#but. i do wish there was some uh. originality with the postgame

[kazumasougi]

as good as the rest of the game was im kind of disappointed with some of the postgame stuff :’) like 2018 didnt Have that which is fine but also its kind of strange to me that they would insist you cant finish some of the quests until you finish the main story only for it to feel so empty

[valeriefauxnom]

Yo, since you brought it up, what's the interpretation of Abyss's ending you like the most?

Going for blood, huh, anon? I'll bite!

I'm on the side of 'technically I think it should be Asch in Luke's body' side even if I acknowledge it's ultimately ambiguous.

The Contamination sidequest, of course, is the principle foundation for this argument, as it spells out pretty clearly: Asch will die, but Asch will assume Luke's body as a backup. Luke will remain in body but not spirit, further twisting the knife to Jade, who no longer would want his dream of 'replicas as a replacement body' to come true as he wished for Nebilim.

We also see an example of the effect with Star in Ortion cavern. The group comes back to see that the original cheagle has died, and the replica remains. But when Jade interviews the cheagle via Mieu, he finds out that it is the original in the replica's body, who felt weak, passed out, and woke up in another body.

More arguably, but I also might look to Jade's immediate response after he learns of Asch's death. He starts asking Luke about how it feels and all that, likely trying to get a gauge on what's happening, if there's any chance Luke is escaping the Big Bang, etc. He wants Luke to escape this with his life, no matter how dismal the odds even without Asch's death.

...And he doesn't seem pleased with the response he gets.

There's also his response at Tataroo itself, which, okay, very arguable, but to me is not a pleased look from Jade. I'm not claiming to be any kind of expert on reading emotions, but Jade's to me looks like one more of grief and/or disappointment than of happiness, especially in the anime, which could have more expressiveness than the original PS2 graphics in a game that had some notably poorly cutscenes.

And while yes, the mysterious figure does have more visual hints to Luke than Asch, and does reference a 'promise', I will say that to the latter both of the redheads were chucking around promises to everyone and is ambiguous. Luke's promise to Guy, to Tear, Asch's to Luke, etc.

Also, I just think it could be a unique and sad ending if Asch, who has utterly loathed replicas and the concept of one, from Van's grooming and his own trauma regarding Luke's replacement, finds himself a 'replica' in the new world, in his counterpart's body, and has to start trying to figure out what to do and who to be in the new world while puppeting around what's effectively the corpse of another person. It's just uniquely horrifying a concept that I would have loved to see explored. Heck, maybe even a postgame or game about the Jade Gang dealing with the impending fonon crisis while maybe trying to find a way to get Luke back and all the drama that could result would have been fun.

...But, as always, this is a very cursory summary of some of the most common arguments for Asch. We could dissect the Contamination Effect and Big Bang and all that all day, but to me, I personally don't see any evidence that it is not working as prescribed on Eldrant, or 'reversed' as some people argue. The one example we see is it working as intended, and Jade doesn't seem all that pleased when it seems like it's starting to kick up with Luke.

However, I'd like to throw a much rarer argument into the works as a thing to consider, just for fun.

What if it's not Asch in Luke's body or the reverse, or a merging of the two into one mind/body...But Lorelei?

To this, I'd like to point out that Lorelei has a sworn duty to answer the Grand Fonic Hymn of Yulia. And what was Tear signing right before this mysterious person popped up randomly in a field when Luke nor Asch show a particular skill in stealth? Well I mean Luke says he's good at hide and seek but still

Uh-huh, Grand Fonic Hymn. This could also explain the 'promised' quote. Lorelei is fulfilling its covenant with Yulia in heeding her descendant's call.

The mysterious person's speech and behavior, for however short we see it, is...ethereal? For lack of a better word? Detached? Both Luke and Asch are very emotional people and don't tend to speak in such a even, neutral tone. Lorelei, however, is a fonic sentience (well, so is Luke, but Luke is a mini chunk of Lorelei) and is not human at the end of the day. What few lines we do get from it in game are 'indirect' and otherwise formatted in a manner humans don't usually use when speaking. To me, the more detached 'This place has a nice view of Hod' compared to anything Luke or Asch might have said normally, even a greeting, is more aligned with Lorelei's potential behavior.

