I got through phases of games, and right now I’m in the one I like to think of everything-modern-is-making-me-angry-so-I’ll-turn-back-to-vintage-games - and that’s in the form of PCSX2 on my Steam Deck.
Playing the PS2 generation on the Steam Deck is kinda the ‘perfect’ generation: I can upscale the resolution without a performance hit, I can apply HD texture packs, Retro Achievements and I can drop the TDP to extend the battery life.
Anyway, I never had a PS2 (it was just a touch before my time), so there’s so many games I’m yet to discover there. I’d love to hear any suggestions you might have for what I can play on there:
Just a couple notes:
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No GTA games because they’re better with the PC versions. While I’ve bought the games, the account that Rockstar demands people have to play their games makes me angry on principle (a single-player game forcing an online check each week to be able to play it? No thanks), so I’ve got cracked versions to play.
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No Final Fantasy because I’m not even sure where to start!
So if anyone was around back in the PS2 era, and has some recommendations for games they’ve loved, I’m all ears. I’ve been having such a fun time playing these.
Some big thanks to my friends who made and run RetroDECK (my choice for emulating on the Steam Deck), and to the PCSX2 team (who I’m chatting to right now actually, so keep an eye out and in a week or so I’ll share that chat with them all about creating and maintaining the PS2 emulator!)
Also, if you do have a Steam Deck, and want to play with the HD texture packs I do, then it’s really simple. Just download the pack, and name then according to their game’s I.D. code - SLUS-20743 for example, then place it in the texture_packs folder:
From there, go into PCSX2, then right-click the game, select properties, graphics, texture replacement and tick the two boxes I have:
Then you’ve got the games looking the best they can be!
Here’s a link to a stack of pre-done HD textures for a lot of PS2 games, to help you on your way!
You have one of, if not the best starting points for Final Fantasy in the whole series on this system with X. Just play it. There’s no mainline numbered Final Fantasy game that ties together. They’re all separate stories. A few share a common setting with Ivalice, but that’s about it. Hop on X now. I know there’s a PC version, and that’s probably the recommended way to experience that game at this point, but I don’t really care how you start it. If you ever wanna experience Final Fantasy, FFX is the one a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooot of people will say start with.
Radiata Stories - a looker even for a PS2 game.
NFL 2K5 - the greatest NFL game ever made.
Jak and Daxter - This console’s Crash Bandicoot.
Rachet and Clank - I actually have the same problem you have with Final Fantasy with this series. Just pick one.
Need For Speed Underground 2 - One of the best arcade racing games ever made.
Burnout 3 Takedown - Same as above except you crash the cars instead of pimp them out.
SSX3 - Some say Tricky is better, I like them both but usually give 3 the edge.
Soul Calibur II - Best Soul Calibur game IMO
Dragonball Z Budokai 3 - Played the shit out of both this and Budokai Tenkaichi 3
I’m not even scratching the surface.
Jak and Daxter are better played via OpenGoal - a modern open source engine implementation that runs natively on Steam Deck and includes fixes, graphics improvements, proper widescreen, etc.
Nice! I’ll have to check that out.
Re: Final Fantasy games not tying together or having continuities.
Yes. Except, ironically, specifically Final Fantasy X, which had a direct sequel in X-2. Final Fantasy XIII also managed to have a direct sequel in Lightning Returns. Thankfully, if you care to think of it that way, it was crap and can be safely ignored.
Anyway, have an upvote for not blithely suggesting that everyone start with VII.
XIII had two sequels, XIII-2 and Lightning Returns.
Yes and they’re all neatly contained in their numbered entry which is why I say no mainline numbered games tie together. And all the 2s are optional IMO. Especially X-2, which always seemed like a cash grab to capitalize off of X’s success to me. As much as I love, love, love X, I’ve never touched X-2 and probably never will.
That’s the thing. PS2 at one time was the best selling system of all time. I forget if that record still holds up. I know the DS oversold it, but thats not a tv console.
