Board 8 > Leonhart Ranks 100 Games with Writeups!

(+) Yeah! (+)

I had an SNES and a Genesis as a kid, and then I transitioned to the N64 and PS1.

The only Nintendo console I never owned was the Wii U, and I've owned every generation of Playstation.

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Ah, rich kid

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I mean, not really. My parents were well off enough to afford them, but we were hardly rich.

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Pffttt... definitely rich! I didn't know a single kid growing up that owned a SNES AND a Genesis! I saved up my paper route money for over a year before i could afford to buy my first system - a used SNES from a local game shop. Your parents were loaded, Leon.

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#51. Tales of Symphonia


Ah, one of the earliest Board 8 phenomena and the original hot coffee controversy! Seriously though, this was my first foray into the Tales series and still remains my favorite of the three. Id still like to play Vesperia and Berseria at some point to see if they can match the standard that Symphonia set for me. I think probably the main draw for me is the cast, which is one of my favorites in any RPG. This doesnt mean that everyone is a good character (looking at you, Genis and Colette, but Ive even softened on those two over time), but I think they have such great cast chemistry. Theyre all different enough that they play off of each other really well, and its demonstrated so well in the various Skits throughout the game, which is one of my favorite aspects of any Tales game. I think Symphonia is up there with Final Fantasy VII in terms of just motley crews who don't seem to fit together at all and yet they just work. There are a few individual standouts, too. For me, Presea is still one of my favorite female characters in any game, and shes probably the character who made me fall in love with the emotionless girl doll trope.

I really like the battle system, too. Its a lot of fun playing as Lloyd (two swords equals twice the power, right?), because hes just so fast and I love just spamming all his special moves. I will occasionally play as Presea just to mix things up because its neat to have your heavy bruiser be the smallest member of your party. The soundtrack has some absolute bangers for battle themes, too, like Fighting of the Spirit, Beat the Angel, Final Destination, Fatalize, and The End of a Thought. The soundtrack is really good in general, actually. The dungeons are probably the weakest part of the game, and there are some really rough ones, in particular Ymir Forest (so many apples) and Latheon Gorge (so many bubbles). I do like the idea of transforming the ring to do whatever that specific dungeon called for, but I dont think they executed it well. They just ended up making complicated dungeons that werent very fun, for the most part.

Perhaps my favorite thing about Tales of Symphonia is actually the affection points system. I know other RPGs (like Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy X) have a similar type of thing, but I havent played one that does it as extensively as this game does. Almost every choice you make either has a positive or a negative effect on one and sometimes multiple party members. Whoever has the most affection points at certain points in the game gets to be involved in special scenes with Lloyd, and it can be literally any party member. The nice thing is that it isnt pretty much the same dialogue with slight differences. Each scene is catered to that specific character, so it was fun doing multiple runs through the game trying to see those scenes with different characters. The real challenge is trying to get Zelos to the top spot, which Ive never quite accomplished, but maybe whenever I decide to play the game again, I will!

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"Demon Fang! Demon Fang! Damn, I must be a genius! Double Demon Fang!"

Zelos best Symphonia character never forget.

Symphonia is a solid game and along with Golden Sun (and especially The Lost Age) and FE7 may have been the biggest factors in my rediscovering that RPGs are the genre I live for in games after I somehow forgot my obsession with SMRPG as a kid. I do think many future Tales games have surpassed it: Abyss, Xillia 2, Berseria, Graces f. Even Vesperia and Xillia have cases IMO. (get rekt zestiria) but none of that is meant to detract from Symphonia. Fun experience that held up unexpectedly well when I replayed the remaster like two or three years back.

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Rest in peace, sinners! Judgment!

Lightning bl--SUPER LIGHTNING BLADE

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also while Zelos isn't my favorite Symphonia character one of my favorite parts of the game might be the non-canon fight against him

you can hear the struggle in everyone's voices because none of them want to do this

(also you get to hear the awesome arrangement of Zelos's theme)

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Yeah, that's a great moment! So great I almost prefer that route just for having it.