So yeah. Perhaps it's Lorelei, come to Auldrant after heeding Tear's call, perhaps in its' scions' visages, attempting to honor them both by assuming elements of both now that they (or at least Luke) have re-assimilated into the greater whole of Lorelei. Lorelei certainly seems to like its scions.

In the end I can just summarize: scientifically, I think it's Asch, canonically, it's ambiguous. No matter what side of the debate one is on, I dislike people trying to insist that it is absolute fact that x happened. I think part of the ambiguity is intended to reflect the fact that the Score is gone, the future is no longer set. Notice also how all the text boxes are gone after the Score is repealed. What they're saying- what's happening is no longer has a single canonical answer. So even if I do think more of the rules of the Abyss world point to Asch, it's ultimately up in the air.

[ick25]

Net Navis and Backup data.

Uh...Rockman...

And didn’t you delete Plantman just a few episodes before?

Or are Darkloids not Navis?

Hear me out, this post is not to show how hypocritical Axess was compared to the first season ( even though it is), its to give one last look of how hardcore Rockman was back then, and how Navis can be revived with a backup data, as well as trying to solve the mystery of how Rockman came back after being deleted, because it didn’t made much sense if you think about it.

First, though, let’s see why these Navis count as deleted and how were they able to come back in later seasons.

Bombman and Stoneman.

The “Miracle Net Navis” could be able to fight using chips without the help of a human operator, but they can’t revive by themselves. True, in episode 21, Stoneman was able to regenerate himself with a program he had hidden inside of him, but if said program is also destroyed, then Stoneman can’t regenerate anymore.

Random fan: “But Blues couldn’t have deleted Bombman and Stoneman then because we see them again in episode 23 and 25.”

I said that they can’t revive by themselves. Meaning that if Blues DID delete them, Wily could’ve brought them back with a backup data and even used that same backup to make copies of them. It would be until Rockman used the new style change to delete them completely because they don’t come back until Stream, and it has been established in that season that Duo revives Navis who have been deleted by Rockman and friends.

 Airman.

Ok, the only reason I say Airman was deleted was because of the defragmentation effect after Rockman blasted him with the Heat Guts Style, which is something we’ve already seen twice, when Rockman was deleted and in the uncensored version of episode 24 when Gutsman got crushed under a boulder to save Roll. Luckily, Gutsman’s data was recovered along with the Scilab servers. 

This also means that Airman was brought back with a backup data only to be chow for Gospel, and I still think that’s funny. XD

Even though he came back along with the other Navis eaten by Gospel, Airman returning in Stream could mean that he was eventually deleted by something or someone else. Who knows?

Cutman.

One can not be sure about Cutman since we clearly see him disappear with the Log Out animation, but in episode 36, the elder Cutman says that Cutman was deleted by Rockman and we don’t see him again (canonically, at least). 

The brief cameo as an army of Cutman in Stream wasn’t because of Duo, it was because Shademan changed the past, and being a Navi without an operator technically makes Cutman a Darkloid, even though I still think Darkloid origins make NO sense. The Cutman we see in Beast was from a parallel universe, where he was ironically deleted again by Rockman with the help of a friend.

Napalmman.

It was never established if Napalmman had an operator or not, or if he was deleted, but there was no way he could’ve survived a direct Electric Royal Wrecking Ball attack to the face! (The defragmentation effect helps too). Napalman is revived by Duo as an Asteroid Navi, which was a clever way of paring him with his actual operator from the 5th game. BN2 postgame might not be canon.

Planetman.

Just like with Planetman’s origin, whether he was deleted or not is a real mystery. I just assumed he was deleted because his body turns into stone and it then crumbles away releasing what looks like a shooting star.

