2001 - Shadow Hearts
I’ll keep it real with you, I don’t remember a ton about this game. I do remember enjoying it and finding the Judgement Ring system pretty engaging. Also, it was raw as hell to have the protag turn into a monster; that’s that shit I DO like.
What I’ll instead tell you is this li’l story. At the risk of dating myself, when I was getting towards the end of college, it was around the end of the PS2’s lifecycle. The PS3 had been out for a few years and had had a few hits. But, I was a broke ass college student, so I didn’t have one. I still had the PS2 (no regrets, that system was an absolute champ). And I remember stumbling on (maybe literally via stumbleupon, who knows) a list of games for the PS2 that were really impressive because they were made when the PS3 was in development, so the game developers were really trying to push the hardware to the limit, or so this article claimed. And Shadow Hearts was on this list. I went to the nearest Game Stop and picked it up on the cheap.
Like I said, I don't remember a ton and what I do remember, I liked. That's all.