This seemed like a good way to wrap up this month of lists. Listlemania, if you will. It's the sequel to my ranking of pre-millennium RPGs, which is like a whole different world (mostly the 2D world versus the 3D world, mostly). We're picking up with 2001 onward here. If you missed the first list, it's HERE. Same general format, except it'll be over 23 and a half years instead of the 15ish that the first one covered. I don't want to take too much away from the 1000 List, which is still in-progress, so I'm not going to go too deep on most of these or include any fun stuff like "Toughest Part". We'll get some music interludes, though, when the aural pleasure of a game is just too good.
Honorable Mentions: Super Mario RPG HD, SaGa Frontier HD, Front Mission 2 HD, Romancing SaGa 2 HD. All of these were nice sharpened-up ports that I liked. They're too close to their original forms to be counted as new games, though. And it's already a tough call figuring out what really should count on this list. I'd say a remake needs a huge graphical overhaul or a bunch of new content to be considered a new game. All of these got ranked on the pre-millennium list, even if I've only played the HD version.
More Honorable Mentions: There are a few things that are notably missing and would probably place well if I'd played through them yet: Elder Scrolls Morrowind, Baldur's Gate III, Dragon Quest VIII, Shadow Hearts Covenant, Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Eiyuden Chronicles, Knights of the Old Republic, Warcraft III, and Witcher 3 all come to mind for starters.
#130. Lufia: The Ruins of Lore (GBA) - Considering the pedigree of above-average RPGs it hails from, this game was just bad from top to bottom. A total struggle to get through just to "finish the series" and a textbook example of how sometimes you're better off just not bothering. Is it worst than Lord of the Rings Vol. 1, the "winner" of worst RPG pre-millennium? Yes. Much worse. The reason it reaches rock bottom is because of how damn long it is, clocking in at around 40 hours with plenty of tedious maze-like areas. I didn't think a game with a class system could make it uninteresting, but this one managed to.
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#129. Dragonball Z: Legacy of Goku (GBA) - This game is SO BAD that it would be a shoe-in for worst spot on this list if not for the extremely short runtime. 4 hours of pain vs the 40 hours of pain that is Ruins of Lore lets this one barely escape the last spot. So what makes this so bad? Everything. The battle system is atrocious bump combat (which is terrible for something purported to be Dragonball Z), the hit detection is almost nonexistent (which makes bump combat somehow even worse), and the whole game consists of terrible mandatory sidequests. Every fight turns into "Solar Flare, punch once or twice, run away, repeat" for the entire game, and foes have tons of HP unless you grind excessively. And when the grinding is this un-fun...bleech. For a four-hour game this felt more like 20. I've heard the two sequels are miles better, but I didn't get to them.
#128. Xenosaga Episode II: Jenseits Von Gut and Bose (PS2) - Colossal letdown purely because of the incomprehensible battle system. The story and world were actually pretty good, though not much happened plotwise (it was clear that they thought they were getting the full six games for the XS series and could kill some time). Also loses points for the Shion redesign. They transformed her from a curvy nerd into a fairly generic pretty character and it was totally unnecessary. At least the third game in the trilogy makes up for this debacle by being the best of the three by a large margin.
#127. Fable (Xbox) - This was a victim of its own hype. It was supposed to be a huge advancement in RPGs and amounted to...well, not much. The character designs are horrendous, but I think what really kills this game is the gold thread that constantly tells you exactly where to go. Just follow that gold thread for 20 hours and beat the game, no problem. Kinda robs you of having to explore or figure anything out, and a substantially-large world loses all of its magic and mystery (not to mention challenge).
#126. Final Fantasy: All The Bravest (Mobile) - Barely even qualifies as an RPG outside of the name. Collect FF characters to form an army, then smash the army against armies of FF bad guys, over and over. It's all on autopilot so your input starts and ends with telling everyone to attack and hoping for the best. And yet it's still a more entertaining use of your time than Ruins of Lore. Gets some points for showing us FFVII, FFX, and FFXIII bosses in 2D for the first time ever.
#125. Suikoden 4 (PS2) - Another bad fourth game let down by expectations, Suikoden 4 should have just been a repeat of Suikoden 3 with new characters. The Trinity Sight System was a great idea. Instead it's this dull, bland game where everyone has bizarrely small heads. Nothing really even noteworthy about this one. What a letdown for a formerly great series.
#124. Pokemon Brilliant Diamond (Switch) - It's hard for a Pokemon game to not be good, but this one pulled it off. The superdeformed character models (that inexplicably turned into realistically-proportioned character models in battle) made the entire game kind of lame to play. The balance was odd, with most of the game being a pushover while the final boss is the hardest main story fight in the series. That endgame challenge is pretty much the only thing this had going for it, because it requires your party to actually be powerful and well-balanced.
#123. Pokemon Diamond (DS) - The classic version isn't much better. This was my reintroduction to Pokemon after a seven-year hiatus and I found the game to be a total slog to get through with the mind numbingly slow speed and the constant in--battle weather effects slowing it down even more. This just wasn't fun and it took me an age to get through.
#122. Dragon Quest VII (PS1) - Speaking of taking an age, this one had an insane runtime that I wish could have gone into a better game. It's a good "stranded on a desert island with nothing else to play" game and that's about the only thing it has going for it. The slow pace drags it way down and the battles look archaic and out of place for a game from late 2001. Soundtrack is good, at least, with some standout tracks.
#121. FFVII: Dirge of Cerberus (PS2) - The FFVII spinoff everyone hates. More of an action-RPG than anything else. Moody and atmospheric and it's cool to play as Vincent, but that's about it. Would be great to see this get a remake that fixes all the issues with it, because it had a lot of potential.
#120. Lords of the Fallen (PS3) - Not to be confused with the sequel, which is inexplicably also called Lords of the Fallen. I never got around to that one, which is unfortunate because it was said to be an improvement. However, this one kinda burned me out. It's very much a "poor man's Dark Souls" and as an RPG it's kinda weak and repetitive. It's also one of those "where do I go" kind of games and I spent a lot of time lost - a surefire way to make sure something doesn't get very high on the list. Factor in the low framerate and almost slow-mo at times gameplay and this one was a miss.
#119. Mortal Shell (PS4) - Speaking of a poor man's Dark Souls, that's literally what this is. It's actually a decent game, with an extremely atmospheric environment (a misty forest) and some decent gameplay. Problem is, it's super short, and only consists of like 3 areas. There's just nothing to it. It's a shame because it would be a great first act to a longer game.
#118. Mass Effect Andromeda (PS4) - This one was just weird. It was impossible to make a character that was actually attractive, the gameplay somehow felt worse than the older ones, and the story wasn't interesting. It also didn't get much out of the setting, covering a nebula somewhere in Andromeda (I guess the theoretical sequels would have actually gotten into the rest of that galaxy) that was less-interesting than the Milky Way we already had. Not sure why it even needed to take place in Andromeda, we have plenty of room over here for some random nebula. In any case, it's another bad fourth game...which has been a theme so far.
#117. Final Fantasy Type-0 (PS4) - A game that had some interesting ideas but managed to rub me the wrong way constantly. It's interesting in that it's a Final Fantasy war game that covers a massive conflict, and could have been a prequel to any number of other Final Fantasy games. The gameplay is basic as hell though, and range-based characters totally trivialize it. In a vaccum, it's acceptable, there are just better uses of your time.
