Would you kindly play Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Excellent game play, especially going in blind. The music is one of the best game soundtracks ever. The writing is compelling, and you get to play as everyone's favorite broody vampire, Alucard.

For me, it's Beatmania by Konami. I first played it as a highschooler in the late 90s and it's totally changed the way I visualize music. I will never not think of music as notes falling towards a line because of it.

I'll tell you this and I would love to know if anyone agrees; Starfield's entire ship combat mode is stunningly similar to the Wing Commander series. I'd bet the farm some lead devs or PMs were fans of WC.

Granted you are always going to be limited within a genre however to me;

• the views feel the same
• ship handling is very very similar
• the way you transfer power between systems is identical in practice and visual design
• weapons are similar in function and feel
• enemy ships come at you in similar counts and formations

you can't control individual shield direction and you can't ram enemies and do damage but otherwise every time space combat starts i expect a little PIP cat to start talking shit.

• Rain World (top favorite game if all time)
• Cassette Beasts
• Lotr: BfME2
• Wizard of Legend (favorite Roguelike)
• Bloodborne
• Dark Souls (original)
• Gauntlet: Dark Legacy

Definitely "Abzû" and "Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice". One is a beautiful piece of art that touches me every time I replay it and the other finally gave me a wonderful example to show to friends & family of how noisy it is in my head sometimes.

Persona 4 as it was my first. the concept of having to choose how to spend your time, split between training in the dungeons, fostering relationships with friends, or studying and working part time was affecting for me, and its characters and stories are very good.

By extension Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney for showing childhood me that I liked visual novels, before I even knew what that was.

Monster Hunter. I learned to play MH purely because of its reputation as an obtuse game, I thought if I can learn to play and maybe even enjoy MH, that the other parts of my life I wasn't happy with couldn't be that much harder to figure out. Years later and I still adore this series, and don't think it's actually that complex, it's just hard to teach.

Dark Souls. Really taught me that games are more than just games. They're worlds, concepts, feelings. I'm sure I have more games than this that were formative to me, but these are what came to mind.

Mine's probably nostalgia tinged but here goes: FFVII, VIII, IX, and X I love the setting, I love the mechanic changes between the series from materia giving various boosts in 7 to the actual spell slots changing stats in 8 and the summons in 9, and blitzball in 10. The story for each was unique in their own world ending way and beautiful to run through. I replay them probably once every three-five years or so but they mark a high point for me. Adding to the list, Demon's Souls. I never fully understood the storyline behind it but the sequencing of zones around the central hub and the combat are some of my favorite aspects. I need another play on that soon.... It would probably be a little weeby of me to take some life lessons from them but they did help me to understand that hard decisions sometimes have to be made that include personal sacrifice and doing things that are unpleasant in order to move everyone forward and up.

Rayman 2 PS1, Rayman 1 PS1, Rayman Rush PS1, Rayman Arena PS2, Rayman 3 PS2, Rayman Origins Wii, Rayman Legends PS3 and Switch.

Little Big Adventure Little Big Adventure 2

Warzone 2100 (you can download for free as it is an old PC game that went GPL)

gets more on the nose by the day