101 Games you must play and why.
 

After books, songs, movies, this one was inevitable. Post a game you think everyone should play at least once. It can be a computer game or a console game, arcade game, board game if you want to, doesn't matter. Just state in your post which format the game is in.

Post only one at a time please, and wait for someone else to post first before posting again.

The list thus far...

Page 1 (posts 1-16)
1. The Elder Scrolls Franchise - Bethesda (PC, console)
2. Wizardry 8 - SirTech (PC)
3. Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 - Bioware (PC)
4. Vandal Hearts - Konami (PS)
5. Dragon's Dogma - Capcom (PS3, Xbox 360)
6. Devil May Cry - Capcom (PS2)
7. Diablo Franchise - Blizzard (PC/Mac)
8. Ratchet and Clank series - Insomniac (PS1/3)
9. Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2 - Bioware (PC/Mac)
10. Cards Against Humanity (card)
11. Talisman revised 4th Ed. - Fantasy Flight (board)

Page 2 (posts 17-32)
12. Age of Mythology & Titans Exp. - Ensemble (PC)
13. Star Ocean Series - Square Enix (PS2)
14. World in Conflict series - Massive/Ubisoft (PC)
15. The Mana Khemia series - Gust (PS2)
16. Amnesia: The Dark Descent - Frictional (PC/Mac)
17. Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem - Silicon Knights/Nintendo (GameCube)
18. Fury of Dracula - Fantasy Flight (board remake, Orig. Games Workshop)
19. Cthullu Gloom - Atlas Games
20. Citadels - Fantasy Flight (Orig. French "Citadelles" by MultiSim)
21. Bloodborne - From Software (PS4)
22. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - Rockstar (Console/PC)
23. Until Dawn - Supermassive Games (PS4)
24. We Know the Devil (Visual Novel)

Page 3 (posts 33-)
25. Ori and the Blind Forest - Date Nighto (Xbox One and PC)
26. Morphies Law - cosmoscopegames
27. Undertale - Toby Fox (PC)
28. Armello - League of Geeks (Comp/Console)
29. Dark Souls 3 - From Software (Comp/Console)



=====

1. Elder Scrolls Franchise, Bethesda (PC)

Can't really pick one, so yeah. All of them. I've played Morrowind, Daggerfall, and Skyrim and they'll all been good for more or less the same reasons. The open ended gameplay is the most freedom I've had in a game. Look! There's a mountain. I'm going to walk up to the top of it! I'm going to catch butterflies to make potions! I'm going to walk into the holy temple and kill the god-priest! Yeah, you can do those, or rather, try.

The games inevitably start out the same: you wake up, you are in prison for some reason, you get out of prison for some reason, and off you go. The details vary a little, but the basic premise is the same. There is a story, but it's up to you if you actually want to bother following it, and there's no irritating fairy friend to get mad at you if you don't.

Such as massive project each times means the games are always riddled with bugs that need patches and fixing, yet despite this the games are still popular, and the glitches are an accepted hazard. I've only played the PC versions so I can't say if the bugs propagate the console versions as well.

I have to add that the score is my favourite game music so far. The same theme can be heard in Morrowind and Skyrim (and Oblivion I'm told) but altered to match the tone or mood of the game. The Morrowind theme is something I'm hoping to learn to play one of these days.

2. Wizardry 8

From what I understand, the crown jewel of the "hardcore old-school dungeon crawl" genre. And let me get it out of the way: this game is TOUGH. Hand-holding is not a thing here. But as far as D&D-influenced RPGs go, this is far and away the greatest of them for me.

First off, the party creator. Hands down the best I have even seen. You get to create six characters from a myriad of classes (Fighter, Valkyrie, Lord, Samurai, Rogue, Ninja, Monk, Ranger, Engineer, Mage, Priest, Psion, Alchemist, Bishop) crossed with an equal myriad of races (Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, Gnomes, Dragon-people, Cat-people, Wolf-people, Lizard-people, Wookies, and Fairies). There's something insane like 600 trillion different possible party combinations, and of course each character has 8 core stats and a multitude of skills and abilities to level up. The complexity and level of customization available is just wonderful (for those who like in-depth RPGs).

Now, the gameplay. It's in first-person, but the combat is turn-based. It all has a very Dungeons-and-Dragons feel to it, which is exactly what the game is going for. And oh, the battles. They are never, NEVER able to be hand-waved away. Every single fight is a struggle to the death against a vicious foe, and you are nearly always outnumbered. Your characters start off very weak, and in the beginning running away from encounters is often the best move. You need to plan, find suitable terrain, make sure all your buffs are cast on the right people, and get your party formation just right for each confrontation.

