10) Suikoden III

9) Dragon Age: Origins

8) Mass Effect

7) Final Fantasy X

6) Grandia II

5) The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

4) Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

3) Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King

2) Skies of Arcadia

1) Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete

This Top 10 was very hard to do, because I hate "ranking" games. They each have different things I like, and it's hard to figure out which ones I like better than the others. In the end, though, I went with the games that had the most "effect" on me. The most sentimental value – the ones that make me think back to them with really fond memories.

I found it interesting that the games on my list that were released in roughly the first half of the decade are all JRPGs, while the later games are all Western RPGs. Now, this could mean that JRPGs have declined over the years, or that WRPGs have gone up in quality, or that my tastes have changed over the years. It's difficult to say which it is – in fact, it may be a combination of all three.

I was also very torn because when all was said and done, I had 11 games that I just couldn't decide how to rank. Unfortunately, Fallout 3 just barely missed making my Top 10. I really enjoyed the game, and was hooked while playing it. However, it just didn't affect me as much as the other games, and with Oblivion being similar (first-person open-world RPGs by Bethesda), Oblivion got the nod because I prefer the medieval, fantasy setting.