Point is, with any console that had that big of an impact on gaming, it’s going to have a ton of bangers that still hold up 20+ years later.
And boy howdy if that ain’t true!
I’m honestly surprised there aren’t independant projects releasing new PS2 games today, in the same way you see occasional new releases for NES and Game Boy Color.
+1 for Burnout 3. That’s a series that desparately needs a new entry.
Probably the best list imo. I remember picking Radiata Stories up, at random, for my birthday. It blew me away. The story, combat and recruitment mechanic are different from everything else I experienced at the time.
And a few suggestions also:
Def Jam: Fight for NY. Lowkey my favorite fighting game, with 4-players simultaneously beating the crap of each other.
Battle Stadium D.O.N… Fighting/smash bros style game with the biggest jump stars at the time (Dragon Ball, One Piece, Naruto).
Dokapon Kingdom. Board/rpg game with a lot of fun mechanics.
Fuck yes, Fight for NY was amazing. I love the idea of a fighting game where you have to end the fight, not just knock the other guy’s health bar down to zero so he falls over. So satisfying to put your opponent down with a haymaker or chucking him in front of a subway train
NFS Underground 1 is better than the sequel IMO. The open world is empty and tedious filler vs just loading directly into the tracks.
Best NFS on the PS2 is Hot Pursuit 2 however. Made by Black Box, it’s vastly superior in every way to the other console versions and the PC version made by a different company despite sharing assets.
Loved the pc version. With force feedback wheel
Can’t believe I left Soul Calibur II off of my own recommendations, perhaps because most of us thought of that as a Gamecube game.
Link special character was best special character… because… it was a great meming time when people realized there were what appeared to be the silhouette of his tower and bases visible during certain moves.
XBOX version was the best to me but I loved that game so much I owned all three copies at once.
I love the ps2 era of games! Here are some suggestions:
- ICO: Minimalist game about a cursed boy & a girl with mysterious powers trying to escape a castle together. An absolute classic.
- Shadow of the Colossus: Another Team ICO game, this one you’ve probably heard of. You play as a young man who sets out for the Forbidden Lands, finding and slaying 16 colossi to resurrect his deceased love.
- Silent Hill 2: One of the greatest survival horror games ever made. Introspective, tackles mature themes, and deeply chilling. A game I truly feel is haunted.
- Persona 4: High schoolers solving a murder mystery in a rural Japanese town. I prefer the vanilla ps2 version to the revised Golden edition, it graphically preserves the fog & spookier ambience - with better pacing from less bloat.
For some more obscure games:
- The Adventures of Cookie & Cream: A brutal co-op/singleplayer puzzle game developed by Fromsoft. Has a fun art style & interesting levels.
- Tak 3 - the Great Juju Challenge: Works best in co-op but still a blast in single-player. 3D platformer with varied levels & a fantastic voice cast (Patrick Warburton as Lok is the highlight).
Btw if you’re playing mgs3 on the ps2 make sure it’s the Subsistence edition! It has a 3D camera that works way better than the top-down the og game shipped with.
Every time I’m walking with someone and come across a sofa out on the street I force them to . . .
spoiler
sit down on it for a moment with me. Just in case they played ICO.
Also F for agro
spoiler
probably the most tragic death scene i ever played
Regarding your second spoiler: that colossus kill definitely felt personal after that. I mean… It’s not even their fault, but I was determined afterwards.
That fight is so incredible, I could gush about it all day. The ambience, the visuals, the environmental storytelling, just amazing.
Spoiler for 16th colossus
The only colossus to feel so direct in its attacks towards you, you can feel its anger at watching its fellow colossi die. Especially since when you reach the top you realize the 16th faces out from the bottom of the map, so it saw every colossus be slain one after another.
Also holy shit having to snipe its hands/shoulders then jump onto it was so exciting, even if it was a bit jank.
