QotD: Top 5 Video Games

What's on your Top 5 video games list?
Submitted by mileena.

First and foremost, Final Fantasy VII has always been and always will be the (slightly overrated) love of life.  Cloud Strife and Tifa Lockheart have worked their way into my heart and they're not going anywhere.

However, we talked it over and decided that we weren't totally exclusive; we can see other people.

Final Fantasy IX is my second favorite with The Cast That's Impossible Not To Like Lest He Hath No Heart, and Final Fantasy XII has quickly claimed a spot in my top 5 (even though I'm probably no where near the end--Hunter's Camp?).

I've been trying to figure out a way to work this in somewhere, so I'm just going to type it out now: I find it more than a little disheartening that so many people that hated FFIX's Princess Garnet love Princess Ashe in FFXII.  They're not too dissimilar, only Ashe's adaption to the "real world" happens off screen.  By the time Vaan and Co first meet Ashe, she's already begun learning the ways of the underground and is fairly battle hardened; Vaan considers her to be a bit of a bitch before he figures out she's the princess. Alternately, Garnet is introduced to the cast as the princess; the characters and the player's see her at her most sheltered.  Yes, she's naive to the ways of the rest of the world and everyone wants to protect her, but by the time she witnesses the destruction of neighboring kingdoms and the death of her mother, she's determined to become her country's leader in this time of crisis.  She grows to be graceful and queenly by the story's end. ...But somehow showing weakness prior to her coronation makes her weak overall. 

Good job, kids.  Way to miss 3/4 of the game. :)

Another favorite is Jak II, a great, well-rounded, cinematic game that guarantees to have you (first jokingly, then seriously) pondering its suicide rate.

And I guess I should throw in Ocarina of Time for good measure.  Or smash it together with Majora's Mask to try to squeeze another game into my top 5.  Everyone knows that Zelda games are fun; although I loved the Wind Waker, the OoT generation is still my favorite.   Those games really felt epic, though it's a different kind of epic than that of FFXII (though I admit to sometimes comparing the two while running around in the wasteland... and humming the Gerudo Valley theme for good, geeky measure).  It didn't have the ridiculous complexity of FFXII's narratives (every time I think I know who someone is, they turn out really being aligned with someone else and die D:), but the world itself was monstrous and so well laid out.  It wasn't just running into the distance and moving to the next screen a la FFX; you really felt like you were crossing a continent.  I don't know if TP will be able to replace it, but I'm more than willing to give it a chance.   Assuming I'm able to get a Wii.

At least the box will be pretty.  AND ZELDA HAS A SWORD.