In the not-so-distant past, we produced a video called “10 Best-Reviewed PS2, Xbox and Dreamcast RPGs”, and many of you spotted the fact that the other console from the sixth generation, Nintendo’s GameCube, was missing. Well, thanks to some controversial review scores that we were in no way responsible for, the GameCube didn’t have any RPGs that broke into that generation’s top ten. Shocking, I know.
Undeterred by this outrage, many commenters suggested a list that focused on the best-reviewed GameCube RPGs, if only to give the console its moment in the TripleJump limelight. Well, we thought we’d get it done, because we’re proactive like that.
The same rules apply; we’ve gone out to find the best-reviewed GameCube RPGS, and where two or more games have an equal critic score, we’ve used the average user score to choose a winner. That’s all there is to it. Despite none of these games reaching a Metacritic average of 90 or higher, we think that there are some extremely sparkly gems in here, and we hope you’ll agree.
I’m Ben from TripleJump, and here are the 10 Best-Reviewed GameCube RPGs.
10. Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance – 79%
We start our adventure in the city of Baldur’s Gate, where so many grand journeys have begun. Apart from in the original Baldur’s Gate, where the escapade kicks off in Candlekeep … oh, and Baldur’s Gate II, where it gets underway in the city of Amn and you never even go to Baldur’s Gate. Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance definitely starts in Baldur’s Gate though, and it’s also the first console appearance for this classic RPG series.
Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance told the story of a group of adventurers getting mixed up in a plot involving the city’s clandestine Thieves Guild. The gameplay was switched up from its PC-based predecessors, moving from a strategic, top-down affair to a more action-orientated, hack-and-slash system. Despite this move, Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance still retained the series’ dependence on the rules of the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop game, placating dungeon masters the world over.
The GameCube port of Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance came after the PS2 and Xbox versions, and while those did slightly better with reviewers, the GameCube edition still handily satisfied that call to adventure. Great controls, a huge variety of weapons and enemies to use them on, and distinct playstyles provided by the three protagonists all combine to make this one a paragon of the Forgotten Realms.
9. Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life – 79%
Also coming in with a Metacritic score of 79, but faring far better in the user reviews, we have the GameCube’s first foray into the whimsical world of Harvest Moon. This easy-going series, better-known today by the Story of Seasons moniker, eschews the grand adventures and world-threatening villains that are usually found in RPGs, and focuses on the day-to-day life of an intrepid farmer in Forget-Me-Not Valley.
Would-be agriculturalists in Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life start their journey with little more than a couple of tomato seeds, a few tools, and a cow. From these humble beginnings it’s the player’s job to expand their farm by growing multiple crops, gathering more animals, and eventually turning a scruffy patch of land into a lucrative business.
These farm-based goals aren’t the protagonist’s only focus, though. Our strapping hero will be balancing his time carefully between farming, making friends with the locals, exploring, fishing, and even wooing the local bachelorettes. Honestly, there’s barely enough time in the day.
It’s not all fragrant meadows and adorable animals though. Reality ensues when the game eventually ends with the protagonist’s passing, and it’s also possible to end the game early by separating from your wife and son and being forced out of town.
8. Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean – 80%
Back to more traditional adventuring now, with Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean. This airborne adventure was developed by Monolith Soft, who are still steadily releasing RPGs for Nintendo in the form of the Xenoblade franchise. Unlike any of the games in that series, though, Baten Kaitos has a deck-based, card-battling combat system that sets it apart from the other titles on this list.
The game tells the story of Kalas, a winged hothead on a quest for revenge, who ends up gathering a party to fight back against an oppressive empire. The player doesn’t actually take on the role of Kalas though, and is instead a guardian spirit who observes the action from above. This is important, as it opens up an opportunity for a very nice twist later on in the story, that wouldn’t have really been possible if players were in direct control of Kalas’ actions.
The game was well-received for its graphics, music and story, and while some were put off by the card-based combat, the system had enough depth to stay interesting. For example, keep a health-giving edible item card in your deck for too long, and it’ll rot, making it deal poison damage instead.
