[3x3] Your Top Games

[xXD4rk_s3pher0th22Xx]

Uncs on this site talk a lot of TRASH. If you think your hot, let's see it. What are your top 9 games? I say, PUT UP or SHOVE IT.

I'll start (based):



you can get icons from https://backloggd.com/ and paste them in a grid

[Maxlofla-32]

IMG_0216.jpeg

Back when I had an attention span and a childhood I took for granted lol

[maidenhaver]

What am I supposed to do with this?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

This is the 3 x 3 that I had a decade ago:

► Show Spoiler

My dad got me into playing Space Cowboy Online and then its relaunches as ACE Online and Air Rivals. It was my first MMO. It is not "nostalgia" as MMO cynics oh so like to claim whenever you talk about "ye good ole days". There were 2,000+ players logging for the weekend mothership wars and pushing down the lanes of maps towards the enemy capital. It was awesome. Never had that experience in any other game.

The Banner Saga 1 had unusually good aesthetics for a WRPG (which tend to look extremely unattractive). I also liked that most of the party members were older. The story is short and has a tense last act. And I found the gameplay sufficiently challenging before the nerf patch.

Pokemon Sapphire: gives a sense of adventure as you have to budget your money, ration your items while bushwhacking through a marsh during a thunderstorm. Sailing across the ocean, diving into underwater trenches and labyrinthine caves. Trainers are difficult enough. Desaturated color palette on the unlit GBA screen made it feel more real.

I played many hours of FFTA2 on my DS. It is the the Ogre Battle/Tactics game I have most enjoyed. The charming aesthetics, lighthearted tone, and friendly non-fatal guild vs guild setup is very conducive to a game where you are supposed to spend 200+ hours raising your characters and doing missions, as opposed to the dry and serious Matsuno affairs. It also has the most refined and involved gameplay and character building.

Spore I had on there because 1. no other game allowed me to create and play inhuman looking characters. I could add as many arms or legs or eyeballs as I wanted, and that could be an RPG protagonist. And 2. the adventure creator and the community around that. I spent so many hours in that editor and checking out other people's creations. It got me interested in game dev.

This was my character:

Spore Malevolence

Nowadays, I'd probably have it as:

► Explanation

Trails of Cold Steel: very appealing aesthetics with fantasy Prussia, aristocrats wearing trenchcoats and cravats while practicing special swordsmanship in their dojos which is applicable to mech piloting. Rolling countrysides, grandiose castles, humongous airships flying overhead, cold war with a villainous USA expy on the horizon, etc. Great music. Huge cast of likeable characters, lots of comedy and tense story moments. Very fun combat and character building on hard and nightmare difficulties. I most enjoyed CS2.

By keeping Mists of Pandaria here, I do not mean I most prefer how the game played in MoP. I think that - overall - Retail 12.0 (as of the time of this writing) is the best version of the game yet. No other high production value artbook fantasy RPG has a combination of such a wide variety of races to play from (hunched over inhuman beastmen, aliens with face tentacles, etc. Not just reskinned or reproportioned humans with pointy ears), 20 years of armors and mounts and cosmetic potions/items to choose from, 20 years of high fantasy environments (most of which have aged remarkably well), possibly the largest soundtrack ever, 30 grandiose raids with elaborate 25 man setpiece boss fights, dragonriding, etc. I have the MoP box still on there because I think it was the best individual expansion released, not just for the experience and QoL features at the time but also because it was an original expansion to Warcraft, introducing lots of brand new factions and aesthetics not already seen in WC3, but still feeling appropriately Warcraft. All of the other expansions either feel like retreads of WC3 material (and thus less interesting), and/or do not feel appropriately Warcraft (major issue with expansions after BFA).

Final Fantasy XIV is similar in that the current, latest version of the game with the most armors and QoLs and features is overall the most enjoyable version of it. But I found the Stormblood expansion content and story to be specifically the most enjoyable, as it was the last time the story was still focused on grounded geopolitical conflict, and it was taking on a more grandiose level as you pick a war with the empire, go to the outer provinces and become a rebel hero, etc. After that, the story starts descending into power of friendship Kingdom Hearts territory where there are no consequences, and has insidious messaging. There are still fun moments, though.

Shadow of the Colossus: very concise and potent experience. You are a determined young man on a seemingly heroic mission to bring back his dead love/crush. You gallop across the huge, beautifully rendered desolate ruins of a civilization. The movement of the horse and the camera combined with the grandiose environments and bosses feels great. You do not have to memorize combos, and bosses are generally intuitive. You aren't dying over and over until you figure it out. Story becomes interesting as it turns out it is a tragedy - not as in sad things happening, but as in the "hero" suffers a moral downfall. It becomes apparent that our seemingly heroic young man might have been a fool who disregarded his elders and the evidence of an wicked civilization around him by trying to consort with a devil.

