60. Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth
Accessing a tempting invitation to test a new social network with virtual reality, the protagonist is trapped between both real and digital worlds and finds themselves entrusted with the mission of discovering why people who have accessed the digital world cannot leave it while trying to recover their body.
With the help of Digimon, you complete several missions in simple turn-based gameplay. The main attraction is the great variety of evolutions the little monsters have. There is nothing better than to see a little dinosaur turn into an automatic refrigerator with guided missiles.
59. Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift
Like FFT Advance, you play as Luso, a boy who lives in a contemporary world. He goes to the library, reads a book, and is transported to Ivalice. With the help of Cid, the leader of a clan, he promises to help you find a way to return home. The plot doesn’t evolve much from that, betting on sidequests as the main attraction for those who long for a good story.
The combat is the same grid-stale tactical as others and brings back the system of Laws that give rules for each combat. (WHY, OH WHY). There are new races and jobs to mistreat your enemies in more creative ways.
58. Star Ocean: The Second Story
At the beginning of the game, you can choose to play as Claude or Rena. During a quest, Claude is transported to Expel where he meets Rena, who confuses him as the Hero of Light because of his sword of light, a common weapon in Claude’s world. Believing that he is the hero, they go on a mission to analyze a meteorite that they believe is responsible for the exaggerated appearance of monsters and natural disasters.
Star Ocean 2 brought more depth into battle, even in the dimensional sense. In other words, the character can turn around the enemy in a 3D fighting environment. That said, the battle system is a show apart, extremely fluid and full of possibilities.
57. Kingdom Hearts
Not in my wildest dreams, I would dare to imagine a crossover between Final Fantasy and Disney would happen. Thankfully, it did. Kingdom Hearts presents itself as a game intended for a young audience, given its animated design, the interaction between the protagonist, Donald, and Goofy, and well, Disney. And in the first moment, it is. But as the plot unfolds, you realize that it is complex even for an older audience.
Being an RPG action, you control only Sora and mix attack with defense, evasion, and magic to bring victory while your allies spend all their items and use healing magic at the wrong time. The fun is to put in your party the respective hero of each Disney world as Tarzan or Aladdin.
56. Tales of Xillia
Jude Mathis is a young apprentice of medicine and our protagonist. He lives in the city of Fenmont, where the night is eternal and people use magic to heal illnesses, to enlighten the city, and for many other things. He crosses paths with Milla Maxwell, the incarnation of the Spirit Master, who decided to adopt a human form to keep peace in the world of men. Milla senses the arrival of a threat and after meeting Jude both leave on a journey to save the world.
The Tales of Xillia combat system is one of the best made in the series. Being an evolution of the most recent franchise titles, the Dual Raid Linear Motion Battle System puts us in 4 main characters combats against a variable number of opponents.
55. Final Fantasy XIII-2
FFXIII-2 takes place three years after the previous one and you assume the role of Serah, Lightning’s sister. Oddly enough, no one besides her remembers her sister. This drives Serah to make some investigations and eventually she ends up meeting Noel, your brother-in-arms throughout the game.
Final Fantasy XIII was highly criticized for its linearity, so to avoid a more intense rage, XIII-2 changed the progression of the story. There are paradoxes around the world and different timelines, so Serah and Noel start to travel to the past and future to fix the paradoxes. That’s where most of the freedom in progression comes from. The combat is the same with the use of paradigms, but the third member of the party is one of the monsters we can capture.
54. Dragon Quest III
The Dragon Quest franchise was one of the main competitors of the Final Fantasy series before the two developers merged. For that, it had to have a quality at least equal to its competitor and it did. Dragon Quest III (I’ll talk about the remake), greatly improved the quality of the series, presenting new elements such as choice of members with different classes, personalities that change which attributes rise with the level, animation of monster attacks in battle among others.
The story begins when Ortega, your father, sets out on a journey to defeat Baramos but fails. After some time, when you are of age, you go on that same journey. The guild helps you, offering members to accompany you on your adventure.
53. Eternal Sonata
Eternal Sonata begins by telling the story of Frederic Chopin, in the game a boy who is on his deathbed. In real life, Chopin was a great musician, known as the piano poet, and died in 1810. The plot of Eternal Sonata is about exactly the dream Chopin had before he died, and tells how the character finds a beautiful and sweet girl named Polka, who just like him can use magic, and has a disease that will cause her death soon because of this power.
In addition to the clear musical references, the game features a fun battle system. A mix between turn-based and action-ish. Each character has five seconds to act. You must move, approach an opponent and you can hit it as many times as you want within that time and finish with a skill, which changes its effect if you are standing in light or darkness.
52. SaGa Frontier
SaGa Frontier does not follow jRPG standards with linear stories. At the beginning of the game, you choose between 7 characters, each one with his motivation, mission, and outcome. Some have a storyline with clear goals and destinations, others, not so much. You can play as a superhero who wants to end a mafia or a monster who wants to save his homeland.
During the gameplay, you can find some of these characters and add them to your party to help you. The battle system is per turn, but the progression is different. You don’t go level up, but increase attributes at the end of a fight. To learn new skills there is a feature known as lightbulb. Randomly, your character can learn a new skill while attacking, notable by the lightbulb that appears above your head and the desperate face of your enemy taking a suplex where he mistook it for a jab.
51. Shadow Hearts: Covenant
This game is a direct sequel to the first Shadow Hearts and you assume the role of Yuri again after some sobbing ending. Keeping the theme of portraying the real world mixed with fiction, a demon is interacting with events of the First World War and this demon is an old acquaintance of Yuri, who soon finds himself involved in conspiracies with the Russian royal family, a Japanese minister, and a mystical force.
The game as a whole is an upgraded version from Shadow Hearts, including the graphics, cutscenes, voices, the way Judgment Ring works, and the cast of characters. The battle is amazing as ever and correctly hitting the ring rewards you with benefits and powers as if you had joined a pact with a demon.
