Shin Megami Tensei

So I may not have brought it up yet but I am a major fan of Japanese RPGs and my favorite series ever made for Japanese RPGs is easily the Shin Megami Tensei series. The series has always stood out to me because it has themes in it that you usually do not see in any other series. First there is the fact that it is incredibly dark(or at least most of them are). They tend to focus on apocalypses or on worlds that are entirely different from ours. Most of the games do not have voice acting which for me is usually a turn off but in these games it has ever been once I realized how good the story was. Now another thing that has appealed to me over the years has to be the battle system. You see instead of it being a standard turn based system they usually use a token based system. Now how this works is your team has x tokens and x is the number of characters that are alive. Now you can loose tokens by attacking someone with an attack that uses an element they are strong against or you can gain them by using ones they are weak against. Now when you use something they are strong against you usually loose the rest of your turn because party limit is generally 3 and it takes away two tokens which is exactly how much you will have after attacking once. Now if you hit them with their weakness it gives you a half token which can be used in place of a full token to perform an attack. So basically when you hit their weakness you gain an extra attack that turn. Also when a player passes his turn to another character only half of the token is taken so if you have a character that can hit an opponents weakness but your currently selected character does not you can basically pass the turn to that character so they can perform a stringer attack. With team limits of three you can do this in any situation you have 2 tokens or more and it will get to the player you need eventually.
The system works perfectly but more than the battle system it is the incredible stories that draw me in. Honestly the games are incredible and if you like RPGs and have a PS2 these are probably the best ones you will find short of some Final Fantasy games and in many cases they are the best you will find including Final Fantasy games. The only problem is that they usually don't do more than one pressing of the discs meaning once the shipments go out for the game, that's it they usually don't release a second shipment. This little fact makes them the hardest games to find on the PS2 that are worth buying. If you see a game in a store and like RPGs and have the money do not hesitate, buy it. Although if you are an online shopper you should be able to find them relatively easy on sites such as EBay or Play-Asia so check them out. However wherever you find them expect to pay at least 40 dollars for any of them(even the non-PS2 ones). The series has been around in Japan for a long time(since nes) and is still going strong. Currently 10 of the games have been brought to America and all of them are hard to find. The games in America are: Jack Brothers(Virtual Boy, yes seriously), Demi-Kids Light and Dark Versions(both for the GBA, these are similar to Pokemon but with an actual story and are both very good), Persona(PS), Persona 2(PS), Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne(PS2), Digital Devil Saga(PS2), Digital Devil Saga 2(PS2), Devil Summoner:Raidou Kuzunoha VS. The Soulless Army(PS2), Persona 3(PS2). Also note there is currently an unnamed game beign produced and developed for the PS3.