And that is to say, pretty off the wall indeed. As in, some are standard and other surprising even to myself!
1- Super Metroid 2- Half Life 3- Harvest Moon 64 4- Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War 5- Diablo II 6- Civilization II 7- Worms Armageddon 8- Minecraft 9- Dynasty Warriors 5 10- Heroes of Might and Magic III
RUNNERS UP (roughly sorted in the order of sadness that they didn't make it in)
The Void The Sims 2 Pokemon Diamond The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion The Simpsons Road Rage Mass Effect Mario Tennis Megaman X God of War Paper Mario
Shower me with accolades for having such potentially non-standard tastes. People telling me that this list is in fact fairly standard are not allowed.
Because, although I don't think I could stomach playing it over the more recent ones right now, it's the one I spent the most time on and have the fondest memories of.
Yeah, I'm sure few people hate any of my top 10 but they aren't the usual ones I tend to see. Meaning, there isn't a single FF, MGS, LoZ, or Mario game
The first Rune Factory was so 'eh' though. I couldn't figure out the fighting aspect
Damn it, I play Harvest Moon to farm stuff and woo small town girls. Well, unless I'm playing one of the portable versions where the character is a girl. Then I woo small town boys...
The Void, huh? I couldn't get into that game because the detection on drawing symbols seemed a bit off. I'd always end up wasting color and as a result couldn't progress very far.
Maybe I should give it another try. Do you recommend any of the difficulty patches, or should I just try to force my way through on the default?
Honestly, I heavily used a walkthrough and basically lucked my way through (found silver in the second chamber and always had it equipped 100% to reduce realm damage. Game became easy mode even without a patch). That said, I still saved every time I entered the Void and right before I entered every chamber. The amount of times I tried to grow a tree and failed the Donor glyph was mind-boggling, and especially infuriating when I'd managed six trees fine and had to reload and do all of them again. And in boss battles, drawing Hawk had an odd tendency to make a Bait plant. The symbols don't even look alike augh *reload old save*
The game has its flaws I'll admit, but man, the atmosphere alone made it amazing. Plus I'm a sucker for inventory conservation like it had.
Well to be fair the first one isn't very well regarded among the fanbase. The second one is well regarded, but the third one is really the one that stands out far above the others. I've only actually ever played the third one but yeah-- for me it kinda makes HM64 obsolete. Now honestly for me the big appeal wasn't in the zeldaesque combat. I just think it does the farming just as well, the wooing a lot better, and has like 4-5x the festivals/events that HM has. Also you get quests from the town's people to get to know them a lot better than you do in HM64-- and the townspeople are more likable in general.
And then after all that you get some dungeon crawling too for good measure. The dungeon crawling isn't really a huge focus, mind you, but it's there if you wanna do it. (and some of it is mandatory to do at some point to advance the plot but it's not a really big focus if you're not into it-- it's not like you even need to grind because you level up your combat stats by farming too)
-- No problem! This is a cute and pop genocide of love!
Alright, I'll order it off Amazon in the morning and give it a shot. Haven't had a great Harvest Moon experience since Harvest Moon DS Cute so it'll be fun to go back to that
I've never played a Rune Factory game but I've loved every Harvest Moon I've played. I keep thinking I should check the series out too every time I see someone mention how great they are (especially 3) in a topic but then I never do it.
A big part of it is the fact that I've been spoiled by all of the recent Harvest Moon games allowing you to play as a female while Rune Factory still somehow lacks that feature 3 games into the series. Why would I want to go back to being forced to play as a boy?
I'm pretty sure RF2 and the ones on the Wii/PS3 let you use a female after beating the game once. Might be earlier (as in you don't need to beat the game) on the latter.
Course "after beating the game" kinda removes some of the appeal I guess but it's there.
But I'm pretty sure HM games didn't implement choosing a gender till further on than 3 in anyway...! Sure to come at some point, though.
-- No problem! This is a cute and pop genocide of love!
After some thinking (and kicking myself for forgetting it) Banjo Kazooie probably replaces The Simpsons Road Rage on the runner-up list. Turns out half my fond memories of Road Rage were from The Simpsons Hit and Run anyway so I think I can safely remove it.