The introduction to and first part of this list can be found here.
THE LIST, CONTINUED
50) The Gray Garden (Deep-Sea Prisoner, 2012)
Subgenre: Pseudo-RPG
Played: 11 years ago
Memory of it: Bare
A short, freeware RPG Maker 2000 game about Angels and Devils who live together. I would have nearly forgotten to include this game on the list if it weren’t for a blog post I had written in 2014 where I apparently gushed about its “surprisingly engaging story,” “dark humor,” and “quirky loot.” Combat is trivially easy and is mostly just there for RPG flavor.
I feel like I should make a note here: there’s been some flash games and commercial indie games on the list already, but Deep-Sea Prisoner’s games are the first on the list to be among the sort of freeware indie RPGs at the advent of the 2010s that deeply influenced me when I was in my late teens and early 20's. These are especially important sorts of games to me, and if there's anything
49) Mogeko Castle (Remake) (Deep-Sea Prisoner, 2014)
Subgenre: Adventure Game Made in RPG Maker
Played: ~11 years ago
Memory of it: Hazy
I wasn’t sure if this one counted as an RPG since there’s no combat or roleplaying from what I remember, but you still walk around, talk to creatures, and I thiiinnnk pick up items? If (mostly) nonviolent games like Disco Elysium and Citizen Sleeper are RPGs, then is this the JRPG equivalent? I wanted to err on the side of including too many games than excluding them. I acknowledge that, genre-wise, this game is very similar to Yumme Nikki, but I think they exist on opposing sides of the genre's border line. It also feels weird to omit this game in the context of Deep-Sea Prisoner's other games.
I played all of Deep-Sea Prisoners’ games around the same time, and enjoyed them similarly well, so they’re all clumped together here. I think this one was the funniest of the bunch.
48) Wadanohara and the Great Blue Sea (Deep-Sea Prisoner, 2013)
Subgenre: Pseudo-RPG
Played: ~11 years ago
Memory of it: Bare
Similar easy combat and focus on narrative as the Gray Garden. Both games get pretty dark, but this one was waaaaay darker – in fact, I remember this one a little better than the Gray Garden, mostly because of some shocking tonal shifts. I’ll let the content warnings speak for themselves. I really ought to revisit these, huh?
47) Casette Beasts (Bytten Studio, 2023)
Subgenre: Monster collecting RPG
Played: 1-2 years ago
Memory of it: Pretty Good
This was a fun indie Pokemon riff, employing more creative interactions between elemental types than simply dealing super effective damage or not. For example, water moves erodes earth types, lowering their defense, and fire melts plastic types turning them into poison, then ignites poison types causing them to take damage every turn. My favorite type interaction is that hitting any monster with a glitter attack turns them into the glitter type, whose attacks then turn OTHER monsters into glitter types.
The boss’ designs were pretty cool, breaking out of the game’s pixel-art style into alternative analog styles in order to make them feel otherworldly.
46) I’m Scared of Girls (Moga, 2011)
Subgenre: Bumpslash action RPG
Played: Twice, ~1 and 10 years ago
Memory of it: Pretty good
A short freeware indie RPG about a crossdressing boy in the afterlife who must cut ties with his past life. Bump combat may be all the rage in indie games in 2025, but this one had it back in 2011! You collect pieces of the protagonist’s story in nonlinear fashion, and it is possible to clear the game while missing some pieces. When I revisited it last year, I found the ending dissatisfying.
It’s an ambitious and haunting but messy game. I played a lot of games about gender identity in the early 2010’s that left an impression on me for obvious trans reasons, but this one was the most moving, despite its flaws.
45) Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth (Media. Vision, 2015)
Subgenre: Monster collecting JRPG
Played: Twice, ~4 and 8 years ago
Memory of it: Pretty Good
We’re finally getting to the few actually good Digimon games. An above average RPG.
The number of times in the Cyber Sleuth games that the screen goes to black and a character describes a meal in excruciating detail is deeply self-indulgent on the writer’s part, and that is a compliment.
