this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2025
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Tabletop, DnD, board games, and minecraft. Also Animal Crossing.

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Feel free to speak about your favorites, recommend games to other users and anything else you can think of. My rationale for my favorites is the following (I am not a very good writer so bear with me):

Planescape Torment: Interesting setting which I feel is drug-fueled to an extent, great gritty atmosphere, the writing is very good and the narrative is extremely interesting and well done. Go blind and you won't regret it.

Terraria: The game has a lot of flaws (and I prefer the exploration focus before hardmode more than the boss rush), but I have played it a ton of times alone, or with my gf, or with friends so it is my comfort game and I can always relax when playing it. Also, he Thorium mod is a pretty good content mod that stays true to the spirit of the game.

FFXIV: Shadowbringers: It's the climax of the whole story of FFXIV, where almost all of the mysteries are resolved, the plotlines converge and the main antagonists are confronted and explored. I love the setting, the enemies and the lore of the First as a whole, and the story if full of emotion and more thematically rich than one would expect, with a part of the game being a direct parallel of the first world during climate change, and it involves positively if naively portrayed class struggle.

ZeroRanger: Besides the amazing aesthetic, soundtrack and the good gameplay (two of the bosses are some of my favorite of all time), the game blends the story with every aspect of the gameplay seamlessly and it perfectly executes the Buddhism theme in ways I cannot explain without spoiling you. It also has its fair share of emotional moments, and is the perfect mecha anime-like game imo. OFF: Fucked up surreal RPG maker game with a unique aesthetic and disturbing atmosphere and soundtrack. The story has many interpretations and it makes great use of the gaming medium in a meta way to make you feel things. It's probably the most artistic game I have ever played.

Trails in the Sky trilogy: I used the 3rd for my 3x3 since it is the one that impacted me the most emotionally due to the amazing character writing and the emotional journey of the protagonist, but the whole trilogy is the peak of JRPGs for me, with a very fun combat system, amazing music, characters and an interesting setting with great worldbuilding. Some dislike it due to being slower plot-wise than games like Final Fantasy, but that just gives the characters and the setting time to be fleshed out, making you much more invested when shit actually goes down. The portrayal of the nationalist antagonists and the politics as a whole are lib, but in the face of everything else that makes the games good I can easily ignore it.

Hollow Knight: This is pretty much the perfect platformer in all aspects except the music which is very good but not exactly my style. The aesthetic, exploration and bosses are all amazing and I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it.

Katamari Damacy: Has a very unique style of gameplay and humor which accompanied with the great Shibuya-kei soundtrack makes for a great stress reliever game. The final level is something to behold as well (I won't spoil you).

These games have become part of me (sorry for the cheesiness), and if you haven't played them you are doing yourself a disservice.

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[–] SorosFootSoldier@hexbear.net 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

An older one of mine, don't have the time rn to update it but it still holds up for the most part.

[–] TheEgoBot@lemmygrad.ml 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

MGS2 is the perfect Metal Gear game, like 3 is objectively better, but 2 is just so much more kojima

[–] SorosFootSoldier@hexbear.net 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yeah it's my favorite story in an MGS game. With FF Tactics being my favorite video game story overall.

[–] invo_rt@hexbear.net 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] CupcakeOfSpice@hexbear.net 6 points 2 days ago

I don't know that I have enough faves to make a 3x3, but I do enjoy a few games that I keep coming back to or thinking about.

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice: I came across this game as I was coming to grips with my own psychotic disorder, and the game made me feel so understood. Like someone else knows what I'm going through and it's not just me.

Dwarf Fortress: It's a wildly complex procedurally generated world with colony building, like Rimworld, but it also has a roguelike adventure mode. I am a huge fan of roguelikes, so I really enjoyed this part of the game as well as fortress mode.

Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead: A sandbox zombie survival roguelike. You have mostly full freedom to do whatever. You can just go through houses and getting food and tools, trying to sneak around the dead. You can build a forge out of, like, clay and stone to forge metal weapons. There's a complex vehicle building aspect, and you can drive around in your super car cooking meth and getting high and annihilating zombies.

Cultist Simulator: It's a roguelike card game with a cosmic horror atmosphere and themes. You learn rituals and summon horrible gods, sacrifice your followers to ascend to immortality. It's really a horrible premise, but it's a fun game, and I love the cosmic horror.

[–] SpiderFarmer@hexbear.net 8 points 2 days ago

I am hilariously bad at platformers, which kinda sucks cause I love all the bugs in Hollow Knight. Good vibes in that game.

