I am loving so many of the games you have on your list. These last three in particular are some of my faves as well, with Bloodborne being the #1 for me (not influenced by nostalgia on The SNES)

I'm very glad to hear that. I still have seven games to cover and the overall summary of my list to come, so hopefully there's still some more games you like to come.

My hint for my number 1 is: the best game ever, obviously.

And finally: my #1 game of 2020 is my #1 of 2019, 2018 and 2017: Heroes of Might and Magic III. Surprise, surprise.

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. I never really tried multiplayer though. The game has a map-editor and a lot of complexity with upgrading capabilities for both your cities and your heroes.

The presentation works still to this day, although the 2D graphics may seem outdated for todays standards. But the sprites are nice with afew effects here and there. The music is great (although HoMM II has orchestral music on CD beating this).

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 New World Computing.

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

Added to my GoG wishlist.

Starcraft is a historic game. It mixed the formula for real time strategy in a way, which was wildly successful. It was also the game, that spawned e-Sport leagues starting in Korea. It was a mainstay in LAN-parties for more than a decade. The included map editor created a lively online community sharing new creations. Blizzard supported that by releasing the Map of the Month for a long time. Among the user creations were maps that started the Tower Defense genre. Blizzard introduced the expansion Brood War, which added a lot of content and kept the game alive for even longer. I think it is fair to say, that the gaming world today would look different without StarCraft.

This game was a lot of fun to play. At college a group of friends often met to play StarCraft matches locally in the LAN. And without them I played the single player campaign. Which was doubled by Brood War.

The game has a sci-fi setting with three warring civilizations, humans and the alien races of Zerg and Protoss. Each faction has their own research tree, own units and specialties. Again, reasearch and unit types were extended by the excellent Brood War expansion.

By the way, it is unintentional that now for the third year StarCraft ranks #25. I make the lists new each time, and other games jumped around quite a bit. So it is kinda funny StarCraft is stuck exactly in the middle of my list.

If you want to play it today, you can download the original game (well, with a lot of patches that came over the years) for free from Blizzard, or you can purchase the remastered version. Either way, it is a great classic game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-00uQzXyujI

#30

Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES)

Change YOY: -3

The highest ranking NES game on my list, as well as the highest ranking Mario game. It's just impressive to me how a game from over 30 years ago still holds up to the extent that it remains among the best 2D platformers ever made. Nintendo basically got the genre right decades ago, something that many developers are still struggling with today.

The gameplay and stage design here are essentially perfect. There's nothing missing and nothing that doesn't need to be there, and that's all you need in an old-school Mario game. Everything else is just added flavour on top. The music is iconic, the visuals perfect for what they need to be, and the story really just doesn't matter. 

Guessed by @Jpcc86

This game is just awesome, I have no other words to describe it. It looks awesome, it sounds awesome, and it plays really awesome. Like, seriously, the gameplay is soooo good. I haven't gone back to it since last year, and I'm not sure why, because I often find myself thinking I should replay it. I get the feeling that whenever I do, it's gonna be really special going through it all over again. This is easily the Switch's best exclusive in my eyes, I just hope more people would play it.

Top 50 >>

Yeah, buying Cyberpunk was not a good idea. Maybe would've been fine if it was a glitchy mess like everyone says, but unfortunately it hasn't been. Guess I'll post about Smash tomorrow, and leave another hint for now.

#19 - This was the first game in the series to have the protagonist talk in monologues. The second game to do this was very infamous for it.

I loved LucasArts adventures and the first Monkey Island is one fine example of their great work. The game was designed by Ron Gilbert, Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman and is a great achievement for them.

This great is not made with difficult puzzles in mind (although they can sometimes quite the brainteasers) or action and player death. The main focus for this game lies in exploration and just outright fun. The game has humour at each corner. Like the above message after you poisoned the guard dogs. Or who played it might remember the red herring (which was an infamous item in one of the Zork games, as it had no use in any puzzle). Or the hollow tree stump which you can examine further. Or the guy who wants to be asked about Loom. And most importantly the time you learn sword-fight.

The premise of the game is simple: You play Guybrush Threepwood and you want to become a pirate. For that you have to overcome three trials. In the course of the story you also want to win the heart of Elaine Marley and then there is this rumour about the ghost pirate LeChuck!

The game is a classic and pretty much every adventure fan should experience this joyride. If you own an old copy, you can run it again with the trusty DosBox or ScummVM. If you need a copy, you get the special edition with beefed up graphics (which in my opinion miss in part some charme of the original) but also the possibility to switch to original graphics at diverse shops. Or you can play it in the browser at archive.org.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9F9ahZQ7oP0

And another reason why the 3DS is one of the best systems of all times is Kid Icarus: Uprising. Created by Masahiro Sakurai (Kirby, Smash Bros) this game was the sequel for the nearly two decades dormant Kid Icarus IP. Sakurai modernized the gameplay and added some stuff, and some more stuff and even more stuff. This game is filled with endless possibilities.

