Two games left, here's a new clue for each.

#25

• The main cast begin their lives as students in a military academy at the start of this game
• The empire teeters on the brink of civil war, as tensions between the nobles and their opponents begin to mount

#24 Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth

• This game ends on a new take on one of the most famous moments in video game history

#23 Trails of Cold Steel IV

• The final part of this four part arc within a larger series

#22

• A kingdom once ruled by the Pale King
• You were a failed experiment, alongside countless others like you

#21 Trails of Cold Steel II

• Second of four, or seventh of twelve

# 36 Elite Beat agents

This in addition to the Japanese variants of the same concept, is a music game with stories that are actually good. It is very strange to me that one of the maybe 5 games in total that succeeded in being emotional enough for me to cry is a music game. 

Dotting, dragging and spinning on the screen in sync with the music while a short story plays out is pretty much all this game is. But it is done so well with the story changing with how optimal one plays, with worse play making the situation worse for the characters in the stories. I still some 15+ years later play the Christmas themed story "You're the inspiration" on Christmas eve each year. 

# 35 Zelda Ocarina of Time

My first playthrough of this game was on the GameCube. At that time I was not to keen on 3D games since I fond the environments difficult to navigate and move through. I had played most of the 2D Zelda games multiple times before me and a close friend one day stopped playing Smash Bros and instead moved over to co-op single player games. 

To me this was a copy of Zelda a Link to the Past but set in a 3D environment. Later revisits have made me really appreciate the new aspects of gameplay that it brought to the table. That first playthrough went without the fire arrows and for some reason we finished the spirit temple before the shadow temple. Something my brother later told me should not be possible (But of course it is, just not standard). A definitive masterpiece that failed to have the same large impact on a boy who liked 2D Zelda more. 

# 34 The Walking Dead

I have always liked adventure games. The point and click variant especially. Most of the adventure games set out a very linear path for the player to follow through, but Telltales The Walking Dead was serious and presented itself with choices that changed the course of the game. This was the first really great gaming experience I played on my smartphone. 

After restarting the game to try out different choices, the illusion fell a bit for me. Many times it felt like the game panned out in mostly the same way no matter what you did. But that first time playing, deciding who to save and who to let die in addition to all other hard choices put my morals into play in a way I never experienced before or since. Still got the same brand on my phone, but even 4 hardware upgrades later, I still have the game installed, ready for another depressing but fantastic go as long as I have forgotten most of it again. 

#33 Super Mario World

The first console my family got was a Super Nintendo and the first game we had for it... was not Super Mario World, not the second game, not the third game either and not the forth. i Actually took us past the launch of the GameCube before we had Super Mario World in our home. I still played it at friends since everyone who had a SNES also had this game. 

This game is brilliant, but I mostly played it because i thought it was a fun game to break. Playing Super Mario World was one of the first times where I experienced glitches and glitches that I could control and repeat. I copied blocks, p-switches and items, jumped through walls, put shells inside walls and a lot of other strange stuff. At an early video game convention i went to, me and my closest sibling was being called "Brothers Glitch" because of the strange things that we performed in Super Mario World. I heard these days the games is so broken that one can reprogram it to play snake.

#32 Hotel dusk Room 215

This game is here almost completely because of the style. And because the main character is a bit of a blunt asshole for a change. The story is okay and the puzzles is so so, but the characters is top of the line in the art style of the characters is best in class.

Holding the DS as a book while playing and and interact with the hand drawn inhabitants of the hotel made for a unique experience. I'm glad that things like this game exist. The 3D environments are not that great and to see the characters standing like someone cut out them in large paper lessened the experience some. Not perfect, but best in one thing, and being the best if only for a small part takes you a long way. 

#27

Change YoY: -4   My Rating: 9.3 / 10

Hideo Kojima is a fascinating person to talk about, isn't he? Over the last 30 years he has successfully carved out a niche for himself that is unlike that of just about any other video game creator in history. He makes games that tackle challenging and often harrowing subjects like nuclear war, child soldiers, genetic manipulation, war propaganda, and various other political and philosophical themes through stories that are often poignant and heartbreaking in equal measure. And then, he follows that up with some of the most inane and childish moments in video game history, causing such tonal whiplash to leave players guessing whether he's a genius, insane, or both. At this point, it's just something everyone's learned to accept as part of his games' weird charm. It's just Kojima, and there's nobody else quite like him.

