Final Fantasy X is an easy pick for me. It was a massive change with the move to voice acting. It was also a game that worked well with its limitations - the world was much more linear, and so the story became mostly of a pilgrimage through a linear world. Another limitation was that large cities couldn’t be built anymore because in 2D you can make a city feel massive with 25-50 people living in it because you can make it look like a representation. In full 3D it becomes a little silly unless only spending a short time there (like Zanarkand); it doesn’t quite work the same. So instead, they made it a ruined world of villages and really only one larger city. FF12 tried to make multiple larger cities where the player would interact with only a small part of it, but these urban centers ended up feeling desolate, like set pieces on a stage. FFX did it right for this era of 3D games. Many other games did the disaster torn explanation after like Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and 3 - Xenoblade Chronicles X did the single large city with an expansive urban center by making it an exodus ship from earth landing on an alien planet, and all the outside smaller locations were little settlements/stations on an otherwise primitive world with semi-nomadic peoples. Bottom line, I was impressed in how well they weaved the story and worldbuilding through the limitations without trying to fudge the world to fit the story in the way some other major 3D RPGs did, such as FF12. Of course, FFX wasn’t the first game to do the ruined world, Skies of Arcadia did it just a short time earlier, but Skies had shown a bit more recovery and the world had a lot more seems in it than FFX.
GTA3 was also great, I’m a big fan of what DMA/Rockstar was doing in the mid 1990s to early 2000s. The radio and cruising around were always a lot of fun - even if the weren’t quite as developed as they’d become in the sequels. The radio in Vice City was a massive improvement. But GTA 3 had Scarface radio.
Animal Crossing is another game I liked a lot. The first game was really something. I remember that so many people wanted to play that there weren’t enough character slots. But it was really cool having everyone interact in the same town, and see how it evolved over time. For a bit, that game was on 24/7. Many people playing hadn’t experienced a casual game before. For me, Animal Crossing really opened up its potential with its sequels, when it moved to handheld and got connection/town visit functionality.
Last edited by Jumpin - on 28 October 2023
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