Definitely Ace Attorney. It hits a lot of marks; it gives you the feeling of beating enemies by being clever, rather than powerful. It ties in with a sense of justice, and contains some murder mysteries that rival some of the greats of Agatha Christie with twisted, complex motives and multiple lying witnesses. It has VERY creative character designs, making each new face very memorable. Its localization team had their own sense of humor, conveyed well with how they chose to adapt many things. In spite of the humor, they often follow through with deeply emotional endings to each case.

In the order I played them in:

• Pokemon Ruby + Pokemon Colosseum
• Final Fantasy Tactics Advance
• Fable
• Dragon Quest Monster Joker + Dragon Quest 5
• Risen
• Dark Souls
• Dragon Age: Origins
• SMT Devil Survivor
• Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology
• Xenoblade (as a series)
• Witcher 3

There are probably others, but that's the list I came up with in the moment.

A discord community I'm in has been sharing 3x3 cover image grids of the games that "define you". I'll just paste my response from there:

I'm not bothering to share an image because it would just be 7 Kingdom Hearts titles, Tribes 2, and Oregon Trail

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. First really high quality storytelling I saw in games. Setting is so unique I never saw really any copycats

Minecraft, Warframe and old school Runescape.

Everything else I've loved over the years has fallen out of favour with me, but I'll happily dive into those 3 for a few hundred hours again

Some that I don't think I saw mentioned, roughly in the chronological order I played them in:

• Mario 3
• Kirby Superstar
• Super Mario RPG
• Baldur's Gate
• Lords of the Realm 2
• Diddy Kong Racing
• Tales of Symphonia
• Undertale

Little Big Adventure 2.

It's a massive game with both a 3D open world and isometric gorgeousness. Some character progression (not experience points), full voice acting, and a lot of character.

In many ways it set the bar for me in terms of how much a game should contain and the level of quality I expected.

Sonic - halo - wow - Skyrim - crusader kings

The legend of dragoon.

Chrono Cross.

GTA-all of them, (all rockstar games)

Gran Turismo-all of them.

Final Fantasy 7,8,9

Metal Gear Solid-all of them. (Except survival)

Minecraft.

DayZ.

I used to have a hard time ranking my favorite games. Often the order would change based on how I was feeling at that time.

That all changed when I found Satisfactory. I no-lifed that game for months. Never before have I felt as though a game had been made for me.

Now my ranking is

1. Satisfactory

2. (a huge-ass gap)

3. Hades 1&2

4-∞. idk like every other game that is conventionally good?

Based on how many times I have started the game, but never finished

• Stardew Valley
• Terraria

Based on number of hours played

• Modded Minecraft
• No Mans Sky

Rhythm Doctor is the baseline I would want from how Early Access is done. Also an amazing game with a simple control scheme

osu! showed me that even putting the same thing over and over to improve yourself could be really addicting.

Chrono Trigger showed me even with hardware limitations you can achieve stunning visuals.

Elite

Unreal Tournament

Halo

Skyrim

Destiny 2

Baldur's Gate 3

Mischief makers

Factorio kinda set the early access bar so high I doubt another Dev team could come close to their early access stability and openness with the FFF.

Pharaoh, sims (1), sim city, minecraft. And gta of course, every part except Chinatown wars.

Minecraft and Terraria are to me the definitive mining/crafting games you can find.

Stardew Valley sets the bar for farming sim.

The Messenger holds a nice contender of a well-balanced game, one of the best in its ranks.

There will be no better ARPG contender to me than the Diablo series, even if Diablo has made some questionably dumb choices.

The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall/Fallout 1 and 2 are some games that demonstrate the importance of depth and how your choices matter in their games. Something I feel nearly all RPGs should have.

Aaaaaaaa slop Games have shaped how how I view games. I consider any aaaaas company to product trashy predatory garbage and I just never give them money or care to play it. they have pushed me to Indy studios, single dev teams etc... they deserve my money... not trash like ubisoft, ea, rockstar and so on..

DUSK was the game where shooters finally clicked with me, I've played many of them before, whether it was CoD, Serious Sam or DOOM but DUSK is where it finally all clicked and I started to enjoy them. Chrono Trigger completely changed my outlook on RPGs from boring grindfests with pointless texts where you get confused every second to making it my fav genre and finally Yakuza and Zelda BotW completely changed how I viewed open world for better or for worse

• Devil May Cry 3
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009) - especially this one; multiplayer was broken but laced with something special.
• Battlefield Bad Company 2
• Battlefield 3
• Final Fantasy VII: OG and Remake
• Breath of the Wild
• A Link To The Past
• FIFA 07 and Pro Evolution Soccer 6
• Mirror's Edge

I think these are very much the games that just have immaculate systems that are simple and rewarding, yet coupled with a layer of polish that when all the parts are combined, you're left with something even greater.

Super Smash Bros — I play better when I play to get better and have fun. Worse when I try to win. Was a great lesson in general.

Hollow Knight & Silk Song — art and music and such tight games

Slay the Spire — hedging bets and long term thinking in a way that’s much more nuanced than standard RPGs

Sekiro — like playing an instrument

Clair obscur.