The greatest games - A Personal list of Neocracker~

[NeoCracker]

And here we are my friends. Finally breaking into the top 100!

100. Trinity Universe (PS3)
      And of course I start off with a game that will probably only appeal to a very small portion of people. Trinity universe is a game containing only a couple of unique characters and a mix of characters from the Atelier and Disgaea games. If a person finds themselves disliking either
the Atelier series or Disgaea's sense of humor, it may be best to sit this one out.

      The combat system is a pretty solid. You get a fair amount of attacks and Variety within your parties, though it does suffer from feeling repetitive after the half way point when you
your preferred strategies picked out. Still though, the battles can be a fair amount of fun .

      Like a couple of my earlier games, the big reason to delve into Trinity Universe is if you can get into it's story. Consisting of two separate groups stories, each of which converge with each other at multiple points mind you, you get a rather light hearted adventure that doesn't take itself to seriously on a whole, though comes with some epic moments from time to time. There are a lot of laughs to be had in this game as it focus's more on humor then any kind of drama. Another one a lot of people likely won't get to much out of, but you'll probably know if the games for you when you look at the casing.



99. Megaman X-X2 (SNES)
98. Megaman X3 (SNES)
    Now this, my friends, is the SNES side scroller of my choice. I know Mario may have done a lot more for both the Genre and the gaming industry on a whole, but I've always preferred the cyber world of the Maverick and Maverick Hunters. I'll note no of the other Megaman X sidescrollers or the original Megaman games will appear on this list, and X and X2 share as stop because I forgot to put in X2 separately prior to this.

     These games are pretty damn similar in terms of quality for me. The core of all of these games stay consistent, opting for some fairly minor differences from game to game, though they always add enough to keep it fresh. I absolutely love each games sets of powers for Megaman though. With Each boss giving a new power to Megaman and power
ups that can be found throughout the world, the Megaman experience gets altered little by little from beginning to end, keeping a fresh feeling the entire game through.

     &nbspAnd while they are pretty archetypal heroes, it's easy to find yourself getting behind X and Zero on their quest to fight against Sigma, the recurring villain of the X games. I always loved Sigma, essentially a sentient Computer Virus. His plans are basic, but he himself always manages to have a looming presence in these games that makes you feel like he is actually a threat. I was always sad with the later games in the X series as the enjoyment of them just seemed to drop with each installment, but at least we still have the original X trilogy.

[Bolivar]

The X games are so good. The music is so insane.

[Wolf Kanno]

The amusing thing about your X speech is that I know a lot of fans who are split on the series, with many thinking X3-X5 are the best, and then some fans who feel Axel gets a bad rap and is a better character than people give him credit for. Course I think this largely comes down to who your favorite character is cause I like X but don't care for the X4/X5 entries as much since he's relegated to a side character while Zero gets the whole spotlight but I guess this is creator revenge since Zero was meant to be the main character and X's existence is from corporate meddling. Alas, I still think I'm the only fan of X6...

[Polnareff]

Whoooooa, somebody mentioned a Capcom game again.

The Mega Man series is one of my favorites.

When it comes to X, I admit to being one of those "divided" fans. I like X1, X2, X3, X4, X6, and Command Mission. I thought X7 had really troutty controls, which ruined the experience. The voiceovers were terrible too. Try getting through the boss fight with Flame Hyenard without strangling yourself.

Since this is about X1, 2, and 3...... I like X1 the most out of the first 3. It's the most pure one, IMO. The level design is on point and the difficulty progresses nicely. The soundtrack is one of the best as well. And while X gets the Shoryuken in the second game, the Hadoken was more useful. X3 wins a lot of points for being able to play as a really overpowered version of Zero. X2 is my least favorite of the first 3, it seems kind of bland. The added graphic effects were great, though, and so were some of the bosses (WIRE SPONGE!!!!!)

[NeoCracker]

You know Wolf, I never actually got around to playing X6, perhaps I’ll check it out one day.



