Welcome to my extremely personal list of my 10 favorite PlayStation 2 games. This isn’t about which are the most important, popular or influential games on the system. This list presents 10 games I enjoyed the most on the PS2.
This means there’s no GTA or God of War. Shadow of the Colossus isn’t here either. Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3 miss the list too, because going back to them I find them difficult to enjoy. They just don’t do much for me anymore. What I have here are the games I still enjoy playing today.
Now, let’s dig into my personal top 10 PlayStation 2 games. The games are presented in alphabetical order. I couldn’t decide which I liked more than another.
Beyond Good & Evil
Legend of Zelda in a science fiction universe minus the silent protagonist sums up a lot of Beyond Good & Evil, while underselling it. BG&E finds itself on tons of hidden PS2 gems lists and deservedly so. The general public doesn’t know about the game, and newer gamers likely don’t either. It’s a great one to start my top 10 list with.
Beyond Good & Evil is a 3rd person action adventure title. You’re Jade, a strong willed photographer caught up in a save the world plot. Game areas are beautiful and full of secrets to explore. It’s more common now, but BG&E was one of the first games to give players a camera and task them with photographing the game world as a progression mechanic. This helped bring Jade’s world to life.
Combat is solid, but hardly mind blowing. Taking a page from Ocarina of Time, it uses Z-targeting and a few basic moves centered around the lock on system. Every aspect of the gameplay is solid, but the world, story and characters lift it to another level. Pay’j, a pig man and uncle to Jade, is the game’s strongest character. He’s gruff, funny, wise and helpful while never becoming annoying. Jade is more than a tough female action hero. She cares for orphan children, has friends in the world, and a realistic reaction to the craziness happening around her.
Beyond Good & Evil is well worth the $20 you might have to pay for it.
Final Fantasy X
Final Fantasy X has a strange place in the series history. It’s the beginning of the modern Final fantasy games, which receive mixed reviews. This tarnishes FFX’s reputation for a lot of FF fans, but it has far more fans that remain vocal about its greatness than the titles that came after. Is Final Fantasy X a good JRPG? I wouldn’t have it on my list if I didn’t think so.
Killer soundtrack, solid voice acting (yes, even in the infamous laughing scene), great graphics, strong combat, and an interesting leveling system. It’s everything a JRPG fan could want. My only gripe is the random battles. I hate random battles. They’re not handled worse here than any other game, but their very existence annoys me.
What overcomes the hatred I have of random battles is the turn based combat system. Final Fantasy X wisely ditched the ATB system of previous games, giving players a slower paced system that forces players to think a few turns ahead. Combat order is visible on screen, for heroes and enemies alike. This knowledge presents new attack strategies and buff/debuff options, as you can plan several moves ahead.
I know there’s remasters out there that make the PS2 original obsolete, but it earned its place on my list. Among the many PS2 games I’ve played, Final Fantasy X is a stand out. Whether you get the remaster or the original, you’ll enjoy this great Japanese role-playing game.
Grandia 2
Grandia 2 is the best JRPG on the PS2, despite being the worst version of the game available. This Dreamcast port has graphical glitches, poor texture maps, and inconsistent loading time. Despite all those flaws, the core gameplay and narrative elements are too strong to knock this out of my top 10.
Plot and story wise, Grandia 2 doesn’t offer anything incredibly new. Instead, it polishes those common JRPG elements to a shine. The characters are fun and engaging. The story moves briskly with a strong balance between drama and humor. It may not be original, but it’s extremely well done.
What is unique is Grandia’s combat system. It’s the most perfect combination of turn based and real time combat to date. Similar to FFX, all combatants appear on a turn meter and move across it based on their stats. Fast characters get to the end quickly, and with the right attack can knock other characters back down the attack order. It’s a cross between FF7’s ATB and FFX’s turn based mechanics, and it works beautifully. Grandia is the only JRPG series I go back to years later just to play a few battles. It’s that much fun.
Don’t play Grandia 2 on the PS2 if you have a PC or Dreamcast. Those versions are way better, but if you have a PS2 only definitely pick it up. It’s the system I played Grandia 2 on and I don’t regret it for a moment. The game is so good it outshines the problematic port it received.
Jak & Daxter
Naughty Dog wisely left the Crash franchise behind them in the move to the PlayStation 2. It nearly killed Crash Bandicoot, but it helped Naughty Dog thrive. Switching from Crash to Jak & Daxter pushed their creativity in new directions. It’s a beautiful open world platformer with an emphasis on story telling. Without Jak & Daxter I doubt we’d have Uncharted and Last of Us.
Anywhere you can see you can go. It might take some time to reach as you play through the various world areas, but you’ll get there eventually. Running, jumping and fighting through each area is smooth as butter, and detailed animation makes controlling Jak a lot of fun. His body squishes and stretches with each movement, like a classic Looney Tunes cartoon.
Jak & Daxter is a great series, but I’ve always loved the first one the most. It’s innocent, funny, and focused on platforming. Jak 2 and 3 introduce guns and stealing cars as mechanics, obviously inspired by GTA. I’ll take my cartoonish platformer any day.
Katamari Damacy
The King of All Cosmos got wasted and erased the stars in the sky. Only the Prince can travel to Earth and use the Katamari to create new stars from everyday objects…yes, that’s actually the story of this game. Katarmi Damacy is unlike any game of its time, and remains unique more than a decade later.
