Top 10 Hidden PS2 Gems

5. Soul Nomad and the World Eaters

Back when Nippon Ichi just hit it big with Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, they started releasing a bunch of other new IPs for the PlayStation 2. All of them were SRPGs, but they all offered something unique to the table. While Makai Kingdom and Phantom Brave ditched the grid based movement system for something a bit more… circular, Soul Nomad instead kept the more typical grid based system and introduced Rooms instead.

Rather than having individual allies deployed and fighting, you had units set in Rooms. Up to nine party members could be set in these rooms, and the entire unit moved and fought as one, with a particular character set as the leader. Different rooms would have different effects, and much like the characters, they could level up and their effects made more potent.

The system is well-implemented, and makes for some deep strategy gameplay, but it is Soul Nomad's plot that really brings everything together. In a desolate world, your character (who is a bit of a blank slate that you develop the personality for) is given an evil sword with a vengeful spirit named Gig within. As you travel the world, you meet many interesting characters, and unlike most Nippon Ichi titles, it's for the most part serious (Gig's early to mid-game antics not withstanding), offering a plot that really tells a deep story… and after you beat the game once, you can go full on evil on the Dark Path, which is by far the most convincing evil storyline I've seen out of a video game.