Games #50 to #41
Games #40 to #31
Games #30 to #21

Now, I begin with the top 20:

#20 Final Fantasy XII

I love the political tone of this game's story and how fleshed-out is its world. The different nations, towns, and areas have their own lore, and the game does a great job at making the different locations feel alive. The towns are big and feel really populated and, on the fields, you'll see monsters interacting with each other or NPCs interacting with the monsters (for example, hunting them). The game's fields do a great job at giving you a sense of being in a grand adventure, with a great variety of environments, and they also have a lot of secrets for you to find, including fantastic boss battles. The game's side content is also pretty good, with the hunts being the highlight. Also, I must mention that Balthier is one of my favorite FF characters ever.

#19 The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

The Wind Waker is an incredibly charming game, with one of my favorite stories in the Zelda series, thanks to all the heartwarming and epic moments that it has. The characters in this game are all really endearing and it's easy to become very fond of them, especially Tetra. Of course, it must be mentioned that the Ganon in this game is my favorite in the whole series. While the Great Sea has a lot of empty space, it does well its job of giving you the sense that you are on a big adventure, has towns that feel alive, and features a good amount of content and side quests, many of which involve really nice moving moments between the NPCs. The art-style in this game is gorgeous and ageless, and the soundtrack is one of the best in Zelda games.

#18 The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

While I love this game for several reasons, I think the aspect where it shines the most are its dungeons, which have fantastic and intricate level designs, with very good puzzles. Some of the dungeons have pretty interesting and unique settings, for example, I love the idea of the City in the Sky, the Snowpeak Ruins, and the Arbiter's Grounds. This game also features some of my favorite items in the series, such as the double clawshot and the spinner. Overall, using the items in this game is highly satisfying. The boss battles in this are very well-designed, and feel really epic and satisfying to do. I found the whole story of the Twilight Realm to be interesting, and I absolutely loved Midna and her development through the story, I became really fond of her and missed her after finishing the game (in all my playthroughs).

#17 Kid Icarus: Uprising

I find this game's gameplay flow to be super engaging, I enjoy both the rail-shooter-esque air-based combat sections and the TPS-esque ground-based sections, although I tend to prefer the latter.  The ground-based combat is deep, as the effectiveness of your attacks will depend on both the kind of weapon that you use and the way you shoot, for example, shooting while running and while evading won't deal the same amount of damage. The weapon synthesizing system is also pretty deep and I found it to be engaging. Enemies and bosses are varied and require different strategies to be defeated. Also, I love the setting based on ancient Greek mythology. The characters in this are all very likable, even the villains, and the dialogues are well written. I also like the story, which is engaging and with some unexpected plot twists.

#16 Final Fantasy VI

This game's cast of characters is among my favorites in J-RPGs (probably in the top 3), as all the main party members have very well-written and developed backgrounds, and are highly likable, I became attached to them during all my playthroughs of the game. This game's main villain, Kefka, is my favorite in video games. The story is relatively simple, but it's very well-paced and includes some of the most memorable and moving moments in the franchise (a franchise filled with them), and in J-RPGs overall. Another aspect that I really like about this game is that it has a lot of sidequests that you can do in the second half of the game, which feature events that help flesh out the characters even more. Of course, it must be mentioned that the OST is one of my favorites ever, and the sprites are beautiful and very expressive.

#15 Super Mario Odyssey

This is my favorite Mario game, it's just such an epic adventure, with a great variety of locations to visit during your travels, many of which have pretty creative settings. I love how you can explore the levels at your leisure and discover tons of secrets, the exploration aspect of this game is very satisfying since you'll always feel rewarded for going to every nook and cranny of the levels. Controlling Mario in Odyssey feels so good, his mobility is at its best in this game, and the range of moves that he can use to clear obstacles is very wide, since not only you can use his usual set of moves, but also you can use all the moves that he acquires by controlling enemies with Cappy. The level designs in this are overall pretty good, I really like the way they mix open areas with some tight linear sections.

