Final Fantasy X is... Can I spoil it here? It's like spoiling who Darth Vader is. But I think it's a good example to bring up. This was said to me by someone who's trying to play every RPG.
Final Fantasy X has the best pacing out of any RPG I've played that didn't mix other elements into the RPG combat like Undertale's bullet hell sections or the real time combat in Fallout NV or Kingdom Hearts. Switching party members is quick. Every party member has their specialty to make dealing with trash mobs on your way to the next boss a breeze. Your agile guy hits foes who dodge, your ball guy hits flying enemies, Auron is your tank and he crushes armoured foes, Rikku can use Mix to mix items and break the game in half or Steal useful items (and you can even Steal parts from some enemies to instakill them), the combat is designed around your characters, and Yuna's summons are designed to feel like big deals. The Overkill system rewards players who destroy enemies with massive damage. The Overdrive system lets you fill a meter for big damage and do a super like it's a fighting game, but you decide what action fills the meter as you unlock more options. There are not 900 characters you could have in your team at any given time. You won't stumble into an area 20 levels above your strongest character, win slowly using a ton of healing items that you'd normally never have to use during regular gameplay, rush back to the intended area, and find yourself overlevelled, and wonder why the NPCs are unable to react to your sequence breaking like they could in Fallout New Vegas. And while some might complain about the long cutscenes between gameplay, that's like complaining about LOTR's length. This game doesn't "want to be" a movie in the way the new God Of War does, it doesn't religiously reject cutting or fading to black out of a belief that long dull stretches of content designed to obscure loading screens will make their games "more cinematic". Yeah, a movie called 1917 had no cuts, but Prince of Persia did "no cuts" better by changing your fail state from "die, retry" to "almost die, undo, retry". This game's cutscenes have so much narration from Tidus, it sometimes feels like you're listening to an audiobook. Contextualizing the world, and the adventure, through this lens of a reliable narrator who's at the end of the journey you're starting. Plus the FFX cutscenes are skippable with a mod, and FFX-2's are skippable without a mod.
Final Fantasy X is about a girl called Yuna who is going on a quest to die. Tidus helps her, unaware of this. He often says stuff along their journey like "When we're done with this pilgrimage, let's come back here!" and those who know just look at him, they don't have the heart to tell him. She is going to die for the good of others, sacrificing herself to buy a brief window of time without Sin attacks. When he finds out, he breaks down, and that bird thing Yuna summons comforts him because it understands. Yuna and Tidus bond, and there's a romance subplot between them, and there's a religion called Yevon that says technology is evil and illegal (unless the Church approves of it) and that giant water monster named Sin rampaging all over the place is humanity's punishment for previous misdeeds. The random encounter monsters you fight along the way are unsent spirits, they're the ghosts of dead people, and when people die, Yuna has to dance and twirl her staff around and put on a happy face as if everything's fine to try and help send these spirits to the afterlife before they become monsters. Each location they visit is beautifully rendered in 3D with cinematic camera angles and countless voice acted NPCs, and this is on the PS2, a console only slightly stronger than the Nintendo Switch, but it has a moddable HD PC port with jaw dropping beauty. While it strives for realism in so many areas it doesn't let this get in the way of the art style or the aesthetic like so many other games striving for realism. Yuna and her friends all explore the game's themes of religion and death from different angles and perspectives. There's a girl from a culture loathed by those outside it for breaking the rules of Yevon and using technology. There's a true believer in his religion who hates the Al Bhed and is shocked when his religion turns out to be hypocritical nonsense designed to control people. Wakka and Rikku, Yuna and Tidus... this stuff wouldn't be possible in Pokemon. You can't get this sort of worldbuilding and character growth with characters who always accompany you in a Pokemon game. You can't replicate it with recurring rivals or Gym Leaders or Elite Four members. Death and religion and love matter in Final Fantasy X, more so than Pokemon. But in Pokemon, nothing matters more than the Pokemon, and any protagonist who can pick up an Ultra Ball and use it on a strong Pokemon and solo every Gym Leader and Elite Four and Champ with it or his starter in a world where Youngster Joey and his perpetually weak Rattata have no opinion on regional politics or religion. And in Pokemon, characters who want to follow you around but won't help you in double battles or heal your pokemon at will need an excuse for being that way like "I want to be something unrelated to Pokemon battles like a Pokemon Breeder or Pokemon Contest winner". They need an asterisk that explains why they aren't as obsessed with Pokemon battles as everyone else despite having names.
