Persona 5 - I have a hard time not viewing this game cynically. It's the perfect iteration of the Hashino Persona gameplay loop, designed meticulously to tease you with 'the next unlock just around the corner' on three different levels and feeding you bites in such small but consistent increments to keep you hooked for dozens upon dozens of hours. I still had fun playing the game, but after dropping the NG+ run a couple hours in I doubt I'll ever return to it. Doesn't help that its story and themes never really went anywhere.

Super Mario 64 - I suppose I may have played this at a bad time where I really just didn't jive with its kind of exploration and gameplay, but I can't say I enjoyed this game. It feels like the kind of game where it's super cool when you already know all its secrets and are intensely familiar with its controls and can use them to perform great feats, but actually learning all of that is a chore. It also started a trend of games of its nature being generally pretty 'easy' but still highly 'punishing' and nothing feels worse than misjudging the distance of a jump after spending 10 minutes (that still felt like an hour) scrounging up 90 coins. No recourse, no checkpoints, have to do it all over again. Freaking hell.

Steins;Gate - Now here's a game I don't really mind, but its reputation eludes me. Sure it has a damn awesome protagonist and a rather unique story, that's all well and good, but it mostly just feels like pretty standard level as far as VNs go. I guess its popularity and anime adaptation kinda fed into itself into getting it the status as one of the most popular VNs out there. Oh well.

Virtue's Last Reward - There's a problem I have with the conversation surrounding the Zero Escape trilogy and it's primarily how people are so quick to forgive VLR for leaving a million open questions including a totally open ending and instead blame ZTD for not managing the impossible task of answering those cohesively. That's VLR's fault, not ZTD's. VLR just kinda likes making the scope bigger and bigger while not having any answers to show for it that don't come packed with more questions and it kind of sucks. I like a lot of things about the game, and yeah before ZTD came out you could still at least tell yourself it just holds its cards close to its chest instead of just not having any, but it really didn't have any in the end.

Final Fantasy VII - Was debating putting VI here for its own status, but VII kinda takes it as far as FF games go. I like FF7 a lot, I grew up with it, it was my favorite game for a while. But it does still get a kind of reverence that's disproportionate to what it deserves, and while being inside FF circles can kinda cloud (ha ha) things there due to loud vocal minorities, the remake coming out shows just how huge this reverence for the game really is. It actually has a lot of the same issues I take with FF6 with its cast's arcs mostly playing out in isolation from anyone and anything else. It's still a game I enjoy coming back to every now and then