All three correct, although you already recognized that S.Peelman beat you on #7.  I don't recall seeing Katamari Damacy Reroll on your list yet, so I guess that is still to come.   

8. Ocarina of Time?

#19 Okami 

Nintendo let Capcom work on a few handheld Zelda titles back in the day. Those games were innovative for the series due to having weapons that strayed from the norm of the Zelda series. So what does Capcom decide to do after Minish Cap? Well they started making their own Zelda clone, and it wound up being a gorgeous classic. Honestly, this is the best pre-BotW Zelda style action adventure game ever made. 

#18 Xenoblade Chronicles

Xenoblade Chronicles set a new standard for exploration in JRPGs. Yes, there's still story based progression, locking you out of areas. But Xenoblade has these large open, fully explorable areas like Bionis' Leg. This level of exploration in JRPGs has only really been bested by Xenoblade's sequels. Scratch that! This level of interesting, meaningful exploration in ANY game has only been bested by BotW, and Xenoblade's sequels!

The only few flaws in this game are it's graphical age, the lack of good english voice acting, and the tedium of hunting down RNG drops, by walking over blue points of light. The game looks good for a Wii game to this day, but graphics have improved a ton since then. The voice acting in english is pretty terrible, so this is a game that you pretty much have to play with subtitles on. Having to repeatedly walk over blue points of light that spawn on the map to get certain ingredients or plants is just frustrating. 

Most JRPGs use some sort of turn based combat system, or have a decent, but flawed real time combat system. The real time combat systems, in JRPGs, often fail to take into account enemy positioning, or sneak attacks. They also lack a good combo system. Xenoblade's combat system handles all of this with ease. Certain attacks deal more damage, or issue different effects based on where you are standing in relation to your enemy. Sneak attacks are a very real thing in Xenoblade and can often be used to outright kill an enemy within seconds of entering combat. The Break, Topple, Daze combo system of Xenoblade, combined with chain attacks from the party gauge, really make combat dynamic and exciting. Some moves break an enemy's stance, and then you get a timer. If you can use a move with the topple effect before the timer runs out you get another timer, and knock the enemy over. If you can use a final daze move before the topple timer runs out you stun the enemy for a long time. There's also a system that let's you predict and counter enemy attacks called foresight. Xenoblade only has seven playable characters, but each one has multiple skill trees that you can reset at a moments notice. Combine that with the ability to change  equipment and you have thirty or more playstyles built into just seven characters.

The story of Xenoblade Chronicles is excellent and even one that I know non-anime fans would be able to get into. The plottwists in this game are somewhat predictable, but still great. All the characters are compelling with their own story arcs, and personal epiphanies. Riki is a personal favorite of mine. He's just a middle aged guy, saddled with great debt, and a ton of kids. But the fact that he's a cuddly little Nopon makes the player look at him differently. For most of the game you might be tricked into thinking he's just an adolescent fun loving kid that is tagging along with Shulk on an adventure. Nope. He's an grown man with an adult life. He's cowardly and lazy to boot. Oh and did I mention that he makes the ultimate tank? Just imagine a round ball of fluff, suited up in impenetrable spherical armor, taunting giant foes. 

#17 Fire Emblem Three Houses

Fire Emblem Three Houses has very simple AI. All it tries to do is find the character in your formation that is the easiest to kill in a single turn, and then take them out. You would think that this would make the AI stupidly predictable. That's not true though because, there are often so many combinations of possible outcomes that the player playing the game can't see which one of his characters is the most open to dying. This is especially true on the Hard and Maddening difficulty levels. Three Houses offers the choice of your characters either dying forever (Classic Mode) or simply retreating back to base upon defeat (Casual Mode). Playing on Hard Difficulty and above with Classic Mode turned on offers a very satisfying challenge. Thanks to the time warp system if one of your characters dies during a battle you can rewind time a few turns to attempt a quick fix of your mistake. But use these warps sparingly because once you've used up your stock of time warps you'll have to choose between starting the level over again, or continuing with one of your soldiers having permadeathed. 

