PS3 RPGs - The Ones to Watch before New Year

We established yesterday that 2008 has been an incredibly strong year for RPG fans, and a year of complete and utter wallet annihilation for anybody who likes so turn based battling, statistic-based action adventuring, or chessboard-style strategising all focused around an all-important plot.

The Playstation 3 is no exception to this onslaught of high quality, high budget titles. Despite the fact some fans and console war propagandists have been screaming out that the Xbox 360 has taken over as RPG heaven thanks to Microsoft throwing their weight and money around, the PS3 still has several RPGs that match and even rival the Xbox 360 line-up. PS3 owners have already been treated to the awesome Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice, share Enchanted Arms with the 360 and have another exclusive RPG property in Folklore.

Despite all this, there's still a great winter coming up for PS3 RPG fans, featuring some of the best franchises and developers the industry has to offer unleashing their long-awaited titles on the world. Without further ado, here is our RPGSite Top 3 RPGs to watch for PS3 before New Year.

Valkyria Chronicles
Another great tactical RPG hits the PS3. From SEGA comes Valkyria Chronicles, a strategy RPG that merges the traditional SRPG gameplay with real-time action sequences to make for a new and original experience. Valkyria Chronicles will see you command your units across a battlefield in a way not dissimilar to an RTS game, but when units meet the units will head into a real-time Action RPG style battle.

The game follows the story of a nation at war, and you take control of an uprising of citizens determined to protect their nation from invasion and threat. The graphics are beautifully cell-shaded, and the in-game environments factor heavily into battle -- hiding in shrubbery, for example, could give you an advantage, and walls can be destroyed by tanks.

We're especially excited for Valkyria Chronicles because it takes two genres we at RPGSite are very fond of -- RPGs and Real Time Strategies -- and merges them into a strange but pleasing combination that requires you to think and plan a little more than many RPGs do. While the fantasy elements are still there, in this game you'll be usings units you'd expect in Command and Conquer -- gone are the Knights, Monks and Mages, replaced by Assault Infantry, Engineers and Snipers. We love our classic RPGs, but this is a pleasant change. Must-own.

Fallout 3
Also featuring on our Xbox 360 list, Fallout 3 is the latest entry in the Fallout series, finally making an appearance almost ten years after Fallout 2 was released to critical acclaim for the PC. This title is set to bring the PC RPG to consoles in style with a combat system that will be pleasantly familiar to fans of Bethesda's Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, but also very different, making use of more modern weaponry in the same way that Mass Effect mixed the RPG formula with guns.

Launching in October, Fallout 3 sees your character fighting for survival in a post nuclear apocalypse Washington DC, a sprawling world deep and interesting enough to rival Oblivion's. Fallout 3 is set to be one of the greatest action RPGs ever created, and the fact it will be launching simultaneously on Xbox 360, PC and PS3 serves to make its success all the sweeter for RPG fans everywhere. Unless they own a Wii.

We're excited for this game because we absolutely, positively adored Oblivion and hailed it as one of the greatest Western RPGs ever -- and with the same writers, the same artists and similar gameplay but also sufficiently different to grab our interest, Fallout 3 is shaping up nicely.

Eternal Sonata
This final choice was a difficult one. I thought this through for quite some time, and to be honest, it was a coin toss between this title and one of the ones listed below as other interesting titles to check out. I'm glad I picked this one. Eternal Sonata is a truly fun RPG, taking traditional action RPG battling and making it interesting by adding a light/dark system. Depending on if a character is standing in the light or in the shade, the moves available to them will change. Want to heal? Gonna need to be in the sun. Offensive magic will be better in the dark.

This makes for an interesting experience and you're always thinking about these choices -- is the boss stronger in the light or dark? Are my light or dark moves more effective? Eternal Sonata is a great example of how to "switch up" classic RPG elements with new ideas. The game is beautiful, too featuring fantastic cell-shaded graphics and well animated characters.

Sure, the story goes on a bit. Sure, the quality of the voice acting is questionable in places. And yes, sure -- the game struggles to be fun in a few specific areas thanks to an abundance of easy-to-fight but slow-to-kill palette -swapped enemies. Despite all this, Eternal Sonata is an extremely solid next-gen RPG, and we're excited for the PS3 version because while we enjoyed the 360 original, this port is said to cure some of the issues we had with the original game, and give us move to do and one more character to control in battle. Either way, this game is worth it to experience the interesting battle mechanics if nothing else.

Once again we're at the end of our second top three RPGs to watch, this time for the Playstation 3. That's not all for you PS3 owners, though. If these three must-play RPGs aren't enough to quench your desire for the genre, there's others coming out before Christmas, including Sacred II: Fallen Angel, Rise of the Argonauts and, if it doesn't get delayed, a port of the 360/PC open world RPG Two Worlds. Combine that with a back catalogue including Folklore, Disgaea and others, and PS3 RPG fans have a lot to keep them busy this Winter.

That's all for our PS3 RPG round-up, until January, when we'll take a look at the RPGs of 2009.

Previously in the Series:
Winter 08 Xbox 360 RPGs to Watch