These franchises have provided me with literally hundreds upon hundreds of hours of entertainment and all of them represent a level of quality I find unmatched. If any games have influenced me as a person or a gamer these would be they.
Persona 3 was a landmark game for me. I spent my entire winter break the year of its release doing nothing but playing that game. I didn't think that anything could top it. Persona 4 proved me wrong. It improved on 3 in so many ways and introduced a cast that I truly cared about. For that reason alone I will always love this series.
Golden Sun, much like Persona, won me over on the strength of its cast, however beyond even the great characters it also introduced me to a wholly original and interesting world and provided really solid gameplay that allowed me to play for hours on end without ever feeling the need to stop.
Mass Effect, Mass Effect. The game that proved to me Westerners could be just as adept and in some ways even surpass the Japanese in RPG prowess. The only way I know how to describe these games in a way that will do them justice is "cinematic."
Fire Emblem, like Pokemon, introduced me to something new, it was the first Strategy RPG I ever played and still remains one of the best. It cultivated a love for a genre that I didn't even know existed up until that point and provides some of the best characterization in any medium, period.
Pokemon was my first foray into the RPG genre and will forever have a place in my heart. Critics may decry its lack of any real change, but the subtle details each new game in the series adds to the formula are generally enough for me.
After Fire Emblem I was ravenous for any Strategy RPGs I could find, so I was fortunate when Atlus finally decided to bring the long running SRW franchise to the states in the form of SRW Original Generation for the GBA. Since that game I have gone out of my way to obtain and play others in the series in their native Japanese. I cannot say enough good things about this series.
