Ooof! What a year! I have fond memories of playing: Warcraft III, Vice City, Eternal Darkness, REmake (two absolute horror classics in 1 year!), Splinter Cell and Freedom Force. Damn! Just a long list of bangers.

I'm gonna go for Warcraft III. I grew up playing RTS games and coming from the typical historical RTS games like Age of Empires and Empire Earth, WT3 just blew my mind. It's the first RTS game I played where I genuinely loved the story.

This is one of those years that reminds me how underappreciated the GameCube was in it's day

I love gen 3 Pokémon, but Digimon World 3 is just something else.

Another great year imo. Something I won't be saying about 2003, which is gonna have a very dry selection.

As for '02, it's real tough for me to choose between Kingdom Hearts and Warcraft III, but after spending all day thinking about it, my vote goes to Warcraft III. I think, ultimately, it's the best Warcraft game, the best Blizzard game, and the best RTS all in one. The lore established in this game is what carried the story of WoW for so many years before the writers had to come up with really new stuff (and look how that's turned out). And thenn ofc, its impact on the industry was huge with it being, if I'm not mistaken, inadvertently the birth place of the MOBA genre.

Kingdom Hearts was also fantastic but I do think KHII slightly edges it (and I'm playing through III rn). Ultimately, if it came out in '03 it would be a deserving winner, but '02 belongs to Warcraft III :)

My vote went to Morrowind my favorite of the elder scrolls games and the only one I got super into. The scope of this game back in 2002 was simply nothing I ever experience in a RPG before.

My runner up is Neverwinter night more because of the moding then anything else. This is probably the first game I spent more time playing user made content then the actually content released with the game.

Dungeon Siege would be my third place game of the year. Fun action RPG.

2003 wasn't as good as 2002, but still some great games with Sands of Time, Beyond Good & Evil, Viewtiful Joe, Star Wars Kotor, and the launch of Call of Duty. Next to great sequels with Jak 2, SH 3, Devil May Cry 2, MK Double Dash, SSX 3.

But not a great year for RTS and RPG and the year Tomb raider committed suicide.

And yes, Warcraft III was excellent. I never played Kingdom Hearts, can't catch em all :/

Not a fan of TES II: Daggerfall? Back in the days, I remember a lot of Daggerfall fans were displeased (amongst other things) with how small Morrowind is. Personally, I'm somewhere in-between - I liked Daggerfall for what it was trying to do, simulate an actual TTRPG world (which is, when you think of it, impossible), and Morrowind for having more focus, while retaining freedom (plus the setting and the world were more unique).

I'm really hoping those guys that are making Wayward Realms (and those are Daggerfall designers) will manage to pull off what they talked about, living world with some sort of AI that will govern actions and reactions of the factions.

Yeah, at that time I was barely playing anymore, stuff didn't connect with me. Of the games that year I have to vote for Resident Evil Remake, although I never played it on Gamecube (never had one), but did so later on the Wii. I never actually played Metroid Prime, although I did play and like MP3, so I probably should get into MP Remake on Switch. I also never played Morrorwind, but have a feeling that title actually might be the one I like the most of the Elder Scrolls Series. But I actually want to play the whole series, starting with the first title, I only played Skyrim so far and ESO. So yeah, my vote for RE Remake, and I might later learn more about Metroid Prime and Morrorwind.

If you keep an open mind about earlier Elder Scrolls, you might end up liking them much more than the latest iteration (Skryim). One very important difference is that old TES games had combat that is based on your stats, but it's just in real time, which means your "To Hit" chance is much more dependent on your character's skills, unlike Skyrim where it's more shifted towards you as the player.

I never could get into Daggerfall.  The truth is in general I never been into endless exploration.  That kind of gameplay always sound good on paper to me but when I actually play a game like that I find that I get board very quickly.  Using side quests to get me explore some what keep me interested in exploring a world through them but simply exploring without any objective just not something that have ever kept my interest long.

The tighter focus of Morrowind might be why I enjoyed it so much and the fact there no easy fast travel to reach all your objective might be why it seem so large in scope to me back in 2002 while other larger games I lost interest in before the size of the game became that apparent to me.

Morrowind and more recently Witcher 3 are the two more open world style RPG I super enjoyed but I probably one of the only people that enjoyed Witcher 2 almost as much of Witcher 3.  Act 1-2 of Witcher 2 even through they very small maps compare to a real open world game I absolutely loved.  Act 3 did seem a little rush to me on content compare to first 2 acts.