That's certainly an interesting take on it.
I find I have no stomach for most traditional RPGs anymore, just because of how linear and movie-esque they are. I've had Chrono Trigger on my DS for years, and I've tried to start it a couple of times and always fizzled out. If I'm going to play an RPG, I need something that keeps me engaged mechanically. This is why FF5 is my favorite of the SNES Final Fantasies, because the Job System gives you something to focus on and min-max every step of the way without being too ultra-fiddly. When you reach the end and you've got a guy doing X-attack with dual wield and another guy double casting Summons and etc it just feels super rewarding, because all of your combats and choices up to that point have distinctly led here
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Of course, I played "Rhy's and Fall" before I discovered Crusader Kings II. That game now scratches my historical itches pretty thoroughly. Lots of games have armies marching around all over Europe, but in how many of them do you end up plotting to disinherit your eldest son because he converted to the Cathar heresy, just as an emergent part of the gameplay?
I would enjoy CK 2 SO MUCH MORE if the game didn't ******* fall to pieces 200 years or so in.
It is incredibly annoying that the save that I spent weeks or months playing on and off with eventually becomes a bloated mess and it takes as much as an hour to get through a single year, or the save files eventually get corrupted and just die randomly.
Maybe I just need to get a new laptop... Which is stupid because getting new laptops for video games is generally stupid.
I think it's interesting how the overwhelming majority of games listed in this thread are single-player or at most co-op experiences. All the data say we pour much more time into multiplayer, but we don't seem to invest in it the same way.
Different target audiences?
I personally don't enjoy multiplayer games. At best people don't actually do "multiplayer"; at worst they scream insults and obscenities and act like spoiled brats.
Advance Wars: Dual Strike. The first time I saw AW was when a friend played it with me on his graphing calculator, strangely enough. Later on when I was looking for DS games I came across AW:DS, which had a ton of 9/10s and 10/10s on gamefaqs. I bought it thinking, well, all those reviewers can't be wrong, and wasn't disappointed.
The replay value in that game is insane. 28 playable characters, two campaigns (28 missions each), three survival modes (11 maps each), one trial map mode (War Room, 44 maps) and an unexpected Battle City-style top-down shooter (6 maps, it's very short). The thing that ate up the most of my play time was the War Room, where you battle against the computer in an attempt to clear the map ASAP. I got the game 3 years after release so most of the fastest times had already been achieved, but none of the top players revealed their strategies so I took it as a challenge to discover them for myself. I got pretty good at this - I managed to set a new record for one map and tie the record for another one with all characters.
I still haven't cleared this game 100% (and probably never will), but I tried some War Room maps for old times' sake and managed a 9/300 on Twin Isle with Kanbei. It's not the fastest (that would be Sami with 7/300), but it's a record for Kanbei.
Speaking of multiplayer, AW:DS was released just a few months before the launch of Nintendo WFC, so it had no online multiplayer. But IMO, the AW series in general isn't well-balanced for PvP play.
Heroes of Might&Magic 3 - the best of the franchise, hands down. Nine cities, over 130 creatures, about 100 different heroes, crazy amount of spells and skills, great map editor, tons of maps, a game that had endless re-playability. I still play it today.
The problem is that it's completely broken. Like Urza's Saga or Mirrodin block Magic, once you and your friends know the ins and outs, to have fun with it you have to agree to avoid certain optimal strategies (like playing Necropolis). The game's great strength lies in its character. With the hand-animated sprite graphics and vibrant palette and music, it just feels magical in a way the newer entries in the series don't. My position is that there was absolutely no reason for HoMM 5 to be 3D other than the expectation that all AAA titles have to be 3D. If they'd been brave enough to return to sprite art (and put a little more effort into some other production values), it could have blown HoMM 3 out of the water. (4 was a lost cause, and I haven't heard good enough things about 6 to try it.)
