Hyakki Yagyō

During the titular Hyakki Yagyō, a swarm of yōkai invade a town in feudal Japan. Playing as a nameless ninja, you are tasked by your lord to clear the town of yōkai.

This Japanese RPG makes several deviations from the genre conventions. Instead of a random encounter system popular with turn-based Japanese RPGs of the time, the game shows enemies on the adventuring view. Talking to town NPCs - which is a requirement to recruit them as party members - requires you to put on a disguise. The game has a bird's eye view of the world but switches to first-person perspective in dungeons. Town NPCs follow a day and night cycle - at night, all shops close up and night guards go on patrol. Upgrading your stats is not done upon leveling up, but rather requires visiting a priest and paying him a small amount of money. The game structure is also highly non-linear, providing little in term of directions toward your main objective of finding the 3 gemstones to seal up the portal to the underworld.