Okay so one of my buds gave me 3 games. He gave me Soul Nomad, Dragon Quest VIII, and Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. I've heard that dq8 was pretty good but I've always thought the dragon quest series was a gay grindfest. Is this one any different? I've never even heard of soul nomad but it's by NIS and they made disgaea so i assume that a: it's a strategy RPG with a lot of customization and B: it has horrible annoying characters and dialogue. has anyone played soul nomad? I've already played a bit of prince of persia and it wasn't too bad just getting a tad repetitive.

I realize I could just check reviews on gamefaqs or something but every review on gamefaqs is horrible and they all get 10/10 regardless of how good they are.

I have never played a NIS game, I always assumed they were just too weird for me. They are just not my thing but you're probably spot on with your assumptions. Dragon Quest VIII is probably the only one I can relate to. I enjoyed it a lot, but the game starts off very slow just like the other DQ games. If you can get past that, you will enjoy it a lot. There is minimal grinding in this one, but I would be lying if I said you could beat every boss with no troubles. It is also very old school, so if you like that type of gameplay it's okay. Don't expect anything new, because the game does none of that.
Never played Prince of Persia.

you are pretty much right on with Soul Nomad, if you don't like SRPGs then there's is no reason to waste your time with it, but if you do it can be pretty fun.

no sadly enough i am a sucker for any game with a lot of customization. i played a bit of disgaea and beat disgaea 2. is soul nomad any better than those two?

i've got good memories of staying up late with my brother drinking lots of coffee and eating crackers with dragon quest VII, just exploring the world in that game cos it's big, colourful and has nice music which got us pumped up to explore things (on a television). there's no real reason why you should play it though unless you're looking for something like that. it's just a japanese console rpg. it managed to not annoy me though and while there is some dragon ball z style 'hilarious'' in it some of the game is actually pretty cute. jessica is the only character with multiple costumes in it, though, and these costumes include a playboy bunny and a bikini. that annoyed me a bit but i just didn't wear those and enjoyed the music and the colour.

so that's my opinion. if you've already got it you might as well give it a try, but i've got no right to recommend it considering how much i should really hate it. but like i said, it brings back nice memories of a nice time.

no sadly enough i am a sucker for any game with a lot of customization. i played a bit of disgaea and beat disgaea 2. is soul nomad any better than those two?

idk if i'd say better, but it is a very different game(other then still being an srpg) with a few ideas borrowed from Ogre Battle.  As for customizing, its also quite a bit different since you customize the 'rooms'(each room has up to 9 characters with the leader representing the room on the tactical map) instead of the characters themselves.

I love the Prince of Persia series, even the mess that was Warrior Within.  The combat is repetitive, yes, but the level design is still untouched by most platformers.

I also don't care for NIS games but Soul Nomad and the World Eaters (I'm sorry I just love saying the entire title) is one of their "weirdest" in that it's actually different.  Every NIS game basically follows the same formula as Disgaea but SNatWE, like Dead Phoenix said, is closer to Ogre Battle and the way you set up "rooms" which are basically squads is different from every other game.  Unfortunately, the room setup is EASILY exploitable so practice some restraint or you'll be god in an hour.  The game is still stupid anime shit but it's fun stupid anime shit so I say it's worth the entertainment value.

Now then, I love the Dragon Quest series but I don't know why.  Really, only DQI and II were grindfests.  The thing you have understand about the DQ games is that you have to ration your coins because it's so perfectly balanced that you're never able to afford EVERYTHING unless you grind.  Battles will be tough unless you utilize your buff and debuff spells.  I think we're so used to jRPG's traditionally giving us 30 million useless utility spells when FIRE2 kills things in 2 hits so we never use them.  In DQ games, some enemies are immune to damage spells so you have to put them to sleep or lower their defense.

The prince is also a snarky, misogynistic jerk and I liked him that way better than the super emo Prince from Warrior Within.  Probably one of the few games where the hero DOESN'T fall in love with the female lead.  I think there was a moment of passion or something where they briefly kiss but it's been a while.

I didn't like DQ8 personally, but I can understand why others like it. Despite being a series of walking cliches, the series never really takes itself seriously so it can be forgiven and can even be quite endearing.

I actually played SoT recently in anticipation of the new PoP that's out now and I liked it minus the combat (like Sarevok mentioned). Unless you really suck at platforming, I really don't see how it could be frustrating other than a few odd camera problems, which are really prominent in the battles and you always have to struggle to keep it in check. The puzzles are also pretty fun and not brutally hard to figure out - they're mostly obstacle courses with some simple block pushing/light reflecting type things. After playing SoT, I thought Warrior Within and The Two Thrones would be good fairly good sequels but I hated both of them - SoT is probably the only one worth playing in that trilogy.

As for Soul Nomad, I played it for about 5 minutes and decided it was just typical NIS fare. I really couldn't tell you much about it other than it being a low-budget NIS title with terrible production value and unlikeable characters.

DQVIII is one of my favorite RPGs on the PS2, I'd recommend it but it doesn't seem like you're into those types of games. The music, charming characters, colorful environments and voice acting are what did it for me. Funny thing is, I'm not a big DQ fan and I thought VII was the most boring game ever and only played it for about 10 hours. DQVIII had a strange way of making me WANT to invest time into finding things and just exploring every part of the world (which is pretty expansive) in order to find things that would benefit me in it. I can't really describe it, but I really enjoyed the satisfaction whenever I progressed past a tough boss or completed something. It's a long game, mind you, so be prepared to spend about 90 hours if you want to do everything. It's easily the most amount of time I've spent on any one game and I doubt I'd ever do it again, but it was really enjoyable the first time around and was the "definitive" title in the series--if you were going to play one DQ game, I'd play VIII over all the others (even though V is considered the best).

Soul Nomad was actually pretty good.  It pretty much is typical NIS fare, but I happen to have a bit of a soft spot for that and also it is a lot more violent and darker than the other games.  I dunno how you got unlikeable characters out of it, since the dialogue in it is better than many of the other NIS games.

Never played DQ.

Prince of Persia was fun, though at this point it doesn't do anything new.  Back when I played it, though, it was The Shit.  I still prefer the original PoP/PoP2 for like Pentiums and shit, myself

Dragon Quest VIII is fun if you're into those long RPG's that can take you a month to beat. (took me around that long... I think...)

Soul Nomad, this one was really hard to like, it wasn't my cup o' tea. I like NIS games, but this one wasn't exactly up to par with the others in my humble opinion.

And Prince of Persia, never played it.

Yeah I'd give credit to DQ8 where credit is due: the graphics are pretty impressive for the PS2, and the voiceovers are surprisingly CHARMING, probably just because everyone speaks in cockney English and shit and that seems charming to us North Americans. HOWEVER, it's a long fucking game with pretty dull battles and a pretty average jRPG story. Everyone talks about how great exploration was, but I found myself pretty damn UNINTERESTED to explore because of constantly running into random battles. If you don't mind that, then yes, the world is huge with tons and tons of nooks and crannies to check out.

It's ultimately a very polished, well presented game that is completely marred and ruined (in my books) by the definitive traditional jRPG gameplay mechanics. Bottom line: if generic turn based random battles and endless character building within a traditional storyline are your thing, then there really isn't any better than DQ8.