A game that for me surpasses what the first one did, a very difficult compliment to achieve.

I like the treatment of the characters. its direction that is neat and clean but at the same time violent and raw.
A game that in its more than 30 hours maintains the rhythm and its intensity and above all that leaves me thinking about it after playing it.

Listed for me as a masterpiece. Use the base of its predecessor to build something completely different in such a short time.
It brings many ideas that when combined create a distinctive experience. They were really brave to bring a game like this and have it turn out to be wonderfully intrinsic.
It's a 10 for me from top to bottom from its overall design to its music.

Guessed by @Machina

I usually put on the soundtrack to the game I will be talking about when I start writing these, so I'm in the right mood and all that. Well. It was a mistake this time, because the moment the Shadow of the Colossus music kicked in, I was left utterly speechless, or at the very least, incapable of typing. It's unreal how good it is, all of it. Every second of this soundtrack is masterpiece. But then again, the same applies to the game.

The best thing about this game, though, is how little it's interested in being one. The gaming industry has all these standards and conventions it puts on every game, and we as their audience have come to expect these kinds of things. Shadow of the Colossus is, more or less undisputably, an open-world game. But it doesn't feel like one in the slightest. There's no sidequests to engage with, no villages full of NPCs to interact with, no hidden collectibles you have to get to unlock some special reward no one cares about, no senseless crafting systems, no dungeons full of different enemies. There's none of that. There's nothing. It's you and your horse in this empty and desolate wasteland, in complete silence, alone with your thoughts.

In other games, you wouldn't even begin to question the morality of slaying a bunch of giant monsters, but Shadow of the Colossus isn't other games. It's a work of art, one that is scarcely concerned with the notion of what being a videogame is, yet is only as powerful as it is because of the medium it's in. It's an understatement to say it was ahead of its time, and over 15 years on, it is still viewed as a cornerstone of the industry. But it feels weird to call it that, because Shadow of the Colossus isn't a product; it's not trying to be part of an "industry". It's only concerned with being itself, and that's something I value more than anything.

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Guessed by @UnderwaterFunktown

As usual, Skyward Sword is the last Zelda game to show its face on my list, although the position it's at is a bit of a shock. This is the most recent 3D Zelda I relived this year, playing through most of it on the Switch a few months ago before watching a friend's first time through the game. The overall feeling over both of those experiences was a certain disappointment. I think some of that can be blamed on the game's new version - not that the port does much wrong, really, but the controls just aren't the same on the Joy-Cons as they were on the old Wiimote and Nunchuk, they feel worse in both feel and precision. I don't know if it's just the controls, though, probably not, but where there used to be a truly magical feeling whenever I sat down to play Skyward Sword, now it felt more like just another game. Albeit, still a great one.

With or without its magic, this game still shines. It still has some of the best level design in all of the industry, with a few of its dungeons standing out amongst the best in the Zelda series. It still has an amazing orchestral soundtrack that elevates every second of the experience. It still has the best narrative in any Nintendo-developed game, one that effortlessly retcons the origins of The Legend of Zelda with fantastic writing and characters, in a coming-of-age journey that genuinely feels like a legend.

Last year, when I dropped Skyward Sword out of the top 2 for the first time, I said that I still viewed it as my favorite game ever, alongside two others. This year, though, it's dropped officially out of "favorite game ever" status, and it saddens me a bit to say that, but I still love it and to be honest, it's amazing that I still feel this way after having replayed it so many times. It'd feel weird to write Skyward Sword in that banner up there and not color it either gold, silver or bronze, so to make it feel at least a little more special, I gave it the green Link proudly wears. It was the last time he wore it in a console game, and what a send off it was.

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Finally back on track with these, here's the hint for tomorrow's game.

I just played this, Persona 5

#5

YoY: =     My Rating: 9.7/10

I remember buying a PS3 in 2007, and then spending much of the following year and a half looking for games to play on it. Games like Assassin's Creed and Uncharted:Drake's Fortune were fine enough, but it wasn't until the release of Valkyria Chronicles in late 2008 that the first truly great game was released on the system, at least as far as I'm concerned. Initially, it caught my attention thanks to its art style and how the game looked in motion, but in the end it was the gameplay, story, and characters that made it into one of my all-time favourite games.

If it wasn't for the next game on my list, Valkyria Chronicles would be the best game of its whole generation. While I was thoroughly enjoying my time with the game from the start, there's a moment roughly around halfway through the game where it effectively cemented its place as something truly special. I won't spoil it, but it's one of only two times I've literally had to walk away from a game for a time because of how much it affected me emotionally. Naturally, things like that are different for anybody, but in my case there's almost no other game that has hit me quite as hard as Valkyria Chronicles.

