A look back at: Pokemon Kanlara Ultimate

Yep, it seems that nowadays I finish both an RPG review and a ROM hack around the same time. And what a disappointing summer before I head back to the workplace all things considered, I didn't get nearly as much done as I was vouching to do. But I am proud to say that Kanlara Ultimate wasn't a bad hack at all. New region, new storyline, plenty of Pokemon options, good sidequests, it was overall all very enjoyable. My team included Swampert, Blaziken, Gardevoir, Aegislash (in shield form, this line has the Tyrogue evolution mechanic), and Magnezone. The last member basically was different the whole way through, with Cradily for the midgame, then Armaldo before the league, then Demon Tyranitar for the league itself, then Lucario for the postgame.

The Demon forms were interesting but I didn't really use them much. Liked the concept of elite trainers using them at least, so that's that. Yes, amplified stats, nastier moves, and all. I ended up using Demon Tyranitar and researching about the remaining demon forms, even the ones that weren't in the library. But there is a bit of misinformation, Demon type doesn't resist the other types at all. In other words, a Demon/Water Demon Gyarados is still weak to Electric and Grass. Demon itself doesn't resist anything and is weak to itself, while as an attacking type it is resisted by both Fairy and Steel and neutral to everything else. At least the type and the forms are limited to specific Gen-2 mons, so they didn't go too overboard with things.

And I guess I'll appreciate the plot of yet again Team Rocket doing bad stuff, going as far as to conquer the Pokemon League and to use mind control. And heck, that postgame creepy village stuff made for cool sidequests, I don't know if it is all finished, cause you can still build reputation with the Forsaken by buying more goodies. As far as Pokemon go, the only ones in the dex I could not get are: Unown (the only one I couldn't see), and the other two Kanto starters (for example, you pick Charmander and you can never get Bulbasaur, Squirtle, or their evolved forms). All other mons are available in some form or another.

I will go ahead and link the walkthrough I used to go through Kanlara Ultimate. It's Allen's walkthrough, not mine this time, and it is fairly good, though there are some things that are missing which I'll outline:

1. I fought Brock instead of Misty in that special Battle Boat in Sunside City. I'm guessing this is based on gender.

2. May's teams. These correspond to the Kanto starter you pick near the beginning. Allen must've picked Squirtle which explains why May would have Wailord, Camerupt, and Sceptile by the end. But I picked Charmander and found Camerupt, Breloom, and Swampert at that point.

3. Raikou. This is just in the Power Plant after beating the League and was hinted at previously. It's in the NE room.

4. Deathweed and Tomb Ashe in the Cursed Isle sidequests, when you harvest them you actually have a bit of RNG here, getting from 1-3 of whichever you find. So you can savestate abuse to always get 3 if you need.

5. There's a third quest from the bazaar guy in Cursed Isle after delivering him Tomb Ashe. He gives you an Empty Vial if you don't have one, and you can bring it to the Lost Cemetary, go to the NW water area, fill it, battle a random ghost, and give it back to finish his experiment and gain a new item.

6. The Wilds. When you win TMs from the trainers there you actually get 10 of each.

7. Mimikyu. Had to look it up, was the last thing I got. Talk to a guy in the SW building in Kaji City who asks if it's daytime/nighttime, answer nighttime, then enter Haunted Mansion, go to NW room with TV, inspect TV, then talk to capped Pikachu which is the Mimikyu encounter.

8. Not nearly as important but there are other tombstones you can enter with the Cemetary Key aside from Sinner's Tomb, all are empty rooms and are marked as Underground Tomb. Data states that Unown can be found in these but using Sweet Scent/running around finds zero encounters.

A look back at: Digimon World 3

Really wished my summer wasn't spent on so much grinding and understanding game mechanics where all the games in the franchise are all different. At least with Digimon World 3 the gameplay resembled a lot of mainline Pokemon, and I've already been playing quite a few of those hacks at this point. Still, for the last Playstation 1 title of Digimon World, it delivered in what it could. Premises were established, with the nice spice of variety being given out as needed. The one-on-one Pokemon-esque battles can be appreciated albeit with necessary grinding. And a lot of it. Plenty of beef gate moments were frustrating to deal with but I invested the time I could. There's even gyms again for stat training. And while I do say the Digivolutions can be complex, I didn't have nearly as much trouble implementing what was desired.