Rolling your Katamari around the level, small items stick to it, growing the ball in size. As it expands you can pick up bigger objects. Eventually you’ll be rolling up people, cars and buildings. There’s something very calming about terrorizing the world with your rolling antics. Levels change in styling and objects, but the basic of the game remain the same. It’s relaxing, familiar and fun.
Director Keita Takahashi is a mad genius. Katamari Damacy sounds like it shouldn’t work, but it absolutely does. Every PS2 fan owes it to themselves to pick up this strange little game. At the very least they’re guaranteed an experience unlike any other.
Klonoa 2: Lunatea’s Veil
Released in 2001, Klonoa 2 has never been re-released or ported to any other system. This is definitively a PS2 title and it belongs in your collection. It’s a brilliant 2.5D run and jump game with puzzle like levels. Graphics are cell-shaded, giving the game a colorful visual style that stands the test of time.
Tight controls allow you precise control over Klonoa’s actions at all time. Level design is clever in its use of the 2.5D environments, switching perspectives to enhance the world design and enemy placement. Levels are little puzzles to be solved, with great platforming challenges and enough enemies to feel accomplished beyond puzzle solving. Klonoa doesn’t play like Mario or Sonic. Its style is its own thing.
One thing to note, Klonoa 2 is not a challenging title. It has its moments, but you’ll never feel overwhelmed. The entire experience is a pleasant few hours, rather than a gauntlet. If you want twitch based game play, this isn’t for you. Come to Klonoa ready for cutesy characters, engaging but not challenging gameplay, and enjoy the ride.
MK Shaolin Monks
Co-operative beat-em-ups were a staple in the 90s, but slowly faded in popularity. By the PS2 era, very few beat-em-ups were being made. Most developers had switched to God of War style action, and dropped the co-operative element. Thankfully Shaolin Monk’s went old-school and gave us the best two-player beat-em-up in years.
Shaolin Monks was clearly designed for two players. The storyline follows Liu Kang and Kung Lao in a retelling of Mortal Kombat 2. Playing both characters opens up new areas and game content unavailable in the single player campaign. There’s a versus mode if players want to spar. Shaolin Monks is greatly improved with a friend at controller 2.
Combat is tight. The combo system is upgradable, giving players more options as they battle their way through the story. By the time you reach Shao Khan you’ll feel like a badass capable of destroying the ruler of Outworld. And of course, there’s fatalities!
Grab a friend, order a pizza, and spend the day blasting through this awesome PS2 classic. You can play it alone, but I don’t recommend it. This one is all about the co-op.
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time
Sands of Time was a critical darling, but I didn’t play it at release. I disliked the original Prince of Persia on PC, and passed the series by until the 2008 remake on PS3. The flow of platforming and combat hooked me, and the visuals were jaw dropping. Once I was done with it, I jumped right into Sands of Time. What I got was a very different game, but an awesome experience.
Sands of Time has it all. Fun characters, solid story, incredible level design, solid combat, flawless platforming, and great technical presentation (audio and visual). The weakest aspect is the combat, and the worst that can be said is its average. The rest of the gameplay does more than enough to elevate the game into my top 10.
What makes it stand out is the time reversal mechanic. Rewinding time allows the player to attempt difficult platforming and combat multiple times, but the developers wisely limited to how much Sand of Time the Prince can hold and requiring combat to refill the tank. This makes the decision to use your sand a strategic decision. Unlimited rewind would kill the game’s pace. You’d have no reason to stop and think things through…the death of a game meant to challenge you with complex platforming and puzzle elements.
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time presents players with complex puzzle levels to navigate, and discovering the correct path through is incredibly rewarding. For those times you fail, there’s the rewind mechanic. Combat spices things up, but never outshines the core exploration gameplay. It’s absolutely a stand out title on the PS2.
It’s Tricky to rock a rhyme, to rock a rhyme that’s right on time
It’s Tricky, it’s Tricky, Tricky, Tricky, Tricky!
SSX Tricky
I bought the original SSX with my launch day PS2, and sunk hundreds of hours into its arcade snowboarding gameplay. SSX Tricky released the next year and refined the experience. SSX3 came along and I enjoyed it, but there’s something about SSX Tricky that always brings me back to this one.
Mercury City Melltdown, Elysium Alps, Garibaldi and Tokyo Megaplex are the best of the bunch, but each track is perfectly crafted to provide a balance of speed and trick opportunities. The trick system is wild. Utilizing the L and R button steps, you’re given a huge variety of tricks to pull off. Pull off enough tricks and you get temporary unlimited boost, which can be extended by executing uber tricks. This combination of speed and tricks is addictive.
SSX Tricky is the best racing/sports game on the PS2. Only in a videogame can you snowboard through a giant pinball-esque level while completing 1080 spins that end with you hand standing on your board midair.
Timesplitters 2
I was torn between putting Future Perfect or 2 on this list, but I’m going with 2 because I spent far more time playing it back in the day. I’m more familiar with the game, and push comes to shove, it’s the one I would recommend anybody play.
From the developers of Goldeneye and Perfect Dark on N64, Timesplitters 2 plays very similarly to those classic titles. The shooting mechanics have the same weapon movement on screen. Single player uses an objective based mission structure. Multiplayer has similar settings to the N64 games.
Despite those similarities, Timesplitters 2 remains its own game. Its sense of humor helps set it apart. At some point every player needs to setup a 4-player death match, where everybody (including AI bots) are monkeys with flame throwers. It’s ridiculous and tons of fun. That’s the best way to describe the series as a whole. Timesplitters 2 is the best FPS on PS2.