I kinda hate the ending, but not as much as I hate Suzuhito Yasuda’s female character designs in this game, by and large! What about Kyoko’s character would make me think she’d walk around with her shirt totally unbuttoned? Yuuko’s shirt is weird. My partner still jokes about the way the female character model runs boobs first through the world. I love good-looking gals (see FFXIII back up) and horny games (see Embric of Wulfhammer further down), but this sort of design is alienating and undermines the characters in a way that is hard to overlook. I know it's typical anime gooner shit, but it is because it is so typical that I will call it out.
44) Quantum Entanglement (SaintBomber, 2016)
Subgenre: Adventure Game Made in RPG Maker
Played: ~ 2 years ago
Memory of it: Hazy
A fun, funny, sci-fi freeware indie yuri adventure by the creator of Embric of Wulfhammer. You play as a janitor in an underground science facility whose memory regularly gets wiped. I hit the same dilemma categorizing this game as I did with Mogeko Castle, but I think both games hit the explore-a-world-and talk itch that RPGs do, so I’m counting it as one. The character writing is top notch.
43) Standstill Girl (Sky Scraper Project, ...2013, maybe? I can't find a definitive date!)
Subgenre: JRPG
Played: Twice, 2-11 years ago
Memory of it: Fair
Indie RPG where a girl retrieves lost memories that may have been better forgotten. From what I remember, it’s a little edgelord-y (pretty much every bad thing that could happen to someone happens to this girl), but it’s gorgeous and ambitious and has a cool one-on-one battle system where you gain MP every turn – something that I’ve borrowed from in my own work.
42) Megaman Battle Network 2 (Capcom, 2001)
Subgenre: TRPG
Played: 2-3 years ago
Memory of it: Pretty Good
When I played through the MMBN Legacy Collection from start to finish, MMBN2 left a big impression on me. It maintains the focus and fast pace of the original game (it is the last of the non-backtracky Battle Networks) while improving upon the boss design and story.
While BN1 established the series, it was BN2 that set the standard for every game that followed.
Sadly, this is the most racist and xenophobic of the Battle Networks, which is a shame, because the part where Lan leaves his home country and travels abroad would otherwise have been one of the standout parts of the series! It captures the feeling of being stranded without the comforts and resources you’re used to so well.
The game’s final dungeon is one of the most memorable – instead of an inexplicable evil fortress, like in most entries, it’s a relatively grounded and understated (but still imposing) abandoned apartment building full of computer servers. Compared to the other entries, the finale feels more rooted in cyberpunk than in typical anime/videogame melodrama.
41) Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth: Hacker’s Memory (Media.Vision, 2017)
Subgenre: Monster collecting JRPG
Played: Twice, ~3 and 8 years ago
Memory of it: Pretty Good
The follow-up to Cyber Sleuth. I preferred this one for the relatively grounded story – you play as an ordinary hacker instead of the pseudo-digital being you play in the original. Hacker’s Memory also saw some much needed rebalancing from its predecessor – in a game design decision that baffles me to this day, defense-piercing moves in the PS4 release of Cyber Sleuth were entire orders of magnitude more effective than any other type of attacks (rendering all other attacks useless) and were justifiably nerfed in Hacker’s Memory. The events of Hacker’s Memory are concurrent to the events of the original, which means the ending still drives me nuts. The queerbaiting between Keisuke and Yuu hurts. I have seen MANY people unironically praise the Cyber Sleuth games for their queer representation, and I think those people are playing different games from what I played.
40) Citizen Sleeper (Jump Over the Age, 2022)
Subgenre: Nonviolent CRPG
Played: 1-2 years ago
Memory of it: Pretty Good
I liked the time I spent with Citizen Sleeper. For those unfamiliar, you play as a Sleeper - an indentured servant with another person's mind copied into an adroid body - and have escaped onto a space station (the Eye) to escape the corporation that owns you. You spend each day deciding how to spend your limited time as you secure your freedom and, from there, determine how to live on the Eye, and possibly leave it.
As someone who felt that my character’s strongest allegiance was to the Eye more than anything or anyone else, there was something bittersweet about choosing to remain and continue my story every time another character’s storyline ended and they left the station.
