20 Essential Japanese RPGs - Gotta Catch ‘Em All?

[The Japanese role-playing game is a surprisingly important genre for developers to study - and big sister site Gamasutra presents an ‘Essential 20′ - by HG101 star Kurt Kalata - explaining and chronicling the top JRPGs of all-time, from Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger to Xenogears and Shadow Hearts.]
Japanese RPGs that concentrate on narrative and battle systems, favoring storytelling perhaps more than any other genre, actually have more complex roots than many realize, as Kalata explains:
“Two of the most popular games back in the day were Ultima and Wizardry. Although all had followings amongst hardcore Japanese gamers, they were a little bit too uninviting for your average console owners, whose ages skewed a bit younger. Yuji Horii, a developer at Enix, decided to take on an interesting experiment.
By combing the overhead exploration aspects of Ultima (the third and fourth games, specifically) and the first person, menu-based battle system of […]

Original post by editors@gamesetwatch.com (Simon Carless) and software by Elliott Back