Inspired by DexCross: Top 5 Games Needed To Be MMORPGs


4: Star Ocean
What is it:
Star Ocean is one of my favorite RPG games with the latest installments of PS2’s Star Ocean 3: Til the End of Time and the upcoming Star Ocean IV: The Last Hope. While in Japan, they have rehashed the original two games for PSP, most old remakes never make it across the seas. If you never played/heard of Star Ocean before, I’ll give a run down on it’s world and history. Star Ocean, just at the name suggest, is an RPG that takes place around a galaxy. You cross planets, races, cultures, and worlds within the story line from your character's point of view. The theme in all three games have been the main character coming from a world of advanced technology and ending up stranded on a low-tech planet. This franchise was also one of the first real-time battle RPG’s that allowed you to switch between different characters while moving, running, casting, and fighting while computer AI took over the other players.


Why it should be online:
As stated early, Star Ocean is a very large game covering different planets. Each planet has different races and cultures, the technology varying. I figure if they managed to put Phantasy Star and Final Fantasy as successful online games, then why not this one.

3: Bully
What is it:
Bully is a hilarious game from Rock*. It circles around the misadventures of mischievous schoolboy, who find himself stuck in a snotty prep-school. You go on your -missions-, which include pranks, fights, vandalism, and dates, all while trying to still go to class. It’s highly interactive and viciously fun. You can customize your base character with different hair styles and clothes for money you’ve earned from part-time jobs or doing -certain- things around the school.


Why it should be online:
Making a game where you go to school, spray paint on walls, bully other students, and steal would go great for any online game. It’d be fun to make gangs with other students, have school rivalries, and co-op missions for egging houses. What’s not to love?
 
2: Harvest Moon
What is it:
Basically, Harvest Moon is a social, farming simulation. You pick a male or female character, marry, have kids, build houses, raise animals, grow crops. You make friends with NPCs (as well as a mate), sell your wares, fish, and progress. There are several spin-offs of Harvest moon including Rune Factory, River King, and Innocent Life.


Why it should be online:
With the making of Rune Factory, Harvest Moon ceased to be strictly a farming and social simualation. Rune Factory offers dungeons, boss fights, monsters, and beast taming. I believe with the social sims as well as a blend of Rune Factory, Harvest Moon Online would be great to play, as long as you enjoy that type of thing. Real-Time crops, animal raising, harvesting, marketing, splicing seed breeds (as seen in A Wonderful Life), marriage to other players, the ability to have kids, and build you own household would be load of fun for casual players out there looking for something else to do other than grind and crawl dungeons.. My only real concern would be people taking it too seriously (the marriage and kids concept) as well as not allowing same-sex marriage, but I suppose that would be any game that has a marriage system…

1: .Hack
What is it:
.Hack is an interesting Japanese RPG in which the game, itself, is composed of a story about people who play an online game called “The World”. The game follows the trials and tribulations of a group of players who are in an MMORPG, allowing you to crawl dungeons, fields, interact with other ‘players’, trade, chat, send/receive short mail, read ‘news’, and browse the game forums, just as if the game you were playing is a real MMO. The timeline is usually set in the not too distant future, giving the world a feeling of sci-fi, but also not making it so far fetch that we can’t relate.


Why it should be online:
For the most obvious reason, it’s basically an MMO already. The game is based on playing in a fake MMO that mocks/mimics all the features a real MMO has. There are base character models, job classes, skill sets, gear, areas, and dungeons as well as typical base-towns. The only thing that is stopping it from being an MMO really is that it’s not online.

I know that I only had four…but I could only think of four. I don’t believe that a lot of the offline games I enjoy would make great MMO’s, such as Legend of Zelda or Metroid because they revolve around 1, or very few, constant main characters.
Comments and Questions are welcomed as always~