#14 The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

This game features some of the most fantastic level designs in the series, both inside the dungeons and in the areas outside of them, places like the Ancient Cistern and the Lanayru Desert completely blew me away the first time I played the game. The puzzles in SS are brilliantly designed and some are very creative, the ones involving the Time Stones are my favorites. The items are super satisfying to use and none of them becomes useless throughout the game. The motion-controlled sword fighting is my favorite combat system in the series (unpopular opinion, I know). SS has my favorite story of all Zelda games and some of the most memorable characters such as Zelda and Groose. The game also has many NPC-related side quests, which have some nice mini-stories that flesh out the personalities of Skyloft's inhabitants.

#13 The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask

Majora's Mask conveys a very dark and depressing atmosphere, which I found captivating, as you always have a sense of impending doom while playing, which is also reflected in the way the NPCs act during the course of the story. The Three Days time limit system, which makes Majora's Mask completely stand out from the rest of the series, allows for every NPC to change their activities depending on the hour of the day, which results in Clock Town being one of the locations that feels alive the most in all Zelda games. While the game's main quest is well made, where MM truly shines are its side quests, which feature some truly memorable, heartwarming and sometimes heartbreaking moments, and help flesh out the different NPCs. Another feature that I really like about this game are the mask transformations, which add some extra depth and variety to the gameplay. Also, the soundtrack is fantastic, and it has some pretty somber tunes that truly fit the atmosphere that the game conveys.

#12 Tales of Vesperia

This game features one of my favorite casts of characters in J-RPGs (in the top 3), I love the chemistry that they have and I enjoy a lot to see their interactions, not only during the main story but also during the optional conversations named Skits. I really like the way the personalities of the characters are developed throughout the story, all of them have their own fleshed-out character arc. The story also features some really cool moments of bonding between them. I must mention that Yuri Lowell is up there among my favorite protagonists in J-RPGs. Another thing that I love about Vesperia is the huge amount of side content that it has, and how the side quests give you even more insight into the backgrounds and personalities of the different characters. The game's world features a great variety of locations and it truly gives you a good sense of adventure, and it also has a lot of secrets to find. Finally, I must say that I love the cel-shaded art style in this.

#11 Kingdom Hearts II + Final Mix

This was the first Kingdom Hearts game I played and I have a lot of fond memories of my playthroughs of the original non-Final Mix version. Sora feels really good to control in this game, and the combat system is super fluid and engaging, with the right amount of mechanics so that it doesn't feel too simple or too convoluted (or broken). Casting spells in this feels smooth and customizing your abilities is really fun, each type of keyblade that you can use has its own strengths and weaknesses, so you have to choose the best one to use depending on the circumstances. All of these mechanics shine when you play the Critical mode of the Final Mix version, which takes the game's combat system to the next level. Enemy encounters, and especially the boss battles, are well-designed and varied, requiring different strategies to be cleared. The extra bosses in Final Mix are some of my favorites ever. The game also has a story with many moments that I found emotionally impacting.

Nintendo and Square/Square-Enix kinda dominate the upper parts of my list.

Guessed by @UnderwaterFunktown

So, Baldur's Gate 3 opens up the top 10 as the highest-ranking new entry this year. In fact, it's the highest a new entry has placed on my list since 2021.

It's hard to sum up in words the impact this game had on me. Admittedly for much of its running time, I was too immersed to even realize how special this experience was. That was, until the moment depicted in the screenshot above. After a climactic story moment, it was time to rest for whatever lay ahead - I directed Apno, my main character, to this cliff and as I stared at the beautiful view, a breathtaking song started playing, making for a soothing experience as I wondered what more crazy adventures lay ahead.

Let's just say, none of them disappointed. In fact, nothing about this game was disappointing. Which sounds obvious when talking about a game I'm putting in my all-time top 10, but no, really, nothing disappointed. My playthrough of this clocked in at roughly 200 hours, and not a single moment of those 200 hours was spent on something I wasn't thoroughly enjoying. Every single area felt new, every single quest felt meaningful, every single dialogue felt significant. Everything mattered.