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Tales of Symphonia still my favorite Tales, I think. Berseria's the only one that comes close, but Berseria really suffers from its abysmal budget. Plus, Symphonia has the advantage of being the first Tales I played.

Zelos the worst cast member though!!
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Mac Arrowny posted...

Zelos the worst cast member though!!

you take that back

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man I remember the days when Symphonia party member inequalities were all the rage!

Presea > Lloyd > Kratos > Zelos > Sheena > Raine > Regal > Colette > Genis

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LeonhartFour posted...

man I remember the days when Symphonia party member inequalities were all the rage!

Presea > Lloyd > Kratos > Zelos > Sheena > Raine > Regal > Colette > Genis

Zelos > Presea > Colette > Raine > Kratos > Sheena > Lloyd > Regal > Genis

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wow Colette third is definitely an opinion I have not seen very often

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I havent played ToS since it came out. My post-release knowledge is just that courage is the magic that turns dreams into reality.

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Anagram posted...

I havent played ToS since it came out. My post-release knowledge is just that courage is the magic that turns dreams into reality.

get Symphonia 2 out of here

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Colette was fine!

It's been too long for me to put together an inequality. Pretty confident that Genis would be last though.

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LeonhartFour posted...

Perhaps my favorite thing about Tales of Symphonia is actually the affection points system. I know other RPGs (like Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy X) have a similar type of thing, but I havent played one that does it as extensively as this game does.

You should give Star Ocean 2 a whirl

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The prospect of Star Ocean scares me

Remember when Heroic Mario was big on Star Ocean > Pokemon in the Series Contest and it didn't seem that absurd?

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Star Ocean 2 isn't crazy or anything. It's just a plain good game. tri-Ace had some good PS2 stuff with that and Valkyrie Profile.
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So it's the other Star Ocean games that are hot messes?

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Yup! I dunno about SO1 since I never played it, but I heard it's kinda like SO2 but worse. SO3 has some terrible stuff and some great stuff, while the ratio flips more to the terrible side for SO4 and SO5.
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Star Ocean 1 would probably benefit from being more of a hot mess; it's just kind of okay and doesn't have much going for it now that its innovations have been mined and improved by other games.

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#50. Sonic Mania


After the rousing success of Sonic Generations and its throwback to the past by implementing levels from all the main games, Sonic Mania decided to take it the next level and make a throwback game in the 2-D style. I wasnt sure if wed ever see one of these again that was actually good (Sonic Rush and the Sonic Advance games were fine but nothing special; the less said about Sonic 4 the better), and somehow we did! I thought they did a good job of putting in old zones for the nostalgia while mixing in some new ones. They also did a great job with the soundtrack, both the all-new songs and the remixes of old zone themes.

One of the cool things about the old zones is that they arent just straight reproductions of the originals. They mix them up a lot and add some new twists to them. Sometimes the zone has an old boss with new tactics or a completely different boss, like pictured above where the friggin Death Egg Robot shows up in the first zone! That kinda blew my mind and confirmed for me that this was indeed going to be a great game. The old zones are largely the fan favorites youd expect, like Green Hill, Chemical Plant, and Flying Battery, but there were a couple I didnt expect to see, like Oil Ocean. I also like how they brought back stuff that no Sonic fan has thought about in years, like Nack the friggin Weasel, or even making Ray and Mighty playable characters in Sonic Mania Plus. The new zones were pretty cool for the most part, too. Mirage Saloon and Titanic Monarch were my favorites there. I also really enjoyed the last boss fight when youve collected all the Chaos Emeralds. It was really neat what they did with it, and it felt like an homage to the Doomsday Zone from Sonic 3 & Knuckles.