I find I have no stomach for most traditional RPGs anymore, just because of how linear and movie-esque they are. I've had Chrono Trigger on my DS for years, and I've tried to start it a couple of times and always fizzled out. If I'm going to play an RPG, I need something that keeps me engaged mechanically. This is why FF5 is my favorite of the SNES Final Fantasies, because the Job System gives you something to focus on and min-max every step of the way without being too ultra-fiddly. When you reach the end and you've got a guy doing X-attack with dual wield and another guy double casting Summons and etc it just feels super rewarding, because all of your combats and choices up to that point have distinctly led here
Hear, hear! I don't get why FF5 gets so little love compared to the mechanical snorefest FF4 and the not-as-bad-but-still-not-very-interesting FF6 and FF7. "Oh, but the stories..." people say. But every Final Fantasy story sucks. Seriously, they suck so hard. I played the games in spite of them, not for them. And for what it's worth, the one character who sucks least in my humble opinion is in FF5: Galuf, the cool old guy.
So yeah. FF5 is awesome. And Tactics Advance is even more awesome because it's mechanically like FF5, but even more so.
I would enjoy CK 2 SO MUCH MORE if the game didn't ******* fall to pieces 200 years or so in.
It is incredibly annoying that the save that I spent weeks or months playing on and off with eventually becomes a bloated mess and it takes as much as an hour to get through a single year, or the save files eventually get corrupted and just die randomly.
Maybe I just need to get a new laptop... Which is stupid because getting new laptops for video games is generally stupid.
That's rough, man. It's not the most tightly coded game on the market, certainly, but it shouldn't do that. (Actually, going back to the Heroes franchise, HoMM 5 has awful memory leak issues.)
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Favorite: Street Fighter, in particular Zero 3 and Ex 1.
When it comes to skill and replayability, player vs players is where it's at. The games are nearly 2 decades old and yet there are still things to learn about them.
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Probably Demon's Souls. One of those cases where amazing atmosphere, level design and innovation make almost all the flaws (and boy is it unpolished) into interesting quirks.
HMs: Shadow of the Colossus, Vanilla/TBC WoW, Planescape: Torment, Total Annihilation (get ****ed Starcraft), Castlevania: SotN.
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"Virtue, Jacques, is an excellent thing. Both good people and wicked people speak highly of it..."
Probably Demon's Souls. One of those cases where amazing atmosphere, level design and innovation make almost all the flaws (and boy is it unpolished) into interesting quirks.
I just got Dark Souls. It'd be premature for me to even consider putting it on a "favorite video game" list, but daaamn is it an amazing experience.
I neglected a few great old games. Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2 was the best of the series before EA started screwing them up (I've heard generals is good, but I could never get into it).
Civilization IV or Crusader Kings II. I play Civ 5 more than Civ 4 these days, because the unit mechanics are so much better, but as a total package I have by far the fondest memories of Civ 4.
Holy crap, how could I have forgotten. Colonization, either the original or the Civ 4 engine remake have got to be in my top 5. It's one of the few games I still go back and play all the time. Skillfully managing resources, building a militia under the king's nose, fortifying my colonies into impregnable fortresses and then casting off the yoke and wiping the floor with the redcoats... is something I've only been able to do a couple times.
But man have I built war machines in that game. Three colonies, connected by roads: one farms and raises horses, one mines ore and makes tools and guns, one fishes, produces lumber and builds ships. I'm not sure the Man-O-Wars even landed that game.
Favorite: Street Fighter, in particular Zero 3 and Ex 1.
When it comes to skill and replayability, player vs players is where it's at. The games are nearly 2 decades old and yet there are still things to learn about them.
Ex 1? You know, I used to hate fighting games until I met my best friends in High School (who played Soul Calibur and MvC every day after school). If I had to pick a fighting game I love the most, it'd be either MvC or Third Strike.
One of the major reasons I haven't been interested in the big two consoles (Playstation and Xbox) for the past two generations is the push towards online multiplayer. Honestly, online multiplayer straight-up ruins the gaming experience. And I say this as someone who's logged something like 2000 hours in League of Legends. There are several reasons for this:
1) People suck. Individual persons might be awesome, but the major push in online gaming is massive multiplayer or random pairings, which pretty much eliminates the individuality of people. You end up playing with/against a faceless, seething mass of hatred and obnoxiousness.