Wish I had more information about Planetman, but a program advance powered up by the Aqua Custom Style doesn’t seem like something you can avoid. Speaking of that...

Magnetman and Elecman.

The actual scene where Rockman deleting Navis is confirmed. After Magnetman was brutally kicking Rockman in the floor, Elecman fights him while Rockman recovers with the Extra Code, and the Style Changed Rockman starts beating the ever-loving c*@p out of Magnetman.

Obviously cut from the dub.

The bug affecting Rockman during this was interfering with his aim to finish off Magnetman, but Elecman steps in and holds Magnetman in place so that Rockman won’t miss. Both Magnetman and Elecman are deleted because the Count’s PET said Deleted on screen, meaning that Rockman deliberately deleted two Navis to save his friends.

Sometimes heroes have to make tough choices, not everyone can be spared, we have to remember that Navis are computer programs that can be brought back easily because we see Elecman and Magnetman again after this episode meaning that they must’ve had backups.

How does the backup data work?

Both the games and the manga mention repairing Navis with a backup data, every computer program must have a backup to prevent the loss of important information. In a Navi’s case, a backup can be used to restore defragmentation of limbs by using the copy of the Navi’s structure as a base.

However, we’ve seen in later seasons of the anime that many operators are against using a backup when a Navi is deleted, because humans can get emotionally attached to things, bringing a Navi back from deletion wouldn’t feel the same.

Its not confirmed in the anime that backup datas are a thing, but if they were, then why would they not use it to bring back Silk or Nenjiro who sacrificed themselves to save their operators? 

My theory is that their memories and experiences wouldn’t go beyond the last time the backup was made, so if a Navi was revived, it would have the same personality, but it wouldn’t have any memory about being deleted or of anything it had learned prior the deletion.

For something as important as a Navi, and the Net being established as full viruses, the PET should automatically copy the Navi’s data at the end of each day, so if a Navi is deleted, it would only have the memories of the day before. If this was the case for Rockman, then why wouldn’t Netto bring back Rockman with the copy his PET made at the end of the previous day? The only difference would be that Rockman would have no memory of his battle with Blues. One can argue that it just wouldn’t feel right because the Rockman that experienced everything along Netto until his deletion was gone forever and that he would only have a copy of his dear friend instead. It could be that, or that PETs just don’t save backups and it is something an operator is supposed to do, but knowing Netto, doing this would also feel wrong because he would never see Rockman as just a program.

I think there was an argument about Silk being corrupted by the dark aura and that it prevented her from being restored, but I don’t buy that, unless the PET was corrupted as well, the backup would still be intact. The anime was simply making an excuse for teaching children about moving on after the death of a love one, but that just doesn’t work for Navis knowing how computer programs function. 

The anime wanted to follow the end of Battle Network 3, when Rockman was thought to have been deleted and Netto had to move on, but in the games, Rockman was Netto’s dead twin brother back as a Navi ( Which I don’t like), and that made him unique and irreplaceable because he was basically human. Since that relationship doesn’t exist in the anime, they had to change things a little, the viewers had to see Rockman as a person so they made it that only his body was destroyed, his memories were placed in Netto’s PET, and for some reason he had other pieces of memories in his friend’s PETs. So Rockman’s personality and memory datas where still intact, and that all they needed was his structure aka his body which was a back up that Netto’s dad had, unfortunately, save in a Scilab server because Rockman was created there.

I personally dislike it when shows change the rules that were stablished in previous seasons just because they wanted a story that the viewers can relate to. To have a fantastic story have one idea and have it suddenly change because we need children to learn about real life topics, even if the show is not about that. So I want to know what others think about this idea and inconsistencies in a story, in the meantime, here are some images of Rockman possibly deleting security Navis.

I’m starting to think this is the real reason why Rockman doesn’t Style Change anymore.

[wildknightblaze]

Octopath Travelogue, Postgame part 2

Still creeped out by that woman and yet wondering how I’m going to run into her next.

