2. The main character has a blue sword on the cover of this game.

1. 15,000 hours.

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The presentation works still to this day, although the 2D graphics may seem outdated for todays standards.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

#1: Diablo 2

Haven't kept up with this thread. Just going to post my top 10 here.

10 - Persona 4
9 - God of War (2018)
8 - Crash Bandicoot 3
7 - Spyro the Dragon
6 - Super Mario Odyssey
5 - Crash Bandicoot 2
4 - Mario Kart 8
3 - Persona 5
2 - Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow
1 - Crash Team Racing

These are my favourite games of all time.

#7

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

YoY: +9

This the only new game to make its way into my top ten favourite games in years, and even that change was mainly just swapping Trails in the Sky for Trails in the Sky SC, as replaying the game's this year I realized I loved the second game more than the first. Not by much, but still enough to warrant a small change anyway. I've already talked about this series five times while going through my top 50 this year, so I don't exactly have much more to say at this point. I love the deep battle system that allows for a variety of different strategies to work, the world that these games set up is among the most comprehensive and interesting ever created for video games with a history spanning thousands of years.

The music is exceptional in the whole series, and the story that is eventually going to span at least ten different games has almost no equal in terms of scope when it comes to video games. In the end, the one thing that sets the first two Trails in the Sky games apart from the rest of the series, are its characters, specifically Estelle and Joshua, though the entire cast is wonderful. I won't go into great detail about them as I don't want to spoil anything. Suffice to say, there are very few series of video games I love as much as this one, and I don't see that changing any time soon.

3 and 4 are both right!

There's a good chance you do know number 1, so keep up the thinking

2) Final Fantasy X? (first that came to mind)

1) Civilization IV?

#6

Shadow of the Colossus (PS2, PS3, PS4)

YoY: =

A game unlike any other, Shadow of the Colossus is prove positive that video games can be, and are, art. It is also the only game I've ever purchased three separate times on three different consoles. I've been playing video games for over 30 years now, and in all that time I've never played another game like Shadow of the Colossus. Not even Team Ico's other games, Ico and The Last Guardian, both of which I love as well, can measure up to SotC in terms of tone and style. There's a sense of majesty and scale to this game, a feeling of immeasurable scope that permeates it that I've never felt in any other video game.

Its often very difficult to describe what makes Shadow of the Colossus so exceptional, because if you just tell someone that its a game about taking down 16 bosses to revive someone, it doesn't sound that special. I've had 15 years to come up with reasons why I love this game, and every time I think of something new. One of those things is the silence. Outside of the wonderful encounters with the colossi, the world of SotC is a quiet place, one where very few things outside of you and your horse ever seem to move. It's a land frozen in time, and though it may not seem like it to someone who hasn't played the game, those quiet, introspective journey's to take down yet another colossus are just as integral to making this game such an immensely memorable experience. The willingness to allow so much room for silence is remarkable, and something very few games have the courage to ever do, to just let the atmosphere and the world itself speak for the game, without a single interruption or enemy encounter. Those are some of the most beautiful moments in any video game.

2 is correct.

1 is not correct.

1. 15,000 hours.

The approximate amount of time I spent playing this game,  or thinking about playing this game.

Adding what I think will be the final hints. Take your guesses.

5) Released in the same year as Read Dead Redemption and has a main character who John Marston reminded me of

Hint 2: Only this guy is more of a space cowboy

Hint 3: The game also had 2 major expansions where different characters take center stage, including the villain that you "save" at the end of the base game.

Hint 4: I've only hinted at the campaign so far, but the series is best known for it's competitive multiplayer and e-sports scene

1) A mission to save your world becomes a lot more complicated when you learn the cost

Hint 2: Both your childhood friend and another world will have to be sacrificed

Hint 3: But this dual-wielding, spiky-haired idealist ain't gonna let that happen