#116. Final Fantasy IV: After Years 3D (DS/Mobile) - A game that flew totally under most people's radar, this is an After Years remake using the 3D style of the FFIV DS remake. It's like half the length of the original After Years because they omitted most of the massive final dungeon. Which is great if you don't like that dungeon (I don't), but not so great if you want a decent-sized game. Not sure why this even exists, but it does, and it's a rare curiosity more than anything else.
#115. Lufia: The Legend Returns (GBC) - Well, it's better than Ruins of Lore. Wasn't a fan of the nine-character parties, the boring procedurally-generated-looking cave dungeons, or the overall blandness of the whole thing. Had fun with it regardless, mostly in the early game where I wanted to win the "unwinnable" Gades fights and went through a lot of hoops to make sure I took him down. Aside from that personal challenge, the game was pretty Mid. Wish we'd gotten Lufia III: Ruins Chasers on the PS1 instead like originally planned. This one didn't even follow up on Arek. Blah.
#114. Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (GBA) - One of those "big disappointment" games. The card penalty system is what killed it for me. I spent years hyping this game up to myself as a new FFT but instead what I got was a poor imitation. When I finally got around to this, I spent most of the game trying to get around all the artificial limitations and random bullshit. Classes had all these requirements, so instead of just leveling pre-req classes to unlock the class you want, you had to go jump through hoops, unlock specific places, farm certain items, etc etc etc. Instead of just playing through the battles and worrying primarily about your adversaries, you were stuck worrying about the arbitrary rules placed on every fight, and trying not to get "yellow carded" or "red carded". When the rules for a given battle were bad ideas like "No using Swords", you kinda just started wondering if the designers were dropped on their heads.
#113. Secret of Mana Remake (PS4) - Not a terrible game on its own, just totally unnecessary. They gave the game a 2.5D makeover that caused it to lose a lot of its charm (and colors), while not adding anything to the story or fleshing out any of the original's unfinished content. Just a completely unnecessary remake. Would have been better off simply being a visual touch-up like the original smartphone version of the game.
#112. South Park: The Fractured But Whole (PS4) - While the previous South Park RPG (still to come) was awesome, this one got weird fast. It was a bit redundant after the first, the humor missed more than it hit. It's noteworthy for being the one game in history where I was high on weed for pretty much the entire duration. You won't see the follow-up, Snow Day, on this list. For some reason they dropped the RPG design and went with some kind of weird multiplayer arena shooter for that one.
#111. Pokemon: Let's Go Pikachu (Switch) - On one hand this is a terrific remake of the first game in the series, with all of the classic areas more fully-realized in 3D and a pet Pikachu following you around ala Pokemon Yellow. There are issues though. It's way too easy, and random battles are basically a thing of the past, replaced with a tedious ball-throwing minigame. When your targets escape like 80% of the time it really starts to get off-putting before too long. The ball-throwing kinda ruins the game actually. Oh well. I still liked it enough.
#110. Torna: The Golden Country (Switch) - The first 10-15 hours of this were fantastic, and it was headed towards a top 20 spot on the list. However, it fell apart at the end because you can't fight the final boss until you do forty-eight sidequests, which is an unwelcome obstacle for a lot of players. I'd done about 15 sidequests during the main game, which was a nice amount for me personally, and I had to halt the momentum of the story to go spend another 10-15 hours tracking down random errands. If they're required, then they aren't "side" quests. Worst part is that they're gated off in "blocks" of a few at a time so you can't just go around collecting/working on them. Instead you end up running out of quests to do as you get close to a break point, scrounging around to find the last few and having to do even the ones you don't like, until you hit the next threshold and a bunch of new ones pop up that you need to backtrack to try and find all of. Nothing about this makes sense, especially considering that it all happens right before the final battle, when the story is at a crescendo. A lot of the quests are filler, as well. This was handled poorly.
#109. Final Fantasy XV (PS4) - Square designed a really interesting world for this one and the four main characters (and their brotherhood) are great. The villain might be the best FF villain since Kefka, no joke, and they even try to recreate the World of Ruin for the endgame. So why's it my lowest-ranked main-series FF on here? Because you can hold one button to win. Every battle, just hold one button, win. Maybe occasionally use a potion if you turned up the difficulty. I mean there is nothing to this. It feels like a potentially great game that never actually had the greatness added. Add some uneven pacing where most of the story happens in the last 20% after a lot of nothing for the first 80%, and this is far and away my least-liked modern FF. Also, much like Secret of Mana, all of the characterization of the villains appears to have all been left on the cutting room floor due to time constraints.
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#108. Makai Toushi SaGa (Wonderswan Color) - WSC lands on the big board with this remake of Final Fantasy Legend for the Game Boy. While they did a great job sprucing it up, adding color, etc, the game still has a lot of fundamental flaws and is consistently janky. The City/Ruins world is somehow even more tedious than the Game Boy version because Suzaku keeps attacking even after you get the bike for some reason. I'll always have a soft spot for this game, despite all of its flaws.
#107. Pokemon Legends: Arceus (Switch) - An open-world Pokemon was a great idea, but this game didn't hold my interest and got super redundant by midway through. Having to constantly check oddball objectives off a list (like "collect 15 metapods") felt like MMO-style busy work. Didn't feel much like Pokemon either. A lot of people love this one because...it's 3D? It's open world? Yeah, a big empty world. A lot of the positive reviews of it sounded like they didn't even see past the first or second major area. This game isn't actually great, and I challenge anyone to actually play all the way through it.
#106. Fallout 4 (PS4) - A game that was mainly guilty of being aggressively mediocre. It has that Terminator Salvation effect where everything is bright and sunny instead of shaded and and overcast like the other games, and it makes the whole thing not really feel like Fallout. I didn't hate the game or anything but it just didn't live up to its pedigree at all. After the years of hype, it was a colossal disappointment, but it's hard to put it on any of my "colossal disappointment" lists because the game itself is structurally solid. On its own it's actually decent, but it hardly lives up to FO3 or FONV on any remote level.
#105. Mass Effect 3 (PS3) - My least-favorite of the main trilogy, largely due to how much the RPG elements had been de-emphasized by this point. Probably the closest thing to a straight-up shooter on this list, especially if going with the Soldier class like I did. Vanguard or Adept are much more fun / RPG-like respectively, but it still doesn't feel that much like its predecessors. The divisive ending didn't do it many favors either. Still, this was pretty much the biggest game in the world for a week or so in March 2012.
#104. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (PS3) - Decent game here, but not much more than decent. Found it very un-memorable, and the gameplay kinda felt like a single-player World of Warcraft. Which isn't really a good thing, as the appeal of an MMO is the world/players, not the MMO fetch quests and low-APM button rotations. Don't have anything bad to say about this though, it's respectable for what it tried to do. Just forgettable, alas.
#102. Final Fantasy II: Dawn of Souls (GBA) - Includes PSP remake - The remake of FFII with new content and a bunch of QOL improvements was actually a pretty good time. Especially the PSP version with sharper graphics. The new "Soul of Rebirth" postgame was instantly the best part of the whole game and is worth playing. SOR has a simple premise: Minwu leading the other characters who died during the main game in a mission to defeat the Emperor in hell itself. Unfortunately SOR isn't the whole game, and most of the game is still FFII. So it's kinda low on the list. If SOR were the whole game, it'd be like 30 spots higher, no doubt.