2) You will never really "win". The push towards leaderboards and rankings means that rather than just focusing on getting to the end of the game, unlocking all the secrets, and maxing out your character, you're instead focused on competing with millions. And for most gamers, even fairly hardcore ones, you're not going to be the top player of a game of millions. You probably won't be in the top 100, or even the top 1000. Even being in the top 25% is a difficult feat. I can play through a Zelda game and get every secret thing in it and feel a personal sense of accomplishment. I can play a game of League and maybe gain 14 ELO (or lose it just as easily) and maaaybe creep my way slowly up the user board, but ultimately the sense of completion and accomplishment is massively diminished.
3) Most of these games are monetized somehow, either through a monthly subscription or through microtransactions. I pretty much refuse to play anything with a subscription fee, because if I've paid to buy a game, why am I paying for the privilege of being able to continue playing it. Microtransactions are possibly even worse though, because they force the (existing or ongoing) design of the game into a way that squeezes you into purchasing those transactions.
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My access to personal internet and discretionary funds was severly limited during college and in my first 3-5 years afterward; a pretty formative time as far as getting into online games. Having missed that window, I've always been a bit technophobic about post PS2 consoles and online gaming. At this point in my life, I'm content enough with my meat-space tabletop interests, but also just don't have the time anymore to devote to super immersive online stuff. The microtransaction racket that wildfire mentioned is also a huge turn off; it's bad enough keeping up with magic and all the other board game crap I do already.
I think the beginning of the end of liking modern gaming, for me, was Halo 2. Halo 1 had AMAZING same-couch Co-op that I played through with my brother, and the same-couch multiplayer was so fun that I had a group of 8 or so friends who'd regularly get together every week my senior year of high school to play it. Good ol' Xbox Thursdays. Halo 2 had a fairly bad co-op campaign, and the entire focus was online multiplayer. Which quickly devolved into 12 year olds screaming obscenities into their mics.
And shortly after that point, I left for college, and like you, my funds were limited (though my internet was not so much). I played a TON of Smash Bros Melee and Brawl throughout college. I jumped on League senior year of college because it was great that it was "free" to play, but all the stuff above eventually drove me away from it.
Now, I mostly play classic single-player games (mostly Action-Adventure/Action-RPG) on my computer and the occasional DS title.
Just finished Ys I (Ancient Ys Vanished: Omens) as part of the Ys I&II Chronicles+ on Steam, and it was pretty awesome. I'd say it's worth the $15 it costs, especially since I have another (longer) game to play included to directly follow up. Some of the best videogame music I've ever heard, especially with the high quality soundtrack on the Chronicles+ remake.
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If my spending habits are any indication, Pokemon is my favorite game, I keep buying the same thing every couple of years. I guess I just really wanna catch them all.
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My all time favorite is...TRANSPORT TYCOON. It is still being updated to this very day, has online multiplayer now (Which is surprisingly fun, very decent community), even the AI got patched to an adequate level, all thanks to an amazing modding community. Been playing it since summer 1995, so I'll be breaking the 20 years mark on that one next year.
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My Commander decks:
Chandra, Torch of Defiance - Oops! All Chandras.
Prime Speaker Zegana - Draw for Power.
Pir & Toothy - Counterpalooza.
Arcades, the Strategist - Another Brick in the Wall.
Zacama, Primal Calamity - Calamity of Double Mana.
Edgar Markov - Vampires Don't Die.
Child of Alara - Dreamcrusher.
I guess I hae to go with Deus Ex. Played the demo (first level) going through it in a gazillion different ways. Then they released another demo with level 2. And then the game was so much bigger than I'd ever expected it to and my mind was blown.
Honorary mention to Grim Fandango (possible the best story in a game ever) and the Monkey Island series.