[–] Thorngraff_Ironbeard@hexbear.net 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Fallout: NV - prolly preaching to the choir on this one, very solid RPG with a great story

Eu4 - This represents all paradox map starers for me but it's by far the one I have the most hours in. Love painting my nation on the map and looking at ledgers

Rimworld - My favorite colony sim/city builder, the modding community is one of the best I've ever seen. Near limitless replayability.

BioShock - one of the first games I ever played, scared the shit out of me as a kid, great atmosphere.

Sekiro - I've played most of fromsofts library but this one stuck with me. It's such a pretty game and I love the lore and the world in it.

Disco Elysium - this one is okay I guess.

Hollow knight - great artwork, beautiful game, lovely soundtrack, Silksong pls cri

Tropico 4 - Another citybuilder, tropico 4 I have played to death. I've played a good bit of 5 and 6 as well but I still come back to this one from time to time.

Left 4 Dead 2 - one of the best co-op shooters ever made, still me and my friends go to game of we're out of shit to play and just wanna fuck around.

[–] Belly_Beanis@hexbear.net 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

BioShock - one of the first games I ever played, scared the shit out of me as a kid, great atmosphere.

Nope nope nope that game came out last year and there are no adults who were children when it came out I refuse to believe this lie I was just over at my friend's house yesterday watching him play a rental and we really admired the water graphics then the next day my other friend said how much he wishes we had better sand physics instead of more water games.

This totally happened recently I swear.

I thought about this when I added it that I'm gonna give someone a little scare by saying that lol. If it makes you feel any better I played it again when the remaster came out and it still spooked me so what is time.

playing disco rn for the first time

i can attest, it is indeed quite decent

[–] GVAGUY3@hexbear.net 6 points 2 days ago

Shadowbringers is so good. I'm so happy that the Crystarium turned out to have really nothing wrong with it. No secret evil thing. Shadowbringers through Endwalker was the peak of FFXIV.

[–] barrbaric@hexbear.net 5 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Updated from last year, I've only played two of these games recently lol:

Disco Elysium: The best written game of all time and it's not even close. The unique painted artstyle stands out, and the soundtrack is phenomenal. The haunting music of the horns that plays whenever you leave the Whirling in the morning somehow manages to make me feel nostalgia for a place that doesn't exist

Outer Wilds: A fantastically realized time-loop puzzle game set in a simulated solar system where each planet holds the keys to solving the overarching secrets. The DLC is harder (and spookier) but also very good.

Witcher 3: Wild Hunt: Prior to Disco Elysium, this would've been my candidate for best written game (specifically, the Hearts of Stone DLC). A sprawling open world with too much to do and gameplay that's fine but not spectacular, I still have fond memories. The game is at its best when you're given a moral dilemma and there's no clear right or wrong answer, and you're often missing key details. It's at its worse when you're trailing poop tracks through the forest to fight a random monster. Also, the soundtrack is great, and the combat theme with the choral backing is burned into my skull.

Dark Souls: My favorite of the souls genre, second place goes to Sekiro and third to Elden Ring. Something about the slower pace of combat (and viability of heavy armor) really appeals to me.

Monster Hunter World: A game about stabbing dinosaurs in the ankles with swords, where each of the 12 weapons has a full moveset that will take dozens of hours to master, World is the best of the Monster Hunters I've played (Sunbreak gets second, Iceborne third purely due to the addition of the clutch claw, and Rise last). I don't know if I'll ever be able to enjoy another game in the series in the same way, because nothing beats the feeling of exploration as you slowly piece together the game's systems and learn how best to use your preferred weapon. I don't think my PC can even run Wilds lmao.

Victoria 3: Communism simulator is a fun game to play, though the combat is still pretty jank and will likely never be fixed (imo they have to remove RNG general traits or else you have to just cycle fire them which is boring and cheesy). I'd say it's a placeholder for all the other paradox and total war games that I also enjoy but haven't played much recently.

Mass Effect: Okay yes it's about being a space CIA agent but of the sixth-generation western RPGs it's my favorite. The setting is extremely well-realized, and I prefer the unorthodox gameplay with things like the cone of fire and unlimited ammo to the sequels' more conventional FPS fare. The biggest flaw in the game is probably the fact that the morality system is so mechanically reinforced, because it means you're rewarded for not really thinking about conflict because you just always select the good guy/bad guy option to get the right type of morality points.

Timesplitters: Future Perfect: The only real nostalgia pull here, I think this is the best of the games descended from Goldeneye. A frankly stupid amount of weapons and characters, I spent way too many hours playing this in college. I do not imagine it holds up today lol.