TRADING CARD GAMES! I will be 100% honest, I am not a fan of any of these games due to complicated mechanics involving all of them, it took me a couple of weeks to even fully understand Final Fantasy 8's Triple Triad, and to this day I still don't understand 9's Tetra Master. So what makes you think I'm gonna like the somewhat required card game here? What makes you think I'll know when battling a rival tamer means with Digimon or with the cards? And then there's the fact you want to win to get the best of card decks, and don't even get me STARTED on the fact that a draw is a loss. This card game's mechanics were only slightly easier to pick up on than others, but I still hate trading card games.

As for the plot, I actually kinda liked it. Being trapped in the online world, realizing that the guy the government wants is a good guy, being a part of a resistance movement, it's an overused plot line but it still holds up. The bait-and-switch villains were kind of dumb but it's actually hard to notice how bad they were when you get sidetracked by other things in the meantime. But the terrifying concepts of stuff spilling over into the real world with a juggernaut (Destromon) wanting to level areas, as well as trying to do everything before everyone gets turned into Oinkmon made for a nice storyline overall.

A look back at: Digimon World 2

Whew, put a ton of hours into this, and I did take nearly a month to finally finish it and well I'm not too happy with things. Even the gameplay time maxed out at 99:59 and I'm 100% certain that I took longer.

It's great that Digimon World as a series tries different approaches to gameplay, with the first combining virtual pet with RPG elements which was relatively lukewarm. This game goes for the Mystery Dungeon-esque route, combined with traditional turn-based gameplay and a little dice of that convincing Digimon to join a la Pokemon. Of course, things aren't going to be perfect. The battles in this game are really sluggish to go through. You can certainly not have too much trouble with them, particularly with good strategies, but each attack takes a long time to go from one to the next, and seeing "Attack Missed" is annoying since you don't get to see what happens. Oh yeah, and this goes by the "first Final Fantasy" targeting mechanic, you defeat one Digimon and another that targeted it will always miss the target. So yeah, battles, slow-paced but still requires some strategy.

And then the whole navigating randomized dungeons. I'm okay with this on the whole due to being familiar with some mechanics already. What I'm not okay is the amount of preparation needed for many places you'll be going to. You won't know for sure if you need to have the right equipment to tackle electrical fences, landmines, or bugs that you won't see unless you pressed X for what's in front of you, and it can cost a dungeon run and force you to head back. And just so we're clear, you can only hold so much in your tank for supplies, so even treasure chests can become not useful later on. Early game is the worst at this due to having a measly 8 spaces in your inventory. Sure, it gets better, but that's early game hell for you.

The Digivolution system is also hard for me to even describe, though better than the last game thankfully. I hated the fact that some Digimon essentially cap out, and had to be spliced with other Digimon as something that starts weak, yes, this means of course you have to train new guys up at your own pace, and this adds to the overall time spent and exhaustion I felt at the end of it all. Was it worth it? Eh, I've done this kind of thing lots of times, so probably not. And then this game's plot is really just "get assigned mission, battle boss at end of dungeon, rinse, repeat". Not much in things until the Blood Knights start being invaders and some truths get revealed at the very end of things.

All of this really does amount to an RPG that is so not worth it...but then you get the music, and it's kickass. Seriously, this is some good, good music. Technological, of course, but it keeps the adrenaline working. Early dungeons sound tame, but things get much better. All battle themes are great, the main one is repetitive but not bad, and the boss themes are really gone. The soundtrack saved this game from being worse than mediocre.

