This might mean me keeping the thread alive until February but I'm gonna finish my list goddammit!
#17: Hades
I quite enjoy myself a rogue-lite (like? who cares?) but I had come to terms with the fact the format meant you had very little progression on the story front and that each run was at the mercy of RNGesus. Hades flipped that on its head big time! In a stroke of genius Supergiant Games incorporated all your deaths of retries into the story and filled the game with near endless dialogue where NPCs will discuss your latest demise, comment on who killed you, what weapon you are using. The world of Hades feels alive (ironic since you're surrounded by dead souls).
The gameplay is robust, responsive, varied and above all customizable. Yes there's still a degree of randomness to all your runs but as you unlock keepsakes by giving the different Gods some Nectar, you end up being able to guide your builds. When playing for your first clear, you are always encouraged to experiment and little by little the items you unlock make you feel more powerful in tandem with you becoming more agile at dodging enemy attacks. Eventually, you reach a point where you clear the game more often then not but Hades keeps things interesting by allowing you to tweak the difficulty at your leisure for more goodies, more weapons, more companions and soon enough you're more than a hundred hours in and still loving every second of it.
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