ps2 in recent years compared to psx and saturn but shin megami tensei nocturne is still my favorite game so i'll always love it. plus it's backwards compatible so it encompasses the psx library too. mgs2, ico, breath of fire dragon quarter, boku no natsuyasumi 2, drakengard, siren all masterpieces.

[lynnedrum]

this is gitaroo man he is my best friend





this has been one of my favorite guys for a long time. a perfect, singular kind of rhythm game that we'll never get anything else like, with unimpeachable art design. i learned about Gitaroo Man the same night I learned about Katamari Damacy, at a halloween party at an old cool highschool friend's house. it was a fairly formative experience. i still give Gitaroo Man a run thru every year on my birthday

there was certainly some point in my life where i was ride or die by the statement "nintendo ds and ps2 are the two strongest console libraries in history". i bet to some degree i might still agree with that. that japanese DDR Extreme home version on PS2 is the best DDR console release and it's not even close.

[Angel]

i've cooled a little on the ps2 in recent years compared to psx and saturn but shin megami tensei nocturne is still my favorite game so i'll always love it. plus it's backwards compatible so it encompasses the psx library too. mgs2, ico, breath of fire dragon quarter, boku no natsuyasumi 2, drakengard, siren all masterpieces.

as I was writing the first post I was thinking about how little I know about the psx library too... It felt clunky to make a thread with the arbitrary subject of "ps2 but also psx but also saturn and dreamcast but not the gamecube or xbox or any of that frat boy shit" but that is generally within the spirit of the initial inquiry.

Dragon Quarter has been calling to me again too... I think when I finish/get bored of Disgaea 1 I'll pick it back up

[crittergill]

this is gitaroo man he is my best friend





this has been one of my favorite guys for a long time. a perfect, singular kind of rhythm game that we'll never get anything else like, with unimpeachable art design. i learned about Gitaroo Man the same night I learned about Katamari Damacy, at a halloween party at an old cool highschool friend's house. it was a fairly formative experience. i still give Gitaroo Man a run thru every year on my birthday

there was certainly some point in my life where i was ride or die by the statement "nintendo ds and ps2 are the two strongest console libraries in history". i bet to some degree i might still agree with that. that japanese DDR Extreme home version on PS2 is the best DDR console release and it's not even close.

I FUCKING LOOOOOOOOVE GITAROO MAN DUDEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! it's such a perfect video game and there's nothing like it. Ouendan/Elite Beat Agents are the same team but as much as I love them they just didn't have the Gitaroo Man sauce. Nothing does. I can't think of another game that permanently altered my brain as much and as quickly as it did. It's my birthday gift to myself every year too lmao

I really love the PS2 Ace Combat games too... I remember playing Ace Combat 4 at a friend's house when I was a kid and being totally stunned by it. Going like, damn, a video game can be this? Which probably says more about what I was exposed to than anything else but man that game is good. Great series across the board but 4/5/0 are an absolutely generational run

[amos]

YOu ugys ever watch one of those "1 minute of every single game on x console" videos? Part of why I love the PS2 is it has "Shadow of the Colossus" next to an europe-only release called like "Shagadelic! Austin Powers Word Jumble". Pretty much every console has had shovelware on it but something about the way an average shovelware game looks and feels on PS2 (& Wii, kind of) is so palpably grimy I love it.

[MinaSheep]

YOu ugys ever watch one of those "1 minute of every single game on x console" videos? Part of why I love the PS2 is it has "Shadow of the Colossus" next to an europe-only release called like "Shagadelic! Austin Powers Word Jumble". Pretty much every console has had shovelware on it but something about the way an average shovelware game looks and feels on PS2 (& Wii, kind of) is so palpably grimy I love it.

I love how much garbage there is on the ps2, so many licensed games. I have vivid memories of going through the resale bin at my local EB Games and it was always a sobering experience LOL.

Ps2 era is also in my mind the era where I remember my dad playing the most video games he ever has. He would play so much Granturismo 4 that our house had at one point 4 copies because the disc kept getting worn out (crazy that games were that affordable back then)

It's also the console that introduced me to Monster Hunter. That box art and back changed the chemistry of my brain from the moment I laid my eyes upon it


just beautiful stuff. My young brain was so stoked to have both dragons and dinosaurs in the same game??? holy moly

[Angel]

It's also the console that introduced me to Monster Hunter. That box art and back changed the chemistry of my brain from the moment I laid my eyes upon it

This actually awakened some long-dormant memories of spending ages walking the aisles of the local video rental place near us just staring at the box art for ps2 and xbox games and imagining what the games must have been like (we were a family of nintendrones until I bought a ps2 off ebay with my first ever paycheque. unfortunately, I mostly bought it just to play persona 4)