Vampire Survivors: The main genre I played this year is VS clones. It's the perfect podcast game: keeps your hands busy, but doesn't require much conscious thought to play so you can entirely focus on trying to remember all the characters from Blowback S5. I think that the unlock system in Vampire Survivors is also the best, because everything is hidden behind a clear goal, and there's no huge grind. My Survivors-clone tierlist:

  • Vampire Survivors (had 100%'d everything but then the Castlevania DLC came out so I probably have quite a bit left to play)
  • Holocure (finished the latest update a while ago, cheated every character to max fandom to skip the grind)
  • Halls of Torment (almost done, just a few challenges to go)
  • Brotato (just finished the new DLC)
  • Death Must Die (kinda burnt out, the loot system is extremely unfun and you level up extremely slow)
  • Soulstone Survivors (finished all the main challenges, then just cheated every character to max level because I didn't want to grind)
[–] carpoftruth@hexbear.net 4 points 2 days ago

The biggest flaw in the game is probably the fact that the morality system is so mechanically reinforced, because it means you're rewarded for not really thinking about conflict because you just always select the good guy/bad guy option to get the right type of morality points.

This is true, but I still liked the morality system even with an extremely simple choice because it made being renegade that much more satisfying. Renegade femshep is one of the best voice acted parts in videogames ever, there are some really funny moments.

[–] 9to5@hexbear.net 3 points 2 days ago

Fucking Love Vampire Survivors and the gerne it spawned - a perfect example of a gerne where gameplay trumps all. (plus most of the games are rather cheap and indie which is cool)

[–] The_Riddler@hexbear.net 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] Thorngraff_Ironbeard@hexbear.net 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

TF2 and it's community is something to behold, every time I play it I feel like a turned over a rock and found a new ecosystem. I've heard the bot scourge has been defeated mostly as well.

[–] Belly_Beanis@hexbear.net 1 points 2 days ago

I always am like "Huh. I haven't played TF2 in a while."

Then I play it for like five hours and remember why I stopped.

[–] CarbonScored@hexbear.net 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Weirdly, I remain friends with one of the the devs behind ZeroRanger. We actually bonded in an very old timey IRC channel while he attended university.

Doesn't really matter, just freaks me out when I remember he made something so successful that people in the wild mention it.

[–] BeamBrain@hexbear.net 4 points 2 days ago

I like Hollow Knight because it combines two of my favorite things: the Metroidvania genre and bugs

I'll try to have one of these made by the end of the day

[–] 9to5@hexbear.net 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

My favorite genre by far is strategy games — 4X, grand strategy, and RTS. There is definitely some recency bias in this list, and it is not meant to be an attempt at finding the objectively best games in the genre. These are just some of my favorite games within the genre. I would probably have to make like a top 20 at least just to cover Strategy games.

Warcraft 3 The Frozen Throne - This was the 1st RTS that got me hooked on RTS games back in the day. Sure, Age of Empires was great and all, but nothing hit me like Warcraft 3.

Red Alert 3 - Cheesy as fuck, but in the best way possible. Its very funny and still manages to be a kickass RTS with a solid campaign. I’ve never been super into Command & Conquer, but this game turned me into a fan.

Dawn of War: Soulstorm - The grand finale of the Dawn of War 1 series and one of my all-time favorite RTS games. It’s a badass intro to the 40k universe and an awesome game for its time.

Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm - I got into the beta for Wings of Liberty, but it wasn’t until Heart of the Swarm that I got sucked into competitive multiplayer. I never climbed higher than Platinum League, but damn, it was fun being decent at an RTS.

Civilization 6 - I played Civ 4 and Civ 5 before and I like them a lot but and im aware the is controversial to some I think CIV6 is the best CIV game

Stellaris - A grand strategy/4X beast I’ve been obsessed with since day one in 2016. This game is straight-up one of the greatest of all time for me. It’s locked into my top 10, no question.

Crusader Kings 3 - A dynasty RPG/grand strategy mashup. I liked CK2, but CK3 made me believe in the divine right of kings, even if it’s all just an excuse to fuck around and create chaos.

Victoria 3 - You can turn the USA into a communist utopia in this game, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. It’s a great economic and political sim set between 1836 and 1936.

Age of Empires 4 - I started playing this recently, and it’s a damn good modern take on the classic RTS formula.

[–] Thorngraff_Ironbeard@hexbear.net 5 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I really like CK3 and it had one of the best launches of a paradox game IMO, that being said It never grabbed me like ck2 did. I love Stellaris and it's crazy to think how different it is from launch. What are your thoughts on Civ 7? I haven't really heard much about it even though it's coming out next month.

[–] 9to5@hexbear.net 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

The thing with Civ games is that the community always seems to hate or dislike the newest ones when they first come out. But give it 1-2 years and most of the community will play the new CIV game and be pretty happy with it.

People gave Civ 5 a lot of shit at the start, and the same thing happened with Civ 6. Civ 7 will probably get the same treatment, but in the end, it’ll likely become the biggest Civ game to date in terms of success and player numbers.

