Mask of Truth is incredible and one of the best VN's ever imo. Mask of Deception is I thought solid overall with an incredibly slow start (and probably grating, depending on your tastes) and a very good ending. The payoff of MoT does depend a lot on the setup in MoD though so I wouldn't recommend just skipping straight to Truth. I only watched the anime for the original game, but that was quite good and I imagine at least the Prelude to the Fallen remake is similar.
Utawarerumono is pretty similar to Fire Emblem in terms of what the games involve. The story/gameplay ratio is way more skewed towards story though which is why I don't know if it really belongs in a JRPG discussion or not.
I didn't do guru this year but
azuarc
can be in my sig anyways.