Mount & Blade Warband: feels immersive, and it is addictive going around completing quests to get money and hire people, going around setting up businesses to make more money, raiding enemy towns to make more money, eventually trying to start my own kingdom, etc. I spent most of my playtime in Gekokujo 2.

Pokemon ORAS: the remakes are overall better. You get easy access to a truly humongous amount of designs, not just gens 1 through 3 but also 4 through 5, and all legendaries and mythicals released up until gen 6. You also get cool mega evolutions, and a few QoL features. The value add is substantial. Main downside is the brightly, washed out color palette, and how easy the game is.

Granblue Fantasy: both the original game and Relink (cheating yes). Original game I mainly play for the story. Has great audiovisuals, music, and entertaining story. Also has lots of comedy that landed for me. Relink has a meh story but great gameplay, and felt very satisfying to play for 300+ hours and beat the true final boss.

Honkai Star Rail: top tier audiovisuals. Imaginative space fantasy setting and designs. Fun event minigames.

Final Fantasy XI: I became addicted when Horizon launched at the end of 2022. I fondly remember reaching level 18 and forming an 18 man alliance so we could push into the extremely dangerous Gusgen Mines and farm subjob unlock items. I sank 200 hours into it to reach level 35. I couldn't keep that up and had to stop. Then I picked it up again in 2024 to play with the HQ group and wound up sinking another 300 hours into it. Mobs are too powerful to solo alone, so you have to form a 6 man party to level. Low APM combat so you can shoot the breeze during combat. Really feels like you are in a fantasy world. Pleasing aesthetic. Probably my main complaint is that it takes waaaaaay too long before you start going to cool fantasy locations and fighting cool designs. For the first 450 hours, it was mainly traversing mundane deserts and forests and tundras and caves, fighting against caterpillars and bees and skeletons.

[Oyster Sauce]

I hate RPGs

viewtopic.php?t=2458-show-your-refined-tastes

[Acrux]

I hope the order isn't supposed to mean anything.

Uncs

Stop using ****** words.

[rusty_shackleford]

My favorite games are entirely subjective to how I feel at a specific moment. There's probably a hundred or more I could rotate thru as my favorite games.

[Oyster Sauce]

My favorite games are entirely subjective to how I feel at a specific moment. There's probably a hundred or more I could rotate thru as my favorite games.

What are your top 9 at this specific moment?

[rusty_shackleford]

My favorite games are entirely subjective to how I feel at a specific moment. There's probably a hundred or more I could rotate thru as my favorite games.

What are your top 9 at this specific moment?

I do not know

[Tweed]

Shackledinger's Game.

[rusty_shackleford]

Shackledinger's Game.

Choice paralysis.

I've answered what my favorite games are multiple times on this forum and rarely is there even a repeat game.

[Stack of Turtles]

This is way too personal a question.

[methoxetamine]

I have a hard time making a 3x3 because I feel obligated to put a game from a few series that I already can't pick a favorite game from to begin with, and I also don't want to put repeats from the same series. So this isn't actually my top 9 of all time because of that. I also fall for recency bias, I know I'm playing Troubleshooter now but I need a strategy/tactics game on my 3x3 and Troubleshooter is easily my favorite out of what I've played



Ys could've been VIII, Yakuza could've been 0, and Trails SC actually means FC+SC combined but I can't put both

[chud_irenicus]

My favorite games are entirely subjective to how I feel at a specific moment. There's probably a hundred or more I could rotate thru as my favorite games.

This is how I feel. I am terrible at selecting favorites for most categories. What I can say for certain is that Noita is my absolute favorite game by a lot, not even close, and has been for some time, and likely will be forever. Factorio is definitely my second favorite, even if Space Age wasn't as good as I was hoping.

The rest of these are more subject to change, but most of these would probably land in my top 9 on any given year even if they moved around a bit.

3x3bestgamesS.png

[Cipher]

Megaman X: [Platformer] I love the Megaman games, one of the first videogames I played on the NES was the original Megaman. Blue is my favorite color and I saw myself as Megaman as a child. Megaman X is a refinement of the mechanics introduced in the Classic series. And the first one is arguably so close to perfect. My favorite is X5 and the overall best is X4. But, the first one has the special charm and added bonus of also working as a completely stand alone title, when having the armor capsules hidden and scattered made sense. Easily the best soundtrack of the series and for a series famous for great level design, it has one of the best.