But my absolute favorite thing is that we got legit playable Knuckles for the first time in 20+ years. None of this hunting for emerald shards crap or being joined at the hip with Sonic and Tails. I was finally free to engage in platforming bliss with Knuckles, gliding over ravines and scaling tall structures. It was every bit as glorious as I remembered it being. They even altered the levels to fit Knuckless skill set just like in Sonic 3 & Knuckles and gave him a different last boss from Sonic. Speaking of & Knuckles, you can unlock a bonus mode of the same name, where you replace Tails as your sidekick with Knuckles. You can even have Knuckles & Knuckles, and why wouldnt you want that? Two Knuckles (Knuckleses?) equals twice the power, after all!

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@ZenOfThunder

Come celebrate noms closing with this Sonic Mania writeup.

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#49. Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal


For many people, this is the ultimate Ratchet & Clank game, and for good reason. It feels like this is where they really perfected the combat, and they give it plenty of opportunities to shine, such as various fighting tournaments that gradually ramp up the difficulty, as well as various setpieces throughout the game proper where you have to survive waves of enemies in order to progress. Up Your Arsenal also has more weapons and gadgets than ever, including some returning from previous games. They gain levels the more you use them, up to level 5 in the main game, and gain various upgrades as they level up, which is a really cool mechanic. Some of my favorites are the Disc Blade Gun, the Rift Inducer, the Plasma Coil, and the Agents of Doom. The combat was so good that it resulted in them creating a spinoff that was all about combat, but the less said about Deadlocked, the better.

Up Your Arsenal also has a lot of additional segments to diversify the gameplay. Clanks solo segments are better than ever here with his Secret Agent Clank persona. I always enjoy solving the puzzles for his parts because theyre fairly simple and generally frustration-free because the setback for screwing up is pretty minimal. Plus, Clank is just awesome, so I always welcome more opportunities to play as him! There were even 2-D sidescroller segments where you get to play as Captain Qwark and learn some of his backstory with Dr. Nefarious. There were just so many cool little additions to this game, as well as general quality of life improvements over the previous two games.

Speaking of Dr. Nefarious, Up Your Arsenal is his first appearance in the series, and he is unironically one of my favorite video game villains ever. Most Ratchet & Clank villains have been pretty whatever, but Nefarious is amazing. Part of it is the incredible voicework by Armin Shimerman, who, in a strange twist of fate, played a dude named Quark in Star Trek and is now the bitter nemesis of Captain Qwark. Nefarious hams is up in every scene hes in, and I love it. It just speaks to how good the comedic writing had gotten by this point in the series. However, Nefarious is no joke when you actually have to fight him. Id say that the boss battle against him at the end of Up Your Arsenal is one of the most difficult fights in the series. It took me several tries to finally take him down, which made it all the more satisfying.

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Wow no love for the top 50

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Boost Sonic > Classic Sonic

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No thanks Sonic Forces

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#48. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate/Brawl/Melee


I decided to combine these three games into one for a couple of reasons. First, it keeps them from taking up three separate spots, so it enabled me to talk about more games! Secondly, it was honestly hard for me to distinguish between the three of them when organizing the list so they all ended up basically getting listed back to back to back on here anyway. In my mind, I love most of the Smash games for the same reason. I understand they have different mechanics, different tiers, different rosters, different modes, and all that, but they all basically boil down to the same thing. Its just a really unique experience that other games have tried to imitate but have never been able to replicate because, quite frankly, they dont have access to Nintendos resources, which is a large part of what makes Smash special.

I have spent untold hours on Super Smash Bros. Melee. I didnt have to do anything lame like leaving the console running while I wasnt playing to unlock Mewtwo. I unlocked him organically like a real man (who happened to be 15 years old at the time). I used to enjoy occasionally looking at my versus stats just to see what the order of the characters was because I would regularly rotate between everyone (Kirby was always #1 because he was my go-to) and they were all in the hundreds of KOs and deaths and some were even in the thousands. My friends and I would occasionally do 99 stock or 99 minute free-for-alls (yes, I do enjoy playing Time; come at me). This was the age when I had friends coming over most weekends, so we spent many hours and nights playing Melee. In terms of total amount of time spent on a multiplayer game, I have little doubt that this game would be in the top 5.

