Which game (RPG in particular) has the best story?

[devisous]

Which game has the best story in your opinion?
It could be a story that resonates with you personally, a story that kept you engaged the whole way through, or a story that made you emotional!
In my humble opinion, I really liked the story of Final Fantasy 7 and OMORI.
Both of those stories are really great and inspired me to rework my own game's story to be better written and great.
But, what is YOUR answer?

 

[PoptartPresident]

Haha, I'm right on board with you in the latter.

I think OMORI had a very very strong and unique story with a really really nice hand-drawn art style to most of the sprites and images. The Emotions system was really fun to play around with too, kept things interesting.

However, if you were to throw away all the "RPG Battle" elements, and just think of the story as a whole, then I'd have to go with the To the Moon series.

Not sure how familiar you are with it, but To the Moon, and its 2 sequels, Finding Paradise and Impostor Factory have consistently made me very emotional and invested in their story. It brings up interesting premises and ideas in the real world that make me think, and it even has some mystery elements in it too. The stories and soundtrack are extremely beautiful and are the absolute peak of story-telling in a new medium (besides books and tablets). I highly highly recommend the games.
Kan Gao is a legend in my eyes.

Now, you could totally argue that since there's no battle system or stats or enemies or anything like that in those games, it could be more akin to a visual novel that you just navigate through to continue the story, which is totally valid.
But technically, those games were made with RPG Maker, and follow the RPG Maker style very fluidly, so I would argue they are RPG Maker games in some sense.

 

[Andar]

Ultima 4 - Quest of the Avatar
mostly because it does NOT have some big enemy, but was a storyline about improving the good of the world.

 

[Animebryan]

The Lufia series is really underrated but has a good story, especially Lufia 2. But the series became a repetitive cycle after that & eventually died out, which is a real shame.

I also liked the stories of both FF7 & FFX. What really stood out for me in FFX was that the Japanese weren't afraid of offending religious people & called out how fake & hypocritical religion can be with the order of Yevon telling people that machines (machina) were forbidden & lead to war, even though they secretly use it themselves. They also lied to people, tricking them into believing that Sin was the embodiment of their sins & their atonement, while expecting a summoner to sacrifice themselves for a mere decade of peace, only for Sin to return & torment the world once again.

They secretly knew who was behind it, why it comes back, but being the sniveling cowards that they were, gave in to the whole "Spiral of Death" concept instead of eliminating the core of the problem once & for all.

Another example is Dragon Quest 5. Out of all the DQ games I've played, that one's story was fascinating the way it played out. Highly recommend that entry of the series. Also DQ8 as well.

 

[devisous]

I also liked the stories of both FF7 & FFX. What really stood out for me in FFX was that the Japanese weren't afraid of offending religious people & called out how fake & hypocritical religion can be with the order of Yevon telling people that machines (machina) were forbidden & lead to war, even though they secretly use it themselves. They also lied to people, tricking them into believing that Sin was the embodiment of their sins & their atonement, while expecting a summoner to sacrifice themselves for a mere decade of peace, only for Sin to return & torment the world once again.

..Totally not playing through FFX right now.

 

[TheAM-Dol]

a story that made you emotional!

A B-tier game that's tough to recommend, but I still love deeply is Blue Reflection.
In particular the second game...the first one was clearly just a prototype and had a lot of rough edges...the main story of the (second) game is dog water:

Spoiler

Some dumb post-apocalypse/sci-fi story about the world ending and now the characters left are the only people alive because I guess the universe is a computer and it needs to be reset. If the game had any self-awareness, it might be a fun set up, but considering they make this into a big mystery throughout the first 2 acts, it really detracts from the positives I will state below this spoiler.

But when this game wants to do interpersonal drama, real drama with real people, damn can it hit hard. It's the characters I love, not the dogwater plot, and I wish the games would try to focus more on that, but considering it gets less than B-tier sales, I was surprised to even see it get a sequel, and I doubt it's getting anything more than that. (It also would be nice if they are going to elude to a character having schizophrenia, that they would go all in on it, instead of dancing around it and make it some dumb anime plot "It's actually because sHe FliRted WitH Teh Godzzz, tAhts Y sHe Teh CrAzy" eye rolling...

 

[Cymaiden]

Final Fantasy VIII is my favorite RPGs at least from a character/story perspective. I like it's pragmatic almost Metal Gear-like approach to the world in contrast to the JRPG norm and the way that characterization is a fluid and continuous process as opposed to being siloed into singular big character moments like many JRPGs do things. More than any other RPG, it's the one that I'd like to emulate from a writing standpoint.

 

[lianderson]

Final Fantasy Tactics.

 

[M.I.A.]

Has nobody chimed in with Lunar Silver Star Story yet? Or even Wild Arms? Gosh.. those were the golden days..

-MIA