uhhh for the ask thing, what are your favourite video games in general?
For series, Fire Emblem and Final Fantasy! For genre… I don’t have a particular preference that I could pin down with one name. Not shooter games, at least. Mostly games with some sort of fighting in them, whether it’s active fighting or strategy type battles (like in Fire Emblem, where everything comes down to a calculation and planning for the most part). Games that are fun to play and have good stories, rather than just interesting gameplay mechanics. A game could have the greatest gameplay mechanics in the world, but if its story sucks then I wouldn’t want to play it. Part of this probably comes from me loving to grind and beat games by being overleveled. I’ve also loved games where it was impossible/extremely hard or too tedious to be overleveled, so that’s not the sole thing, but it contributes. Games where you can grind are pretty fun too.
looking at my favorite games, a theme is that they all make me cry at some point. Not the entire time, because that’s too depressing, but somewhere. Something that gets me all emotional and really involved. The characters have to be part of it too. Characters usually make or break my enjoyment of a game.Â
So does plot. For example, NieR: Automata (no plot spoilers follow, just thoughts). I loved the soundtrack. But the plot was… not well executed, in my opinion. There was no real central goal. At least, not a clear one that I could follow. The game before it, NieR, had a central goal from the beginning, and that I liked. I want to know why the characters are doing what they are doing. What are they working toward? Another one of my favorite games, Yakuza 0, had a central plot that kept getting slammed in other directions, if you ask me. However, even with changes, I could still tell where they were going. Character motivations were clear where they needed to be. And the suspense in that one… I could go on. But basically, I like games with compelling characters and plots that are relatively clear and usually defined for a significant amount of time (Like with VII. Stopping Sephiroth wasn’t the goal from the second the game started, but it was important for a majority of the game).
Bonus points for great soundtracks! NieR (Gestalt) has my favorite video game soundtrack of all time (I’m listening to it right now, actually. The soundtrack is not only good for game music, but listening music. I highly recommend you check it out!) FFVII’s soundtrack was the first thing I ever bought for my iPod.Â
As for top individual games, in no particular order:
1) Final Fantasy VII (I run a blog for it. Of course it’s up here)
2) Final Fantasy IV (The complete collections version is my favorite. I really like the characters in it, and the plot is interesting too. It had enough twists to be fun without being excessive, and it tugged at my heartstrings at times.)
3) Yakuza 0 (I beat this a few weeks ago and damn did I love it. The story man… The sidequests were fantastic, definitely, but the story was one of the most amazing ones I’ve ever played. I started sobbing more than once)
4) NieR (Gestalt and Replicant. Mostly Gestalt, since that’s the one that was released in the US as “NieR”) ((The soundtrack was amazing as I said above, and the characters were great. The main character was likeable, but 2 of the sidekicks who were with him were absolutely amazing. Particularly GW, for those of you who’ve played the game.))
5) Fire Emblem: Awakening (This one is complicated. I love the first third. I love the last third or so. The middle I’m not so in love with. But this hits so many of my favorite concepts. The soundtrack, while not as consistently good as NieR, includes several amazing pieces and doesn’t include anything I dislike, so that’s a selling point. I also love the gameplay mechanics of the Fire Emblem series, even if I said that that isn’t the most important part of a game, so that gets it up here too. It was the first Fire Emblem game I ever played myself rather than watching a walkthrough of, so it holds a special place in my heart)
I’m mostly a Nintendo girl, to be honest. Even though only two of these were released on Nintendo platforms, now that I look at them. And of those 2, one of them I like best for the PSP version! But yeah. These are my favorite games. Thanks for sending in the ask, this was fun!