One thing about modern Civ games (and yeah, I’m including Civ 4 in this) is that they always try something new. That’s exactly what they’re doing with Civ 7.

Now, my personal take? I’m pretty hopeful Civ 7 could end up surpassing Civ 6 for me. Obviously, I’ll need to put at least 50+ hours into it to really give it a proper shot, but I’m optimistic.

I played a ton of Civ 5 and then a good amount of Civ 6. I really like the climate change and sea level rise as well as the map changes with flooding rivers and stuff. Also a lot of dope civs were added with a much less eurocentric focus.

[–] barrbaric@hexbear.net 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I really like CK3 and it had one of the best launches of a paradox game IMO, that being said It never grabbed me like ck2 did.

For me I think this is partly due to it being relatively easy to understand compared to CK2, so the drive to keep unraveling how the game actually played wasn't there. Like, the CK3 tutorial could actually be played and wasn't bugged out half the time and the systems and mechanics were all extremely clearly explained., meanwhile it took me 100 hours to figure out reliably successful ways to play CK2 without getting owned.

[–] 9to5@hexbear.net 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Absolutely this. I understand that some folks prefer CK2 - BUT CK3 is MUCH more easy to grasp and beginner friendly. The fact that CK3 actually looks nice and has an amazing nestled tooltip system is just icing on top. Basically I understand why / how something happens in CK3 most of the time, which isnt really the case with CK2.

Also on the mod front while CK2 has awesome full conversion mods, CK3 is really getting there. There is like probably a dozen or so really big mods in development atm for CK3

Yeah the tooltip system is great. Most of the big mods like after the end and game of thrones are getting to the level of their ck2 versions.

[–] Belly_Beanis@hexbear.net 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Missionforce: Cyberstorm: Released in 1996, this game was overshadowed by a plethora of RTS games that were more popular than turn based strategy. I still find myself coming back to this game decades later and find out new things each time. Cyberstorm is a turn-based strategy game where players use fully customizable mechs to defeat a rogue AI. You can change everything down to what type of engines your mechs use or the reactor used to power them.

WarCraft III: One of the best RTS games ever made. WarCraft 2 has a special place in my heart, but WC3 was everything we wished we had.

Dragon Quest: Dragon Warrior Monsters was the first title that introduced me to this series. I could probably put any Dragon Quest game here. I've beaten almost every game in the series. Monsters, however, is my favorite due to its Pokémon mechanics combined with the dungeon crawler the series is famous for.

Warhammer: Vermintide 2: Co-op shooters are nothing new, but VT2 takes the cake. It's amazing the devs are still putting out content for this game. Not only is it a fantastic Warhammer Fantasy title, it's an incredibly deep and complex co-op survival game due to its focus on melee combat. There are ranged weapons of course, but ammo is limited. The multiple game modes have kept the game fresh, especially the Chaos Wastes and recently added PvP.

Diablo II: Greatest action RPG of all-time. It's a shame Diablo 3 has better player vs. monster gameplay because D2 has the superior PvP. It's an isometric, 2D fighting game that would have made a great MOBA but Blizzard doesn't realize what they had.

Mount & Blade: Warband: I actually don't play the main game, all my hours are exclusively from one mod: Warsword Conquest. Mount and Blade is basically Battlefield 1942 if it were set in the Middle Ages. This Warhammer Fantasy themed total conversion has minotaurs, vampires, magic spells, castles, dwarven riflemen, and more. Every faction from the tabletop wargame is here and then some with most races playable. It's constantly getting updates despite the modders doing all the work without getting paid for it due to bullshit copyright issues.

Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis: Like Cyberstorm, I keep coming back to this game decades after it came out. It's the superior Final Fantasy Tactics/Fire Emblem/Advance Wars strategy game with a great story, great graphics (despite its age), and all kinds of customization/player choices.

Against the Storm: If you've ever played an RTS, then kept an enemy unit alive just so you could city build/gather all the resources/research everything/etc. then you'll love Against the Storm. This roguelike city builder is exactly like what I described, but it incentivizes you to move on to the next city. Players are in charge of building a settlement surrounded by hostile wilderness where they have to prepare for massive rainstorms each year in order to survive. What's also neat is how much the game emphasizes pacifist choices over violence.

Into the Breach: Another turn based mecha tactical game, Into the Breach is Subset Games' follow-up to Faster Than Light. Players are tasked with defeating kaiju as they attack cities. What's interesting is how there's little hidden information. Players know exactly how enemy kaiju will attack and each turn is a puzzle where you try to protect the power grid. This game is extremely challenging with deep mechanics despite its simple appearance.