What makes them your favorite games?

[The_Liquid_Laser]

Darashiva said:

My top three has remained the same for about two decades now, those being Final Fantasy IX, The Legend of Dragoon, and Freespace 2, in that order. They are all games I fell in love with when I was first discovering that video games could be more than just a series gameplay challenges. That they could be used to tell stories and feature characters and events that genuinely had an emotional impact on me as a person. They are also all games I tend to go back to over and over again every so often, and every time I do I find something new to enjoy and love about them. In the years since I first played them some games have come close to unseating them from my top three (Dark Souls for example), but none have ultimately had the kind of impact those three had on me.

I don't think there's any one specific reason why they are my top three favourite games of all time. Nostalgia probably plays a factor, but I've found that I enjoy playing through FFIX, The Legend of Dragoon and Freespace 2 just as much now as I did almost 20 years ago when I first experienced them. The sense of discovery might not be there anymore since I know the games so well, but that has never diminished my enjoyment of them whatsoever.

I've played through Final Fantasy IX three or four times now.  It's really fun each time and I'm not exactly sure why.  I think it is a combination of things.  1) I tend to choose different party configurations where I can.  2)  I didn't play all of the minigames the first time through.  3)  I usually wait a few years between replays.  4) The biggest factor is probably the world which includes the characters (protagonists).  The world and characters have a lot of charm and have a classic Renaissance-fantasy type of feel.  Almost all of the Sakaguchi Final Fantasy games are high quality, but they tend to blend fantasy and sci-fi elements into the game world and protagonists.  FF9 doesn't have anyone with a machine gun arm or anything like that, and that ironically makes the world seem like a unique place to visit.

Metallox said:

- Pikmin 2: The game which I grew up with and found magical throughout my late childhood. I got stuck several times, and with most games today I would usually just look up a guide if I took too much time, but back then I didn't have Internet and I barely understood English, so some instructions and details weren't really clear. I think that just made the game more enjoyable somehow, though. Every discovery felt massive, overwhelming and so satisfying, it's a kind of feeling that I haven't been able to replicate with any other game. Pikmin 2 wasn't my first GameCube game (it was Mario Party 7), but it was the one that resonated with me the most. So, yeah, this one is pure nostalgia, but, at the same time, it's truly incredible. It's why Mario Party 7 wasn't so memorable, becuase that game isn't so great, but I still have plenty of memories with it.

- Paper Mario TTYD: This one was my first RPG, when I had like, what, 10 or 11 yo? So, in essence, it was my first true epic adventure, and it's one that is truly excellent in handsight, I didn't pick wrong at all. I remember that I saw Super Paper Mario for Wii and impulsively told my father to buy it for me. He brought me TTYD instead. Initially I thought it was indeed Super Paper Mario, but I don't remember when exactly I learned that it wasn't, it's a shame I don't recall this memory. Once again, my English was far from ideal so I had to pick up a dictionary and try to understand the more complex writing. Some puzzles took me a long while because of this. But, again, that only added to the charm. No Internet, either, so I had to discover most secrets by hand, and so I spent hundreds of hours with this game. Again, I love this game for pure nostalgia, but it's excellent nonetheless.

- Xenoblade X: This is the most recent one and not exactly the best one, but it had a lot of good stuff to it, the exploration, the side quests, the addicting combat and the passive multiplayer, and ultimately is the game that got me into Xenoblade. I used to go to Gamefaqs to check for tips, discuss builds, farming spots and to recruit people to play online. There are a lot of games like this, I know, but it was the first one of its kind I played, and this is also a game that is excessively big and convoluted, so there's a spark to it. This was pretty much the only game I played on Wii U from its release until Breath of the Wild came out, and spent almost 1000 hours in it.

In the end, what all three games have in common is that each one of them were the first of their kind I played. Pikmin 2 was my first special game, TTYD was my first RPG, and Xenoblade X was my first kind of RPG that I complemented with online functionalities.

Reading this post made me think of Raph Koster's book, "Theory of Fun for Game Design".  He basically says that learning (in a broad sense) is what makes a game fun.  The fact that you were learning English while learning these games may have magnified the fun factor.