#101. Sword of Mana (GBA) - Full-on remake of Final Fantasy Adventure, but barely recognizable as such. I wanted more Secret of Mana and less Legends of Mana, and unfortunately this one leans way more towards LOM in terms of fairytale aesthetic and weird-ass character models. Lots of Precious Moments style characters here, and that little psychopath Lil' Cactus is probably around somewhere too. If one wants a remake of FFA, there's the much-better Adventures of Mana.
#100 Pokemon X (3DS) - Gen 6 is another Pokemon gen that I'm not super crazy about. As the 3DS debut of the series, it looks great and the colors are vibrant. However the game itself feels stiff and limited compared to the stellar Gen 5, and it was pretty clear at this point that the series needed to be shaken up badly.
#99. Fable 2 (Xbox 360) - Liked this a lot more than the first one. The character models no longer look horrendous, the game feels more mature, and it doesn't hold your hand as much. That said, it still wasn't great, and there's very little about this game that I found particularly memorable. It has all the tools to be great, but couldn't put it together.
#96. Dragon Quest VI (DS/Mobile) - The weakest of the three DS DQ remakes. DQ6 is kind of a long plodding game to begin with, and this remake doesn't do much to address that. The most fun I had was turning this into a "grinding simulator" and maxing all of the classes in Spiegelspire while on commutes and airplanes. It's the biggest class-grind of any game I've played outside of DQ7 and a great time-waster.
#95. Baten Kaitos (Gamecube) - Decent game here with some inventive worlds. Some of them are quite magical, and I like how colorful/creative it gets. It never really clicks into full gear though, and the story lacks oomph. Basically a poor man's Chrono Cross in a lot of ways. At least the card battle system is interesting. A game that had its moment in time, but only a moment.
#94. Suikoden Tactics (PS2) - The B-Side of Suikoden 4 is a considerably better game, but it still follows the largely-uninteresting Suikoden 4 story. What gets me the most about the post Suikoden 3 games is that they were all set up to heavily involve Harmonia in the next games, and just kinda didn't. What happened to Harmonia? Regardless, okay tactics game here, nothing special, and not memorable enough for me to have much to say about it.
#93. Xenosaga Episode I: Der Wille Zer Macht (PS2) - Two things I love about this: The UMN Mode music, and the sense that this was the beginning of a fully-realized "Xenogears Perfect Works" series of games. Nope, so that was a big disappointment. Taken for what it actually is, the game is decent. The lack of music actually adds atmosphere and makes the isolation of space feel more pronounced. The battle system is basic, but fine. The problem is that as a standalone story without the Xenogears connection, it isn't that interesting. And as atmospheric as it is, if they had Yasunori Mitsuda on board they really needed to add more music to this on general principle. He's debatably the best game composer of all time, yet they had the guy do like 5 tracks for the game and the rest is silence.
Music Interlude: The UMN menu screen (where you can look at story/location/monster entries from the game) is one of the most soothing video game tunes I've ever heard. One of Yasunori Mitsuda's finest works, and a tune that really stoked the embers of how excited I was at this game at first.
#92. Parasite Eve (PS1) - This game actually should have been on the Pre-Millennium list, but I missed it in my sweep, so it sneaks onto this list (along with Vagrant Story, which will place considerably higher). This released close enough to the era switch to probably get away with it, anyway. It is a super-atmospheric RPG that takes place in modern-day NYC. I never climbed the optional uber-dungeon the Chrysler Building, so I have a reason to give this another go. Will I? Probably not. Wish the sequel didn't have tank / horror game controls, because try as I might, I haven't been able to get into it. This first one though? Great controls, great everything, super-underrated. The soundtrack captures the vibe of "NYC in the wintertime... during an outbreak of John Carpenter's The Thing" and the whole game is just a bit of a mood.
#91. Code Vein (PS4) - Anime action-RPG with lots of Soulslike mechanics, sexy characters (and a character-creator) and lots of things to like. However, it's VERY breakable, lacks the refinement of a Fromsoft game, and the action mechanics really overpower the RPG mechanics. Likely deserves to be higher than this, but it's tough to put it above so many decent RPGs on an RPG list.
#90. Final Fantasy: Four Heroes of Light (DS) - Old-school RPG that brings back Final Fantasy classes and gives you four characters to play around with. Unfortunately for about half the main quest you don't have access to all four of them, having to make do with two-person parties which kills the whole gimmick of the game, being able to play around with different class combinations. You're limited to one healer and one another for that first 50% of the game, which gives you a whopping...one character to play with classes on. Why didn't they call it "Two Heroes" then? Way to kill their own gimmick. The second half of the game is great, but it was too late to get the game higher up the list. The whole thing should have been styled like Final Fantasy III and given you four characters as a canvas from the get-go.
#89. Megaman X Command Mission (Gamecube) - A Mega Man X RPG. What's not to love? The gameplay is good and the music is great. Just wish there were more to it. Still, as a big Mega Man fan, I was all over this game and enjoyed the hell out of my one playthrough.
#88. Fire Emblem 10: Radiant Dawn (Wii) - Fire Emblem games are always good, even when they're not that good. This one was okay but it was a bit of a letdown considering how great the name is. "Radiant Dawn". Awesome.
#87. Fire Emblem 9: Path of Radiance (Gamecube) - Superior game overall to its follow-up, but I don't rank it too high because of how dull the visuals are. After the colorful visuals on the SNES and GBA, they took more of a realism approach for this one, and that means lots of dull browns and greys.
#86. The DioField Chronicle (PS5) - Strategy game from Square-Enix that had a lot of potential. Has some characters I liked and the whole thing moved along at a good pace. It just didn't stand out. Yeah, we're in the "treaded water" portion of the list where none of these things are "bad" per se, just not as good as they could have been. The water looks amazing in this game, and the visuals in general are something else, so it's got a lot going for it.
#85. Witcher 2 (Xbox 360) - Sadly the only Witcher game I've finished, and I played it well after the era where it was current, so the graphics suffered a lot. Playing it in-era likely would have resulted in a much higher ranking. Regardless, it's a well-done game and you can see the genesis of much of what made Witcher 3 so great, but it gets a little redundant after a while with the battle gameplay loop.
#84. Final Fantasy Tactics A2 (DS) - I've gone into how the long and tedious final boss brought this game down a few notches for me, but overall it was much better than the first FFT Advance, which was a huge letdown. Takes the same concept, refines it with better visuals and more classes, adds a likeable main character, and gets rid of the horrible card penalty system. Not a bad game at all.
#83. Adventures of Mana (Mobile) - A nearly 1:1 remake of Final Fantasy Adventure with vibrant colors, a few things fixed (like pickaxes), and good controls for a mobile game. Had a real good time with this one. At the end of the day it's a very basic game, though.
#82. Final Fantasy III 3D (DS/Mobile) - Looks MUCH nicer on phone than DS. Overall it's a big improvement on the NES original, much like AoM is for FFA. Had a fun grind after finishing the game so I could get to level 99 for the new superboss, Iron Giant. This required hours of fighting wyverns on Bahamut Mountain, which a phone game like this is really good for. Probably the best version of FFIII out there due to the characters having names/personalities and there being a little bit of postgame.
