Final Fantasy-less title: The Legend of Dragoon
Totally Square-free developer: Sony (SCEI)
Why you should ignore Zidane and play this: Because it was every bit as big and beautiful as any other Final Fantasy on the original PlayStation, but it added in tons of dragons. Spiky-haired hero Dart and his captivatingly innocent girly-girl Shana were as charming as FFVII's Cloud and Aerith, it looked amazing for its day and the story was epic and meaningful and all those things you want an RPG story to be.
But the big sell was that literally every member of your party had the ability to turn into an elementally-themed dragoon. Which is indeed just a fancier way to say "dragon" - as in, "huge, badass lizard ready to bite your face off and melt the rest of your body into steaming goop with its radioactive lava breath". Even without the dragon thing, the various characters had interesting personalities - you really cared when someone died - and impressive powers. But with this little added bonus, you were completely hooked. Sure, blocky old PlayStation games look a little rough in these days of HD everything, but The Legend of Dragoon is still one of the finest RPGs on any system.
