[Question] Top 20 Games of the last 20 Years?

I feel like my list of "best games" is just a list of "games I've played" because I've only seriously played a few games. The games I've played, of course, are a bit controversial in that they don't all appeal to everyone so either my nerdy friends here hate them or my friends in life have never heard of them. I'm alone, you see, but that's OK because I can't express myself properly all the time anyway.

I also can't do all 20 at once. It's just too much to ramble on about, which I'll be doing. These are my favorite games and yet many of them are deeply flawed, so forgive the incoherent stream of consciousness and what may seem like conflicting thoughts. This might be my list of most influential games or most memorable or games that have deeply scarred me. I apologize in advance.

Chrono Cross

because fuck abby

I played this game because my uncle bought it on a whim after falling in love with Final Fantasy 9. He didn't stick with it so I just played it while I was staying with him one summer years ago. I loved this game for one particular reason: a bajillion characters. About 100% of those characters were lame with either no story, too little story, or not an interesting story, but those characters were there and it required two complete play thrus and a half to acquire them all. I played the hell out of this game as a result and haven't touched it since. The game is flawed as a Chrono Trigger follow-up because nothing about it, aside from what feel like forced connections to the SNES classic, even tries to be a sequel to that game. The ire is deserved, due to it being marketed and titled this way, but I think it's good that Trigger didn't get a real sequel: that game was perfect on its own and didn't need more. This game ruined it's chance at that and any future attempts to do so, so thank you Chrono Cross. Thank you.

Final Fantasy VIII

because fuck everybody

I'm not sure what's more obnoxious, arguments about what the best FF was or the fact that everyone writes off Final Fantasy VIII as the worst so quickly. Let's all not forget that new Final Fantasy games are still being made and they have a tendency to be awful compared to the classics. To further annoy the world, Final Fantasy VIII was my first Final Fantasy game! I am known for being out of touch and I think this bit of my history seals that reputation down. When I played this game I fucking loved this game. I was really, really bad at it because I didn't have any RPG history and this game threw just about all the classic gameplay elements out. Leveling is pointless, magic was never to be used in combat, and there was no armor or weapons to buy. All of this was tossed aside for junction system which, despite the hate, I loved to death. I loved the collecting of new magic, I loved grinding it, and I loved turning cards from the card game into items that would become magic. I loved the GFs and their animations. I loved that you had to divvy them up between characters to get the most junctioning options per character. I loved the mix of a slightly futuristic and slightly medieval world, but do you know what I loved the most? FUCKING LAGUNA. Seriously, why wasn't this game about just his story? It's way more interesting and totally outshines the main plot, something I regularly try to forget. It took me a long time to finally beat the game because I was so bad at it, but I did, and the story is dumb and ends in a dumb way. I feel like it suffered from what might have been a tight schedule or just trying to put too many somewhat interesting but never fully fleshed out ideas into the main story. Either way, the world and the side characters always had my imagination going. There's so much not said or simply left hanging due to simple laziness that a kid like me would fill in the gaps and consider it amazing. In retrospect, it's seriously flawed, but my childhood glasses are rose tinted and I love going back from time to time to get in a quick Triple Triad game, get the Lionheart on disc 1, or try to kill all five cactuars before any ran away. Fuck those things, but they are cute.

Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance

First, I loved the core game. I got every dog tag, wrote really bad fan fiction that I never shared with anyone, and as a consequence played through it about 100 times in my life, which is probably just about accurate. Substance really blew it up for me, though, with another go at getting every dog tag, which I did again for the HD Collection, Snake Tales which are totally worth it for the final "Tale", and the VR Missions. This was my first serious, cognizant, very difficult attempt at a 100% rating in a game in all modes and it was not easy. The dog tags are tedius, sure, and can be particularly unforgiving if you forget one and you've progressed past any of the nearly impossible bosses and have to go back and try again. Those bosses, on the hardest difficulties, were, and still are, just complete bastards. The game forces you to drill, drill, drill your moves and hits down to muscle memory. The Harrier, for me, being the most difficult thing I've ever done, is a nightmare, but does not compare to the unsuspecting Level 5 Grenade VR mission for MGS1 Snake. It's hard to explain, but it is a fucking rage inducing experience. The calm music, the delayed explosions of the grenades, the lack of a cross-hair, the maze-like arena that reside around you but cannot be accessed from the floating island you stand upon, and all the damn targets moving around in erratic patterns. Nothing has had me jump for more joy that defeating this pointless thing, this gift from Satan. Of course, all of this bitterness would be pointless if not for all the excellence of the variety the VR missions had, which pit you against giant guards with Godzilla spine-fin-things, or taking photos of strangely behaving guards, shooting down an invading hoard of people from touching your precious cardboard box with a sniper, or just testing your skill in missions that actually show off the limits of the game play. The actual MGS2 game suffers from many things, but the biggest crime is a very limited use of the more interesting aspects of the engine they built and the game play they showed off in trailers. The VR missions bring on the serious quirkiness of Kojima and test a self-proclaimed fanatics skill. I really loved it and also really hated it. Totally worth it.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Axelrod :shoryuken: Axelrod

You very badly need to play Suikoden.

I've played Suikoden 2 and I really liked that game for similar reasons. Plus, it's a better game. Unfortunately I was only borrowing it so I never got a full experience.

Suikoden is a series I need to desperately catch up on.

There's nowhere I can't reach.