I'm about two hours into Tales of Phantasia, I'm liking the battle system a lot. Terringma is also much awesome but I'm stuck 
Might start it again someday. Bahamut Lagoon is excellent, one of Square's best RPGs. Its strategy-based, you can download it from The Underdogs. I've neer played any other of Square's SRPGs so I couldn't say if its worse/better than FF Tactics, but its so worth a go.
Although not many people bother to differentiate the two...
Bahamut Lagoon is what is known as an SRPG or a Strategy RPG.
Final Fantasy Tactics is a TRPG or Tactics RPG.
I wont bother outlining any exact definitions but the quick way of saying it is that the difference between the two (the line blurs more with every new hybrid) is that TRPGs have less environmental interraction (things like freezing water and cutting things down to get past) and are shown in an isometric view with height playing a major role in unit placement. SRPGs tend to have a fair bit of enviromental interraction and are shown mostly in a plain old top down view, they are the ones where you are taken away to another screen or shown a zoomed in view when close up attacks are executed.
I'm sure that was badly written and all, but that's pretty much it.
There goes all the classic lines when they're on the boat.
I wouldn't say DeJap's "translation" of the boat scene are anywhere near faithful to the original text. :p As far as I know, the game is child-friendly, he just spontaneously goes overboard in some parts.
Equinox! There's a good game. My brother bought it on a whim for 50 kronor years ago, and we don't regret it. Some puzzle rooms are pure evil, though. When the level designers noticed that they had invisible, exploding and conveyor-belt blocks at their disposal, they made sure to make the most out of them. Sonia is a sissy, too, and there's an evil bug where you teleport yourself into the middle of the ocean if you try going to the near-final island without restarting the save file first. That aside, it's really cool, but requires alot of patience.
Stunt Race FX rules too. The look and feel they've pulled off in some areas of the game are better than the stuff you see in F-Zero GX, like the underwater tunnel with higher contrast and more colors.
I'll have to get ahold of this Terranigma sometime.
Nah, I had a friend who is fairly fluent in Japanese compare the translation with the original. His conclusion was that the difference was the "strength" of our words VS the original Japanese wording, pretty much our words are seen as being more offensive even when used playfully and that if other words were used in their place the feeling behind the speach wouldn't have come across the same.
Again I'm sure that I wrote that poorly... I just hope that I got the right idea across.
