I was pondering where Suikoden 1 and 2 would be put on the list, but you are right in that it won't be appearing. Anything I played this year won't be. I'm guessing that I would place 1 just ahead of Trinity Universe, which is my 100 Spot, and 2 just past Borderlands 2, replacing it at 66. Perhaps I'd set it higher after my next playthrough of it, which I shall likely embark on soon.

And I'm glad to see one of the worlds few remaining Septerra fans here Pauper.

To the next games!

24. Fallout: New Vegas (PS3/360/PC)
      For all you nay-sayers out there that said I didn’t get the point of a Open World RPG, I use this title to tell you to go smurf yourselves. This has all the things that the big open world RPG’s get praised for, and all of that comes without the need to sacrifice a great plot to do it.

      The opening scene of New Vegas was one of the best openings I have seen in a video game. Benny was absolutely wonderful, and I loved how he actually looked you in the eyes and the dialogue he had before shooting you and burying you. And even though I wanted to make him pay, and I traveled all the way to New Vegas, I couldn’t bring myself to kill Benny. So instead I smurfed him.

      The choices you make in New Vegas really seem to matter as well. There are so many things going on in the world, and at games completion I loved hearing how all of my actions resulted, whether or not it had to do with the main story. This is the most invested I had ever been in an open world RPG.

      And the characters were terrific. While a personal favorite is Veronica, I give major props to Arcade Gannon for having the best endings in the game, as no matter what you do in some way or another Gannon shows himself to be a freakin’ bad ass. Best part? Both gay Characters, and in no way were they shown in a stereotypical light.

      And yes, while the game is glitchy as all hell, it doesn’t stop the gameplay from being really solid. Like any open world game, you are given a ridiculous amount of customization over your character, and the Perk System was wonderful. Don’t get me wrong, a smart player will figure out easy ways to abuse the system, but at the very least it comes with a lot of thought and planning to do so, and isn’t something you’re going to just pull off right out of the gate. (Well, at least I didn’t).

      All the weird things of New Vegas to discover were wonderful too. I think I had the most fun traveling through the Vault where you discovered some everyone in it had died, and there was some kind of Civil War going on over sacrifices being made to the Computer to keep food and water coming. I won’t spoil it, but dear god was it hilarious and smurfed up when you get to the bottom and find out what happened.

      In short, greatest of the Open World RPG genre, even if you didn’t like Elder Scrolls, much like myself, this is a great one to go check out.

23. Rune Factory 3 (DS)
      This is a game whose focus is farming and getting married, as well as finding out who you are and why you are here because of your amnesia. And there’s some pretty solid dungeon crawling gameplay! And if you are not already fascinated by the concept, I can’t say I’m surprised cause it sounds smurfing awful. Really, Rune Factory and Harvest Moon on a whole are almost impossible to make sound enjoyable.

      What I could start with is saying there is a big variety of crops to grow! Though that really does nothing to help sell this game to people who don’t already enjoy the series. The combat is really good though! But in the end when compared with games with a combat focus it doesn’t amount to much more then functional and a bit quirky, but there really isn’t a game out there it beats out, so you can’t really use this as a major selling point either.

      Rune Factory just has this bizarre nature to it that you get in to your role as this farmer/Monster Fighter/Family man. Where this game shines more then any other in the series, however, is the quality of the writing. Every relationship you build in this game feels genuine and is fun. You play as a guy who is actually, personality wise, a very normal guy. He is pretty much the only normal person though, and he’s dropped in this world of these strange and bizzare people.

      As your relationships build, he begins accepting the bizarre nature however, and while he retains his own normality, fit’s in very well in this land of weirdo’s and crazies. And better yet none of them are just weird, they have a lot of personality to them. Some of their stories can even be down right sad and depressing. This is likely the only game I have ever played in which I can honestly say I don’t dislike a single character, and considering the massive cast that’s impressive. And I believe it was twelve of which of them are marry-able!

      The story is actually pretty good too. There is an actually over-arching plot going on that, while nothing amazing, does a good job at keeping you interested in progressing the story, and adding to the over all feel and flavor of the world.