It’s not often you get a chance to vanquish your enemies with a bunch of mouldy bananas, you know.
7. Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles – 80%
Also scoring 80% with the critics, but faring a little better with users, is a spin-off to the most successful JRPG franchise in gaming history. Well, unless you count Pokémon, that is. Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles is the first entry into the Crystal Chronicles series, and the gameplay focuses on protecting fuel for special crystals that keep a deadly, all-encompassing miasma at bay.
A multiplayer-focused RPG, Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles sees players teaming up to protect caravans that travel the land, gathering the aforementioned crystal fuel. This involves defeating enemies and solving various puzzles so that the caravan can progress.
The game was praised by reviewers, and ticked all of the boxes you’d expect a Final Fantasy game to tick, including innovative gameplay, great graphics, and memorable music. However, it did have one problem, and that was the fact that in order to play with multiple players, everyone had to have a Game Boy Advance and a link cable.
That’s right, if you wanted to set off on an adventure with your friends, you’d better hope they all brought their handhelds and accessories. Either that or you were facing a costly trip to the local game shop. Saving the world from toxic miasmas sure could get expensive.
6. X-Men: Legends – 81%
We’re leaving the whimsical and fantastical behind now, and moving on to a more modern, sci-fi setting, as X-Men Legends tells the story of the group of mutated comic book heroes as they battle various villains around the world. Players choose a team of up to four X-Men, and proceed through missions, unlocking new playable X-Men along the way. The combat is action-orientated, but RPG elements include the ability to gain experience and upgrade characters, and equip items that enhance their special mutant abilities.
Playable characters include popular mainstays like spooky-eyed weather witch, Storm, scary psychic lady, Jean Grey, and grumpy, slicey boy, Wolverine, and the game plays out from an isometric viewpoint as the player’s chosen mutants explore clandestine facilities and other such locations.
Critics enjoyed the game’s fluid combat system, the ability to choose from a large pool of iconic characters, and the use of cel-shading to give the 3D graphics a comic-book feel. X-Men: Legends was released on the Xbox and PS2 as well, with the Xbox version receiving the highest praise and the GameCube edition coming in second.
Incidentally, X-Men Legends was also ported to the N-Gage, with that version being handled by a developer called Barking Lizard Technologies. You’d have to be barking to own an N-Gage to play it on, though.
5. X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse – 82%
Sitting one whole point ahead of its predecessor in the GameCube RPG Hall of Fame is X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse. This sequel upped the ante when it came to the storyline, focusing on millennia-old mega-mutant, Apocalypse. This all-powerful bringer of doom presents such a threat that the X-Men have to team up with the first game’s antagonists to try and see him off.
What this means for the player is that the previous title’s roster of playable X-Men is bolstered by some of the more morally-questionable characters from the franchise. This includes the likes of snarling beast-man, Sabretooth, walking slab of meat, Juggernaut, and the infamous supervillain, Magneto, who never loses his car keys.
The addition of online play bolstered the original’s already-strong cooperative multiplayer, and reviewers were also happy with the new characters, grander scope of the story, and the smattering of new mutant abilities to play with.
X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse took what was great about the first game and delivered more of it, and letting players control the villains from the first game handily raised the story stakes and gave us the chance to blast people with evil mutant powers for once. For the greater good, of course…
4. Skies of Arcadia Legends – 84%
If you watched our previous video about the best-reviewed RPGs for the PS2, Xbox, and Dreamcast, you’ll know that we’ve already talked about Skies of Arcadia. Still, you can’t keep a great game down, and despite scoring less than its Dreamcast counterpart, Sega’s still-sequel-less RPG opus manages to break into the GameCube’s top four.
Skies of Arcadia Legends brings the epic story of air-pirate, Vyse, and his crew of swashbucklers and potential love interests across to Nintendo’s console in its entirety. The huge dungeons, ship battles, and sweeping continents full of secrets to discover are all present and correct, but Sega did more than just add the word “legends” to the title to give this GameCube version something to call its own.
