I watched a YouTube video about this topic today and thought it was the perfect idea for a post here. It’s pretty straightforward, it’s games you played in the past that you’re still stuck thinking about, or games that taught you a lesson that you’ve held on to.
I’m going to start. For me, the two games that perfectly exemplify the idea of a game that sticks with you are Sekiro and BioShock. I have a feeling Dark Souls will be a popular choice but I think Sekiro did it more for me personally.
Starting with Sekiro, I honestly think it’s the closest to perfect I’ve ever seen in a video game, at least for a first playthrough. It’s fun, challenging, rewarding, thoughtfully made, beautiful to look at, it’s got great voice acting, memorable characters, and I honestly can only think of two mini bosses that bring the whole game very slightly down. Every other aspect is a 10/10 from me. Not to mention the combat is the best combat of any game I’ve ever played. Personally, this game is the purist example of a game that forces you to get good at it, and does the best job at teaching perseverance. In the rest of the Souls games, you can upgrade your weapon, get a new weapon, use buffs, summon NPCs or another player to help, if you’re getting stuck. With Sekiro on the other hand, you need to get good. Above any other game, this one showed me just how well hard work can pay off. I feel about this game the same way video essayists feel about Dark Souls. If you know, you know.
Moving on to BioShock, this one really taught me the value of a good story, and showed me that video games truly are art. It helped that the game itself is a ton of fun to play, but on top of that the writing is just phenomenal. I’m assuming most people on here have played this one so I won’t get too into it, and in case you haven’t, most of what I’d be gushing about would spoil the whole game anyway, so I’m just leaving it short, but yeah. This game is the finest example of video games being an art form.
What about you guys? What has stuck with you the hardest? I’ve got more games I could talk about but I’d love to see discussion from you.
I have many choices but here’s a few that really stand out to me
The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine If you’ve played just the base game of Witcher 3, you’ve missed out. I decided after playing the base game and waiting for a couple years that I’d go back for the DLC. I spent upwards of 100+ hours with this game on the hardest difficulty and the story in the base game is long, engrossing, and whimsical. But at the end you aren’t really completely satisfied despite several moving moments. Enter the DLC of Blood and Wine though and now you’re basically in The Witcher 3 part 2. This is where you leave the baggage of the main game behind and play out the best ending to any character I’ve ever seen. It’s full of adventure and new sights to see, its full of interesting characters to meet, and it captures the sense of love that Geralt has for the other characters. I legitimately cried at the end of the epic adventure when you sit down next to Ciri and just… realize that its over. Every good book I’ve ever read makes you really feel an empty heart to see the last page and read the final words on it. It felt just like that and I was sad to leave that world behind.
Kingdom Hearts Series Just an incredible game series that appears almost made for children but turns into a very convoluted and at times extremely beautiful story. Whats so wild about it is that the story is somewhat complex but the emotions throughout are so simple, pure, and understandable. It gets to the core of what we all feel and makes cartoons of our emotions and never leaves that space. And the music matched with those emotions is just the purest art.
To The Moon Its short, its sweet, it has great music, go play it and bring tissues. Its a sad tale with very simple gameplay but I listen to the soundtrack once in a while to this day and I never stop thinking about the themes of this game. What exists in this game is so thoughtful, thought provoking, understandable, and most importantly human. I can’t discuss the story at all without spoiling it but just go play it. It takes a few hours and I recommend never leaving your seat for the whole thing. You can probably even just watch it be played on youtube without commentary and get 95% of the experience.
Blood and Wine was especially tragic; I sympathized with Dettlaff and his pain, and Syanna was a terrible person. But preventing Detlaff from killing Syanna for using him leads to him attacking Geralt, who has to defend himself. Regis understands why you had to kill Dettlaff, but he still loved him like a brother; the death of Dettlaff leaves him feeling terribly alone. There isn’t any way to end the bloodshed; everyone is hell-bent on destroying themselves.
That’s what I really love about the Witcher and its writing, there aren’t very many characters that I can think of that don’t have many dimensions to them. And every decision you make isn’t good or bad, just different. Even the love interest you can completely turn your back on and for understandable reasons. It’s just phenomenal writing that doesn’t exist in any other game of its caliber imo
Do you need to play the first two Witcher games to play the third one? I want to play the Witcher 3 but I can’t seem to get into the first one. I’ve got about 6-7 hours put into it on steam and I haven’t had any desire to come back since
I actually haven’t played the other two since they’re both very old games at this point but I do plan to try them out. Witcher 3 seems like it mostly stands on its own and you won’t be missing anything too huge when it comes to the story and characters from the other games. That being said, its a situation where knowing the prior games helps and you’ll understand the relationships better. If you bounced off of the first one though, my recommendation is just to at least read up on the characters and major events of the first two. Maybe watch a game movie if you can find one. I went in completely blind into the third game and it turned out fine so really you can’t go wrong, don’t let the prep for playing the game stop you from actually playing it.
I appreciate it. Thank you!
Absolutely not- you can just play TW2 which is significantly less dated than TW1, or just skip directly to TW3. Maybe watch a recap of the first two games if you do that, though.