For some masochistic reason, I looked the game up on TV Tropes and lord was that page a mess and needed a lot of cleanup. So much I actually created a new account to do so. There were a strange amount of insistent references to the original beta demo that isn’t even available on the eShop anymore, not to mention lots of shilling for two random NPCs in Sunshade and Cobbleston that would supposedly kick your dumb ass if you Challenged them and could even put story bosses to shame, ~~ooooooh. I went and checked, and the Sunshade turban-wearing villager that was referenced was nerfed all the way down to two pips and is a joke. The Cobbleston barmaid outside the tavern, though, has six pips now instead of five. So at least she’s still a force to be reckoned with.

I just find it really weird that there was so much focus on that original demo, like it was gospel, when clearly a lot of things were changed between then and now (and it’s not like the developers were coy about whether things would change or not, they specifically said that first demo was to solicit player feedback so they could change things). Old screenshots indicate that even things like the font changed, not to mention how Primrose’s Path Action is called Allure, not Seduce.

In the actual game, I found a man named Bryan in the Sunshade tavern, and I remembered there’s a sidequest from Wispermill involving a woman complaining that Bryan raised the prices of the windmills. So I did what I’ve done to all the other dirty capitalists I’ve met in this game -- sicced Linde on him. Heh. And it worked for the sidequest. So that was nice.

Proceeding counter-clockwise around the original towns, I found nothing interesting in Cobbleston, though I did get a reminder that I still haven’t figured out Noelle’s sidequest (to find some kind of historical monument or something). I’m thinking it has something to do with an optional dungeon that’s named Tomb or something, but I’ll have to look into it.

Up to Rippletide, and oh what a surprise TV Tropes lied to me, they said Leon was here on the docks and I see nothing. I did find Princess Mary, though, surprisingly, and discovered that Therese had nothing to worry about in terms of her crush on Cyrus because Mary is clearly holding out for her other professor from ten years ago. (...For the sake of avoiding age difference creepiness, I hope they’re both in a graduate program at the Atlasdam university. Even though it seemed like Cyrus was teaching extremely basic history... 😕) Then the news came that Paul’s ship crashed, and I realized “oh, that’s what the dungeon named Undertow Cave is for, isn’t it?” So I went and checked, and indeed, there was Paul, waiting to be Guided back to Mary, upon which point she received some interesting character development. So that was nice!

I cleared out Atlasdam already after clearing Cyrus’s story, as far as I can tell, so I skipped over that and went up to Noblecourt. A number of interesting things there -- first, apparently Orlick is back to working with Barham, and second, they got into an argument with Mikk and Makk about Leon apparently having returned to his pirating ways? He wouldn’t do that, that would upset our smol babby merchant girl too much...

Kit’s also here. I can’t figure out who to bring to him because he’s kinda nonspecific in his wish for a band of traveling partners. :/ I can pass on Why Odette Doesn’t Visit Geoffrey to Revello though! ...Ah, she told me offscreen. Okay. ...Well, that was a heartwarming resolution. :3 ...Interesting, though. Geoffrey knew he would die soon, huh...?

...okay, Kit is really bothering me, so I give up. I’m gonna look him up.

...what? The Aspiring Actor on the next screen over from him? How was I supposed to figure that out?! 😕 Ugh, fine, whatever. At least that’s finally taken care of. For now.

Back into town and oh, hey, there’s Leon! ...uh, okay, maybe not. Let’s check him out...Yeah, that’s definitely not him. Well, only one thing for it...Sicceth him, Linde! Hehe. ...Yep, just an impostor. That explains it. Ahahaha and even his name changed to Definitely Not Leon. Nice touch.

That seems to be it for Noblecourt so...Wispermill next? Sure why not.

...Hm...this 67-year-old man knows Heathcote, does he? Hmmmmmm. 🤔 Do come with me, good sir. Doesn’t seem to be anything else here, unfortunately, that I haven’t already taken care of.

So back to Bolderfall...And indeed, just as I surmised.

...Uh.