By the end, I was so invested in the lives of these fictional characters, that I started to genuinely dread the ending. I wanted to see how the story finished of course, but I was genuinely afraid of moving on from this world. I'd grown especially attached to Karlach (it's why she's also depicted there), and it genuinely felt to me like she and Apno were inseparable besties, to the point where I had him leave everyone behind (even his then-partner) to be with her 'till the end.

And when the end came, well... I did enter a mini-depression for like a week. I desperately craved an "Act 4" or something, like for the love of god please I need to keep going!! It was so weird to leave this game behind, but that's also a testament to how much it meant to me. Well, that's without even mentioning how I had to take a one-week break during my playthrough because the ending of a certain quest completely and absolutely broke me (it's the end of Wyll's questline, if you know, you know).

I think a big reason why Act 3 hit me so hard was because, after getting to know these characters for like a hundred hours, now I had to start making the tough choices. Whereas the choices in the previous acts usually boiled down to "you can do the good thing or the evil thing!", in Act 3 there is genuinely a lot of ambiguity, there's no clear right side or wrong side, and you ultimately have to decide which characters you'll side with and which ones you'll betray - and I personally didn't have full trust or distrust in either side. It was tough, and... It mattered.

Baldur's Gate 3 mattered.

FULL LIST >>

Guessed by @UnderwaterFunktown

Yup, it's Breath of the Wild.

This was the most hyped I've ever been for a game, and wow did it live up to the hype. Everything about this game is masterpiece. Well, that's not to say it doesn't have its flaws, it has many of them, but I've grown real tired of the term "flawed masterpiece" anyway. The thing about the flaws of Breath of the Wild is: they don't matter. This game blew my fucking mind.

No, seriously. Take a moment to remember what it felt like to play this on March of 2017 (wait, it's gonna be 8 years old already? Holy shit I'm old...). The first time we could freely explore Hyrule, this gorgeous take on Hyrule with so many of its classic landmarks as well as new landmarks done the utmost justice. Explore it everywhere we wanted, do whatever we wanted, in any way and order. Ignore whatever you didn't want to engage with, whether that was the shrines, the koroks, the story, hell even the dungeons! Everything is optional. This game was so bold for that. It gave the player all the freedom in the world, to play around in its world and with all its deeply complex physics and chemistry systems, in whatever way they wanted, and it was all so great.

I think a common problem with "you can do everything!" types of games is that they can lose their central identity in the process, and I'd argue that certainly happened with the sequel, but not here. Breath of the Wild somehow maintains a very strong vibe and identity throughout the adventure, whether you spend hundreds of hours finding every little thing there is to find, or rush your way to Ganon in half an hour. It just feels like Breath of the Wild. Nothing like it.

FULL LIST >>

Guessed by @UnderwaterFunktown

Honestly, I still can't believe they went from dated-ass Metroid 1 and experimental Metroid 2 to... this.

What the hell is this game, man. Super Metroid is so sick. It became 30 years old this year and it still absolutely kicks ass. Sure it shows its age here and there, but for the most part this is a timeless masterpiece and feels as awesome to play whether it's your first time or your hundredth. I've played it over and over and over, admittedly, at a certain point even trying to do speedruns (they were never any good, mind you), and also playing a bunch of randomizers and cool ROM hacks people made of it. As much as the Metroid franchise has a large fanbase, there's also a whole sub-culture around just Super Metroid, and it's so cool.

I don't really have much else to say about it though. This is the best Metroid game, period. And that's saying a lot given how many masterpieces this series has had. Super Metroid in my opinion is the kind of game everyone should play, even if it's very much not for everyone.

FULL LIST >>

Guessed by @Runa216

Let's not make a big deal of this dropping one spot and into the lowest position it's ever been in.

Heh. I mean, yeah. Seventh place is not exactly low, and it doesn't mean I think any less of this game.