97. Killer Instinct (SNES)
      This, my friends, is the SNES era of fighting games at it’s finest. While Street Fighter was always good fun with a group, it never managed to engross me as much as Killer Instinct.

      Like most of the Fighting games on this list, it’s story is pretty much irrelevant, if it even has one. I can hardly remember to be fully honest. But the characters each had a style and way of moving that make them seem unique, so much like street fighter each character had an aura of personality even without the need for dialogue.

      This game has the advantage, however, of having what I find to be the vastly superior atmosphere in it’s design, making the visual fun of the game and the satisfaction of seeing your moves succeed give it a huge leg up over the others.

96. Disgaea ‬2 (‬PS2)
      You know, I forgot this was even on my list until now. Being a game that slipped by my eye when I revised this list, I’m left to realize it probably deserves a good 7-8 spots lower then it currently is. But oh well, little late to change it now.

      This was my first Disgaea game, and I enjoyed it. Still haven’t played one surprisingly. Regardless, it holds it’s own as a game well enough. The characters are decent, plot is decent, and the humor is decent. It get’s by without having any real problems, but doing nothing spectacular either. Worth a go if you like the NIS style of SRPG’s.

95. Starfox 64 (N64)
      Take everything great about Starfox on the SNES and make it better. There isn’t a whole lot to say past this. It was just a purely upgraded version of the SNES version with a few great things added in.

      The big one is your allies having more of an effect on battles if you keep them alive then the previous installment. This added even more to the the feel that you operated in a squadron, something also aided by the expanded personalities and dialogue of your team.

      To date, this is my favorite flight simulator type game, and you should really check it out if you haven’t.

[Wolf Kanno]

X6 is a frustrating game actually. It brought the X series into some of the cheap death designs of the NES era so its often considered to be one of the hardest entries barring X7's bad 3D controls *shudders*. So most fans hate it, especially since X5 was meant to be the final X game, though X6 actually ends in a way where its still canonical with the MMZero series depending on the ending you get so I still count it as part of the main timeline. The game is seriously designed to piss you off though.

I like Killer Instinct but it never kept my interest as a game and had some bad balancing issues. I still enjoyed it though.

I've never played much of Disgaea 2, and to be honest, the series never caught hold of me like other SRPGs have. Its funny and I love the characters, but the gameplay always felt more like busy work.

[Polnareff]

X6 is a frustrating game actually. It brought the X series into some of the cheap death designs of the NES era so its often considered to be one of the hardest entries barring X7's bad 3D controls *shudders*. So most fans hate it, especially since X5 was meant to be the final X game, though X6 actually ends in a way where its still canonical with the MMZero series depending on the ending you get so I still count it as part of the main timeline. The game is seriously designed to piss you off though.

Another thing is, Inafune actually did come back to work on X6 too (about halfway through development), so that pretty much, on top of what you said, makes it a canon game. Pretty much all the MM games except the fluff games like Battle & Chase are canon, but some of them are canon in different timelines. MMBN and Star Force occupy one timeline, while original, X, Zero, and Legends in that order occupy the other.

X6 is basically a Guide Dang It game because of the level designs. Especially once you get to the final stages of it and wonder why you keep dying over and over. Metal Shark Player's stage and a certain Gate stage caused me plenty of grief. It wasn't a sissy game in terms of difficulty like X5 was. I also liked the Nightmare Soul idea, even though it wasn't varied enough, and made some stages annoying (but at least you could tell which stages had it and could simply play another stage or reset the game and it'd pick other stages).

The bosses were either really cool (Metal Shark Player and Yammark) or really stupid (Infinity Mijinion, Shield Sheldon). There seemed to be no in-between.

As much as I like X6 despite it being rushed out, I have to laugh at the story. Not that the story in the X games was that great, but it reached an all new low with X6. In X5 (SPOILER)Zero is cut clean in half and is floating through outer space, kinda like what happened to Freeza in DBZ but then you find out that X6 took place only 3 weeks after that, and that (SPOILER)Zero somehow recovered while floating out in space. Think about that. How could something like that happen and get resolved with no explanation? Even as a person who rarely cares about storylines in games, that trout cracked me up.