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One of my favorite games is probably star ocean 4: the last hope. Mostly because it's a pretty open rpg and traveling into space to visit other worlds made the game interesting in my mind. There was also multiple side quests that you could do so you can get even more play time out of the game which is pretty cool. I also just love video game console rpgs in general as well.
I don't think I could ever pick a single favorite - there are different bests in different categories.
Best multiplayer game? DotA2
Best RPG/Story game? Baldurs Gate
Best skill/platformer? Super meat boy
Best roguelike? Binding of Issac
There is no one single game that can cover all the bases that make games good - its just impossible, at least for me. Though, if we go by hours played, DotA is by a wide margin my "favorite"
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I find I have no stomach for most traditional RPGs anymore, just because of how linear and movie-esque they are. I've had Chrono Trigger on my DS for years, and I've tried to start it a couple of times and always fizzled out. If I'm going to play an RPG, I need something that keeps me engaged mechanically. This is why FF5 is my favorite of the SNES Final Fantasies, because the Job System gives you something to focus on and min-max every step of the way without being too ultra-fiddly. When you reach the end and you've got a guy doing X-attack with dual wield and another guy double casting Summons and etc it just feels super rewarding, because all of your combats and choices up to that point have distinctly led here
Currently Playing:
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I would enjoy CK 2 SO MUCH MORE if the game didn't ******* fall to pieces 200 years or so in.
It is incredibly annoying that the save that I spent weeks or months playing on and off with eventually becomes a bloated mess and it takes as much as an hour to get through a single year, or the save files eventually get corrupted and just die randomly.
Maybe I just need to get a new laptop... Which is stupid because getting new laptops for video games is generally stupid.
Different target audiences?
I personally don't enjoy multiplayer games. At best people don't actually do "multiplayer"; at worst they scream insults and obscenities and act like spoiled brats.
The replay value in that game is insane. 28 playable characters, two campaigns (28 missions each), three survival modes (11 maps each), one trial map mode (War Room, 44 maps) and an unexpected Battle City-style top-down shooter (6 maps, it's very short). The thing that ate up the most of my play time was the War Room, where you battle against the computer in an attempt to clear the map ASAP. I got the game 3 years after release so most of the fastest times had already been achieved, but none of the top players revealed their strategies so I took it as a challenge to discover them for myself. I got pretty good at this - I managed to set a new record for one map and tie the record for another one with all characters.
I still haven't cleared this game 100% (and probably never will), but I tried some War Room maps for old times' sake and managed a 9/300 on Twin Isle with Kanbei. It's not the fastest (that would be Sami with 7/300), but it's a record for Kanbei.
Speaking of multiplayer, AW:DS was released just a few months before the launch of Nintendo WFC, so it had no online multiplayer. But IMO, the AW series in general isn't well-balanced for PvP play.
| Ad Nauseam
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Big Johnny.
Hear, hear! I don't get why FF5 gets so little love compared to the mechanical snorefest FF4 and the not-as-bad-but-still-not-very-interesting FF6 and FF7. "Oh, but the stories..." people say. But every Final Fantasy story sucks. Seriously, they suck so hard. I played the games in spite of them, not for them. And for what it's worth, the one character who sucks least in my humble opinion is in FF5: Galuf, the cool old guy.
So yeah. FF5 is awesome. And Tactics Advance is even more awesome because it's mechanically like FF5, but even more so.
That's rough, man. It's not the most tightly coded game on the market, certainly, but it shouldn't do that. (Actually, going back to the Heroes franchise, HoMM 5 has awful memory leak issues.)
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
When it comes to skill and replayability, player vs players is where it's at. The games are nearly 2 decades old and yet there are still things to learn about them.
"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
HMs: Shadow of the Colossus, Vanilla/TBC WoW, Planescape: Torment, Total Annihilation (get ****ed Starcraft), Castlevania: SotN.
Can't you just say that both are awesome?
