#3 Sekiro Shadows Die Twice

Ladies and Gentlemen say Hello to the new king of Hack n' Slash! In 2001 DMC brought the Hack n' Slash genre to 3D, and possibly invented the genre altogether. In 2004 Ninja Gaiden further honed the genre by way of crushing difficulty, and having to choose whether an attack was best dodged or blocked. Blocking a heavy attack would either deal heavy chip damage or not be blockable at all. On the flipside trying to dodge a quick attack would get you hit. In 2009 Demon's Souls came out and introduced the Souls' XP/death system that has been copied by Hollow Knight and Nioh. When you die you leave a puddle of XP on the ground. Die again and you lose all that XP. This made death in games a lot more meaningful and punishing, upping the tension. In 2019 Sekiro built on all of this even further. Here's how...

First off instead of just flatly dying you can stock power to resurrect yourself effectively giving yourself multiple lives before leaving that Soul Puddle. This led to being able to reset smaller fights if you messed up and died, lowering the tedium in the game. Second Sekiro came with a whole slew of Ninja tools that you can equip to your prosthetic arm. From a big axe that can break shields to a ghost blocking umbrella these tools were all extremely useful against certain enemies and bosses. They allowed players to customize their playstyle in a game that only offers a single main weapon, the Sword. But the best thing Sekiro did was the damned posture system.

Blocking an attack, dodging, or doing pretty much anything in the game usually increases your posture meter. If the posture meter fills up the enemy can instakill you. But the enemies in this game all have posture meters too, and you can do the same thing to them. Enemies in this game deal a ton of damage to you, so it's in your best interest to instakill them if you can. Pressing block during the instance an enemy's attack would land parries their attack. Parrying an enemy attack keeps your posture meter from growing as much as a regular block. It also prevents chip damage, and adds to your opponent's posture meter. There's also a system of counters in the game. You can counter a sweep, stab, or grab by pressing the appropriate button at the right time. If you counter correctly your opponent either takes a ton of posture damage or is left wide open to a few quick stabs from your Sword. The lower your health the faster your posture meter grows, and the slower it shrinks. This is true for both the player character and enemies in the game. The end result of all this is that fights demand that you get in the bosses' face, and keep the pressure on with a flurry of parries, dodges, and counters. Since bosses all have absolutely massive HP bars and Posture Bars, as well as devastating attacks this makes for the most intense fights in any game ever. 

How to counter a stab attack in game. Step on their spear and then kick their ass!

Finally enjoy some hilarious Dunkey Highlights of the game!

50 days have almost gone and....it's time for my number 1 game to get another hint

Hint 1. Open the disc tray, do over, do over, do over, do over, do ove-damn I just missed it, do over, do over, do over......

Hint 2. A famous scene from this game was recreated as a tech demo for the PS2

Heh, I was reading your clues, and I think I could have gotten it by around clue 5, but I haven't logged on for a few days.

I really liked DQ Builders 1, and this game looks even better.  I am getting way behind on my Switch games though.  There are so many I want to play now, and this is one of them.  Right now I am starting to lean more toward shorter games.  This games looks really good though.  Oh well, I'd rather have too many good games to choose from than not enough.

You've guessed enough, the others needed a chance too.

And yeah, it is a good problem to have too many good games too choose from.

With Katamari Damacy and Dragon Quest Builders 2 as contenders this year, I wasn't so sure if HoMM 3 would keep it's first place. But in the end, Heroes got the first pplace again. But it was close.

So this game is a great combination. You manage your resources, build your cities and send your heroes into the world, exploring, claiming artifacts, resources and troops and battling the enemy. Battle is a good tactical hexfield fight. This game gives a pretty good impression of you being an emperor controlling your lands in a fantasy world with magic. The different factions have so many mythical creatures battling on their side.

It is no problem, even these days, to pick up the game and create a random map to battle it out with a few CPU-players. Or to play the great single player campaigns again. It just still works.

The game is from the legendary strategy specialist dev New World Computing. They invented the whole sub-series of Heroes (apparently based on an earlier game by them, King's Bounty, which I probably should play one of these days). Sadly, as the mother company 3DO got into financial trouble it also meant the end of 3DO.

This works well under Linux with the Windows-emulator Wine, but there is also a project called VCMI that modernizes the engine and allow for modding. Ubisoft also released a HD remaster of the game. So plenty of options to play it today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdJRKWfzpuA

Three Houses is a marvellous achievement that feels like the climax of the series' revival that started with Awakening. It has a fantastically told story with numerous branching paths (what Fates attempted mediocrely, 3H does incredibly well) that makes you want numerous playthroughs and makes everything you do in game feel like it carries weight.

Three Houses' biggest strength comes from it's characters. A huge, diverse bunch who are all incredibly well characterised and developed, and who you come to care about deeply throughout the story. After my first playthrough, I made sure to recruit everybody possible on other playthroughs because I didn't want to have to kill them.

The game's music is another incredible strong point, there are nothing but fantastic tracks in the game, including my personal favourite battle themes of all time, particularly Chasing Daybreak.

I could go on for pages, but I'll leave it here. 3H is an incredible masterpiece, and my equal top game of all time.

#3
Hint 1: Plusle.
Hint 2: Got remade with too much water.

Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire?

Guessed by Flilix

I still agree with Metacritic on this one, even after 21 years. I was there when it came out, probably the very first game I was really hyped about, and I haven't been as hyped as back then for anything since. I used to draw pictures of the game's box art so I could show it to family members hoping one of them would buy me this game. I needn't look far, because my mother had gotten it for Christmas. That box still has a prominent spot on my shelf. The game didn't disappoint, it's like if Miyamoto, Koizumi and Aonuma visited me personally at my house to ask what I want in a video game, because this one hits all the right notes. A large, open yet structured world with varied locations and tons of secrets to find and people to see, level and character designs above and beyond what you'd merely call 'inspired', a memorable soundtrack from start to finish and to top it off, the most epic scene ever in a video game. When I first opened the Door of Time, and there beyond lay a serene hexagonal chamber, empty with but a single ray of sunlight shining upon the pedestal that holds a legendary sword that had slept for ages; the Master Sword. And then you take it. If 'Super Mario 64' (#3) was "perfect", then what is better than perfect? It is surely 'Ocarina of Time'.

Correct! Well, it's actually Emerald, but I couldn't think for a good easy hint for that game specifically.