The most obvious addition was tough, recurring boss encounter, Piastol, a pirate-hunting mercenary with a shady past, but slightly improved character models and a reduced random encounter rate were also welcome tweaks. That last one was a particular boon, as many would-be sky pirates found that the original game’s penchant for throwing groups of bugs, slimes, and other miscellaneous critters at you every few steps could drag the pace down somewhat. Pirating isn’t just about fighting endless waves of weird bats, you know.
3. Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II – 85%
Ah, we’re back in Dreamcast land again. Another game that made it onto our previous list was Sega’s multiplayer RPG, Phantasy Star Online, but this GameCube re-release adds a whole new episode to the mix, and finds itself in the upper echelons of GameCube RPG goodness as a result.
Where Skies of Arcadia saw fans of Sega-developed RPGs taking to the skies, Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II has them breaking through the atmosphere and into space. The huge colony ship Pioneer II acts as a hub world, where players can suit up, purchase items, and recruit fellow adventurers, before heading down to the planet Ragol to smash monsters, find loot, and discover what happened to Pioneer I.
The second episode adds further mysteries to uncover, and seven new areas to explore. It also adds extra classes for players to experiment with, and balances and tweaks some issues with the original game.
Unlike Sega’s Skies of Arcadia re-release, which was GameCube only, Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II also came out on Xbox, where reviewers were slightly less impressed, giving that version an average review score of 83. Our next entry is a bona fide Nintendo exclusive, though. Kind of. In the West. For a time…
2. Tales of Symphonia – 86%
The Tales of… RPG series has been going since its 1995 inception with SNES title Tales of Phantasia, right through to Tales of Arise. Tales of Symphonia marked a big step up in sales and popularity for the series, however, and the adventures of protagonist, Lloyd Irving, and friends saw the franchise take off in the West.
Like its predecessors, Tales of Symphonia is an action RPG with anime-styled visuals. Players embark on a quest to unite two worlds, exploring overworld maps and dungeon areas, solving puzzles, and engaging in real-time battles. Said battles start off as fairly simple affairs, with players controlling Lloyd as he moves, blocks, and slashes with his twin swords, but as higher-level skills are unlocked and magic-wielding party members are recruited, combat becomes a particle effect-filled spectacle where strategic use of powerful attacks and support skills is a must for survival.
Tales of Symphonia did get a for the PS2, but only in Japan, before eventually reaching Western PlayStation owners with its 2014 PS3 release. If you want to play the second-best RPG on the GameCube right now though, perhaps the 2023 remaster for Switch, PS4 and Xbox One will be of interest.
Stay and see what number one is first, though. I’ll give you a clue; the protagonist has a moustache.
1. Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door – 87%
The second game in the Paper Mario series, and the last one to be a true RPG, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door is a lengthy adventure featuring Nintendo’s world-famous mascot, a smattering of brand-new characters, turn-based combat, and an eye-catching visual style.
Far-removed from Mario’s usual, platform-based antics, the game saw players taking on the role of the heroic plumber as he explores the papercraft hub-town of Rogueport, a den for outlaws, runaways, and other ne’er-do-wells. From here, he’ll embark on various adventures to locate seven crystal stars, and said adventures can be anything from solving mysteries on a swanky train to fighting your way to the top of a wrestling federation.
Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door’s delightful, papery world is full of charm, wit and atmosphere. Innovative twists on traditional, turn-based combat, funny moments, great music, and wacky-yet-somehow-relatable characters all combine to make it truly deserving of a place in the upper echelons of its RPG generation. Despite not breaking into the 90s on Metacritic, the only negative remarks we can find about the game seem to be complaining that it was a bit text-heavy and lacked voice acting.
Hey, it could have been worse. Nintendo could’ve got Chris Pratt involved. He was probably a lot cheaper back then, too.
