Number 7
Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber
Best RPG of its generation right here, and I will fight anyone who disagrees. Of course, maybe that's not fair, because it's so much more than an RPG, too. It's part strategy game, part RPG, part long and storied quest through the best and worst that humanity has to offer. Ogre Battle is completely unique mechanically, and its appeal has never really been surpassed for me.
Ogre Battle 64 is huge - beyond huge, with my original playtime for the game clocking in at nearly 80 hours, and with an easy expectation of 60 for most players. It's huge in scope, huge in ambition, huge in execution. The classes available to you feel endless, and the ways that they work in tandem makes for many hundreds of ways that individual units in your army can function, so that gameplay variety can change enormously between playthroughs. Your options border on limitless, but never feel overwhelming. The game encourages you rather than overwhelming you. It is a thing of immense power.
Ogre Battle 64 was localized by Atlus before Atlus was any good, so many parts of the script feel peculiar or badly worded, but the power of the original story shines through, embodied in dozens of memorable characters (many of whom have their own specific theme songs) and entrenched in a war that spans an entire country. In many ways, this game has the best writing of any RPG to ever come out of Japan.
THe graphics are simple but gorgeous, the music is fantastic, the writing is excellent, the game is fun to play, and it's an enormous behemoth of a game that demands investment of time and energy and effort, rewarding the player hugely when they are willing to commit. I've beaten this game three or four times, even as huge as it is.
What more can I say?
Fight it out!
