Shin Megami Tensei: Persona franchise overtaking Final Fantasy.

No longer is Square's premier franchise ontop of the JRPG ( maybe even the RPG ) throne. While FF had been the leader and innovator in this RPG genre, the emergence of Persona 3 turned the heads of the gaming community. Never had a game had such a compelling story been brought together with solid gameplay, fantasic music to create an overall fantastic feel. I feel that the RPG genre has reached its peak in gameplay. While new variations could be brought forth, the core gameplay of the RPG has been set: summons/spells, items, weapons, etc. etc. For me, it is the story and how it is presented to the player which define whether or not a RPG is good or great. RPG stands for Role-Playing Game. ROLE PLAYING. Persona 3 and 4 had such compelling stories, engaging characters, and beautiful delivering mechanisms to emmerse the gamer fully. I've heard people bitch about how the story is nothing compared to the gameplay. Excuse me? How can you disregard the drving point of the entire game? Grant you multiplayer driven games don't need a story but I've heard some ridiculious arguements saying how one game is better than the other because the storyline doesn't matter.... Anyways. The introduction of Social Links was genius, combining the social aspects of the player with his/her gameplay. While the recent incarnations of the FF series have been good, nothing in them was ground-breaking for me. Also, the humour in both games is genuine, sometimes making me lol and other times it was dark humour. Making games funny is a hard thing to do in this industry, and Atlus makes its games funny while not making it feel forced.