Shadow of the Colossus was possibly the first game to absolutely and completely blow me away. I think growing up, there were many games I played that felt incredible, but nothing blew my mind like seeing this on the PS2 for the first time. It blew me away immediately with the insane graphics and scope, the ambition of it all, and then it blew me away again when I played through it and witnessed an incredible story with deeply complex themes and feelings.

12-year-old me actually didn't like the ending at first, I was really confused by it to be fair, but I just needed some time to process it. This was the first game I played with such heavy storytelling, and honestly it might still be one of the heaviest. And it's the kind of story that could only work in a videogame - told in any uninteractive medium it'd lose a lot of its impact, but here, when you yourself are controlling Wander and making him do all the things he does, well... Yeah, it hits different.

Shadow of the Colossus was, for a few years back then, my favorite game of all-time. I don't know if teenage me would be disappointed in seeing it at #7, but in my defense, every game above it was something I played after it. Either way, I'll always cherish this experience.

FULL LIST >>

Guessed by @UnderwaterFunktown

What's there to say about Hollow Knight that hasn't been said? This game took the indie world and the metroidvania world by storm, and became a rather mainstream hit. Everyone has gone on and on about how amazing it is, but I feel like in recent years the fanbase has almost dilluted its greatness, made its genius look ordinary just through how casually everyone talks about it. But Hollow Knight is absolutely genius.

I know it has its detractors but honestly I cannot even begin to make sense of how someone could dislike this game. It's just so beautiful, so deeply compelling, so fun to play and so frightening at the same time. It's so ridiculously immersive, and that's not a common trait for a sidescroller, never mind an indie one. It's so challenging, but it remains fun even if you're dying over and over and losing all your geo. And I know because I've been there, my friends have been there, even non-gamer friends I know have been there and everyone kept enjoying the game even after going through that.

And of course, it's the longest metroidvania I've ever played. I used to think games in this genre couldn't be too long, maybe 10 hours at most, before losing their impact. And yeah, by 10 hours in, Hollow Knight was blowing my mind - but then it just kept going, and kept going, and kept going, and everything I kept uncovering just blew me away even more. There's such a ridiculous amount of things to discover in Hallownest, and the deeper you go, the more interesting the worldbuilding gets, and by the end you're completely invested in the story even though there was very little dialogue along the way. That's because Hollow Knight is genius.

I don't know if next year will finally bring us Silksong - people have been meme'ing about that game's inexistence for years, but now it's getting to the point where even I think it's pretty ridiculous. Either way, I'm happy with the game we got. Hollow Knight is timeless, I'll enjoy it and love it forever.

FULL LIST >>

One more hint, after that I'm just going to reveal the game.

#3

• Galactic Terran-Vasudan Alliance (GTVA)
• Humanity has been cut off from Earth
• This space combat simulator ends in a cliffhanger that has never, and likely will never, be resolved.
• The developer, which was shut down in 2023, is best known for a series of open world games that began as a GTA clone but became increasingly ridiculous which each new entry, finding an identity of their own.
• A sequel to a game called Descent:_________ - The Great War
• Developed by Volition and released in 1999.

Guessed by @Darashiva

Opening up my top 5 this year is... the same game that opened it last year. Yeah, my top 5 is completely unchanged for the first time ever, it's the same 5 games in the same positions.

I'll never forget playing through Persona 5 for the first time. This is a 100-hour game I blasted through in just over a week. It was instant addiction from the moment I first booted it up and I couldn't think about anything else or do much else at all until I finished it. I got ridiculously attached to every character, was extremely invested in the story, I was so immersed that it felt like I myself was living the double-life Joker lived - boring real-life stuff whenever real-life stuff had to happen, then off to being a phantom thief whenever I got to play the game, which thankfully was rather often. And I don't care about how "edgy teenager" it is, it felt damn cool to be a phantom thief.

