What makes them your favorite games?

[The_Liquid_Laser]

Here are my top 3.

3. Freedom Force - When I first played this game it was unique, and I still feel it's pretty unique.  The only game like it is the sequel.  After playing through it again recently, I figured out the thing I really liked about it most is how you can interact with the environment.  You can rip up lampposts and use them like clubs, and you can throw most other objects.  Do enough damage and you can level a building.  Basically you can interact with every part of the environment.  You can do that in games like Minecraft or Breath of the Wild, but you have super powers here too, so it's just a lot easier to interact with the environment, and basically everything above street level can manipulated in some way.  Also there has been a ton of great fan made content for this game which really extended its playtime for me.

2. Final Fantasy 7 - (WARNING: What I am about to say has a bunch of HUGE SPOILERS!!  Please skip to the next game if you don't want to be spoiled.)  There is a lot to praise about this game: the characters, the world, the materia system.  Back in the day the graphics had a huge "Wow" factor.  But I realize what pushed the game into my all time top 3, was specifically the way they told this story.  Throughout the first disk the game asks you questions that subtley make you choose whether you prefer Aeris (Aerith) or Tifa, or maybe neither one.  Then you go on a date with the one that you had been choosing the whole time, which makes you an official couple.  The choosing part is actually the most important part of this game.  I chose Aeris.  At the end of the first disk she gets killed permanently by Sephiroth.  I have never had another game stir up emotions like this in me, either before or since.  Why?  Because I chose Aeris.  It's the choosing that makes this game great.  Now, I suspect the people who chose Tifa or neither one don't think this game is terribly special.  It's the people who chose Aeris who got emotionally invested.  Well, I did choose Aeris, and while I normally think most stories in games are way worse than say movies, this story is better than any movie.  I can't make any choices while watching a movie, so it's the choice in this game that made the story more memorable than any movie.

3. The Legend of Zelda - This was my favorite game back when the NES was a current system.  Several NES games that I replayed recently, like Final Fantasy, feel dated when I replay them, but I went back and played Zelda 1 again a few years ago and I found it to be even better than when I first played it.  This game is a perfect blend of action and freedom.  Back in the 80's RPGs were really about freedom, and so Zelda 1 was made as an action RPG.  At the same time, the action games were arcade-like games, which are my favorite kind of action games.  Also, each of the items has a unique purpose and yet adds to your combat ability.  I find that when I play the dungeons out of order the game has a totally different experience.  For example, in one playthrough I got the ladder as my first item.  I realized that this upgrades my combat ability because it lets me attack enemies while standing on water.  When that is my only upgrade I end up adopting a new playstyle.  No other game comes close to offering this perfect blend of action and freedom.  I'm hoping that at some point they'll blend Breath of the Wild's game engine with Hyrule Warriors combat or something like that.  That is the best way I can explain how much I love the combat + freedom combo from the original game.