#11
The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky (PC)
YoY: -4
This is the game that introduced me to the Trails series, and considering it is now behind only Final Fantasy and Dark Souls among my favourite video game series, I'm very happy that I ended up stumbling across Trails in the Sky on Steam five years ago. There's very little about this game that I don't love. The few minor shortcomings that there are can generally be attributed to the game's age, and everything else about it is genuinely excellent.
The way this game also sets up events that are still unfolding nine games later is quite amazing. While in this first game those things are largely just hinted at, it is the title that began unveiling a world that has expanded to include dozens of characters, multiple nations, hundreds of years of history, and much more. What initially seemed like a relatively straightforward journey of two characters growing up and achieving their dreams has grown to become one of the best-written and most expansive fantasy worlds across any medium.