This game also came at a good time in my life because it's full of irredemable scumbag villains you're supposed to beat up without feeling even an ounce of remorse. Had I played it earlier, maybe I'd still be in my phase where I thought "every person has good in them", but I played this in 2019, when both my country and the world's most powerful country were under the rule of irredemable scumbag fascists, so nothing felt better than having this game where I could punch the living shit out of them and get that feeling of "us against the world".

And outside of those main villains, Persona 5 is also great in how it depicts the general apathy of society towards everything, the way people just don't give a shit about anything, or how they put up with bullshit because it's just the way things are - it's why the main characters have to take off their masks to unleash their Personas, because everyone is living life through a mask. And then, the way everyone is so easily manipulated into a certain way of thinking that leads them to defend these insane fascists or even the massacre in Palestine which yeah, somehow some people defend that. The fact that this game came from Japan, an extremely conservative country, makes it even more incredible.

Persona 5 is fucking red, man.

I love red.

FULL LIST >>

Guessed by @drbunnig

Sometimes all a game needs to etch itself into my heart forever is a damn good story with loveable heroes and hateable villains.

Honestly, thinking back to Skyward Sword now, maybe in these depressing times, what I really need in my life is to replay this. This is a story of hope, of heroism in its most purest sense, of shining a light in the darkness and doing everything you can for those you care for. It's a story of sacrifice, but more than anything it's a story of love.

It's about bringing out the best in people, whether they be your closest relationship, a bully you wished left you alone, a thousand-year-old robot sailor whose sea has dried up and can only be explored through time travel, or what will you. And then, it's about how helping people brings out the best in them, and seeing them grow and be stronger because of the strength you showed them.

Skyward Sword was the first videogame to make me cry, I believe. It's no wonder it was my #1 for so many years on here, and well, even a year before I joined here, because I first played it in 2013. The impact this story and these characters had on me was immeasurable, and their tale still brings me to tears every time I revisit it. It also helps that it's a damn good game too, with some of the tightest level design Nintendo has ever put together. The dungeons are all extremely fun to play through, and absolutely iconic.

Well, everything in this game is iconic to me. It's the best Zelda game ever made and I'm afraid it'll always be... And that's alright.

FULL LIST >>

Guessed by @UnderwaterFunktown

Put on some music from this game to get me in the mood to do the write-up, and... wow.

I don't think I'll ever get over how special this work of art is. I still remember staring at the title screen for 30 minutes on my first time of seeing it, just so blown away by the gorgeous art and music that I had to take it all in before heading into the game. And well, the game was an absolutely beautiful work of art for as long as it lasted. The visuals are so unbelievably stunning, this is the prettiest game I've ever played. The soundtrack is so incredible, it's the best score I've ever heard. The story hits you so hard with barely any dialogue, it's the most emotional a videogame story's ever gotten me. And even the gameplay feels so smooth and silky that it feels like a work of art in an of itself.

Ori and the Will of the Wisps is so incredibly special, I struggle to put it in words. Well, to be fair, I've written very many words about it here in years past, but it still never feels like it's enough. Nothing can describe the sheer amazement of having this game on your screen and in your hands. Of moving this cheerful little spirit through this wondrous world. And shining a light on the darkness that pervades it, doing everything to help those for whom everything seemed lost, and then the hard truth that not everyone can be helped. Yeah, this game packs a punch. The world of Ori may be wondrous and look simple, but it's full of complex struggles and even a good-spirited little guy like Ori can't fix everything.

I don't know what else to say about this game. It seriously blew me away so much and still does. On top of all that stuff I said above about the visuals/soundtrack/story/gameplay, I also think this game has the greatest final boss of all time. I was a somewhat serious speedrunner for this game because it was just so fun to play, and despite playing through to the end dozens upon dozens of times, that ending still made me cry every single time. I admit the speedrunning removed a lot of the impact of many things here, but not that ending.

I'm not sure I'll ever fully get over how incredible this game is. I'm sure it'll never age, I'll always cherish it deeply in my heart. I absolutely adore it. Ori and the Will of the Wisps is what videogames are meant to be.

FULL LIST >>