But that's the beauty of it. The game is totally non-linear. You can go wherever you want as soon as you exit the starter dungeon. You can brave the hardest areas in the game and rely on your wits and luck to see you through to powerful treasures, or you can take things slow, it's totally up to the player, and the level-scaling works to balance the difficulty just right most of the time.

The graphics are dated, but they actually hold up really well. For a 3d rpg from 2000, it's surprisingly smooth and easy on the eyes. The locations are all vividly realized and the Fantasy-meets-Space-Warfare theme makes for some really cool atmospheres.

The story is fairly basic, but also rather unique in the genre. Your a group of mercenaries whose ship crash-landed on Dominus, the planet of the Cosmic Lords, and literally everyone there is on the "Quest of Ascension" trying to become gods. And you join in, playing the various factions and races against each other all the while thwarting the designs of the Dark Savant.

The game just got re-released for cheap on both Steam and GoodOldGames, and I highly HIGHLY recommend it to anyone who's a fan of classic RPGs.

If that doesn't sway you, try this: "Half-dragon samurai with a lightsaber". This is a thing you can have in this game.

Edit: actually, I thought of an even better one. "Fairie valkyrie with a pistol that shoots lightning" :D

Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 - Bioware

The first game of it's type that I played, a third person, top view rpg that used the rules from Dungeons and Dragons 2nd edition and it set in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. A lot of the game is recognizable to people who are familiar with the novels and the setting in general.

Baldur's Gate 2 is definitely considered the better of the two but both games feature a good story and lots of technical game play for people that like to be meticulous about battles and such. You create your main character (for BG2 you can import a character you made for BG1) and you pick up other game-created characters along the way until you have a party of 6.

I'm not sure what to say about it but Baldur's Gate can likely be credited as a frontrunner (edged out by the original Diablo) of the 3D, top down role play games like the Icewind Dales series and Neverwinter Nights that followed.

Tales of the Sword Coast is the only expansion I played and goes with BG1. In it's package it adds to the map a location called Durlag's Tower, which is essentially a massive dungeon crawl. Good loot, but harsh challenges. Never did get into the place.

Vandal Hearts

Turn-based tactical role-playing game.

This could just be nostalgia making me biased, but I loved this game. It's about the only tactical role-playing game I could stand....maybe because of it's story line. It's from the 90's, so while it's graphics aren't the best, it isn't the worst. You can't choose classes of every character or anything, but you can choose what path they take within their classes (they branch off) and, from what I remember, you get two of most/all classes.

It's also one of the first rpgs released for 32bit systems.

(Feel free to disagree with me all you want, but I STILL want to replay this game 17 years later...)

So why should you play this? Story line. STORY LINE. And (this could be good or bad) it's easy to tell what will be effective against what, kind of like rock/paper/scissors....minus the not knowing what the other person is going to pull....though that won't always save you.

5. Dragon's Dogma

It's like Skyrim, but way better combat :P

No, really. The concept is remarkably similar: an open-world fantasy action-RPG centered on slaying dragons. Except DD is 3rd-person to Skyrim's 1st, and the open world is much smaller, but it makes up for that with the truly incredible combat mechanics.

To get it out of the way: Buy Dark Arisen, it contains both the original game and the amazing expansion pack all in one package, and fixes several flaws in the original.

Now. Why the combat is so amazing. For one thing, you tend to fight really epic enemies like the eponymous dragons, as well as giants cyclopes, chimaerae, gryphons, ogres, beholders, and more, and these fights are EPIC. The main mechanic is the ability to scale these giant monsters and attack their weak points, and the way it plays is so fluid and enjoyable the combat never gets repetitive. And the DRAGONS! Oh, the dragons. These things make Skyrim's look like cardboard-cutouts of how dragons should fight. They will strafe you with breath and fly away before you can retaliate, they will snatch your party members, crush them, and drop them to their depths, they will smash down on top of you and crush you with their weight, they will sweep you aside with their tails, overrun and trample you to reposition, rend you with their claws, and of course bite you (often accompanied by flying off and dropping from considerable height). Oh, and they do all this whilst spamming fireballs and thunderbolts and maelstroms. The AI is just incredible, and when you finally kill one, the feeling of triumph is incomparable.

