I'm currently playing Legend of Heroes: Trail in the Sky. Who would have thoughts that this ~12 years old game (first released in 2004, although the PC version is probably based on the PS3 remaster of 2011) would take me away from Dragon's Dogma and Mass Effect 2. Well it did.
I haven't had that much fun questing in a while. I'm back to suffering from "just one more quest, OMG, it's already 11pm!" syndrome. Looking at it, game developers (everywhere, this is a JRPG) forgot how to make RPGs at some point, because this is the format to follow.
Amazing story pace so far (not drowned in side quests, not lost following the trail of the main quest either). No "you are our Savior" trope in sight, crime solving and defending villagers from monsters is what I'm doing. Most side quests have substantial content, if they don't they get completed just by following the main quest. The isometric voiceless cutscenes with emotions and animations are very cool. I wish more games went this way instead of voicing everything. Also the games keep track of what you are doing, I had multiple instance where NPCs referred to optional things I did, I don't often see this anymore.
Downside: this being a old console games, maps are very smalls, but loading is basically instant on PC so it's not that bad. The problem is every time you load a map monsters respawns…most of them are easy to avoid though.