I like games that use the passage of time to pressure the player. In RPGs, I think it is one of the few ways to add tension and friction without relying on violence, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that nonviolent RPGs like Always Sometimes Monsters and Citizen Sleeper rely on this mechanic.
Rolling dice at the start of the day and choosing how to allocate them to determine what happens was a cool mechanic at first, but as your character levels up, the risk of failing a given task diminishes so much that this central mechanic begins to feel meaningless.
39) Pokemon Legends Arceus (Game Freak, 2022)
Subgenre: Monster-collecting JRPG
Played: One and a half times, ~1 and 3 years ago
Memory of it: Pretty good
When this game came out, it was as close to a dream Pokemon game as I could’ve asked for. If your normal Pokemon game is a JRPG abstraction of the Pokemon trainer experience, then Legends Arceus feels more like a Pokemon trainer simulation. I love the way in which the game recontextualizes the relationship between humans and wild Pokemon, both by letting them attack the player directly and trying that into the lore of the game’s historically ancient setting. Small touches like being able to maintain control of your character during combat and having them get buffeted by the surrounding action go a long way into immersing the player.
The Volo boss fight may be one of the greatest battles in the franchise. While I think the changes to the battle system were a downgrade (letting combatants input their moves right before acting was a mistake), the Volo fight in particular plays to the system’s strengths – moreso than regular Pokemon games, simply having more Pokemon on your team is a huge advantage, and giving Volo what is effectively a team of 8 was a great way to pressure the player.
38) Pokemon Violet (Game Freak, 2022)
Subgenre: Monster-collecting JRPG
Played: ~2-3 years ago
Memory of it: Pretty good
I already reviewed Pokemon Violet alongside Sword and Legends Arceus in 2024, and to reiterate previously stated positions on Gen IX and the Switch games more broadly – I’m willing to overlook some graphical roughness if I’m otherwise able to have a good time, which I did.
While I normally despise open-world mechanics as commonly applied to games (see my thoughts on Skyrim and FF7: Rebirth), when applied appropriately, they are delightful. An open-world format works great for a game like Pokemon, and it is executed well here. There is no dichotomy between a singular main quest and filler side quest – most that there is for you to explore IS mandatory main story content, cleverly split into three parallel plotlines. It’s just up to you to determine where you go and when you complete each objective.
A lot of people wish that gym leaders and other bosses in SV had level scaling, and, hot take, I think they are wrong. I think that if every gym leader had Pokemon whose level matched yours, then it would render decisions of what to do next meaningless. Giving the player choices in a game doesn’t mean that all of the choices must be equally valid; in fact, the presence of wrong choices can give decisions meaning. I had the most fun in SV when I accidentally stumbled into a part of the game I was underleveled for and was either able to overcome it anyway, or I got curbstomped (a rarity in this franchise! What a treat! Hurt me more, Game Freak!) and actually had a goal to work towards.
The final boss battle was memorable, and I think this was the first Pokemon game I played where I actually cared about the side characters. It is so cute when the whole gang assembles Avengers-style at the end to tackle Area Zero. What a treat.
I had a hard time figuring out where to place this relative to Pokemon Legends Arceus – I want to reward Arceus for its experimentation, but I think Violet was just more fun.
37) Persona 4: Golden (Atlas, 2008/2012)
Subgenre: JRPG
Played: ~5 years ago
Memory of it: Fair
The Persona franchise’s reputation precedes itself. Great story, art style, music, and gameplay. Solid game.
But as much as I enjoyed solving the mystery, it’s hard to overlook the socially conservative sentiment that runs through Persona 4 that includes (but is not limited to!) persistent homophobia. Do the characters in this game really accept themselves, or do they conform to the external pressures of society? Yukiko decides to inherit the inn from her parents after all, it turns out that Kanji isn’t actually gay, and Naoto submits to living as her assigned gender. (Having romanced Naoto in my playthrough, the amount of control the game gives the protagonist over how Naoto expresses her gender is really unsettling! Not cool!)
On the plus side, this game was one of the pieces of media that inspired me to buy a motor scooter, which has been one of the better things I’ve done for myself this decade.