The single player mode sees you playing through missions, which each consists of a flying part in which you are restricted in your movements to the screen and the main flight path controlled by Palutena, while you shoot enemies. Then a ground part, were you move more freely. And finally a boss fight. Sakurai throws in enough stuff to keep things fresh though.

The story is long-winded and includes an enourmous cast of mythical characters. This includes a whole bunch of gods and their champions. And all of them are constantly talking in some banter, mostly at the expense of Pit, the playable character.

The difficulty of the missions can be adjusted, but you risk more hearts on higher difficulties, but may get bigger rewards too. The game also has an enourmous amount of weapons and other stuff. A multiplayer mode is also included. This game blew me away and kept me glued to the 3DS for a long time. I think this game would be a great candidate for a remake or even a sequel on Switch, so Nintendo take the hint!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGR8wXl4QTM

Did you ever ask yourself what would happen, if you mix the characters of Persona with the gameplay of Etrian Odyssey? Well, we know what happened, it is called Persona Q.

Mixing the labyrinth exploration of Etrian Odyssey, with all the little secrets, events, traps and so on with the style of Persona was an incredible idea. This works as a great dungeon crawling RPG. And with the level design magic of Atlus, this is a winner.

You start off from a cursed high school which gives way to a dangerous labyrinth with strange monsters. But with your party of chibified highschoolers from Persona 3 and Persona 4 you face these dangers. This is in the end another great game in 3DS excellent library.

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

Baldur's Gate is one of the best attempts to bring a Dungeons&Dragons campaign to a video game. It had D&D license and made a lot of stuff very truthfully to the source material. The world is based on the D&D campaign-setting Forgotten Realms in the region of the Sword Coast. For this game the Infinity engine was developed, which was the base for a lot of similar games, including the sequel Baldur's Gate II, but also Planescape: Torment and Icewind Dale.

As in a D&D round you gather a party of individual adventurers and step out in the world to exterminate evil… or get rich… or both. You create your main character, following the D&D rules, but the other characters you find in the game and include them into your party, if you want. But once they are part of your group, you control them all directly. In combat things happen in real-time and you can give orders. If you are overwhelmed (and probably a good idea at the start of battle), you can pause the action to give direct orders. This can be in very fine detail, including which enemy to target, which spell to cast or which weapon to use.

Also outside of battles the game uses D&D rules, for instance for stealth, for pickpocket or for other interactions. Freedom to do what you want is the key philosophy here. Baldur's Gate is a game which often allowed you to play how you want. Therefore systems exists for a lot of things. Decide which party members to recruit. Which way to go. Be evil or a do-gooder. In a way it is a Skyrim with isometric view, a party (instead of a single fighter) and a much deeper battle system.

In Baldur's Gate you create your character based on the D&D-system, which starts out at the fort Candlekeep were you grew up. One day your mentor hastily wants you to leave the keep with him. Outside you encounter a figure that demand of your mentor to hand you over. Your mentor denies this request and fights to allow your escape. On your own now you try to uncover the secrets about this encounter and meet a lot of interesting characters on the way.

The characters are also great in this game. Who doesn't remember Minsc and his miniature giant space hamster Boo? Look, how lovely they are:

Interplay projected 200K sales for the game, in the end it sold past 2 million, a major success for the time.

These group of games seemed gone from the market after the demise of Black Isle, but Black Isle veterans founded Obsidian and developed Pillars of Eternity, Interplay veteran founde inXile which released Torment: Tides of Numenera and Larian Studios started to go in this direction with Divinity. So in modern times we have more games in the style Baldur's Gate started, including after a long time Baldur's Gate III by Larian Studios.

The game got an Enhanced Edition some time back (also including console versions), which probably is the best way to play it these days.

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

#16

The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC (PC)

Change YOY: =

The 4th The Legend of Heroes game on my list is Trails in the Sky SC, with one more yet to come a little bit later. The series has become one I look forward to playing more than almost any other, with only Final Fantasy and Dark Souls being higher on my list of video game franchises. The main reason for this are the story and characters in these games, which I consider among the best in all of gaming. However, the rest of the game is equally excellent, with the music and battle system being a major highlight of the game as well.

Once I'm done with the game's I'm currently working through I'm planning on going back and playing through the entire Trails in the Sky-trilogy, just to experience the who story again from the start. 

#15