Xenogears

This game for the most part is excellent. Its story hooks you right from the get go and the combat is rather varied for a turn based rpg. Great characters and great story too. The combat is turn based, however for some of the fights you will fight using the characters themselves and you push the buttons in certain order to perform super attacks that you can chain together for deadly result. The other fighting involves mech warriors the characters pilot called gears, and while the fighting doesn't have quite the combos in this form you do get to do very devastating attacks to your opponent. The game features cut scenes ala final fantasy, however, with the exception of the first one most are done in an anime style. The story follows a young man whose tiny town is invaded by warring nations and who becomes involved with a rebel group to take back one of the countries at war. However, not all is as it seems as secrets are learned and outside forces trying to help one country over the other have appeared. There are a lot of mystery's to unravel, a super powered villain out to destroy seemingly everything, and people with differing motives to be found. Yes, this game would nearly be perfect until the start of the second disc and from here on out the game seems a tad rushed as you basically get told what is happening without any involvement in some areas and you must fight a little in others. I am guessing the makers of this game were pushed into releasing the game a bit faster than they wanted. Still after awhile you take control of the game again and it once again becomes very good, just a shame that this one section of the story had to unfold the way it did.