I know this wolden't be a "best" game but...
Star Ocean 2. You can choose your hero (Claude or Rena), make your own items, cook things, make jewelry, make ur own weapons, and even counterfeit money. It is half rpg sword style based, and half space-age based (Claude gets thrown to a primitive planet). The storyline was great (you end up fighting 10 powerful dudes who try to rule the universe after being transported to an advanced planet and the people from the primitive planet have no idea wtf is going on), and you can even ALTER the storyline, and add different things into it.
They can fall in love, which even affects battle (if one gets K.O.'ed the person who loves them becomes "berserk" and all stats are boosted).
And who can forget the ultimate weapon, Eternal Sphere? It shoots out stars as you attack with it, hitting the enemy like 10 times per swing, and add that with meteor/slayer's ring and atlas/berserk ring and they'll be dead in no time.
And the BEST thing is, once you've beaten it on normal, you can go for it on hard or extremely hard.
And you can get up to 8 characters out of like 11 or 12. (Claude, Rena, Celine, Ashton, Opera, Bowman, Precis, Leon, Dias, Noel, Earnest, and Chisato). And the coolest thing was that you can have 4 people in battle, 1 who is you, and 3 who fight on their own, and there was no ATB or turn based thing, it was like a random battle free-movement style battle. You hit X to attack and L1 or R1 to use killer moves, triangle to use spells.