"The Japanese role-playing game is a surprisingly important genre for developers to study - both in terms of gameplay and storytelling, and Gamasutra presents an 'Essential 20' explaining and chronicling the top JRPGs of all-time.

Valkyrie Profile: In most RPGs, it's your job to stop the end of the world. In Valkyrie Profile, it's your job to start it.
The battle system is a strange beast, with actions for each of the four party members assigned to a face button. Each character has a numbe..."

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"Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings opens with a pretty gorgeous cinematic sequence showing Vaan and Penelo, two of the heroes of Final Fantasy XII, flying through the sky in an airship. As the sequel opens, we see that Vaan has achieved his stated goal of becoming an air pirate in his own right, and it's pretty clear that now we're going to see a story exploring the adventures of these two. Sounds good.

I was especially eager to try this game out at E3 -- not just because I was a big fan of..."

"10. Final Fantasy XI
9. Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls
8. Final Fantasy X
7. Final Fantasy Tactics
6. Final Fantasy VIII
5. Final Fantasy VII
4. Final Fantasy IX
3. Final Fantasy V Advance
2. Final Fantasy XII
1. Final Fantasy VI Advance"

"Usually the goal with any game at the beginning is to make it not suck in the time you are given. That said, I think every Japanese game has an inner English game hidden away, and once you start to find it, it sets its own bar and the goal then becomes to meet those expectations, again within the constraints of time available. Vagrant Story was one of those rare projects that was just screaming to be in English from the moment it was made, so the bar, though high, was very clear.

While a s..."