Top Eleven: Japanese RPGs

Lately I've been playing a lot of Eternal Sonata (review to come once I can find someone to help me discuss the absolutely insane outfits these characters wear), and I managed to get two other people I know interested in playing it.  The question then came up, "What are you favorite Japanese RPG (jrpg) games?"

Now, I could've done this as an Ask Erik, but then I was afraid it'd get lost in the shuffle.  Titling it a "top eleven" makes more sense, in my eyes, because it is, at its core, a list.

I'm also amazed I haven't done this list before, because I've played a lot of these games over the years.

Now, one has to ask "what makes a role-playing style video game a "Japanese RPG?""  Well, there are a few qualifiers.

The first of which is "at least one person needs to have an absolutely ludicrous costume and/or weapon.
The more characters that look like they gathered everything they own from the blown up ruins of Party City, the better."

Top Eleven: Interesting Video Game Women

If I had to think back to all the video games I've played (and there's a lot), I'd probably notice an interesting trend.  A lot of the games with a female lead (or optional lead) tend to be more fun than the games with male leads.  It might be simply that a game with a female lead might need tighter controls and game play to sell as many units as a game where a guy is the lead star, but I think it goes deeper than that.

I'm going to take a look at why I think this might be (just an initial impression, and one I'll probably touch on later once I have more hard data), and also present what I feel are eleven of the best female characters in video games.