Next: the character creator. This should appeal to everyone here, since this game essentially doubles as a dress-up game. And the body editor is simply the most detailed I have ever found. You can pretty pretty much any character you can imagine, and *re-make* your character's appearance whenever you want. There's a hundreds of pieces of armor to kit yourself out in, it's just endless fun recreating OCs and then running around slaying dragons with them.

Third: The "multiplayer". Okay, so this game is single-player, but with a twist. When you start playing, you make not only your player character, but a "pawn", a customized NPC who travels everywhere with you (and yes, they are fully customizable!), and what happens is this: you can have a party of up to 4 characters, and you send your pawn to other people's games via XBOXlive or PSN to join their parties while recruiting other players' pawns to fight in yours. Pawns gain experience and often receive gifts from your fellow players while they're away (and they can visit as many other players as invite them, there's no limit. And they're always with you regardless, so there's so downside to it). I've never seen a system like this in any other game, and it's just really cool. Seeing the characters other people make is awesome, and trying to find ones that fit with your other characters makes for some fun role-playing.

4.: The expansion. Bitterblack Island is simply epic. It's a dark, dingy delve into a labyrinth filled with death knights, liches, undead dragons, armored giants the size of a castle, flying demons, minotaurs, and more. The whole time you're in there, you are chased by Death Himself, an incredibly difficult superboss with a great reward for finally killing him. The atmosphere is just incredible, the fights are thrilling, and the treasure is awesome. A flawless expansion to a great game. Cannot recommend it enough.

If I can ask, how does it compare to Final Fantasy Tactics? I've heard a lot of good things about VH but never gotten around to playing it. FFT is pretty much my gold standard for RPG stories.

I didn't like the story line of tactics as much (I care more about story line than other things, though is every thing else is horrible, I can't do it...Note: I haven't played Tactics as much as VH or as long)

It has (to me) similar combat from what I remember from Tactics. Oh, and gold is not infinite...there are only so many battles.

6. Devil May Cry, (PS2)

This game is the reason I bought a PS2. Action adventure game, completely over the top, and I like the music. The battle music makes no attempt to be scary, it's all about killing something. It's fun!

Reality is overrated. It's so much more fun to wave swords around like they're flimsy sticks and hover in mid air while you pepper something with bullet holes. It also is the only game I've encountered where your best bet to survive after getting your ass kicked is to fight more things.

That said, this game also has one of the hardest early boss fights I've ever dealt with, but there comes opportunity to vent one's rage and frustration later.

Tech-wise, the control set in DMC is one that I've often transferred into other games that allow you to pick your settings. It's easy to use, and menu navigation is breezy, even mid battle.

I haven't actually finished the game, and DMC3 is still sitting in it's case until I do. I will get around to it someday, really.

7. The Diablo Franchise, Blizzard (PC/Mac)

First, I'll go with the story. It explores the conflict between the High Heavens and the Forces of Hell (Prime Evils and their minions) in an attempt to destroy each other which leads a group of both who are weary of the fight to create a place for themselves away from it all named Sanctuary. If you look at it, there are biblical references both obvious and subtle. Basically it is the conflict between good and evil with mankind (the descendants of ancient angels and demons...therefore Nephalem) caught in the crossfire and trying to be swayed to shift the balance of power to one's favor.

Second, the series really draws you into it with the story and the characters. There are those who are fallible and those who exemplify traits and virtues that are exalted as being possessed by heroes. This is to include the Demons and Angels themselves...showing that they are not without fault and therefore can be subject to "weakness" despite what they claim. My basic point is that it makes you think and gets you involved.

One downside (well, in some's eyes) is that the gameplay has evolved and changed quite a bit and become much more dynamic in terms of mobility, timing, and chaining of abilities. I personally enjoy that as it shows what the company is capable of producing and advancing the overall capacity of the game for different styles of play and use of items/gear.

Finally, the universe itself expands beyond the games with books, short stories, and even plenty of fan fiction that has been considered being integrated into the lore/main storyline (or a secondary or tertiary storyline).

Basically...this game is awesome and you will love it. At least that's my opinion.

@Alpha
I would have posted Diablo, but I would have went on like a rambling through the story line ruining it for everyone XD

Cause I love it. Way too much XD Though I could never get the first one to play right on my computer.

Ratchet and clank series
(Original ps2 ones and then the ps3)
Huge fan of insomniacs games. All of them with a gun toting lombax. Each one with its own perks and damage. The weapons are different in each, but some what the same start up on all. A wrench, plasma gun of some sort, and a glove. Later weapons to be purchased with bolts and hidden stuff to be found for secret unlocks. I give it a 9/10. Needs more boom boom for that 10... I like pretty esplosions

Not familiar with that series, though I know the name. Never played.