As far as I'm concerned, Kojima's finest work to date remains Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. This was the game where his most eccentric tendencies, which could at times detract from his games' themes and messages, were at least somewhat kept in check, and as a result the story doesn't get overly convoluted and the characters' motivations remain clear and understandable throughout. The poignant moments are genuinely earned, and the silliness never gets too ridiculous, feeling more like added flavour that give the game a bit of levity when it's needed. Part of the reason for this may have been the fact that it's a prequel to the rest of the MGS series, meaning that many of the franchise's weirder elements weren't weighing it down yet, and the game was just allowed to tell its story without too much over-complicated nonsense. Naturally, it still features Kojima's trademark style, but not to its own detriment. This is, in my opinion, Kojima's true masterpiece, which none of his other works have quite matched in either effectiveness and overall quality. Other games of his might have individual elements that are done better, but in none of them have they come together as fantastically as they did here in Snake Eater.

Oh. We're half way there.

No. 26. Minecraft.
A game where you can loose hundreds of hours very easily and one of thee most medative relaxing games there is.

No. 25. Death Stranding.
Just like minecraft, it's a building and teaversal game at heart and through it's gameplay loop of refining your builds exceeds Minecraft in it's zen, relaxing loop but also has extreme drips of dopamine to boot. Really underrated title with one if the best OST's.

Right, here's another clue for the two remaining games.

#25

• The main cast begin their lives as students in a military academy at the start of this game
• They are part of a newly establish class where nobles and commoners are mixed together, rather than separated into different classes
• The empire teeters on the brink of civil war, as tensions between the nobles and their opponents begin to mount as the game progresses

#24 Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth

• This game ends on a new take on one of the most famous moments in video game history

#23 Trails of Cold Steel IV

• The final part of this four part arc within a larger series

#22

• A kingdom once ruled by the Pale King
• You were a failed experiment, alongside countless others like you
• The game's namesake was the one successful experiment, created by the Pale King to trap the Radiance

#21 Trails of Cold Steel II

• Second of four, or seventh of twelve

#26

Change YoY: -1   My Rating: 9.3 / 10

Prior to release, my feeling on Final Fantasy VII Remake was that of cautious optimism. It looked like it could be something quite special, but there was also a lot that could go very wrong in a project like this. Remaking one of the most beloved games of its kind is a tall order, and deciding what to change and what to keep true to the original had to have been quite difficult. Fortunately, the game we ultimately got turned out to be great, though it was also quite different from what I expected, though in a good way. One of the cleverest parts of this whole remake project, at least in my eyes, is that it isn't actually a straight remake, but rather more of a deconstruction of the original game and its story (or a part of it so far). I really like this approach, as not only does it make the new game stand out, it allows even returning players to be surprised by the story that they would otherwise be very familiar with. In addition, the original still exists anyway, so I can always go back to that when I feel like it. Neither version is obsolete or unnecessary, rather they can coexist side by side.

The game did a great job at expanding the Midgar section of the original, adding a lot of wonderful details to the world and story, including new sidequests not found in the original, and most significantly, giving so much more depth to many of the characters that lacked it in the original. This was also the game where Square Enix finally managed to properly combine the classic ATB battle system with a real-time one, succeeding in what quite a few past releases have struggled to do. Adding to that is an exceptional soundtrack, with wonderful rearrangements of the original game's music mixed in with all new pieces.

The only true negative I thought the game had was the decision to make Sephiroth the final boss already. Obviously it was just the first encounter in what will ultimately be quite a few over the course of the three games, but I thought it should have been saved for a later point in the story. That was the only point that felt too "fanservicy" to me, and kind of unnecessary as well. That one blemish aside, this is a fantastic remake of the first part of the original game, and set the scene wonderfully for what was to come after.