The PlayStation 2 ran on RPGs, and nobody fed it like Square Enix.
Here’s the wrinkle most people forget: the PS2 era started before Enix and Squaresoft merged at all. By the time the console wound down, though, plenty of games were shipping under the new company logo. In between, Kingdom Hearts arrived out of nowhere, and Star Ocean, Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy each took a technical leap that’s still visible today.
Nearly every Square Enix RPG on the system was terrific in its own way. But three of them get treated as the top tier, and the followings they’ve built since their early 2000s releases haven’t shrunk. Thanks to remasters and remakes, all three are still easy to play in 2026.
Kingdom Hearts 2 won the argument, even if it shouldn’t have
I could (and would) make the case for the first Kingdom Hearts over its sequel. The larger fanbase disagrees, loudly, and adores KH2.
They’ve got reasons. It pushes the storytelling of the first game to new limits, improves combat tremendously, and hands you even more Final Fantasy and Disney characters to play with. The wider Kingdom Hearts story starts doing real work here too, which is the moment the series stopped looking like a fun one-off crossover and started looking like a franchise that would stick around.
Since the PS2, KH2 has turned up in countless ports and remasters. A Switch 2 version is on the way while everybody waits on Kingdom Hearts 4.
If you’ve ever wondered what it’d be like to fight Hades’ minions with FF10’s Auron at your shoulder, or wanted to see FF8’s Squall and Scrooge McDuck sharing a town, this is your game. It’s a fantastic RPG on top of all that.
Final Fantasy 10 is the PS2, basically
No RPG is more synonymous with the console. FF10 was a huge technical jump for Square Enix (Squaresoft at the time), with fully voice-acted cutscenes, detailed facial expressions and cinematics that looked gorgeous for the period.
And the tech wasn’t even the best part. Tidus and Yuna carry one of the best Final Fantasy stories anyone has written.
For a lot of players it’s simply their favorite Final Fantasy, and it lands near the top of most franchise polls. The Sphere Grid, Blitzball and the Cloisters of Trials are woven into what makes it memorable rather than bolted on.
The game has been ported almost endlessly over the past 12-plus years, most recently on Switch 2. Never played it? Go now. (Final Fantasy 12 deserves an honorable mention here, because it’s also fantastic.)
Dragon Quest 8 is the one that broke the series in the West
This was the first Dragon Quest in the U.S. to drop the Dragon Warrior name, and a big part of why the franchise finally caught on outside Japan. Until DQ11 showed up in 2018, DQ8 was the definitive entry for most fans in the West.
Like FF10, it was a jump forward. Go look at what Dragon Warrior 7 looked like on PS1 and the distance is obvious.
The cel-shaded graphics made characters and monsters feel like Akira Toriyama‘s illustrations standing up and walking around, a first for the series. Voice acting in the North American and European versions gave the cast real presence. At around 60 hours, you’re fully invested in the story long before the ending arrives.
The 3DS remake arguably improved on it. But the original is probably Square Enix’s greatest achievement on the PlayStation 2, and it holds that title against a shelf full of contenders.