A look back at: Touhoumon Cirno

And here's something that isn't involving Pokemon but has Touhou characters as the Pokemon, with a handful as the trainers. Really interesting. Of course, this little version here actually doesn't change the base game of Pokemon Ruby apart from those things. My final team was LFlandre (Fire/Dark), LSuwako (Water/Ground), EHatate (Psychic/Flying), LYuyuko (Ghost), LSakuya (Ice/Steel), and EShou (Electric/Rock). Some may recognize the names but why do they have L and E in front of them? You'll see. And by the way, have an EXTENSIVE GUIDE, one with the Touhoumons listed, new moves, abilities, a brief walkthrough, and trainer info all in one.

So the Touhoumon are interesting, and I'm glad they retain their overall name and status as specific Touhou characters as they evolve so to speak. I guess C is for Chibi, then you have the normal, non-prefix character, then E (dunno what this means) as the more advanced form. Some alternate forms exist, some characters have L when they level to Lv75, I assume it stands for legendary? Some have F, or EA, or SS (I assume this is swimsuit cause they all look like they wear swimsuits), A (angel), DE (demon), you get the idea. Some of the alternate forms do require stones to evolve.

Well really the Touhoumon are all I can really discuss for this hack as the base game and the plot remains totally the same. There's a few design differences in some cases, like Route 2 (Route 102) looking entirely different, and the Trick House now requiring Waterfall to access and seeming largely post-game as the trainers there all are unique. But as usual, there are still flaws with the game and I'll list them below. Unordered this time.

- There are still mentions of Pokemon in the game despite the Touhoumon replacing them.

- The rival character in dialogue still mentions Brendan/May instead of becoming Renko/Merry.

- Cut is, sadly, a necessary HM. This is mitigated however by the fact that it now is a 100% accurate Steel type move. And you know what? Some types got changes to their viability, like Ice resisting Ground, Rock not being weak to Water or Ground, and Steel just being surprisingly good; sure it's not resistant to Grass or Psychic but it gained a lot of good moves and is now super effective against Dark. This is handy for Ghost/Dark types who now have a weakness in Steel.

- The north side of Route 15 is off-limits completely. Why? No reason to have an invisible wall where I can surf.

- For that matter, you can't head to Route 26 via Route 24 and vice versa. To get to Route 26 you have to enter from Route 27, which I don't like.

- Several fixed encounter Pokemon, like the Wynaut egg, Castform, invisible Kecleons, and the legendaries will seem a bit awkward given the forms that they have when you encounter them. And a bit underwhelming when you find out that DERemilia is the Rayquaza encounter, especially if you ALREADY got a DERemilia!

- There are Z variants of Touhou, but for some weird reason they're all in the Transport Ship (Abandoned Ship) as fishing encounters. Trying to catch these glitches the game. Vocaloid characters are also present as fishing encounters in Lunar Falls' (Meteor Falls) first floor but they also are messed up. The whole thing seems awkward.

- At times, Slateport's PokeMart freezes the game. I did save and reload and can access the mart then but after a while it doesn't seem as usable.

- Yes, you can buy evolutionary stones at certain places, but my biggest issue of all is the Sun Stone. You can get it early at Petalburg, it costs a hefty P9000 at that point, but due to the way Petalburg's mart works, after some time (I assume after the fourth badge), one item is no longer sold, and that item ends up being the Sun Stone. After that, there's only one other Sun Stone in the game to get in Mossdeep City, and no you can't farm the Solrock replacement for Sun Stones cause it's not catchable in the wild here. And then yes, there are plenty of alternate forms that require the Sun Stone. Kind of bad when you want to try the A forms of Touhoumon and have to farm money early before the Sun Stone becomes permanently gone.

Even with these flaws though, I can easily appreciate this entire game for what it contains. No new plot, but it's not necessary. Touhoumon are interesting and also helping out are the increases in difficulty that don't go too far. Almost every one of them is accessible, but I did a lot of data mining to find out some things just aren't programmed to appear or will glitch the game.

A look back at: Digimon World

What a tiring game. And for the Playstation and for a one-disc game, this is surprisingly impressive. It takes a lot to figure out what to do in this game and even then there are still areas of the game which even guides have yet to figure out. Man, did it really take years to figure out the Digivolution? Because that certainly was a core mechanic that I feel this game really should have done better. Anyways, yeah, Digimon World, this is my first foray into this small series and I plan to play more, but this first game is easily the most unique.