10 Best-Reviewed GameCube RPGs
In the not-so-distant past, we produced a video called “10 Best-Reviewed PS2, Xbox and Dreamcast RPGs”, and many of you spotted the fact that the other console from the sixth generation, Nintendo’s GameCube, was missing. Well, thanks to some controversial review scores that we were in no way responsible for, the GameCube didn’t have any RPGs that broke into that generation’s top ten. Shocking, I know.
Undeterred by this outrage, many commenters suggested a list that focused on the best-reviewed GameCube RPGs, if only to give the console its moment in the TripleJump limelight. Well, we thought we’d get it done, because we’re proactive like that.
The same rules apply; we’ve gone out to find the best-reviewed GameCube RPGS, and where two or more games have an equal critic score, we’ve used the average user score to choose a winner. That’s all there is to it. Despite none of these games reaching a Metacritic average of 90 or higher, we think that there are some extremely sparkly gems in here, and we hope you’ll agree.
I’m Ben from TripleJump, and here are the 10 Best-Reviewed GameCube RPGs.
10. Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance – 79%
We start our adventure in the city of Baldur’s Gate, where so many grand journeys have begun. Apart from in the original Baldur’s Gate, where the escapade kicks off in Candlekeep … oh, and Baldur’s Gate II, where it gets underway in the city of Amn and you never even go to Baldur’s Gate. Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance definitely starts in Baldur’s Gate though, and it’s also the first console appearance for this classic RPG series.
Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance told the story of a group of adventurers getting mixed up in a plot involving the city’s clandestine Thieves Guild. The gameplay was switched up from its PC-based predecessors, moving from a strategic, top-down affair to a more action-orientated, hack-and-slash system. Despite this move, Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance still retained the series’ dependence on the rules of the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop game, placating dungeon masters the world over.
The GameCube port of Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance came after the PS2 and Xbox versions, and while those did slightly better with reviewers, the GameCube edition still handily satisfied that call to adventure. Great controls, a huge variety of weapons and enemies to use them on, and distinct playstyles provided by the three protagonists all combine to make this one a paragon of the Forgotten Realms.
9. Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life – 79%
Also coming in with a Metacritic score of 79, but faring far better in the user reviews, we have the GameCube’s first foray into the whimsical world of Harvest Moon. This easy-going series, better-known today by the Story of Seasons moniker, eschews the grand adventures and world-threatening villains that are usually found in RPGs, and focuses on the day-to-day life of an intrepid farmer in Forget-Me-Not Valley.
Would-be agriculturalists in Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life start their journey with little more than a couple of tomato seeds, a few tools, and a cow. From these humble beginnings it’s the player’s job to expand their farm by growing multiple crops, gathering more animals, and eventually turning a scruffy patch of land into a lucrative business.
These farm-based goals aren’t the protagonist’s only focus, though. Our strapping hero will be balancing his time carefully between farming, making friends with the locals, exploring, fishing, and even wooing the local bachelorettes. Honestly, there’s barely enough time in the day.
It’s not all fragrant meadows and adorable animals though. Reality ensues when the game eventually ends with the protagonist’s passing, and it’s also possible to end the game early by separating from your wife and son and being forced out of town.
Heavy stuff. Those cows sure are cute though.
8. Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean – 80%
Back to more traditional adventuring now, with Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean. This airborne adventure was developed by Monolith Soft, who are still steadily releasing RPGs for Nintendo in the form of the Xenoblade franchise. Unlike any of the games in that series, though, Baten Kaitos has a deck-based, card-battling combat system that sets it apart from the other titles on this list.
The game tells the story of Kalas, a winged hothead on a quest for revenge, who ends up gathering a party to fight back against an oppressive empire. The player doesn’t actually take on the role of Kalas though, and is instead a guardian spirit who observes the action from above. This is important, as it opens up an opportunity for a very nice twist later on in the story, that wouldn’t have really been possible if players were in direct control of Kalas’ actions.
