I don't like hockey much, but meh. Okay. My top 5 games of all time. Considering the fact that the most "recent" system I own is a Playstation (the first one!), there's nothing from 1998 onwards in my list, except one.
5. Mother 3 (Game Boy Advance). Some of you might be familiar with Earthbound on SNES. In Japan, Earthbound was called Mother 2. Anyway, Mother 3 is an incredible game... no, a masterpiece. It keeps the charm and humor of the previous games of the series, but a deep storyline is added into the mix. It's simply awesome. The game was not released outside Japan, however there's a fan translation on the net. You need to understand what's going on to truly appreciate the game to its rightful value.
4. Final Fantasy Tactics (Playstation). I like strategy RPGs in general, but this one is special. The story is complicated (on a first playthrough anyway), but deep. The gameplay is good (although on the very easy side after you learn how to play efficiently), but what really stands out is the way you can customize your characters' classes and abilities. That's fun. ^_^ Personally, I enjoy doing playthrough with all five (generic) characters being the same class, without external abilities, from other classes. Definitely much harder than it sounds. But I love that kind of challenge.
3. Lufia 2 : Rise of the Sinistrals (SNES). Epic. Good story, likeable characters, smooth gameplay. What's not to like? It's actually a gem that not enough people had the chance to play back in the days. Lufia 2 has the best optional dungeon in any game ever (up there with Star Ocean 2's), in my opinion.
2. Mega Man 3 (NES). I'm a huge fan of the Mega Man series, but this one is my favorite. Most people prefer Mega Man 2 over 3, but I prefer 3. I found the game more solid, the music more enjoyable (although 2 was awesome as well), and the way you fight Mega Man 2 robot masters again is really nice. Too bad it hasn't been done in any other Mega Man game (except Cut Man/Wood Man in Mega Man 8). Actually, I like it so much that it was the very first game I played through to upload on YouTube. On a related sidenote, I didn't have the chance to play Mega Man 9 (due to not owning newer systems), but I know the game's awesome. I'm dying to play it too.
1. Warlords (PC/DOS). Okay, I'm pretty sure none of you knows that game. You might think you do, because it's a relatively generic-sounding game name. There's probably a dozen games called Warlords on the net. Anyway, the game I refer to is basically an old strategy game. There's one map. There's eight armies. There's lots of castles. Each army starts with one castle. Most of the other castles are "neutral" (basically vacant, they're there just to be taken by whoever grabs them first - although said castles have some defenders, but they don't produce units and can't go out to attack you). Basically, each castle can produce different units. Light Infantry, Cavalry, Wolf Riders, Griffins, etc.
Each unit has a different strength stat and move stat (to move around the map), and might take a different amount of turns to be produced. You use them to attack your enemies, logically. When there's a battle, the system looks at the strength stats (and any other bonuses depending on terrain, items, etc), and the game decides which unit dies, but there's a big randomness factor. That means even a Light Infantry can win over a Dragon sometimes (but that's rare!). The randomness factor makes the game very replayable, imo.
Each army begins with one "Hero" unit. Heroes can explore ruins scattered throughout the map, and can acquire items, money, or special units that are generally stronger than the regular units (such as Dragons, Demons, etc). Although the Hero can die on said ruins as well. Each new game has different things in the ruins, so every game is different, and just adds on the replayability. Sometimes, the Storm Giants (yellow army) will get two Devils on the first ruin near their starting castle, and dominate the entire south-west part of the map, and thrash Elvallie (green army), their closest rivals. Sometimes, their Hero might die on that ruins and Elvallie will seize all nearby castles quickly and overpower the Storm Giants with ease. The random factors of the game make replayability very high because it's never the same. Of course, when you played the game as much as I, you still end up winning almost every game because you know some good tactics.
When the game starts, you get a screen with eight armies. All are shown as "Human" (which means the player control them all). Obviously, you want to pick one of the eight, and change every other to CPU. Diffculties, in order of easiest to hardest go in that order : Knight, Baron, Lord, Warlord. I say put every army but the one you picked Knight, although you can assign different strength to different armies (making the Sirians Warlord and everything else Knight for example), but that's just weird. If you take your time, you can get to know the game fairly well. Yes, it's a bit compicated at first, considering there's no ingame instructions. Anyway, the game can save up to eight files, which is nice.
For a 1991(?) PC strategy game, it's unbelievable how I love it. I played it a lot when I was 10 years old, and I still play it now that I'm 25. Although now, I prefer Warlords 2, the first game will always have that incredible amount of nostalgia to me. If you like strategy games and don't mind old, unrefined graphics (games weren't always realistic and mindblowing, kids), I say give it a try. It can be downloaded on
http://www.warlorders.com. Shameless advertising, I know.
That's about it. Honorable mentions to Super Mario Bros 3 (on NES), Chrono Trigger (on SNES), Final Fantasy 4 and 6 (both on SNES) and Super Mario Kart (on SNES), as well as the entire Mega Man and Breath of Fire franchises. Also, countless other games that I loved. I could start a huge list of games a loved, but it would be, well, huge. And no, I'm not a Final Fantasy 7 fangirl.
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