36) Pokemon Gold/Crystal (Game Freak, 1999-2000)
Subgenre: Monster collecting JRPG
Played: Repeatedly ~6-25 years ago
Memory of it: Fair
I had played Gold version as a kid, but have since replayed Crysal as an adult.
This game is peak 8-bit aesthetics for me. It is such a pretty game with wonderful use of color. I’ve already written about how the color palette restriction of the monsters in Pokemon GSC influenced my monster design in Danger Zone Friends and Jailbird Nocturne.
Like many Pokemon fans of my generation, I used to think of Gen II as a unilateral upgrade of Gen I (more Pokemon! Psychic type nerfed! Defense split! Bug fixes! Two regions!), but as time has passed, my general thesis about Pokemon has become that I’m not certain if more/improved features makes for a better game. The consensus on this game has declined over time. Is the internet wrong, or is GSC more middling than I thought? I really need to revisit this game for myself.
Something that 8 year old me and 33 year old me agree on is that battling Red in Mt. Silver is one of the coolest things that has ever happened in a Pokemon game. What a great post-game boss.
35) Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth (2024, Square Enix)
Subgenre: Action JRPG
Played: ~6 months ago
Memory of it: Pretty good
I feel so conflicted about Rebirth and have never struggled with where to place a game on this list as much as I have with this one. I think it represents the best and worst parts of AAA game development excess.
I mostly hated the open world component. It is tedious and unrewarding. I spent months pecking away at this game, and had to take long breaks in-between. Its chief sin is that most of the points of interest are mostly copy-and-pasted from each other. Every lifespring, every summon shrine, every comms tower, and every Chocobo stop are not differentiated in any meaningful way. The first baby Chocobo I encountered by a Chocobo stop was cute. But by the thirtieth one, I began to resent them, which makes me sad, because they’re supposed to be lovable!
But I also think that when you have a main story that’s as urgent as it is – you’re actively pursuing Sephiroth to stop him from ending the world! - having so much side content undermines that urgency. And when Rebirth’s actual main content is as good as it is, it was easy for me to get impatient and resent the game from keeping me from the next part of the actual story.
Thankfully, you can skip most of the side content and have a good time, but that means missing out on cute cutscenes with your party members, the game’s more powerful summons, and Queen’s Blood, which is the only card game minigame in an RPG I have ever liked (it is brilliantly designed!). So I met the game halfway and only explored the game’s world to get the rewards and experiences I cared about. The less of Rebirth I played, the better time I had. Not good!
But buried under the tedium is what is otherwise an awe-inspiring game. The mixed real-time/tactical combat system is great. The game is gorgeous. Every cutscene feels lovingly made. It is a spectacular game in the most literal sense of the word – it’s a series of flashy spectacles. If this were a different game, that would be an insult, but Rebirth is so damn good at it.
Regarding the story of the Remake trilogy as a whole – I don’t think there was ever going to be a version of this story that competes with the original. I think the best call was for this game to explore different themes – ultimately, I think FF7R is a metanarrative about Final Fantasy VII as a franchise, fan expectations, and retelling stories, which is cool, but the original game is a story about loss, which is just going to connect more with folks. Not contest. But I also think the remake trilogy is better for being its own story. Aerith getting killed by Sephiroth – gaming’s best known plot twist of all time – was never going to have the same impact the second time, so I’m not sure if a straightforward retelling was ever going to work. At the end of the day, despite fan insistence otherwise, I don’t think we ever needed a second FF7. But it's here.
But while the Remake trilogy is worse version of FF7’s story, I do think it is the best way to spend time with its characters. I love the character writing, acting, and animation on display here. I kinda “get” Tifa now and for the first time genuinely wasn’t sure whether I wanted Cloud to have his Golden Saucer date with her or Aerith.
It’s a game that alternates between being remarkable and awe-inspiring and being bloated and undermining itself. At times there is too much filler, while at the same time it doesn’t give itself enough time to breath and let the player process the game’s more emotional moments.
PS – There’s some discourse about the ambiguity of Aerith’s fate at the end of Rebirth spoiling some people’s feelings about it, but it seems preeeetty clear to me that the party is in a universe where Aerith is dead! If that makes the game go down easier for you, then you’re welcome!