Whether you started with a 2600 and a joystick in your hand, an N64 with a blistered palm or building your first PC in your teens, what is that one video game you’ve played at some point that to this day sits at the top of your list.
Whether you started with a 2600 and a joystick in your hand, an N64 with a blistered palm or building your first PC in your teens, what is that one video game you’ve played at some point that to this day sits at the top of your list.
Trials of Mana. Actually the whole Mana series were completely unique and very innovative when they first released. But the combination of story telling, party building, and combat system still hasn’t been topped for me. The games are something I always have ready to emulate at all times. Fingers crossed they decide to remake the rest of the Mana series. Legend of Mana needs some love even though I remember most people weren’t really keen on building their own world.
The Tales series was probably the closest before the switched from 2D to 3D. The switch, I thought, took away a lot of what made them stand out from other jrpgs in the market.
My close 2nd is Legend of Dragoon since it actually changed the combat system in a really meaningful way. Legend of Legaia also did something similar but I thought the storytelling was better in Legend of Dragoon.
Soul Sacrifice still needs some love. It’s only downfall was releasing on such a niche system like the Vita. It actually moves the MH formula forward in a really interesting manner by forcing you to make really interesting choices in the story.
Legend of Dragoon is super under-rated. All these remakes going on, I’d kill for that to be one of them.
It’s been a long time, but the combo timing system from LoD was something I loved a lot. Want to say that Shadow Hearts for PS2 had a similar style of iteration on traditional JRPG battle systems, where they landed on a timing minigame to make it stand out. If you’ve not played the series before, I highly suggest it.