But when Super Smash Bros. Brawl came out in 2008, I moved on from Melee and never looked back. To this day, Im pretty sure this is the only midnight release Ive ever gone to. The hype campaign for Brawl was unlike anything that has ever existed in gaming history. We all stayed up just to see the latest Dojo update in hopes of seeing a new character revealed, and even when it was something lame like YOU MUST RECOVER, we still came back the next night for more because we knew thered be a payoff eventually. Super Smash Bros. Brawl elevated Solid Snake from the bottom of the Noble Nine to someone who won the Male Bracket with ease in 2006. I still blame Brawl for robbing Squall of his opportunity to beat a Noble Niner because Sonics reveal came out in the middle of the 2007 Character Battle. The game itself was a lot of fun, too. I actually really enjoyed the Subspace Emissary because it was basically a Kirby-esque sidescroller with Smash characters, and it had some neat cutscenes considering there was no dialogue. Gradually unlocking all the characters through that mode was cool. Brawl > Melee in Game of the Decade was the right result...!

I still need to spend some more time with Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. I havent finished World of Light yet, but its a really cool mode where they replicate famous fights from other video games. Its an amazing tribute to gaming, as Ultimate itself is in many ways by bringing back the entire roster and adding so many third-party characters, from long-time classics like Dragon Quest to a recent phenomenon like Persona 5. I really enjoy the changes they made to Classic Mode, with each characters route being an homage to something from their game or series. Theres just an insane attention to detail in Ultimate, and I have tons of respect for that. I need to go back and beat all the DLC character modes, but I just cant get hooked to Smash like I could when I was growing up. That doesnt mean I dont still love it, but Im just in a different phase of my life now.

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LeonhartFour posted...

I decided to combine these three games into one for a couple of reasons. First, it keeps them from taking up three separate spots, so it enabled me to talk about more games!

I'm glad I'm not the only one planning to pull this exact same maneuver on my own list, I hate clogging up the list with games that should technically all belong on the list but are basically the same

It's not the last time that will happen either...!

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Yeah, I'd rank all five Smash games in the same spot if I did a list like this. They're extremely similar games! Not sure if I'd do that with Mario Kart, but that wouldn't be as high up anyway, and I only put a lot of time into SMK/64/8.
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good decision, and the same 3 i'd put there. but yeah, life got in the way of playing the single player of brawl and i haven't really tried SSBU's single player at all
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Mac Arrowny posted...

Yeah, I'd rank all five Smash games in the same spot if I did a list like this. They're extremely similar games! Not sure if I'd do that with Mario Kart, but that wouldn't be as high up anyway, and I only put a lot of time into SMK/64/8.

Well, I put the original Smash Bros. lower because I think it's noticeably lower quality than the other three (although it's still quite good!). The series hit its sweet spot with Melee. I think the GameCube control scheme is just about perfect. Along the same lines, I might put Smash Wii U on the list here if I had played it, but I couldn't put Smash 3DS here. I just didn't like the feel of it on a handheld.

And I think there's enough of a distinction between all the Mario Karts to rank them separately.

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wow misleading advertising this topic should be immediately renamed "leonhart ranks 102 games with writeups"

I put so much time into 64 and Melee. Yoshi main for life.

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Brawl the best Smash. Leon we are one.

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xp1337 posted...

wow misleading advertising this topic should be immediately renamed "leonhart ranks 102 games with writeups"

I put so much time into 64 and Melee. Yoshi main for life.

technically (so far) it'd be 103 because I already combined two other games early on!