Baldur's Gate: [cRPG] The Bhaalspawn duology is fantastic and to this day still the best D&D experience in videogame format. I specially prefer 1 over 2 because you start at Level 1 and are even afraid of forest wolves. It feels like your first character when you were a 12 year old kid discovering D&D for the first time. That magic feeling of wonder about a fantastical world. I also like the more restrain magic that has to be more strategic and rewards preparation and having the martial characters not require 5 tons of pre-battle buffs to survive. You can employ actual tactics like choke points and flank maneuvers.

Diablo II: [ARPG] While Diablo 1 was awesome and had an unmatched atmosphere and is one of the best action dungeon crawlers, Diablo II refined those mechanics, much like Megaman X did for Megaman Classic, and turned it into something really special. Diablo II really has it all. The action, the music, the atmosphere, the graphics, the classes, the co-op and the single player storyline. If there was ever a game that deserved the title of "Masterpiece" I have no regards about the claim for this game.

Final Fantasy IX: [JRPG] Out of all the anime games from Japan that mix D&D mechanics, later known as "JRPGs", Final Fantasy has always been the most special series of them all. And amongst all the Final Fantasy games, IX is the most Final Fantasy of them all. A tale of friendship, sorrow, existentialism and what means to truly be "alive" wrapped in all the melodramatic glory that made anime famous. And most important of all, it is extremely sincere. Not a hint of shame or ironic humor. Hironobu Sakaguchi's swan song is the game that does the "JRPG" task better than any other and is rightfully the last title of the series and stands above the rest as its Champion. Never again will we see this magic every reproduced. It is the Final Fantasy.

Final Fantasy Tactics: The Zodiac Brave Story: [Tacticool] This game uses the "war of the roses" plotline and adds its own anime spin to it. But the key here is the gameplay. Elevation, weather effects, spells have casting times and can be interrupted, flanking matters. It is very close to D&D on a grid instead of the theater of the mind that is more closely emulated by BG. While sharing a lot of DNA with Tactics Ogre and the story in Tactics Ogre is objectively better, the abilities, robust class features and the way you can add "multi-class" features to your character via the ability system edges FFT for me over TO. Both greats of the genre that have not been toppled to this day.

Mount & Blade Warband: [3rd person ARPG/Strategy mashup] No game has truly tapped into this style of gameplay other the M&B series. Starting as a lowly peasant on foot or even a betrayed noble on a horse, you and you alone set out on a journey to go from Adventurer to Conqueror to King and even Emperor of all Calradia. From 3rd person action RPG into big medieval RTS into grand strategy. Warband is the only one that has the complete package. Alone, the game is rough around the edges but with mods it becomes something truly special that no game has been able to replicate.

Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War: [Arcade Fighter Jet] The reason the Ace Combat series is so beloved is because they mixed arcade fighter jet gameplay with just a sprinkle of sim and then a heavy dose of Top Gun. All the games are essentially unofficial game adaptations/spin-offs of Top Gun that put the Player in the cockpit. The music, the cheese action movie dialogue, the flight model that is just realistic enough to feel right but arcade-y enough to properly let you play into the power fantasy of being the leading man in a Top Gun movie. There have been other arcade fighter jet games that pale in comparison and while its nowhere near a proper fighter jet sim like DCS, it never intended to be anything more than Top Gun: the game series. Out of these games, the best one is Zero, which introduces a mechanic where you can damage enemy planes enough to have them become ineffective to keep fighting and you can decide to spare them or kill them. It also has the best soundtrack in the series which already has great soundtracks and the story of Galm 1, callsign "Cipher" who canonically flies an F-15C Eagle, the BEST fighter jet EVER created by the UNITED STATES of AMERICA and as such, he is the best protagonist in the entire series by virtue of this alone.

HBS Battletech: [Turn-based Strategy] Harebrained schemes was a game developer studio which was led by Jordan Weisman, the original creator of Battletech. They created an excellent adaptation of the tabletop into a videogame format. It has both a story campaign and a superb free-form career mode that lets you roam across the Inner Sphere, running a mercenary company as you see fit. And then you can add the RogueTech mod which improves the gameplay and the mechanics to make it almost 1:1 to the tabletop. Take jobs, get salvage, build your big stompy robots, customize them in the Mechlab to fit your specifications and mission priorities, recruit pilots, train them, manage your finances so you can continue getting more and more new toys to play with.

