Soul Blazer really surprised me. It’s an early game, but does a lot of interesting things that I didn’t expect and don't recall ever seeing followed up on by anything else bar the…direct followups by the same folks. The structure of the game is clever, and the way you "build” a city over time by defeating monsters in the underworld is satisfying. You’re constantly getting a nice jolt of gratification as you progress through a dungeon, which kept me really engaged. I also liked the magic system — just complex enough to not be boring, and the way it adds an additional level of strategy to the basic movement works really well. And, of course, the music rules.