The Year of the Dragon

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth and the world’s nicest hero top my list for 2024

My love for role-playing games is rooted in the days of the original Playstation 1 when the Final Fantasy series ruled the videogame landscape. There were other ambitious, beautiful games available but a scant few could evoke the same epic scale of a Final Fantasy game where you summoned godlike spirts to combat world-spanning evil.

For me, the four consecutive Final Fantasy games of the Playstation 1 and 2 era — VII, VIII, IX, and X — make up one of the greatest runs in videogame history and set a modern template for Japanese role-playing games (JRPGs). There were others, of course. Dragon Quest never hit as big in the U.S. as its native Japan but had its fans and the first Persona game marked the launch of a franchise that wouldn’t peak until 25 years later.

Final Fantasy’s creators at Square Enix had nearly perfected menu-driven, turn-based combat systems. Too bad that Western-style gaming, with its focus on hack-and-slash and/or run-and-gun action gameplay (God of War, Halo, Call of…