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Holy crap, how could I have forgotten. Colonization, either the original or the Civ 4 engine remake have got to be in my top 5. It's one of the few games I still go back and play all the time. Skillfully managing resources, building a militia under the king's nose, fortifying my colonies into impregnable fortresses and then casting off the yoke and wiping the floor with the redcoats... is something I've only been able to do a couple times.
But man have I built war machines in that game. Three colonies, connected by roads: one farms and raises horses, one mines ore and makes tools and guns, one fishes, produces lumber and builds ships. I'm not sure the Man-O-Wars even landed that game.
Ex 1? You know, I used to hate fighting games until I met my best friends in High School (who played Soul Calibur and MvC every day after school). If I had to pick a fighting game I love the most, it'd be either MvC or Third Strike.
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1) People suck. Individual persons might be awesome, but the major push in online gaming is massive multiplayer or random pairings, which pretty much eliminates the individuality of people. You end up playing with/against a faceless, seething mass of hatred and obnoxiousness.
2) You will never really "win". The push towards leaderboards and rankings means that rather than just focusing on getting to the end of the game, unlocking all the secrets, and maxing out your character, you're instead focused on competing with millions. And for most gamers, even fairly hardcore ones, you're not going to be the top player of a game of millions. You probably won't be in the top 100, or even the top 1000. Even being in the top 25% is a difficult feat. I can play through a Zelda game and get every secret thing in it and feel a personal sense of accomplishment. I can play a game of League and maybe gain 14 ELO (or lose it just as easily) and maaaybe creep my way slowly up the user board, but ultimately the sense of completion and accomplishment is massively diminished.
3) Most of these games are monetized somehow, either through a monthly subscription or through microtransactions. I pretty much refuse to play anything with a subscription fee, because if I've paid to buy a game, why am I paying for the privilege of being able to continue playing it. Microtransactions are possibly even worse though, because they force the (existing or ongoing) design of the game into a way that squeezes you into purchasing those transactions.
Currently Playing:
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EDH Cube
Hypercube! A New EDH Deck Every Week(ish)!
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
And shortly after that point, I left for college, and like you, my funds were limited (though my internet was not so much). I played a TON of Smash Bros Melee and Brawl throughout college. I jumped on League senior year of college because it was great that it was "free" to play, but all the stuff above eventually drove me away from it.
Now, I mostly play classic single-player games (mostly Action-Adventure/Action-RPG) on my computer and the occasional DS title.
Just finished Ys I (Ancient Ys Vanished: Omens) as part of the Ys I&II Chronicles+ on Steam, and it was pretty awesome. I'd say it's worth the $15 it costs, especially since I have another (longer) game to play included to directly follow up. Some of the best videogame music I've ever heard, especially with the high quality soundtrack on the Chronicles+ remake.
Currently Playing:
Legacy: Something U/W Controlish
EDH Cube
Hypercube! A New EDH Deck Every Week(ish)!
My Friend Code is: 0146-9645-8893
Chandra, Torch of Defiance - Oops! All Chandras.
Prime Speaker Zegana - Draw for Power.
Pir & Toothy - Counterpalooza.
Arcades, the Strategist - Another Brick in the Wall.
Zacama, Primal Calamity - Calamity of Double Mana.
Edgar Markov - Vampires Don't Die.
Child of Alara - Dreamcrusher.
Honorary mention to Grim Fandango (possible the best story in a game ever) and the Monkey Island series.
Did I write something useful? Leave a like.
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Best multiplayer game? DotA2
Best RPG/Story game? Baldurs Gate
Best skill/platformer? Super meat boy
Best roguelike? Binding of Issac
There is no one single game that can cover all the bases that make games good - its just impossible, at least for me. Though, if we go by hours played, DotA is by a wide margin my "favorite"
G MGC
WB Teysa Tokens
BR Wortsnort
UG 23.5-No Edric
URG Noncombo Animar
GUB Damia Stax
WBR Alesha Hatebear Recursion
WBR Daddy Tariel
UBR [Je]love-a Your Deck
GWU Almost Critterless Enchantress
WUB Sydri+Artifacts=WUB
WURG Glint-Eye Combo