...You took being mugged for your precious Cat’s Eye pretty well, Heathcote.

Oh, that’s why. That’s pretty interesting. So I guess you feel like you don’t deserve the Cat’s Eye, since you didn’t get with this woman back in the day, so really you let Nighteye take it. Okay, sure. Thanks for the dagger. Got some impressive Elem. Atk. on it! I’m sure Primrose will be very happy with it.

...Oh, wait, I forgot, I do have business in Atlasdam, Zeph’s letter! Let’s go do that. ...Aww, that was sweet, and she misses him too. ...And also wrote a letter but never sent it. COME ON, YOU AWKWARD NERDS, JUST TAKE THE LEAP. Ugh fine let’s just take it, Therion. Back to Clearbrook.

Aww, that was also very sweet. And hey, here she is! Back to visit, at least! That’s sweet.

They should be a throuple with Alfyn.

I’m just sayin’.

Let’s check out Wellspring. Erhardt’s here, and I can Guide him! Awesome! ...And his Inquire profile states that he used to be known as the Blazing Blade. As if Olberic’s story didn’t already have enough Fire Emblem references. Heh. ...And he has the Battle-Tested Blade! Sweet! As if Warmaster H’aanit wasn’t OP enough, heheh.

And Bale’s sidequest has him wanting to get back in touch with Donovan...That was the bishop in Goldshore? Sure, let’s revisit there too.

...Donovan’s Condition? I don’t like the phrasing of that. ...Ah, okay, it was a positive thing after all. Just phrased ominously. Some good backstory on Bale, too.

Over to Marsalim now...

...uh. Wow. This sidequest with the prisoner Kevin got really depressing because it’s heavily implied he went to the gallows after. I wasn’t able to save him, just ease his mind regarding the woman he loved. Poor man...

Ah, here’s the guard with the mother in Orewell who regrets their final argument. Let’s Guide him...oh, nice, and the king is wondering how to put on plays for the masses. I’m sure the theatre troupe Kit joined will have something to do with that.

This is getting pretty long, but I’d like to stop in Victor’s Hollow now. There’s that high-level forest dungeon, and it seems like the bandit Alaic is chasing is in there too. Turns out I had to bring Alaic to him to trigger a fight against him...after which, Alaic gave his backstory -- as a member of the Obsidians, stopped by Z’aanta when he tried to kill Susanna, and then saved by Susanna when he tried to drink poison. Wow.

At the end of the forest, I found the missing daughter of the man in Victor’s Hollow, taken by a monster that jumped out at me...and looked like some kind of HP Lovecraft writhing mass of grossness. It was surprisingly difficult -- it managed to kill everyone once, with a crazy powerful AoE dark spell that did around 2000 damage and caused blindness, and even when I got a handle on things, it did a lot of damage and put up a crazy good fight, not helped by the fact that it kept spiriting away party members and reducing the number of weaknesses it had. It took like 15 minutes, but I got it and returned Ellie to her father. Phew.

I haven’t run into Lyblac again, which only makes me more nervous. But I’ll keep hopping around and seeing what’s up.

[team-skull-admin]

My favorite 40 games of all-time

Made an arbitrary list of my favorite games of all-time cause I wanted to figure out where Breath of the Wild is on it. It’s, uh, pretty high. Assload of text below the break.

40: Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow I'm not the world's biggest Symphony of the Night fan (outside of the incredible soundtrack) and I think this is where Iga's seamless platformers found their footing.

39: Call of Juarez: Gunslinger I love goofy, experimental games like this and Far Cry: Blood Dragon, but I think the schtick in this (an unreliable narrator bragging about their heroic exploits) works better than Blood Dragon's dorky 80s nostalgia.

38: Rayman Origins A beautiful platformer with incredible level design. The music for the diabolical secret level is seared into my memory.

37: Cibele A short, story-centric indie game that captures the essence of playing MMOs in the mid-2000s and long-distance relationships. The awkward conversations in this game made me think about my WoW years for an entire weekend.

