Care to name some? What is your opinion about claim Phantasy Stars being the best RPGs on Mega Drive & Genesis?
I'd say... probably best on Mega Drive & Genesis, because those systems had a serious dearth of RPGs. it says something when a game as flawed as the Genesis Shadowrun makes it onto EVERY RPG list for a system - that game was just... so grindy. So very, very grindy. The Matrix computer system was awesome, but everything else was a chore.
Okay, good/great JRPGs of the 8/16 bit era... not naming Final Fantasy, of course, that goes without saying. Some of these you've probably already played, so just skim over any you've seen.
I've heard good things about Beyond Oasis for GEN, but never played it. PS4 is the best of the Phantasy Star games.
Dragon Quest 4 (NES/DS) for the storyline. You play each ally character through their own storyline before you pick up as the main character again - sometimes as goofy stories, where you play as the merchant Torneko and get to find out what it's like on the OTHER side of the counter, and other times as more serious. Hell, DQ5 & 6 are also good - DQ5 also has a great storyline that starts you as a child and you end up the
father of the legendary hero, and DQ6 is just so weird that you want to find out what's going on.
If you can, lay hands on the DS versions - they're definitive IMHO. Or the GBA versions of DQ1-3 if you really want to experience them. The NES Dragon Warrior 1 is
awful, any game that you can speed up 4x and still play just fine is way too slow.
Chrono Trigger (SNES) goes without saying. Any list that doesn't have that as one of the top five RPGs of all time, if not THE best RPG ever, is a bad list. Once again, the DS version is definitive - has the Toriyama cutscenes of the PS1 version without any of the horrific slowdown of early PS1 games.
Crystalis (NES) is a seeming Zelda clone at first, but has a lot of RPG stuff and that science is magic aspect which is also good, and some pretty neat play aspects - it's a bit aged, but not nearly so bad.
Shin Megami Tensei (SNES) - though it's only available in translated roms, has a very unique setting that persists in a ton of spinoff games to this day.
Lufia & Lufia II (SNES) - Lufia 1 is WAY easy, but the second game more than makes up for it with some of the
hardest puzzles you will ever see in an RPG. And technically, Lufia 1 is a sequel to Lufia 2, so it's not bad to play them a bit out of order.
Final Fantasy Legend II (Gameboy) is really SaGA 2, and probably the best of the SaGA games - It has an interesting setting, and several different leveling mechanisms. For example, Robots get stronger based on their equipment. Monsters eat meat from other monsters and can evolve into weaker or stronger versions. Once again, I like the DS version best, if only because GB graphics are.... limited, and the translation was done by a Japanese-native speaker, not English speaker, and so it's really... unique.
Secret of Mana (SNES) is also genre-defining action-RPG, and is one of the few two-player RPGs out there. But I don't really care for it all that much without another player, and the story is kind of all over the place. Seiken Densetsu 3 is probably better overall, because the story changes based on which main character you choose.
Super Mario RPG: Seven Sacred Stars (SNES) is one of the best RPG games ever. Hilarious, good mechanics, interesting storyline, and one of the best optional bosses I've ever fought.
Shadowrun (SNES) isn't a traditional JRPG, but it's also well worth playing - you wake up on a slab in a morgue and have to master magic, computers, and guns to find out who you are. It also was a very early, but very good, isometric view RPG (top down at an angle, think Fallout 1/2?)
Earthbound (SNES) is just... weird. It's a very Japanese take on America, and is just... weird. It's a straight JRPG, but set in a kind of America where it's okay to swing cracked bats at punks to turn them tame and eat hamburgers you find in garbage cans instead of swinging swords at slimes and drinking potions you find in pots.
Fire Emblem Sacred Stones (GBA) is a bit of a cheat as it's 2003, but it's what I consider the best 'classic' Fire Emblem game in that 16-bit style.