If you haven't yet, NeoCracker, then play MMX: Command Mission. I highly recommend that game. It was even made by the same team within Capcom that made the Breath of Fire games.

[Bubba]

I may as well offer my opinion on both Starfox games as I think they're both classics in my opinion. The original was fantastic. It was obviously one of the first games to utilize the Super FX chip which created the 3D polygon graphics. I was blown away by the intro to the first level and the controls were lovely and responsive. The action may have gotten a tad repetitive as the game went on but it was still a wonder to behold for it's time.

Starfox 64 was an absolutely gorgeous looking game and easily in my top five N64 list. Some of the levels were brilliantly designed... especially the one that was robbed unashamedly from Independence Day but nobody cared because it was that awesome! It was a much less challenging game than the original but a varied choice of path to the end level kept the replayability level high.

[NeoCracker]

Well, I’m a day later then normal, but meh. Here is the next set of games ot discuss!

Let's see if I can provoke a defense from Raistlin.


94. Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Gamecube/Wii)
      To start with, this is based soley of the Gamecube version, so the Wii controls have no impact on my review of this game. And like with Disgaea 2, it should probably be a couple spots lower, but only a couple.

      That said, this game looks great. The designs are all spot on, feeling like advanced versions of Ocorina’s designs. Minda also comes in as Link’s greatest fairy side kick to date. She manages to be not annoying, and a pretty damn good character.

      This game also saw the addition of sword techniques Link could learn, as well as the Wolf form to change up the gameplay. I think it’s a bit of an under rated title, at least as far as how a lot of Zelda fans disliked this one.

      However, there are two things which drag this game down below other Zelda’s that will be on this list. The first one is how easy this game is. There were barely any points in this game I felt like I was trying. From monsters to Puzzles this has been the easiest Zelda to beat by far. Even with the most epic final boss set ups of any Zelda game, the lack of challenge really kills the feel that the fight could have had. The ease of the puzzles leads into my second point. The game gives you so many new toys and gadgets, but never does it feel like they get much use. So many new options, yet so little is actually made of it all.

      On a whole though, it’s still a great time to be had, and if you ahven’t yet it’s worth checking out. Mind you, I say all this not having played Skyward Sword.

93. Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits (PS2)
      Being the only Arc the Lad I have completed, for quite a few reasons this game really works. It takes place by going back and forth between two groups, each led by one of the brothers.

      What works here is how polorizing each story is in nature and goal, and yet how well they intertwine. It shows the worlds of both humans and deamons of the planet very well, helping you to understand both sides of the conflict in the world.

      Complete with a solid combat system, albeit rather exploitable at times, and a cast of great characters on both sides, there really isn’t a way to go wrong with this game. Give it a go if you ever get the chance.

92. Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete (PS1)
      Confession time, since starting this thread Lunar was quite a few spaces higher (Like, 10 or so) before I played through Lunar again recently. And dear god. Oh dear god is this game cheesey. Before I go off on it hough, I would like to point out the awesome battle system in this game. Easily the best aspect of it.

      Now, however, to go off on it. Every single character in this game, heroe’s and villains alike, are very stereotypical. They do very little, if anything at all, to distinquish these characters from thier archetypes. You have the good hearted thief in Kyle, the goody goody main character, the good hearted tom boy Jessica, the shy and good hearted Maya, and then there is.... Nash. Nash is a complete dick but with a good heart.

      And I find it hilarious that this is one of Raistlin’s favorite games in considering he’s doing his Sexism in final fantasy. Not so much a dig at him for liking the game, but considering this game is far more sexist is highly amusing to me. At least three times Jessica and Maya need saved throughout the plot, two intances being The Black Dragon Cave as well as The Frontier when Mia and Jessica get caught. They serve no realy plot at any point in the game, and have only served as people to be rescued.