Kinda surprised how long it took to scroll before seeing Ico and SOTC mentioned, tbh.
Crown jewels of PS2, imo. Pushed the medium forward artistically.
Yes absolutely! Inspired Dark Souls, future zelda games, & basically every indie game to come out afterwards.
I started The Last Guardian, still need to go back & finish it. I liked a lot of what it was bringing to the table, but the pacing dragged a bit in the middle imo.
Beyond Good & Evil
Devil May Cry trilogy
If you liked God of War (and its PS2 sequels), another franchise well worth checking out!Final Fantasy X. Hands down the best entry of the franchise (fight me), and one of the best introductions to the series.
Ico + Shadow of the Colossus
Literal works of art.Killer7
Manhunt + Manhunt 2
If you like Bully & PS2-era GTA entries, this series is well worth exploring. Very dark and gory.Need for Speed Underground + Underground 2
Some of the best racing OSTs ever, and the offline PS2-editions don’t lose tracks when licenses expire.Prince of Persia - Sands of Time
Silent Hill 2
Viewtiful Joe + Viewtiful Joe 2
An incredible 2d beat-em up with a great vibe.The Warriors
Rockstar’s love letter to a cult classic 70s film.Zone of the Enders + Zone of the Enders 2nd Runner
Hideo Kojima just doing more of his thing outside of the MGS franchise.Final Fantasy X. Hands down the best entry of the franchise (fight me)
I never finished X, it felt like it was dragging on and there were too many unskippable scenes.
I actually preferred XIII, which I nearly 100%'d (I think I was one or 2 combats away from 100%) and even XIII-2 which I enjoyed, tho I thought the “post-game” was too heavy with loading screens. I never played XIII-3 (Lightning Returns).
In any case, FF VI is actually the best entry in the franchise. I know that because I played and beat it as a child. (/s)
(I was really hoping FF XV [?; road trip with the boy band] would be good, but I played about 10 hours and had nothing good to say about it.)
To each their own, I suppose!
FF7 was my entry into the franchise, and I went back to play 4-6 after 8 left me disappointed. I ended up (regretfully) skipping 9 until revisiting it much later. I’m saying this specifically to point out that I am not biased because FFX was my first.
I skipped XI as MMORPGs didn’t hold any interest to me at the time - but WoW would change that, and cause me to skip XII altogether!
I didn’t like the combat of XIII, it was too much of a departure of what came before (variants of ATB and general turn-based combat) - and I did not find the plot engaging enough to persevere much beyond I think the ~10hr mark?
I haven’t bothered to revisit the newer entries since, even though I have added XII, XIII, XIII-2 & Lightning Returns to my retro collection. Perhaps one day?
I thought I wasn’t going to like the combat of XIII, but I ended up really quite enjoying it most of the time. I thought the support roles AI was quite good, and eventually I figured out a rhythm of switching roles that felt really good.
But, I probably should go back and play some of the 7-9, maybe even X again. I picked up 2, 3, and 5 (and the portable Nintendo consoles to play them) and never made the time to play them.
I know some are on Steam, but I’m on Linux and I don’t know how well the Proton/SteamPlay works with them. (Plus, I need to finish up Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 before I buy yet another JRPG.)
According to protondb.com the entire Final Fantasy catalogue is pretty much flagged as either Gold or Platinum so you shouldn’t have issues.
For what it’s worth, the console versions also run great through EmuDeck and RetroDeck on my Steam Deck too!
I need to get around to playing Clair Obscur - I’ve seen and heard great things about it, but with a 2yo running around the house - I just don’t have the bandwidth currently to invest in new games… 😅
Zone of the Enders was phenomenal.
I strongly recommend Dark Cloud and Dark Cloud 2. DC2, to my memory, could have aged well, but DC1 might be a rough play if you’re not in the headspace for a game of that era. I haven’t played them in an age, though.
Otherwise, I find that Kingdom Hearts (and KH2 in particular) aged very well. KH2 just feels really good to play.
