Exactly!

...James? Pokémon Yellow?

I don't feel that's it, but it's what came to mind.

Meanwhile I fell behind again, oof... well, time to throw in a bunch of hints, and I guess I'm spamming again later on.

#16 - Probably the only game to ever have Sigourney Weaver as a voice actor.
#15 - The latest installment in this 2D series, which was received much better than the latest 3D entry.
#14 - This game introduced us to a region whose capital was revisited in one of this year's best-selling games.
#13 - This game was lambasted pre-release for turning this franchise into a "generic FPS". It's not exactly been a common opinion since.
#12 - In this sidescroller, you must confront many enemies and hardships to defeat the white-haired goddess who rules over everyone's lives.
#11 - In this       RPG      , you must confront many enemies and hardships to defeat the white-haired goddess who rules over everyone's lives.

Nope. Avatar is also part of the hint in case you missed that post.

15) Metroid Dread

14) Pokemon X

12) Hollow Knight Silksong

11) Clair Obscur

Alien Isolation maybe?

#27

Change YoY: -2   My Rating: 9.3 / 10

Very few video game series have  ever climbed up in my estimation as quickly as The Legend of Heroes did after I first discovered it. I played Trails in the Sky 2015, the sequel the following year, and then the first two Trails of Cold Steel games in 2017, and at that point the only series I held in higher regard than it were Final Fantasy and Dark Souls. Now, the issue here is that this is now the second time I'm talking about a Trails game, and I've still have five more to go after this, and trying to come up with new and interesting ways to say "I really like this one" is getting a bit difficult, especially since these games have a shared continuous storyline that spans the entire series, characters that play a role in much of it, and a battle system that retains its basic foundations throughout. Essentially, the reasons why one of these games is great, are quite often the exact same why another one of them is. Even putting them in any specific order within the series itself can be very difficult, as it is in essence a single extensive narrative that runs through nearly a dozen games at this point.

I guess the one thing I can say about Trails of Cold Steel, is that it was basically the game that cemented the series' place in my mind as something truly great. As mentioned above, I had previously played the first two Trails in the Sky games and loved them, but this was the game that showed the franchise could keep the quality high beyond the confines of that one sub-series. It could introduce new characters and settings and make me care about them just as much as the ones I already knew, a trend that has continued ever since with each new installment I've played. Almost no other franchise has ever held up this well across so many different titles for such an extended period of time, for me personally at the very least.

#26

Change YoY: -2   My Rating: 9.3 / 10

By far my most anticipated game of the last several years, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth more than lived up to the hype as far as I'm concerned. I mentioned when I talked about FFVII Remake that I was cautiously optimistic about the game prior to its launch, and my feelings here were much the same, but for a different reason. This time it was a matter of picking up where the previous game had left off and carrying on without fumbling the ball, and while there are some minor issues to be found, Rebirth is an absolutely brilliant game that was an absolute delight to play from beginning to end.

From the moment you set out into the open world and start to slowly realize just how much there is to see and do in this game, it hooked me and never once lost me. The battle system from Remake is back with some nice improvements, the visuals are just fantastic, and the soundtrack is one of the best of this whole generation. Add to that an excellent story that follows many familiar beats from the original, but changes just enough to keep even fans of the original guessing what's going to happen next, and some brilliant character development that fleshes out the main cast even further from the original and adds details that make them wonderfully compelling to follow as the story progresses. Every member of the main cast gets a chance to be in the spotlight, and I never got tired of learning more about them. In addition, I loved the recreations of locations and scenes from the original, and the way the game kept the spirit of those things intact while expanding on many of them in various ways.

The biggest issues I have with the game are the excessive number of minigames for seemingly every occasion, which feel like the developers throwing every single thing they could come up with in the game and just hoping some of them will stick, and the very final section of the game, which I thought was way too overdone in terms of number of battles you needed to fight. The impact of the scene immediately preceding that series of fight was greatly diminished in my mind because you had to spend such a long time fighting one boss fight after another, not to mention if you happened to lose at any point and had to repeat any of them. I know in the original that same scene was followed by a boss battle, but there was only one, and the game made absolutely certain you could not forget what had just happened with its music choice while in Rebirth you just had to focus on far too many things to let the big moment really sink in. There are some other minor issues and strange choices that occasionally show up, but otherwise I enjoyed nearly all of my 100+ hours I spent playing this game. Admittedly, the game didn't need to be that long, but it didn't bother me too much in the end. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is an absolutely incredible game that I will go back and replay at some point, it's just one that has some blemishes on it as well.