#81. Onimusha Tactics (GBA) - I made this one a lot of fun, but when it comes down to it, it's a very middle-of-the-road tactics-style game. Lack of customization options like classes mean there's very little replayability to be found here. The main character is so OP that he pretty much resolves all of your problems and everyone else is just along for the ride. It made it this high on the list mainly because of the fun I had with it on my own.
#80. Dragon Quest IX (DS) - A firm "middle of the road" DQ game. Didn't bother me in any way, didn't really get me excited either. It was just sorta there, content for the sake of content, and I played through it because of the Dragon Quest name. Didn't like the kindergarten-like character designs, and none of the characters particularly appealed to me, but I did like the class system and the party customization. It's the first one since DQIII to let you totally form and customize your own party. Matter of fact, this one might do classes the best out of the one-player DQs that have classes (DQ3, DQ6, DQ7, DQ9).
#79. Final Fantasy XVI (PS5) - It's called Final Fantasy, but it plays more like Devil May Cry. Which is great if you're playing Devil May Cry. Since you're playing an FF game, meh. Only having one character to play as gets pretty old after a while too, and you're using the same few moves for most of the game. The story and dialogue really carry this one, and it's pretty good for the first 75% or so of the main quest. After playing the DLCs recently, this moved up a bunch of spots on this list. It's a really high-quality game, I just wish it felt like an FF game instead of a DMC/Game of Thrones hybrid (which is cool in its own way).
#78. Fire Emblem 8: The Sacred Stones (GBA) - Places this high because of how damn hot Eirika is. But seriously, this is the most technically advanced (NPI) of the three GBA 'Emblems, but I think it's the least-great of them by a mile. While the story of the previous two FEs was gripping and the characters memorable, this one delivers more of the same gameplay without the same gravitas. It's also much harder than the previous games which wasn't really needed.
#77. Pokemon Sun (3DS) - Mixed feelings on this one. It had a ton of nostalgia about it, and felt like a really big deal after several years off from main-series Pokemon and the not-amazing Pokemon X. However, the story is really slow and nothing about it was particularly memorable for me. Liked the Hawaii setting, and remember people getting really excited for this one. So for the social aspects of the whole thing (which was a little after the Pokemon Go craze, no less), I give these decent marks.
#76. Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark (Switch) - Super solid tactics game for the Switch that very few people seem to know exists. There are nearly infinite combos of classes you can make in this game, and it's just a damn good time. It does fall prey to that thing that some Tactics games do where the main character (and usually one other character) get excessively strong and end up carrying the rest of the party. I didn't really like the art style and the characters are a little bit flat, which keeps it from soaring the way it probably could.
75. Dragon Quest IV (DS/Mobile Remake) - It's Dragon Quest IV, always a good time. Add in DQVII graphics and the ability to actually control your entire party, and it kinda blows away the original DQIV. This is probably what DQVII should have been, and the only thing keeping it from being higher is that it isn't new, and that the PS1-like graphics aren't exactly great to look at a lot of the time. It's also over pretty fast. Good game though.
#74. Hades (PS4) - Lot of people would have this in their top ten, but it didn't land with me the way it did for others. Just not really into roguelikes with temporary upgrades. Liked the artwork, liked the characters, the gameplay was pretty solid, etc. However it was over pretty quick and didn't make a lasting impression.
#73. Final Fantasy VII Remake (PS4) - While it was great to see FFVII return and FINALLY get a remake, the issues I had with this one stand out to me above the things I liked about it. The final dungeon is way too long, taking up around 30% of the total runtime of the game if not more. The final chapter goes completely off the rails into la-la land. The battles get too repetitive after a while. There's way too much Sephiroth, a guy that the original game used sparingly for a reason (to build tension). The slums are way too bright and sunny. Overall though, it was a cultural moment in the gaming world and a game that I very much appreciated. I was pretty stoked for a game that took place entirely in Midgar (a place I thought was WAY underutilized in the original game). However, rather than fleshing out Midgar and adding new areas (especially more of the city's tantalizing upper level), they mostly just added tons of very overt padding. It's unfortunate. At least we got that one new chapter on the upper level, the main part of Midgar that needs more attention. Square-Enix is still leaving a lot of meat on the bone with that setting; Midgar is one of the most interesting settings in video game history and we've barely gotten to explore 10-15% of it across all of the games.
#72. Wild Arms 3 (PS2) - Good game that suffered from two things. One, it isn't as good as the first two games in the series. Two, by the time I played it, it was old news, and it's tough to go back to PS2 games even when they're in HD like this one. At the end of the day, it was fine, and it was there. Was fun to cover it on here, which was probably the only reason I dug this one up. If we ever get a remaster of the first two, as is all the rage currently, maybe I'll cover 'em too.
#71. Triangle Strategy (Switch) - A decent tactics game that I mainly remember for how damn gorgeous it looks with the 2D-HD. Water in particular looks amazing here. Cool storyline too, with multiple paths.
#70. Final Fantasy XIII (PS3) - Hit or miss game here. The environments are some of the most gorgeous on the entire PS3 system, but most of the areas are completely linear hallways. Yeah, FFX is also super linear, but it's taken to the extreme here. There isn't much customization either, with the Crystarium functioning as a linear version of the Sphere Grid. The leveling system is, basically, a hallway itself. The world is interesting, but a lot of the writing is incomprehensible. The good news: The battle system is great, with the focus being on setting up paradigms and switching between them constantly as a way to issue commands. Like a simplified version of FFXII's gambit system that moves faster and lets you take a more active role. There's no reason to ever enter regular commands in this game; just switch your paradigms between the sets you've put together, let the characters do their thing, repeat. Unfortunately the battle system alone can't pull this to a higher level. The battle system gets brought back and improved for FFXIII-2 at least.
Music Interlude: FFXIII Chocobo Theme. Listened to this a lot after playing the game in 2011. While it's a little weird, it's one of the happiest tracks, my favorite Chocobo theme since FFIV's Black Chocobo, and a track that manages to make me nostalgic for the "old days" of FF. The funny thing is, the "old days" of 90's FF were as far away in 2011 as this game is now.
#69. Pokemon Emerald (GBA) - Kind of a lost era for me in Pokemon, Gen 3 is definitely the one I've played the least. It doesn't have the childhood nostalgia of playing Gen 1 or hearing about Gen 2, and a lot of my issues with Gen 4 start creeping in here. Especially slowness. It's a good game, no doubt, but I can't rank it higher than this.
#68. Lost Odyssey (XBox 360) - Really cool game with a neat aesthetic, story, and characters. Might have been the first RPG I played on the PS3/360 gen, not sure. Could probably be higher on this list if I'd spent more time with it or gotten more attached to the characters. A lot more people would remember this one if it had been called Final Fantasy 13 and it probably could have been, given the developers.
#67. Ys Book I + II (PSP) - My only experience with the earliest Ys games comes via this remake. Both are a fine time, but most of what I remember is how huge and time-consuming the last dungeon of Book II is. Seemed like half the runtime of the entire game was wandering around in that one dungeon and it dragged a lot, to say the least. So it's difficult to rank this higher even if the game was fundamentally an enjoyable one.