As for Final Fantasy, if you have a wild hair to play just one, you’ll get a dozen different opinions. However, since essentially every game plays with new universes and new gameplay mechanics, you really do get a fresh start with each one.
Seconded for Dark Cloud 2 specifically. Game is incredibly good.
DC2 is absolutely a must play. Its a ridiculously big game though, be warned. You’ll be deep into the latter chapters with the game still throwing new mechanics at you like “omg, I have to play golf in dungeons now too, and fishing, and base building, and photography, and and and and”
I kind of do reccomend a guide for it as there’s some permanent misables.
From my memory, the misable stuff isn’t the important, but it is frustrating to not be able to get. I would say if you aren’t worried about missing a few unlocks, just accept that you’ll miss stuff and don’t stress about it.
If you’re the type of person (like me) who finds out they missed something and feel compelled to restart, even if you were never planning on 100% the game, then yeah, use a guide. I wouldn’t use a guide for everything, but I’m certain there are guides that say when misable stuff is coming and how to get them.
God Hand is probably the most underrated game on the platform. Dont let the visuals or the crass humor turn you off. It’s made by Clover (the same devs behind Okami and Viewtiful Joe) and is mechanically deep to an absurd degree. Easily the best beat-em-up on the console.
God Hand is great!
I’m a big fan of the R-Type series, and R-Type Final plays very well on the Deck.
Also:
Katamari Damacy - Really weird concept for a surprisingly fun game. Roll up the world!
Devil May Cry - The high-speed brawler that launched a genre.
Tales of the Abyss - A good RPG with likeable characters and some great twists.Bunch of good Shmups on the PS2, Gradius V, gradius 3 and 4. Darius gaiden and G darius are on a taito collection. Bunch of cave stuff, the Dodonpachi DOJ port is good. Bit psyiko stuff too I think it has Dragon blaze.
One of my favorite eras to live through and emulate!
Aside from Dark Cloud 2, mentioned already, I also really love:
Katamari, but on Deck the native version is better and includes the sequel.
The Jak and Daxter trilogy, simply amazing games! The first or the second are usually the favs. 1 is a solid mascot platformer. 2 also is, kind of, but adds guns and cars and a slightly GTA inspired open world. 3 is also fun but leans harder into vehicles and generally isn’t regarded as highly.
Odin Sphere. All the VanillaWare games are great, but OS is one of the most beautiful games ever drawn, and has really fun brawler\rpg combat. GrimGrimoire is another of theirs, also good, kind of a side scrolling RTS.
Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 are both a lot of fun, especially if you love Disney or SquareEnix games. If not, they’re still pretty fun and have an… interesting, if convoluted, lore. I probably wouldn’t recommend if you dont care for Disney though. Probably worth playing Final Fantasy 7 first as well. It’s referenced quite reverently and is a great standalone game (and PS1 still counts I think, haha).
Devil May Cry 1 and 3. You can skip 2, even the fans and creators don’t care about it, and 3 is a prequel. DMC1 is a landmark game, and is required playing in my opinion for being both important and incredibly fun. It can be quite hard though. 3 is arguably the best in the whole series, and holds up really well near the top of the genre to this day.
God of War 1, 2,
and 3. They’re fantastic action games, and pretty influential still. I dont like them as much as DMC, but they’re still pretty fun.There were actually a lot of pretty mediocre DMC clones on PS2, like Gungrave or Bujingai. If you love the genre, they’re neat and OK fun. God Hand is quite funny and kind of unique, probably the best of the 3 listed here.
I see Okami in there and I approve! Although I think the remasters released on other platform more recently are a better way to play. I also preferred the Wii version back in the day.
The Sly Cooper games and the Ratchet and Clank games are also both really excellent series. I liked Jak more, but they’re distinct games with their own neat elements. Sly’s particularly unique as a mascot stealth game.
