JWK wrote:NIER AUTOMATA... yep. People are probably getting sick of me talking about this game. I’ll be to the point: this game has the greatest soundtrack I’ve ever heard and tells the best story I’ve ever experienced. The graphics are gorgeous, the characters are as quirky and Japanese as you can be (apologies to Persona), and running through the war-torn cities is surreal (though it had some technical hiccups on PC/base PS4 but are more or less eliminated with the PS4 Pro/XBox One X). The game has 26 ENDINGS, but 22 of them are jokes (death by... bad fish?), which highlights how effortlessly the game transitions from world ending catastrophe to not taking itself too seriously. The story will fill your heart one moment and rip it out of your chest the next. And once you reach the end, be prepared to have the story race through your mind for the next few MONTHS. If you never listen to another suggestion I make on this board, hear this: NieR: Automata is one of the greatest video games ever made. It’s my choice for Game of the Generation and in my Top 3 games of all time. For the glory of mankind, indeed.
Before getting to this topic, your list is outstanding. It seems you have very similar taste to me. I do not see any CRPG's on your list though but that is okay, the genre has "acquired taste" stamped on it . I am pretty much a PC gamer and only play the consoles for exclusive content. Pretty much grew up on that genre. Playing Icewind Dale at the moment for the first time in some 15 years, oh yeah, just as mamma used to make em... Agreed with Half Life 2 being beyond excellent and I am not even an FPS fanboy.
Now to Nier Automata. So I finally meet another who holds this game in very high esteem. I do not meet too many folks that speak highly to the point they consider it an all time favorite. Nier Automata might be in my top 10 of all time. This even playing it on the PC which ran horribly on my setup at the time (i7-7700K/16GB Ram/GTX1080). Now that I moved my build to an i9-9900k/RTX2080Ti, it is still shocking that Nier Automata struggles to hit 60fps at 1080p and will have serious frame stagger, bottoming out to around 10fps. It is crazy. The graphics are awesome though and the soundtrack is... different.... but in a good way. Not many games out there have you battling robotic enemies far bigger than the screen. Some enemies are beyond epic. I am surprised this game is not in the 95 - 97 section on Metacritic. I notice that 2B is on the Soul Caliber 6 roster so somebody out there likes Nier Automata.