29: Octopath Traveler or the sequel. Could apply to either.

#35 Pokémon Blue Version

Guessed by UnderwaterFunktown My Pokémon career was short but turbulent. I religiously watched the anime, collected the playing cards, and of course played the video game. I had Pokémon Blue Version, with Blastoise proud on the cover. For a short time, this was my most played video game ever, and probably my favourite as well. When this game was relevant our dog, now long since deceased, was still young and well, difficult. He had a hand in the destruction of many things in our household. Sadly, one of those things was my GameBoy Color and I once found it all in pieces. Screen broken, speaker punctured. One thing survived. My Pokemon cartridge. A big hole in the top right corner, it still worked. I still have that cartridge, as a permanent reminder.

#34 Age of Mythology

Guessed by UnderwaterFunktown One of the greatest real-time strategy games is surely Age of Mythology. A spin-off of the Age of Empires series, I was also attracted to the game's classical, mythological theme. I was already interested in these things, and playing a game where you choose Gods for each tech advancements was right up my alley at that point. This game would become part of a small group of games we, which is me, my parents and some family friends would play together. At one point, we rented a house somewhere and brought all our computers, which during this time were huge with even huger monitors. The entire house was filled with desks, computers and many, many wires.

#33 Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock

Guessed by UnderwaterFunktown I spoke of Pokémon, but that ended for me after one generation. My other great gaming addiction was Guitar Hero, and for me this started at Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. It lasted longer too, and I would buy pretty much all the new games that would release for the next few years. And there were plenty. Novelty wins usually, and with this it's no different, though on the other hand I do also genuinely feel that the setlist of songs was best in this game, of the ones I played at least, and it's the songs that made the games. Did they overdo it with the amount of notes that needed to be played in this one? Maybe, but hey, it looked really cool when you did it.

#32 SimCity 3000

Guessed by haxxiy SimCity 3000 was a game that shaped my life. There have been a few, and I've written this sentence down for multiple games now, and there will be more, but it is true nonetheless. Together with those other games, it would help shape my life's interests and even personality. The game itself was well balanced and an innovative way to create whatever city you could think of. I made many cities, and some I'd play long enough to become quite huge. I think my largest had over 400,000 inhabitants, which is quite a lot in this game. Still though, as this game completely supplanted its predecessor because it was superior in every way, the life of SimCity 3000 would also be fairly short...

#31 Super Mario Galaxy

Guessed by drbunnig When I was turned off from home consoles, and handhelds as well more or less, the seventh generation of video games would come along with a renewed sense of wonder. Finally, new, original and unique stuff would come out again across the board. Nintendo as well, would finally regain some former glory with the Wii with some of its great games. Super Mario Galaxy was one of those, and it was absolutely stellar. Pun intended. I was disappointed by Sunshine, but Galaxy would again make me feel like when I was playing Super Mario 64 and it helped bring me back into the fold. I loved the soundtrack, and the Observatory hub world. The combination of those is especially great. I think I'll have the Observatory theme song at my wedding. If that ever comes.

The list so far.

Yeah, the first one. Still have to play the second. Another game in this packed year.

I've only played the second one, quite literally just finished it a few weeks ago. My second favourite game of the year so far.

So I should give this one a go as well. I already have it laying around here, but so are a few more games.

As a fan of Heroes of Might and Magic I took notice of the announcement of Songs of Conquest. It looked a lot like the gameplay of the series. And true enough, the game tries to be a spiritual successor to the old HoMM-games. You get heroes, here called wielders, who can assemble an army and travel with them around the world map. There are cities that can be improved by buildings and can produce more soldiers for the wielders armies. You also can unlock workplaces that produce goods, which you can use for the upgrades.

If your wielder meets enemies in the field, the conflict is resolved with turn based battles on a hex-grid. This can get a complex undertaking, especially if you don't want to lose too much of your troops, as you want to explore further instead of turning back to gather more soldiers. The wielders can level up and carry items, that improve their abilities. They also cast spells, that can help in battle.

The game offers a lot of modes. A single-player campaign, multiplayer skirmishes, free games with AI or other players on pre-made or randomly created maps, a map editor and community made maps. There is a lot of content. Until recently I would've criticised that the main menu looks kinda out of place with a modern looking UI, but with a recent update they also put their great looking art-style on the main menu as well. So yeah, updates are a thing, as the game is still considered early access. It feels like a good package already, but they are still working on community feedback, bugs and content.

In my opinion a worthy successor of the original games. Compared to these there is quite a good amount of quality of life improvements and also some tweaks to the gameplay that make strategies more interesting. Not to mention the visual upgrade.

Songs of Conquest - Turn based strategy - Gameplay trailer - YouTube

I have to admit, at first I didn't took  the game serious. It looks ridiculous (I think this is in part intentional) and the gameplay only consists of you moving the character, it attacks automatically? Is that a joke? I needed to actually play it, to understand how it works and how addictive it can be.

As I said, gameplay looks simple on the surface, but your job isn't the direct fighting, it is choosing the right upgrades on level-up to survive longer into the run. Chopose combinations of weapons, optimize your experience point growth to be able to face tougher challenges that arise once the timer ticks up.

Add to that the crazy amount of strange foes, the number of unlockable character, weapons and improvements, and you are deep into playing 'just another round'.

The game got some updates with new content, so it keeps staying interesting. So even you may consider going on the hunt for the vampire.

Vampire Survivors - Launch Trailer - Nintendo Switch - YouTube

Let's give it some more hints:

#35: Persona Q as guessed by The_Liquid_Laser.

#34:
Storm, Drizzle, Clearance, repeat.
Beavers, Humans, Lizards, Harpies.
All trying to get the favor of the Scorched Queen in the Smoldering City.
You as one of the viceroys are in charge of expeditions to settle the land before the blightstorm is destroying it again.

#33:
Pig verruca heritage.
Broom, vroom, vroom.
Go to school while also uncovering old secret knowledge.

#32: A Short Hike as guessed by UnderwaterFunktown.

#31:
Start the game by playing with members of the dawn brigade.
This is the only Wii-entry of this vast series of turn-based tactics games.
The series got much more successful with their entries on 3DS and Switch, even though it is around since the Famicom.

#30: Deus Ex: Human Revolution as guessed by haxxiy.

#29: Octopath Traveler as guessed by Darashiva.

Come on guys, let's get this guessed.

#32 - There was a battle between order and chaos, and chaos won - this game is a result of that.
Hint 2 - Since then, these kinds of battles have had three sides, because this is the third entry in the series.
Hint 3 - This is a series of online multiplayer games - these "battles" I'm referring to are timed online events where players pick sides.

#30 - This game's protagonist has two differently colored eyes - one red, one green.

Guessed by @UnderwaterFunktown

This is almost like a glorified tech demo, what with how short of a game it is - it certainly feels like little more than a little test project compared to its sequel - but what a damn fine tech demo. It only goes on for a few hours but it's an unforgettable game for everyone who's played it. It's held one of the most stable positions in these rankings, and it'll probably continue to do so for as long as I'm doing them.

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