As unique as it is, it takes a ton of balancing in order to just beat the game, and even far more to complete it. I don't think I'm gonna try that latter half. See, you have one Digimon as your pet, you gotta take it to training, feed it, have it battle, and have it go potty. All while balancing what appears to be general RPG navigation and other mechanics. Well, apart from the battles, which ends up being another key point as in the beginning their entirely AI controlled. I've never really been a fan of "letting things play out" with little in the way of influencing the battle, and I would argue that there should be more commands available early instead of when you can increase their Brains stat. With AI control, you're bound to see your or enemy Digimon just run around, determine whether or not to block attacks, or use the right techniques you want, and what could have been a short battle ends up much longer. Battling is necessary for extra skills and for stat increases of course, but then you gotta deal with that and getting the RIGHT stats up for Digivolving, all the virtual pet stuff I mentioned earlier, oh, did I mention that Digimons can lose their lifespan and start completely anew? Yeah, they can.

And all this while you try to rebuild a town. I actually like this mechanic a lot, reminds me of the Suikoden games and recruiting people for your castle. Except for a fleeting moment where a Greymon can ambush you outside the main house, which can be unwinnable if you just have a rookie Digimon at the moment. Definitely not fun. Of course, time-based events are at play, meaning there is quite a lot of waiting, but having to combine that with training the Digimon makes it quite easy to miss the event you were hoping to trigger. But hey, I hear the other Digimon games have significantly different gameplay, and I do applaud the many things to do, even if they take up most of the game that the plot of this game doesn't really take off.

A look back at: Pokemon Sky Twilight

Well, this one is an in-between in my eyes. My team consisted of Pokemon I have used multiple times in other hacks: Blaziken (was my mega), Quagsire, Claydol, Crobat, Florges, and Galvantula. I flipped mons a few times, notably having a Vaporeon instead of Quagsire for a good chunk but the HM usage was a thing to consider. My walkthrough is here too.

So this features mons, abilities, and moves up to Gen-7 and a slightly expanded dex, which is great. Most if not all evolution methods are changed, trade evolutions usually require a new stone or a certain level, and things generally work out. The difficulty in this one is probably the first I played to not be actually that difficult, there's no super trainers to battle postgame (actually there's no postgame), and the champion's highest level mon is Lv48. Granted, it's a new mega evolution, and yes there are new mega evolutions and all existing ones in this game. So you have all of this, and then you have a brand new region to comb through, a plot with a traditional evil team that wants a legendary (but the legendary is actually Noivern) and it is fairly easy due to big trainers having no more than three Pokemon and three moves each. Some criticize a decision like that, but I could use a difficulty break.

With all this said, it's no Dreams. There still lies a number of problems, and that usually has to do with progression. It's fairly open, although some routes your character just refuses to enter until you get the next badge or do the next event. One of my bigger gripes has to be that some places are not possible to fly out of, due to certain towns replacing Sevii island locations therefore you cannot fly back to other areas (and the map gets glitched too). The worst of this is Amaranth Village, because the day care is there, and you have to go all the way through Amaranth Path to the previous route to fly somewhere else. And it takes at least two Super Repels to even head on out of that cave. I used the day care for breeding, specifically for getting the base forms of pseudo legendaries, which while they are static encounters in secret caves, why in the world are they mid-stage starting out? I also was unable to resurrect the Old Amber fossil nor was I able to get an egg at Camellias Island.

But this all pales in comparison to the fact that some areas just weren't accessible, and that there were a number of other bugs not weeded out. The sign in Amaryllis Town softlocks the game, and sending a Drilbur out to battle for some reason also freezes it! That's a bit severe especially if you like Drilbur. Then there's Begonia Cavern, the later parts of it, where you can't cross one bridge and need the Walk Through Walls code to see what's on the other end. Of course, that area is optional, but Victory Canyon? The Victory Road of this game? You need to go through it, and can get as far as the second floor before the glitch tiles get in the way. And then there's the cave with the Deino and the exit cave, both of which have an invisible wall blocking. And then, every single Elite Four room has an issue with the door to the next room not being accessible. Why the invisible walls? I could have used AdvanceMap to modify the movement permissions for this too, but it's not something that a person just downloading the hack should have to deal with. And these things can certainly ruin a hack with a lot of great features.

