So far I've bought Max Payne 3 (was going to get the retail version but the price was too good to turn down), Bioshock 2, Arkham City and LA Noire.

Can't think of many more games I'll add to that. Maybe Just Cause 2 and Jade Empire. I'll see how the daily/community/flash sales pan out.

Final Fantasy VII.

Gran Turismo, Metal Gear Solid and Halflife also blew my mind when I first played them, but FFVII was the first game I played that really stood out over anything I'd ever played before, across all genres.

I was put off by the difficulty for ages, then manned up and bought Dark Souls. Started playing it last week and it really is amazing. I typically go for story/narrative driven RPGs but the game does what it tries to do very well.

I haven't got far enough to really comment on the difficulty but I've actually found the learning curve quite reasonable. You just have to be patient with the game and concentrate when in combat.

Vagrant Story - I don't think it helped releasing this game at the end of the PS1's life, and when traditional JRPGs were still very popular. In fact the game brought major innovations and sophistication to the genre which you are only now seeing more frequently with the likes of Dark Souls, Dragon's Dogma, The Last Story etc.

Amazing game that should have been bigger than it was, and would be fit in very well as a 2012 game.

As others have said, don't force yourself to do multiple playthroughs.

I have a nord warrior and a Breton conjuration mage and I enjoy playing with both, but I decided to focus more on the mage as the game is too vast for me to get through everything with more than one character.

Unlike many RPGs though, I'd say with this game you could take a break to play other games, then come back to. As much as it sucks you in it still has a certain 'pick up and play' factor that many narrative-driven RPGs (which I generally prefer) lack.

It would be a huge loss, but only because of its legacy and because I have faith that the Japanese market will find some inspiration and success in the future. The Japanese really need to look at the direction they've taken this generation with their games.

JRPGs in particular seem to have completely lost touch with how to appeal to the western market, and their increased focus on handheld gaming (either out of budgetary reasons or because of its success domestically) appears to be a bad choice globally given how important the traditional console market is elsewhere. Also, genres that have usually fallen into the Japanese domain such as platformers and beat em ups have become somewhat out of fashion.

I'm not saying they should be trying to make FPS and WRPG clones. The opposite, if anything - Japan has always been at the forefront of gaming innovation (whilst still making games that appeal to the masses of traditional gamers) but this generation they have lost that edge a little and that is where they have gone wrong.

I loved FFXII, so it wasn't change from FF traditions that made me hate FFXIII. Rather that they went the complete opposite direction from everything I liked about 12, and it showed that the 2 games were made by different development teams.

Linearity, lack of towns or interaction with NPCs, boring level design, repetitive pacing, bizarre but uninteresting storyline, annoying characters, battles that drag on far too long. It all added up to a game experience that felt like a chore to finish.

If I had to be positive about it in any way the boss battles can actually be quite fun. There's some strategy involved in them where as most FF games you can easily beat the bosses with summon spamming. Also the crystarium system is ok and the graphics are pretty.

Having only getting properly into gaming from the Playstation onwards, I feel like I missed out on the SNES JRPG era, although most of the classics weren't released in Europe anyway. I've played most of these games since but it's not the same.

Also I regret not playing the Baldur's Gate games in their day... by the time I gave BG2 a go I struggled to get into it because I had been playing Neverwinter Nights for ages and didn't like the old D&D rules.