The deep, tactical gameplay with various characters classes and units, beautiful visuals, and one of Hitoshi Sakimoto's finest scores make for an excellent experience. I've since played two of the game's sequels, and while they're both great (Valkyria Chronicles 4 in particular), none of them have quite reached these same heights. Also, I'm long overdue a replay of the game by this point, and since I recently bought the HD remaster I'll probably get around to that soon. 

That was quick.

5: Final Fantasy X

FFX has a really fast paced turn based system. Most of the fights don't last long. I really enjoy the story. It has some of the best music I've ever heard in my life.

I think it makes an engaging story with a great cast. This is a game that I return to every few years. It's a joy to play, it's a joy to watch, it's a joy to listen to. I love being able to summon aeons. There's a good bit of depth with magic, a massive but not terrible leveling system that offers some level of customization and also being able to level up everything. That's fun too.

I've yet to click with another Final Fantasy game the way I have with this one.

The saga continues.

#4 Digimon World

When I replayed this game years after I first tried it to confirm my nostalgia, I was surprised by many things. One thing is for sure this game continues to be one of the most unique games ever. This game is not about acquiring monsters and leveling up, or play as a character and level up like your typical JRPG. Instead any stat boost (ie: leveling up) is your choice to make. In this game you have to raise a digimon from a baby into an old powerful monster. The strongest currency is time. This game's day/night cycle means that time is always a factor. Most things in the game take an hour of ingame time to pull off. The more time training at the gym, the less time roaming and exploring the world. But if you don't train, the more likelihood you find a difficult opponent and lose a life. Certain monsters prefer certain stats, others prefer a certain amount of battles. In order to raise each digimon you have to become personally acquainted with them all, even the bad ones will require something like sacrificing your good digimon.

Each digimon has their own techniques and a unique special attack. They all start with one technique, but if your digimon can learn a technique, they can learn the technique by training brains or fighting a digimon with the technique themselves. When you get the technique, you keep it forever and any new digimon that can use it will be able to use it right away. Each technique is interesting in battle with some more useful than others. From jabs to throwing poo to making a thunder cloud to inferno breath to many other things.  An interesting completionist medal is getting every technique. To truly get them all logged, takes a ridiculous amount of time played, but you do get a medal for it. Every area has different digimon during the day and during the night, and certain things even have to be done at dusk or dawn.

The battle system can seem difficult at first, especially if your digimon doesn't do what you want it do. But luckily if that is an issue, you can train b rains and if you can't, you can make up for by spamming recovery items. The randomness can keep the battles fresh and exciting, especially if you facee off against the boss monsters. The game can easily be beaten within your first digimon's life, and you can keep playing with many different monster to try to get 100%. Another medal is to attain every digimon, which when you look at evolution table, feels amazing. Getting your first Ultimate digimon feels like cheating because the power spike is so nice. In order to truly get 100%, requires precise training, discipline, battles and weight management. While it is easy to get the fat monsters by overfeeding, sometimes holding back the food or giving them 1 of 128 unique items that is found in the world really helps to get the skinny monsters. As said earlier some of the monsters require being overly cruel or careless. For example, when I was really bad at the game as a kid, my digimon digivolved into one of the best digimon by dying in battle. Another example of being bad is by letting them be filthy and poop all over, they will digivolve into weak filthy monsters like Sukamon. Before getting the training boost by progressing in the game, it is common to get a Numemon due to all of the stats being not good enough for anything else. You can find items to boost your stats though, these are best used to get your desired digimon. Other items let you get a digimon directly, but these items don't boost the stats along with it. So you can have a Champion digimon as weak as a Rookie digimon.

This game has many more unique items. For example, the Auto Pilot item, it enables you to fast travel back to the city, which is amazing utility for a PS1 game. Other items can recover you and you can always use a revive to not lose your digimon, or as said earlier the weight management items. Food and port o potties. All of these items are almost exclusively used for your personal monster.

The main goal of the game is to become friends with many other digimon. As you become friends with more digimon the city improves and builds up. At first you start with a hut and a tiny meat farm. If you befriend Palmon it becomes a giant meat farm. Birdramon gives you fast travel for a price to almost any location. Agumon gives you a bank to store your items. Kuwagamon and Kabuterimon improves your training in the gym. Piximon, Greymon, Meramon, Centaurmon add important buildings to the city like a shop, restaurant, clinic, and battle arena. Many others add small things, and it is beautiful to watch the hut grow into a full fledged city full of digimon. The hut itself becomes a nice house. Becoming friends with all of these digimon takes different methods, the most common being through battle. But other methods include finding them at a certain time, working for them, or playing one of the many minigames. Two of them even ambush you in what you thought was your safe zone in the city. It doesn't matter if you had a baby digimon or your strongest monster, they will still challenge you. One of the most interesting but difficult ones is working in a shop. In this shop you have to haggle with customers based on their feelings and try to make a big profit for the shop. Sometimes it comes down to luck, because if all the customers want is cheap meat, it will be too difficult make as large of a profit as you want.