RPG Ranks: Up to 170

I am back and doing this again. Mostly cause I have the time to do it, but because I have already played 10 RPGs so therefore I want to go back to this ranking system I did for a post that is almost a year old by now. My gosh. Since summer is in session I do have the free time to play some games, and now with that out of the way I'll use the same ranking system I did for the 160 post.

 If you want to see some blurbs for all of them, start from here. I think in the event I reach 200, I will return to this formula once again, but this will include all the RPGs I played in list format, along with blurbs and images for all the new ones. So here it goes.

170. Deep Dungeon 3 (#114)
169. Golvellius: Valley of Doom (#21)
168. Hydlide: (#53)
167. Deep Dungeon (#112)
166. Startropics (#12)
165. The Guardian Legend (#15)
164. Deep Dungeon 2 (#113)
163. Minelvaton Saga: Ragon no Fukkatsu (#118)
162. Shining Wisdom (#52)
161. Popful Mail (#103)
160. Deep Dungeon 4 (#124)
159. Ys. (#96)
158. Secret of the Stars (#107)
157. Dragon Quest (#76)
156. Dual Orb II (#86)
155. Ys. III (#123)
154. Ys II (#102)
153. Wizardry IV: The Return of Werdna (#144)
152. Majin Eiyuuden Wataru Gaiden (#19)
151. Dragon Quest II (#79)
150. Crusader of Centy (#8)
149. Orphen: Scion of Sorcery (#131) 
148. Magic Knight Rayearth (#48)
147. The 7th Saga (#77)
146. Final Fantasy Legend II (#46)
145. Final Fantasy Legend III (#54)
144. Faria: A World of Mystery and Danger! (#17)
143. Ranma 1/2: Treasure of the Red Cat Gang (#121)
142. Grandia III (#133)
141. Final Fantasy (#2)
140. Final Fantasy Legend (#43)
139. Wizardry III: Legacy of Llylgamyn (#143)
138. Wizardry II: The Knight of Diamonds (#142)
137. Lunar: Walking School (#44)
136. Silva Saga (#119)
135. Great Greed (#47)
134. Tenchi Muyo! Game Hen (#93)
133. Phantasy Star II (#16)
132. Silva Saga II (#122)
131. Lufia & The Fortress of Doom (#6)
130. Robotrek (#101)
129. Final Fantasy Adventure (#105)
128. Warsong (#56)
127. Final Fantasy II (#135)
126. Dragon Quest IV (#94)
125. Shining Force: The Sword of Hajya (#129)
124. Shining Force (#106)
123. Shining in the Darkness (#82)
122. Wizardry V: Heart of the Maelstrom: (#146)
121. Wild ARMs 4 (#136)
120. Phantasy Star III (#71)
119. Romancing SaGa (#61)
118. Dragon Quest III (#89)
117. Princess Crown (#126)
116. Might and Magic Book One: The Secret of the Inner Sanctum (#153)
115. Wizardry VI: Bane of the Cosmic Forge (#147)
114. Might and Magic II: Gates to Another World (#154)
113. Breath of Fire (#9)
112. Final Fantasy Mystic Quest (#75)
111. Wizardry: Proving Grounds for the Mad Overlord (#141)
110. Might and Magic III: Isles of Terra (#157)
109. Might and Magic IV: Clouds of Xeen (#158)
108. Might and Magic V: Darkside of Xeen (#159)
107. Phantasy Star (#3)
106. Dragon Quest V (#104)
105. Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure (#84)
104. Earthbound ZERO (#88)
103. Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny (#161)

Man, look at all those gridlines. This PC RPG is kind of on the ridiculous side with its tactical battles, and while you can automate it, sometimes that's not recommended. In any case, I think of Realms of Arkania as a tactical version of Might & Magic or Wizardry, and for the most part I am okay with this kind of thing, well, most of the time. Difficulty is quite high and there's a ton of statistics to worry about.