Kirby forever (with a side helping of Luigi)

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#47. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney


I feel like if you had to sum up what Ace Attorney is all about in a single image, it would be that one. The extreme closeup and the speed lines for maximum intensity and drama as Phoenix says something patently absurd but yet ends up somehow solving the case, thats the series in a nutshell, and it all started here. I initially resisted Ace Attorney fever for the first few years because the idea of playing as a lawyer in courtroom trials didnt sound very interesting to me. Law is pretty boring and tedious in real life! I dont even remember what initially made me decide to give it a shot. It might have been Phoenixs success in SC2K8 when he finally advanced past the first round. Either way, despite the three-year delay, I managed to enter into the series completely spoiler-free because I didnt click on Ace Attorney topics since I wasnt all that interested but I wanted to avoid spoilers in the event that I eventually did play it (a policy I still try to uphold!). Im glad I was able to play the series fresh because I cant imagine what its like playing a game like this for the first time when you already know what happens!

The first case is short and simple but gives you a pretty solid idea of how the core gameplay works. Then they threw a pretty big twist at you right away at the beginning of 1-2, which I thought was a pretty bold move. There were a few eyebrow-raising moments throughout the case that made me a little dubious (such as Phoenix illegally pocketing the wiretap, which really confused me, and then the sudden revelation of spirit channeling being a real thing in this world, which confused me even more), but the writing was clever and the characters were colorful and humorous, so I decided to stick with it. 1-3 is where Ace Attorney really comes into its own. This is the first case where Phoenix and Maya team up on an investigation, and their chemistry was instantaneous. I still enjoy replaying 1-3 just to watch how their dynamic develops because theyre just getting to know each other. However, there was a moment at the end of the second day of 1-3 that completely sold me on Ace Attorney. It was a crazy twist that I never could have predicted, and I finally understood what this game was really about. Then the last day had its own share of crazy twists and I realized that the hype was justified. 1-3 is still a top ten overall case for me just because of how it basically cemented my fandom.

But then 1-4 took the game to an entirely different level. Phoenix has to defend his childhood friend turned rival against a seemingly unbeatable opponent. For three solid days, victory seemed impossible and defeat felt like it was only a snap of the finger away. This was the case where Phoenix Wright became one of my favorite characters because he embodies one of my favorite tropes (The Determinator) so well here. Theres a moment where youre told that the moment you run out of explanations is the moment you lose, and somehow he never does. Theres a moment when everything seems lost and everyone else is ready to give up, and theres Phoenix getting his case ready like its no big deal. He impressed the heck out of me here. Then I was confused by 1-5 because it felt so different from the first four cases, but I had no idea why at the time. Suddenly I was actually using the features of the DS to investigate, and the quality of the sprites jumped drastically! For most of the first game, I refused to save scum or look at a guide. If I got a game over, I just went back to the games designated save points. However, the final stretch of 1-5 day 3 broke me of that habit because I kept getting game overs and it took so long to get back to where I was, but I eventually emerged victorious.

I could probably go on and on if I wanted. Ive probably spent more time and space talking about Ace Attorney on this board than any other series except for maybe Final Fantasy. Ive been dubbed the boards number one Ace Attorney fan by multiple users (a title I would wear with pride!), and Ive done insane things in the name of my fandom, like timing how long it takes to beat every case or figuring out how many lines of dialogue are in each case. I still have the results on a Google Doc if anyone wants to see them!

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"no one can go 40 years without losing"

ya well tell that to manferd van carma

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I get the appeal of Ace Attorney but I've never really been that interested in it.

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#46. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild


Breath of the Wild is many peoples (and many websites) game of the decade, and itll be the heavy favorite to win Game of the Decade 2 here. It even became user SaveEstelles favorite game ever after he completed it, and thats saying a lot. The biggest surprise of all is that Ill probably find myself actually voting for it multiple times! One of the great things about this game is that no two people experience it in exactly the same way. Breath of the Wild gives you the freedom to tackle literally everything in whatever order you wish, and you can do as much or as little as you like. Despite it being a post-apocalyptic setting, theres never a real sense of urgency to be anywhere or do anything, so you can tackle everything at your own pace. The game doesnt overwhelm you with tasks and dots all over the map. It also feels like such a peaceful, serene world (again, despite the fact that its all been ravaged by CALAMITY GANON), so theres something inherently calming and refreshing about just sailing through the air on your paraglider with no particular destination in mind, observing the world around you and taking it all in. Its a sensation thats hard to convey through text alone, but Breath of the Wild makes exploring for the sake of exploration feel so satisfying. Theres something so cool about the concept of, If you can see it, you can reach it because it makes it seem like theres nothing off limits to you.