9. Neverwinter Nights (1 and 2)

Gods, I don't know where to begin. Firstly, Neverwinter entered thescene with AOL instant messaging - it was one of the first ever online games. When AOL closed it down (despite much anger) Bioware took the game and made it an unofficial "step up" from the Baldur's Gate series...

This game admittedly has bad graphics and somewhat monotonous fighting mechanics (think TERA without the graphics)...but the engine it was made on was one of the most flexible and freely moddable I've known, and the storyline...and the characters (though not as good/engrossing as Baldur's Gate/Dragon Age)...were lovely. Each additional release added a new, more engrossing story, and people have went wild on making mods and new stories to the game. I mean, you take a game that is essentially Baldur's Gate with +1 to graphics and a mobile camera...and you make a fully functional/visual Jousting tournament as a side quest to your story! You take a D&D based game, and make it a Science Fiction work where humanity is "contained" by other species, and make magic run like technology - Shadowrun Style...and the characters that you work with or accompany you are akin to the depth of Eschaton characters. Or a story where the Narrator is actually a god that uses/kills off heroes in order to tell his whimsical tales of adventure...BEFORE PORTAL! Or a story of an alchemist who discovered how to live past death...and it's curse. A game where a person who knows just 2 years of programming can take and make a rogue/assassin realm, or 12-year-old me could use to create a castle/port city that was a work of art, mixing medieval Asian and European influences. It is a great game and had a modding community I have never seen since (1998-2014 and still going despite Windows/Mac issues). And people borrowed elements from EVERYWHERE. A Mod that retell's Poe's Raven. Songs from Oblivion, Anime, Baldur's Gate, and Icewind Dale. Continuations of stories from such places (One mod tying in the Original Campaign to Viconia from Baldur's Gate). There is a comedy sketch machinima that ran 3 seasons using this game...and an hour long Machinima Movie!

Neverwinter Nights 2 is almost as good. The storyline for the initial campaigns were loads better; the expansion Mask of the Betrayer is...epic - a shorter story that rivals the depth of Dragon Age and Mass Effect. However, stories made in mods were a lot...less creative, this time around. People made up for it with new mechanics. Developing Characters that you could take on different campaigns by just adding one hak to the file, new spells and races, making this possible in the actual old campaigns!
Sadly, the Windows/Mac issues also have plagued this one (worse than the original) and I myself can no longer play NWN 2. It was overall more bugged, and so never left the same impact.

WHAAAA
you have to play
especially if you like explosions

Explosions are good.

10. Cards Against Humanity (card game)

If you only play it once, which I'm sure might be all some people are inclined to. It's essentially this: a random question is pulled from the stack, and players answer it using the cards they have in their hand. It's a horrible, horrible game for dirty minds and makes you think things you would rather not have thought of, but it can be pretty darn funny. Mature content advisory, at the very least.

If you have issues with racy things or just...yeah...there's always "Bubble Talk." Same style of game but with pictures to which you add a caption from the cards in your hand. Much, much more family friendly.

11. Talisman (Revised 4th Edition)

A bit of a mix of D&D and Monopoly, it has all the fun and anguish of adventuring with none of the character setup or roleplay. You draw one of many characters with varying abilities that will help you throughout the game. Each turn you roll the dice and move to a different area of the board. There is no restricted movement, so you are allowed to move back and forth throughout various areas of the land. On most tiles you will draw an adventure card(s), which has you encounter everything from rats to dragons to blizzards and pestilence to Mephistopheles himself. Or, you know, a hag.

You obtain followers, magical objects, items, gold. Killing enemies allows you to boost your strength and magical prowess, allowing you to be more formidable in combat. You may attack other players, mess them up with spells, or just be downright nasty and make it your mission to kill everyone you land on.

There is a goal, however: Get to the center of the board. Use the Crown of Command. And murder everyone else. If a player dies in normal play, they are reborn as a different character. This lets players jump back in the game after being murdered or stepped on after being turned in to a toad (Being a toad is a thing).

However, once you get to the Crown of Command, you start killing everyone. And if someone dies by your hand at the Crown, they don't come back. The endgame turns in to a race to see who can make it to the Crown. It is tough. Traps and awful things await. You could die, or you could wind up being thrown back to the very beginning of the map. Great treasure or colossal failure awaits you!

Oh, and there's a crap ton of expansions. Some are simply card and character based, others are quite literal board expansions. Using multiples is fun and makes for a humongous board and adventure.