As for my personal reply on this matter:
I think I played a fair share of JRPGs during the seventh gen. I know it wasn't the brightest gen for this genre, but I still consider some amazing gems came out from it. In no particular order, there's four:
· Lost Odyssey. Despite being somewhat easy to break (which fundamentally made it a very easy JRPG), and some story elements told in such casual manner you'd be forgiven for being unaware of them, this one was a nice throwback to Sakaguchi's old-school RPG design days. He even nailed it adding such an useless character as Tolten, in the same vein a certain spoony bard was made only to annoy the players.
· Dark Souls. I have trouble deciding which one I prefer better, Demon's or Dark, and that generally depends on my mood, but I tend to give Dark the edge, mainly because of its superb dungeon design, its gameplay structure being a bit different than Demon's and its bosses. Both amazing games, though. Not playing any of these should be considered a crime, if you like japanese RPGs.
· Final Fantasy XIII. Beautiful, with some satisfying gameplay and a kickass score to top it all. It had annoying characters, but it also had Sazh, so it's balanced!
· Tales of Vesperia. It was my first Tales, and I've got to say, it is the Tales game I love the most after playing many more. Albeit derivative when it comes to its RPG formula, it is a long, incredible game with many twists, featuring a charismatic party and with enough content to put other bigger games to shame.
What about the worst, you might ask?
· Star Ocean: The Last Hope. Ugh...I tried, I really tried liking this game. But I couldn't. It's just so boring, and bland...even with its nice sci-fi setting, I just couldn't put up with this. I've heard it was grindy as heck too, so that's even worse.
· Blue Dragon. I don't know why. I tried it and wasn't impressed, so I put no more thought in it and just stopped playing.
Special mention to Nier. A game that features enough strange gameplay designs to be considered "bad", but at the same time features some videogame brilliance that should put it on "best".
