The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age

Final Fantasy X [ファイナルファンタジーX] perfected turn-based combat. The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age recognizes this, and rips it off wholesale. I, for one, am all for this. Why try to reinvent the wheel?
The Third Age's big mechanical deviation from FFX is in its skill system. Each time you use a skill, you gain a point toward the next skill in that category. What's more, almost every level of the skill tree has two different skills in it. This means that you can learn one skill in a row, then go down to the next row if you wish. This is handy when you really want a skill in a lower tier, but don't care too much about what is above it.
However, this also means that in order to get some of the important late-game abilities, you need to spam non-damaging abilities in the early game. You may not need Berethor to raise everyone's attack power in an early game fight against two orcs, but you need the skill point gained from using that leadership ability to later obtain Last Gasp (which lets your characters survive a lethal blow at 1 HP), which is necessary come Helm's Deep.

Because EA only had the rights to The Lord of the Rings films and not the books, this game was only allowed to use film locations and characters, aside from seven original characters. If you don't mind looking at the same orcs, uruk-hai, and trolls, though, this is a good time. Using a cast of original characters rather than Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas also allows you to go to Osgiliath, which is nice.