36: Mario Kart Wii It's not technically the "best" Mario Kart, but I actually enjoyed the motorcycles and I have fond memories of crushing my brother while we downed beers and talked shit.

35: Guild of Dungeoneering I'm usually not super into "We made X game, but added CARDS!" even though I love card games, but they nailed the loop here. I vaguely remember one of the decks being super busted, though.

34: Tropico 4 Adding a political slant to Sim City by making you the leader of a banana republic was just the slant to that formula I was looking for, and I lost a weekend circa New Year's '13 just delving into this hard.

33: Gran Turismo 2 My brother bought a PS1 off a friend when they upgraded to a PS2, and I grabbed a copy of this cheaply at the local EB Games. Once I wrapped my mind around the simulation, upgrading cars and havin fun with them here might have more to do with me being somewhat of a car person than anything else.

32: Metal Gear Solid 4 I should really put the whole series on here, but MGS4 deserves special note for making the core stealth actually fun and somehow tying all the loose ends of the insane plot together while dialing up the insanity even further.

31: Sim City 2000 I figured out how to make a 50,000 person city when I was like, 8. I still have no fucking idea how I did this. It took me till my 20s to crack 100k.

30: Pokemon Black/White People are torn on this game, but the contentious design decision to hide the old Pokemon in the postgame made every new encounter incredibly exciting in a way the series hadn't been since the orignals. The writing also shows signs of the maturity that Sun/Moon would follow through with.

29: Dragon Warrior Monsters 2 I think most would deride this series as a soulless Pokemon cash-grab on the surface, but they're actually roguelikes with a crazy monster breeding system and the most rote of stories to get you into the core loop of exploring new keys to breed ever crazier monsters.

28: Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls Diablo 3 vanilla's reliance on the auction house created design issues that were hard to look past, but Blizzard abandoning it for the expansion made the game into an incredible dungeon crawler. I never laddered, but had fun for hundreds of hours chasing loot with friends.

27: Fallout 3 I'll never forget the feeling of walking out of the vault for the first time, and feeling like I could go anywhere. I also think this is the only Bethesda game that regularly pays off when exploring - weird shit like the Republic of Dave or the man stuck in the tree are fantastic rewards for poking at the less inhabited edges of the map.

26: Bassin's Black Bass featuring Hank Parker I'm honestly wondering if the rest of the world has picked up on this game's low-key genius since I saw it for 15 bucks at a retro game store recently, but this game's arcadey fishing is incredibly satisfying and snappy. It has some major, obvious, irritating mechanical issues, but the core gameplay loop is so good I don't care.

25: Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor I still remember my nemesis. This motherfucker was right at the beginning of the game, inside the first quest area, and was like level 5 or 6, but had a defensive ability that made it harder for me to gank him easily. So he killed me. Twice. And leveled up each time, becoming a level 12 badass who could literally sniff me out when I hid. But he was weak to fire, and I lured him to a campfire and set him ablaze, getting my revenge.

24: Super Metroid I feel like most people would have this game higher on the list, but I think the controls are floaty and Meridia is overly confusing. The rest of the game is incredible and I can't believe they pulled it off on a Super Nintendo.

23: Pokemon Sun/Moon After XY and ORAS were disapointments I was cool on Pokemon, but Sun/Moon challenged a ton of series conventions and got a lot right in the process. I can't believe how deftly this game handles dysfunctional families.

22: A Link Between Worlds This was Nintendo's hit at what was to come with Zelda - a smart, experimental take on the franchise that's easily its best 2d outing.

21: Muramasa: The Demon Blade Vanillaware's magnum opus, a gorgeous Metroidvania where everything is hand-painted. The combat's loop of mixing launchers with sword management is also incredibly fun, if not particularly deep. But fuck I loved looking at it so much and it felt good.

20: The Walking Dead Only time a video game made me cry.

19: Banjo-Kazooie The only 3d collect-a-thon platformer from that era that still holds up, it combines cheeky humor and an incredible soundtrack to craft a world that's always surprising.