#66. Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII-3 (PS3) - This was a great one-time playthrough and I even platinumed it. However there's very little reason to ever revisit it. It's an RPG version of Majora's Mask, with the same time limit and four main areas extending off the hub area. Takes some time to figure this one out, but once you do it's a memorable time. But yeah, once you've played it once there isn't much else to see here compared to your average FF game. There are some sweet dresses to find and equip, which is the main thing I remember about it.
#65. Suikoden 3 (PS2) - Game I only played through once and have been nostalgic for ever since. Never replaying that to ruin the memory. I consider this firmly in the middle of the Suikoden series: Not as good as the good ones, not as bad as the bad ones. Which is also around where it lands on this list: Right between the domain of the not-great and the great, and exactly halfway down the list.
#64. Persona 3 (PS2) - This one coincided with watching a lot of Buffy, so I associate the two of them. It took some work to get into this, but once I did, it was a real experience. Never finished the "DLC", The Answer, too hard. Luckily it's just optional. Very unique, very interesting game that was very much in a class of its own circa 2008 or so when I finished it.
#63. Tactics Ogre: Knight of Lodis (GBA) - Solid follow-up to Tactics Ogre that is clearly scaled-down quite a bit. Functions as a decent prequel. Enjoyed it a lot as part of the overall mythos. I should really do something with this, and Ogre Battle, at some point for this site before it's all said and done.
#62. Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim (PS2) - A Ys game that I enjoyed way more than any of its much better-known follow-ups. This one gets more into all of the lost ancient civilizations / Atlantis / pre-Sahara mythology that some of the other Ys games (namely Ys V) hinted at. It also has an absolutely sick final boss theme.
#61. Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia (3DS) - It's a Fire Emblem game. It's decent like all the others. Notable for having a super hot main character, and being a remake of Fire Emblem Gaiden (much like Shadow Dragon is a remake of the original Fire Emblem). Alas, the three on Super Famicom seem to have been left to wander in the woods, which is a shame. I should check those out. In any case, this game isn't too drawn-out and gives you a good amount of story, making it just right.
#60. Final Fantasy IV: The After Years (Wii) - The FFIV sequel that I was so stoked to play, it was the first thing I played on the Wii console once I had one. Not any of the Wii's big exclusives, no. A lowly Wiiware title with 1993 graphics. Compared to most main-series Final Fantasies, this game doesn't measure up. However, as a massive FFIV fan, I got a lot out of this, and it's my list dammit! Liked the chapter system and revisiting all these characters I hadn't seen in a long time, to see how their lives (canonically) turned out after making up stories in my head for years. The only downside to this is that the final dungeon takes up like half of the game and is a bit much to deal with. Other than that, it's as good of a "retro-styled sequel to a retro game" as I've ever seen.
#59. South Park: The Stick of Truth (PS3) - The modern era's answer to Earthbound. Had a great time exploring the town and enjoying the offbeat humor unique to this show. The gameplay was also far better than it had any right to be. Bleed builds are a little too OP, and there isn't much replay value. It's a great time for that first run-through, though, especially for a fan of the show.
#58. Pokemon Alpha Sapphire (3DS) - Remake of Gen 3 that, IMO, improves on Gen 3 quite a bit (and looks very modern by Pokemon standards). This one is sort of a bridge between 2D Pokemon and 3D Pokemon and is noteworthy for that reason.
#57. Ys IV: Memories of Celceta (PS4) - Got this one ages ago for like $20, finally played it a couple years ago, turned around and sold it for almost a hundred. Talk about appreciating in value. The game itself is fine, pretty solid 2D Ys game.
#56. Fire Emblem Engage (Switch) - The latest Fire Emblem game is...well, it's Fire Emblem. It doesn't really do anything new, but it's got good gameplay and some gorgeous character models for some of the women. Fire Emblem has always been strong in that department. I'd put this significantly below Three Houses because at least that one tried to do something new.
#55. Live-a-Live HD-2D Remake (Switch) - Very good-looking remake of an underrated Super Famicom RPG, deserves quite a bit of credit for that. The HD-2D craze of remaking 90's RPGs is one that I hope continues for a while. While this isn't deep or replayable, really, it's a very nice one-shot playthrough.
#54. Pokemon FireRed/LeafGreen (GBA) - Probably the best version of the iconic Pokemon Gen 1. Doesn't try to do anything fancy, just gives you a nicer version of Gen 1, with color and some QOL improvements. I've got zero negative things to say about this one and lots of warm fuzzy memories of it. If someone asked me what the best way to experience the origins of retro Pokemon was, I'd suggest playing this one without hesitation.
#53. Xenoblade Chronicles X (Wii U) - One of those games that sat on the shelf for years before I finally made some time to get to it. Nice big open world game with giant mechs. I was really hoping for another Xenogears here but instead I got...well, not Xenogears, that's for sure. It does capture the mech gameplay pretty well, at least. I liked the various biomes and how diverse the environments were, exploration was a joy, and the extremely long wait to get mechs made their eventual arrival mean a lot more.
#52. Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin (PS4) - A prequel to the very first Final Fantasy that uses the Soulslike gameplay that is all the rage nowayears. Made by the Nioh team, this one's got some serious talent behind it. I've heard it's hard, but I'm not sure what people are talking about. Outside of maybe the first boss, and the fairly-overtuned Tiamat, I never really ran into any problems with this game. The remakes of various locations from the NES original, with striking 3D visuals and an incredible soundtrack, made this game a real experience. It almost comes off as a love letter to the original game. I'd love to rank it significantly higher, but at the end of the day it feels more like an action game than an RPG. Also the DLCs are kinda terrible because they try to turn the game into an MMORPG (by making everything take an age and a half). I'd have fonder memories of it if I just stuck to the main game, which is all you need anyway. Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the fantastic class system, with a plethora of diverse classes you can switch between on the fly and level up independently of each other.
#51. Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin (PS4) - A massive game that can keep someone busy for a long time. There are so many builds to try and armors/accessories to find and areas to traverse that it feels like a legit world. I had the most fun playing as a "Griffith build" that had paladin-like abilities and stats. You can mix and match things like that easily enough. A basic Rapier turned out to be one of the best weapons in the game with proper forging and buffs added to it. Sometimes you just need to find the right weapon for one of these games to finally click. It's another of those "moody" games that I tend to like a lot, having its own unique vibe all throughout. It's a perilous journey, but that's what makes it fun. The early games in this series were so good that it took me many years to even move onto Dark Souls III. Never needed to. That's when you know a series is good, when you take years to actually finish the series because you keep replaying the earlier entries. All of that said, it's probably the worst of the modern Fromsoft RPGs. There are some balance issues and the level design can be a bit whack. The rough edges make more sense when you find out this one was made by the Fromsoft B-Team, not Miyazaki's team.
Music Interlude: Majula's theme - One of the best hub zones in any game ever. The music encapsulates that perfectly, giving you something to listen to while you gaze across the water at sunsets.
#50. Final Fantasy Record Keeper (Mobile) - A phone game that recreates boss fights from across the FF series, allowing you to assemble a team from characters from across that spectrum as well. This game was unfortunately shut down a few years ago, but I kept going back to it for many years before that just to see what new fights they'd added, what new characters were available, what iconic weapons from the series would show up, and so forth. Unfortunately, it's a gatcha game, and it's hard to rate it higher. I got a ton of enjoyment out of checking in with it, in any case, and had a number of parties I assembled and micromanaged. I think my "main" group was Orlandu, Ramza, Cecil, Rosa, and Sephiroth. Good times.
