Foolz said:Ocarina of Time Master Quest came with my copy of The Wind Waker. I wish it came with Majora's Mask as well.
As a result i've never played it in full.
I remember that bundle. Yep, Majora's Mask would have been a sweeter deal, but that wasn't too bad either all things considered. Not sure if you've got a Wii U, but it's definitely worth a Virtual Console pick-up.
#23. Azure Dreams
I'm not sure if there's a game on this list that gave me so much fun and so much frustration as Azure Dreams. I threw controllers, slammed my hand on top of my PSX, and popped out the game and flug the disc across the room in moments of sheer rage due to the game cheating (this was in college, I'm much calmer these days). The result would be me quitting the game for long lengths of time before going back to it. In fact, for many years Azure Dreams held the record of the longest time in between playing a game and completing it at 10 years (it was eventually surpassed by Earthbound). But even as frustrating as dying and losing all my items and progress could be, there was just too much to do and too much fun to be had in this game.
Azure Dreams was primarily a Rogue-like dungeon crawler, and was my introduction to the genre. It's since gone on to become a favorite genres despite the lack of innovation in them these days. But, where Azure Dreams tops all the others was the additional features and the other genres it mixed in. Half the game is in fact focused on monster training so you can have a couple with you to make climbing the tower (hell it's literally impossible to do it without them). And then there's some lighter elements like a dating sim and city building in the game as well. The result is a game where your time climbing the tower helps you progress the story elements in town, and vice versa. It's a great balance that keeps the game engaging at all times.
Early version of Dark Souls?
travo said:Early version of Dark Souls?
Not so much. The frustration was just from being a rogue-like, but one that's a lot harder than the average ones. though even average difficulty ones will have you pulling your hair. But once you start learning how to breed and combine monsters the game gets a lot more manageable. There's a few combinations that make things a hell of a lot easier, and once you get one of those you can finally win the game, which is how I finally managed to do it after 10 years.
Nice to learn stuff about games I hardly know about. My list will be so boring in comparison, everyone knows my games.
Zelda, Metal Gear, The End.
I remember reading a long GS blog about Azure Dreams' virtues; could it have been written by you?
robio said:I remember that bundle. Yep, Majora's Mask would have been a sweeter deal, but that wasn't too bad either all things considered. Not sure if you've got a Wii U, but it's definitely worth a Virtual Console pick-up.
On the bright side, it gave me a chance to play Ocarina of Time in full. 
travo said:Or try the DS version which came out a couple of years ago.
My DS's lower screen is broken. Given Nintendo's shitty attitude lately I'll probably emulate it.
I rented Azure Dreams but I played it briefly and I mean extremely briefly. Don’t really recall much of it all to be honest.
Foolz said:I remember reading a long GS blog about Azure Dreams' virtues; could it have been written by you?
Very likely. there's not exactly a giant fan club for this game, even when it was newly released. I remember writing about the game and rouge-like's several times before. Hell, I've even written about its piece of shit sequel, Tao's Adventure in my 28 Worst Games blog from a couple years back.
That's a game I always wanted to try. There was just too much to choose from on the ol' PS.
#22. Harvest Moon: Magical Melody
Picking a favorite Harvest Moon is always tough for me. While the series has utterly gone to shit in recent years, there were still a solid 15 years of great games. A lot of them have great memories attached, and there's at least half a dozen whose virtues I could ramble on about for hours, but if I had to pick one to play right now the answer is always Magical Melody. It's very much the pinnacle of the traditional Harvest Moon gameplay and it nails the balance of farming/ranching/social life/exploration better than any of the others, even to this day. The cast is made up almost entirely of familiar faces from earlier Harvest Moon games, even going back to characters from the original SNES version. Even with familiar characters and gameplay, Magical Melody still offered up some ideas that were new for the series in the form of simple quests. When the game would get a little slow and repetitive, these quests would help offer up short-term goals and help get things moving again. For a series that tended to suffer from a slow pace, these quests went a long way in fixing that.
So Magical Melody is my favorite in the series and my go-to anytime someone asks which HM game they should play, but it's also a game that makes me smile on an almost daily basis. The game came out for the GameCube right around the time my son was born. Natsume always offered up plush animals as pre-order bonuses and for Magical Melody they gave a sheep. Shortly thereafter the sheep was given to my son and for one of his earliest portraits, the photographer used it in the picture to help keep him in a good mood. So in my upstairs hallway there's a picture of my son, chewing on a sheep. Harvest Moon: Magical Melody...great nostalgia in many forms.
