Man, Tales of Phantasia on SNES still holds up. You start off with this quiet village kid, Cless, and within like 10 minutes everything goes sideways—demons attack, your hometown gets wrecked, and suddenly you're time-traveling with a half-elf mage who's way cooler than you. The combat's this weird hybrid where you run around slashing in real-time but still have to manage spells and special moves. Took me a while to stop button-mashing.

The translation's janky in that classic 90s ROM-hack way ("SODA POP" as a healing item will never not be funny), but the story goes way deeper than most SNES RPGs. One minute you're fighting in medieval castles, next thing you're in a futuristic city full of mechs. Also, that opening vocal track blew my mind as a kid—SNES wasn't supposed to do that.

Fair warning: some dungeons drag on forever, and good luck figuring out where to go next without talking to every NPC twice. Still one of the best action-RPGs of the era though.