This is more of Nostaliga post than a Review, as I'm talking about my experience more than the games themselves. I did with PS1 something similar in September .
Salam (Peace)
I never had a Playstation 2™, but when I was a teenager I spent most of the summer with my cousins. sometimes in their own house... And they had a Playstation 2... I also played some on Emulator when I got older.
Unlike PS1 which I played a lot of its games... I only remember a handful of Playstation 2 games that I played with my cousins.... The best one was MGS2. There are some PS2 games I played with Emulator after that like KH2 below.
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
We were excited for MGS2 as we played MGS1 the summer before. I never thought that Snake wasn't the main protagonist and Raiden who we thought was one-level playable character was the hero of the game. While I watched my cousins playing (I don't remember I held the controller in this game) I thought Raiden was weaker in both strength and personality than Snake, that made his character more interesting.
In my late teens I was proud of my English level, but this game forced me to reconsider that. Because while I understood what's happening... Most of the terms they used got above my head.
There are a lot of scenes that moved me in that game... And in one fourth-wall breaking case we genuinely thought that the game was going to corrupt the Playstation 2, that was scary!! MGS2 is one of the games I wish to play again.
"Thanks Kojima"
Resident Evil 4
This is one of the masterpieces I'm glad I played... I played this a while after playing RE1,2 and 3. At that time it wasn't usual that we play a whole series in order!! Resident Evil 4 returned my favorite character of the series: Leon Kennedy.
While this game was very different than the parts before it... It wasn't less enjoyable. Though I wished there were more puzzles and less fighting, and I wished we kept fighting Zombies rather than ambiguous creatures. (But the series was never about the Zombies but Viruses which is acceptable.)
'm a bit disappointed that the success of RE4 made Capcom switch to full action in RE5 and RE6... Sometimes I really love the game series that stick to its roots.
Anyway, we played Resident Evil 4 more than once. Me, brother and my cousins and later by myself on Emulator... Yup, I love this masterpiece!!
Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3
I always say I don't play multiplayer games, but playing with family & friends is awesome!!
We spent long time playing this PS2 DBZ game, sometimes we played the story mode and we took turns, everyone has a fight or two in the session. Sometimes we played tournaments.
I remember liking the "What IF?" levels... I remember there being some overpowered characters we banned among us (maybe Broly?). I remember one of my cousins spamming Goku's special move. He would destroy us all and we would shout "No cheating!".
For a Dragon Ball game it was average and I'm sure today's games are a lot better but I liked this better than "Dragon Ball Infinite World"... And I'll never forget the many memories it gave us.
TEKKEN 5
It seems we loved TEKKEN 3 on PS1 more than we thought, because as soon as we found the PS2's TEKKEN 5 on the store we agreed to buy it. The game was... and around that time I understood that TEKKEN wasn't just few people fighting without a reason and the series actually had a story. (who would've thought?)
I always loved how TEKKEN various characters with different play styles, and it's one of the games that if you're really skilled you can beat anyone no matter which character you choose (contrast with DBZ above). I remember watching the movie related to TEKKEN 5 few years after and it explained some of the points of the game.
Kingdom Hearts II
I played this one on PC with Emulator in my college years, so it's one of the games I played as teenager nor the games I played with my cousins. I always loved Disney since I was a child and liked fantasy RPG worlds as much. And playing GBA Kingdom Hearts game few years before, I already knew about the series.
"Can you feel Sora?"
I bought Kingdom Hearts II while I thought it was KH1, But since the ending of KH1 was spoiled on me beforehand, I thought it was okay to play KHII before the first one. And I don't regret it!! There's something unique in this series, and what everyone criticizes about the convoluted story, I find it the best part of it!!
I loved the dual relationship between Sora and Roxas... Riku's fight against the darkness... Kairi's short awesome screen time... How they made Mickey a super hero!! The awesome recreation of Disney Worlds!! And the sad situation of Nobodies who fight just to have the right to exist...
Poor Roxas
Final Words
There are many PS2 Masterpieces™ that I have yet to play including ICO, Shadow of Colossus and FFX which I'll probably get on steam... But there are also some games I played that I didn't mention, like God of War and Final Fantasy XII which while I found really interesting I didn't feel the vibe of Final Fantasy in it.
Maybe I'll write another post in the future about them.