#21. EverQuest
My first and my last MMORPG. Shortly after I graduated from college, I'd gotten a job, and for the first time had some real disposable income. So naturally I bought a new PC with the sole purpose of playing EverQuest. I'd been seeing it in video game stores for a few months and something about the name and box art called to me. And I'll tell you I got my money's worth out of the investment. For the next three years and three expansions I would play it off-and-on. Then I took a few years off and started playing again. It was always hard to stay away from the game for too long. The world of Norrath was fascinating. It was alive with people living their own adventures while I was living mine. The game had amazingly deep lore. It wasn't unusual for me to spend hours in the libraries of bigger cities or just wandering around some of the more lesser traveled zones just to look around (that usually resulted in me getting killed by some much more powerful creature). My final time with EverQuest was around 2010 and I can safely say that was the final time for me. It had just evolved too much, but I did enjoy that last send off to visit old sites and kill monsters that were once the bane of my existance.
For as many hours as I put into EverQuest, I've got no shortage of fun memories with the game, particularly when I'd play it with a buddy of mine who had two rigs set up in his apartment. But the most memorable moment was the day I got my driver's license revoked. I had been driving on a suspended license (I swear to god I didn't know), and I was pulled over for expired tags (that I did know). The police were naturally very generous and pulled me over and told me they'd be towing my car. I walked and grumbled home and once I got there started drinking and playing EverQuest. Had to kill the anger one way or another. I called my boss and told him I wouldn't be coming in today, but he insisted I just work from home since we had a very important conference call with a web developer for a new project. That was problem because I'd been drinking since 9 AM, and in my drunken state I wasn't able to do much other than focus on killing kobolds and trying to level up. Still I ended up doing the call, but I just couldn't focus. I know I asked the right questions during the call, though I was talking too loudly throughout it, but I had no attention span and literally couldn't remember a thing from it even just an hour later. However, I did get my very precious level up (lvl 14), and i remember that part perfectly clear. As far as the meeting though, when the boss asked me about it later I just said I didn't think we got a lot accomplished and should probably schedule another call, to which he agreed.
At least your boss wasn't a cunt.
You've always made Harvest Moon sound as appealing as GG, Bugsy, et al, make Animal Crossing sound appealing. I'm afraid to try it, because I did try Animal Crossing...
Foolz said:You've always made Harvest Moon sound as appealing as GG, Bugsy, et al, make Animal Crossing sound appealing. I'm afraid to try it, because I did try Animal Crossing...
well, for what it's worth I have never liked animal crossing. I've tried it a couple times, and I've never been able to get into it.
robio said:
well, for what it's worth I have never liked animal crossing. I've tried it a couple times, and I've never been able to get into it.
But I also didn't enjoy Stardew Valley at all.
#20. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy
For the purpose of this I tried to stay away from collections, but the original Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney Trilogy deserves an exception for a couple reasons. First of all, the games were collected and remastered to be released as a collection, so it's pretty much the only way you can get it now. More importantly though, these three games are completely linked together. If you started with the third in the series, Trials and Tribulations, you'd almost be lost with as you'd miss out on much of the background and relationships the characters forge with each other. Plus, with the chapter based episodic nature of the series, you can roll from one to the other without feeling like you've started a new game. There's also the fact I love them all, and it's really hard to pick out just one so fuck it, the Trilogy gets the spot.
When the original Phoenix Wright came out for the DS in the West it was insanely hard to find due to a very limited run. While I originally had little interest in some weird lawyer game the shortages gave the game a reputation of a rare gem that you would be lucky to play, and eventually I got caught up in the hype and tracked down a copy. Shocklingly at first, the game lived up to the hype. Investigating crime scenese and then battling it at out in the courtoom was far more entertaining than I ever expected it would be. A large part of that reason was the characters and stories. The way everything was woven together, with plot twists and surprise cameos made it feel like the writing was just too good for a video game. It was all so good that it was really hard to put down and damn near addictive. At the time I was working in an office near Ft. Lauderdale and because of this game I'd taken extra long bathroom breaks in the one very quiet and private bathroom a few floors below the one I worked on just so I could play a little more. It got so bad that thanks to the DS' save state system I'd actually try to play them in my car as I was driving home and stuck in traffic (I never got into a wreck, but that was definitely not my greatest idea).
Since the release of the original trilogy the series has taken a hit in quality. They're still good mind you, but it's clear that there was a well thought out storyline in the original trilogy that the later installments lacked. I've skipped the last couple as a matter of fact, and that's fine. Maybe I'll track them down one of these days. But my real hope that is that in a few more years I forget more and more of the details of the original trilogy so I can go back to it and it will still surprise me with everything it offers.
Ocarina of Time Master Quest came with my copy of The Wind Waker. I wish it came with Majora's Mask as well.
As a result i've never played it in full.