Other interesting things to do as mentioned are the minigames. One digimon is unlocked by mistaking him for a big fish and fishing him out of a lake. Fishing for other big or small fish can be a good addition to your food stores, but this digimon is the most useful for taking you to the insect island. Another minigame is curling, curling depends on the object and how much power you put into it, but it is also a good strategy to knock out your opponent's pieces. So in the end it is a simple physics game. Yet another simple thing in the game is to trade with the Moyjamon. From Physics to Economics, this game has everything. With these Moyjamon shops you can buy items he wants especially from the regular shop, and trade the items to him for more valuable items, then sell these items at the regular shop. The result is massive profits for you and and a very good money source to buy whatever you want. Typically I would spend all this extra money on card packs. Card packs are completely random like in real life, so with enough money you can eventually collect them all.

One digimon in particular gives you a jukebox, which should be used to listen to the game's wonderful music. However hilariously this jukebox is bugged and will crash the game. Why is this hilarious? Well the digimon in question is Giromon, known as the net keeper. Basically this digimon is the hacker/ bug digimon and his special attack is literally "Crash!". So crashing the game is very appropriate for this digimon.

The music in this game is quite fitting and melodic to each situation. Exciting battle tunes, peaceful city music, spooky mansion, empty canyon, snowy wasteland and my favorite is with goofy Ogremon's various bases. Enter a familiar place and listen to the music and all of a sudden it is Ogremon's music is like "wait a minute, why?" Why did he change the sign to オーガー トンネル?  Speaking of the tunnel some activities are time locked. You can open a shortcut by helping the drillers work. This shortcut helps avoid a long trek up a mountain, through easy time wasting monsters. But that same area on the mountain might be useful in the future after many days of ingame time. There is also an area where time goes slower than normal, and right next to it where time goes twice as fast. Those areas can really mess up the time you have with your current digimon. When you just want to fight and experience the battle systems, you can enter tournaments. Depending on the stage of your monster , you can enter various cups and try to earn special rewards. You can order the digimon, but you can't use items, so if something goes wrong, you are in for a challenge. The sheer amount of things to do are represented well by the medal system as mentioned earlier. This medal system was a thing before trophies or achievements ever existed. Accomplishing all of these medals makes for a varied, innovative, and complete game.

This game is simply one of a kind, I can only hope someone makes another game as amazing as this.

Guessed by @Angelus

I was sold on this game the moment I saw some random image of it somewhere on the internet. It was so... red.

But I wasn't actually sold, because I had no means of playing it, so I never allowed myself to look up anything more about it, so as to not get interested. But whenever I had the chance, I knew I was going to love it.

It took a few years, and then... I loved it. Probably moreso than I ever anticipated.

I played through the entire game in just a little more than a week. I couldn't put it down for anything that wasn't absolutely necessary, and in the rare moments when I wasn't playing it, I was still always thinking about it. Or dreaming about it. I was completely engrossed by this story, I was in love with it, and getting more and more into it with each chapter that went by. I'm not a big fan of when stories start in the middle then take you back, but with how insane the opening was, I couldn't help but spend the whole game wanting to get to that point and to see what would happen after it. And just as I began to figure things out as I neared that point, the story still found ways to keep it surprising in the best way.

But honestly, the main thing that kept it all together for me was probably the amazing sense of style that radiates in every facet of this game. Every street you walk through, every loading screen, every menu you open, every battle with every enemy, every palace, every everything is just so ridiculously stylish. It doesn't even have great graphics, but it still looks better than most games out there. Everything oozes personality, from the UI design, the transitions and loading screens, even the freaking dialogue text box (which goes a long way given how much screentime it has), and then the character animations and idle poses, the way they move in battle looking like something straight out of a comic book, not to say anything of the all-out attacks, or the super cool victory screens, the game is just a joy to look at.

It's hard not to get invested in its characters when the visuals pop off like they do, and then it's nearly impossible when you add in how good the writing is and how the narrative gets the best out of them, putting them in all kinds of relatable situations while creating satisfying pay-offs effortlessly and repeatedly. The story delves deep into the effect authority figures and companies have on people in the modern society - the way it's portrayed, it's basically impossible not to relate to what the characters go through, because we know all the shit that happens to them is happening to some people in real life too. So when the game gives you a mask and tells you to go fuck up the assholes in power, it's always incredibly cathartic.

Anyways, this went on for a while. Much like how Persona 5 does. I played through this a few times and am already looking forward to replaying it, just not sure which version I'm getting at this point. Either way, it'll be awesome because it always is with this game.

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