The main things youll probably prioritize are the towers (which unlock more of the map) and the shrines (completing them enables you to expand your heart total and stamina wheel, as well as collect new weapons and gear). I enjoyed scaling those huge towers because theyre all different paths to the top, and it reminded me of climbing up really tall buildings in Assassins Creed. While it wouldve been cool to have some more variety in the shrines in terms of tasks and layout, there are some really cool puzzles and fights in them. Its also fun trying to find some of these shrines because they can be literally anywhere, and your tablet will let you know when one is close by. There were many times I was on my way to a shrine I saw in the distance, and then my tablet started to beep to indicate there was another one on the way, so I stopped everything I was doing to try to find that one first. The four main dungeons are in the form of Divine Beasts, where you have to go inside them and rid them of CALAMITY GANONs evil taint. For Zelda dungeons, theyre honestly pretty simple, but they had some cool designs and fun boss fights.

There was also one other thing I prioritized finding in Breath of the Wild, and that was the Zelda memories. Zelda games are usually pretty light on overt storytelling and characterization, so I loved the fact that these existed and made it a point to track down every one of them. In hindsight, it might have been better for these things not to exist and then Zelda might not have bodied Squall in Character Battle X, but thats neither here nor there! Seriously though, theyre really cool scenes and flesh out the backstory of the characters and the world theyre living in. There were also some cool NPCs littered throughout the world, mainly Prince Sidon [insert flex and glinty smile here]. This level of characterization and storytelling is more than I usually expect from a Zelda game, so it was a very pleasant surprise for me.

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Breath of the Wild is so good. with nier automata in the "goty 2017 actually nope because nerf 2017" club.

The exploration rush is real and I related way too hard to "on my way to a tower/shrine and wait the tablet is going off? gotta find this now!" Mipha and the Zoras were the best and the Gerudo Arc was pretty fun too. Rito and Gorons whatever.

Parrying Guardian lasers is an experience, fighting Lynels can be super fun, the memories are great but the true peak for me is Hyrule Castle. That is an incredible place and one of, if not my favorite, in Zelda and way up there in all gaming. The music and atmosphere are top notch as you work your way through it.

also there's that one tower with a bunch of corruption that i spent like an hour trying things to see if i could figure out a no damage route to the top and just couldn't do it but i still figure must exist because it'd feel weird otherwise. The damage was no issue to me whatsoever but the puzzle in my mind was just too compelling.

Think I was working on this pre-Revali's Gale which might have solved it but part of me feels like there should still be a solution without that that works "out of the box" from Great Plateau.

I'm sure I could post way more on BOTW if I let my stream of consciousness continue and more memories flood back into me. Incredible game and BOTW2 will be max hype for me like you can't even believe.

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Yeah, I could've said a lot more but I'm trying to limit myself to 3-4 paragraphs and a single post! That feeling the first time you reflect a Guardian laser is incredible. Hyrule Castle is indeed really, really cool.

and yes I will be day 1 for BOTW2 which is crazy for me

it's that good of a game

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I'm not typically into that kind of game but it sounds like just the shakeup the Zelda series needed.

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I generally have no interest in open world style games either but Breath of the Wild is the exception.

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GTA: San Andreas is probably the only open world game I ever truly sunk any real time into. I could see myself getting into BotW or Skyrim though.

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Leonhart4 posted...

I generally have no interest in open world style games

Yeah same. The idea appeals to me but when I actually play I always just get overwhelmed by all the stuff, mess around for a bit then end up dropping it.

Xenoblade is about as open as I can handle.

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Yeah, I think Breath of the Wild is a good open world game if you tend to get overwhelmed by too much stuff.

Still need to play Xenoblade one of these days.

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