What's your favorite RPG?

[lestatdark]

MasterVG71782 said:
Damn, there are a lot of titles that have been mentioned that I haven't ever played once or played very little of, which makes me want to start going through them.

I remember the original Shadow Hearts for PS2 being a great title, and it got overlooked because of FFX coming out around the same time. I was in college at the time and there was a local video game shop on campus. I went in there (I went regularly, so the guy knew me) and saw both this title and FFX sitting on the shelf. In the end, I chose Shadow Hearts and was certainly happy with that choice.

Shadow Hearts and Shadow Hearts Covenant were amongst my favourite RPGs for the PS2. Yuri and Alice's story was pretty touching on Covenant, especially after all the build-up you had on the original for their relationship. The Fusion and Ring systems were pretty cool, especially towards the end of the game were the ring mini-games were considerably tougher with smaller and smaller hit areas. 

Plus, the first one had one of the toughest RPG fights I've played, Seraphic Radiance. Seraphic wasn't tough per se, but since you came from fighting Ben Hyuga and didn't have a chance to heal (plus, considering you were fighting with Yuri alone), it was an extremely tough sequence to beat, which relied a lot on your skill with the Judgment ring and not on your levels or equipment. 

Covenant had much better characters and character development (Joachim and Anastacia FTW) and Karin was my favourite character from all the Shadow Hearts series. 

I shall not refer to the abomination called Shadow Hearts: From A New World....my soul cries a little everytime I remember how much they butchered, murdered and utterly destroyed an amazing plot build up and characters from the first two games and gave us...that...