Normally losing a soldier is okay in a tactics game. But in Fire Emblem games almost all soldiers are unique with their own abilities, life story, and importance to other characters in the game. There are 36 different recruitable characters in three houses. All 36 characters have a story to be unlocked featuring one of the other 35 characters in the game. So in other words there are well over 100 unlockable stories to be told, depending on what combination of characters you choose to recruit. Combine that with the fact that the game has four different routes and you have a truly massive game! I'm only 250 hours deep into this game, and I've yet to complete the fourth route. With a large amount of story DLC coming early next year Three Houses is set to become even more massive! 

There are 40 classes all with their own unique skills to be unlocked. Each of the 36 characters in the game comes with their own unique powers and stat growth rates as well. You can crossclass in Three Houses meaning you can take a skill or passive ability you learned in a previous class and use it in your current class. Throw in battalions of stat boosting soldiers that you can assign to each character, and you've got a huge amount of customization. Each battalion also happens to come with it's own ultimate move that effects multiple tiles at once. There's also a huge amount of weapons to choose from in Three Houses, as well as secondary items like Rings or Shields. 

Outside of battles you spend most of your time running around a large university speaking to each of your students, having lunch with them, fishing and growing crops. During your first playthrough this will be a little tedious because there's just too many people to talk to, and too many things to do. Once you've started your second playthrough though, this part of the game smoothes right along. That's because during your second playthrough and on, your professor is fully leveled up making many university tasks unneeded or instantly completed. 

The story is pretty damned good in this game, but only once you've gotten most of the perspective from playing through at least three different routes. You'll see different cutscenes, and be given different pieces to the overall story puzzle depending on which of the three houses you align yourself with. It's one of those stories that really makes you sympathize with the villains. Why? Because those villains are often the exact same characters you just heroically finished your last playthrough with! 

The cellshaded anime artstyle is great despite a few graphical hiccups. The animations are absolutely top notch during the combat sequences of this game. The most impressive part of the game's presentation though is the absolutely fantastic english voice acting! I mean, these guys just nailed it! This is the best english dub of a game or Anime since Full Metal Alchemist, or Sabat's Vegeta in DBZ. 

Wait, did I just write a full review of this game on accident because I love it that much, and had to describe why I love each and every part so much? Damn, I guess I did didn't I? 

#10 - A Timeless RPG

#09 - A dragon rescuing dragons

#10 - You have three partners to choose from, though you really only want to use one of them.

#9 - New Age Retro Hippie.

#8 - The latter half of the game involves completing sidequests to regroup your crew.

#7 - This mountain is a strange place.

#6 - The head from #3 is playable.

#5 - Has a terrible awful bad bad bad 3DS sequel and a WiiU one as well.

#4 - Reggie actively and relentlessly worked to stop this game from ever releasing in the West (/s).

#3 - A mission has you go to an area that looks like a character's head.

#2 - Some of the best sidequests involve doing stuff in the past to open paths in the present.

#1 - Epic Music - Abrupt Cut - SUPER EPIC MUSIC.

No, but not a bad guess. With Zelda though, you can still question whether or not it’s better than a newer game since they’re different.

Err… uhm… Oh, look there, a three headed monkey!

#4: Disaster: Day of Crisis!

#10

Final Fantasy X (PlayStation 2/3)

Change From Last Year: +5

Ranking the Final Fantasy games beyond my favourite in the series has always been really difficult for me. Basically, there are four games in the series that are practically tied in my mind for places 2,3,4 and 5, and their order almost depends on the day someone asks me about it. This time, when I was looking through my top 50 and thinking about the order, Final Fantasy X came out on top over VI, VII and VIII. 

I have a lot of fond memories towards Final Fantasy X, from it being the very first PS2 game I ever owned, to replaying it once every few years and always finding something new and interesting I missed previously. The story and characters are some of the best in the entire series, the battle system is genuinely excellent, with tactical depth beyond almost any other game in the series, and the soundtrack, which for the first time in the main series wasn't composed solely by Nobuo Uematsu, is absolutely wonderful. FFX is a classic and a masterpiece that still holds up exceptionally well today.