Metal Gear Solid series and the Tony Hawk games are obviously excellent, but you’ve got so many other ways to play those I’m not sure they’re worth emulating.
Zone of the Enders, 1 and 2. ZoE 1 is infamous as being the game that came with the first MGS2 demo on it. The game is fine but short, and mostly serves to set up ZoE2, which fucking rules! You pilot a badass mecha and it just has a really fun plot, great music, and good action. An underrated gem!
Not your jam I’m sure, but I’d be remiss if I didnt mention the many hours I spent playing Capcom vs SNK 2. Still one of my favorite fighting games, legendary roster and soundtrack.
If you’d like a roguelike, I’d suggest Baroque or (PS1) Azure Dreams. Both pretty fun, quite long games with lots of replay value. Baroque is uh… well titled, kind of challenging to get into.
Ah, there were so many good games in that era. Truly one of the most stacked console lineups ever.
GoW³ is a PS3 title
Good catch, my bad, I thought it was just the trilogy collection on PS3. It’s probably been since it first came out that i played it.
I went general on MGS because I couldn’t remember which game premiered on which console generation without looking it up either, but it’s 2 and 3 for PS2 (and 1 from PSX).
Katamari Damacy and sequel <3
Im here for this answer.
Lots of good suggestions already, but I don’t think I saw anyone mention Twisted Metal: Black. It’s very dark and lots of fun.
I recently went through a ps2 games phase. Some already mentioned but the lesser known standouts for me were;
God hand (probably the best game on ps2 and released really late in the life of the PS2 so many people missed it),
Odin sphere (best looking game on the system and really fun),
urban reign,
steam bot chronicles (robot action rpg really satisfying game play)
robot alchemical drive (ride on the shoulders of huge gundam style robots, really unique game)
champions of norrath, (action rpg based on EverQuest universe, really fun)
psi ops, (fps like game with stars wars style force powers, crazy fun)
Drakan: Ancient gates, (action rpg, fly on a dragon, one of the best magic systems ever where you have to trace the pattern to cast. The reason I started my ps2 phase was to replay this game, loved it as a kid and still holds up)
Recently did a no-deaths kick-me run of God Hand. The combo system in that game is so satisfying.
Also second the recommendation for Steam Bot Chronicles. The dialogue doesn’t half let you say some out-of-pocket shit.
A warning about emulation though; bind a key to swap between hardware and software rendering. Software mode is necessary within stores.
Ratchet & Clank and Going Commando are great.
I’ve been playing Ratchet & Clank (something-or-other-about-booty) via RPCS3 on my Steam Deck, and I’ve been loving that! Totally forgot R&C got their start on PS2. Thanks!
Dark cloud 1 - amazing
Dark cloud 2 (Dark Chronicle in EU) - 11/10, I replay it almost every year
The PS2 Ace Combat games (4/5/Zero) are still best-in-genre as far as I’m concerned, and have held up exceedingly well in general. Aerial dogfighting with good controls, good mission design and interesting story.
Sky Odyssey is a more “relaxed” little flight game that I also like, still got game-like controls but no combat, just missions where you fly through hard situations.
BTW I couldn’t get AC5 full speed on Steam Deck so if anyone knows the right config hmu
Ratchet and Clank is a great series, and so are the Jak and Daxter series; both are excellent platformers for different reasons. Although, it might be easier to play Jak 1 and 2 through OpelGOAL, which will run the games natively on the Deck instead of emulation and isn’t too hard to set up.
It’s a bit of a black sheep, but Spyro A Heroes Tale is a guilty pleasure of mine. It isn’t as great as the original Spyro trilogy on PS1, but it’s entertaining in its own right. I’m currently playing through it and enjoying it.
Final fantasy isn’t a continuation from game to game, they are new stories each time. Final fantasy is more like a feeling than a specific place or group of people.
All that said I really think you should consider trying Final Fantasy 10, it has fantastic cinematics and is a very emotional game.