Mechwarrior 5: [Mech-sim 1st person shooter] And the companion to Battletech is Mechwarrior. In the same universe but now you are inside the cockpit of the big stompy robot. 4 has always been my favorite but now with the most recent DLCs and mods, 5 has been elevated into the best way to get inside a BL-6b-KT Black Knight and light everything on fire with its powerful energy weapons loadout in VR. Just like the HBS game, there is a full story driven campaign and also an open sandbox career mode that lets you roam free across the Inner Sphere. The timeline progresses and new tech becomes available as it is rediscovered. The new DLCs now include the timeline all the way to the Clan Invasion, the best era of Battletech. While there's a lot of overlap between the two games as they both let you play out the fantasy of running a mercenary company in the Battletech universe, they are completely different genres, with HBS Battletech being a slow, methodical, turn-based strategy game while Mechwarrior is a fast-paced, mech-sim first person shooter. If HBS Battletech is about being a commander of a mercenary company, leading your pilots through comms with a bird's eye satellite feed, MechWarrior is about being the leader on the frontlines inside the cockpit of the Command Mech of that same mercenary company.


I tried to do only one game from a series and one genre per game so some great games that I wanted to include didn't made the cut. I thought this was just a gimmick but I ended up enjoying the exercise of having to come up with nine great games that I love while also limiting myself to one of each genre and one of each series. And no, FFT is a spinoff series with three games as of yet and is a tacticool game based on a grid, not a JRPG like FF IX so there's no overlap.

[chud_irenicus]

It feels like your first character when you were a 12 year old kid discovering D&D for the first time.

While I prefer 2 over 1, I know exactly what you mean about 1. I remember using the BG1 manual to play a sort of ersatz D&D with my friends in elementary school. There was a certain magic to 2nd Edition that they really lost with later editions, although 3E was pretty good as well.

[Stanko]

Omg that's Meeee.jpg

(I have a **** taste and I don't play games anymore anyway)

[Killagain665]

Shackledinger's Game.

Choice paralysis.

I've answered what my favorite games are multiple times on this forum and rarely is there even a repeat game.

I just have to know one. Yea Vagrant Story or Nay Vagrant Story

[rusty_shackleford]

Shackledinger's Game.

Choice paralysis.

I've answered what my favorite games are multiple times on this forum and rarely is there even a repeat game.

I just have to know one. Yea Vagrant Story or Nay Vagrant Story

Never played it

[Manny V]

making a 3x3 manually is annoying

also for mount & blade i mean warband but warband has a foid in its' cover art

[Tweed]

3x3.jpg

[Maledict]

making a 3x3 manually is annoying

https://photogrid.space/3x3-grid
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=3x3 grid maker&ia=web

[Maledict]

https://photogrid.space/3x3-photo-grid-maker this one works better - set to instagram feed 4:5 and then 3:3 for better proportions

[Maledict]

[Manny V]

making a 3x3 manually is annoying

https://photogrid.space/3x3-grid
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=3x3 grid maker&ia=web

idk man i just did it in paint.net and i didnt wanna sign up for the website in the OP

[Maledict]

making a 3x3 manually is annoying

https://photogrid.space/3x3-grid
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=3x3 grid maker&ia=web

idk man i just did it in paint.net and i didnt wanna sign up for the website in the OP

I didn't sign up for any website

[maidenhaver]

My list is my top 9 from steam, according to hrs played, not my favorites. It doesn't count, ignore it.

[xXD4rk_s3pher0th22Xx]

I'm a stupid ******.

Uhh okay unc? good for u?

BASED IWD fan, though

[Acrux]

I'm a stupid ******.

Uhh okay unc? good for u?

BASED IWD fan, though

Hey moron, you're the one who uses their words.

[maidenhaver]

Actual Top 9 Games:

Rome Total War - absolute monster amount of hours. Impossible to calculate the many lifetimes of hours of chinese peasant children I tallied-up in Rome Total War. This is my top 9 favorite games.

Dawn of War - This is real 40K, James Wokeslop just plagiarized them. It was my introduction to the whole thing, and my introduction to internet cafes. That was a really fun summer, probably the top 5 summers of all time, ever.
HoMM2/3 - hotseat vs friends, while we played Halo, whatever wrestling/football game, DDR (if gfs came over), or watched da boss play whatever jrpg he was into that week.
Oblivion - it let me be anything I wanted, and without rules. My first power-fantasy.
Chrono Cross - first rpg, only game I'm still nostalgic over.
Chaos Theory - really cool levels and abilities.
Thief - still play them.
Fallout - I like rolling high Luck characters. I like punching and kicking people. I like gambling. I like being a ****. I like the music. I like timers. I like The Glow.
Jump Start 2nd Grade - Made me the Man I am today.