#49. Fire Emblem 7: Blazing Sword (GBA) - Most people's introduction to the Fire Emblem series in the West, this is a great way to get acquainted with the series. Some series-best protagonists here like Lyn and Hector, and it's an enjoyable time throughout. Also has a great name. I never played the first five FEs, but out of the second five, this could be as good as it gets. Aside from maybe...
#48. Fire Emblem 6: Sealed Sword (GBA) - The sequel to FE7, weirdly-enough (meaning FE7 was a prequel when it came out). Surprised this never got brought to the US as "Fire Emblem 2" or something. When played right after FE7, it tells a pretty epic story, and I actually prefer this one slightly due to the tougher gameplay that rewards you for micromanaging. Just be warned that it's quite a bit more difficult than FE7.
#47. Pokemon Black (DS) - For me, this and Pokemon Black 2 are pretty much a package deal, as I played them back to back (much like the previous two entries). I consider Gen 5 to be the pinnacle of retro Pokemon. This one is more narrative-driven than earlier games in the series and raises the bar quite a bit.
#46. Pokemon Black 2 (DS) - I prefer this one because it gives us more of a traditional Pokemon game, in the same world, which was refreshing after Pokemon Black took some risks. Most people would probably disagree with me about it being ahead of Pokemon Black, but either way, I found this one to be a blast and a good way to cap off this duology.
#45. World of Final Fantasy (PS4) - A love letter to FF fans, featuring characters and locations from all across the series. The visuals and music in this game are truly dream-like and I think I enjoyed pretty much every hour of it. Considering how basic it is (barely above FF Mystic Quest on the complexity scale) and how redundant the battles can be, it's punching way above its weight class on this list. However, the dreamlike aesthetic, and running into so many characters I remembered from past games in the series, made this feel like I'd been warped back to a warm summer of my youth. I'd love to rank this about 30 points higher. If only there were more to it.
#44. Fire Emblem: Three Houses (Switch) - Fundamentally good game, only thing keeping it from going higher is that it's still the same Fire Emblem formula I've played a zillion times before. Liked the three houses setup, however, which allowed this game to surge ahead of the rest of the series and take the top spot for FE (even if I'm a bit more nostalgic for 6 and 7).
#43. Lies of P (PS5) - A game that really is unique. Easily the highest-quality "souls game" outside of the Fromsoft catalog, aside from perhaps Nioh 2 (which I haven't played so I can't comment). A rainy, atmospheric, Victorian steampunk game with great swordplay, interesting characters, and a mood all its own. If I'd spent more time with it, it'd probably be a bunch of spaces higher, but it was a one and done. Tons of customization to do here, micromanaging is rewarded, and you can level along all kinds of build routes. Did I mention it's high-quality?
#42. Final Fantasy: Dawn of Souls (GBA/PSP). Probably my favorite remake of the original NES game, with bright colors, big sprites, and four extra dungeons (five if playing it on the PSP). 2-3 of these give your endgame-level party something to work on, while the first two change the balance of the normal game up by giving you a lot more to do during the main story. This game is textbook "how to add new content to an existing game without ruining the balance" and I love how my OP endgame party gets tested by some of the new content. The only problem with this game is that the main story is pretty easy. Much easier than on the NES, and a breeze, more or less. Especially with the added dungeons making your party even stronger, buffs being way more effective, etc.
#41. Dark Souls III (PS4) - Pretty much the pinnacle of Souls design and a carefully constructed experience from start to finish. With more Berserk references than ever. This game is truly great, with numerous builds to play around with (I never even got around to trying a spellcaster), and the only thing really going against it is that by this point we'd done it all before many times over. Souls had run its course already, much like the world it takes place in.
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#40. Pokemon Sword (Switch) - Loved the British setting of this game. The gym leaders were a highlight, with the sports-like presentation and huge stadium backdrops. Most people would rank this way lower, for whatever reason, and I'm not sure why. It was great to see a main-series Pokemon finally make its way onto a console/TV, and I remember this game extremely fondly. Especially those gym leader battles, and those stadium crowds. Really felt like Pokemon was finally what I imagined it to be in my head as a kid.
#39. Final Fantasy IV 3D (DS/Mobile) - An interesting game here that really didn't need to be made, but it was, and it's worth a run-through. I consider the original 2D version of the game to be far superior to this in terms of the normal story playthrough, but what gives this one some meat is New Game Plus and New Game Plus Plus. You can play through the story up to 3 times on a single file, adding to your Augment collection (something new added for this game). One of the hardest uberboss fights in the entire series, Proto Babil, awaits you on the moon in NG++. This gives you something to work towards and plan for. Plowing the game 3x and carefully micromanaging my Augments to make sure I ended up with everything I needed by NG++ was a really good time, and gave this a lot more depth than the original even if it isn't as good on a surface level.
#38. Ys III: The Oath in Felghana (PSP) - Another Ys remake, this one was a fantastic time on the PSP. A very underrated system for RPGs, the PSP was doing this "remake old RPGs with a distinct new visual style" thing way before the HD-2D style made it cool. This is my second-favorite Ys game and the distance between this and the rest of the series isn't even close, with an absolutely banging soundtrack, likeable characters, and a compelling journey.
#37. Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake (Switch) - Outside of the Great King Hydra Debacle, this was a really cool time. It's DQ3, with new stuff added. Very similar to Dawn of Souls a few spots above, just with another decade or two of enhancements. Had to tackle some recency bias to figure out where to place this on the list. Given that the original DQ3 is probably my favorite NES game of all time, this could have easily placed quite a bit higher if it weren't for that one lategame fight. The game is very much tuned around the new class, Monster Wrangler, and if you haven't been building one or two of those up, you're in for a bad time later on.
#36. Unicorn Overlord (Switch) - A terrific modern-day reincarnation of Ogre Battle that is compulsively playable. I.e. good luck putting it down. Forming group lineups, customizing their equipment and abilities, etc etc made for an incredibly engaging playthrough and it was well worth the time spent on it.
#35. Final Fantasy XIII-2 (PS3) - The best of the FFXIII trilogy by a wide margin. Takes all the good elements from the first and creates a much better game around it. They took the hallway criticisms of the first game and made this one more of a normal RPG, with open areas and towns and so forth. It also has time travel through a bunch of very distinct eras, no doubt in an effort to recapture the magic of Chrono Trigger. Also liked the variety of having the party consist of two main characters and one rotating monster character, with numerous monsters to choose from for that slot (a bit like what Lufia II did). It's also probably the best-looking game on the PS3, with incredible graphics, high res, and superb art direction. Just a great game here that didn't sell well due to its predecessor; more people should have given a shot.