The game was well-received for its graphics, music and story, and while some were put off by the card-based combat, the system had enough depth to stay interesting. For example, keep a health-giving edible item card in your deck for too long, and it’ll rot, making it deal poison damage instead.
It’s not often you get a chance to vanquish your enemies with a bunch of mouldy bananas, you know.
7. Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles – 80%
Also scoring 80% with the critics, but faring a little better with users, is a spin-off to the most successful JRPG franchise in gaming history. Well, unless you count Pokémon, that is. Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles is the first entry into the Crystal Chronicles series, and the gameplay focuses on protecting fuel for special crystals that keep a deadly, all-encompassing miasma at bay.
A multiplayer-focused RPG, Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles sees players teaming up to protect caravans that travel the land, gathering the aforementioned crystal fuel. This involves defeating enemies and solving various puzzles so that the caravan can progress.
The game was praised by reviewers, and ticked all of the boxes you’d expect a Final Fantasy game to tick, including innovative gameplay, great graphics, and memorable music. However, it did have one problem, and that was the fact that in order to play with multiple players, everyone had to have a Game Boy Advance and a link cable.
That’s right, if you wanted to set off on an adventure with your friends, you’d better hope they all brought their handhelds and accessories. Either that or you were facing a costly trip to the local game shop. Saving the world from toxic miasmas sure could get expensive.
6. X-Men: Legends – 81%
We’re leaving the whimsical and fantastical behind now, and moving on to a more modern, sci-fi setting, as X-Men Legends tells the story of the group of mutated comic book heroes as they battle various villains around the world. Players choose a team of up to four X-Men, and proceed through missions, unlocking new playable X-Men along the way. The combat is action-orientated, but RPG elements include the ability to gain experience and upgrade characters, and equip items that enhance their special mutant abilities.
Playable characters include popular mainstays like spooky-eyed weather witch, Storm, scary psychic lady, Jean Grey, and grumpy, slicey boy, Wolverine, and the game plays out from an isometric viewpoint as the player’s chosen mutants explore clandestine facilities and other such locations.
Critics enjoyed the game’s fluid combat system, the ability to choose from a large pool of iconic characters, and the use of cel-shading to give the 3D graphics a comic-book feel. X-Men: Legends was released on the Xbox and PS2 as well, with the Xbox version receiving the highest praise and the GameCube edition coming in second.
Incidentally, X-Men Legends was also ported to the N-Gage, with that version being handled by a developer called Barking Lizard Technologies. You’d have to be barking to own an N-Gage to play it on, though.
5. X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse – 82%
Sitting one whole point ahead of its predecessor in the GameCube RPG Hall of Fame is X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse. This sequel upped the ante when it came to the storyline, focusing on millennia-old mega-mutant, Apocalypse. This all-powerful bringer of doom presents such a threat that the X-Men have to team up with the first game’s antagonists to try and see him off.
What this means for the player is that the previous title’s roster of playable X-Men is bolstered by some of the more morally-questionable characters from the franchise. This includes the likes of snarling beast-man, Sabretooth, walking slab of meat, Juggernaut, and the infamous supervillain, Magneto, who never loses his car keys.
The addition of online play bolstered the original’s already-strong cooperative multiplayer, and reviewers were also happy with the new characters, grander scope of the story, and the smattering of new mutant abilities to play with.
X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse took what was great about the first game and delivered more of it, and letting players control the villains from the first game handily raised the story stakes and gave us the chance to blast people with evil mutant powers for once. For the greater good, of course…
4. Skies of Arcadia Legends – 84%
If you watched our previous video about the best-reviewed RPGs for the PS2, Xbox, and Dreamcast, you’ll know that we’ve already talked about Skies of Arcadia. Still, you can’t keep a great game down, and despite scoring less than its Dreamcast counterpart, Sega’s still-sequel-less RPG opus manages to break into the GameCube’s top four.