102. Realms of Arkania: Star Trail (#164)

It makes a few improvements, and I especially love the final battle against Arkandor in the screenshot which is quite nicely done for something in a tactical RPG. Other than that, the same as the first game. It certainly still has its difficulty, and events can screw you over at times, but it all remains quite fun. And it's hard to believe that a Doom 2 WAD got me into this game because of the music that was taken from it. Yeah, this is a thing with some of the games I played here.

101. Chocobo's Mysterious Dungeon (#145)
100. Chocobo's Dungeon 2 (#165)

Yet another case of me being lazy and putting a sequel game immediately after its predecessor on the ranking. But then again, what can you do if they kept the core mechanics of the sequel the same as the first game? Not a lot, that's what. Still, Chocobo's Dungeon 2 has a better overall feel to it (and better translation) and was a lot more fun. And hey, randomized dungeons can be fun AT TIMES.

99. Jade Cocoon (#58)
98. Koudelka (#163)

This is a good example of a story-driven RPG. The predecessor to the Shadow Hearts franchise definitely has the spooky feel that Resident Evil and Silent Hill fans can appreciate, combined with a turn-based, grid-based RPG style. Problem I have is the gameplay is too damn slow. It takes a while to get to enemies, and then to defeat some bosses it takes awhile. There's a lot of backtracking and man I hated it when I broke some weapons that I wanted to keep. The storyline ultimately saves this from being bad at least, plus the different endings.

97. Vandal Hearts II (#162)

If you're a fan of medieval, war-like storylines, then this is a game for you. Yes, you'll be witnessing politics in the grand scheme of many, many cutscenes, how rulers are trying to usurp one another, how men die valiantly for their country, oh wait, what about the gameplay this one had? Needless to say, the sequel tried something that ended up poorly executed. Great idea, have BOTH an enemy and player character move at the same time. This led to a lot of frustrating moments. And then there's remembering to make the right choices so you get the best ending possible. A lot to take in, and if it wasn't for the storyline this would be a lot lower.

96. Wild ARMs (#22)
95. Star Ocean: Blue Sphere (#109)
94. SaGa Frontier 2 (#132)

93. Dragon Quest VI (#116)
92. Sailor Moon: Another Story (#37)

91. Star Ocean (#67)
90. Final Fantasy III (#55)

89. Tales of Eternia (#136)

88. Xenogears (#30)

87. Odin Sphere (#34)

86. Spectrobes (#152)

85. Illusion of Gaia (#51)

84. Langrisser II (#73)

83. The Legend of Dragoon (#60)

82. Final Fantasy IV (#4)

81. Kartia: The Word of Fate (#63)

80. Lufia: The Ruins of Lore (#139)

79. Final Fantasy V (#65)

78. Romancing SaGa 3 (#83)

77. Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (#140)

76. Mystic Ark (#137)

75. Dragon Quest VII (#127)

74. Wild ARMs 2 (#24)

73. Vandal Hearts (#160)

72. Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land (#156)

71. Dragon Quest VIII (#138)

70. Thousand Arms (#69) 

69. La Pucelle: Tactics (#117)
68. Threads of Fate (#1)

67. Tales of Destiny (#39)
66. Suikoden IV (#66)
65. Wild ARMs: Alter Code F (#29)
64. Sword of Mana (#14)
63. Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time (#62)
62. Legend of Legaia (#80)
61. Lufia: The Legend Returns (#36)
60. Star Ocean: The Second Story (#98)

59. Secret of Evermore (#10)
58. Secret of Mana (#110)
57. Seiken Densetsu 3 (#120)
56. Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant (#148)
55. Soul Blazer (#42)

54. Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete (#7)
53. Tales of Phantasia (#18)
52. Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete (#26)
51. Breath of Fire III (#13)

50. Brave Fencer Musashi (#59)
49. Breath of Fire IV (#28)

48. Paper Mario (#64)

47. Growlanser III: The Dual Darkness (#74)

46. Suikoden Tactics (#81)

45. Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga (#31)