#34. Dragon Quest V (DS/Mobile Remake) - Possibly the best Dragon Quest game, depending on who you ask, got a nice DS remake and an even nicer mobile HD-ifying of the remake. While I prefer the look, feel, and style of the SFC original, this was still a damn fine time and good excuse to revisit what many people say is the best of the Dragon Quests. (I wouldn't go that far, but it's top 3, for sure)
#33. Ys Origin (Switch) - My favorite Ys game ever. This is a prequel to the rest of the series, so no Adol or Dogi. What? No Adol or Dogi? Well, no problem. The main character for this one is super likeable, even if most of the other characters treat her like garbage for no apparent reason - something that would normally cost the game a lot of points, except that it's self-aware of this and makes it a plot point that she wins their respect in the end. This is a very basic, old-school dungeon crawler of sorts, where your character fights her way up a massive tower with numerous floors, diverse environments, and so forth. It takes the Ys concept and distills it down to the core. No wandering around a town getting lost constantly, no trying to figure out where the hell you're going, no invisible barriers, no recurring prison dungeon. None of the things I disliked about later games in the series. Just fun gameplay, a tower to climb, and a solid character to root for.
#32. Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty (PS4) - Action-RPG that retells the Destiny of an Emperor / Dynasty Warriors story of the Three Kingdoms. Well, not quite - it covers the saga of the Yellow Turbans, Dong Zhuo, and Yuan Shao, but not the actual war of the Three Kingdoms beyond that. A lot of familiar faces appear in all their Koei-Tecmo glory, and the combat system consists of fun parry-based gameplay. Landing a well-timed parry is incredibly rewarding, and the timing window is generous. The only other game I've played that made parrying this much fun was Sekiro, which unfortunately doesn't have any RPG mechanics so I couldn't really put it on here. Outside of the awesome gameplay, this game can have some uneven difficulty, with things like the two Lu Bu confrontations being big spikes. At least you can bring a friend to fight the harder bosses. This was a good time all throughout.
#31. Final Fantasy X-2 (PS2) - This is one of those few PS2-era games that just gives me warm fuzzy feelings. It's a peppy game with a great soundtrack, and it brings classes back to the FF series in a big way. Going through the classes and mastering abilities for your characters is all kinds of fun, as are the numerous Dressphere outfits your characters can flip between. I'm probably more nostalgic for this game than any other game on this list, and it's got a lot of replay value due to the depth of classes.
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#30. Trials of Mana (PS4) - A glorious, colorful game that felt like a real evolution of the classic Secret of Mana and Seiken Densetsu 3 on the SNES, finally reaching full potential in a way those games couldn't back in the 90's. Fast-moving action RPG that never stopped being exciting, and the class system gives it replay value.
#29. Dark Souls (PS3) - Some of the best world design and art direction I've ever seen in a game, with map layouts that intricately fit together to form a living, breathing world. Should be a lot higher on the list, but unfortunately the last third or so of the game is very clearly rushed/unfinished. If I were only ranking the first 70% or so of this game (up through the end of Anor Londo), it would be much higher. Also it's a fundamentally ugly game (by design) compared to the rest of the Fromsoft catalog, and feels "dirty" most of the time. Hey, it does what it sets out to do.
Music Interlude: The main menu theme / character creation is awe-inspiring and exemplifies the ability of this series to make you feel something.
#28. Xenoblade Chronicles (Wii) - A structurally solid game, with interesting characters and a very interesting setting. I played this side-by-side with Fallout 3 and they were a good one-two punch of open world exploration and more traditional story. Both also had an extremely unique look and feel. I'll always associate the two of them with each other for these reasons. I'll also give it high marks for the main character: Shulk is a compelling protagonist, losing his best friend after having a vision he couldn't grasp or prevent, and having to grapple with that along with the other ramifications of his abilities.
#27. FFVII: Crisis Core (PSP) - Includes the PS5 remake, which elevates the original quite a bit. That's right, I have this spinoff ranked much higher than FFVII Remake. I didn't see that coming. Mulling over it, I've got a lot more fond memories of this game and would rather play this again any day of the week. While the PSP version is kinda Mid a lot of the time, the PS5 version fixes up the few issues with the game to make it much better overall. The main character is an infinitely more likeable version of Cloud, with similar abilities yet a way better attitude on pretty much everything. Of course, this game lives and dies on that emotional core it hits with the ending, one of the most impactful endings in any RPG on this list. For me, the impact isn't from Zack dying - we know that's happening from the get-go - nor is it even from the injustice of it. No, for me the greatest impact is him thinking of Aerith at the end, no doubt where he'd rather be. She's pretty amazing in this.
#26. Persona 4 (PS2) - Stylish, just insanely stylish. This game kept the PS2 afloat well after it was old news, and was one of the few games out there to make the bold choice of going with yellow as the game's primary color (to great effect, mind you). While I preferred Persona 3 in some ways (I was one of the people who actually loved Tartarus), Persona 4 wins because it's so much more refined. All the rough edges are smoothed out. Also has one of the best, and most immediately-recognizable, soundtracks out there.
#25. Lord of the Rings Online (PC) - A World of Warcraft clone of sorts that lovingly recreates Middle-Earth (the book version) and does a fantastic job doing it. It took about 15-17 years for them to finish creating all of the key Middle-Earth areas (meaning everything from The Shire to Mordor to The Lonely Mountain) but it's all there now, plus some new lands as they continue to add content updates. I mostly played this when it was brand new, and at the time the world was quite small (Rivendell was about as far as you could go along the main story path of the books), but it rewarded the people who stuck with it or kept returning to it. If I were as much of an LOTR fanatic as I was as a kid, I would have probably spent years playing this instead of weeks. Either way, it's a terrific game, let down only by the game engine being a bit choppy and difficult at times. It tried to be TOO graphically intense for 2007 and a lot of computers just couldn't handle it back then. Another reason why it really came into its own much later in time. If I'd played it later, it'd rank higher, and I'm forced to essentially rank it based on the original vanilla game and what little I was able to see of areas beyond that. It's a delightful game that a lot of folks swear by.
#24. Bloodborne (PS4) - Much like Wo Long and Lies of P, this barely makes the list because it's more of an action-RPG. That said, you can level up, there are stories and quests, and it's got other RPG mechanics, so it makes the cut. An extremely high-quality game on every level, with numerous potential builds. Each of the 20 or so weapons is basically its own playstyle and moveset, so you can have an entirely different run just by sticking to a different main weapon. Even the three starter weapons (you have to choose one, ala Pokemon) are all very useful. The Hunter's Axe can probably be used from start to finish without issue. This game should probably be higher, but this isn't a "best game" list, it's a "best RPG" list, and the RPG mechanics aren't strong enough to place higher. It's a great game, in any case, and as far as its RPG side goes, I wish it were bigger/expanded/less linear.
#23. Xenosaga Episode III: Also Sprach Zarathustra (PS2) - The best of the XS trilogy by a country mile, this is another one of those massively underrated games that suffered due to its predecessor, ala FFXIII-2. It's got giant mech battles, Xeno-y music (even if they didn't get Yasunori Mitsuda back for this one, IIRC), and an intriguing story that wraps all of the high concepts of the first two XS games up in a neat bow. Also has a lot of Xenogears fanservice, and one may recall that Xenogears landed the #1 position in the pre-millennium list.
#22. Yakuza: Like a Dragon (PS4) - Takes the open world minigame-rich street brawling gameplay of the Yakuza series and gives it an RPG spin. This was way, WAY better than I think anybody really expected. This game is tremendously fun from start to finish, with a massive amount of things to do. Considering how the street brawls have become more and more redundant as the series goes on, this turned out to be the shot in the arm the whole thing needed. My only regret is that I never got the hero's ultimate weapon, which is on the cover of the game and just looks awesome. Hard to believe the sequel managed to easily surpass this one, as well. Considering how great THIS game is, the fact that they were able to top it at all (much less by quite a bit) is a feat.
