25 Games To Get To Know Me
(originally posted September 23, 2023)
Did not bother to sort them into a specific layout.
First row:
- Chrono Trigger
- The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
- Planescape: Torment
- Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (Subsistence)
- Fate/stay night
Second row:
- Mass Effect 2
- Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward
- Asura's Wrath
- Pyre
- Nier: Automata
Third row:
- Disco Elysium
- Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer
- Final Fantasy Tactics
- Return of the Obra Dinn
- Live-A-Live
Fourth row:
- Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
- Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire
- Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4
- Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island
- Pokemon: White Version
Fifth Row:
- 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim
- Fire Emblem: Three Houses
- Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords
- Final Fantasy VI
- Shadowrun Hong Kong
This was mostly done off the top of my head at 8am. There are definitely some games I'd consider glaring omissions, but there's only so much room and I don't feel like agonizing over some shit like this. Couldn't fit on Hollow Knight or Spelunky, for instance. ZOE 2 or Valkyria Chronicles, maybe. Kirby Air Ride, Paper Mario 2. Elite Beat Agents. Any game by Shu Takumi (by the way, check out @yotsuben's Ace Attorney podcast series, Updated Autopsy Report).
Fact of the matter is that I can never make a "definitive" one of these that actually contains all of the games that would help you get to know me. A chart like this can only ever represent a snapshot in time of when this specific chart was made.
I'm always a smidge embarrassed to include Yoshi's Island in these sorts of lists; it's certainly the Odd One Out in the middle of a bunch of Big Serious RPGs. Anybody Giant Bomb adjacent (so, much of my circle of friends [and much of Cohost, it feels like]) often parrots Jeff Gerstmann's jabs about how it's a shitty game or whatnot. Like, okay. You can think that I guess. You don't have to tell me every time.
999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors is probably the better game, but Virtue's Last Reward is my personal favorite of the trilogy. I like the cast more; Junpei doesn't really have much of a personality, but Sigma is a weirdo and a pervert which leads to some better back-and-forth dialogue.
Pokemon B/W is my personal favorite era of Pokemon. Limiting the player purely to a brand new slate of 151 mons until the post-game was a great decision that forced everybody to pick new favorites instead of relying upon the usual suspects. They will never do something like this again and the series is forever worse for it.
Fate/stay night is another somewhat embarrassing inclusion, but it would be outright dishonest of me to omit it. It is formative. It something about which I have capital-letter Thoughts. It is a permanent touchstone in my brain.
We can't always control the things that stick with us, I guess.
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