18: Borderlands 2 is better crafted, but I enjoyed the dry wit and more grounded guns of the first. I've replayed this like 4 times and I'm not entirely sure why, but I have a blast each time.

17: Doom (2016) Apparently the secret to making this license work in a modern context is to give Halo combat arenas a healthy dose of cocaine and play Meshuggah riffs over it. It so fucking works.

16: Saints Row: The Third I think the writing in GTA is usually sophomoric at best and its attempts at commentary are eye-roll worthy, but having a game say "FUCK IT" and just Mel Brooks that experience is such a wonderful idea. It's also hard to pull off, and SR3 totally sticks the landing (unlike the sequel).

15: Super Mario World The best traditional Mario game. I replayed it recently, and it struck me how much secret exits add to the level design versus 3, and how freed Koji Kondo is by the new hardware. The castle music's classical overture sticks out.

14: Monster Hunter 4 I liked Monster Hunter 3's various iterations but I hated swimming. Taking out swimming and replacing it  with mounting was enough for me to sink hundreds of hours. I actively avoided getting Generations because I knew it would interfere with school.

13: Mario Golf (GBC) The perfect portable game. Golf works well on the platform, and adding basic RPG hooks was enough to make a rote story totally engaging.

12: Super Mario Maker I think the real triumph of Mario Maker isn't the levels (which are usually terrible), it's how Nintendo imparted the feeling of being creative in such an easily digestible and satisfying way. It's an achievement that ascends past Mario design (which still works here) into something greater and more profound.

11: Hearthstone I fucking hate this game and I keep playing it because the Arena is like literal fucking crack and every time I have an opponent at 1 life and they beat me they can eat fucking dicks.

10: Super Mario RPG Clever writing and a strange world grabbed me way harder than Intelligent System's later Paper Mario games. It's too easy and doesn't look as slick now, but the writing still holds up.

09: Mass Effect Trilogy You can't really separate these, as the experience that makes Mass Effect great was carrying your Shepard and their decisions from one game to the next. Everyone will remember Garrus, Wrex, and co. Shame about the ending.

08: Tetris I am weirdly good at Tetris. I know what a T-Spin is. I sank hundreds of hours into it on Facebook. I don't regret it.

07: Persona 4 Describe a game to me as a mix of a J-RPG and a slice-of-life anime and I'll run to the hills, so the fact this game's sharp, mature writing and "just one more day" calendar mechanic combined into one of my favorite games of all-time is a shock. They also put in Pokemon with fucking demons, how cool is that shit?

06: Ocarina of Time I can't believe this game came out in 1998. The world is still fun to traverse, and the dungeon design (especially as an adult) still holds up at the top of action-adventure puzzle design.

05: Magic: the Gathering I wish it was less expensive otherwise it'd be higher.

04: Breath of the Wild I can't believe Nintendo reinvented the wheel so well that I'm putting the game so high on the list. Every design decision in this game is carefully considered to make exploring this iteration of Hyrule that much more satisfying. And its incredibly clever chemistry engine, where every object in the game has chemical properties that can be manipulated as well as physics, creates a ton of emergent gameplay scenarios where you're constantly asking "Can I do that?" and the game almost never lets you down.

03: World of Warcraft Sometimes I regret the 4000 hours I spent in Azeroth, but I'd have a hard time giving up the friends I made there. I could probably shred and like, speak another language though.

02: Pokemon Red I was the perfect age for Pokemon mania, and the fact that the core game was literally designed to appeal to me didn't help. I still love collecting the things and min/maxing ways to beat the Elite 4 with minimal grinding.

01: Mega Man X I think this is literally the perfect platformer. Moving X feels incredible. There's nothing in any of the levels I think is out of place. The soundtrack is a masterpiece. And the game's hidden secret is so insane you'd probably call bullshit on any kid who told it to you at recess. I'm really glad the rest of the world picked up on it after Arin Hanson did a Sequelitis about it, because I've been beating this drum for decades.