Alright, time to play catchup.
26. Pokémon X/Y
There will always be at least one Poke'mon game on my list. As a franchise Poke'mon is pretty much a must play. What other JRPG franchise has hundreds and hundreds of recruitable characters? What other JRPG franchise has an online VS mode? X/Y makes the list over the other ones, because this is the first time the series jumped from 2D sprites to 3D models.
25. Dragon Quest VIII
This is hands down Level 5's best work. They took the template of DQ7 and just improved on it drastically. The casino is less grindy. There are only 4 party members, letting the game focus on just those four characters, instead of randomly taking members of your party away for plot reasons. The combat was sped up. The multiple class system from DQ7 was taken away in favor of a point based system for each weapon. This meant you didn't have to clutter up your combat menu with useless skills you already learned. Akira Toryama's fantastic character designs finally had graphics that could represent what he made. Add in Yuji's excellent soundtrack and you have a perfect JRPG.
24. Portal
The biggest problem with long games, is that the best parts are interspersed between filler. The developers of Portal kept the game down to a ten hour adventure, making every second of this game interesting, funny, and fun. The whole concept of platforming with a portal gun is genius on a Nintendo level. Now if only we could get Portal 3 with a gravity gun attachment.
