Favorite Game:

Dragon Quest V had such a massive impact on me when I first played it way back in middle school. I had never played a game that appealed to my personal taste so much. I instantly fell in love with it. It solidified my love of RPGs, and of the Dragon Quest series.

Favorite series:

As mentioned before. Dragon Quest consistently blends heartwarming narratives with unforgettable characters and worlds with lovely classic turn-based combat. Each new entry always has some big things that sets itself apart from the rest, which makes them all worth playing.

Favorite Soundtrack:

I promise this is the last Dragon Quest related entry.

Dragon Quest V’s soundtrack is absolute bliss. Not only does it further enhance the atmosphere of this game tenfold, but it also impacted my music taste in large. I would not have the interest I have in classical music if it wasn’t for Dragon Quest.

Other picks that almost made it are Persona 3 and Yo-kai Watch 2

Favorite Protagonist:

Raiden is the best trans allegory I’ve seen in any media, and I don’t even know if it was intentional! As someone whose struggled with identity in my life, Raiden’s journey in this really strikes a chord with me.

Favorite Antagonist:

I mean, what is there to be said that hasn’t been said already? The gold standard that every RPG villain afterwards has been held to.

Best Story:

An extremely touching tale of love, dedication, and the human condition

Haven’t played, but want to:

A lot of games could go here, but Yo-kai Watch 4 fits the most. Yo-kai Watch is my second favorite series, behind only Dragon Quest, and the games have genuinely changed my life. Yo-kai Watch 4 looks as though it continues the tradition of the series by changing things up and introducing new, completely fresh ideas. I know there’s an English fan translation of it, but as I’m learning Japanese anyways, I’m going to wait to play it until I speak enough of the language to. Also, the fan translation is machine translated I believe, and I really don’t want my first experience of this game to be through that.

You love, Everybody hates:

Whilst not my favorite of the Yo-kai Watch games, (in fact, I’d argue this is the worst of the ones I’ve played; still great though) it’s the one I saw get the most hate. Whether it’s people baselessly calling it a Pokémon rip-off for the GALL of being a monster catching RPG (there can only be ONE 😡😡) or people thinking it’s an extremely dumb game (understandable honestly with the horrific overseas ad campaign), Yo-kai Watch was essentially a guaranteed failure. The game itself, however, is such a unique experience that brings a lot of new ideas to the monster catching genre. Hell, Pokémon Sun and Moon wouldn’t have shaken things up as much as it did if it wasn’t for this game! While all of its sequels add on to the concept and succeed in places where this one fails, I think there’s a lot of respect to be given to the first entry as well. Sure, it didn’t nail everything on the first try, but that hardly ever happens. Especially with something as unique as this game, and this series.

You hate, Everyone loves:

I was tempted at first to put ‘The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’ here, as that game completely stripped away most everything I love about the Zelda series, but with Breath of the Wild, I can at least understand why people like it. I love old Zelda and those games mean so much to me, but I get that a lot of folk were getting tired of the formula by Skyward Sword. Zelda did need a shake-up. I just don’t like the direction it went, personally.

However, with ‘The World Ends With You’, I genuinely do not understand the praise this game gets at all. The music is pretty good and Tetsuya Nomura is still a good character designer, but other than that I really don’t have anything to say about this game that’s positive. I played a little past the first week in game, and I wanted to give it a chance as I often see it heralded as one of, if not THE best RPG on DS, which is high praise given how many great RPGs there are on the system. However, I was met with one of the most obtuse battle systems I’ve ever had the displeasure of playing, a story that didn’t grip me in the slightest, boring characters, and perhaps the most annoying main character in any game I’ve played. I don’t get it!

Best Art Style:

I adore every visual aspect of this game. To start with the sprites, they all have beautiful color choices with an extremely unique style of shading that is unmistakably ‘Steins;Gate’. The stance of each of the characters take in their main sprites does a great job at conveying to the player their personalities. The hot-headedness Kurisu, the aloofness of Suzuha, the innocence of Mayuri, etc. The backgrounds are also gorgeous as well, and mesh fantastically with the characters. Also has some stellar CGs

Best Ending:

Oh man, this is tough. Metal Gear Solid 2, 3, & 4 were close picks, but Persona 3’s sticks out in my mind slightly more. I will admit that sometimes even just thinking about the ending of this game, or hearing Kimi no Kioku makes me tear up a little. I count the ending as the entire ending sequence, like the entire month or two up to the final boss and everything after it. It’s so good.

Favorite Boss fight:

The final boss of MGS4 is the absolute perfect way to end off the Solid Snake saga. Is it obvious what it’ll be from the second you start the game? Yes. Is it kind of just a rehash of the first Metal Gear Solid’s final boss? Yes, again. But that’s entirely intentional, I believe. It’s a fight that had been built up for an entire decade before this game’s release, and it doesn’t disappoint.

Childhood game:

This, and Pokémon Diamond. I forget which I put more time into. In fact, this entire Generation of Pokémon could be called my childhood games. I’m not sure if I’ve more time in this or SoulSilver. I spent so much time raising different Pokémon, exploring the worlds of these games, trying to squeeze every last drop out of them. So many hours of scrolling Bulbapedia…

Relaxing game:

Though I’m nowhere near as big on this as I used to be, it’s the closest I’ve ever had to a game I played to relax. Most things I play are pretty high energy

Stressful Game:

Largely depends on who you play with and what difficulty you’re on, but if you’re going for a decently hard difficulty/stage, it’s extremely stressful. But, like, in a fun way. Until you have some funny guy shoot the cars on that one stage. Still not over that.

Game you always come back to:

Sometimes I just get in a Punch-Out!! mood. Pulling off a successful run of this without any rewinds or save scumming is the most satisfying thing ever. The trick is to come back just as you start forgetting the patterns of some of the harder fights so you get to go through the challenge again. Only thing keeping me from playing this more often is the fact that when emulated, even via Nintendo’s official service, this game has just enough input lag that makes the Mike Tyson fight borderline impossible. I played this on Mesen a lot and couldn’t beat Tyson for the life of me, despite having all his patterns down. I found the game for sale at a store I haunt and picked it up, played it, and proceeded to beat him on my first attempt on OG hardware. Insane dopamine rush

Guilty Pleasure Game:

I just really like the gameplay, man. It’s hard for me to be good at it cause I instinctively constantly look over my shoulder

Tons of hours played:

I probably have accumulated more time in Minecraft than this, over the different versions I’ve played. But that’s not something I’m particularly proud of. My ~350 hours in Yo-kai Watch 3, however? I wear every one of them like a badge of honor. There is so much to do in this game and I never got bored of coming back to it. I 100% the medallium and all of the quests, not doing the asinine trophies though