Are RPG's getting worse every 5 years? (List your top 10 RPG's ever to help!)

1. Xenogears (1998)
2. Suikoden II (1997)
3. Skies of Arcadia Legends (2003)
4. Final Fantasy IX (2000)
5. Baten Kaitos (2004)
6. Final Fantasy Tactics (1998)
7. Alundra (1997)
8. Legend of Mana (2000)
9. Secret of Mana (1993)
10. Chrono Cross (2000)

Honorable mentions:
11. Crystalis (1990, for old time's sake, but it was really good for its time!)
12. Secret of Evermore (1995, poor black sheep of Squaresoft, I enjoyed you!)

It would seem 1995-1999 takes it, but 3 are lying on the cusp of the next group (FF9, LoM, CC, (and Vagrant Story?!) in 2000...woa, that was a crazy good year for Square). I do feel like that was the "golden age" of RPGs for me, I don't know if I'll ever encounter that again. Since 2000 there haven't been many stellar RPGs for my tastes. Even Skies of Arcadia was released originally in 2000, but I never had a DC. This makes Baten Kaitos the only RPG since 2000 that I really got enthused about. I did like FFX, Suikoden III, and Dark Cloud 2, but they would be further down the list and didn't quite have the lasting appeal of anything in the top 10.

I guess you can count me with those of the opinion that the neverending drive for "better" graphics (= more realistic? who knows, but I'd take LoM-style graphics to absolute realism any day) in the new console generations hasn't been kind to RPGs. Maybe video games have become too mainstream for RPGs to really be made like they used to. Perhaps some of the developers' vision is being sacrificed to the need to now push as many copies as you can out the door. Maybe developers' visions simply aren't as good as they used to be. There's just something lacking now and I can't put my finger on it :\

Jam it back in, in the dark.