Skies of Arcadia Legends brings the epic story of air-pirate, Vyse, and his crew of swashbucklers and potential love interests across to Nintendo’s console in its entirety. The huge dungeons, ship battles, and sweeping continents full of secrets to discover are all present and correct, but Sega did more than just add the word “legends” to the title to give this GameCube version something to call its own.
The most obvious addition was tough, recurring boss encounter, Piastol, a pirate-hunting mercenary with a shady past, but slightly improved character models and a reduced random encounter rate were also welcome tweaks. That last one was a particular boon, as many would-be sky pirates found that the original game’s penchant for throwing groups of bugs, slimes, and other miscellaneous critters at you every few steps could drag the pace down somewhat. Pirating isn’t just about fighting endless waves of weird bats, you know.
3. Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II – 85%
Ah, we’re back in Dreamcast land again. Another game that made it onto our previous list was Sega’s multiplayer RPG, Phantasy Star Online, but this GameCube re-release adds a whole new episode to the mix, and finds itself in the upper echelons of GameCube RPG goodness as a result.
Where Skies of Arcadia saw fans of Sega-developed RPGs taking to the skies, Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II has them breaking through the atmosphere and into space. The huge colony ship Pioneer II acts as a hub world, where players can suit up, purchase items, and recruit fellow adventurers, before heading down to the planet Ragol to smash monsters, find loot, and discover what happened to Pioneer I.
The second episode adds further mysteries to uncover, and seven new areas to explore. It also adds extra classes for players to experiment with, and balances and tweaks some issues with the original game.
Unlike Sega’s Skies of Arcadia re-release, which was GameCube only, Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II also came out on Xbox, where reviewers were slightly less impressed, giving that version an average review score of 83. Our next entry is a bona fide Nintendo exclusive, though. Kind of. In the West. For a time…
2. Tales of Symphonia – 86%
The Tales of… RPG series has been going since its 1995 inception with SNES title Tales of Phantasia, right through to Tales of Arise. Tales of Symphonia marked a big step up in sales and popularity for the series, however, and the adventures of protagonist, Lloyd Irving, and friends saw the franchise take off in the West.
Like its predecessors, Tales of Symphonia is an action RPG with anime-styled visuals. Players embark on a quest to unite two worlds, exploring overworld maps and dungeon areas, solving puzzles, and engaging in real-time battles. Said battles start off as fairly simple affairs, with players controlling Lloyd as he moves, blocks, and slashes with his twin swords, but as higher-level skills are unlocked and magic-wielding party members are recruited, combat becomes a particle effect-filled spectacle where strategic use of powerful attacks and support skills is a must for survival.
Tales of Symphonia did get a for the PS2, but only in Japan, before eventually reaching Western PlayStation owners with its 2014 PS3 release. If you want to play the second-best RPG on the GameCube right now though, perhaps the 2023 remaster for Switch, PS4 and Xbox One will be of interest.
Stay and see what number one is first, though. I’ll give you a clue; the protagonist has a moustache.
1. Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door – 87%
The second game in the Paper Mario series, and the last one to be a true RPG, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door is a lengthy adventure featuring Nintendo’s world-famous mascot, a smattering of brand-new characters, turn-based combat, and an eye-catching visual style.
Far-removed from Mario’s usual, platform-based antics, the game saw players taking on the role of the heroic plumber as he explores the papercraft hub-town of Rogueport, a den for outlaws, runaways, and other ne’er-do-wells. From here, he’ll embark on various adventures to locate seven crystal stars, and said adventures can be anything from solving mysteries on a swanky train to fighting your way to the top of a wrestling federation.
Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door’s delightful, papery world is full of charm, wit and atmosphere. Innovative twists on traditional, turn-based combat, funny moments, great music, and wacky-yet-somehow-relatable characters all combine to make it truly deserving of a place in the upper echelons of its RPG generation. Despite not breaking into the 90s on Metacritic, the only negative remarks we can find about the game seem to be complaining that it was a bit text-heavy and lacked voice acting.
Hey, it could have been worse. Nintendo could’ve got Chris Pratt involved. He was probably a lot cheaper back then, too.
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