Oh man, Tales of Phantasia—this is where the whole Tales series started, and honestly, it still holds up. You’ve got this classic SNES JRPG vibe, but with this weirdly cool real-time battle system where you’re mashing buttons to combo attacks instead of just picking commands from a menu. The story kicks off with your hometown getting wrecked, and suddenly you’re jumping through time trying to stop some ancient sorcerer king from, you know, ending the world. Typical JRPG stuff, but the writing’s got charm.

First thing you’ll notice? The voice acting. For an SNES game, it’s wild—actual spoken lines during battles and cutscenes, which was nuts back then. The DeJap translation patch cleans up the original Japanese script (though it’s got some… interesting early-2000s fan-translation quirks). Also, the soundtrack? Absolute bangers. Fight me.

It’s not perfect—some dungeons drag, and good luck figuring out a few puzzles without a guide—but if you like old-school RPGs with personality, this one’s a trip.