44. Romancing SaGa 2 (#78)

43. Suikoden III (#38)

42. Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (#128)

41. Suikoden V (#108)

40. Grandia (#32)

39. Growlanser II: The Sense of Justice (#57)

38. SaGa Frontier (#97)

37. Might and Magic IX: The Writ of Fate (#169)

Snazzier graphics did not necessarily make this entry in the M&M series the best. Well, gameplay is like the other three before it in the series (which I'll explain later, they come after this one!), so that means that I like the free-moving real-time battles that they offer. But I don't like how the plot was like "Hey, fight this warlord guy because destiny says so. Oh wait! It turns out you both were tricked by what is essentially Loki! Hahaha!" Sometimes a plot can break an RPG on me. Shame too, it was somehow quite good until the plot twist.

36. Wizardry 8 (#149)

35. Pokemon Yellow (#151)

34. Pokemon Red/Blue (#150)

33. Might and Magic VIII: Day of the Destroyer (#168)

Another thing that can ruin things for the Might & Magic series in my opinion, the strange continuity. In other words, to get all the full backstories, you need to play the Heroes of Might and Magic spinoff series to understand a few more things. M&M8 isn't too bad though, the same mechanics as the previous two games exist here, and they try to make things improvable as much as possible. Dragon recruits! Elemental gateways! Crazy crystals! It's all here and is fun.

32. Might and Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven (#166)

By the time M&M6 rolled around we saw them do what they did with Wizardry 8, and arguably better. Still got tons of character customization to boot, but the developers knew they needed to make their series a bit more appealing than the last few games which were difficult in many ways. M&M6 is a direct sequel to the fifth game, and at this point the continuity kind of snarls in between the HOM&M series which again I need to play, but the advancements in gameplay are what make this a good game in the series.

31. Might and Magic VII: For Blood and Honor (#167)

I'm gonna argue and say this is the best of the M&M core games though, and it's mostly because its plot was the most interesting (the gameplay here is more or less the same as M&M6). A major character returns from the previous game, there's a fun scavenger hunt, and your party actually becomes rulers of your own castle. Granted, with the rule of a castle you have the politics that go with it, the results being having to ally with a light or dark side, or worrying about invasion, these things happen around the midpoint which I think is perfect for such decisions in-game.

30. Crystalis (#5)

29. Final Fantasy VIII (#85)

28. Final Fantasy IX (#115)

27. Earthbound (#99)

26. Skies of Arcadia (#90)

25. Treasure of the Rudras (#87)

24. Phantasy Star IV (#92)

23. Chrono Cross (#40)

22. Final Fantasy VII (#50)

21. Terranigma (#68)

20. Grandia II (#41)

19. Makai Kingdom (#170)

I've said enough about how Makai Kingdom essentially combines Disgaea and Phantom Brave, and if you can foreshadow, you'll realize those games are ahead of this one. Maybe I should've played Makai Kingdom before them and it would be much higher, but the magic is lost cause I played those first. Regardless, a fun tactical RPG with LOADS of customization will earn you really high points. And you get to utilize facilities and mechs too. Lots of overlord magic to be had.

18. Final Fantasy X (#155)

17. Vagrant Story (#70)

16. Final Fantasy Tactics (#95)

15. Suikoden (#27)

14. Suikoden II (#33)

13. Breath of Fire II (#11) 

12. Disgaea: Hour of Darkness (#130)

11. Bahamut Lagoon (#125)

10. MOTHER 3 (#111)

9. Live-A-Live (#49)

8. Wild ARMs 3 (#35)

7. Final Fantasy VI (#45)

6. Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals (#23)

5. Phantom Brave (#91)

4. The World Ends With You (#100)

3. Chrono Trigger (#20)

2. Valkyrie Profile (#25)

1. Soul Nomad & The World Eaters (#72)

And with that, I have officially ranked all of my RPGs accordingly, yet again. I will continue to play more as time goes on, the new ones will probably not show up on this list anytime soon until I hit a target number. Regardless, peace out as I continue my gaming escapades.