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#21. Pokemon Scarlet (Switch) - A game that took the open world exploration of Pokemon Legends: Arceus and filled it in with an actual game full of activities. Never needed to grind or fulfill any dull objectives like Arceus, it felt more like a Pokemon game, and I just had a ball with this one. I'm probably rating it much higher than most people would. I'll say this though: The graphic performance and framerate really are horrible. Especially for the year this came out, and the...not exactly cutting-edge visuals of this series. Aside from exposing how weak and antiquated the Switch is, this game was great and I'd very nearly call it a series-best game.
#20. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (Switch) - Now this one made much better use of the Switch hardware. For whatever reason it just functions a lot better than the previous entry. In any case, I expected Xenosaga III to run away with my favorite post-Xenogears Xeno game, but then this one swooped in at the 11th hour (as in, I played this while I was writing this list) and landed even higher on the list. While the game takes a long time to get going, and the battle system has some Xenosaga 2 elements of over-complication, it's still an epic story that probably captures the Xenogears mood better than anything has since then.
#19. World of Warcraft (PC) - Took everything Everquest (#5 on the pre-millennium list) did and made it vastly more user-friendly and appealing to the masses, capitalizing on the Warcraft 3 pedigree to deliver something awesome that holds a special place in millions of hearts. Did the game kinda fall off after a while? Yes. The difficulty level in particular dropped off a cliff somewhere around the second or third expansion, and along with the character-micromanagement being massively simplified to the point of robbing it of fun, made the game into more of a "WoW 4 Dummies" than it was at its inception. People will argue that the raids are still quite challenging and that's all well and good for the players who team up with their guild to do those, but my issue is with the standard PVE gameplay the rest of the time and what a joke it is. There were other mistakes too, like how every expansion immediately obsoleted everything from the previous (even the most epic BIS gear from quest chains), which made the world feel smaller and smaller as it got technically larger and larger. All of that said, the classic game and the first couple of expansions were gorgeous and fun to explore, and putting in the effort to develop and micromanage your character in those early eras was rewarded. When it comes down to it, this is an MMO at the top of its class that really was like stepping into another world.
#18. Final Fantasy X (PS2) - A game I heavily associate with the color blue and an awesome soundtrack. The FF that usually fights it out with 7 on "best FF" polls across the internet, this game sold extremely well and tops many a list. It was my first PS2 game (and I jumped right from SNES/PS1 to PS2, more or less, so it seemed cutting-edge) and I have lots of fond memories and wonder associated with it. However, this is about as high as I can put it due to how linear it is. The main character is also kinda...meh? Regardless, this is a gorgeous, iconic game that anyone who likes Final Fantasy should play.
#17. Pokemon Platinum (DS) - Nearly the high point of the entire Pokemon series for me, which is funny given how low I ranked Pokemon Diamond (which is essentially the same game). This is the revamped version of that one, and it fixes the speed and adds other QOL that turn it into a totally new experience. Lots of added content too. This is everything Pokemon should be. I'd only put one Pokemon game above this one.
#16. Vagrant Story (PS1) - Like Parasite Eve, this should have been on the previous list and I missed it, so it lands on this one. Which the game benefits from quite a bit, because I appreciate it more now than I did a year ago when I did the other list. The soundtrack is among the greatest in RPG history and does most of the heavy-lifting, but unfortunately the gameplay falls a little short for one main reason: They made everything about this game a bit more complicated than it needed to be. That said, once you spend some time researching (hopefully via candle light like an old wisened sage) and figure out the copious amounts of things to figure out, the game is quite playable. The dialogue and overall vibe of this game is like nothing else on the entire list, and it's worth a look for basically anyone who likes RPGs. If it ever gets an HD remake, it'll be one of the most worthwhile PS1 remakes out there.
#15. Fallout: New Vegas (PS3) - The great "Fallout 3 Versus Fallout New Vegas" debate has raged on for over a decade, and I guess we know where I stand on that debate. New Vegas is probably a superior RPG with superior storytelling, but Fallout 3 is the one I played first so it has the edge. That said, New Vegas really does have some fantastic content, and is probably the closest one can get to playing an RPG version of a season of The Twilight Zone. So many good stories here in what is a very eerie world. The Mojave Desert isn't really affected much by the nuclear war in a physical sense, though the culture of it has been changed a lot, so this game could have really been from any series and still worked. What I'm saying is that this game barely looks post-apocalyptic, and comes off more as an eerie sci-fi anthology set in a desert. It's fantastic.
#14. Fallout 3 (PS3) - The one I played first. One of those Dragon Quest 1 type games that just turns you loose in a big world, tasked with getting more powerful via quests and battles. The Washington DC metro setting is fascinating to explore and it's brimming with interesting stories, weapons, and things to find. One can pretty much walk in any direction from the starting point and run into a questline or location before long that has things to do. Literally a "point at the map, go there, get into an adventure" sort of game. Does open world better than 99% of the open world games out there and never ruins it by forcing you into linearity, something a lot of modern games still don't get right. You're turned loose in a big world and your only goal is to get stronger and find your missing father. You go from an unarmed level 1 scientist to a level 30 force of nature by the end (though like DQ1, you can beat the game around level 20 if you really want to). Also, that very first "step outside into the surface world for the first time" is still one of the most striking and memorable moments in gaming history, right up there with landing on the planet for the first time in Metroid Prime.
PS3 Specific - I don't know if I've ever played a more atmospheric game than Demon's Souls on the PS3. That entire game was a gritty mood of its own. It definitely made me feel something, and some of the side-characters and their stories were engaging. This entire misty experience felt like I was looking through a portal into a very strange, and real, universe.
#10. Suikoden V (PS2) - The 500th game I beat, this was the big comeback of the Suikoden series and a worthy leap to the PS2. I only played through this game once, much like Suikoden 3, and like that game, I made it count. Like the first two games in the series, it's got great characters, political intrigue, an entire army to recruit, and some uniquely detestable villains. Just great stuff across the board here and it'd be a great thing for Konami to remake next. Maybe an HD two-pack of 3 and 5? Just pretend 4 doesn't exist (along with Suikoden Tactics being unfortunately guilty by association).
Music Interlude: Sol Falena - A glorious tune that feels like a sunny day in music form. This is, no joke, one of my favorite tunes in the entirety of the PS2 generation.
#9. Persona 5 (PS4) - The sheer stylishness of this game is nuts. With the amount of ink black and bright color contrast in the visuals, it's pretty much made for an OLED screen and pops like no other on those. The game itself is well-constructed and advances on all of the good things about P3 and P4. Every dungeon and boss feels like an event and there was never a point where I was let down by this one. Was one of the first things that popped into my head when I started doing this list. Doesn't have the "nostalgic benefit" the other two have, and I played it at a much less relaxing time in life, but it rises above all of that by just being really really good.
#3. Dragon Quest XI (PS4) - The pinnacle of the Dragon Quest series, and more than that, could have been a Chrono Trigger sequel too. Huge world to explore, elements of time travel, lots of character customization, and just a fundamentally near-perfect experience. They landed lightning in a bottle with this one, somehow, and it would have been #1 on this list for a long time.
Playstation 5 - 6
WINNER: Playstation 4
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