Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

The second entry in the Final Fantasy Tactics series limits the unbelievably frustrating permanent death mechanic from the first game to specific locations tied to the plot, which is a bit of a ripoff of The Neverending Story... still it's better than the DS game's plot so I can't complain. It does explore escapism in a very interesting way (check the supplemental info for a link to a really fun reddit thread on this). The crippling flaw in this game is the harshness of the legal system. If you break a law, you permanently lose stats (a min maxer's worst nightmare), or lose monsters from your monster bank that only appear in story missions (a 100% completist's worst nightmare), or lose items (which might only be acquired once in a playthrough). There are less game-ruining punishments for breaking the laws, but when you have to reset a thirty minute battle because a speed-based character had their speed permanently reduced? Good lord. What about just, you know, following the law? It's not too bad at the beginning of the game, even with obtuse and frustrating laws such as "Copycat," which prevents you from using the same ability as the previous character (good luck when your physical fighters don't know any damage abilities further than "Fight!"); but as the game progresses, the plot demands that the laws be tightened, culminating in three laws simultaneously. So for instance you might be forbidden from Copycat, using Color Magic, and using Fight. Good fucking luck. The game's anti-law card system is a nice touch, but you can only carry twenty cards at a time, so you'll end up stockpiling cards of the laws you hate most.

Besides the legal system, this game is absolutely fantastic. The difficulty scales quite well, such that experienced players can make the game as easy or as hard as they desire, there is immense potential for completionists to find a million ways to perfectly optimize everything in existence, and the tactical combat has infinitely more depth than something like Fire Emblem. Shame the laws are so beyond frustrating. Regardless, I've sunk probably 2000 hours of my life into this game, and I highly recommend playing it. Maybe you can find a cheat out there to plug into your emulator to just bypass the laws altogether.