One sign of a truly good RPG is whether or not you can bring yourself to start over if something goes wrong. When the original cartridge suffered a loss of save data (my guess is a bad cartridge connection), I made an alternate cartridge and just started over like nothing had happened. I may have rushed through the first half of the game the second time, but it was still an enjoyable experience.

Wow, this one was a slog. From the end of chapter 2 on, I stopped allowing characters to die, so there's quite a bit of resetting when things go wrong (and they go wrong OFTEN). There's also a segment where my capture card decided to drop the capture a couple of minutes in. I enjoyed the humbling experience of being outsmarted by the game's AI repeatedly, but all in all, I'd recommend one of the remakes of this game over the original.

The game that started it all (well, at least that one branch of it all). As an early-ish PlayStation RPG, Persona definitely shows its age, and is most certainly not as stylish or well-balanced as its successors; the Personas themselves don't feel like a necessary part of the game either, since even melee weapons hit multiple times by the end. Still, it's a fun game, and helps to show just how far the series has come in 20+ years.

The Breath of Fire series has been on my radar for a long time. I'd heard nothing but good things about it, and had heard enough of the music to know I'd like it, so it was a treat to finally get a chance to play the original. With a surprisingly deep and complex story, as well as likable characters (except for Gobi, of course), the game proved itself worthy of its place among the great SNES RPGs.

I honestly didn't know what to expect going in, but Sword of Vermilion's mixing of gameplay styles makes for a surprisingly fun game. First-person dungeon crawling with realtime action combat works quite well, though the variety of spells leaves a bit to be desired; I found the weakest attack spells to work better, since they tended to be faster and cheaper to cast. Oh, and in my headcanon, the Prince is an aspiring golf pro who was handed a sword and just did what came naturally against bosses.

The progenitor of the Lunar series, the Sega CD version of the game was one of Working Designs's... most Working Designs games ever. With pop culture references injected into the dialogue at every turn, you can't help but cringe every few minutes now. I rented the game several times back in the day (and probably spent enough of my dad's money to have just bought it outright), and the combat and gameplay are just as polished and fun now as they were when I was a tween.

A highly underrated hybrid RPG, Sword of Hope combines the puzzle exploration of Shadowgate with Dragon Quest-style first-person combat. It's short--and would have been shorter if the damage roll RNG weren't sometimes completely unfair--no doubt as a favor to players squinting at the Game Boy's screen back in the early '90s. But it's a fun little gem that even earned itself a sequel.

I never realized just how short this game is; even with a bit of grinding and getting lost, the whole thing was over in less than 10 hours. Granted, I've beaten it before, but I wasn't mashing through dialogue or going out of my way to skip things. In fact, I hunted down every monster lair and collected all the swords, armor and spells in that time.

The sequel that launched a thousand complaints against Working Designs, the original Sega CD release of Lunar: Eternal Blue was a misguided mess of a localization. Not only were the enemies significantly beefed up, but WD added in a "feature" where saving the game required the player to spend precious magic experience! Fortunately, a kind soul by the name of Supper created a patch which restores the difficulty of the original Japanese release, and that's the version I'm playing. It's still got that Working Designs "charm", though.

A surprisingly short little gem, this was a game I played back when I was a kid, and though I apparently had no idea what I was doing back then, the challenge was still there. Full of Sierra-tier game-ending traps, the game encourages you to gather passwords frequently, and to HEED THE WORDS OF KUKULCAN carefully.

Fan translation. More to follow. :D

Our first "modern" Quest! This one required a small retooling of the layout to accommodate the 16:9 aspect ratio, but it was worth it. :3

The official release this time. :)

The original, untouched prototype, the same version of the game featured on Wii U Virtual Console as Earthbound Beginnings.