The First Ten Minutes of Secret of Mana (Snes)
7This is a vid of the first ten minutes of the beloved Snes RPG classic Secret of Mana.
Games like this are prime examples of what I mean when i say that RPG's haven't been good since the PS1, but haven't been great since the Snes.
From the music to the world presented in this, and Square's other Snes efforts, these RPGs have a charm to them that has since been stripped from modern RPGs (which feel soulless by comparison).
You probably have to be a pre Final Fantasy VII RPG player to truly appreciate the charm of a game like this, but there's a reason why I love 2D sprite based RPGs more than the pre-rendered, or fully polygonal ones of today. Their worlds have a lot more charm to them. I don't know what it is, but there's just something about the old 2D graphics that appeals to me more than all the cinematics of today's RPGs combined.
As for Secret of Mana, I actually didn't get this one until a few years back, and only just got around to playing through it last year. I played a little bit of it back in the day when my brother rented it (he played more, because I was the younger brother), but never really got to experience it myself.
There's a reason why Square's Snes efforts are still held in such high regard by oldschool RPG fans. SoM has everything that makes RPGs great, and you can even play it with three players and a multitap too.