A recent piece over on MSN rounds up 10 turn-based RPGs that supposedly changed video games forever. I'm a sucker for lists like this. I've been playing RPGs since the original Final Fantasy on the NES, back when discovering that games could actually tell stories instead of just testing how fast you could mash the A button felt like a revelation. So yeah, I read it. Nodded at some picks, argued with others, and now I'm bringing the whole thing here.

Turn-based RPGs occupy a weird space right now. They're not the commercial juggernauts they were during the late '90s PS1 JRPG boom, but the reports of their death were always exaggerated. They splintered, mutated, found new life through indie devs and western studios who grew up mainlining the same games I did. The format still works. It just looks different.

I'm not going to spoil the full list because you should read it yourself, but a few entries got me thinking.

Final Fantasy VII is the obvious one. You can't build this list without it. I want to say it was around '97 when it hit, and I already had years of imported Super Famicom cartridges under my belt by then, grinding through text with a Japanese dictionary balanced on my knee. FFVII wasn't my first RPG, not even close. Even I could see it cracked the format wide open for an entire generation of players who'd never touched one. The Materia system alone changed how developers think about modular character customization.

Nina Alvarez over in our Gaming section would probably argue Final Fantasy VI matters more, and she's got a case. But that's a debate for another day.

Pokemon belongs on any list like this. Whatever you think of Game Freak's output lately, the original Red and Blue built an absolute empire on a turn-based foundation that's still holding up. The collecting mechanic layered on top of standard RPG battles was transformative. Every creature collector since, from Persona to Digimon to Temtem, owes it something.

EarthBound is the interesting pick. It sold terribly in the US, became a cult obsession, and then spent two decades quietly influencing how indie developers handle tone, humor, and emotional resonance in RPGs. Games like Undertale and Omori don't exist without it. Sales numbers don't equal legacy.

What always gets me about these lists is the reluctance to dig deeper. Wizardry from 1981 basically laid down the dungeon-crawling framework that Japanese developers studied, refined, and turned into the JRPG genre itself. You can trace a straight line from Wizardry to Dragon Quest to Final Fantasy to everything that came after. Strip out that foundation and the whole house collapses.

The MSN list also pulls in more recent games, which I appreciate. A good list shouldn't stop at nostalgia. Persona 5 proved turn-based combat could feel stylish and urgent, not just methodical. The presentation, the soundtrack, the sheer confidence of that UI design. It reminded people that turn-based didn't mean boring.

My broader thought is that lists like this matter less for the rankings and more for the arguments they spark. Everyone's list is different because everyone came in at a different point. Mine was a gray cartridge with Final Fantasy on the label and a party I built out of Fighters and Black Belts. Yours might have been Pokemon Blue or Mass Effect or Darkest Dungeon.

The format endures because it gives you time to think, and your decisions carry weight. Action games test your reflexes. Turn-based games test your judgment. There's room for both, and the fact that we're still arguing about which 10 RPGs mattered most tells you the genre never lost its hold.