More hints:

#14:

• The shards of the primordial man's soul influence the fate of great kingdoms.
• The shards manifest themselves in the form of women, each encompassing one aspect of the primordial man.
• Said primordial man in a monstrous form was one of the most difficult bosses in the previous game in the series.
• Nashandra, Elana, Nadalia and Alsanna.

#11:

• Junior Bracers.
• During the game, the two main characters befriend the heir to the kingdom's throne.
• Ouroboros.
• The first game in a story-arc which includes at least 11 games in total, split into several sub-series.

Correct.

Okay so three correct guesses for #16, #15 and #14. However #17 still no dice. A final hint;

#17: The Mac OS version of this game (at least) featured an interesting anti-piracy measure where you had to look up letters in the manual.

Hint 2: Once you find the correct letter, you can drink the correct bottle and the door to the next level opens. Drink the wrong one, and die.

Hint 3: This actually mirrors the rest of the game, most bottles are for health, while some take health. You see this by the color of its plume. Obviously though there is no plume in the lettered bottles because that would be too easy to guess.

Hint 4: The levels start down in a grey-coloured dungeon, presumably the place where you were imprisoned, until the switch to the more elaborately decorated red and golden floors of the palace.

Hint 5: Then finally there's a bridge to the throne room where hopefully you were on time to save the princess.

#24

Grandia (PS1)

YoY: -1

Grandia was originally released in Europe in 2000, but I didn't actually play it until 2011 when I bought the game from the PS Store largely on a whim. I was just looking for some new JRPGs to play, and I happened to come across this one. I bought it, played it, and ended up absolutely loving it. The stars of the game are the characters and battle system, the latter being something that other games should definitely copy and make use of. The story and music are very good too, although I wasn't quite as fond of the music initially, it eventually grew on me as well.

Grandia isn't a perfect game by any means. The 3D graphics have naturally aged quite poorly, though the backgrounds and character sprites still look great and their animation is often gorgeous. Also, the voice acting could charitably be called average, though more often than not I'd use the terms questionable and amateurish to describe the acting. To be fair, that was just something you had to accept with games of this period, so it never really bothered me.

Is this a Prince of Persia game? Perhaps the original?

Yep

Yes! Excellent. Prince of Persia it is. Originally from 1989, but I played the 1992 version for Mac that looks a billion times better.

#23

The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel

YoY: -2

The third Trails game on my list so far, and it's definitely not the last. In fact, it's the only series besides Dark Souls from which every single game I've played is in my top 50. That means that at the moment there are six Trails titles on my list, with one more probably making its way there next year since I only recently finished that one and didn't want to start redoing my list and thinking of its placement at that point anymore.

This year I actually played through all seven Trails games almost in a row, which is the reason a lot of them have shifted around on my list this year, this one having the smallest change of the lot. Regardless of the change, I find these games to be excellent across the board, with great stories, interesting characters, excellent music and a genuinely well-designed battle systems. 

#18: DOOM

DOOM IS AWESOME!!! No for real, this game kicks ass hard. Blasting through the hords of demons from hell, blood and bodyparts everywhere with this absolutely incredible soundtrack. The heavy metal music brings the action to another level.

The art direction is spot on with everything being in this redish tone, fits the Mars and hell settings. The demon designs are incredible and detailed. They look like they're really out for blood. The gun play is topnotch, awesomely fun. The gore is amazing, the glory kills are a great new mechanic that let you tear the demons apart with your bare hands. Incredible!

The level design is fantastic too, with so many little secrets to find. I spend many hours looking for stuff outside of the fights. The retro levels you can find from the original 1993 game are a nice touch and really hard to find.

The boss fights are tough as hell and fun as heaven (hehe).

Doom is a fantastic and fun game. Earlier this year someone asked me about my top 10 games and I put this game at #10. It's not only lower now because I spent more time on making this longer list, but also because after playing Doom Eternal I replayed this Doom and realised that it's actually really slow compared to Eternal and early on you also can only jump once. So Doom Eternal is more fun.

That said Doom from 2016 is a top quality fps with some incredible action. The gore and the soundtrack are the best parts. The credits are really cool btw. Doom is a pure adrenalin rush.

Why can't I edit my post?