      This isn’t getting into the fact that the entire point of this plot is to save Luna, and one fo the main villainess’s of the game’s motivations is her love of Ghaleon. For that matter, 3/5 of hour heroes are doing all of this for a woman. It feels as if the world altering plot line takes a back seat to this. Hence why the game is so unabashadly cheesy.

      But you know what? I still enjoy it. The characters my be nothing but walking stereo types, but they do a good job in those roles. You still manage to walk away liking them all. And the plot may be cheesy as all hell, but you can still get behind it. Perhaps this is because it is shamelessly thus, and isn’t tryin gto be anything else.

      So, if you have a fair amount of tolerance for cheesyness and sappiness, you would probably find yourself enjoying this game.

[Raistlin]

Hey, FFVII is terrible on the sexism issue too, but it's still one of my favorite FFs.

And I will qualify this with the fact that I have not played through Lunar since I was 18 or 19 (though I did play through it several times up until that point), so I may also give it a worse rating now. But the game is just pure fun and non-stop entertainment. Oh yes, the characters and plot are cheesy, but they're also lovable and engrossing (except Nash. smurf him). The Alex-Luna story is very touching, Ghaleon is a great villain (I would rank him above any FF villain from the numbered series), and the game is just put together beautifully. The animated cutscenes, the voice-acting (probably the only time I've thought voice-acting has substantially improved an RPG), the witty dialogue, everything. And the ending! One of the best JRPG endings ever.

True, Jessica, Mia, and Luna all fit feminine archtypes, and it seems like every guy needs a girl (except Ramus, poor filthy rich bastard). And the game is overwhelmingly sappy at times. But I just love it. I may very well be biased due to the nostalgia factor, but I still think it is a fun and enjoyable game.

I actually thought the battle system was far from the best aspect of Lunar: SSSC, but it is still fun. The last time I played the game I actually used the Gameshark because I really just wanted to experience the story without any hassle. Though there is plenty of good dungeon crawling, too.

[NeoCracker]

For the life of me, I cannot think of a game more sexist then Lunar.

I disagree on the ending, if only because when it ends there is a lot the game leaves to desire.

The biggest being you end the game knowing virtually nothing about why The Frontier is in it's current state. They screwed up, got punished, and then the goddess turned herself into a human and no longer possessed the ability to help them...

What did they do that was so terrible? XD

But yes, it had surprisingly good voice acting. I think plenty of later games did it better, but considering it's time frame it was outstanding in that regard.

Oddly enough, I think if the game tried to be more clever though, it would have failed miserably.

[chionos]

I agree that with you about Twilight Princess on basically every point, Neo. It's underrated certainly. I agree that the game was quite a bit easier than previous installments, but I don't know whether I find this a good or bad thing. Mainly because TP was one of the first real games that I played with my daughter and the lower difficulty allowed her to actually play the game. On a personal level, though, daddy definitely wanted the game to be harder.

I want to defend SSSC, but I have a feeling that, like Raistlin, I'm being affected by the nostalgia bug. All I have are good memories of the game. =) Oh, other than the ridiculous hot springs scenes. Those just made me feel creepy.

If nothing else, though, it's a standout example of how to localize a game. The English script is fantastic.


I tried to get into the AtL series, but a few hours in a bug ruined my gamesave (couldn't enter a room iirc) and I just couldn't drum up enough enthusiasm to start all over again.

[NeoCracker]

And I forgot to do the first set of bad games prior to starting the top 100, so I'll just throw it in here real fast. In total I'm only going to have 13 games on this list, as a result there will only be two more sets here and there.

Like my favorite games, this probably won't cover all games I've played and hated. Most of those just kind of fade off for me outside of some titles.

13. The Elder Scrolls III/IV
      You know, were it not for the love these games get I would probably not have thought to put this on my worst of game list. I will give the game credit for the shear volume of stuff one can do in these games. That was an accomplishment that the creaters of these games that deserves praise. It had a certain level of ambition that you don’t often see. Not so much in plot, but for the amount of things you could do in the world, and the shear open nature of it.

      That sad, these games feel horribly unfocused. At no point playing them did I ever feel the main plot was really that important to get too. I always felt like I was some guy whose sole purpose in this world was to run around doing stuff. I’d never felt like doing anything was at all rewarding.

      And this may be the fact I’ve only played on Console and not PC, but the control’s and mechanics were never that good. Neither game did I enjoy their magic systems either. Between poor mechanics and a world that failed entirely to emmurse me, the games always felt like wasted potential. Hell, Skyrim I find the best of the lot, that said I wouldn’t willingly pay for it. I just got lucky in that my friends are massive fans of these games, so I at least got to enjoy playing Skyrim through once, about all the game really deserved.


12. Shin Megami Tensai: Persona
      Well, after pissing on the WRPG fanatics, I guess I may as well take a piss in Wolf’s Cheerios now. What better way to start the pissing then Person? Mind you, this was the PSP version, as I never played it on the PS1.

      First and formost, oh god. This is cheesy. Not Lunar Cheesy, but it almost feels as if the game doesn’t realize it’s cheesy. The best example of this I have is the line “You must be the greatest in Japan!” spoken by a dying butler I had never met before. It was a bizzare line delivered at I time I felt the game was trying to have a dramatic moment, but the shear nonsense of that line, which gets no other context in the scene mind you, killed the drama.

      This game has some bad Dialogue, but what bothered me more was the first person view for walking down dungeons. Even back in the day I hated this view for moving through dungeons. This is a rather personal problem, but god does it bother me. Were it one or the other I would be fine, but both just bother the hell out of me.

      However, it has a solid battle system, though I can’t recall to much on it, so if he want’s I’ll let Wolf describe why the Battle System is good.


11.Folk Lore
      This game is a trap. I played for like, 5 hours straight upon getting this game, thinking it was good. However, Twenty minutes after putting it down I thought “God, that game is smurfing stupid.”

      The world takes you off at first for it’s more bizarre nature, but if you start thinking it’s kind of ugly. Not in a good way either. The mechanics are poor and the story is just boring as all hell. Stay away from this one.

9. Deus Ex: Human Revolution
      This is not a fair placing of this game. At all. To be fully honest this game should probably have been in my top 100 somewhere. The customiztion is well done, the story is great, and you are given a lot of options. Hell, even the different enviroments all look amazing. There were only two things about this game that were bad.

      The difficulty on this game quickly dissapates once you get the hang of it. I played on hard my first play through, and after the first hour I had little to no problems walking through this game, the first boss fight being the only real challange. This wasn’t a big detractor, but still bothered me. Now we get to what was the reason to hate this game.

      I really try not to let one or two small things, or even one big thing kill a game for me. Deus Ex I couldn’t do it though. This game has one of the most piss poor excuses of an ending I have ever seen. Well, kind of, it doesn’t really have an ending. It ends with you making a choice, then speculating on what might have happened. He even makes sure to point out this speculation is just what he thinks. You don’ t even get a hint as to what happens following the end. All of the decisions you have made throughout the game, as a result, are completely smurfing pointless. The worst bit was one of the endings is quoting Albert Einstein to make all technology sound bad, which was just plain smurfing infuriating.

      So yeah, smurf this game. Yet still I could recomend you play it because it’s very well made.

[Wolf Kanno]

I disagree about Twilight Princess being too easy, I mean I blew through Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time pretty quickly and in OoT's instance the crappy controls are often the bigger issue than the game being challenging. So to me, TP is probably just about right in terms of difficulty with the rest of the series. It also just has a better plot and characterization than the rest of the games I've played.

As for not liking P1, well, even I admit its a bad game but I actually really like the plot if only because I look at it like the B-Movie that this game really is. It is hilariously bad, and playing the heavily Americanized PS1 version is even funnier. The combat system on the other hand is interesting on paper but terrible in execution and I am still happy the later games dropped it like a rock.

[NeoCracker]

...You know I was hoping for something more out of you Wolf, not this 'I'm mostly in agreement with you' crap.